The Truth Is

by Nonieqa Ramos

I head toward her bedroom—the bedroom I slept in for two months after Blanca died. My moms is sitting on the edge of her bed. Her head in her hands, she’s massaging her temples.

  I sit by her and rub her back. “What is it?” She sits up and I rest my head on her shoulder.

  “Your dad. He didn’t make the payments for your violin lessons. Says he needs the money to send his stepdaughter to private school. Can you believe that shit?”

  I guess that means he isn’t going to show up at tomorrow night’s recital. In a way, I feel relieved. I can focus on the music and not keep scanning the seats to see when he’s going to come. Last time he made it for the last fifteen minutes. I had a meeting, but I did my best to stop by. Stop by. What he means is drive-by. Drive-by parenting. At the end you have holes in your heart.

  “Don’t cry, Ma. I’ll practice at home. I needed a break anyway.”

  That statement dries up her tears. “A break? You got a job? You kids always say you need a break. School ain’t no job, it’s a privilege. It’s Club Med. You need a break from what?”

  There is no satisfactory answer to this. My mother’s family believes you’ve earned rest when you’re dead. Back when Abuelo was alive, even though he was 180 years old, he still insisted on sweeping the house to earn his keep. Never mind that we had a vacuum. He had to suffer.

  “Listen.” My moms pulls a folded Kleenex from her bra and blows her nose. “You get a break after you finish your college education. Then you could have your break in France. Keep your eyes on the prize. Don’t get distracted.”

  By “distracted” she means no crushes, no lust, no sex. She and Blanca butted heads a lot after Blanca went from Aw, Hello Kitty! to Whoa, hello titty in like zero to twenty seconds. When we were little, Blanca was the one who went off the mile-high diving board first. (I was the one who watched her plummet and said hell no.) She dove into puberty the same way.

  Of course, while Blanca was checking out guys, I was still checking out library books. The only characters I want to take to bed are the ones between the pages of my books.

  I kiss her on the cheek. “Guess that’s my cue to start on homework.”

  My moms starts changing into her pajamas. She puts on her sleep mask to block out the afternoon light.

  I grab my backpack and swing by the kitchen. Yes! My moms left me jamón con queso and some dulce de coco. I could make the same damn sangwich and it would taste like cold cuts and bread. Mami makes it and it’s magic. I gobble it down, smack my lips together, and head to my bedroom.

  After two hours of homework, research for projects, and violin practice, I’m ready to collapse. The real reason Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on the spinning wheel—she was all like, I could just kick it and skip dance/archery/Chinese? Hella yaas. I shower and towel off in my room. Until I notice Jesus watching me.

  I turn my laptop around. “No offense, Jesus. I mean I know you made all these parts but . . .” I slip on my fave baggy jeans and unbraid my hair. Get up and find a tiny pair of scissors from the bathroom and play surgeon, operating on each split hair, the fork in an otherwise perfect strand that I didn’t choose.

  I think about tomorrow. The recital and the stranger who will sit beside me on the stage. Instead of Blanca, some girl, somebody whose name I still don’t know. The chair in the audience that my dad won’t fill. My life is full of empty chairs.

  But no matter how my mind can fill in Blanca’s place, when it comes to my dad, the file will not upload. We’re completely incompatible. Thing is, even when your dad is a complete asshat, you’re wired to love him forever. My heart feels cold, abandoned, obsolete. The trouble with tomorrow is, tomorrow is always today.

  5

  “Schtmrphx.” My moms mumbles something as she crawls toward her bed and I crawl to the coffee maker. She’s gonna catch a few hours of sleep so she can make it to my recital. I’ve learned how to be so quiet I could out-tiptoe Misty Copeland.

  I’m on my own. I always fix myself coffee that is too weak or too strong. This time it’s butane. I take two sips and leave the cup at Abuelo’s place that’s been reserved at the table since I was ten. The man ate pork chops down to the marrow. He’d like coffee that put hair on his chest.

  On the bus, which I have mapped out too, I sit in the way back by the exit door. The problem is I got no plan mapped out for the dude walking down the aisle eyeballing me from the legs up. Almost every other seat is empty but of course the dude with the hat on backwards and the Kanye T-shirt has to park himself right next to me. Five more stops and I can get off.

