by Diana Lopez
Finally, we reached the play area. It had a giant floor mat with brightly colored squares, each featuring a letter of the alphabet or a number. Against the wall, goldfish swam in a tank with multicolored gravel, fake plants, a scuba diver bobbing up and down as he released bubbles, and a sunken ship with windows big enough for the fish to swim through. Buckets of crayons and colored pencils were on the tables, and toy boxes filled with stuffed animals, puzzles, and board games lined the walls. A few parents stood around, too.
“Have fun,” the nurse said before returning to her station.
“What do I do now?” Iliana whispered. She sounded panicky.
“Talk to the kids,” I suggested.
But she didn’t say anything. She just stared at them. A few kids were in wheelchairs. Others had IVs or oxygen masks. One boy didn’t have a leg, and one girl was bald with a long scar on her head. There were also kids who didn’t seem sick at first. Except for the hospital gowns and ID bracelets, they looked like students on a field trip. But then, you noticed that they were tired or pale or extra thin. You noticed something else, too. All of them had added a personal touch to their hospital clothes—slippers shaped like fire trucks or teddy bears, crazy socks with stripes or polka dots, robes with cartoon characters, or baseball caps with the logos of their favorite teams. Sure, the children weren’t feeling 100 percent, but that didn’t stop them from having a sense of humor and a sense of style. They had a special kind of bravery, the kind I saw in my mom whenever she laughed at her own situation. She wasn’t in denial, like my dad thought. She was trying to make the best of things.
I nudged Iliana. She didn’t move. The kids stared at us, full of expectation, so I nudged Iliana again. Nothing. This was going to be a disaster if I didn’t act fast.
“Good morning, everyone,” I said.
They stayed silent.
“Good morning,” I said again, this time with a big smile and my arms moving like a drum major’s urging the band to play.
This time they said, “Good morning.”
I glanced at Iliana. She was looking at me. Very quietly, she said, “Go on.”
So I said, “My name’s Erica, and this is my friend Iliana. You can call me Erica the elephant, and you can call her Iliana the iguana.”
The children laughed at that.
“So who are you?” I asked, pointing to a girl who wore a jangly bracelet.
“Susan the swan.”
“Hello, Susan. You have beautiful feathers.”
She brushed her arm as if smoothing a wing.
“And you?” I pointed to a boy.
“I’m Hugo the…”—he looked up—“Hugo the hyena.”
“And I’m Clarisa the camel,” another girl said.
After that, everyone jumped in, all of them giving us their names and laughing at the animals they chose. Soon, Iliana the iguana was laughing, too.
“Why don’t we make name tags?” she said, finally warming up to her job.
She pulled some blank stickers from her purse, and the children wrote their names and drew their animals. Then they pressed the stickers onto their gowns. Now everyone knew everyone else.
“What’s in the basket?” a boy named Juan asked.
“More animals for our zoo,” I announced. I reached in and pulled out Mickey Mouse, his big ears peeking through the green hair.
The kids giggled.
Juan laughed, “Mickey doesn’t have hair!”
“Well, this isn’t Mickey,” I explained. “This is Mitch, his green-haired cousin.”
The giggles turned to laughter. The children wanted to see the other Chia Pets, so Iliana and I took them out, telling a story for each one. Then we handed them to the children.
Some were too weak to hold the Chia Pets, so we put them on their laps or nearby tables. They smiled and petted the funny green hair. Soon, Iliana and I heard animal noises even from Chia Pets based on historical figures. Abe Lincoln barked, and Einstein mooed. One girl had a kitten, but instead of meowing, it quacked. Why not? If a kitten could have green fur, then it could quack, too. We were acting so silly, all of us, and I caught myself laughing till my belly hurt. When I glanced at my mood ring, it was red, which meant I was feeling energized and adventurous.
Now that Iliana knew what to do, I decided to work on my own project. Since I was at a hospital, I figured lots of people would know how I felt about my mom. After all, if they were here, then they knew someone who was sick. Surely they wanted to cure diseases, so I went to the lobby to ask for sponsors.
