by Josh Farrar
“Joo have reach home of Marielis Eliana Cabrera … and her family also …” She sounded like she was yelling at a deaf person. “Please, now, you leave message for us. And … we will call you back … when we are no busy. Please speak slowly, and do not to leave a message too long. Good-bye.”
“Hola, Abuela, it’s me, Annabelle … are you there?” I yelled it, but I knew from experience how unlikely it was that Abuela would hear the message, now or ever. She rarely remembered to check the machine, and my parents and I would sometimes have to go through dozens of messages, one by one, when the tape filled up and the machine stopped working.
“Abuela, I hope you are doing good. X and I are okay. We both started school a couple weeks ago. There’re only a few middle schools in Providence, so my school’s way bigger than 443. Mom and Dad are busy with recording all the time. X is okay, I guess. Today he threw a cymbal at Dad. I would really love to talk to you right now. Do you have my cell? 718-215-1333. Call me if you can, okay? Love you, Abuela. Call me …”
EggMtnRckr: Wait, WHY exactly did X throw a cymbal?
Did he draw blood?
Bassinyrface: No, no … I mean, I’m sure it hurt, but my dad didnt go to the hospital or anything.
EggMtnRckr: What is goin on up there anyway? X is not exactly the cymbal thrower type.
Bassinyrface: well, he is since he moved HERE.
EggMtnRckr: sux that bad, eh?
Bassinyrface: Worse. I mean, my parents are never here. Remember how Abuela was always cooking like a crazy woman in my old house?
EggMtnRckr: yup, I do. it always smelled like onions frying in butter. And tomato sauce.
Bassinyrface: Well, my parents cant cook! And they dont clean, or anything. Abuela did EVERYTHING, and now she’s not here to help us.
EggMtnRckr: Ugh, that blows. But maybe things will get better? Maybe your mom n dad can do that stuff? Or maybe you and X can.
Bassinyrface: My parents never do anything except record and tour. You know that.
EggMtnRckr: So Belle, how about YR band stuff? Any progress on the rules?
Bassinyrface: mmm, not really. But I did find out there’s another band at school.
EggMtnRckr: Yeah? Any good?
Bassinyrface: Well they’re just a cover band like us, at least I think. But I hear they rule.
EggMtnRckr: Cover bands never rule. Original songs do.
Bassinyrface: Yeah, but I’ve heard like three people at school say they totally rock your face off.
EggMtnRckr: Well, listen, dont let em scare you. Whatever they have in tightness, u can make up for with good ORIGINAL songs.
Bassinyrface: I know, Professor Duffy, that’s what u always say.
EggMtnRckr: It’s true, though! How’s rule #3 coming?
Bassinyrface: My songwriting? Nothing to share … yet. But I’ll keep you posted.
EggMtnRckr: you should. U R gonna be a genius, I can tell.
Bassinyrface: thanks, R. You always know what to say. But … does it always take this long to form a band? This is getting super annoying.
EggMtnRckr: Belle, you’ve just started. It can take months to find just the right people.
Bassinyrface: But it didnt with Egg Mountain. Right after I joined, we were totally dominating the city. We had fans, we had gigs.
EggMtnRckr: Ha, so U think yr the secret to my success, eh? You do realize we were a band for almost a year before you graced us with your presence?
Bassinyrface: uhh, yeah, I do. And no, I dont think I’m the reason we were popular.
EggMtnRckr: You were PART of it. But another part of it was all the work we did for the year before that. Cant tell you how many times we played to four people in a lame café.
Bassinyrface: really?
EggMtnRckr: So, try to be patient. It’ll happen. Promise!!!
After chatting with Ronaldo, I pulled out my homework. I had picked an especially ridiculous writing assignment out of the blue bowl this week: “Which of your personal traits would you most like to pass on to your children?”
I would have liked to write an essay on all the reasons that assignment was just plain wrong. After the incident at Don’s, the last thing on my mind was my future family. Not everybody is going to have a million children anyway. And what if some girl in my class does want children in the future but can’t have them for some medical reason? She’ll remember the time in sixth grade when she was forced to describe the traits she wanted to pass on to her kids in some dumb essay, and she’ll feel terrible. I wanted to protest this assignment for ethical reasons.
Luckily, Mr. V told us we could always write about something else if we didn’t feel “inspired” by the one from the blue bowl. I tried some haikus:
Forced Family Fun
Drove us all bonkers today
Ice cream, salty tears
My dad loves music
My mom just follows my dad
Where do we fit in?
It seems clear to me
X chucked a cymbal at Dad!
He just needs some love
I need this rock band
To keep from going crazy
When will it happen?
Moments after I finished, my phone started to sing out The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” That was my customized Abuela ring!
I opened the flip cover. “Abuela?” I answered.
“Hola, mi Annabella,” Abuela said. “How you, my baby? Tell Abuela.”
I surprised myself by choking up with tears and almost not being able to talk.
“Annabella, is you all right?” Abuela asked.
I got it together. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” I said, trying to keep my voice from sounding shaky. “I was just drinking something, and it went down the wrong pipe.”
