by Diana Lopez
“Why don’t you go read a book or memorize some vocabulary words if you’re not going to help? They’re just cookies, anyway. They probably tasted gross.”
“I’m not Jimmy,” she said. “You can’t lie to me and act like today’s a normal day, because it isn’t.”
With that, she kicked the pile of broken cookies and glass, respreading them across the floor. “Hey!” I shouted. I wanted to pinch her, but she ran to the backyard, slamming the door behind her. Fine, I thought. Let her melt outside. It had to be over ninety degrees today.
I was prepared to let her stay outside all afternoon, but the last thing I needed was for Dad to discover a badly sunburned child. He had enough on his mind with Mom’s surgery. Since she’d probably ignore me, I asked Grandma to call her in, and we all sat in front of the TV. For the next hour, I put on a happy face as I watched cartoons with Jimmy, but every few minutes, I glanced at my watch. All this waiting was torture.
At last, the phone rang. Grandma rushed to answer it. She kept saying, “I see” and “okay” and “uh-huh.” Finally, she hung up and said, “Your mom’s out of surgery. She’s doing okay.”
The knot in my stomach relaxed a bit. I could finally ignore my watch. And maybe, just maybe, the stone on my mood ring would change to a color that was happier than black.
An hour later, Dad picked me up. “Tomorrow, we’ll all see Mom,” he said to Carmen and Jimmy. “But she’s really tired today, so I’m only taking Chia.”
Carmen pouted. “I’m the one who should go. Chia needs to take care of Jimmy.”
“Grandma can take care of him just fine,” Dad said.
I knew he was right, but I also knew that Jimmy would cry as soon as Dad and I stepped out the door. So I asked Grandma to take him to the backyard. That way, we could sneak out while he was on the swings. When we heard Jimmy laughing outside, Dad and I quietly left the house.
Once we rolled out of the driveway and turned the corner, I spotted a group of kids from school, including Lou Hikaru. What a heartthrob! Iliana and I had been trying to engineer a close encounter with him, but no luck so far. Wait a minute. Why was Lou walking so close to Paula Wilson? Were they an item? Oh, no! They were an item. He’d just grabbed her hand. This was not good. Lou was a top pick on my Boyfriend Wish List. We hadn’t moved beyond nodding hello and good-bye, but that didn’t keep me from hoping. After all, he was the star of our baseball team. Then again, Paula was a pep squad captain, so they made total sense as a couple. I shook my head. I’d have to text Iliana to tell her that Lou was on the Currently Unavailable List.
Luckily, Forest Montoya was with the group, too. With him, I actually had a chance because last year, we paired up for a science project, and in front of the whole class, we demonstrated how potatoes conduct electricity. When the teacher gave us an A, Forest gave me a high five. I secretly cheered. Physical contact, at last! Okay, so it wasn’t exactly romantic contact, but I still put it in the close encounter of the fourth kind category. And he did say hello when he spotted me at the skateboarding park last week.
“You like him?” Dad asked, nodding toward Forest.
I covered my face, all embarrassed. I couldn’t believe Dad had caught me staring at a boy.
“No,” I said. “Well… yes… maybe a little.”
“So what’s his name? What’s he like?”
I squirmed. “I don’t know.”
“So you like a total stranger?” he teased.
“He’s not a total stranger. I mean, we had a class together last year, so we kinda know each other, a little bit.”
“Oh, yeah? Which class were you in? Did he get good grades?”
“Stop with the twenty questions,” I pleaded. “I can’t discuss boys with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re my dad. It’s… it’s…” I glanced at my mood ring, the stone a yellowy orange, which meant my emotions were… “unsettling. It makes me feel unsettled.”
Dad glanced at me. “Unsettled” wasn’t one of my usual vocabulary words.
Dad finally drove out of the neighborhood and onto the major road. He didn’t ask any more questions about boys. Instead, he turned up the volume for his favorite radio talk show, All Things Considered, and we listened to people from NASA discuss the space program. Dad usually shared his opinions about the stories, but today he was quiet. I couldn’t tell if he was really listening. With Mom in the hospital, he was probably too preoccupied to pay attention.
