Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “That’s not what I see,” Chloe finally says. “But something’s telling you to believe it. And it’s that voice, the one only you can hear, that worries me most.” She wraps her arms around me. “It’s lying to you, Pen. That’s all it’s ever done.”

  “I know.” I surprise myself, the response coming out like a kind of reflex. But there’s a sense of resolve in it. Like this part of me that’s been buried, that’s been fighting to come to the surface, is finally starting to see the light.

  But it also feels fragile and temporary, and I’m scared that any second it’ll slip from my grasp.

  “What’s the voice telling you now?” Chloe says.

  I pluck the thought like a poison berry and force it to my lips. “That I can’t do this.”

  Chloe tightens her grip on me. “And what do you say back?”

  Another thought blooms on my lips, the taste this time somewhere between bitter and sweet. “That I will.”

  I wince against the glow of my cell phone, checking the time. Six o’clock. Chloe just left to catch her 7:00 AM class, but not before making me promise to call her if I needed anything.

  What I really need is a pair of earplugs to drown out the awful squealing sound coming from behind the wall. My next-door neighbor has decided to take a long shower in which he plans to sing every song from West Side Story. Including the instrumentals.

  He butchers a high note and I throw my shoe against the wall. He coughs, goes quiet, and then I hear the shower shut off. The walls rattle, pipes probably purging the last of the hot water.

  For a long time, I lie perfectly still, listening to the cars on the street, staring at the walls, at the barred windows, until the solitude is staring back. I wait for it to reach for me, to wrap me up.

  I pull the blankets tighter and glance at my phone again. Nine o’clock.

  I pinch my eyes shut and bury my face in my pillow.

  Time starts to slip away from me and I let it. Along with everything else on my to-do list—the phone numbers and addresses of nearby restaurants, the number for the renters insurance company, the dirty dishes that need to be washed, the misplaced clothes and shoes and cooking supplies that the guys from the restaurant did their best to unpack but probably just stuffed into random cupboards.

  The only one who didn’t make a mess was Xander. Instead, he pulled out my childhood memories, one by one, brushed off the dust, and wove them into this mesmerizing patchwork, this haphazard portrait—revealing a life I hardly recognize anymore.

  From where I lay, I carve out each piece, matching it to an age, a place, a feeling. My eleventh birthday party. Fear. The sound of my mother’s voice. Safety. Hugo’s favorite ice cream. Joy.

  My cell phone is to my ear before I even realize I’ve dialed the number.

  My mother answers. “Pen? Are—?”

  “Let me talk to Hugo.”

  There’s silence and then my little brother takes the phone. My little sister’s voice swirls around the mouthpiece too. She’s crying.

  “She forgot this morning when she woke up,” Hugo says.

  “Forgot what?” I ask.

  “That you wouldn’t be here.” His voice is hard, so much like our father’s.

  “I’m sorry, Hugo. You know I didn’t want to.”

  Something brushes the phone, like a hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Pen?” It’s my mother again.

  She’s the last person I want to talk to. Even though I can tell in her voice that she’s hurting just as much as I am. Maybe I want her to. Because even though it’s awful, sharing it is the only thing that makes it more bearable. “I have to go.”

  When the phone finally slips from my fingers, it’s 5:00 PM. I’m concrete, each breath barely chipping away at the things that hold me down. But I know this feeling. I miss this feeling.

  It used to sit in the corner of my room, watching me sleep, waiting for me to wrap myself in it like a warm blanket. It used to follow me home from school, reminding me that moving only made things worse. That I should be still. That I should disappear. It used to stare back at me from my vanity mirror, whispering how.

  The doctor called it a chemical imbalance. All I needed was to tip the scales. But even though the medicine helps, the voice more like a nudge, a familiar tap on the shoulder, it hasn’t gotten rid of it completely. I stare at the little white pills on the kitchen counter; imagine one resting on my tongue. And then I imagine what happens after I swallow—the loosening of the chains, the bruises they leave behind.

  I remember the first time it happened, puberty inciting a war inside me that finally erupted the day after my abuelita died. I remember Lola’s tiny hand on my shoulder, Hugo peering into my room through the crack in the door—both too young to see her death like a fog, to harbor the memory of me getting lost in it.

  Angel pulled them away. Then my father sat next to me on the bed while my mother could barely watch from the hallway.

  He took my hand, and in a voice that was both furious and afraid, he said, “We don’t get to give up, Pen. You don’t get to give up.” He squeezed me harder. “Whatever’s gotten into your head, you fight it.” He shook me, tears welling up in his eyes. “Do you hear me, Penelope Rosario Ruiz Prado? You fight!”

  I trembled and I cried and I fought. Because he told me to. Because when my father demanded strength, I had no choice but to become strong.

  I reach, trying to remember how.

  But all I hear is that voice like honey. Like thorns.

  Close

  your

  eyes.

  And

  sink.

  I feel the chains, but I don’t let them tighten.

  Instead, I remember that moment. The moment when he needed me to be unbreakable and I learned how to pretend. Ten seconds, thirty seconds, one minute at a time until I was someone new, the girl stuck in that bed an apparition whose hauntings I could keep at bay with cooking and those little white pills.

