Help Wanted

by Gary Soto

  "That's when he started his onion farm, huh?" Javier could sense a nastiness grow in himself. He didn't believe a word she was saying.

  "No, the onion farm was in our family for a really long time. Since the conquistadors came—or something like that." She explained that the Spanish adventurers settled in New Mexico and her family was part of the first settlers. "Of course, we didn't grow onions back then. It was just for sheep, I think." She stirred her drink with a straw. "I'm not really Mexican, like you. I'm Spanish."

  Javier gazed out the window at his bicycle. Just a few more sips of this milkshake, he reasoned, and I'm outta here. He was mad that she was denying she was Mexican. She's embarrassed, he growled in his thoughts.

  "You know the explorer Cortez? My last name is Cortez. We're related."

  "Yeah, right," Javier snarled. "Veronica, you're a liar!"

  Veronica's smile disappeared. She let go of her straw, which began to sink into her milkshake.

  Immediately, Javier felt bad. "Well, maybe not a liar, but you're making all this up." He couldn't see the difference being lying and making something up, but the latter seemed less offensive.

  "I'm not a liar."

  "So, your dad has a farm in New Mexico and some grapes in—" He stalled as he tried to remember the place.

  "Napa. And yes, he does. He grows zinfandel varietals."

  "And he flies a helicopter! And he was a captain in the air force!"

  "Colonel," she corrected coolly. She lifted her straw from her milkshake.

  Javier's face reddened with anger. He continued in spite of himself: "And you're Spanish, not Mexican like me. And you went to this stupid fancy ball. And you've got all those Barbies and Kens. Plus, your mama drives a Ferrari." His voice had grown louder until he sensed the pimply guy behind the counter sneering at him. Suddenly he lowered his head. I'm a jerk, he thought. I should just let her lie and lie.

  "You know, you're being really awful, Javier." Her voice was about to crack.

  The two became silent.

  "I'm sorry," he heard himself mutter. He considered plunging his hand into his pocket and giving back her two hundred dollars. Indeed, his hand went into his pocket, felt the crisp texture of new money, but then he brought his hand out empty. He really felt like a jerk when Veronica's eyes filled with tears. When the tears began to spill, he apologized, "I'm sorry. I believe you."

  "No, you don't."

  "Yeah, I do." He almost crossed his chest and said, "Scout's honor."

  Veronica wiped her face, jumped from the stool, and left the store, riding away with the teapot clanging like a bell on the handlebars.

  The next day Javier looked up "charminggirl" on eBay.

  "Dang," he muttered when he found her account and discovered that she had already posted the teapot for sale. The teapot's price was two hundred dollars, but it was going for over three hundred. Javier looked up from the computer screen. Even though he was full from breakfast—chorizo con huevos and papas with homemade tortillas—he had an empty feeling in his stomach. He felt that he had lost something precious.

  "I'll call her," he said. But he couldn't remember her last name. He knew she shared the name with an explorer, but which one? He asked his mother, who was on the couch in the living room. Her face was layered with lettuce—she was suffering a headache from the buzz of the neighbor's leaf blower. Her hands were fitted with rubber gloves—his mother made her own moisturizer from honey, and she wore gloves to keep it off her clothes and furniture.

  "Mom, who's the Spanish explorer?"

  "Christopher Columbus."

  "He wasn't Spanish."

  "Thomas Edison." She held the lettuce on her face as she started to laugh. Her headache, it seemed, was gone.

  "Mom, Edison wasn't an explorer!"

  "Michael Jackson." She laughed harder.

  "No wonder I'm getting Cs in school!"

  Javier stomped from the living room as she uttered, "Placido Domingo." He went into the kitchen and was about to call the library to ask about the explorer when the telephone rang. It was Veronica.

  "I'm sorry about yesterday," Javier said before she could speak. And he was, and was especially sorry because she had the teapot that was going for hundreds.

  "I understand how you might not believe me," Veronica nearly sobbed.

  "I do," he lied.

  "You do?"

  "Yeah, totally."

  She asked what he was doing later. Her father had flown his jet from New Mexico and was going to rent a helicopter to view some vineyards outside of town. Her father was thinking about buying them.

