“Look, Mom hid your stupid games, so I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”
At the apartment they moped around, then totally ignored me when I told them to get working on their homework, like I had hidden the games. Mom had left a note saying that she’d gone to the store. Maybe it was the Super 88, the Vietnamese supermarket! Not because I am obsessed with Vietnamese food, but because Mom is. See, even though my mother grew up in El Salvador, she is capital O Obsessed with Vietnamese food. And if she’s cooking Vietnamese food, that means she’s happy. She tried it when she first came to Boston, and then, when she was pregnant with me, she only wanted to eat Vietnamese. Same when she had my brothers six years later.
So while Mom was at the store hopefully picking out lemongrass and nuoc mam, I sat in the apartment practically sweating to death (yes, it was hot for the middle of September, and no, we don’t have air-conditioning) and trying to write in my journal. I say “trying” because Benjamin and Christopher were tearing the place apart, searching for their video games. I mean, they moved the couch, dug under cushions, inside Mom’s pillowcase, behind the toilet. They were like cops hunting for drugs. Finally, after like forty-five minutes, Benjamin found the video game box. He almost cried. He really did. So he plugged it in and got all settled on the living room floor—which was so stupid, because by the time he heard Mom coming home, he wouldn’t have time to put the box back where Mom had hidden it, which was inside a cardboard shoe box labeled fotos at the bottom of her closet. But he was an idiot, so.
Turns out Christopher and Benjamin still weren’t able to play video games because Mom had hidden the controllers separately, not in the box. Sneaky! So round two of the search began. Now they were flat-out pissed.
Finally Christopher said, “Get off your fat butt, Liliana, and help us look for them!”
I was like, “Whaaaat? Who you think you talking to, little boy?” and stayed put on the couch and kept working on my short story, the one about the girl who gets a new boyfriend and forgets about her best friend and then one day the boyfriend dumps her. The story was inspired by the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. You know, flying too close to the sun melts your wings, or whatever. We had just read it in English and it wasn’t that boring. We were supposed to hand back the photocopies of it, but I kept mine.
Christopher and Benjamin finally gave up the controller hunt and put the video games back in the closet, just in time, because Mom came home not two minutes later. But with only one white plastic bag instead of the usual ten pink plastic ones from Super 88. Shoot. The Vietnamese food she cooked was mad good, even though the windows got all steamed up whenever she made pho. We usually had it with beef or chicken, depending on how much money Mom had earned that week. She cleaned houses, and people were always going on vacation or something and then didn’t need her at the last minute. So, all right, her Vietnamese food was bomb. Well, almost. Except for those spring rolls. Hers tasted like soap. Truth? I would’ve eaten those soapy spring rolls if it meant Mom was actually cooking that night. But a white plastic bag meant no dice. No pho. I peeked inside: five boxes of mac and cheese, a carton of milk, and two sticks of butter. Dang. This meant Mom was in a deep, dark state.
While I took out a pot to boil water, Mom washed her hands, then winked at me as she pulled the controllers out from her black purse. She’s super smart like that. Despite that small victory, though, she looked utterly defeated. Every day Dad was gone, the look grew worse. But here’s when her mood changed—when I brought up METCO.
“So, Mom, a crazy thing happened today—”
Her eyes immediately fixed on me.
“Yeah, so the vice principal said I got into this METCO program—said he left you a couple voice mails.”
“¿Cuando?” I swear, her hands started shaking. She dropped one of the controllers.
I gave her the pamphlet. “Today. He said I got in, but I told him I’m straight. It’s in some town like an hour from here.”
“You got in? ¿De verdad?” She began digging in her bag.
“Yeah… but—” I folded up the plastic bag so we could use it later.
“But nada. You’re going.” She tucked one of her dark curls behind her ear in a that-settles-that sort of way, and checked her voice mail.
We stood there having a little stare-off while she listened. A huge smile spread across her face. Huge. “You got into METCO!” she exclaimed, as if I hadn’t told her this thirty seconds before.
