Help Wanted

by Gary Soto

  As she was pouring the steaming milk into the cup, Maria noticed a new smear of red lipstick on the cup. "It's Mom," she whispered to herself, and gazed around the kitchen. Her eyes came to rest on the table, where her mother would sit in solitude admiring her backyard and its flush of flowers. "Mom!" she called in the direction of the table. "Mom, you can't come back!"

  There was no answer, no sign, other than the kitchen faucet dripping and a fly beating on the windowsill.

  "Mom, are you really here?" Maria asked in a hollow voice. She pounded the table with her fist, and the salt shaker fell over, raining grains of salt.

  Angela came into the kitchen. "Who are you talking to?" she asked. "Did Papi come back?"

  Maria didn't answer. She stared tenderly at her sister and for a moment thought of hugging her. Instead, she pointed vaguely at the cup of hot chocolate and told her, "It's hot. Be careful not to burn your lips."

  Angela picked up the steaming cup of hot chocolate. Turning it around in her small hands and examining it, she asked with a smirk on her face, "Have you been using Mama's lipstick?"

  "No," Maria said.

  "The cup is all red."

  "I didn't use her lipstick. Now, quit it!"

  Maria left the kitchen and hurried outside, letting the screen door slam behind her. The sun was dime bright and hot for early May. The sky was blue and marked with a cargo of white clouds in the east. Mexican music drifted over the fence from Señor Cisneros's yard.

  Maria climbed onto the tire swing that hung from the mulberry and rocked it slowly, her shoes dragging and scraping the dirt under the swing. Why? she thought. Why has Mom come back? She remembered an argument they had had the day before she died, an argument about Javier, a boy she liked, a boy with green eyes who was always phoning her. Maria bit her lower lip and felt bad about having snapped at her mother.

  She looked at their house, which was pink stucco with a runner of green AstroTurf. Mama hated the fake grass but her father said it wore well, longer than a straw welcome mat.

  "Hi!" Angela called from the side of the house. She was holding the coffee cup.

  Maria looked over her shoulder. She got off the swing and approached her sister.

  "You're not done with your chocolate?"

  Angela took a sip and smacked her lips, trying to annoy her older sister. "It tastes good."

  Maria noticed that Angela's lips were red. She took Angela's chin roughly into her hands and examined her mouth. "Are you wearing Mom's lipstick?"

  "No," Angela answered, pushing away hard and almost losing her balance and falling. Some of the chocolate spilled on the front of her blouse. Mad, Angela looked down at the stain. "See what you've done, stupid!"

  "It's nothing. And don't call me stupid."

  "I'm going to tell Papi when he comes home," she cried, and stomped off, careful not to spill her remaining hot chocolate.

  Maria sat down on the front steps, raking her hand across the AstroTurf. She thought of her mother, gone eight days. What does she want? she thought to herself. Should I be nice to Angela? Should I take care of the house? Of Dad? Mom had never demanded much, but maybe she was asking for something now.

  When a sparrow swooped and settled on the handrail, Maria jumped to her feet and cried, "Ay, Dios." To her the bird appeared to be the messenger of death. "What do you want? Get outta here!"

  The sparrow locked a gaze on Maria, and after a moment of silence flew to the neighbor's roof, then over the house.

  Shaken, Maria returned inside the house. Angela, who was in the living room watching television, made a face and said, "I'm gonna tell Papi on you for dirtying my blouse." She muttered under her breath, "Stupid."

  Maria passed her without saying anything and went into the kitchen. She looked around slowly as she listened for sounds. The faucet still dripped and the fly now buzzed the overhead light. A ceiling beam creaked, the floor creaked. The water heater in the closet popped and hissed, and the clock on the wall whined its seconds.

  "It's Mother," she told herself. "She's telling me something." Maria's gaze fell on her mother's coffee cup on the counter. She walked over and took the cup and poured herself some coffee. She stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar and a splash of milk, and sat down at the small table near the window, her mother's favorite place in the house. She gazed out the window at her mother's garden of tomatoes and chilies, sunsparking pie tins tied to the vines and banging softly in the breeze.

