Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink

by Nancy Rue

  15

  Dad wasn’t kidding when he said Inez was coming early. She had a breakfast concoction on a tray in front of Lucy before she could even get off the couch to go to the bathroom.

  “Eat this now,” she said. “I will make the caldo de res for lunch.”

  “What’s that?” Lucy said.

  “Stew. Very healing.”

  “What’s this?” She drew in a breath of steam from the plate in her lap. It smelled amazing. Dad would say Inez had stolen it from heaven.

  “Machaca,” Inez said.

  Lucy stared into the bowl whose contents shone with grease. “Do I want to know what’s in it?”

  “Brisket, scrambled eggs, beans, hash browns.”

  “Does Mora like it?”

  Inez straightened up from peering under the couch at Artemis Hamm. Lucy thought she saw a smile somewhere on her face. “No,” she said. “She says she will die if she eats it.”

  “Then I’ll probably like it,” Lucy said. And she did.

  When she was finished, she wriggled back into the pillows and said, “I guess I get to watch TV all day, huh?”

  “Huh,” Inez said as she produced a bright red notebook that said LUCY ROONEY, SOCCER CAPTAIN on the front of it. “Work from Senor Coach. Get busy.”

  “I have a concussion!”

  “You will live.”

  And then Inez got busy, sweeping and polishing and scrubbing things Lucy never would have thought of. She herself had no choice but to do the twenty math problems Mr. Auggy had assigned, all of them with jokes attached to them, and copy over the paragraph she had managed to string together from her collage. By the time she was finished, Inez had the caldo de res ready, and although it looked like it had the hoof of some animal swimming in it, Lucy ate it and scraped the bowl with her finger.

  Inez made her take a shower and climb into her bed for the nap she swore she didn’t need. She turned on the radio so she could hear Dad’s voice while she lay there.

  When she woke up, Mora was sitting in her rocking chair, staring at her.

  “What was it like?” she said.

  “What was what like?” Lucy sat up and felt somehow naked with Mora in her room.

  “Going unconscious — was it weird?”

  “No — well, yeah. It was like being asleep, only not.”

  Mora arched an eyebrow. “Now, that clears it up. At least we don’t have to do Bible study today because you’re sick. I bet we could talk Abuela into letting us watch Oprah.”

  Lucy was about to ask her what the big deal was about Oprah when she heard a high-pitched whine outside the window.

  Mora bolted to her feet. “Is that that cat?”

  “Could be,” Lucy said, though she knew it wasn’t.

  “I’m out of here,” Mora said, and she was.

  Lucy waited until she heard the TV go on before she got to her knees and looked out the window. Januarie was crouched below, face full of news.

  “Dusty and that other girl are coming to your back door!” she spewed out.

  “No they are not,” Lucy said.

  “Yuh-huh.”

  Sure enough, Lucy heard voices from the kitchen that didn’t belong there.

  “Okay, thanks,” she whispered to Januarie. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  She shut the window, ready to burrow under the covers, but Mora f lung open the door and said, “You have company. Huh. You really do have friends.”

  Lucy didn’t inform her that Dusty and Veronica did not qualify as friends. And what was with everybody invading her bedroom? She felt a sudden need to brush her hair. She tightened her ponytail and straightened her big Dad T-shirt and pulled it over her knees as she hugged them against her.

  “Hi,” Dusty said from the doorway.

  “Hi,” Veronica said from over her shoulder.

  Dusty gazed around the room as if she were entering a foreign land. “Can we come in?”

  “Sure,” Mora said. She shut the lid on the toy chest and patted it. “You can sit here.”

  Their voices — as they chattered about Lucy’s stuffed animals in the fireplace and the giant soccer ball on the bed and the totally cool rocking horse in the corner — covered the mournful mewing of Lollipop in the chest.

  “Cool room,” Dusty said as she sat on the end of Lucy’s bed and leaned on the soccer ball.

  Mora settled herself into the rocking chair and dug into her pocket. Inez must not have frisked her for techno today. Lucy herself focused nervously on Veronica, who looked like she was about to open Lucy’s drawers.

