Open Mic

by Mitali Perkins

Mom frowns again.

  “I wish you two wouldn’t do that.

  If this was Montgomery

  or Selma in the sixties,

  it wouldn’t be so funny,

  would it? Back in Puerto Rico —”

  Daddy cuts her off. “You sitting,

  aren’t you?

  That’s like some southern kung fu move —

  take all that bad energy

  and rechannel it to advance

  the cause.”

  Mom doesn’t buy it.

  “I’ll give you kung fu, Papi,” she says,

  holding up her hand

  to his face.

  But he just smiles

  that grin of his,

  the one that always

  melts her heart.

  She shakes her head and

  finally cracks a smile, too.

  Next thing you know,

  he leans down and

  they kissing.

  How can they do that

  in public?

  We sit for the longest time,

  making our way across

  Berlin.

  Turks are starting to board,

  and some of the Germans

  get off.

  When those two ladies

  bust a move for the door,

  I smile and wave,

  even though they ain’t looking

  my way.

  “See ya next time!” I call out.

  Mom playfully slaps my hand.

  “Stop it. They can’t help it

  if your Papi is so handsome

  it hurts to sit next to him.”

  Dad pats his hair

  and throws us a grin.

  Now a couple of Muslim girls

  in head scarves sit next to me.

  I gotta admit,

  it makes me feel weird,

  them having to cover up an’ all.

  Mom notices my face.

  “Want to move?” she whispers.

  That’s what she likes to call irony.

  I don’t play that game.

  My brother leans over.

  “You might look good

  in one of those scarves, Reina.

  Especially the ones

  that cover your face.”

  I take the high road

  and ignore him.

  Mom’s impressed.

  Another ten minutes pass

  and I look around.

  No Germans left —

  mostly Turks,

  Chinese,

  Vietnamese,

  Africans,

  and us.

  They all smiling,

  looking around like this

  is how

  it should be.

  Talking and laughing,

  dancing to a Greek guy

  playing his crazy violin for money.

  They all just biding their time,

  waiting for the Europeans

  to accept them for who they are.

  But things are changing,

  a little too fast for some

  and way too slow for others.

  But someday,

  they’ll see:

  sometimes

  you just gotta squeeze your way in,

  rub some shoulders,

  and hope

  they’ll rub back.

  For that,

  I’d be willing to stand.

  Just not next to my brother.

  The day I talked to my sister started out as an ordinary Sunday. Papá began yelling at us to get ready two hours before we needed to leave for church. I knew Rosalinda would be staying home because I had heard her battle with Papá earlier that morning. Once a month, Papá reluctantly agreed to let Rosalinda stay home on account of problemas de mujer.

  “Luis, let’s go!” I heard Papá yell all the way from his room. I covered my face with my pillow.

  “You all right?” Bernie was standing over my bed. He had a worried look on his face. He and I had shared a room since forever. “You haven’t been yourself lately. Is everything okay?”

  It was hard to keep things from Bernie. He could read something wrong a mile away. And when he asked how you were, it was difficult not to spill your guts out. But there was no way I could tell him what was bothering me that particular morning. Rosalinda was the only one that could help me.

  “I can’t go to church today,” I said.

  “Why?” Bernie asked. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

  “I just need to stay home — that’s all.”

  Bernie was thoughtful for a few seconds, and then he gave me this look as if he understood that my problem was more mental than physical.

  “Luis! Why aren’t you up yet? We’re late!” Papá’s large body seemed to fill up most of the room. He had on his shiny black suit with the usual fully starched white shirt and the blue tie with velvet stripes that our mother had picked for him when she was still alive. On Sundays Papá always reminded me of an undertaker. Papá placed his hands on his hips, and that was the signal for me to get up. I never argued with Papá once he put his hands on his hips.

  “Papá,” Bernie said softly but firmly, “I think Luis should stay home.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  I glanced at Bernie and then at Papá. “I’m okay,” I said.