  "What do you want, Mama?" she said after a chill touched her shoulder. "Are you here, Mama? Are you?"

  The floor creaked, the ceiling creaked, and the fly that had been buzzing the overhead light beat against the window.

  Maria sighed and lowered her gaze on the steam rising from the coffee. She turned the coffee cup around and studied the lipstick marks. She blew on the coffee, raised the cup, and took a sip where the lipstick marks would match her own mouth. Without intending to, she moaned in a different voice, her mother's voice, "I'm here and will never leave you, mi'ja."

  Angela was at the dining table drawing a picture with crayons. She asked, "What did you say?"

  Maria moaned.

  "You sound like Mommy," Angela said. She scratched her thigh, swollen with mosquito bites. With her face scrunched up from the pain of scratching, she asked, "How come you got your hands on your mouth?"

  Maria's hands tightened around her mouth as words tried to force themselves from the back of her throat.

  "See," Angela said, getting down from the chair. "It's a picture of Mommy." Angela raised the picture for her sister to see—a picture of the sisters waving to their mother. In the drawing their mother was calling, "I'll never leave you, mi'jas."

  Maria's mouth twisted with fear. Unable to stop the words, she let her hands flop at her sides and let their mother have her say. Their mother's spirit was circling the house, their lives, with a last good-bye.

  One Last Kiss

  Daniel Rubio lowered the morning newspaper, stared at the muted television showing a monster truck climbing onto the back of a VW Beetle, and then lifted the newspaper back toward his face. His mouth hung open like a sack as he stared at columns and columns of fugitives wanted by the Fresno Police Department. Each one had a photograph and a description of the crime. They were wanted for burglary, passing bad checks, domestic violence, probation violations, grand theft auto, assault with deadly weapons, attempted murder, and in one case, animal cruelty toward a Chihuahua. Most of the faces—all of them, in fact, except one—looked like those of people who should be taken off the street. The photo of Daniel's grandmother Graciela stared at him with what looked like a smirk. The smirk was saying, "Okay, catch me."

  "Dang," Daniel whispered. "Grandma got capped." His grandmother was wanted for passing bad checks. That totally surprised him because Grandma drove a newish car and wore nice clothes. Plus, she smelled of the products she sold—perfume and lotions that promised to rejuvenate aging skin. The lines on her face were filled in with her products, and her lips were red from them, too. Her hair was always in place, and she was a generous grandmother who quickly dispensed her butterscotch Life ¡Savers when she came over to visit.

  "Why would she pass bad checks?" he asked himself. Her purse was large as a shopping bag. She's got to have money in one of those zippered pockets, he figured. There was a roll of fat on her stomach and hips from all the good eating she'd done. Didn't that prove she was doing okay in life?

  "Dang!" he repeated.

  Daniel zapped off the television. He set the newspaper aside, stood up, and gazed absently out the window—the winter sky was gray with valley fog. Then he knew why his mother had left early in the morning: She had driven over to her mother's house, his grandmother's house, to see about her problem.

  Daniel felt sad as his shoulders sagged. His father had moved out on them two years before and he hadn't come around once, though Daniel had seen him with a woman in the parking lot at Longs Drugs. His father had been holding a heart-shaped balloon in o
ne hand and pushing a stroller with the other. Daniel was angry with his father. When had he ever given his mother a balloon? And that ugly mocoso baby! Now this—his grandmother's face in the newspaper.

  Daniel sighed as he headed to the bathroom to take an afternoon shower. He was going to the junior high dance, though he didn't know how to dance and had to admit to himself that he wasn't good-looking. Even if he knew how to dance, where would he get the strength in his voice to ask, "Hey, girl, you wanna dance?" Or some other bold line, like, "Ruca, I'm for real!"

  "I can't believe it! Grandma!" he shouted in the shower. His face was bearded with foaming bath gel and his eyes stung from the shampoo, two products that his grandmother had sold him. When he had bought them from her, Daniel had suspected that they had already been opened, but he feared saying anything because his mother would find out and lower the boom on him. Plus, he would have felt awkward telling his grandmother, "Looks like someone used them already."

