by Diana Lopez
“But, Mrs. Huerta, I have to play. I have to keep in shape for the volleyball team next year.” I’m trying not to cry, but a few tears leak out.
“No, sweetheart. You have to study. I know it’s hard to accept, but you’ll thank me in the long run.”
“But I have to play,” I say again. This time I don’t care how kindergarten I sound. I start bawling. “Can’t you give me extra credit? I’ll do anything. I’ll read a bunch of books. I’ll wash your car. I’ll babysit your kids for free.”
“That’s not extra credit,” she says. “That’s bribery.”
Asking for sympathy from Mrs. Huerta is like asking for sympathy from an ironing board. She offers me the box of tissues, but I shake my head because in my purse is a “sockerchief,” a white sock I use as a hankie.
I can’t go to the cafeteria in tears. Everyone will ask what’s wrong, and I’m not ready to tell the world I got kicked off the team. So I return to my desk. I try to calm myself using the positive self-talk my dad taught me. “You’re okay, I’m okay,” I tell myself, and “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
And what does Mrs. Huerta do while I’m sobbing? She eats a sandwich, munches on chips, and grades papers! She should be gassing cute puppies at the dog pound, not teaching.
I have to walk home by myself. Luís is rehearsing for the Christmas concert, and Vanessa’s practicing soccer (not that I’d be with her if she weren’t). I notice that all the kids who go home early are Hollywood extras, and then I realize… without soccer, I’m an extra too. I can’t even be the water girl till I’m passing English again. The way I see it, I’m lower than a Hollywood extra.
I drop my backpack by the door and go to my room. It’s been a bad twenty-four hours, the worst. I take a blanket, tie it around the posts of the top bunk, and let it hang off the edge, making a wall for the bottom bed. This is what I do when I want to disappear. I call my little hideaway “the cave.”
Thirty minutes later, I hear my dad come in. He walks by my room and stops.
“Lina?” he calls. “Are you in there?”
“Yes,” I say.
I hear him approach. He pushes aside the blanket and looks down at me.
“Why aren’t you at soccer practice?” he asks.
“I’m not going to play after all. I don’t really like soccer.”
“Why not?”
“My legs are too long. I’ll just trip over the ball. What’s to like about that?”
I start to believe myself and why shouldn’t I? It’s true. All of it. Soccer and long legs don’t mix.
“I wish you’d reconsider,” Dad says. “Don’t you think it’s boring moping around while your friends are at practice?”
“No. I’m not bored.”
“Hmmm,” my dad says. I can tell he doesn’t believe me, but he decides not to ask any more questions. After a few seconds, he lets the blanket fall and steps out.
Then I hear the phone. It’s probably Carlos, but I don’t budge. I want my dad to answer. Maybe he’ll casually mention Vanessa’s boyfriend to Ms. Cantu.
When I hear the mumbled tones of a conversation, I figure a salesperson called. Then, I close my eyes for a nap, but my dad calls me to the living room before I drift off.
“Apolonia!” I hear.
“What?” I call back.
“Get over here,” he says. He sounds mad. He uses my full name only when I’ve done something wrong. So either I’m in trouble or a real pushy telemarketer bullied him into buying something like snow boots or a year’s supply of mascara.
When I get to the living room, I catch him going through my backpack!
“Hey, that’s private property,” I say, but I’m too late. He’s already found what he was looking for—my vocabulary test with the big fat zero.
He says, “Mrs. Huerta just called.”
I can’t believe it. It’s like she read my mind, like she knew I was going to forge my dad’s name. I am so busted. This must be what it means to get caught with egg on your face.
“She told me the real reason you’re not at soccer practice.”
What can I say? I just stand there waiting for my punishment like a sandcastle waiting for the tide to roll in.
He looks over the test. “How could you get a zero?” he asks. “Did you fail this on purpose? And why would you do such a thing?”
I can only shrug.
“‘Felicity,’” he reads, “‘a city for cats.’” He shakes his head. “How could you get ‘felicity’ wrong?”
“I did what you always do,” I say in my defense.
“And that is?”
“I took apart the word to figure out its meaning.”
“But, Lina, ‘felicity’ is like the Spanish word feliz, remember? Feliz Navidad. Feliz Cumpleaños. We use it all the time. It means ‘happy.’”
“I tried Spanish with marsupial,” I explain, “and I got that one wrong too. How am I supposed to know whether to think about Spanish or Greek or Latin or prefixes or suffixes or roots? And who cares about vocabulary anyway?”
My dad winces. He’s really mad, but I don’t feel guilty at all. Who cares if I let him down? We’re even as far as I’m concerned.
“I just don’t understand how you could be failing your favorite class,” he says.
“English is not my favorite class. It’s your favorite class.”
He rubs his forehead. Good. I hope I’m giving him a headache.
“So what is your favorite class?” he asks.
“I talk about it all the time.”
“Volleyball?”
“Volleyball isn’t a class,” I say. “It’s an after-school activity. Besides, it’s soccer season now, remember?”
“Math, then?”
“Math’s okay, but it’s not my favorite class.”
I can’t believe it. He’s stumped.