“Oh, I am sorry, angel. But you doing okay? Tell me. Why your brother throw a thimble at your papa?”
“A cymbal, Abuela—you know, like part of a drum set?”
“He what? Why he throw that? Why he hurt your papa?”
“Well, maybe because he’s tired of being ignored.”
“Your father ignore Chabito? Your mother?”
“Well, yeah. We’re not exactly getting tons of attention right now.”
“You want me talk to him? Talk to you father?”
“Well, maybe, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.”
“What you mean? You mama and papa always be good for you, Annabella. Maybe lots of things happening for they music now, so they don’t see. Maybe—Annabelle, what is wrong, baby? You crying?”
I totally was not crying when she asked. I was just sniffling for a half second. But the second she said the word “crying,” I completely broke down, snorting and sniffing and choking on my own tears.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. You cry with Abuela now, is okay. You feel better. You will.”
Abuela had always been big on getting tears out of your system. She said you needed to cry to put out the fires in your life, and that when you stopped you could take a look at what had burned down, and what hadn’t. So I just cried for a minute or two. Abuela was probably the only person in the world who I’d let see me like that. I knew it wouldn’t change the way she looked at me, so it didn’t matter. I just cried it out.
“You feel a little better, angelita?” Abuela asked.
“Yeah, a little,” I said. “But I’m not really even that sad. I’m just … mad.”
“At you fathers?” This was the word Abuela always said for parents, but I always smiled when I heard it, as if X and I were being raised by Charlie Sheen and his brother on Two and a Half Men.
“Yeah, mostly at them. But even at you a little, Abuela. This family doesn’t work without you. Don’t you get that?”
Now it was her turn to pretend not to cry. But I heard her breathe in sharply, and when she exhaled she sounded shaky.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she managed to say. “I knew it would no be easy, but I no like to hear you like this.”
I c
ould tell I had gotten to her. “Are you still sure you’d never come up here and live with us?”
“Oh, baby, you know how much it hurt me not to have my babies with me in Brooklyn no more. But maybe you understand me more when you old. I move around so much in my life, Annabella, and lot of times, no so happy thing for me to move. Like when I come to this country, not easy. When I marry you gran papi and live with him, not so easy. I have all my friends here, all my old lady friends and my family.”
“What do you mean? We’re your family.”
“Yes, yes, baby, for certain you are my family, my family most important. But I have my cousins and my sisters here, and they understand what it mean to be old lady like me, and how to help old lady like me. They can take care of your Abuela maybe better than you fathers take care. I never been to this Providence, this new city, and would be very hard for me to change now, to live there now.”
“But I miss you!”
“I miss you, too, Annabella, you know I do. I come visit so soon, I promise you, okay?”
“Wait, hold on,” I said. “Did you just say a second ago that you didn’t come up here because you know Mom and Dad can’t take care of you? Or won’t take care of you?”
“Annabella, I know you think me so strong, but I not so healthy all time anymore. Is hard to get older. Consuela, she take care me, and your uncle Roberto. Your mommy and daddy, they too busy.”
I suddenly realized what Abuela had obviously understood for a long time now: my parents weren’t so hot at parenting. They had been okay while Abuela was young enough and strong enough to hold everything together. But she was getting old and needed rest. And my parents were in no condition to help anybody but themselves.
“Maybe X and I should have stayed in Brooklyn with you,” I said. “Even though you’re getting older, you could take care of us way better than they can.”
“Annabella, no! I no like hear you speak this way, okay? You must love you fathers, and respect them. Even though they not perfect. Even though they make you angry.” She blew her nose, and I could picture her picking up one of the frilly baby blue handkerchiefs that she always carried around with her when she had a cold, hand-washing them with the rest of the laundry three times a week. “Life sometime very hard, baby, very hard. But you have to be strong. You got to be. And you got to remember that I love you, too, okay? Abuela love you very much.”
“I love you, too, Abuela,” I said, trying to ignore the voice inside my head that said, You are not as strong as she is. Will you ever be? “Very much.”
CRACKERS ’N’ CHEESE
Mr. V gave me back my “homesickness” assignment on the following Tuesday. It didn’t have a grade, but it was covered in red marks.
Everything’s better in Brooklyn
Fried salami, goopy cheese
Egg Mountain shows and the East River breeze
Take me back to Brooklyn, please
Man, I miss my old hometown
Milk shakes at Uncle Louie G’s
What’s for dinner tonight, pizza or Chinese?
Take me back to Brooklyn, please
Ms. Cabrera, a few comments:
• Nice emotion in this piece
• What is the Egg Mountain?
• “Goopy cheese” is a nice colloquial phrase, which makes me very hungry.
• I want to know more. There is a great deal of greasy food in Providence as well, I’m sure you know. What else are you missing? Other places, other people? Can you write more verses, please?
• “Uncle Louie G’s?” Is this the proper spelling? Please verify.
• “pizza or Chinese”—nice touch, celebrating multicultural cuisine
This is a nice beginning. It begs questions of the reader, which is a good thing. Is it a poem or a song? Songs are a legitimate form—you should keep working on this—but even short songs have more than two verses, usually, don’t they? And a chorus?
Keep going!