  He dressed and cooked himself an egg burrito laced with strips of baloney. He ate staring at the turned-off television, his hand within inches of the newspaper that carried the picture of his grandmother. He almost cried, and not as the result of eating his burrito in five big chomps. It was because of the newspaper photo. He muttered, "We're messed up."

  He was thinking of his family. His mother was a single mother, and his older sister, Rebecca, at nineteen, was a single mother, too. His sister lived in Merced, an hour's drive away, where she worked at a swap meet, selling stuffed animals and plastic toys that fell apart after one use.

  "Wonder where Mom is," he said vaguely after a while. He was going to ask her for ten dollars for the dance. He was also going to ask her for a ride. He washed his plate and frying pan, and then tidied up the living room. While he was finishing that little chore, the telephone rang.

  "Yeah," he answered on the fourth ring.

  "Mi'jo," a voice whispered.

  It was his grandmother Graciela.

  "Grandma? Where are you?" He held back his tongue, which nearly let loose that he had seen her picture in the Fresno Bee.

  His grandmother ignored the question. She told him to tell his mother that she had forgotten her cell phone at her house. She was using it at that moment but wasn't home. Grandma then asked, "Mi'jo, what do you want for Christmas?"

  A supply of good looks, he considered bargaining for. Instead, he answered truthfully, "I want you with us. Maybe we can make tamales."

  "You said the ones in the cans are better," his grandmother threw at him. There was a touch of anger in her voice.

  "Nah, Grandma. That was a joke." He laughed a little to show that he had been kidding.

  The reception of the cell phone faded and cracked, and then the phone went dead after a series of clicks.

  At five-thirty he wrote a note to his mother saying that he was off to the dance and would return home at ten, eleven at the latest. He said he had taken three dollars from the cupboard and promised to return the money when he could. From his sock drawer he fumbled for the two dollars he kept there and then for extra luck sprayed his throat with the cologne his grandmother had sold him. But he had to wonder what girl would sniff around his throat—No girl.

  He pedaled his bike against a chilly wind to his best friend Vince Torres's house, a mile away and down a street that was dark as a tunnel—the streetlights were busted out and the porch lights off. Darkness had grown thick and the fog cold. By the time he arrived at Vince's house, his nose was running. His ears were red and his eyes were watery.

  "Hey, homes," Vince barked through the curtain before Daniel even knocked. "Just leave your bike on the porch—it'll be okay."

  "Yeah, like stolen, ese," Daniel countered. He guided his bike to Vince's backyard and chained it to their clothesline. Daniel wiped the soles of his shoes and invited himself through the back door and into the kitchen, where Vince's mother looked up and slowly let a frown pull down her already sagging face.

  "Oh, Danny, I saw—" she started as she spread her arms and welcomed Daniel into their stringy warmth.

  So she knows, Daniel thought. She would have to know because Daniel's grandmother had sold her cologne, too, or had it been the three shades of lipstick called Mood Changes? Still, he didn't walk into this woman's arms. No, he remained near the back door, looked over her shoulder, and called, "Hey, Vince—ready? ¿Listo?" He wanted to get away from his best friend's mother, who appeared to be wringing her hands for information. When it wasn't forthcoming, she announced, "She'll be okay. You wait and see." Then in a whisper flavored with the cheese she had been cutting at the kitchen counter, she said, "Vince doesn't know. How is your mother?"

  "She ain't home," Daniel admitted.

  "Your mother is with your grandmother, huh?" Vince's mother's eyes were wet with excitement. Her hands were held high, resembling the crippled arms of a praying mantis.

  Daniel turned away without answering and exited through the back door, ignoring her pleas to come back and have some hot chocolate. "Mom's right—the woman's a chismosa." He felt like unlocking his bike and returning home to mope in front of the television. He would have except Vince bounced down the back steps and growled, "Look at the money I got."

  Daniel released the bike chain. He admired the two twenties in Vince's palms. He also admired his friend, who was better looking than him and slimmer. His teeth were straight, not like the car wreckage in Daniel's own mouth.