“Science,” I say. “I like science.”
He nods. “I should have known. Cada cabeza es un mundo. Everyone has his own way of thinking. At least now I know why you dressed as a fish devil for Halloween.”
“I was not a fish devil! I was the red tide! You never listen, do you?!”
I’m about to stomp to my room when the doorbell rings. Before we get to it, we hear Vanessa on the other side.
“Hurry, Mr. Flores! Hurry!”
“What is it?” my dad asks, opening the door.
“It’s my mom,” Vanessa says. “She fell down. She’s really hurt!”
El silencio es oro –
Silence is golden
13
Egg Under the Bed
We chase Vanessa to her kitchen. As soon as I see Ms. Cantu, I think of the time I pretended my Barbie was Gail Devers, an Olympic track star. I had put her into the hurdling position and SNAP! her leg came off.
“Ay, Homero!” Ms. Cantu cries when she sees my dad. “I can’t move!”
“Now, now,” my dad says.
“I came home from practice and found her like this,” Vanessa explains. “I think she’s been here for hours!”
“It sure feels like hours,” Ms. Cantu cries.
“Now, now,” my dad says again.
“Someone gave me el mal ojo, the evil eye—someone who’s jealous of my beautiful cascarones. Now I have to call la curandera and tell her to put the egg under my bed.”
A curandera is a folk healer. She can get rid of a curse from the evil eye by breaking an egg into a bowl of water and leaving it under the bed while the victim sleeps.
“You don’t need a curandera,” Vanessa says. “You need a doctor. Please, Mr. Flores. Please talk some sense into my mom.”
My dad reaches in his pocket for his keys. “I guess we have to go to the emergency room. That leg probably needs a cast.”
Ms. Cantu almost faints. “¡Ay, Dios mío! A cast?”
When we get to the emergency room at Spohn Hospital, my dad helps Ms. Cantu to the check-in window.
“Why weren’t you at soccer practice?” Va
nessa asks. “Are you still trying to avoid me?”
“No.”
“Then where were you?”
“Long story.”
“I fell down in the kitchen,” we hear Ms. Cantu say. “And I was all alone because my husband, that good-for-nothing, left me three years ago.”
“Does she have to tell everyone she’s divorced?” Vanessa says.
“Give her a break. She’s in a lot of pain right now.”
“I know, but I hate when she complains about my dad.”
“At least she isn’t mean to his face,” I say.
“Are you talking about my mom or me?” she asks. “Are you still mad about me using your phone last night?”
“No, I’m mad about you making fun of Luís.”
“So I said something sassy. I didn’t mean it, and I told you I was sorry, didn’t I? What else am I supposed to do?”
I don’t have an answer, so I do the only thing I can do—sit in the chair and sulk.
Ms. Cantu says she can’t do the paperwork because of the pain. So my dad takes the clipboard and fills it out for her. Then he turns it in, and while he’s talking to the receptionist, I have a vivid memory of this same emergency room, this same arrangement of chairs, this same everything from the night we brought my mom. They didn’t make her wait. They took her temperature, and in ten minutes, she was in the ICU. I can’t believe I’m here again—at this hospital where she died—from that germ that looked like a bunch of grapes.
Suddenly, I realize that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ate after school is still in my stomach, jumping as if my stomach’s one of those inflatable castles people rent for birthday parties.
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I say, leaving everyone in the waiting room.
I go straight to a stall and throw up. Then I cry, blowing my nose with the toilet paper. This is the second time I’ve cried today. The first time was my fault. I admit it. I deserve to be off the soccer team. But did I deserve to lose my mom? There are people meaner than me, people like Jason who still has his mom. This is when I wish life were like math, when I wish I could put numbers into an equation and get answers.
When I leave the stall, Vanessa’s waiting for me by the sink.
“Have you been here the whole time?” I ask.
“Most of it. I figured you were thinking about your mom.”
“Sometimes our telepathy scares me.”
“And sometimes the way we’re mean scares me. What I said about Luís was terrible,” she admits. “I’m just sooo sorry. I hate when we fight.”
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have been rude when you tried to apologize this morning.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“No, really, Vanessa, I am.”
We smile a little.
“Is this a Lifetime show or what?” she says.
I nod. And then I laugh. We both laugh. Then we give each other a let’s-make-up hug and go back to the waiting room, best friends again.
“Where’s my mom?” Vanessa asks my dad.
He points to a hallway. “She took some X-rays. Now she’s waiting in a room for the results. You can wait with her if you’d like.”
“X-rays?” I say. “I love X-rays. I bet I could name all the leg bones after spending so much time with my Gray’s Anatomy book—the tibia, the femur, the patella.”
“Wait a minute,” my dad says. “We’re not finished, young lady. We still need to talk about your English grade.”
I look longingly after Vanessa, wishing I could join her and the X-rays. When I look at my dad, he’s pointing for me to sit down, so I take a seat, wondering if I should fake a seizure because having a needle in my arm and a tube up my nose is better than getting scolded.
“I was thinking about what you said,” he begins.