  She won't stop, Javier thought. She lies and lies and lies. But could he be wrong? The idea flashed in his mind.

  "I'm playing baseball," he said. "With some friends."

  The friends were little kids and the game was with plastic bats and balls. When she asked where, he told her the vacant lot at the corner of his street.

  "I know the place," she said. "That's where people sometimes throw garbage."

  "Yeah, that's it."

  Javier repeated his apology and had to repeat it a third time when she said she couldn't make out what he was saying. She said she had just gotten a cell phone, the kind with a small screen.

  Liar! he shouted in his heart.

  He was about to ask her about the teapot when she said that she had to go, that her brother was calling from France. "Ciao," she said, "I'll see you later."

  Dang! Javier groaned as he hung up. He had been stupid to trade the teapot. He got back on the computer and searched eBay. It was going for over four hundred dollars.

  "It's not fair!" he cried in anger. For a moment he wondered if he was wrong. Maybe she was rich. After all, she did wear nice clothes and he had heard she sometimes had parties at her house. He did remember her buying ice creams for all the girls in third grade. Plus, didn't she seem to pull out hundred-dollar bills from her pocket whenever she wanted? In the end, though, he figured she couldn't be that rich. "No way," he told himself. "She's just like me—like the rest of us."

  Javier left the house just as his mother was mixing a bowl of egg whites, a concoction she would apply to her throat. The mixture, she said, would keep her throat from sagging.

  "I'll be back," Javier hollered.

  He went into the garage to see if there was something worth anything. He kicked among the boxes. He scanned the shelf where his mother kept the detergent and bleach—nothing. He rifled through a laundry basket of old clothes; the sour smell nearly brought tears to his eyes. He wrestled a lawn mower and car parts out of the way to get to a chest of drawers. "It's got to have something," he told himself. When he opened the top drawer, a mouse leaped up and scampered over his shoulder.

  "Ahhh!" he screamed.

  He hurried out of the garage and seconds later returned to retrieve the plastic bat and balls. Late for the baseball game, he ran to the vacant lot and found the little kids sword fighting with branches.

  "You're going to hurt yourselves," Javier said.

  "We're already hurt," one kid said. He showed him the skinned elbow from when he had fallen. Another kid showed him where he had been whacked on the back of his hand.

  "Man, you guys," Javier snarled. "Your parents are going to blame me."

  "No, they won't," one chubby kid claimed. "They won't care unless we die. That's what they said."

  Because he was thirteen and they were only eight-year-olds, Javier played himself against them. But he couldn't concentrate. The image of the teapot kept floating behind the back of his eyes. He imagined it on eBay and its auction price rising to over a thousand dollars.

  "She's such a liar," he found himself saying as he swung through a pitch. "Yeah, right, your brother lives in France and you've got a cell phone." He swung and missed again. "Yeah, right, you have the lightbulb that once belonged to Thomas Edison." He swung and missed badly.

  He was out, but none of the kids in dirty T-shirts cared. An ice-cream truck rolled up the street and
the kids ran after it. Javier was glad they were gone. He sat in the shade of a pomegranate tree and stuck a blade of grass in his mouth. He placed his hand over his brow, as if he were saluting, and made out his cat walking on a neighbor's car.

  "You're going to get busted, buster!" he yelled. He liked his cat because he was an adventurer that sometimes scratched at the front door with a mouse in his mouth. Javier was about to get up to get him when the dirt at his feet began to swirl. He heard a sound above— whump, whump, whump—and when he peered up, in a confused state, thought he was seeing a washing machine falling out of the sky.

  His pants began to waver and his T-shirt flapped about his belly. The dirt powdered his face like makeup.

  "Hello down there!" a voice blared through a bullhorn.

  It's a helicopter, he realized.

  "Did you win?" the voice called.

  Veronica, he thought, rubbing his eyes with his fists to get the dust and disbelief from his eyes.

  The helicopter hovered over the vacant lot, swirling dust and bending the limbs of the pomegranate tree. The plastic bat and balls rolled away.

