“No! Yes. He said it. Last night!”
My stomach did this fluttering thing. “That’s fire.”
“Yeah.” And I swear she looked all… dreamy. Gah!
“So happy. For you.” I didn’t know what else to say. It was true. I wasn’t jealous—not of what he said. It was more like, my best friend was sitting right in front of me, but she couldn’t have felt further away. Like… it didn’t matter to her at all if I went to school twenty-two miles away. Yeah, I’d looked it up.
The bell rang. Jade stood up and gave me a side hug. “Anyway, congratulations. ’Bout the new program. That’s whatsup. Look, I gotta get to art.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Later.”
Yeah, but who knows when, later.
3
After school I brought the boys to the library so I wouldn’t have to deal with them complaining about Mom hiding their video games for a second day in a row. We stayed until the sky turned the color of cement. When we walked into the living room, Mom was going nuts. She was hunting through a bunch of papers and envelopes, looking wildly at each handful, then flinging them to the floor.
“Mom!” I grabbed her by the shoulders, but she pushed me away, so hard that I fell backward onto the couch. What the—
“I can’t take this anymore!” she yelled, and began pacing the living room.
“Mom?” I said hesitantly, not wanting to get her even angrier. “Why don’t you just sit down? Maybe I can help you find—whatever it is?”
Benjamin and Christopher had immediately booked it down the hall and were now poking their heads around the sheet that divided the living room from their bedroom (which was really the dining room).
Mom’s eyes were totally swollen. It looked like she’d been bawling for a month straight. I remembered her crying last night. What was up?
“Mom?”
“I need to find a paper that belongs to your father. A pay stub. It’s important.”
I jumped up. “I can help.” I went to the chair by the door and picked up a pile of mail that I assumed she hadn’t looked through yet.
“Don’t touch anything, Liliana!” She yanked the letters from my hands, and they flew everywhere.
“Mom. Chill.” I squatted to pick it all up.
“What?” She glared at me.
“Calm… down…?”
Why did people hate it when they were told to calm down? Still, I was about to take it back, when Mom said, “You want me to calm— Do you even know how much— Do you think—” She was so uncalm that she couldn’t even finish her sentences.
I reached for the remote control and shut off the television. Then I kind of wanted to turn it right back on. The silence sucked. So did arguing with my mom.
“Look, Mom, it’s been a minute since Dad left, and yeah, he’s unpredictable—he’s done it before. But you’re… you’re kinda scaring me… and the boys. You’re acting… kinda craz—”
Her hand flew up, ready to slap me. And my hand flew protectively to my cheek as if it already stung.
“What the hell—” came out of my mouth before I could stop it. I cringed, waiting for her to slap me. Truth: she’d only ever hit the boys and me on the arms or legs before, and that was only when we did something really bad, like steal money from her purse. I’d never seen her this riled up.
“Malcriada,” she said, raising her arm in the air once more.
“Well,” I said, narrowing my eyes, “you’re the one who raised me, so then that’s on you.”
This time I knew she would actually slap me, so I ducked out of the way, snatched my backpack, and headed out the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she bellowed after me.
I was charging down the hall, pushing open the door to the stairs.
“Liliana! Get back here!”
I took the stairs two at a time, holding the rail so I wouldn’t fall on my face. Fury surged through me. Why was she like this? No wonder my father kept taking off!
Outside I glanced up at the apartment, and there she was, head stuck out the window, hair all crazy like a witch’s or something.
“Liliana! Get back in here right now!”
No way. But where to go? Not Jade’s. Mom would just march over and drag me back. The library was closed already. I could go to the corner store. And then it dawned on me. Damn. My phone and wallet were on the counter. It was dark. Suddenly I could barely breathe. I hated this. Being cornered. Out of control. Not knowing what was next. I hadn’t even grabbed my jacket. Stupid! I checked my pockets for money. Nada. I avoided eye contact as I roamed up the street, especially with that sketchy dude with the mustache in front of Lorenzo’s Liquor who always catcalled at me and Jade. I walked around until my skin prickled with cold. September could be like that—unpredictable. Like my life, apparently.