“No!”
Now she was hand-talking. “Liliana.” Hands sweeping toward me. “Do you know how many kids are on that waiting list?” Hands in the air. “It’s one of the few programs that doesn’t have requirements like certain grades, income, or… other things.” Hands on her hips. “Listen, you’re going. Besides, your father and I—”
And there it was. Dad did know. I looked at my mother’s beaming face and imagined him having the same reaction.
Truth. My dad has been MIA since the end of the summer. All Mom would say about it was, Your papi went on a trip. There’s really nothing worse than being lied to by your own parent. Why couldn’t she just tell me the truth? I could handle whatever it was. What? Dad left to go live with another woman and her dumb-ass kids? Dad left on a bender and Mom didn’t know when he’d be back? Dad took some shady job in some other part of the country? He’d left before on those sorts of jobs, but he’d always come back. Then he and Mom would spend the whole day in their bedroom (ew), and that night we’d all go out to dinner at someplace like Old Country Buffet or Olive Garden.
But he’d only ever been gone for a week, tops, before. Never this long.
“Bueno,” she finally said, giving the pamphlet a kiss, I kid you not. “You’re going. Punto.”
I slammed the door to my bedroom, put on my headphones, and played music so loud I swear my hair was vibrating. Why did I need to go to some school an hour’s drive away? Where I didn’t know a single person? I pictured myself eating chips all alone at a table in a sea of strangers.
I planned to protest in my room all night—except I got crazy hungry. I needed to get me some Honey Buns from the corner store, is what I needed to do. But they had six hundred calories in each one, and two come in a package, and once you ate one, it was virtually impossible not to eat the other. So—not. I knocked on my window for Jade, trying to distract myself from my growling stomach. No answer. So I took out my notebook. Something that always made me feel better: writing. I have always capital L Loved writing. Even more than sleep. I’d stay up late and I’d wake up early to write, even on the weekends. Like, I had to. I’m not talking about some five-paragraph bull they always be giving us at school to practice for the state tests.
I’m practically the same way about reading. Right now I was totally into books by Sandra Cisneros. From her website she seemed cool, but in that way where the person wasn’t trying to be cool, you know? She didn’t have a dozen piercings or anything, but she had a tattoo of a Badalupe on her left bicep. She wore BRIGHT red lipstick and lots of mascara. And sometimes she had really short bangs. If I even tried to have bangs, then my whole head would just frizz. Not cute.
Something else I capital L Loved—and this is kinda weird, but whatever—I capital L Loved building miniatures. Houses and buildings. Like, out of cardboard, or cereal boxes or receipts, scraps of paper, shopping bags, stuff like that. That obsession started way back when I wanted the Barbie Dreamhouse soooo bad. Mom said it was too expensive, but then one day she came home with a big cardboard box—a lady she was cleaning house for had just gotten a new TV—and helped me make my own. Like I said, Mom = smart. Then, when I was in fourth grade, Dad took my brothers and me to the Children’s Museum, and a lady was offering a free art class in one of the studios. She showed us this one artist, Ana Serrano, who made little hotels, stores, and apartment buildings. But this was like, next level. She only used cardboard! I’m talking teeny tiny air conditioners, teeny tiny potted plants, and even teeny tiny satellite dishes on
teeny tiny rooftops. All. Made. Out. Of. Cardboard. So crazy! So cool. And boom, I was obsessed. Under my bed is like half a city’s worth of teeny tiny buildings. I was building a bakery now—Yoli’s Pasteles y Panadería—but that night I didn’t have the patience to focus on it. My stomach was mad growly.
So I gave up and left my room. Mom was in the living room, whisper-yelling into her phone. All of a sudden, she began crying like someone had died! I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating from how hungry I was. Wait, maybe someone had died, someone in Guatemala or El Salvador or Arizona (about one hundred relatives I’d never met lived in these places), or hello, my dad. It was hard to hear exactly what she was saying between the wails, but I caught phrases: too dangerous, too expensive, I just don’t know.
