Running

by Natalia Sylvester

  “Do you think he’ll get a big crowd? With everything that’s going on?”

  “Big, yes. Good? That’s the real question.”

  “Hi, Cup of Joe.” Gloria rushes into the kitchen rummaging through her purse. “Sorry, sorry.” When she looks up and sees me, she asks me in Spanish, “You’re coming with us?” in a tone that I know is asking not if but will you please.

  I smile at Gloria and nod. No one but her gets it. No one else will admit that Joe can be creepy. It’s as if every minute you talk to him, he’s trying to test the boundaries of what he can and can’t say to you. Or maybe he’s just one of those people who is deep down insecure and struggles to hide his awkwardness. That’s still no excuse for the time he asked if I had body piercings he couldn’t see, or told Gloria that the pictures of her school days in Nicaragua were nice because she was so much thinner back then.

  It’s why Gloria calls him Cup of Joe. When she learned it was an idiom for coffee she said, “That makes sense. More than one cup and he gets on your last nerve.”

  Gloria puts the grocery list in her purse and ties her hair up in a messy bun. Joe’s gaze travels up and down her neck and I push my chair back under our glass table. It scrapes against the marble tiles and startles him.

  “We going? I need to be back soon too,” I say.

  * * *

  While Gloria and I do groceries, Joe wanders to the deli section and orders himself a sub. Chicken tenders and honey mustard on a whole wheat roll with pickles, onions, oil, and vinegar. He says it like it’s all one word.

  “You guys want? I can wait for yours to come out while you shop,” he says, pointing at a green wire table by the deli’s café. “I have a bunch of messages I need to take care of anyway.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have the same but with muenster and tomatoes,” I tell the woman behind the counter.

  “Tell Gloria not to take too long,” Joe says. I shoot him an annoyed look and he adds, “You don’t want your sandwich getting soggy.”

  I chuckle at the thought of Joe thinking he knows what I want or don’t want. It’s so typical of Papi’s staff. I’d hate it if it weren’t for the fact that it’s nice to know some things are mine. They can tell me how to dress, what to say, and how to act, but they can’t control the things I feel and want. Even if it’s just a Publix sub that’s a little soaked with tomato juice around the edges.

  I grab a basket, find Gloria by the produce, and ask her if I can help.

  “Of course. Gracias, Mari.” She tears off a section of the grocery list and hands it to me. It’s all written in Mami’s perfect, nearly microscopic cursive. “Actually, if we hurry, I can convince him to stop by my apartment on the way home. I have some books I need to pick up.”

  The thought of seeing Gloria’s apartment excites me. In the four years she’s worked with us, I’ve often wondered where she goes home to on the weekends. The most she’s ever told me is that her place is tiny and she shares it with her roommate, Amarys, who’s from the Dominican Republic and plays practical jokes like putting decals on the windows that make it look like the glass is broken. Amarys loves to make her worry, is what Gloria will say, though she never looks worried, just amused.

  We load the groceries into Joe’s trunk and Gloria sits in the front so she can give him directions to her place. It’s a few minutes from the Publix, off a back road that hugs the edge of US 1, right around the corner from the Metrorail station. Joe rolls down his window to spit out his gum and the sound of the train rattling overhead fills the air. We pass a small strip of stores with a Domino’s, a barber shop, and a nail salon with $27 MANI-PEDIS written in blue letters on the glass. Gloria’s place is in the last building on the street, which is about a third the size of the others. It’s shaped like a U that someone divided into several units, and the center courtyard is filled with overgrown palm trees.

  Joe parks at a spot marked RESERVED and Gloria and I snap off our seat belts at the same time.

  “Entro y salgo. Just wait here,” she tells me. I watch her dash off and disappear behind a staircase as she makes her way up. Through the bars of the hallway balcony, I catch a glimpse of the purple scrubs she wears as a uniform, but I can’t make out which door she goes into.

  Joe drums at his steering wheel with his thumbs, even though the radio’s turned way down.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Just staying alert. We don’t exactly blend in around this neighborhood with my car, you know?”

  I get what he’s implying. “You drive a Subaru, Joe.”

  “It’s brand new.”

  I roll down the window and let the breeze massage my hair. The driveway is full of potholes and the buildings look nothing like the new ones being constructed in our neighborhood. These have stucco walls and terra-cotta tiles on the roofs, but they’re faded and cracked in places. “It reminds me of one of our old apartments. We lived on the first floor of a building just like this.”

  “Bet your parents are glad that’s behind you now.”

  “I liked it,” I say, still looking out the window. “I like it.”

  What I remember most was all the noise. Kids actually played on the sidewalks, and because our air conditioner was never working, my parents would leave the windows open. I used to stare out at the streets through the screen and pretend the little squares were pieces of the world I could place in my pockets.

  Gloria bounces down the steps hugging a stack of books. She’s been studying to take her citizenship exam in a few months.

  “Ready to go, muchachas?” Joe emphasizes this word like it’s a joke to him, so exotic. He loves referring to me and Gloria this way, except for when it’s just me. He calls me muchachita, which is even creepier. I’m no one’s little girl. Least of all Joe’s.