  I crack open my book and initiate force field mode. Four more stops. I flinch.

  Ew, is it a cockroach? No. Worse. A hand brushes my hair from my shoulder, flicks the pages of my book. “Hey, girl, what you reading?”

  My body stiffens like I’m all bone, no flesh. “Oh, what”—I brush off my shoulder and scooch onto the end of my seat—“because you want to discuss slipstream literature?” I reinitiate my force field, which is a hardcover and may come in handy.

  “Oh, c’mon girl,” says Kanye, snaking his arm over the back of my seat. I sit up. “I just want to talk to you.”

  “Touch me again and I will papercut you.”

  “You gonna what?”

  I grab my backpack and stand up to change seats.

  “What’s your name?” Kanye runs his finger on my belt loop. “Oh my God, you got that back packed, don’t ya?”

  I turn around and wield my backpack of library books like a mace. Kanye falls out the chair.

  “Bitch!”

  The only advantage I have now is I’m standing and he’s sitting.

  But in a second, he hoists himself up and hurls me into the aisle ass first.

  “Hey!” yells the bus driver, his face glaring in the mirror at us. “You two! Cut the shit and sit down!”

  “Us two? Us? What the hell?” I lurch forward, grab my backpack and turn to make a run for it. Kanye grabs my backpack straps. He lifts me up and drops me on my culo. Thank God I been padding it with plates of Mami’s pasteles.

  I gain traction and scramble forward like a cartoon.

  Kanye curses. “Where the fuck you think you going?”

  But just like that he’s pulled back. Like someone opened the exit door on a plane and he’s sucked out.

  “Damn it,” Mr. Socially Conscious driver hollers, “Don’t make me pull this bus over!”

  Kanye is in a headlock by a dude almost my height. Blue flannel sleeves choke his neck.

  My savior is wearing an unzipped hoodie jacket and Dickies with hems cuffed above the ankles. A lock of his blond hair spills out his hood. I can hear him breathing hard, but he’s not saying a word.

  “Get off me, cunt!”

  Cunt?

  My savior is clearly Wonder Woman. In a blink the Rhodes scholar and his donkey kicking Timberlands are being hoisted up the aisle. I look at my savior’s hands. They’re beat up like the hammer missed the nail and hit every finger.

  The hood falls all the way back and—oh shit! It’s the kid from homeroom. Danny.

  I can’t even. I’m ded.

  The bus stops. The bus driver puts it in park. He helps pin Asshat by holding one of his arms behind his back while my savior holds the other. He and Danny spin around and shove him to the front exit. Asshat tumbles down the stairs and into the gutter where he and his thoughts belong.

  In conclusion and to be fair to men of all cultures and colors: YOU SUCK.

  I stare at Danny as he/she/they climbs back onto the bus. The bus driver, meaty like a porkchop, stands at the top of the stairs and folds his arms waiting for asshat to try and get up.

  “Your ass gonna be walking if you ever act like that on my bus again. You hear me?”

  “Fuck you bitches!” Asshat apparently has a schedule and runs off somewhere to discuss the canon of western literature.

  Bus driver to me from his seat: “You all right?”

  I’m off the sticky floor and dusting t
he staphylococci off my jeans. “Yeah. I mean I’d be more all right if you had intervened earlier.”

  “Maybe you’d be more all right if you wasn’t so hostile. Have a seat. I’ve got a schedule,” he says, turning his back on me. “Damn kids don’t know what’s it’s like to earn a living.”

  The bus lurches forward. Shit! Half of my books are on the ground surfing under the seats. I bend down to collect them when, of course, people start pouring in at the next stop. By the time I have my books and shit together, Danny has situated themself in the front. A flood of people push their way through the front and back doors, taking seats. I hold onto a hook and stand swaying as the bus turns. I didn’t even get a chance to thank him. Her? Ugh.

  “No matter!” I shake my fist and shout toward the front. “We will meet again!”

  A lady with no eyebrows sitting next to me mumbles, “Drugs,” and clicks her tongue.