  The two twenties disappeared from his hands like a magic trick, and the smile on his face collapsed. Vince was suddenly all business. "Let's see if we can get us some girls."

  Vince was confronted by a girl who stomped her dainty feet, propped her hands on her hips, and screamed above the music, "Me first!" The girl had purple streaks in her hair and a tattoo of a bunny on her forearm. The bunny was playing air guitar.

  "Slow down, girl," Vince said, a playful smile working its magic from the corner of his mouth.

  But she didn't slow down. She pressed up against Vince, inhaled the air around him, and cooed, "You smell good." She sniffed Vince's neck, and Vince opened his collar, where she planted a quick kiss. She dragged him onto the basketball court, which had been turned into a dance floor. Daniel swallowed and discovered a lump of jealousy forming in his throat. He stepped away from the crowd of dancers jumping to the throbbing music.

  "Vince gets them all," Daniel remarked. He then bumped against someone whose smile deflated into a sneer and who said, "You better not step on my shoes."

  "Sorry," Daniel apologized hurriedly.

  "You got that right," the kid snarled. The kid's-face was a dartboard of pimples. He was smaller than Daniel, but his ropy arms were lean with muscle. His right eye was flecked with the blood of anger inside him. Daniel had never seen him before, but the sneering face was backed up by dudes he knew—one was a guy with whom he had shared sandwiches in elementary school. Since then they had shared nothing except the heartache of attending a school etched with graffiti and littered with hamburger wrappers and paper cups.

  Daniel moved away. He felt lonely in spite of the bodies around him. From the corner he watched the dancers and spied the red glow of a lit cigarette. He smelled smoke and remembered the saying, Where there's smoke, there's fire. He waited for the fire of fists or a couple kissing so fiercely that the security guards in windbreakers would have to break them apart. But the cigarette was just sucked until it was dropped and rubbed into the floor.

  "I should go home," he told himself. He pictured his grandmother being led away in handcuffs. Her face was lowered in shame but still dolled up with the products she sold. Yeah, I should go home, he thought. Mom probably needs me.

  His chest rose and produced a sigh. He left the gym, but couldn't force himself to leave just yet. He liked the song the DJ had just pumped up. He stood outside, listening to the song's anthem that you couldn't trust anyone, not even your best friend. "It's true," he vouched. "It's real true. Like my dad! He ain't true." He played in his mind the rec
urring image of his father walking with that strange woman in the parking lot of Longs Drugs. "I hate him," he spat. "My life is stupid."

  He had the evidence that his life was stupid. He was thinking about the cheap necklace his mother had gotten him for Christmas. His mother had carelessly bought a necklace with a charm that was an 0, instead of a D for Daniel. His own mouth had become an 0 when, on his knees, he had unwrapped the gift in front of their Christmas tree. He would have told his mother about her error, but he knew that her mood would sour. She would scold him for being ungrateful.

  He next was thinking about his grandmother when he felt a hand on his arm and then a face coming close to his. He wasn't sure what was happening. Was it that dude who had threatened him earlier? Had Vince come out to whisper some naughty detail about the girl he had danced with? Was the face that of a vampire lowering its fangs toward his throat? His speculation stopped there. He felt a pair of lips lower and a slight suctioning of a kiss. The pair of lips brushed his throat.

  "I was waiting for you," the girl purred. "You playing hard to get, or what?"

  Playing hard to get, he thought as he swallowed. Never!

  "You're teasing me, huh," the voice said playfully. The girl hugged him around his neck. They kissed again. He tasted the glossy lipstick that smelled like mint. He wanted more, a lot more. He was also happy that he had sweetened his breath earlier with a stick of chewing gum. He was glad to be alive, in the dark, and in the arms of a girl who was warm and generous with her praise.

  "Where were you?" The girl stomped her foot, and Daniel was surprised that her heels didn't kick up a bushel of sparks. By those sparks, perhaps, he could have made out her face. Then again, she would have made out his and immediately run away. He would have considered it love at first sight except that he couldn't really make out her face. He could make out a pout and the gleam of three studs in her left earlobe.

  "You were waiting for me?" he asked meekly. He pointed a finger at his heart.