Oh, no. What did I say? When will I remember my mom’s favorite advice? El silencio es oro, or silence is golden. If I accidentally said a cuss word, I’m in really, really bad trouble. I could be grounded for a year. Once I used a cuss word, and my dad said, “Get thee to a nunnery!” He was serious. I straightened up fast. Nuns are really sweet and I’m sure they’re happy knowing they’ve got tickets to heaven, but they can’t be athletes and they can’t date boys.
“Maybe you’re right,” my dad says, pulling me back to the moment. “How can I expect you to show an interest in the things I like when I’m not showing an interest in the things you like?”
I nod, remembering how he read a book at my volleyball game, how he left the dinner table to search for Watership Down.
“So tell me,” he says, “how can I help you with science? I’m sure I’ve got some interesting books in my library.”
I’m flabbergasted. I can’t believe my luck. I expected prison chains and a dungeon with roaches climbing the walls. Instead, my dad wants to help me with my project. That’s great.
On second thought, maybe it isn’t so great. How’s he supposed to help? In some ways, my dad is really smart, but if we’re talking about things that don’t rhyme, he’s lost.
“Any ideas?” he asks, still wanting info on my science class.
“I have to do a project,” I offer. “On whooping cranes. The first birds have already started to arrive. Every autumn, they fly all the way from Canada to the Gulf Coast.”
“That’s a long trip,” my dad says. “I think I’ve got a bird-watching book. Maybe we can make some posters.”
“I was thinking we could see the birds in person at the Aransas Pass Wildlife Refuge. You won’t see them around our beaches. They’re very picky about their environment.”
“You want to drive to the middle of nowhere and hike?”
I nod.
He thinks about it. I can tell he doesn’t want to go, but after a few seconds, he says, “If that’s what you really want. I can take you there the Friday after Thanksgiving.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“You can’t act like a sailor from Moby Dick or like the god-of-the-sea guy.”
“You mean Poseidon?”
“Yeah, Poseidon.”
“What about Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea?” he teases. “Can I act like him?”
“No. No Santiago, whoever he is. And no chupacabra or donkey lady, either.” Since we’re going to look at whooping cranes, I add, “And no famous birds!”
I can tell this pains him, but he takes it like a man. “Okay,” he says. “I promise. No sea or bird stories. No ghost stories either.”
I can’t help smiling. He smiles too and playfully tugs at my ear. Everything’s going to be okay. I can’t believe it.
A while later, Vanessa and Ms. Cantu, who’s in a wheelchair, come out from the back room.
“How long will you need the wheelchair?” I ask.
The nurse answers for her, “Just till we get to the car.”
“They’re worried I’ll trip over this big thing and sue them,” Ms. Cantu explains, pointing to a cast on her leg.
When we get home, I ask Dad if I can go to Vanessa’s for a little while. “She’s going to help me correct my vocabulary test,” I say.
He agrees. With Vanessa’s help, I learn that a marsupial is an animal that keeps its baby in a pocket—a kangaroo, for example—and a trifle is something that is unimportant.
“Let’s check the Corpus Connection,” I say when we finish the corrections. “Maybe another dork posted his profile. At least we’ll have something to laugh about.”
We go to the laptop, and Vanessa gets on the net. Sure enough, there are lots of new profiles, but instead of finding a funny one, Vanessa finds one that grabs her attention.
“This guy calls himself the Silver Fox,” she says.
We read. Under interests, he’s written “traveling and cruising down Ocean Drive in my Hummer.” Under job, he’s written “businessman.”
“He’s got to have money if he’s a businessman,” I say.
“And if he can afford a H
ummer.”
“Click on his picture. The suspense is killing me.”
Vanessa clicks on the picture icon, and the Silver Fox pops on the screen. He’s got tanned skin, gray eyes, the whitest and straightest teeth, and silvering hair, of course.
“He looks like a soap opera star,” I say.
“Yeah, the kind of soap star who plays the owner of a big company and buys his girlfriend flowers and takes her to Italy on his private jet.” Vanessa stares at the Silver Fox for a moment. “This is it,” she decides. “This is the guy who will make my mom forget she hates men.”
“You can’t actually contact him, Vanessa. That’s dangerous.”
“I’m not going to write to him. I’m going to steal his identity.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mom needs a secret admirer in order to feel special again,” she says. “The Silver Fox is the perfect secret admirer. So I’ll pretend to be him when I write her love notes. What do you think?”
“I think she’s going to hate men even more once she finds out he’s a fake.”
“But in the meantime, she’ll feel better about herself,” Vanessa says. “My mom wouldn’t go out with some guy she doesn’t know. But if she starts seeing herself as attractive, then maybe she’ll be open to new relationships. See what I mean?”
“I guess,” I say, still doubtful.
“She needs a positive experience with a man to fight off the bad experience she had with my dad.”
“Well, when you put it that way, it makes sense.”
“So you’re going to help me, right?”
“Of course,” I giggle.
An hour later, we copy the first love poem onto some pretty stationery:
I’ve looked up and down and in every direction
For a woman who’s worthy of my affection.
But the girls I meet seem so fake,
Like people who want to make my heart break.
Then I discovered your love for art
And I know you’re someone who’ll take care of my heart.
