by Diana Lopez
“Why?”
“Because I don’t deserve to get out of jail.”
“Be c-c-careful,” he says, “anything you say can and will be used against you.”
“Well, consider this a full confession. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings last week. Honestly. I don’t even care if you stutter.”
He smiles. He smiles big. I think I’m forgiven.
“Excuse me,” Jorge says, “but I’ve got another warrant for your arrest, Lina.”
“I just got out.”
“I know, but…”
“Don’t tell me, rules are rules.”
He leads me back to the jail, but this time, I barely step in when Luís bails me out. Five minutes later, Jorge returns, this time with a warrant for Luís too.
“You must be really, really bad,” Luís says.
“Who’s doing this? I can’t spend my whole night in here.”
As if to answer my question, Jason sticks his head through the jail bars. He’s dressed as Rey Mysterio, a famous Mexican wrestler who wears a cape and a black mask with the profile of a golden eagle head. “Try getting out now!” he says as he walks away.
“You jerk!” I call after him. Then I turn to Luís. “Don’t worry. Vanessa will get us out soon.”
“It’s okay,” he says.
We sit quietly and wait. In the meantime, three ROTC guys get arrested. They’re wearing their uniforms. They’ve got everything but the guns. The mariachi guy has been replaced by someone dressed as a royal guard for Buckingham Palace with the red coat, white pants, black boots, and tall furry hat. Like Jorge, he’s in my history class where we saw a film about the guards last month. The ROTC guys try to bribe him for their freedom, but he’s taking his code of silence seriously.
“You’re talking to a statue,” I tell them. “Give it up.”
“We don’t take orders from fish devils,” they say.
“She’s n-n-nnnot a fish devil,” Luís says. “She’s the red tide.”
I can’t believe it! Finally, someone understands my costume. Last month, Mr. Star talked about the red tide, this algae stuff that travels along the Gulf Stream and kills lots of fish. That’s why I have my poster with dead fish and S.I.P. tombstones.
“Whatever, piñata man,” the ROTC guys say.
“Hey, he’s not a piñata man,” I tell them. “He’s kryptonite.”
“Oh, yeah?” they say. “Whatever.”
“You’re the first one to guess my costume,” I tell Luís.
“You, you’re the first one to guess m-mine,” he says.
“So I’m off the hook about the Christmas concert thing?”
“Hmm.” He pretends to think about it. “Let’s just say I’ll be recommending you for, for parole.”
Finally I see Vanessa walk by. “Hey,” I call through the bars.
She turns around, and her eyes get wide when she realizes I’m still in jail. “You must hate me,” she says. “I forgot all about you.” She quickly pays the bail for both Luís and me.
“It’s been almost an hour,” I complain.
“I’m soooo sorry. I promise to make it up to you.”
I’m about to ask where she’s been when I see Carlos behind her. He’s holding a big coffee can with a construction paper heart glued on.
“Hi, Lina,” he says. “I’m the tin man. Get it?” He taps the tin can and shows me an empty quart of Quaker State oil.
“That’s real cute,” I say to Vanessa. “You’re the scarecrow and he’s the tin man from the Wizard of Oz.” I can’t believe she didn’t tell me their plan about matching costumes. What else is she leaving me out of?
“It was all Carlos’s idea,” Vanessa says. “Doesn’t he have a great imagination?”
“I’m sure your mom would think so.”
“My mom?” She grabs my arm, takes me aside, and whispers, “Look, you can’t tell my mom I’ve been hanging out with Carlos. You know how she feels about boyfriends. If she could, she’d send me to an all-girls school. She hates men.”
I’m very tempted to tattletale after spending an hour in the jail booth. But Vanessa’s my best friend, and best friends are supposed to cover for each other, even if one “forgot” to mention planning her costume with a boy. I look over her shoulder. Carlos is reaching into the neck of Luís’s headless Superman. He pulls out a piece of bubble gum.