  “Are you better?” Dusty said.

  “Uh-huh,” Lucy said. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to a roomful of girly girls — her room full. It didn’t help that Januarie appeared in the doorway, scowling, chubby arms folded across her chest as if to say, “You let them in? How could you?”

  “I was so scared when Mr. Auggy said you had a concussion,” Dusty said.

  “You could die from that,” Veronica said.

  Januarie hiked herself up beside Lucy. “Could you?”

  “I didn’t,” Lucy said.

  “Which is good, because we are going to have a for-real soccer team.” Dusty smiled, lighting up her heart-face. “And you’re the captain.”

  Lucy looked at each of them, but they were both smiling, Veronica with her lip hanging down.

  “Is Gabe mad about that?” Lucy said.

  Dusty shrugged. “He’ll get over it.”

  “I comforted him,” Veronica said with a giggle.

  Ickety-ick.

  “Is Gabe your boyfriend?” Mora said.

  “I wish,” Veronica said.

  “I have a boyfriend.” Mora stared into the thing she was holding, which didn’t appear to be either her cell phone or her iPod.

  Veronica wandered over to her, but Dusty parked her chin on the soccer ball and said to Lucy, “We are going to have such a good team. I wish we could have uniforms.”

  “Me too,” Lucy said slowly. “I was thinking of red and blue — I don’t know — ”

  “That’s totally what I was thinking! We have to come up with a name for the whole team, though. You’re good at soccer names.”

  “That is the coolest thing ever!”

  They both looked at Veronica, who held Mora’s small contraption in her hands as if it were a diamond ring.

  “What is it?” Dusty said. She got up to join them. Even Januarie craned her head.

  “It’s an electronic diary.” Mora took it carefully back from Veronica. “I keep all my secrets in it.”

  “About your boyfriend,” Veronica said, voice velvet with envy.

  “Oh, yeah, and other stuff. Very secret stuff.”

  Lucy could actually understand that. She’d been pretty nervous when Veronica was poking around near the underwear drawer. She had to find a safer place for the Book of Lists.

  “That’s why I use an electronic diary instead of a regular one,” Mora was explaining. “You have to have a password to get into it.”

  “What is it?” Veronica said.

  Dusty tucked her chin under. “Like she’s so going to tell you.”

  “Oh, it’s okay.” Mora’s eyes were big and shiny. Lucy figured she loved an audience. “It only opens if I say it exactly the way I recorded it. And it’ll tell me if I’ve had intruders.”

  “Cool.” Veronica seemed barely able to keep herself from dissolving into a coveting pool.

  “See, you have to do it just like this.” Mora put the device up to her lips and said, in a voice that sounded like somebody on TV, “Consuela.”

  “Who’s Consuela?” Dusty said.

  “It’s the name I wish I had instead of Mora. See — ” She f lashed the diary toward Veronica. “I’m in.”

  It was obviously too cool for words this time, because Veronica just shook her head. Even Dusty looked impressed, and Januarie — Januarie was hanging over the edge of the bed, fascinated in spite of herself. The two seconds of being abl
e to talk to another girl slithered out of Lucy like a snake that might never have been there in the first place.

  “A gathering of mini-women!” someone said from the doorway.

  Dad was there, face sunlight-smiling, eyes traveling toward the sounds.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  Lucy started to scramble out of bed, but Dad said, “Stay where you are. You’re still a patient.”

  “How did he know you were getting up?” Veronica whispered loudly.

  “Because he isn’t deaf,” Lucy whispered back.

  Dad chuckled. “A lot of people make that mistake. And you are?”

  “Me?” Veronica said.

  “This is Veronica,” Lucy said.

  “Ah — from church.” Dad’s eyes traveled some more. “Dusty, you here too?”

  “Wow — yeah.” Dusty looked impressed, more than she was over the electronic diary.

  “Where’s Januarie-February-June-or-July?”