“Hello, can I speak to you?” I said to the first group who walked in. When they saw my clipboard, they hurried away. I asked the next group. They shook their heads and said, “Not now.” This was turning into a repeat of going door to door. But eventually, people stopped to listen, and they were very understanding. Some even admitted knowing someone with cancer, too. So I was able to collect more sponsors. After a while, I was on a roll. Maybe this had been the answer all along. Instead of ringing doorbells, I should go to hospital lobbies. San Antonio had lots of hospitals. Maybe I could visit them all. What a great strategy! I finally had a genius idea. At least, that’s what I thought until a security guard approached and said, “I’m sorry, miss, but you are not allowed to solicit here.”
“I’m not soliciting,” I explained. “I’m just trying to get donations.”
He put his hands on his hips as if to scold me. “That’s what ‘soliciting’ means,” he said.
I felt so stupid. If I were Carmen, I would have known the definition and wouldn’t have made a fool of myself. But I wasn’t Carmen. I wasn’t a child genius. I was Erica, dumb Erica, a failure at math, at vocabulary, and at finding five hundred names.
“I’m afraid I have to ask you to stop,” the security guard said.
So I left, returning to the pediatric ward, all down in the dumps. When I got there, most of the kids were gone, and those who remained had moved to other activities, which meant my Chia Pets were scattered about, completely ignored. One was on the floor, not broken but on its side, the leaves getting squished. And over by the giant window, Iliana was giggling with some guy. Okay, he was amazingly cute, but he wasn’t wearing a hospital gown, so he wasn’t a patient, which meant she had no business talking to him. She was here to work with the kids.
“What are you doing?” I said to her.
She didn’t catch my anger at all. “Oh, Erica. Back already?” She glanced at her watch. “I guess time flies when you’re having fun,” she said, smiling at the boy, who smiled back. He was even cuter when he smiled, which just made me angrier.
“Aren’t you supposed to be playing with the kids?” I said.
“I was. We had a great time, but then I met Alan, Clarisa’s older brother. You remember Clarisa, right? Clarisa the camel?” She told Alan about the name game we played, taking all the credit. He said she was clever, and she giggled again.
Normally, Iliana’s flirting wouldn’t bother me. In fact, I’d be flirting, too. But not today, when we were supposed to be working on our projects! How could she play around like this in a hospital where people were sick or dying—even little children, the very children she came to meet? There I was, in the lobby, begging for sponsors and then being humiliated by the security guard, while she was up here playing around. This was a game to her, but for me it was life and death, my mom’s life and death.
I knew I was about to cry. That’s how angry I felt. So I decided to calm myself by collecting my Chia Pets. That’s when I noticed some were missing. I counted. Yes, nine Chia Pets were gone!
“Where’s Tweety?” I asked Iliana. “Where’s the president?” I held out the basket to show her how empty it was.
She shrugged. “A couple of kids asked if they could have them, and I said yes. I guess the other kids thought they could take them, too.”
“You gave away my Chia Pets?” I couldn’t help it. I shouted.
That’s when Iliana finally realized I was angry. She got a
pologetic. “I’m sorry, Erica. I thought you wanted to give them away. I thought that’s why you brought them.”
“I’ve been collecting them since I was a baby, so why would I give them away?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I thought you were tired of them.”
“But I love my Chia Pets. They make me laugh. They’re like my friends! And my whole family calls me Chia. It’s like my identity. What are they going to call me if I don’t have the pets anymore?”
I wasn’t making any sense. Even as I spoke, I could tell how ridiculous I sounded.
“My mom’s the one who started the tradition,” I said.
Iliana’s eyes got watery. “I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t in the mood to forgive, but I didn’t want her to cry, either. I glanced at my mood ring to figure out how I felt. It was orange, a firebrick shade, which meant I was feeling vexed. Breathe in, breathe out, I told myself. I did this three times, trying my best to change the color of my mood ring.
“My sister took one,” Alan confessed. “I’ll go get it for you.”