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t tell your mom about Carlos. You have to stay in the courtyard so they won’t see you. Meet me here in forty-five minutes and we’ll head back to the cafeteria together.”
“You’re great with the covert operations,” Vanessa says, giving me a grateful hug before disappearing with Mr. Tin Man.
“Looks like I got ditched for Carlos,” I explain to Luís.
He gives me this pretend frown. Then he points to the free-throw booth. For two dollars, he buys five free throws and wins me a glow-in-the-dark necklace. Then we eat turkey legs and buñuelos, my favorite cinnamon and sugar pastries. Then we try dunking Mr. Star in the dunking booth. Every time we see Jason, we hide, hoping he’ll forget we exist. Luckily, he does.
Soon our forty-five minutes is over. When Vanessa and I return to the cafeteria, my dad and Ms. Cantu are taking down the Halloween decorations.
“We sold out!” Ms. Cantu announces.
I can tell because there’s confetti all over the floor.
“I think we should celebrate,” my dad says. “Let’s go out to eat.”
Vanessa and I start hopping like kids in a candy store.
“Can we go to Snoopy’s?” we ask.
My dad winces. At first I wonder what’s wrong with Snoopy’s, then I remember how far it is.
“Of course,” Ms. Cantu says. “I’ll drive. How about it, Homero?”
He says “sure”—not with any excitement but like someone who doesn’t want to spoil the party.
We get in Ms. Cantu’s big truck. She’s got the kind with an extended cab. Vanessa sits up front with her mom, while my dad and I squeeze into the back. As soon as we hit the road, he asks about Watership Down. He wants to know what the rabbits are up to.
“Have they met those complacent rabbits yet?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though I don’t know what “complacent” means.
That’s enough to get him started on another lecture. Doesn’t he know I’m taking other classes too? Doesn’t he care? I’m grateful he helped with the carnival, and I’m really grateful we’re going to Snoopy’s, but this is my free time, time to talk about anything and everything except school. Mom would have known better. She’d have her fingernails painted orange and black, and instead of talking about homework, she’d ask about the games I played, the food I ate, and the costumes I saw.
I tune Dad out, and when he notices, he stops talking. All we hear is Ms. Cantu bragging about her cascarones.
“Maybe I should open a flea market booth,” she says. “I can call it Cascarones Corner.”
Then we get past Flour Bluff and reach the strip of road with nothing but the ocean on either side. I love living near the sea. I’ve seen pictures of mountains and forests and canyons. I can tell they’re beautiful, but they don’t carry the promise of a “forever” the way the sea does—especially at night when the black water and the black sky melt into each other, making me feel like I’m in the center of infinity. Tonight’s a full moon, its light on the ocean like a glow-in-the-dark road. After seeing Vanessa and Carlos dressed as the scarecrow and the tin man, the light reminds me of that song from the Wizard of Oz, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a song about traveling across the rainbow to another land. That’s how I feel about the moonlight. I want to walk on it and see where it takes me. Will it take me to my mother?
Finally we get to the bridge, and there below us is Snoopy’s.
Snoopy’s is a great place, right on the water. It has two parking lots, one for the cars and one for the boats. Inside there’s a huge fireplace in the middle of the dining room. There’s a dock a
long the back for people who want to sit outside. It’s all very casual, no waiters, just an order and a pickup counter, a bar for the condiments, and lots of cats and seagulls begging for scraps.
Tonight they have a “Southern Special” on the menu, catfish and shrimp with a side of fried pickles. Vanessa and I order it, of course. We’ve never eaten the fried pickles before. They come sliced with a cornmeal batter, sour and crunchy at the same time.
Vanessa and I yap about the carnival. We’re so hyped we talk with our mouths full. We’re so hyped we don’t notice how quiet our parents are until we run out of things to say. Now that I think of it, this is the first time my dad and Ms. Cantu have been forced to talk for more than ten minutes. No wonder they’re so quiet.
“Are we boring you?” Vanessa asks them.
“No, m’ija,” her mother says. “We’re glad you’re having fun. It’s just like old times.”