What was too dangerous? What was too expensive? METCO was a free program. She couldn’t have been talking about that, and besides, who was she talking to?
Afraid she would hear me snooping, I speed-walked to the kitchen, grabbed two granola bars (what? the cheap kind are small), and hightailed it back to my room, thinking, thinking. No. She wasn’t talking about METCO. That news had made her happier than she’d looked all week. When had they signed me up, anyway?
As I thought about it, it started making sense. See, every February when I was in elementary school, my dad had dragged me to a charter school lottery. The last time we went, I think I was ten. I remember because Dad got us a blue raspberry Coolatta from Dunkins, even though it was snowing. The school basement was packed. I even recognized a girl from my grade. She was with her grandmother, who clutched a rosary as she prayed. I was kind of scared at first, but Dad explained that we were there to put in our application for a spot at the charter school. I didn’t know what a charter school was, and to be honest, I still don’t really understand how it’s different (besides the fact that they make you go to school longer, sometimes even in the summer). But Dad was all psyched about it.
Like the other parents, Dad filled out a form and received a poker chip with a number on it. Then we sat and waited on benches for, like, ever, passing the Coolatta back and forth until finally a lady at the front of the room said it was time to start the lottery. Inside one of those big round bingo cages were poker chips that matched the ones that had been handed out. That cage was packed with chips!
“Let me tell you how this is gonna work,” the lady announced. “I’m gonna call the numbers, and if your number is called, your child gets a spot. At the end, we’ll put the rest of the names on the waiting list.”
“How many spots are there?” a man with red cheeks asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
“How many poker chips have you given out?”
“Two hundred and twelve.”
The audience gasped. I looked at Dad, who rubbed at his knuckles. No lie, I was ready to be done with it. My butt hurt from sitting so long. And I had to pee. As the lady called the numbers and the spots filled up, some parents cried tears of joy. The sleeping babies woke up in a daze. The old people clapped. But as we got to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth slots, other families—most families—began to weep into crumpled tissues. This must be one special school, I remember thinking. And when she called the number for the twenty-eighth slot, a man screamed, “¡Así es!” as around him the weeping grew louder.
The lady at the front looked around—I gotta admit, she looked really sad—and said, “Thank you all for coming. If your number hasn’t been called, you’ll be added to the waiting list.”
Dad’s nostrils opened and closed like a bull’s in a bullfight. In a low, calm voice he said, “Let’s go.”
I grasped his hand, glad we were leaving. But he was heading for the lady. “Thank you for organizing this lottery,” he said to her, dipping his head. “I know you have lots of kids on the waiting list. My daughter Liliana would love to attend this school. Is there something I could do? Work as a janitor at night or on the weekends? Or maybe—”
“Sir, please,” she interrupted. “There is a waiting list, as I explained. Fair is fair.”
“But I want her to have a chance. I couldn’t finish school. Please at least hear me out.”
The woman looked at my Coolatta-blue lips.
“I’m sorry, sir. You have to go.” She pointed to the door where families were inching their way out of the hot basement.
I thought maybe Dad was going to jump over the table and tell this lady off. But he didn’t. He nodded. “Thank you anyway,” he said, so, so politely. And we walked away.
“Dad? Can’t you talk to her boss or something?”
He shook his head.
“Dad? Why can’t I go to this school? That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t always fair, mija,” he said.
“But, Dad—”
“Listen to me. This is not a problem. Oye, there are worse things in life. At least you have a public school you can go to. I didn’t even have that.” He looked up. Outside, the snow had almost covered the basement windows.
“Dad?”
“You want something, Liliana, you go after it. No matter what. You’ll get an education, whether it’s at a charter school or not. Okay?”
“Dad?”
“You have a goal? Stick with it. ¿Entiendes?”
I nodded. “But, Dad?”
“What is it?”
“I really have to pee.”
* * *
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I heard was my morning alarm.