  “Here,” said the Chihuahua voice. By some miracle, she hadn’t said a word through the whole thing. Dad must have smelled her.

  “What’s up, little one?” he said.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Inez made cookies.”

  Januarie was off the bed and in the kitchen almost before Dad could get out of the doorway.

  “We shouldn’t do that, Dad,” Lucy said. “She has to lose weight if she’s going to play soccer.” She sneaked a glance at Veronica, who didn’t even blink.

  “She’s not that chubby,” Dusty said. “I was like that when I was her age.”

  “Not me,” Mora said. “I’ve always been thin — that’s why I’m such a good dancer.”

  “Do you take actual dance classes?” Veronica said, using her envy voice again.

  While Mora went into a long explanation of how many classes she took every week and how many competitions her team in Ala-mogordo had won, Dad eased his way over to the bed and felt Lucy’s forehead.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You seem better — but I still want you to stay home tomorrow.”

  “Another day?” Dusty said. “Can’t she come back? We’ll watch out for her.”

  Dad found Lucy and arched his eyebrows. She knew what he was thinking. She was a little confused herself.

  “We’ll see. I’ll let you girls do your thing. Luce — take care of what I love.”

  “I will.”

  “That is so cool,” Dusty said when he was gone.

  “What?”

  “You and your dad. It’s like, you know each other so well.”

  “We take care of each other.” Lucy wriggled a little.

  “Wow,” Dusty said. “Wow.”

  Wow was right. Lucy had to wonder if Dusty was just being nice to her because she had a concussion and nobody else in school had ever had one before. There had to be some reason why Dusty wasn’t looking at her like her skin was the wrong color. Or, actually, why she was looking at her at all. It was almost fun — but you couldn’t be too careful.

  Dad didn’t let her go back to school the next day. The worst part about that — besides not getting to play soccer — was missing J.J.

  He didn’t come by after school on Monday, and Januarie had no message from him. As Lucy lay on the Napping Couch Tuesday, sick of doing nothing, she thought about his face the last time she saw him. Was he still mad because she told that he was in the shed? What was she supposed to do? And besides, the only trouble he got into was having to go to Mr. Auggy every day after school. That was better than his dad yelling at him so bad he had to go hide in their backyard.

  Thank you for my dad, she thought. And then she wondered who she was thanking. When Inez set up for Bible study right there at the coffee table that afternoon — with the TV Mora so longed to turn on just a few feet away — Lucy wondered something. Could you think about God without knowing you were? Like even if you were mad at him?

  As Inez told her and Mora the next part of the story, Lucy figured if anybody had a right to be ticked off at him it was Ruth and Naomi, who even changed her name to Mara, which meant “bitter.”

  “Mora means bitter?” Mora said.

  “Mara,” Inez said.

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m going to change mine to Consuela when I’m old enough.”

  Naomi had a relative in Bethlehem named Senor Boaz, Inez told them.

  “Bozo?” Mora said. “What is up with the names?”

  “Boaz,” Lucy and Inez said together.

  Could this girl be any more annoying?

  He had a field where Ruth went every day to pick up the leftovers so she and Naomi could eat.

  “Is that like going through the dumpster behind a restaurant?” Mora said.

  “Senor Boaz he is a good man,” Inez said. “When he finds out what Senora Ruth is doing, he tells his other workers leave more for her.”

  Mora wiggled her eyebrows. “He thought she was hot.”

  “He does. But he shows her the respect. He does not think a beautiful young woman will want the old man.”

  “How old was he?” Mora said. “Like thirty or something?”

  “Much older than she is.”

  “Then he must have been rich.”

  “Would you shut — hush up?” Lucy heard herself say. “I want to hear this.”

  Mora blinked her big eyes. “You do?”

  “Yeah,” Lucy said. “I do.”

  Inez ran her hand across the page in that way she had. “Senor Boaz finally has the cause to talk to Senora Ruth and he tells her to gather grain only in one special field, where nobody will bother her. Other hombres think she is ‘hot’ too.”

  Mora nodded. So did Lucy.

