by Bibi Belford
This Saturday I will demand information from the recycling center driver. I need to know how to collect my checks. I lock the dumpster. It’s not even January, and already I’m making my resolutions. 1) Demand to know how to get my money; 2) clean the house to surprise my mom; 3) be a better brother to Girasol; 4) never speak to Abiola again.
I heard that if you always do things the same way, it makes your brain soggy, so all week I’ve been walking home by different routes. I live eight blocks away from school, and I’m on variation four not counting Miguel’s usual way. He’s certain his way is faster. I try to explain to him that eight blocks is eight blocks, no matter if you go straight and turn once or turn eight times, but he can be quite pigheaded.
Anyway, on my route today I see some seedpods that are shaped like Christmas ornaments, little prickles poking out around the holes. Girasol loves Christmas. I could decorate her mirror with these. I pick up a few. My dad already told me that Christmas will be thin this year (which is a nice way of saying I won’t be getting many presents). I look down at the seedpods. The dry leaves near the pods are perfect five-pointed star shapes. I wish I knew this tree’s name. Mamá loves plants. Maybe I could grow her a seedling for Christmas from one of these pods.
That’s when I see a flash of something orange and red wedged under the muffler of a broken-down Ford pickup. I bend down and look closer, and I see the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. An Adidas Predator soccer ball. And it looks brand new.
At first I think my luck is changing and that this soccer ball is my reward for all the donkey doo-doo that has happened to me over the past few weeks. Then, while I’m lying under the truck with my face staring up at its greasy underbelly, I think, No, this ball belongs to somebody. I will rescue it and return it and reverse the Sandro curse.
It’s not an easy task, but I use my inventor’s skills to maneuver the ball around the axel case and sharp stuff, getting my hands full of black gunk and my shirt wet and muddy. By pressing down, I can almost push the ball out, but there’s no way it will make it past the muffler pipe.
I just happen to have a paper clip from the paper-clipping project. Don’t even accuse me of stealing, okay? It’s one paper clip, and I found it on the ground. I wiggle my hand into my pocket, pull the clip out, and bend it, then poke it into the valve. Ironic, isn’t it? Now I’m deflating something for a good reason. The ball flattens just enough, and I shimmy out from under the truck with it. As I emerge, I see two little legs standing on the curb, then a little brown face with dark eyes staring at me.
I hold the ball toward the little boy.
“Here you go, it’s still okay. I just deflated it to get it unstuck.”
“La-La,” he yells and runs around the side of the apartment building. He says some other stuff I don’t understand. He comes back with a compact air pump and hands it to me. I dig in my backpack for my air pump needle, which I always carry for the flat soccer balls at school. I show the boy how to screw it to the pump hose, and I hold the ball while he pumps. His teeth are so white when he smiles at me, and a spot under my ribs gets a little warm. He makes me miss Girasol.
The boy runs away again yelling, forgetting to give me the needle back. Oh well. I’ve got a whole bag of them. I feel pretty good about myself. But then I see a girl in soccer shorts and shin guards walking around the corner and hear her make a whooping sound. She yells, “Wait!” But I’m a secret Avenger, a masked Zapotec warrior, and I jog toward home without stopping, smiling inside.
The new-resolution me gets right to work cleaning the house to surprise my mom. Dad and I have sort of let things go a bit around the home. In fact, I’m getting downright lazy. Most nights I leave my dinner dishes in the sink so Mrs. Arona will have something to do when she comes over. And I hardly ever make my bed. What’s the point if no one’s around to see it?
First, I spray everything in the kitchen with some good smelling stuff I find under the counter, then I wipe it away in my best karate imitation. When I finish, the counter is streaky and a little sudsy, but boy it smells great.
I listen to the phone messages while I throw my soccer uniform in the dryer. I left it in the washer for a couple of days, and now it stinks. I hope the dryer fixes that. The first message is the hospital again. I wish I could ride my bike over there and hand them a wad of cash. Here, this settles it. Now leave us alone.
The second message is from Mrs. Arona. She’s sorry that she won’t be able to bring over dinner tonight. Her husband must work late to pay for a new car tire. She’s bringing him dinner from La Estrella. I check the freezer for pizza and thankfully find one. Good. At least I won’t go hungry.