  “He’s sick,” Bernie said. “He was up all night coughing.” I could have sworn I saw Bernie wink at me.

  “I didn’t hear nothing,” Papá said authoritatively. “Besides, since when does a little cough keep a real man from doing what he needs to do?”

  I glanced up at Papá’s face in the hope that he might be joking. But no, when it came to pronouncements on what real men do, Papá never joked.

  Bernie was not giving up. I don’t know how he did it, but he had mysteriously figured out how important it was for me to stay home that morning. “If Mamá was here, she’d make him stay.” I was standing up now. Bernie reached out and placed the palm of his hand on my forehead. “Go ahead and touch him,” he said to Papá. “He’s burning up.”

  Papá lifted his hand slightly as if to touch me and then changed his mind. “Both of you guys are a bunch of girls, I swear.” Papá waved his hand in disgust. “Go ahead and stay, if you’re so sick.”

  We waited until Papá was out of the room. “Thanks,” I said to Bernie.

  “Enjoy,” he responded.

  My sister’s bedroom shared a wall with my room. Her door was always closed when she was in there. I knocked, timidly.

  “I’m not going.” Her voice was unwavering.

  “It’s me. Papá and Bernie left already.”

  “Please be so kind as to read the sign on the door.”

  A Do Not Enter sign hung in the middle of her white door. Below the yellow letters, Rosalinda had scribbled with a red marker: SPECIALLY LITTLE GEEKS. That was a reference to me, her geeky little brother. Spelling was not Rosalinda’s strength.

  “Are you decent?” I asked.

  “No. I’m indecent.”

  “I need to ask you something. It’s really important.” There was silence on the other side. I knew that was as close to “Come in” as I was going to get. I turned the knob and opened the door slowly. She was lying horizontally on her bed reading. The novels Rosalinda read usually had shirtless men embracing women with glassy eyes and half-opened mouths, the sure look of some kind of intestinal pain. This book, however, had a familiar black cover.

  “You’re reading the Bible?” I said in shock. Seeing a Bible in Rosalinda’s hands was as unlikely as seeing Papá dancing around the house in a tutu.

  “Is that so astonishing?” She rested the open book on her stomach and looked at me, poised to defend herself. Rosalinda and I had constant battles over her reading choices.

  “Is that for school?” I already knew the answer to my question, but I needed to warm Rosalinda up with some small talk.

  “No, I’m reading Leviticus because I just love the way the guy writes
. Of course it’s for school.”

  “Leviticus?”

  “Yup. Have you read it? What am I saying? Of course you’ve read it. You’ve read everything.”

  “I’m familiar with it,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “What class?”

  “World History.” Rosalinda yawned. She’d had her best friend, Petra, for a sleepover, and I knew for a wakeful fact that they had stayed up talking until 3:16 a.m.

  “Leave it to Mount Carmel to use the Bible for a history book.” I tried to make her laugh, or at least smile, but all I got was another yawn. “By the way, what did you say to Papá to get off from going to church?”

  “Cramps. What about you?”

  “Bernie told him I had a sore throat.”

  “Great! You should give your sore throat a rest.” She made a “go away” motion with her fingers. “I need to finish this before I have to start cooking Sunday dinner. Cramps aren’t going to keep me from that.” She lifted the book above her face. When I didn’t move, she lowered it again. “Okay, what do you want?”

  I sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. She eyed my movements the way a cat eyes an over-friendly dog.

  “I have a family question.” I hoped I didn’t sound too anxious.

  She flipped quickly to her side and propped her jaw on the palm of her hand. I guess even a question from your geeky brother is better than Leviticus. “Shoot,” she said, pretending she could care less, but I detected interest. “But remember, you get what you pay for.”

  “Ha, ha!”

  “Seriously, could you do my report? It would be a piece of cake for a genius like you. All you have to do is give four examples of how women were treated when Leviticus was written.”