Finally I had no choice. I had to head home, and face… more unpredictability. But when I cracked the door open, Mom was asleep in front of the television. I turned down the volume. Had the boys even had dinner? I peeked behind the curtain. They were sleeping hard, sprawled out like they owned the world. I felt a pang in my chest. They were okay. At least there was that.
I filled a coffee mug with Froot Loops and milk, grabbed a spoon, and tiptoed to my room. Out the window, Jade’s lights were off. The moon was bright. Bright like a diamond. No, that was from a song. Bright like a Home Depot bulb? I thought, I should write that down, but I didn’t feel like writing. Or reading. Or painting my nails. Or working on my cardboard buildings. Ugh. My head began to throb. I wolfed down the cereal and tried to fall asleep.
But I couldn’t.
Because all I really wanted to do was talk to my dad. Look, I wasn’t stupid. I knew Dad wasn’t a saint. Yeah, he had a day job, delivering soda crates, but I knew he had side stuff going on too—gambling, selling car parts, and whatnot. A couple of his friends had even been arrested, mostly for stupid stuff—theft and drugs here and there, but nothing really bad like murder or whatever. Dad was a hustler. A businessman of the streets, I liked to think. And he was smart. Really smart.
And now he’d been gone for twenty-six days. Yep, I’d been counting. I legit counted every time. And when he did come back, he was like recharged or whatever. Last July when he came back from a five-day stint to who knows where, he was in the best mood for, like, the rest of the summer. Every morning he’d bring my brothers and me someplace fun, like swimming at Revere Beach or to get pastries at Au Bon Pain or to some program at the Children’s Museum. Dad had friends who worked everywhere, it seemed—the Prudential mall food court, the big library downtown in Copley Square, the welcome center at one of the Harbor Islands. So we’d visit his friends and get something free, even if it was only a soda from a concession stand. On really hot days he’d take us to the movies and we’d sneak from room to room, show to show, until my skin prickled with goose bumps from the air-conditioning. But this time felt different.… This time I got to thinking, What if he wasn’t just skipping town? What if he was gone for good?
My mind kept racing. Was this insomnia? And now I was crying—I had to get a grip. Sometimes I wished I could just… just… unzip myself from my own life and start over, somewhere where no one knew me, or my shady father, or my depressed mother, or my “best” friend. Escape it all.
It’s a scary thing, though, to get what you ask for. Right?
* * *
The next morning the couch was empty and Mom’s bedroom door was closed. Didn’t even open when Christopher spilled cereal all over the place and Benjamin screamed, “I’m going to tell Dad!” We all froze, stared at the frosted squares on the floor, waiting for Mom to come charging out, but nada. The deep dark state must be near sea bottom. To be honest, after last night, I was glad I didn’t have to see her before I left for school. Gave me the day to think. Then she wasn’t there when we got home. I let the twins play as many video games as they wanted.
Mom must have gotten a quick job. Sometimes she got calls from other
ladies in the building to join them for a day’s work, usually doing something like helping a white lady in Brookline reorganize her closet or label a hundred jars full of homemade jam or whatever. My mom was the queen of random jobs. Once, she got a job from this lady who needed help making party favors for her four-year-old son’s birthday party. No joke! These jobs paid in cash, so Mom was happy. Thing was, she didn’t have a high school diploma. So it was hard for her to get steady work and still be home for us after school or at night or whatever. Plus, there was some issue with missing paperwork—something about she lost her original birth certificate and stuff in a fire when she was younger.
Dad was the one who’d had—HAD—a real job, like, one he went to every day, at a soda company warehouse. They even gave him a special belt that protected his back while he worked. You would think we would have gotten tons of free soda, right? WRONG. That company was mad cheap. Employees couldn’t even take a soda for their break, or they’d be fined, or even fired.