  I stare at them across the room and then I drag myself out of bed, reigniting the resolve my father had forced me to find.

  My knuckles ache, the bottle barely cracking open. I shake, pouring the pills into my open hand. They skitter, falling onto the counter. I scoop them up. Drop them on my tongue. Swallow. Deep breath.

  9

  Pen

  A BEEPING SOUND PULLS my eyes open. It’s morning again. I can hear someone pushing buttons, and then footsteps quickening into a run. I slam my pillow over my ears, trying to figure out how I didn’t realize during the walk-through that the walls were paper-thin, how I missed every burp and cough and sneeze that is suddenly so loud I barely hear the knock at the door.

  When they knock again, louder, I startle before creeping to the peephole. When I look through, it’s empty. But the moment I turn my back there it is again, so quick it’s just a scratch and a thump. I look through the peephole again. Still nothing.

  I turn my back and three hard bangs make the doorknob tremble. I wrench it open, the trill of laughter following two small children as they disappear at the end of the hall. And maybe it’s because I’m sick of feeling like a victim, or maybe it’s because I’m out of my mind, but suddenly I’m charging after them. I round the corner and spot two little boys in their pajamas hiding behind a fake potted plant.

  I growl, “Where’s your mother?”

  They suddenly pale.

  I snatch them by their shirtsleeves and drag them back to their apartment. Doors open on the way, people peering out at them kicking and crying. I relish the audience the same way I do at the restaurant. Better for my new neighbors to think I’m some kind of psychopath than a helpless little girl who lives alone.

  The blond one wriggles. “Let go of me, lady!”

  I bang on the door of their apartment.

  “Shut up, doofus,” the other one snaps. “She’s gonna tell Mom.”

  A woman with a lit cigarette opens the door. Also still in her pajamas.

  “These yours?” I
say, and then I hurl them inside.

  The woman doesn’t say a word, just raises an eyebrow and takes a drag on her cigarette.

  I march back to my apartment. Another door creaks open, a man in jogging clothes stepping out. He takes one look at me, his eyes wide, and then he bolts for the service stairs. That’s when I remember that I’m still in my underwear.

  I slam the door to my apartment closed, leaning against it. The breaths come fast, the realization that I’m out of bed, out of its grip, making me dizzy.

  I check the dresser drawers for my sweatpants, but some idiot, probably Struggles, has stuffed the first two with shoes. I finally find a pair of jeans in the trunk at the foot of my bed. They smell like sugar and have a small butterfly on the front left pocket. Lola’s. They fold over my arm, my fingers picking at the holes.

  Just get back in bed.

  Crawl under the covers and close your eyes.

  Instead of reaching for my pillow, I reach for my cell phone and plug it in. A flashing appointment reminder pops up as soon as it powers on.

  10:00 AM–11:00 AM

  INTERVIEW @ Tiers of Joy Bakery

  My sense of self-preservation returns with a jolt and I’m dressed in a matter of seconds. The elevator ride takes longer than usual, my makeup dripping down my face by the time I make it to my car.

  When I arrive, I’m five minutes late. My hands sweat against the steering wheel, and I rake them across the seat before finally heading to the door. The bakery is bigger than I expected, the parking lot already full. Women in big sunglasses carry pink boxes tied with bows out to their Lexuses and BMWs.

  I pass a redhead juggling a Pomeranian, a Birkin bag, and a long box of gluten-free cupcakes on her way out the door. She gives me the once-over, unimpressed, and when I step inside the bakery to find young women in traditional white double-breasted jackets, long hair tied back with simple black ribbon, not a red lip in sight, I realize why. I look down at my clothes, tight and loud and wrong. But there’s no turning back now.

  “Are you here for an interview?” a girl asks from behind the counter.

  “Oh, uh, yes.”

  “Thought so,” she says. “Didn’t think you were a customer. Follow me.”

  I’m not sure if that was some kind of dig, but from the way she smiles I convince myself it wasn’t.

  “I’ll go get Maureen and then we can start the test.”

  Test. My stomach drops. Tests were one of the many reasons why I spent last semester ditching school. I stand in front of one of the worktables, watching from across the kitchen as two girls meticulously ice cupcakes before balancing them on an elaborately tiered cake stand.

  “Grab the girl an apron.”

  The employee who led me back tosses me a pink apron, and I yank it over my head just as a large woman reaches out to shake my hand.

  “I’m Maureen, and your name is…?”

  “Pen. Pen Prado.”

  “Nice to meet you, Pen. We’ve been looking for a new apprentice for a few weeks now. Spring is our busiest time of year. Tell me a little about your previous experience.”

  “Well…” I fumble with the strings on my apron, suddenly unable to move my hands and speak at the same time. I finally get the first bow done, wiping my forehead before she sees the sweat. “Well,” I start again, “I spent my whole life working in my father’s restaurant—Nacho’s Tacos. I came up with most of the menu. The desserts are sort of my specialty. Everyone loves my white chocolate coconut cake.”

  “Family recipe?” Maureen asks.

  “Something like that. But I do like to put my own twist on things. I’ve taken almost every classic Mexican recipe on the menu and—”

  She cuts me off. “What are some of your other specialties?”