Then it hits me—“just like old times.” Now I know why my dad winced when I mentioned this restaurant. Mom loved coming to Snoopy’s. There was a time when we came to Snoopy’s at least once a month, all of us, my family and Vanessa’s family. We paired off with our conversations—me and Vanessa, our moms, our dads. But this is the first time we’ve come since Mr. Cantu left and since my mom died.
Thinking about it makes me really sad. I start to get a lump in my throat, the kind that comes before crying.
“I’m going to walk down the pier,” I say, wanting a moment alone.
They all understand and let me go without following.
The pier isn’t very long but it’s private and dark. I get to the end of it and sit on the edge, my feet dangling over the water. Little waves splash against the posts. My tears plop into the ocean. I’ve tasted tears before. They’re salty, just like the water below, and I wonder if the ocean is made of tears from all the people and all the animals that have lost their mothers.
After a while, my dad comes and sits beside me.
“I miss her,” I say.
He says, “I miss her too, m’ija.”
Then he puts his arm around me and we spend a few minutes filling the ocean together.
Lo mismo el chile que aguja, a todos pican igual –
Both the chile and the needle sting
9
Fragile as Eggshells
The day after Halloween is El Día de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, a time when the spirits return, not to haunt us, but to visit. And, of course, that means Dad and I will spend some time with my mom. And since it’s the first time we’ll be honoring my mother, we want to make it extra special.
First my dad drives to La Guadalupana Bakery and buys skull-shaped sugar cookies. Then he stops at a flower shop and buys marigolds in a pot covered with blue aluminum foil and a dozen pink roses.
When we get to the cemetery, hundreds of people are already there. Most are picnicking by the tombstones. Some are raking away the leaves and watering the grass. They say hello as we walk by. Then we reach Mom’s stone, where Dad and I kneel to say a few prayers. When we’re finished, Dad offers the roses to Mom’s spirit, and I offer the marigolds. Then we sit on the grass and eat the skull cookies.
“Did I tell you?” Dad says to Mom. “Lina won her volleyball game last week. M’ija was the best player on the team.”
“He’s biased,” I say. “Don’t believe him.”
“You’d be real proud of our daughter, mi amor. She’s a smart one, too.”
“Especially in science,” I brag.
Dad has a few more things to say to Mom. I can tell he wants to be alone, so I go for a walk.
Some of the tombstones have pictures of the dead, but I don’t need a picture to remember every detail about my mom. She loved jangling bracelets and sleeveless tops because she had beautiful arms. Most ladies have a lot of flab above the elbows. But not Mom. She had small cups of muscle on her shoulders and firm biceps because she exercised with her five-pound dumbbells every morning. She used to flex her muscles in the mirror when she thought she was alone. Sometimes I called her Xena from the TV show.
One thing Mom and Dad shared were dichos, but they were very different about when they gave me their words of wisdom.
Dad’s, I admit, always made sense. They flowed from the conversation. I might ask a nosy question, and Dad would say, “No preguntes lo que no te importa,” which means “Mind your own business.” Most of the time, his dichos were the result of something I did, usually something naughty. He might find out I lied, for example, and say, “Las mentiras no tienen pies,” or, “Lies don’t have feet so they can’t travel on their own.”
But the reasons behind my mom’s dichos were always a mystery to me. She’d say them at the weirdest times, and they startled me because they were always unexpected, like the cuckoo of a clock that’s ten minutes ahead.
One day, Mom and I sat on the back porch eating ice cream and she said, “El camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente,” which means, “The shrimp that goes to sleep gets carried away by the current.”
“Mom, how did your mind go from chocolate ice cream to shrimp?”
She laughed. “That sure does sound like a gross combination,” she agreed.
One day she was double-checking the expiration date on the milk carton and said, “You know, Lina, lo mismo el chile que aguja, a todos pican igual. Both the chile and the needle sting.”
“Why did you say that?” I asked. “Are you thinking about mixing chiles with milk?”