I microwaved some instant hot cocoa for the boys and me, then pulled the half-finished bakery from under my bed. I’d used an empty cereal box for the walls, painted them pink with some old nail polish. Made the walls nice and glossy. Now I cut up a tissue box and used those pieces to create some windows and a door. I flipped through some recycled revistas for a picture of a brick wall (which was really hard to find, in case you’re wondering). As I was writing Yoli’s Pasteles y Panadería on a rectangle of cardboard—I was going to glue it onto the front of the store—Benjamin came into the kitchen for more cocoa and asked what I was doing.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“You know what you should do?” Benjamin opened the refrigerator and stuffed a slice of cheese into his mouth.
“What?” I rubbed the glue stick on the back of the little sign.
He chewed with his mouth open. “You know how they have those wires at the top of buildings so robbers won’t jump over the walls?”
I looked up, picturing the barbed silver spirals that covered so many of the stores on Centre Street. “Hey, shut the fridge!”
“You should do that,” he said.
It was actually a good idea. “But what would I use?”
He didn’t answer. He shut the refrigerator door with his hip and ran back to his room.
Hmmm… I’d have to think on that one.
I was writing in my journal, ready for bed, when Mom finally came home. I expected her to head straight to the kitchen to heat up some frijoles or whatever. Instead she knocked on my door real soft. That made me instantly nervous. For years I’d tried to train her to actually knock on my bedroom door instead of barging in—so why was she finally doing it now?
“Come in,” I said, closing my journal and sitting up straight.
She perched on the edge of my bed. “How was your day?”
I shrugged. I got it. I got it; she was under a lot of stress. But she was going cray-cray. Still, I knew I probably should apologize for swearing the night before. Just as I was about to, she surprised me again by saying, “So… listen. I’m sorry about what happened.” She looked away. “I really am. It’s just that there’s a lot going on and I don’t know what’s going to happen.” And then—gahhh!—she was crying again!
No lie, I felt bad for her. “Dad’s not coming back, is he?”
She cried harder. “I don’t know, mija. I just don’t know.”
I rubbed Mom’s shoulder. She cried it out for another minute, then pulled a tissue from her jeans pocket and wiped her nose. “Liliana…,” she began. I knew what she was going to say.
“Mom,” I said. “I’ll try METCO.” We both knew that meant, I’ll do it, but I’m throwing in that “try” because I’m stubborn and we both know that I’m stubborn because I’m your daughter so let’s just leave it at that. K? K.
“Ay, mija,” she said, hugging me tight. Then her phone buzzed. It was probably Tía Laura. She’d been calling from Guatemala like every other day since Dad had left. Tía Laura had raised my father, so she was more like his mother than his aunt, which made her more like my grandmother than my great-aunt. She was sweet and all. Dad loved her a lot. I could tell from the way he made us clean the apartment like crazy whenever she visited, or how he insisted on Tía Laura getting the best seat on the couch. Mom glanced at the phone screen and bolted out of the room.
Huh. Lately, every time Tía Laura called, my mom took the phone into another room, and on top of that, she whispered. Something was up. Something was definitely up. And not just me, now going to METCO.
4
And after one more week of skyscraper-size butterflies in my stomach, I was on my way to Westburg High. When my alarm went off that first morning, it was still dark outside. I wouldn’t say I was 100 percent excited or 100 percent nervous. I was more like that scared emoji with all its teeth showing. Everyone else was still asleep. I kissed Mom good-bye on the forehead, and she opened her eyes long enough to smile and whisper, “Good luck, mija.”
“Thanks,” I said, pulling up her blanket. I looked at the empty other half of the bed. Dad didn’t even know I’d gotten into METCO.
I was heading for the front door, when there Mom was, in her wrinkled white robe.
“Jesus, Mom! I thought you were a ghost or something.”
“Here,” she said, handing me a warm ten-dollar bill. “I don’t know what they’ll have for lunch over there.”
She looked so sleepy.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
* * *
Most of the twenty or so other kids on the bus were asleep. The few who were awake listened to music on their phones or did homework. I could never do that—read or write on a bus. I would throw up all over everyone. I didn’t recognize anyone. They were mostly Black and apparently from all over Boston, not just my neighborhood. I wondered how long they’d been in the program. Some looked my age, some older. Were any starting today, like I was?