At lunch, Jade and I sat together like we always did, except she spent most of the time texting with Ernesto. Jade was the only friend I spoke Spanish with—okay, Spanglish. Unlike me, Jade wasn’t born here. She was three when her parents moved to Boston from Honduras. I knew she didn’t have her papers. It was something that just was, something we never really talked about. When it came time for city-subsidized summer programs or the opportunity to get stipends from the YMCA, Jade never bothered applying because she knew she wouldn’t qualify. That, and she didn’t want to get sent back to Honduras. Jade’s phone buzzed for, like, the sixth time in three minutes. Her boy, Ernesto, was cool. I mean, I liked that he made Jade happy (even though he was mad old, like seventeen, I think). I reached for the bag in front of her. “You gonna eat the rest of those chips?”
“Um, YES.” She snatched the bag back. “But you can have one.” She smiled.
As I licked the salt off the chip then nibbled the edges, Jade stared.
“What?” I asked.
“Liliana, please. Don’t what me. What’s good with you lately?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just got in a fight with my mom last night.”
“ ’Bout what?” Jade asked, looking down at her phone.
She was obviously more interested in Ernesto than in me. So why bother? “I don’t want to talk about it. Can I have another chip?”
She handed me the bag, laughed at one of Ernesto’s texts, and began typing away while I sat there crunching. I might as well have been sitting alone. METCO wasn’t looking so bad all of a sudden.
“Oh look! Mrs. Marano is on Insta. Oh shoot!”
“What? Let me see.” I grabbed the phone. There was Mrs. Marano, holding a baby in a pink blanket, waving into the camera. Aw, she’d had a girl. Jade snatched back her phone. God forbid she missed a single text from Ernesto. Sure enough, she immediately began typing away.
“Hey, girl,” I finally said.
Jade raised a finger. Wait.
“Wow,” I said, crossing my arms when she finally put down the phone.
She smiled wide. “What?” Even her eyes seemed to smile. It was cool, on the one hand, seeing her all cheesed out and whatnot, but I couldn’t help but be worried that she was going to turn into one of those girls who only had time for their guy.
I handed her the METCO pamphlet.
Jade turned it over. “What’s this?”
“Read it.”
The pamphlet included information about the history of the program,
contacts, and biographies of alumni, along with stuff about the W towns—Wellesley, Wayland, Weston, Westburg. White towns. Towns where the schools were real good, where there were enough computers for everyone in a grade to be using one at the same time. Truth, the laptops in the computer carts at my school were always breaking. Kids were always stealing letters off the keys—especially F, U, C, and K.
The pamphlet also bragged about all the extracurricular clubs, from fencing to fashion. But Jade just scanned the cover, then flapped it at me. Her phone buzzed. “Okay, so what exactly is this I’m reading?” she asked, glancing at a new text.
“I got into that program, METCO. I guess my folks signed me up forever ago, but before you say anything—”
Instead of looking upset though, Jade looked… impressed? “Sounds fly.”
“Fly? Who says ‘fly’ anymore?” I laughed.
She smirked, checked out her phone again, which had pinged a second time, and then looked back up. “Girl—so you’re really changing schools?”
“I kinda don’t have a choice. My mom is being super aggy about it all.” I didn’t want Jade to think I’d been seeking out this opportunity, or was like, dying to leave Boston. “I wanted to tell you about it last night—”
Bzzzz. Her phone. Again.
How could she not be upset? And I realized that I wanted Jade to be upset. I wanted her to want me to stay.
“So, that’s it?” I asked.
“Whatchu want? A bunch of balloons to fall from the ceiling?” Jade’s smile disappeared.
“No… It’s just— Forget it.”
“Well, I think it’s cool, that program. Damn. And,” she added, “I got some news of my own.”
“What’s that?” My head was stuck on Jade thinking METCO was cool. Even though, well, wasn’t she going to ask me about the school? Wouldn’t a best friend want to know basic things like, when I’d leave? Hello?
She shut her eyes for three long-ass seconds. “Ernesto said he loved me.”
“In a text?” Whoa! “For real?”
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From Page 2