We finally reached the Medical Center, a section of San Antonio crammed with hospitals, clinics, and the University of Texas Health Science Center, where people learned to be doctors, dentists, physical therapists, and researchers. Mom was at Methodist Hospital, but instead of going there, Dad parked at Baskin-Robbins.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“Getting ice cream, what else?”
Even on the worst days, I wasn’t the type to turn down ice cream, especially when I had a chance to enjoy it without Carmen and Jimmy around. Come to think of it… I hardly ever had one-on-one time with Dad. I liked pretending that I was the only child sometimes, a totally spoiled only child who could order whatever she wanted.
“Can I get whatever I want?” I asked.
“Of course,” Dad said.
I got two scoops, Rocky Road and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, in a chocolate-dipped waffle cone. Dad ordered two scoops too, Chocolate and Vanilla, but he asked for his ice cream in a cup. I shook my head. Sometimes, adults have no imagination.
I was halfway through my dessert when Dad said, “I wanted some alone time with you before going to the hospital. We need to discuss a few things.”
“Like what?”
He took a spoonful of ice cream and stared at it. “We need to discuss your mom,” he said. “Today’s surgery is a very important part of Mom’s treatment, but the doctors need to make sure they get rid of all the cancer cells. They’re worried the cancer might have metastasized.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, glad Carmen wasn’t around to supply the definition.
“It’s a fancy word for ‘spreading.’ ”
“You mean the cancer traveled outside the breast?”
“Maybe, but to make sure it doesn’t grow into tumors, your mom is going to have radiation therapy.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yes, but the treatment has a lot of side effects, so your mom’s going to be under the weather for a while.”
I moaned.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I hate the word ‘under,’ ” I explained.
“Why?”
“Because it’s so negative. I was thinking about it this morning—how we call anesthesia ‘putting the patient under’ and surgery ‘going under the knife’—and now you’re telling me Mom’s going to be ‘under the weather.’ What does that mean, anyway? If the weather is something that happens in the sky, then aren’t we always under it? If being ‘under the weather’ means we’re sick, then being above the weather should mean we’re feeling healthy, right? But think about it. No one ever says ‘above the weather.’ They might say they’re on ‘cloud nine,’ but that’s not the same thing. And why cloud nine, anyway? Why not say you’re on cloud five or cloud sixteen? Who came up with the number nine? Did someone look at the sky one day and count?” I didn’t mean to go on and on about weather and clouds, but when I feel nervous, I tend to ramble. Okay, I ramble a lot, but usually I don’t ramble out loud.
Dad took my hand and squeezed it. I guess I had an “off” switch on my palm because I immediately hushed. Usually when Dad silenced me this way, he let go of my hand right away, but this time, he kept holding it. He bit his lower lip, and I knew that if he had a mood ring like mine, it would be black, too.
“I just don’t know why your mom got sick,” he said. “It’s not fair.”
“Lots of things aren’t fair,” I said, thinking about how Carmen was so smart without even trying, while I broke
a sweat every time I opened a textbook.
Dad smiled and released my hand. “You’re right, Chia. We can fill a whole book with things that aren’t fair. Lots of people, for example, don’t have a nice house like we do. They don’t get new clothes every season. They don’t go to places like Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. Lots of them are alone in this world.” He paused a moment because his voice was starting to tremble.
“It’s okay, Dad.”
“Nobody asks to be sick,” he went on. “It just happens and all we can do is deal with it.”
I nodded, wishing I had the perfect words to comfort him. But all I could say was “it’s okay” again.
I looked into my ice-cream cone. The last bites had melted, making the cone all soggy. Why did all the good stuff melt?
Soon, we left the ice-cream shop and headed to the hospital. The lobby had an information desk and signs to the cafeteria, the gift shop, and a chapel, but Dad walked straight to the elevators and pushed the “up” arrow. First, the elevator beeped, and when we got to Mom’s floor, beeps from call buttons echoed through the hall. The doctors’ and nurses’ pagers beeped too, and so did heart and blood pressure monitors and the intercom before every announcement. All that beeping reminded me of items being scanned at the grocery store. Who knew hospitals were so loud? And how could anyone rest with all that noise?