The last message is from my soccer coach. Our game is Saturday at ten o’clock at the fields behind the high school. I give a fist pump. Yes!
Next, I tackle the piles on the floors so I can vacuum. I zoom around and throw everything into a laundry basket. The shoes by the door, the DVD boxes and remote controllers spread out on the rug, a TAICO work shirt that’s on the back of a chair, some bags to recycle with flattened cereal boxes, and a stack of mail with lots of those coupon flyers in it—probably all junk mail. Holy guacamole, we sure are slobs. I will sort all the items in the laundry bin out later and put them away. Right now, it’s clean-sweep time.
I don’t know why moms seem to like cleaning so much. It’s really boring. And vacuuming is the worst. I can’t hear the TV or anything. After I vacuum the living room, I head into my bedroom and plow over the potato chips I spilled last night. The vacuum makes a really cool crunching noise. A great sound effect if you were giving a report on dinosaurs chewing bones or something.
Franklin’s box smells a bit, too, so I decide to suck the bark out with the vacuum. Wow! Talk about sound effects. A little red light comes on the bottom of the vacuum, and the sucking stops. I smell burning rubber. I’m flipping the switches to troubleshoot the problem when I almost have a heart attack.
“Sandro.”
“Ayyeee.” I turn and there’s Miguel. “You freaked me out!”
“You didn’t answer the door, so I came in.” His voice sounds crackly and lower than an old man’s.
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Bronchitis.”
“Can you play soccer?”
“Maybe. Depends. I have medicine. Let’s go. We are going to be late for practice.”
I shovel some fresh bark into the box while Miguel says hello to Franklin, then I grab my soccer shoes out of the clean-sweep basket.
Once we’re in the car, my stomach growls. Rats. I forgot to eat a snack. And with those termites in there chewing everything, I have lots of hungry holes. A vision comes to me of a pepperoni pizza oozing with cheese, and just for a second, I imagine ordering pizza from my favorite pizza place, Tommy Joe’s. Who would know? I could secretly dispose of the box. I have twenty dollars in my drawer in a box marked BIKE SAVING. Better yet, you and I can split the pizza. Ten dollars each. What do you say?
Funny how soccer takes my mind off everything—even food. For an hour and a half I’m a normal kid with a wicked left foot. Cesar has trouble judging when to run up and get the ball and when to hang back and protect the goal, so we practice this move over and over again. Finally Coach puts Jared back in goal. This makes me uneasy about Saturday’s line up. Will coach play the hand with me and Jared? Or the one with Noel and me? Or another hand altogether with me on the bench?
After practice, I bake the frozen pizza, using my self-control not to touch my bike savings. Papi calls and tells me he talked to Girasol and Mamá. They might come home sooner than two weeks. When I tell him there’s soccer on Saturday he doesn’t say anything. I know what he’s thinking.
“It’s okay, Papi. It’s not the championship yet.”
“I may have to work on Saturday.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sad, but it can’t be helped. Making money to pay for Girasol is way more important than a silly soccer game. After devouring my pizza,
I do my homework and take a shower. It’s too late to take care of the laundry basket from the clean sweep. First thing in the morning, I will sort and put everything where it goes. I put away the worthless vacuum and step on something crunchy. I spilled Franklin’s bark on my carpet. Well, tomorrow I’ll sweep it up with the trusty old broom.
“Sandro?” It’s Mrs. Arona. She must be in the kitchen.
“Sí.”
“Sandro, why is the kitchen so slippery?”
“I cleaned.”
“Show me what you use.”
I pull the bottle from under the sink, and she tells me it is dish soap. It does not mention anything about dish soap. It reads DAWN ULTRA 3 in big bold letters on the front. She points at the little tiny words under the big bold words. Oh, yes, it does mention dishwashing liquid. Now who’s gonna read those tiny little words? Come on, people. She hands me a wet cloth, and she and I wipe and rinse and wipe and rinse until my fingers are puckered up and raisin-ish.