  “You should ask Papá. He’s the real Bible expert in the house. Besides, that’s so easy, even you can do that,” I replied. The foot attached to her long leg reached the small of my back. “Ouch!” I wanted to talk about what was eating me, but it was hard not to jab at her. She was such an easy target.

  “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” she commanded.

  “Is that piece as in P-I-E-C-E?”

  It took Rosalinda a few moments to spell the word in her head. “That’s hilarious.” She flashed me a fake grin.

  What can I tell you? I’m a moron when I’m stressed. I cleared my throat. It was time to get serious. “It’s about Bernie,” I managed to say.

  “What about him?” Her immediate and concerned response confirmed for me once and for all that Bernie was her favorite brother. Bernie was beyond reproach. She happened to be right, but it still hurt a little, the way she was always so ready to defend him.

  “Why do you think that he never goes out with anyone? I mean all your friends are always after him. Petra has orgasmic spasms whenever he even glances in her direction, which is not often. And she’s supposed to be sizzling.”

  “Okay, okay. Hold on a second. Let’s go through what you said step by step. Let’s ANALize things, as you like to say. What do you know about ‘orgasmic spasms’?”

  “Everyone knows about orgasmic spasms. It’s common knowledge.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. They were stuck up there for about ten seconds.

  She sighed. “You’re how old? Thirteen?”

  “Fourteen next month.”

  “Fourteen going on forty!” She sighed.

  “Okay, okay, you don’t have to get a cow over it.”

  “It’s ‘have a cow,’ not ‘get a cow,’ and you shouldn’t be quoting Bart if you’ve never watched the show.”

  “Who’s Bart?”

  “I rest my case.” She sat up and scooted to the head of the bed, where she propped a pillow behind her. “Why doesn’t Bernie go out with anyone?” She scrounged her eyebrows in my direction. I could tell that she wasn’t pondering the question. She was penetrating my skull, trying to decipher the gray hieroglyphics that twisted chaotically in there. “Now, why would you ask such a question?”

  “I just find it strange. He’s eighteen, extremely handsome, has an after-school job at Papá’s garage, so he has money, and I’ve never seen him go out with anybody.”

  “And that bothers you because . . .”

  “I’m worried about him?”

  She gave me her bull-detector grin. “Try again,” she said.

  I took a deep breath. “Do you think he might be — ?”

  “No,” she cut me off. “He’s not.” Then she rubbed her chin à la Sherlock Holmes. “But it is very interesting that you should be asking me that.”

  I gush of hot blood rushed from the tip of my toes to the top of my head. I started to get up.

  “Wait. Sit.” She waited for me to obey. I sat on the bed reluctantly. “I’m going to answer your question.”

  “What question?” I asked.

  “Why Bernie doesn’t go out with girls.”

  Oh, that question.

  “Bernie is a noble kind of guy.”

  “You mean as in he moves around a lot?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, noble. I thought you said mobile.”

  “You are such an idiot.” She paused to collect herself and then continued: “First of all, Bernie goes out with more girls then you know about. He just doesn’t date girls from Mount Carmel. Why, you ask? Most girls at Mount Carmel are not like moi. Most of them are like Petra — you know: beautiful but traditional. What do you think would happen to Petra, for example, if Bernie asked her out?”

  “They’d have to call the coroner?”

  “Do you want a serious answer to your question or not?”

  I nodded. The focus of the conversation had shifted from me to Bernie, so I was fine.

  Rosalinda’s face was suddenly serious. “The reason Bernie doesn’t ask Petra out, or any one of countless girls at Mount Carmel, is because those kind of girls want a serious relationship and Bernie is waiting until the absolute right girl comes along. He doesn’t like to date the same girl more than once or twice. If he dates a girl more than twice, that’s probably the one he’ll marry. Besides, he knows that if he went out with anyone from Mount Carmel, that poor girl would be a goner, heart-forever-broken, not the same again, ever.” She waited a quick moment and then went on, “And even if that poor girl ever managed to eventually marry someone else, she would be doing so out of a sense of hopeless resignation. You follow?”