  Wincing, Javier could make out the pilot—a man wearing sunglasses and a soldier's hat with a shiny colonel's cluster. He could make out Veronica talking on a cell phone. She snapped closed the cell phone and picked up the bullhorn.

  "That was my brother. He's flying in to see the vineyard!" she yelled above the whirl of the helicopter's propellers. "Plus, my dad might buy the lake next to it." She then dipped her hand into a sack. "Catch!"

  Veronica tossed what he believed was a discolored baseball. But when he caught it, he discovered it was an onion. He sniffed it and recalled her saying that her father had an onion farm in New Mexico.

  "I'll see you at school!" she yelled.

  He had no choice but to wave as the helicopter lifted slowly and banked away, but not before he heard her yell through the bullhorn, "I'm taking off a week to go to Florida—sorry you can't come!"

  He watched the helicopter until it was a speck in the sky.

  "Yeah, right," he answered with dirt on his tongue and an onion he tossed like a baseball from one hand to the next. "Yeah, right."

  How Becky Garza Learned Golf

  Becky Garza rubbed an old T-shirt up the shaft of her five wood and marveled how the chrome-plated shaft sparkled in the hot summer light. Uncle Andy had given her a set of used clubs (minus the putter) with the promise to take her to the golf course when she got good. And in order to get good, she figured, she had to practice. She first practiced in her backyard, but her cat, Samba, kept chasing the golf ball. Then she practiced in the living room but had to stop that when the golf ball slammed against the television screen. Becky was spooked. That was close, she thought. How would she explain a spiderweb-like crack like that? Her parents didn't like her horsing around in the house.

  The solution, she decided, was to make her own golf course in the vacant corner lot. She spent two whole days removing rocks, boards, car parts, bicycle parts, paint cans, and other debris. She raked away litter and cut the long, brittle grass. Some kids from school came by to see what she was doing. They straddled their bikes, spitting sunflower-seed shells, and asked, "What are you doing?" She explained the course, and they listened awhile before riding away doing wheelies.

  Becky was in competition with her friend Dulce Rosales. Dulce was a smallish girl who played tough at all sports, especially soccer. Dulce wasn't afraid of playing football with boys or handball with grown-ups. She tied back her ponytail and taunted, "Let's go." But Becky felt that Dulce was too rough to understand the subtle nature of golf. Golf was a thinking person's sport, Uncle Andy said. Becky wiped her face and complained, "Man, it's hot."

  "What's hot is my play, you mean," said Dulce, who was using a three wood as her putter. On her knees, face close to the ground, she had the club positioned between her thumb and index finger and was pretending to shoot pool. With one eye closed, she slid the club back and forth and then struck the golf ball. The ball traveled six feet straight into the hole.

  "That's not how you play golf!" Becky exclaimed.

  Dulce rose to her feet, her knees powdered brown from the sandy dirt. "The ball went in, didn't it?"

  Becky fumed. She didn't know the rules of golf but didn't believe that using a club like a pool stick was in the books. Still, she didn't say anything more. She felt confident.

  "Okay, my turn," Becky said, and lowered her club, eyeing first the golf ball, then the hole. She wiggled her body a little, just like the pros do on television, and then tapped the golf ball. The ball rolled four feet and to the left.

  "Too bad, girl!" Dulce cried.

  Becky furrowed her brow and bit her lip. She took a second shot and that one stopped an inch short of the hole.

  "You got to put a little meat into it!" Dulce sang.

  Becky got the ball into the hole on the third putt. She picked up her ball and said, "Dulce, you're not supposed to talk to the other player."

  "What other player?" Dulce asked seriously. She looked around.

  "The other player is ... me," Becky said. She swallowed painfully. The score was one to three. How is that possible? she wondered.

  They studied the second of eighteen holes. It was in a small valley and the ground was cement hard.

  "You go first," Becky said.

  "Nah, girl," Dulce mumbled. She had a length of red whip licorice hanging from her mouth. She chewed a little and said, "You go first."

  "But you're in the lead."