Mr. V
Jonny and I met again at lunchtime. We passed the activities board in the hall, and I spotted my sign, now hanging at a funky angle. It was starting to get tattered around the edges, and someone had written “LOSER” at the bottom! That insightful comment had been there for at least three hours.
“This is so depressing,” I said. Although it was probably time to pull the sign anyway—I hadn’t gotten a single response after the ADHDisaster. I ripped the sign off, folded it up, and threw it in the trash.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Jonny said. “Child’s play.”
“What do you mean? That’s so obnoxious.”
“Sticks and stones, Cabrera. Forget about it. Listen, I’ve got a lead on a musician. A piano player.”
“A piano player?” I hadn’t really thought about keyboards—guitar, bass, and drums were the real essentials. I didn’t want to sound too much like Benny and Joon, either.
“A keyboardist. Whatever. She can play.”
“Well, okay. Sure.” Rule number one, I thought. Got to go for it.
At this point, I probably would have hired a kazoo player if that kazoo player had shown some serious commitment. If I had to mold the talent, I’d mold the talent. Jonny said he had heard really good things about this girl, at least musically. He didn’t say a word about her personality.
We walked down the hall and I spotted Bumblebee Shoes, the kid who was constantly being thrashed by the team of Federal Hill thugs. I gave him a nod. He started to give me a smile, but then he took a quick look at Jonny and turned white. The kid was so spooked, I guess anybody over five foot six gave him the heebie-jeebies.
“Did you see that?” I asked Jonny.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing.” It was too complicated to explain.
Jonny led me up two flights of stairs to a short hallway on the top floor of the school.
“This is where the practice room is,” Jonny said. “Every once in a while a band will work up here, but it’s usually where the classical kids come to geek out and practice for an hour.”
“I hear somebody going at it right now,” I said. I could hear fast, furious classical piano music.
“Yup.”
We peeked into the room and saw a girl absolutely punishing a piano. She stared at her sheet music like a psychic looking into a crystal ball, and she pounded the keys as if fighting some private war. The girl didn’t notice us. Then the music changed, and suddenly she was playing quiet, spacey melodies. She looked like she was in a trance.
“Ah, yes. Crackers ’n’ Cheese has some crazy technique,” said Jonny.
“Crackers ’n’ Cheese?” I repeated, loudly and stupidly. The music stopped.
“I don’t like to be called that anymore,” the girl said. She stood up so suddenly that the piano bench fell over. Furrowing her brow, she picked up the bench and then turned around to see who had so rudely interrupted her practice session. She was African American, very tall, beanpole thin, and had a goofy expression, like Martians had dropped her off on Earth, hightailed it back to space, then left her here to fend for herself.
“Wow, you’re really tall!” I said. Duh. Another brilliant comment.
“Yep, I know.” The girl popped a Triscuit in her mouth and followed it with a cube of orange cheese. Her lavender top was covered with crumbs.
“You’ve, uh, got something on your shirt,” Jonny said, then, to me, explained, “That’s why they call her Crackers ’n’—”
“It’s just a snack,” Crackers ’n’ Cheese said, brushing off some crumbs.
“Hey, aren’t you in Mr. V’s class?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“I thought you looked familiar.”
“You look familiar, too, Annabelle Cabrera.”
“How’d you know my name?”
“You talk a lot. You’re kind of loud.”
Loud? I had barely opened my mouth in that class.
“Well, what was that excellent music you were playing?”
“It’s by the composer Ravel.”
“Ra-who?” I said.
“Maurice Ravel. He’s French.”
“It’s great. Play some more, Cracker— Sorry, what’s your real name?” Jonny said.
“Christine. Christine Briar.”
She put her hands on the keyboard again. At first, she didn’t play a note. Resting her fingers on the keys, she closed her eyes and took one deep breath, then another. Jonny looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Then Crackers/Christine’s hands started to move, and waves of big, round sound came out of the piano. With slim, powerful hands, she played up and down the instrument, her fingers racing across the keys like spiders. When she frowned, a big wrinkle appeared in the middle of her forehead, like there was an old woman trapped in her sixth grader’s body.
“Whoa, that’s amazing playing, Crackers,” I said. “I mean, Christine. Want to join our band?”
“Our band?” Jonny said.
“Sorry, my bad,” I said. “My band.”
I explained the idea of the rock band while Crackers pigged out. How’d she get all those Triscuits into that skinny frame?
“You want to have a piano in your rock band?” Crackers asked.
“It might be kind of hard lugging a piano around to clubs, but I have a keyboard you can borrow. I want great musicians in my band, and you’re pretty great.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever be a great musician, but I definitely work at it.”
Crackers started up the Ra-who piece again, playing even harder and faster while Jonny and I listened in awe. Crackers finished the piece with a flourish, closed the lid of the piano, and turned to us.
“I’ve thought it over and decided I’d like to participate.”
Jonny gave me a quick whoa-she-could-be-nuts look, but I was stoked. I clapped my hands together, let out an embarrassingly girly squeal, and jumped in the air.
“Cool!” I said. “A band member! One down, a couple to go. Can you get together to practice this Saturday at my place?”