  It took me a few moments to fully understand what she was saying, and then I nodded. Rosalinda for once in her life was right. All the girls at Mount Carmel were already half in love with Bernie. If he went out with them, they would want to bear him children right there on the spot. Shoot, if he was a sheik and they were only one of a thousand wives, they’d stand in line and take a number. “I follow,” I said in agreement.

  It was the right time, I thought, to take my inquiry one step further. “It’s just that there are some things about him. . . .”

  “Such as?”

  “He cooks. He even bakes. He makes cupcakes with pink frosting.”

  Rosalinda laughed. “Oh, I get it. And real men don’t do that, right?”

  “Not according to Papá, they don’t. Real Mexican men don’t cook or bake.”

  “Yeah, right, if it were up to Papá, I’d have to do all the cooking and dishwashing and cleaning around here. Thank God there’s at least one person that helps me.” She shot me her deadliest killer glance. “By the way, who eats the cupcakes?”

  “Not all of them,” I answered guiltily. Then, I added, “And he’s always going with you to the mall to help you shop.”

  “Well, sometimes I need a man’s advice.”

  “Why? Because you want to impress Manny Luongo?” Manny Luongo was the quarterback at Mount Carmel and, next to my brother, the hottest guy at school. I had just the night before discovered that Rosalinda had a thing for him.

  “How . . . ?” she said, eyes narrowing. “You were eavesdropping on me and Petra again, weren’t you?”

  “That’s not all
,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Bernie drives a light-blue Prius!”

  “So?” Rosalinda asked, mystified.

  “Papá says it’s a sissy’s car.”

  “Oh, here we go again. Papá. Papá. Papá. Do you believe everything Papá says? You think I believe everything Papá says or the nuns at school tell me? I’m an independent woman, buddy. You should try that kind of thinking yourself instead of accepting everything that Papá says as gospel truth. Besides, who washes that baby-blue car about twenty times a week, which is almost as many times as he takes a shower?”

  “I don’t like to see him drive a dirty car. It doesn’t reflect well on the family. And I take lots of showers because I like to smell clean.”

  “And you use my moisturizer because . . .”

  Once again blood made its customary trip from toe to hair follicles. How did Rosalinda know? I was so careful. “It’s good for pimples,” I mumbled.

  “And who reads Vogue?” She was looking straight at me.

  “You do.”

  “And who else?”

  “Only when I’m in the bathroom.”

  “Ewwww! No wonder you spend hours in there. Have you ever seen him even open that magazine?”

  “Who?”

  “Bernie. Who else are we talking about?”

  She was annoyingly right yet again. I had never seen Bernie read Vogue. “Why does he buy it, then?” I asked, confused.

  “He buys it for us, for you and me. Mostly he buys it for you. I told him once I preferred Cosmo, but he said, and I quote, ‘Luis likes the fashions in Vogue.’ Are you getting all this?”

  I was stunned. I was a pretty smart guy. I never got a B in my life. I was also very perceptive. I could tell if Rosalinda was wearing a blouse from Abercrombie and Fitch or Anthropologie. But it never occurred to me, never, not for one microsecond, that Bernie bought Vogue for me to read, which I did every month, religiously, from cover to cover, and not just when I was in the bathroom.

  I stopped. I blinked. Then I rubbed my right eye with my index finger. Rosalinda never cleaned her room, and dust was always flying everywhere. “Remember when Papá found the computer open to the website on baking recipes? He was so mad at Bernie. God hates a maricón, he said. Especially a Mexican one.” My voice was low. I could hardly say the word. It had sounded nasty when Papá said it, but it sounded ten times worse hearing myself say it.

  Rosalinda folded her legs and then crawled on her knees to where I was. Before I could do anything, she grabbed me by the shoulder and planted a big wet kiss on my cheek.