He turned toward the rooms and was almost out of the play area when I called him back. “Wait!” He stopped and looked at me. “She can have it,” I said.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded. After all, how could I take a Chia Pet away from a sick child, especially one as cute as Clarisa the camel? If she was anything like Jimmy, she’d start to cry. All the kids would cry. I didn’t want to cause so much sadness, especially when I came here to make them laugh.
“Are you sure?” Iliana repeated, and I nodded again. Sometimes, it was too late to get things back even if they were still close by.
I made another pass through the play area in case I had overlooked a Chia Pet, but, no, they were definitely gone. Meanwhile, Iliana and Alan exchanged cell phone numbers and said good-bye. Then Iliana asked a nurse to sign her timesheet, and we headed to the elevators. When we got there, I spotted a directory of the hospital departments. I pointed at the word “oncology” and said, “That’s where the cancer patients go.”
And that’s when the tears finally came. I couldn’t push them down anymore.
“Oh, Erica,” Iliana said. She hugged me. She probably knew I wasn’t crying about Chia Pets, but about my mom.
A moment later, the elevator doors opened. Some people came out. They saw my tears, but they didn’t say anything. Why would they? We were in a hospital, where tears were more normal than smiles.
28 CARS PASSING BY
Because of the lymphedema, Grandma had been driving for Mom, and while I was in school, she watched Jimmy. But by the end of the day, she was ready to go home. “Your grandpa gets cranky,” she explained, though I knew she got cranky, too.
When she dropped us off on Thursday, Carmen and I found Mom at the kitchen table, sound asleep, her cheek on top of a place mat. The swelling in her arm had finally gone down, so she had returned to radiation therapy. The treatment knocked her out, but Jimmy thought she was playing night-night, a bedtime game.
When he tugged at Mom’s robe, Carmen pulled him away. “Mom’s not playing,” she said, but he didn’t believe her. He curled up on the floor, closed his eyes, and said, “I go night-night, too.”
She was about to stand him up, but I stopped her. “Let him pretend,” I said. Then I gently shook Mom. She lifted her head, confusion all over her face. “Come on,” I said, helping her stand and letting her lean on me as I walked her to the bedroom. Once we got there, I pushed aside the blanket, and when she crawled into bed, I tucked her in and kissed her cheek.
She smiled. “Who would have thought?” she said sleepily. “You acting like the parent and me acting like the child?”
“You’re still my mom.”
“And you’re still my baby.”
She patted the bed like she used to when I was Jimmy’s age. I shook off my shoes and curled up beside her. I knew I was leaning near her sore side, but she didn’t complain. I was almost as tall as she, and I’d been washing clothes, vacuuming, and giving Jimmy a bath every night. I’d been trying my best to keep peace with Carmen even though she got on my nerves. But right now, I wanted to be a child again, Jimmy’s age because he was too young to understand what was happening.
Mom stroked my hair and hummed my favorite lullaby about little chicks who cried when they were hungry and cold. “Los pollitos dicen, pío, pío, pío, cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frio.”
That’s how I felt, like a pollito crying—not like Jimmy, whose shoulders shook, but like Dad, who got still as a wall.
As I lay there, I thought about the Race for the Cure and my project, both only a week away. Little by little, I’d been gathering names, but I still didn’t have five hundred. Last Sunday, I had asked Dad to take me to the Medical Center area because lots of hospitals were on the same street. I went to the lobbies, asking for sponsors, and leaving only when the security guards explained the “no soliciting” rule. I knew it was lying to pretend I didn’t know the rule, but each time, I managed to get several sponsors before getting caught. And I never really got in trouble. I just apologized and went to the next hospital. What else could I do? I had already knocked on every door in my neighborhood and called all my relatives. I had even bugged people after church. But it still wasn’t enough, and I was starting to panic because it seemed impossible to get five hundred names in time for the walk—in time for Mom.