  “When she asks him why he is nice to her, he says — ” Inez nodded at her Bible. “I will read.” She cleared her throat and began: “ ‘I have been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband — how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.’ ”

  She closed the Bible and her eyes. Mora rolled the ribbon that trailed from it around her finger.

  “Did he do it?” Lucy said. “Did God reward Ruth?”

  “Yes. Senor Boaz marries Senora Ruth and gives Senora Naomi a place to live.”

  “Cool,” Mora said. “Happily ever after. I’m gonna go put that in my diary.”

  “What will you write?” Inez said.

  “How if I’m good, I’ll get to go out with Reese.”

  “No, Mora,” Inez said sharply. “This is not what it means.”

  “Then what does it mean?” Lucy threw off the blanket that was suddenly smothering her. “See, I don’t get it, because my mom was good, and she got killed. And my dad is good, and he got his sight taken away from him. I try to be good, and my Aunt Karen keeps saying I have to go live with her, which would be like, horrible — ”

  Lucy stopped, because she was breathing hard, and Mora was watching her with frightened eyes. Artemis, Marmalade, and Lollipop all f led from the living room. Only Inez stayed still and quiet.

  “Mora,” she said, “make the tea.”

  She did it without argument. Lucy folded her arms around herself and wished she could suck every word back in.

  “Everything is not happily ever after for Senora Ruth,” Inez said. “You will see in the next part. And it is not for Senora Naomi — she still does not have her hijos and her esposo.”

  Lucy let her chin drop to her propped-up knees. “Then what good does it do to believe in God if bad things are going to happen anyway?”

  “How does Ruth get through these bad things?”

  “She worked her tail off,” Lucy said, although she knew that wasn’t the answer Inez was looking for.

  “And who gives her the chance to work?”

  “Bozo — sorry — Boaz.”r />
  “And why does Senor Boaz have such rich fields and so many people looking up to him?”

  Lucy shrugged.

  “That is right,” Inez said.

  “Huh?”

  “We do not know why some people have the good fortune and some have the bad. We all have some of each. But Senor Boaz knows God, and so the bad is not so bad, and the good is even better.”

  “How did he know him?”

  Inez closed her eyes, as if the answer were inside her eyelids. “We all know him somehow different. You will find your way.”

  What if I don’t want to? Lucy wanted to ask. And then she didn’t want to ask. And that confused her.

  “Enough for today,” Inez said. “You want the quesadilla?”

  “Can I have guacamole with it?”

  “Si.”

  “The kind that looks like baby food and makes your nose run?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please,” Lucy said.

  And it was better for the moment.

  Lucy never thought she would be happy to go back to school, but when Dad said on Wednesday that she could, she was ready long before Januarie showed up at the back gate. J.J. wasn’t with her, but Lucy was afraid to ask why. She rode across Second Street in silence.

  “Don’t you want to know where J.J. is?” Januarie said.

  “Is he mad at me?” Lucy said.

  “Kind of.”

  “Then no, I don’t want to know.”

  It was the only dark part of the day, or any of the almost two weeks of days that followed.

  Every day at recess, Mr. Auggy worked them hard, only to Lucy it was like working at play, and in a dream world. Each time she thought Mr. Auggy had taught her everything he knew, like he promised, she learned something new.

  And just as he said, as long as she concentrated on the game, it didn’t bug her so much that Gabe called her Lucy Goosey just to make her face turn the color of a hot chili pepper, or that Veronica yelled “Foul!” every time anybody touched her or Gabe. In fact, Lucy grinned like no other when Dusty finally said, “Veronica, is that the only word you know in soccer?” After that, Veronica didn’t do it so much.

  Now J.J. — he said almost nothing at all. Lucy noticed — because she watched him, begging him with her eyes — that he was getting better at soccer too. He could dribble with almost as much control as Gabe, and he blocked most of Gabe’s shots before Januarie even saw them coming, although that wasn’t saying all that much. She wasn’t getting better at soccer. But J.J. didn’t even answer Lucy when she told him at the water fountain that he rocked.