  “Sorry,” she says, even though she didn’t even take five minutes. “Amarys te manda saludos.”

  “Really?” A giddy smile spreads across my face. If Amarys had meant to say hello to both me and Joe, Gloria would’ve said so in English, but she didn’t. “I wish I could meet her.”

  “Maybe one of these days,” she says.

  I gasp in excitement and cover my mouth.

  “What? What?” Joe startles, looking over his shoulder as he pulls out of the parking lot.

  “No, nothing. I thought I had to sneeze.”

  “Promise you won’t do that during Friday’s interview. It makes you seem flaky.”

  Sometimes, and I mean very rarely, I get so annoyed at Joe that I almost feel bad about it. He tries so hard to make everything perfect for my father that he goes too far. And he’s so excited about this nightmare of an interview you’d think it was his dream come true. Well, it definitely wasn’t mine. I never asked to be paraded around in front of millions. I never agreed to offer up my bedroom for the world to dissect. My life is not some throwback MTV Cribs episode.

  “How are today’s polls looking?” I ask.

  He answers the same way he always does. “Unreliable.”

  five

  When I get home, the smell of paint hits me as I climb the stairs. A rustling, crunching sound, like packaging paper being stepped on, is coming from my room.

  “After this room is done, I left some blue paint in my son’s room down the hall.” Mami’s voice sounds rushed but focused. Even before I walk in, I picture her texting with one hand while the other points in the direction of Ricky’s room. It’s exactly how I find her, along with two men in work clothes. One of them kneels on the floor, running tape over the edges of the walls. The other pours a can of pale purple paint onto a tray.

  “Mami, oh my god! What are you doing?”

  My bed, my desk, and my dresser have all been pushed to the center of the room, huddled together like they’re chatting. My bookshelf has been shoved a few feet off the wall, and my vintage Lucille Ball Barbie is tipped over, facedown, on the floor.

  “Mami! A little respect for my space, please.” The doll is protected in its box, but that’s
not the point. Mami should understand my I Love Lucy obsession better than anyone—she was the one who got me hooked on Lucy’s boxed set of DVDs years ago. I’ve seen all the episodes, even the one-hour specials, multiple times. “You know I don’t let anyone touch this.” While she’s still turned around, I check the space on the shelf where the box used to be. My journal’s dark wooden cover sits face out, totally exposed, in the same spot I’ve been hiding it since freshman year. I feel my face get hot, blow up like a balloon, as I casually place the box back in front of the journal.

  “I’m so sorry, Mari. I told you, we’re doing touchups around the house.”

  “You never said that included my room.”

  “Of course I did. It must’ve slipped your mind.” A look of dread sweeps over her. “Ay dios mío, or did it slip mine? I’m so sorry, I thought I . . .” her phone beeps and her voice trails off into Spanish.

  There’s a pile of folded clothes on my bed that Gloria probably left there—bras and panties are lined in colorful, neat stacks next to a bunch of notebooks and picture frames that the painters must’ve taken off my desk when they moved it. Everything’s just clustered together like it’s nothing, like no boundaries exist anymore. “How could you just let people go through all my stuff?” I gather as much as I can into my arms and walk into my closet, shutting the door behind me.

  Through the white wooden panels, I hear my mom’s voice grow soft and singsongy. “Mari. Don’t make this bigger than it is. It’s just paint. It’s the same color.”

  “It’s Purple Majesty,” one of the painter guys says in a deep, croaky voice.

  I remember. I picked it out when I was eleven, thinking the name would make Papi happy. It reminds me of those mystery ice cream flavors they pump full of food dye. It’d look so ridiculous on television.

  “It’s not just paint,” I shout as I begin stuffing my underwear into its drawers. Out of habit, I check the very back for the glow-in-the-dark thong that Vivi bought for me online as a joke. It says “angel” and then “devil” when you turn off the lights. “Because you’re the pure and innocent one, get it?” she said. I wore it once, and then I washed it by hand and hung it to dry underneath a hand towel in my bathroom so that Gloria wouldn’t find it in my laundry basket. The next day after school, I found the hand towel on my bed, washed and folded with the thong tucked into it. It was weeks before I could look Gloria in the eyes again.

  “What do you want me to do, Mari?”

  I groan loud enough so she can hear me. “Can you at least make it an off-white?”

  Mami whips open the closet door, startling me. “Fine. You’re lucky we have Cinnamon Oatmeal in the garage.” She turns to the painters and adds, “She grows out of everything so fast. Acaba de cumplir quince.”

  Even though I turned fifteen last month, my parents decided against throwing me a quinceañera in the middle of election season. Papi suggested waiting until next year instead—What could be more American than a sweet sixteen at the White House? Mami warned him not to get overconfident, but in the end she agreed. She’d been planning on helping me shop for my dress and choreographing my court dance. She’d even saved a bunch of YouTube videos for ideas. To be honest, though, I was relieved. Where was I going to find fourteen girls and guys to dance at my quinceañera? I would’ve been too embarrassed to ask anyone but Vivi and Zoey.