After a while, Mom’s voice faded out, and her hand slipped away. She was asleep again. I wanted to stay and dream that things were back to normal, back to the time before Mom brought those nine bikinis home, but something fell in the kitchen and the loud crash made Jimmy cry. So I crawled out of bed, took a deep breath, and went to investigate.
When I got to the kitchen, I discovered the trash flipped on its side. Last night’s chicken bones were scattered on the floor, along with dirty paper towels and broken eggshells.
Jimmy was holding up a jar and saying, “Throw away!” It was a half-empty peanut butter jar. We’d made a few sandwiches from it, but the rest of the peanut butter was on his face, shirt, and hands. He even had peanut butter in his hair.
“How did you get this in your hair?” I asked.
He just held up the jar and said, “No more!” even though there was enough for several sandwiches.
“Why weren’t you watching him?” I complained to Carmen.
She didn’t answer because she was counting, her eyes staring at some invisible point. She said, “Twenty-three,” and a few seconds later, “twenty-four,” and a whole minute later, after I had time to dampen a towel and wipe Jimmy’s face, she said, “twenty-five.” That’s when I realized she was listening for cars passing by. We didn’t live on a busy street, and you could barely hear the cars from within the house, so counting them took a lot of concentration, something Carmen had gobs of right now. She looked obsessed, in my opinion.
“If you’re counting cars, you’ll never get to the end,” I said. “There will always be cars driving down the street.”
She just said, “Twenty-six, twenty-seven”—long pause—“twenty-eight.”
I could only shake my head. My sister was going nuts.
I looked at Jimmy again. If I wanted to wash off the peanut butter, I’d have to give him a bath. Lots of kids probably cried about taking a bath but not Jimmy. He loved it. I filled the tub with bubbles and threw a bunch of toys in there. I helped him into the water, and then I sat on a stool beside the tub to make sure he didn’t drown. While he invented adventures with his pirate ships and toy shark, I invented a story in the journal GumWad had given me. I’d been writing in it every day. And GumWad was right. Having a place to express myself helped. Maybe it didn’t solve my problems, but it made me feel calmer. Often, I didn’t even mention my worries. I wanted to forget them, so I wrote whatever came to mind—stories, lists, conversations I’d overheard, or letters to famous people.
Today, I wrote a story about a girl who liked t
o count. First, she counted the cans of soup in the cupboard. “It took her twenty-two seconds,” I wrote. Then, she counted the lightbulbs in the house, which took five minutes and forty seconds. She went outside and counted the trees on her street. Since the street was long, it took over an hour. She then made her way to the grocery store to count the cars in the parking lot. Cars weren’t like trees. They kept leaving and arriving. The girl had to start over numerous times. Finally, around midnight, when the last person left, she finished counting. One car. “The girl wondered who it belonged to,” I wrote, “since all the customers and employees had gone home. Finally, she looked at the sky and started to count the stars. She’s still counting because you could never figure out how many stars there are. It would take a lot more than one lifetime to get that number.”
All my stories were short and simple. When I had time, I went back and drew pictures. Sometimes, I read my stories to Jimmy, very quietly—not because of Dad’s rules but because I didn’t want Carmen to overhear.
I was just about to read him this one when Dad walked in. He sat on the edge of the tub, scooped up some bubbles, and threw them at Jimmy, who was too preoccupied with his toys to notice.
Then Dad said, “The counselor from your school called today.”
“Is Carmen getting another award?” I asked, already dreading the news.
“No,” Dad said. “She called about you.”
“Me?”
I thought for a moment. The counselor called only when it concerned Carmen, usually to invite my parents to some type of recognition ceremony. No way was I getting an award. I hadn’t done anything special. That could mean only one thing. The counselor called because I was in trouble. Of course I was in trouble. I’d been falling behind. My grades were okay, but I’d missed some assignments and my quiz scores were low Cs.
“She wanted to schedule a conference with some of your teachers next Monday,” Dad said. “She mentioned Mr. Leyva. Isn’t that your math teacher?”
Of course, I thought, dropping my head. “Yes,” I said, my voice small because I felt like such a loser.