“She’s in here,” Dad said, leading me to a door.
When I thought about Mom in the hospital, I pictured a dozen machines attached to her body and a tube stuck down her throat and a bloody bandage wrapped around her head. Of course, this was ridiculous. Mom’s head was fine. I must have watched too many hospital scenes on TV. Luckily, she looked okay. She was asleep, her hair spread upon the pillow. Her lips were pale but only because she wasn’t wearing lipstick. She had an IV and a splint on her finger with a red light to monitor her blood pressure. With the sheets tucked in at her armpits, I couldn’t see her chest, but I could tell it was bandaged.
Dad took the chair beside her bed, reclined it, and stared at the newscast on TV. The sound was muted, so we had to read the headlines: “Burglar Caught on Tape,” “Car Accident on Loop 1604,” and “Local Unemployment on the Rise.” How depressing, I thought. No wonder I hated to watch the news. I walked to the window ledge to examine a vase of roses. I smelled them and touched their velvety petals. The card said, “Abrazos y besos”—hugs and kisses—followed by all our names. I recognized the handwriting—Dad’s. He’d also brought a present from Mother’s Day, a photo of Carmen, Jimmy, and me in a frame that said, “World’s Best Mom.”
I turned to him. “You’re really sweet, Dad. These are the perfect things to cheer Mom up.”
He nodded. “Maybe we can buy her a big balloon tomorrow. Jimmy would love to pick it out, don’t you think?”
“He’ll want to keep it for himself,” I said, and Dad had to agree.
Then he pointed to an empty chair. “Why don’t you sit down?” he suggested.
I nodded an okay, and when I sat down, I thought about my promesa again. Would a 5K be enough? Maybe I could promise to do it two times in a row?
Dad had closed his eyes for a nap, so the room was quiet. How could he relax when I was feeling—I checked my ring—still unsettled? Then I remembered the blue-smudged envelope that GumWad had left in our mailbox. I pulled it from my pocket and opened it. Inside was a card with a kitten clasping a branch, its legs hanging free. The front cover said, “Whatever you fear, you can overcome,” and inside, it said, “because you are not alone.” The inside picture showed the same cat, but this time a pair of hands reached to catch it. There was a personal note, too. “Just wanted you to know,” GumWad wrote, “if you need help with anything, you can count on me. Your friend, Roberto.”
Leave it to GumWad to mess up. I wasn’t the one who needed a “get well” card. He meant this for my mom. She’s the one who called him “Roberto,” anyway. I shook my head as I stood the card beside the roses.
That’s when I heard someone whisper my name.
I turned. Mom’s eyes had opened. Her fingers weakly waved me over.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, taking her hand and kissing her forehead. Some hair had fallen near her eyes, so I brushed it aside. “How’re you feeling?”
“Woozy.”
“Want some water?”
She nodded. I filled a glass, lifted it to her lips. When she finished drinking, she turned her head aside, and then she clenched her lips and blinked as if fighting back tears. That’s when I saw the ninth bikini top. She must have worn it to the hospital.
“Chia,” Dad said, his voice startling me because I thought he was asleep. He nodded toward the dresser. “Can you put that away?”
I picked up the bikini top. “I’ll take good care of it,” I told Mom. “I’ll hold it for you, okay? Just for a little while.”
She smiled. “You can have it, mija. You can have all of my bikini tops. Take them from my room when you get home, okay?”
“Okay… but… they don’t fit.”
She laughed a little. “They will, Chia. Someday soon, they will.”
50 PAIRS OF SHOES
The next day, Dad promised to pick us up around dinnertime so we could see Mom. In the meantime, Grandma was spending another day with us. She took Jimmy outside before it got too hot, while Carmen and I sat at the kitchen table, me with the Sunday tabloid and Carmen with the laptop. I loved glancing at pics of movie stars with and without their makeup, especially when they were doing normal things like buying groceries or pumping gas.
“Did you know,” Carmen began, “that there are different kinds of surgeries for breast cancer?”
I shrugged. I was not in the mood for one of Carmen’s lectures.