“No. That would definitely give me a stomachache.”
Another time we went to Payless inside the air-conditioned mall, with no way of knowing the weather, and for some bizarre reason, Mom said, “Después de la lluvia sale el sol.” After the rain, the sun shines.
“Mom,” I said. “We left the car in the parking garage, so even if it does rain, we won’t get wet. I don’t get it. Why are you always saying dichos when they don’t matter?”
“They don’t matter now,” she explained. “But you never know when you’ll need a good dicho. I want to make sure you have a whole bunch of them in your brain account.”
“What’s a brain account?”
“It’s like a bank account, but instead of dollars, you save dichos.”
I couldn’t help laughing when I heard this, and even today, as I walk among the tombstones, Mom’s silly way of teaching dichos still makes me smile. It feels good to think about her without feeling sad.
Every now and then, I glance in my dad’s direction, waiting for him to signal that he’s ready to leave. As I walk past the tombstones, I read the names and dates on them and invent histories for all the strangers, especially those who lived long, long lives. What would they be saying if I could hear them? Did they have daughters and do their daughters still visit?
Finally, my dad waves me over. He hasn’t cried the entire day, but I can tell that his emotions are as fragile as eggshells because as soon as we get home, he rushes to his room and closes the door. The next morning, I find several wadded tissues in the trash, and I feel sad—not because of my mom, but because my dad didn’t let me comfort him the way he comforted me at Snoopy’s. When he hides this way, I feel like a burden and then I feel invisible. And I have to wonder, what’s the right dicho for that?
No tengas como vano el consejo del anciano –
Don’t ignore advice from someone with experience
10
Cascarones Factory
The following Monday, Vanessa peers down from the top bunk in my bedroom. “What’s taking you so long?” she says. “We’re going to be late for school.”
I shrug as I search through my drawer. I know it’s weird, but I’m thinking my love-life destiny is linked to socks.
“Is this about Luís?” Vanessa asks, reading my mind. Sometimes telepathy with your best friend is not cool. “Are you using your socks as love bait?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“You’re so corny!” She nearly rolls off the bed when she laughs.
>
“Quit teasing. It’s not as corny as matching costumes.”
“Okay, okay, we’re even,” she says, hopping off the bunk. “Move aside. I’ll be your fashion consultant.”
We decide on white knee-highs with pastel flowers embroidered up the leg. A very dainty design.
“I don’t know why I try so hard,” I say. “There’s not much I can do about my looks.”
“Quit acting silly. You look adorable.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You make zits look like accessories.”
“What you need is a skirt,” she suggests.
“No way. I’m too skinny.”
“No you’re not. You’re just like my mom. Always hiding your figure.”
“What figure? You’ve seen my legs. My kneecaps are wider than my thighs!”
She shakes her head as if I’m crazy.
By the time I get to science, my stomach is in a nervous knot. Luís and I had a great time at the carnival, but he hasn’t exactly confessed true love. Does he like me or not? I wonder. When he comes in, he does his routine—sits in front of me, waves hello, looks at his sundial, and turns to the front.
Surely not the behavior of a boy in love.
Mr. Star starts class with a reminder about our semester projects, which are due right after the winter break. Then he pops in a National Geographic video about coral reefs and turns off the lights.
“Psst.” It’s Luís slipping me a note.
I try to read it, but it’s too dark. I have to tilt it to the TV light. Little by little, I make out the words. Can I walk with you after school? it says.
Is this the sign of true love I’ve been waiting for? Yes, I write. Meet me by the tennis court parking lot. Then I hand Luís the note.
He reads it and whispers, “Okay.”
The movie rolls on and just when I start paying attention, I remember that Ms. Cantu is picking me up after school. We’re supposed to go to the grocery store, but I’d rather hang out with Luís. So I turn around to tell Vanessa, but she’s in the back row with Carlos. They’re not watching the movie. They’re whispering to each other. After class, Carlos hangs around till the fourth-period bell rings, which means no privacy for Vanessa and me.