  Dulce shrugged. She stood and used the club properly. She took a practice swing, the red whip licorice dangling from her mouth. She swung the club back and smacked the ball, which went racing left and then corrected to the right. The golf ball disappeared into the hole.

  Dulce threw the golf club into the air. She pumped her arm and yelled, "I'm hot, man!" She fitted a few inches of red whip into her mouth.

  "Dulce," Becky growled, "you're not supposed to be eating in the presence of the other player."

  Dulce laughed. "And you're the other player, huh?"

  Becky nodded.

  Dulce gobbled more of the red whip but first offered Becky a few inches by pulling and breaking it into halves.

  "No, thank you," Becky said as she dropped her golf ball and lined up a putt. She measured in her mind the distance between the ball and the hole. She wiggled and adjusted her stance. She then let the club rise and fall, striking the ball past the hole by four feet.

  "That's too bad, girl!" Dulce said. "You got to do it a little smoother. Let me show you." Dulce stepped toward Becky, who turned her body away and suddenly had a great interest in the house across the street.

  "Don't be like that!" Dulce warned.

  "Like what?"

  "Like a friend can't teach you. I mean, Tiger had to learn from someone. ¿Qué no?"

  Becky glowered at Dulce but was surprised that Tiger Woods was in her vocabulary. She thought, Yeah, maybe she's right. Tiger started somewhere and with someone's help. But for the time being, Becky felt she should play by instinct. She approached her golf ball and knelt down, her hands cupped around her eyes as she studied the distance and terrain of the course.

  "Whatta you doing?" Dulce asked.

  Becky rose quickly and ignored her friend.

  "I'm studying the ball," Becky said.

  Dulce laughed. "That's funny—studying the ball, like you're in school or something."

  Becky mumbled and took her stance. She placed her club behind the golf ball. But while she was adjusting her stance, her club struck the golf ball by mistake.

  "Hey, that counts!" Dulce yelled, jabbing a finger at the golf ball. "I saw it."

  Becky swung around to her friend. "It was a mistake."

  "Yeah, but you hit the ball, didn't you?" She was gobbling a handful of Nerds. The corners of her mouth were stained red from candy.

  Becky had to admit that she had struck the golf ball. But it had traveled only two inches. "That
wasn't a hit," she argued to herself. Wasn't there a rule about a golf ball touched by mistake? She was about to concede the stroke when Dulce cried, "Okay, I'll let you off this time. But that's it, girl." She then rattled a box of Nerds at Becky. "Want some? They'll give you energy."

  Becky refused the candy and refused to give up, though by the ninth hole she was behind twenty-four hits to sixteen by Dulce, who had finished the box of Nerds and was then eating sunflower seeds.

  "I oughta go pro," Dulce bragged. She spit out the shells of sunflower seeds. "Except this game is boring." She smacked her lips. "I'm thirsty, too."

  "It's not boring," Becky argued.

  "When you're in the lead it is." She spanked her golf ball without concentration, and the ball rolled and went into the hole. She let the golf club fall from her grip. "Did you see that?"

  Becky's shoulders slumped.

  Dulce lifted her face skyward. There was the sound of an approaching vehicle. "It's my papi."

  A rattling pickup truck filled with his kids and other kids rounded the corner. The horn tooted.

  "There's a fire!" Dulce screamed.

  Dulce's father was an amateur ham radio operator. A large antenna was propped up on his roof. His radio was able to pick up police and fire calls. He didn't respond to police calls, but if someone's house was burning, he would yell, "Fire—let's go! ¡Ándale!" Dulce's father argued that his interest in fire was a community service. It taught kids not to play with matches.

  Dulce ran off but turned and said, "You win!" She leaped over every hole she had won, and that was all of them.

  But Becky didn't feel like a winner under the hot summer sun. She was disgusted with her play. How did someone loud and rough like Dulce beat her? Wasn't golf supposed to be subtle and a thinking person's sport? She gathered the golf balls and clubs and walked home with her bag on her shoulder.

  "Hi, Mom!" she called out. But no one was home, though the cooler was on and stirring the newspaper on the coffee table. The newspaper was opened to the sports section. Tiger Woods was smiling with a trophy hoisted over his head.