“A mastectomy and a lumpectomy,” she explained. “Do you know the difference?”
I lifted the tabloid to block my view of her.
“I figured you didn’t,” Carmen said. “And you probably don’t know what ‘sentinel lymph nodes’ or ‘immunotherapy’ are or what the word ‘metastasize’ means.”
“It means ‘spreading,’ ” I said, remembering the conversation with Dad yesterday.
“And the others?”
I put down the paper. “I don’t care, Carmen. You’re not my teacher. You’re my little sister, which means you’re supposed to do what I say. And I say quit being a pest right now.”
“You’re not my boss,” she snapped back.
“Am too.”
“Are not.”
We locked eyes for a stare-down. I was not going to blink first. Who cared about the strand of hair tickling my temple or the ceiling fan drying out my eyes? Carmen might be smarter than me, but she wasn’t tougher.
After a few intense moments, my phone pinged. Carmen blinked.
“Gotcha!” I cheered.
She just shook her head and went back to her computer screen.
I glanced at my text message. It was from Shawntae to all the Robins. “I’m totally bored,” she wrote. “Anyone free? If so, come over. Save me, plz!”
I peeked into the backyard to ask my grandmother if I could visit my friend for a while. “I’ll put Jimmy down for a nap first,” I said, so she wouldn’t have to worry about him crying.
“Sounds like a deal,” she answered.
So I texted back to Shawntae. “CU in an hour.” Then, I went back to the tabloid. I was just starting to read about the strange names stars gave their kids when Carmen interrupted.
“Did you know that the mastectomy rate in the United States is fifty-six percent?”
“I’m not a doctor,” I replied. “Why would I know something like that?”
She ignored me. “The rate in Central and Eastern Europe is seventy-seven percent,” she went on. “And in Australia and New Zealand, it’s thirty-four percent.”
I had to admit, I was a little interested. After all, this related to Mom. But what did it matter? All those percentages were meaningless to me. What did Carmen expect me to do wit
h those numbers? When I thought about breast cancer, I didn’t see an equation. I saw a picture—Mom in a light blue gown, her hair spread upon the pillow, and a quiet tear when she realized that she wouldn’t wear bikinis anymore.
I folded up the paper and scooted back my chair.
“Where are you going?” Carmen asked.
“I’m going to get Jimmy. It’s almost time for his nap.”
“But don’t you want to learn more about breast cancer?”
“When you can tell me why our mom got sick,” I said, “I’ll listen.” With that, I headed out the door.
An hour later, I was at Shawntae’s. She lives on the next street over. Her bedroom is an explosion of color—bright yellow walls, a rainbow-striped bedspread, and a tall bookshelf for her pumps. She has so many pumps. She organizes them by color. Lots of people wear black, red, or gray pumps, but Shawntae has orange, green, and pink, too. She has pumps with animal prints and some with bows or buttons. She must have more than fifty pairs! I imagined she slept with them because the only time I saw her bare feet was at the pool.
When I stepped in, she said, “Thank goodness you’re here. I’m dying of boredom. Feel this.”
She held out her wrist, so I touched it.
“I don’t feel anything,” I said.
“You see? No pulse! Like I said, I’m dying.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I heard heaven’s boring, too. You don’t get to chase boys, and heels are useless when you’re walking on clouds. Plus, the only instruments they have up there are flutes and harps.”
“That does sound worse than being cooped up in my room all day,” Shawntae admitted. “At least I have a computer.”
I put my hands on my hips and cleared my throat.
“And cool friends like you,” she added.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s nice to be remembered. So who else is coming over?”
“Iliana and Roberto are busy,” Shawntae said, “and Patty…” Her phone rang. “Patty’s calling right now.”
She turned to answer it, so I decided to mess around with my own phone while she talked. I went to a screen saver site. I found one called “ribbons,” bands of color running across the screen like shooting stars or glow-in-the-dark eels. Another screen saver had glowing light like the aurora borealis, and another had fireworks. I finally settled on a screen saver with bubbles. They changed colors—pink, blue, and yellow. They floated and bounced against one another. I picked one and followed its trail across the screen.