I was supposed to meet my METCO “buddy” at school, some girl named Genesis. Miss Jackson had explained that the buddy was usually a junior or a senior, also from Boston. The buddy would do stuff like show me where to sit at lunch and whatever. But last night, Genesis had texted to say that she was going to be absent on my first day—she’d meet me on Tuesday instead. So I was on my own. Great. I also had something called a host family, like a backup family in the suburbs. I wondered who my host family would be. Were they rich? The pamphlet had said: In case of a bad snowstorm, if the buses can’t get out of Westburg, it might make more sense for your child to spend the night with his/her host family. Now I was worrying about snowstorms—staying with some rich suburban family sounded totally awkward!
Yet I must have dozed off, because all of a sudden the sky was pink and orange and we were in the suburbs. I wiped drool off my chin with the back of my hand, hoping no one had noticed, and stuck a piece of gum into my mouth. There was actually traffic out here! Except no one was honking or cussing anyone out. People used their blinkers. Let each other turn at intersections. Crazy-nice cars too. Expensive-looking. The neighborhoods all had big houses. BIG houses. I also saw things I knew the words for but had never had a reason to name: sprinklers, landscape truck, dog trainer. No joke—a van with the words canine etiquette and paw prints painted on it drove past us. Who says “canine,” anyway?
We drove down one street lined with pastel-painted mansions, photo-shoot-ready lawns, and driveways dotted with abandoned basketballs and scooters and everything. People just left their stuff outside overnight? NO WAY that would happen on my street; it would be like putting up a steal me sign. I saw a man jogging. An old lady power walking with her elbows out to the sides. A teenage guy delivering newspapers. Like, real newspapers. I thought newspaper delivery people were extinct or whatever. And they were all white. Alllllll white.
My stomach started to cramp up. Did these white kids all really have their own cars? Were they all really allowed to drink beer and wine in front of their parents? Did the
y hang out with their boyfriends and girlfriends in their furnished basements (or was it “finished”?)? Okay. Maybe Jade and I had watched Mean Girls way too many times. But still.
Finally the bus swerved through a maze of mini rotaries, over speed bumps, and boom, we were at the school’s entrance. I followed the rest of the METCO kids off the bus, trying not to check things out too obviously, like, Hello! I’m the new kid. The air smelled cold, like the ice-skating rink at Stony Brook. My elementary school always took field trips there, I think mostly because it was within walking distance. But man, that smell—did this school have its own rink? Dang. The school itself was huge. A janitor—even he was white!—rolled blue bins toward a dumpster. I could hear birds cawing, the roar of an industrial lawn mower, and the growling of a bus tackling one of the speed bumps in the parking lot. Speaking of, there had to be a hundred speed bumps.
As I walked in the front doors, a girl with long, thick red hair was stopped just inside, trying desperately to peel gum off the bottom of her sneaker. Try scissors, I wanted to say, but I didn’t know this girl, and what if she told me to just mind my own damn business? That’s what happened the last time I’d tried to be friendly with a white girl. Truth. That girl’s name was Melissa, but everyone called her Missie. She was tiny, but boy she had the biggest dirty mouth. She cussed out teachers left and right and held the record for most suspensions. Once, when I tried to help her pick up books she’d dropped in the hall, she told me to mind my own damn business. So, yeah, Missie was the only white girl I’d ever spoken to for more than five seconds. Some people might find that surprising, but it was true. I mean, duh, I’d SEEN white people, especially in Jamaica Plain. That was another thing. White people called it JP, but we call it Jamaica Plain. Well, I used both now, to be honest.
So I gotta admit, I was so surprised when the redhead girl looked up and said “Hi” that I looked around to see who she was talking to. I took in the gold and silver trophies displayed on the walls, protected by Plexiglas. Everyone else seemed to be headed to classes, so she must have been talking to me.
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From Page 3