  Mami regretted it the day of my birthday, though. After I blew out my candles over an ice cream cake that was partly melted because Papi was late from work yet again, she pulled him into the hallway, pretending they were getting my gift. Of course I got up to eavesdrop.

  “We’ll never get this moment back,” she said to him. “How much more of our lives will we give up before it’s no longer worth it?”

  I think of that question constantly. Like right now, when Mami looks super tired but also super wired, as if she’s afraid that if she stops moving, she’ll never start again. She takes a deep breath and signals for me to walk with her into the hallway. “Your father wanted you to have these. For your room.” Resting against the wall are a couple of framed pictures of our family—the day we all went to the beach for Father’s Day, and the four of us backstage before he announced he’d be running last year. There’s also a giant, red-rimmed photo of a sunset over a lake and the words WISH ON THE SUN. ONLY THE BIGGEST STAR FOR YOUR BIGGEST DREAMS.

  Where does my father find these things? I hope this was another one of those personal errands he sends Joe on when he’s too busy to make “thoughtful” family gestures. I can live with Joe being unoriginal and cheesy. ¿Pero Papi? Please. Just, no.

  “Seriously? Just tell them to skip my room,” I say. “Tell them to skip me. I beg you.”

  “Mariana. You know how important it is that every step of his campaign go smoothly.”

  “Me not being there is not that big of a deal.”

  “We have to do what we can to help his chances . . .”

  “Even give up your kids’ privacy? Honestly, Mami, is it even worth it?”

  Her head jolts back a little, like she’s dodging a punch, and she begins to blink. “Please don’t make me seem like the bad one. It wasn’t my first choice, but it’s our final decision.”

  “His final decision. Why does he always get to make them? Why not you?”

  Mami looks stunned. Seriously hurt to the point that I almost apologize. Then I remember that even if she agreed with me, she’d never go against my father’s wishes to say so.

  “You know what? Tell them to hang these up wherever you want when they’re done,” I say. “It’s not like you care what I think.”

  “Hijita . . .”

  The painter comes back upstairs with the can of paint and asks her if it’s the right color.

  “That’s the one,” she says, way too cheerfully.

  “Yeah. Go to town.” I step into my room one last time, grab my laptop and leave them to it.

  * * *

  There aren’t a lot of places in my house you can go to be alone. Everything is exposed, and one room kind of flows into the other. “Open-spaced floor plan” is what the real estate people call it. Sunlight everywhere. Columns and arches instead of doorways. I used to love it because the house felt cheerful and warm, like summer, but lately it just leaves me with the sense that I’m on display.

  I head outside. The canal that runs behind our backyard is extra calm today, but looking at it doesn’t bring me any sense of peace like it normally would. I sit along the edge of our pool with my feet in the water, wishing I could jump inside and scream. Instead I FaceTime Vivi. My laptop screen is dim from all the sunlight, but I can tell right away that she’s been crying. Her voice is nasal and she’s slouched over her desk, rubbing her forehead and blinking like eight hundred times a second.

  I almost don’t want to ask. Vivi’s parents are going through a divorce, and they’re being horrible about it, always fighting in front of her and making her a go-between for their arguments. “What’s wrong?”

  She grabs a tissue and blows her nose like she’s an elephant. “We’re moving. My parents are selling the house. They couldn’t agree on who gets to keep it so now nobody does.”

  She’s full-out crying by the time she stops to take a breath. I think I might cry, too, but I try to hold it together for Vivi’s sake. We can’t both break down at the same time. That’s essentially the one rule in our entire friendship: we can be vulnerable in front of each other because we’re strong for each other, in the moments we each most need it.

  “Oh, Vivi. I’m so sorry.” I know it’s not much, but it’s the only thing I can think to say.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Where will you guys go?”

  “Probably Miami Beach for now. With my aunt and Abuela. My mom doubts we’ll be able to stay in South Miami. It’s too expensive.”

  My breath catches and I almost drop my laptop into the pool. “Does that mean . . . would you have to switch schools?”

  Vivi breaks into a
loud sob and I cringe for having asked. “Maybe. I don’t know. Mom says she’s looking at apartments. You know the ones on Eighty-eighth? Right by the Dairy Queen?”

  “We actually lived there,” I say, “when I was little.” My brother and I used to sleep on the couch cushions on the living room floor. It was a one bedroom, and my parents couldn’t afford another mattress while my dad finished law school and my mom worked to pay our bills.

  “Yeah, well, apparently they’re super expensive now. My mom says the owners remodeled the units and suddenly they think they’re like South Beach. So who knows.”

  “But . . . in the middle of sophomore year?” I can’t bear the thought of facing school without Vivi, not after she’s back in my life again all these years later.

  “Ugh, Mari! Stop asking me so many questions. I don’t knowww,” she says, with a whine that stretches out her words. “Let’s just change the subject—what’s up with you? You looked upset about something when I answered.”

  That’s the thing about Vivi. She never hesitates to call me out on things, and it’s mostly a good thing. But how spoiled would I sound, complaining about how my mom is getting my room painted?

  “I was just thinking about Jackie Velez. I wish she’d keep me out of whatever it is she’s doing,” I say instead.