  6

  Outside homeroom, I look through the glass at the potential battlefield. Walk into homeroom and do my usual safety assessment. I know which windows I could jump out of and only break a bone or two before hitting the pavement. Nelly and White Girls 1, 3, and 4 are absent, I assume because they’ve been suspended. But all the other empty desks? None of Nelly’s friends are here either.

  Were they all suspended?

  Blanca’s not here, but I’m in the mood to pass notes. I lay open my sketchpad on my desk. I hold a pen by the cap and position my hand upright like I am holding a compass.

  Boricua 2 aka Penelope, pulling her long pink hair out from under the nail in the desk: “What is Ex-Machina doing?”

  Like what I’m doing is the weirdest thing in the room. A group of girls is watching a YouTube video on how to pierce their own arms. Another chick is filming the inside of her shirt. Her boyfriend is filming the inside of his pants.

  “I tried to sit with her once. But she’s so hostile,” Boricua 3 says over the sound of music blaring in her ears.

  “Yeah,” Boricua 1 says over her own music. “We have lockers right next to each other, but she stares straight ahead. I guess her model’s got no peripheral vision.”

  White Girl 2, aka @XOXO, with the glitter braids: “Maybe she’s autistic!”

  White Girl 5, with the faded henna: “Maybe she’s just”—lowers voice—“a bitch.”

  White Girl 2: “Don’t use the word bitch. It’s sexist.” Lowers voice. “But she is.”

  White Girl 5: “What is she anyway? Her hair is, you know . . . but she talks white.”

  Boricua 1: “What do you mean she talk white?”

  White Girl 5: “I just mean—you said yourself she doesn’t speak Spanish.”

  Boricua 1: “She don’t. But that’s not what you really mean. What, because she knows vocabulary and shit, she can’t be Spanish?”

  White Girl 2: “I’m so confused.”

  White Girl 5: “This is a private discussion.”

  Boricua 1: “There ain’t nothing private about stereotyping.”

  The words tap against my consciousness like a fly hitting a windowpane. Albeit a big fat blue bottle fly.

  Me: Did you send me a guardian angel today?

  My pen inches over the paper. Makes a gentle 360 turn.

  Blanca: :)

  Me: Thank you. I’ll come see you. Bring you some mofongo my moms cooked up. After I catch up with my savior. That girl. Guy. Person. Damn, this gender stuff is confuzzing. Anyway, I have to say thank you.

  The pen slashes. Right over the happy face.

  Me: Oh stop it.

  The pen climbs up, down, up a jagged N. Slashes a sociopathic O.

  Blanca: NO. NO. NO. NO.

  Once Blanca brought me a slice of bizcocho mojadito from her abuela. Ay Dios Mio, my heart was in heaven, my stomach feeding a hunger only an abuela could satisfy, my brain in Culebrita where Blanca’s family was from, my body swinging on a hammock between two flamboyan trees, my eyes gazing up at a canopy of fiery blooms. But no sooner had I finished my last bite, than my palms itched. My abuelo taught me that meant my conscience itched. I was in debt.

  My moms always rolled her eyes when Abuelo talked like that, but she believed it more than anyone. She doesn’t use credit cards. When we had to borrow money from the tías to put a down payment on our house, she worked triple shifts until she paid them back with interest they never charged. So being my mother’s daughter, I baked Blanca and her abuela a whole cake to thank them for the slice.

  Blanca, her giant brown bun bouncing on her head, her wiry baby hairs curling around her forehead: “My abuela says you got a problem. You can’t receive.”

  “You mean, I’m not a moocher.”

  “No, I mean you aren’t open to love. You always feel like you got to even things up.”

  “I guess I want to be debt-free.”

  “You can’t be debt-free in a relationship, Verdad. Sometimes you’re in the red. Maybe that’s why people think red is the color of love. Sometimes you got to let someone else be the giver. If you love someone, you can’t take that away from them.”

  “Shit, that was like profound. I’m gonna write—”

  “That shit down.” Blanca pointed to a pen and the empty skin on my arm. “Highlight it.”

  Me: Blanca, I have to say thank you to Danny.

  I have to do something to show my appreciation. To make sure that he. She. They? Don’t expect anything more from me.

  My hand is going crazy now. Blanca’s pissed.