I’m snuggled down deep in my puffy quilt, drifting off into soccer dreamland, where the fields are slippery with Dawn Ultra 3 and I’m slide tackling left and right when my door opens.
“Sandro?”
“Huh?”
“Where is the remote for the TV?”
“What?”
“The remote. For the TV.”
“Oh. Uh. In the basket.”
“What basket?”
“In the kitchen. The laundry basket.”
She says a not very nice word in Spanish. “The basket is dumped into the garbage.”
I sit up so quickly that I’m dizzy. “What?” And then I remember that I put the bag with recycled cereal boxes and the junk mail on top of the basket. Of course, that did make it look like garbage. But who takes other people’s garbage out? Mrs. Arona, that’s who.
Shizam. I shoot out of bed and stub my toe on Franklin’s box. Here’s the thing. We live in a duplex. And our duplex is part of a bunch of duplexes. And we all share a big green dumpster that sits in the alley. So my clean sweep is now in that big green dumpster. Cheese Whiz.
Mrs. Arona holds a flashlight and the back of a chair we brought out to the alley as I lean over the edge of the dumpster. The first thing that happens is I’m knocked senseless by the rotting refuse smell. My pizza dinner tries very hard to escape from my stomach. I pull my pajamas up over my nose and pray I don’t fall in.
Oh man. Oh man. This is so gross. I’m touching nasty creepy slippery stuff. I think I see my dad’s shoe. Yes. It’s his shoe. Covered with something yellow. And this bit of blue material might be his shirt. By golly, it is. Yuck. Note to self—use two capfuls of laundry detergent when I wash the clothes this week.
By the time I’m done, we’ve filled the laundry basket up halfway. I found three shoes, my dad’s work shirt, and the TV remote but not the DVD remote. The mail I recovered is wet and mushy, and I distinctly see an electric bill, so it wasn’t all junk after all. The DVD boxes are kind of cracked and broken, and I can’t remember what else to look for. My dad might have to come in the daylight to find the rest of our things. Wait. My dad? Holy cow. I’m in trouble now.
“No more cleaning for you,” says Mrs. Arona.
I want to say, “No more throwing away garbage for you,” but I can’t speak. My teeth are chattering and not just from the cold. I’m horrified. I’ve lost count of all the reasons I’m in trouble. Do you have a spare bedroom? I’m not picky. I can sleep on the top bunk or the bottom. Put in a good word for me with your mom, okay?
I help Mrs. Arona wipe and rinse the items once we get inside. My dad’s three shoes look semi-okay. The mail does not. I’m super glad my soccer shoes escaped the clean-sweep disaster.
While I’m taking my second shower of the day, I hear the TV go on, so I know the remote still works. By the time I get to bed it’s late, late, late.
I dream I hear my dad talking to Mrs. Arona. “Such a disappointment. Our only son. He can no longer live in a Zapotec house.” I’m driving away with an officer of some sort when I see Girasol arrive in a limousine. The last thing I see from the rear window is Girasol walking up the steps, my dad holding dozens of roses, and my mom overloaded with pink stuffed animals. Girasol turns and blows me a kiss.
“Sandro. Sandro. Shhh. Shhh.”
I open my eyes and lift my head. My dad is sitting on my bed pushing my hair off my forehead.
“You’re dreaming. It’s okay now.”
I sink back into my pillow. I wish I could tell him that my nightmare is not as bad as the daymare he’s going to have when he wakes up.
CHAPTER 11
One Man Standing
There’s nothing to tell about my last in-school suspension day. Mr. Smalley doesn’t mention taking action with my dad. Maybe he was just trying to scare me.
Mrs. Lopez gives me my spelling test. She whispers, “You just missed one word.”
“Which word?”
“Weight.”
“No, I spelled it right. W-A-I-T.”
“Not that ‘wait.’ It’s the other ‘weight.’”
“How am I supposed to know which one you meant? You have to give me a sentence using the word.”
“Oh,” she says and looks disappointed, as if she messed up her debut as a spelling tester.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I know how to spell both. W-E-I-G-H-T, as in ‘You look amazing. Did you lose weight?’”
She laughs. “Okay. And you better W-A-I-T until you’re older before you start flirting.”