  I swallow, searching her eyes as if they’ll reveal the appropriate answer. “I can make empanadas, pan fino, cuernos de azucar, orejas, pan de huevo.…”

  She cuts me off again. “So, tell me, Pen, do you only have experience cooking Latin food?”

  “Well”—if I could somehow score a point every time I started a sentence with well, I’d have this interview in the bag—“most of the things I make have some kind of European or North American equivalent. It’s not that hard to make the leap. I mean, as long as I have a recipe I can cook almost anything.”

  She crosses her arms. “Anything…”

  The smile on my face is so wide and fake it starts to hurt.

  “Pen, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Tiers of Joy is an essential part of this local community. What do you know about this neighborhood or our customer base?”

  All I know is what I observed upon arrival—the customers are mostly rich white women, the place is pet-friendly, the employees are robots.

  She stops me before I even start. “I can hear your passion for Latin food. After all, you did grow up working in a Latin restaurant.” She looks me up and down. “Indelibly, it’s left a significant mark on not just your cooking style but your way of life. I’m just not sure if that”—her eyes crinkle into a condescendingly cheerful smile—“style will be a good fit here.”

  The anger is instant. I almost don’t recognize it at first—it’s been a long time since I was rejected in this way for this reason. But it’s the type of rejection you never forget.

  Like the time Michelle Smiley didn’t invite me to her thirteenth birthday party. The next Monday at school she broke down and told me that her parents didn’t want me sleeping over because they were afraid I would tell my father how many TVs they had or where her mother kept her nice jewelry.

  Or like the time when I was seven and my father and I were pulled over on our way home from La Pulga. They made him get out of the car, and for three minutes I didn’t breathe. They asked him for documentation—not even stopping to consider that he was born in this country—and when he went to reach for his wallet they slammed his face against the trunk of the car. Even though they’d told him to move. Even though he had a Texas driver’s license and a United States birth certificate.

  I tore out of my seat, flying at the policeman’s knees. His partner wrenched me up by the arm, dragging me off the street while my little white Keds kicked up dirt and rocks. While I screamed and cried.

  Instead of getting angry, my father started offering discounts to anyone in uniform. A few weeks later, he even served the two cops who had given him a bloody nose.

  I was furious, and when I asked him why he did it, he said, “Because I’m not the only one in this neighborhood who might get stopped.”

  He wanted them to love our neighborhood, to see the human beings who lived there up close.

  But I’m not in the mood to build bridges. Because Maureen’s distaste for my way of life isn’t just the kind of rejection that keeps you within a five-mile radius of home, speaking in another language when you’re out in public, clinging to the sights and sounds and tastes of your native country even though, before you arrived, you were willing to trade it all in exchange for a one-way ticket. It’s the kind of rejection that can get you killed.

  Now I have a choice—I always have a choice. I can retreat and let this feeling fester. Let it follow me home and force me under the blankets again. Or I can snuff it out… by letting it explode.

  “Give me a chance to bake you something,” I plead.

  “Something,” her voice is stern, annoyed, “French.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Mille-feuilles. I want it in an hour. I expect you can find your own way around the pantry.” She glances at her wrist, sighs, and shakes her head. “The next interviewee should be on her way. Candice, will you go and see if she’s waiting out front?”

  But I’m not worried about the next interviewee. Because whoever she is, she won’t be baking in this kitchen for the next twenty-four hours. No one will.

  They leave me standing over a bowl of dry ingredients I pulled from the pantry that make absolutely no sense together. The other
girls take turns watching me from where they stand, side-glances not even making me sweat.

  Eventually, they lose interest, the other interview already starting—a wide-eyed blond being shown around the facility. She introduces herself before relaying the year she just spent at a culinary academy in Louisiana.

  No one is watching me as I swap out a few traditional ingredients for a few nontraditional ones. I pour the final mixture into the pan, slam the oven door closed, crank it up to the highest heat, and then I walk out.

  “A grody gordita?” Chloe is sprawled out on my bed, paralyzed in awe. “And then you just left?”

  She gags and I almost do too, both of us remembering the infamous stink bomb created by a (still) unnamed source during last year’s Nacho’s Tacos Prank Wars. The recipe was found on a scrap of paper beneath a jar of pickled jalapeños, the writing barely legible. But I’ll never forget the secret ingredient—human hair. Which I just so happen to have plenty of.

  “Just walked out…” I fan the short strand of hair I sacrificed in my quest for revenge.

  Chloe’s laughter fades. “I’m sorry they were such assholes.”

  “Me too.”

  She wraps her arms around me. “I… did see an opening at El Pequeño Toro.” The Little Bull.

  I whip around. “A fast-food chain?”

  She climbs off the bed. “I know that place is like a revolving door, but that’s sort of the point. There’s no way you won’t get hired, and you can make some cash to hold you over until you find something better.” She rummages through a pile of shoes, which I have not had time to correctly organize yet. “Boots or flats?” She places one on each foot.

  “We’re just going to Angel’s.”

  She kicks off the boot and slips the flat back onto her bare foot. She looks nervous.

  “Is something going on?”