  Blanca: You want to even the score. But how can you even a score when somebody saves your life? That’s a lot of freakin cake.

  My hand drops and the pen shoots like an arrow across the floor. Someone stops the pen with their Vans, manages to flip it up like a hacky sack, and catch it midair. Danny.

  I mouth “Gracias” in Danny’s direction and stare like they’re a pointillism picture and I’m dissecting every dot to see how it contributes to the whole painting. It isn’t till their head drops and they blush that I realize I look like a dopey second-grader smiling for a school picture.

  My savior hands me back my pen and I take it like I’ve been handed a wand from Hogwarts and it has chosen ME. At this point words should probably be exchanged. I’m thinking of how defined Danny’s cheekbones are. Like a supermodel’s. So of course, all I say is “Cheeks.”

  Danny’s cheeks are now apple red. “Um, sorry?”

  “Your cheeks. You have.” One beat. Two. “Freckles!” I say triumphantly.

  Boricua 1 to her girls: “I think there’s a glitch in Maquina’s program.”

  “Yes,” says Danny. “I take after my nana.”

  Ha! I made conversation. Throw enough spaghetti at the wall and something will stick! And they called their abuela Nana. Que cute!

  The bell rings.

  “So, you’re my fearless leader.”

  I blink. Slowly gather my belongings and remember. I get to lead Cheeks, and dang check out those other cheeks, to class.

  “Okay. Let me see your schedule.” The key to sanity is organization. Somehow for me, that freakin key is always the last one on the ring.

  Danny hands me the schedule of regular and remedial classes. The tips of—their—fingernails are dirty, the skin cracked and bruised. Maybe they work in their dad’s shop before school? Something like that? Maybe that’s why Danny is three weeks late starting school. Family issues?

  “Okay, your math class is gonna be this w—what the hell?”

  We step into the sunlit hallway, and through the windows along the opposite wall I can see the campus grounds, the football field and stadium seats, the concession stands, the track.

  And all the kids who should have been sitting in homeroom sitting in a field.

  Some kind of protest?

  I turn my back. Light pours in and spills onto the scuffed white tiles, and a vague sense of dread soaks through me. Light always makes me feel late, last, exposed. “Okay, let’s go,” I say to Danny, pulling on my own hood. Thinking. . .
<
br />   Danny smiles. “Now you’re in one cave. I’m in another.”

  I blink. Blanca and I used to do that all the time—think the same weird thing at the same time. We were always in sync. “You know Plato?”

  Our eyes meet just like in one of Blanca’s stupid-ass novels (no offense, Blanca).

  “No.” But he nods his head yes.

  A laugh escapes my lips. Meaning it drilled a hole in the prison wall when the guards were sleeping, slithered through tunnels of sewage, and escaped. “All we see are shadows.” I see the shadows under Danny’s eyes. I wonder if they see mine. Another insomniac.

  “Because our backs are turned to the light.” Squinting, Danny turns their(?) back to the window. “And we’re chained. But what happens when we see the shadows of our chains?”

  I can’t help looking back outside to my classmates and the security guard now talking to them.

  Me: “You’re not much for small talk, huh?”

  Danny: “Life’s too short.”

  Tell me about it.

  My heart feels like a car on a full tank getting pumped with gas. All it would take is one match. I’m panicked. Normally, I know what that means. My hypothalamus is trying to take over. The flight-or-fight response wants to kick in. But what do you call the opposite? Flying toward something in a panic? Shit, I feel like a bird about to hit a windowpane. I need to retreat. BREATHE.

  “What are you two doing here?” Perez barks.

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” Danny answers, and we both laugh through our noses like only two dorks who read Plato in their spare time can.

  “To class. Now.”

  I motion for Danny to follow me down the hall and I break into a jog, leading my savior and philosopher king/queen to their remedial math class.

  ……

  I’m sitting in AP bio. Time to compartmentalize. I tie up The Entity in a bun with a rubber band that I know will hurt if I touch it, so I won’t waste time messing with my hair.

  “Dónde está tu abuela?” Nelly says in my head, trying to shove me out of the cave. How long will she be suspended? What will it be like when she comes back? Was that posse in the grass protesting her suspension? Should I be walking outside into the sunlight to join them instead of sitting here?