Finally the day is over. After taking care of the recycling, I walk home using one more different route. I do think it’s good for your brain to vary your routine. I’m definitely noticing more things than I used to. And as I round the corner, I notice my dad’s truck in our driveway. Whoopee! Maybe we can practice some soccer together if he has the afternoon off.
Then my super-charged brain has another thought. Maybe it’s not good that he’s home this early. What if he reinjured his back? What if he’s in trouble at the TAICO factory? What if he bumped into his boss, Mr. Kahn, and mentioned that his son Sandro just happened to be a fourth grader at Lincoln Elementary? Did you ask your mom about me visiting for a while? I might need that invitation soon.
My dad is sitting at the kitchen table as I plow through the door. I see three letters spread flat out in front of him. His face is concrete hard. I freeze. It’s not my dad that’s in trouble. It’s me.
“Sandro. Sit. Do you remember that I tell you worry about yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t smart talk me.”
“Yes, Papi.”
“Do you remember that I tell you, be the better man?”
“Yes, Papi.”
I can see that the letters on the table all have my school logo at the top. One of them is stained with dumpster slop. Uh-oh.
He points at the first letter. “Did you erase any phone messages? Did you keep the mail from me? Why does your teacher say I did not respond?”
See what I mean about adults firing questions at you? “Uh . . . well . . . I might have left the letters in my backpack.”
He holds out his hand. I dig in my backpack and retrieve the envelopes.
He rips them open, and his head sort of jerks back and forth. “Sandro. Your teacher wants me to give permission for a social worker to talk with you.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
I rack my super-charged brain that has suddenly gone back to soggy waffle brain. What is a social worker? Is that the person who takes you away from your parents? Or is that a caseworker? Maybe it’s that nice lady with the curly black hair who talks to kids at school. It’s hard to admit I don’t know this stuff, but I need to know. “What’s a social worker?”
“It’s a person who works with kids with problems.”
“Oh. But I don’t have problems. There’s a girl who doesn’t like me. That’s all.”
“It says here you have trouble adjusting to fou
rth grade and need help with crisis management.”
“I think they’re exaggerating. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
“Not true. I have two letters from your principal. Vandalism. Bullying. Suspension.”
“Oh.” My mouth seems to be stuck in a circle shape.
“Sandro, I don’t understand.”
“This girl, Abiola, is ruining my life. She tattles and gets me in trouble.”
“Sandro, are you worrying about yourself?”
I shake my head.
“Sandro, are you being the better man?”
My face gets hot. I’m ashamed.
“You have let the Zapote family down. You have let me down. But worst of all, you have let yourself down.”
I feel pretty sorry for myself right about now. No one understands me. It’s not all my fault. I’m being blamed for everything. I need my mom. A drop of water leaks from the corner of my eye. I bet even Atlas shed some tears when he picked up the world and put it on his shoulders.
“Now we must all worry about Sandro as well as Girasol? You are to stay in this house. Do not get into trouble.” He points at the yucky mail I fished out of the dumpster and then at the laundry basket. I see he found his other shoe and the DVD remote.
“I’m going to substitute on the third shift tonight. Then I will go straight from work to Pablo’s in the morning to help with the roofing. Mamá is not to worry about this. Do you understand?” He folds up the letters, puts them in his pocket, and exhales with a little growl as he gets up.
I understand perfectly. I understand that my dad will be gone all night working the graveyard shift and that I will be home listening to the spooky graveyard noises that come in the middle of the night. I understand that Mamá will not be on my side giving me sympathy and easing my punishment. I understand that I am grounded with no end in sight and that the biggest soccer game of my life is tomorrow.
Now think back with me. Did he actually say that I’m grounded? He could have meant that I have to stay in the house tonight—not stay in the house forever. The more I ponder this, the more I’m sure I’ll be able to get away with soccer tomorrow and, of course, meet the recycling truck at school. Uncle Pablo and my dad will work from early morning to late afternoon. I’ll straighten out the recycling situation, ride my bike to the high school, beat the pants off the opposing team, and be home before my dad returns from roofing with Pablo.
