Merci Suárez Changes Gears

by Meg Medina

  But I don’t feel lucky, not at all.

  And as for God, why wasn’t he looking out for Lolo? Why did he let him get confused on that median? Why did he put him in so much danger? Why did he nearly kill Roli and me?

  Our bedroom feels different tonight. I listen for Roli’s breathing on the other side of the curtain. When we were little, I could crawl into his bed if I was scared. Not now, of course. We’re too big. Nothing is the way it used to be, not with Roli, not with school, not with Lolo.

  I slip out of bed and stand by the window. Lolo and Abuela’s house is dark, and there’s no one on the glider. Papi is sleeping in the sewing room over there to make sure Lolo is OK. He and Tía helped get him to bed tonight. Abuela was too upset to do it. Too angry. Too tired, she said, crying. Too everything.

  “¿Pero, cómo? How could this happen?” she kept asking. “It was just a moment.”

  But nobody had an answer, or at least not one they would say. Not even Lolo himself could explain how he slipped away from her at the drugstore or why. But that’s what happened. They had gone to get more bags of Halloween candy because the twins had already eaten all of theirs. Before Abuela even noticed he wasn’t beside her, Lolo was walking home.

  Roli’s bed creaks, and then the curtain slides open. His hair is all points. There’s a nasty cut over his eyebrow where he hit the rearview mirror.

  “Are you OK?” I ask.

  He nods as his finger drifts to the stitches at his forehead.

  “What’s wrong with Lolo?” I whisper. “Why is he acting like this?”

  Roli looks at me for a long time. Finally, he crosses to his desk and signals to me to sit in the chair.

  “Come here.”

  He flips on the desk lamp and reaches for his paperweight. It’s the model of a brain he got for Christmas a couple of years ago. At the time, I told him it was the dumbest gift ever. He insisted that he wanted it.

  It’s life-size, the width of two fists, and it comes apart like a 3-D puzzle. He pulls it in front of me now, and in the dim light, I see that he’s labeled all the parts with long words that jumble in my mouth when I try to say them.

  “A human brain weighs about three pounds, and it has three main parts,” he whispers.

  “Roli —”

  He talks over me, his watery eyes on the model. “There are sections that manage how we talk, how we decide, how we remember, all like little departments that make us who we are.”

  He puts it down. “Lolo’s brain has gotten sick,” he says. “It’s shrinking a little every day, and so the parts aren’t working well anymore.”

  I stare at him. “Shrinking?” The thought is eerie. “Well, how can we make it better?”

  He looks at me squarely, the lamplight reflected in the lenses of his glasses. “He’s not going to get better, Merci. He’s going to get worse.”

  He can’t be right. “How do you know that, Roli?”

  “Because he has something called Alzheimer’s disease, Merci,” he says. “He’s had it for a few years, but now it’s advanced.”

  The word disease hangs between us. It’s a word that has bats and beetles all over it. A word that means sickness and worse.

  “Lolo has had a disease for years and you didn’t tell me?”

  He stares at the brain model, his face bright red. “Yes.”

  I push him but he stands his ground. I shove him again as everything starts to make sense. Lolo’s falls. His questions. How he wanders. His confusion. The day he almost hit Abuela. All along there has been a big secret in the Suárez family, and no one told me.

  “Merci,” Roli begins.

  “Quiet,” I say, glaring. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  I grab the brain model and angrily peel back layer after layer on my own, the complicated names sticking on my tongue as I practice them. Roli watches as I put it together and peel it apart, again and again, stumbling over the words until I can say them all perfectly.

  We sit together late into the night with that rubber brain. And when I finally start to ask all the questions I can think of, Roli answers every single one. For once, I don’t mind all the details.

  MAMI KEEPS US HOME on Monday.

  Are you dizzy? Are you feeling nauseous? Did you vomit?

  These are the questions Mami asks us every little while all weekend until Roli finally puts on his headphones and draws the curtains. The cut above his eye has seeped into a bruise that runs along his eye socket, just like Lolo’s old bruise. If he wanted to be a mad scientist today, he wouldn’t need makeup at all.

  Mami’s nose is still chapped, and her face has the pale color of someone who’s just been sick. But that hasn’t stopped her from getting out of bed today to light a candle in the living room. Abuela says novenas, but not Mami, who has never been one for church. When something big is wrong — like when the twins were born so small and couldn’t breathe on their own — she lights our Caridad del Cobre candle and says her prayers in her own words. “God hears everything, everywhere,” she says.

  I watch her from the doorway without her knowing. Her lips move quietly. Other times when I’ve been sick, Mami has let me crawl into her bed and watch game shows or read. Abuela has made me broth. But today, I still want to keep my distance. She knew . . . everyone knew . . . that Lolo was sick. And no one told me. I’m so angry that they kept it a secret that I can barely look at her. It’s one thing not to tell the twins, who can’t understand yet. Even when we came home from the hospital, they were still red-eyed and grumpy that they missed Halloween. Tía let them open every bag of candy we had left to keep them quiet.

  But I’m not five. I’m eleven!

  There’s a knock at the screen door in the kitchen. Mami’s eyes snap open in the middle of her prayers. “Merci,” she says, surprised to find me watching her.

  I turn away without a word.

  Lolo and Abuela are outside the kitchen door. They’ve never knocked before. More or less, we all call out and let ourselves in. But I locked the door, like another boundary between us.

  Abuela looks like she hasn’t slept a minute in days. “Are you feeling all right this morning?” she asks.

  “Preciosa,” Lolo says through the screen.

  I just stare at them. It feels as if I’ve lifted a whole house by myself. Everything hurts.

  After a minute, I unlock the door and Abuela wraps me in a big hug that lasts too long and that I don’t return. When she pulls back, her eyes are wet, and the sight of her so sad makes me stand back, afraid. I can’t find any words to say to her. All that’s banging around in my head is: Liars. I live in a family of liars.

  I stalk off to the living room, mute, right past Mami, who has come to see who’s here.

  “Merci,” she calls after me. “Come back.”

  “Déjala,” Abuela says. Let her be.

  I don’t know how long I’m in the living room, but a little while later, Lolo comes to find me. He’s showered and shaved, and his hair is neatly combed, the way Abuela likes, but I can still see that his eyes look tired, too. There’s not a scratch on him, though, nothing to say that he was almost hit by a car on Friday or that he caused an accident that was serious enough to be reported on the late news. It’s like the whole thing could have been a dream, like he’s not changing the way Roli says, but I know he is.

  Lolo sits down on the edge of the sofa and puts his tin of dominoes on the coffee table.

  “In case you were bored and wanted to play,” he says.

  Neither one of us makes a move to open the lid. Instead, I stare at the candlewick as it flickers against the Virgin’s calm smile. Normally, Lolo and I are easy with each other, pals. But not now. Everything feels stiff inside me in a way I don’t like. Everything is diseased.

  His brain is shrinking and it’s changing him. Everyone kept it a secret from me.

  It’s an angry loop.

  Lolo looks up at the ceiling and clears his throat. “I want to talk about something, preciosa.”


  I stay very still. Out in the kitchen, the coffeepot gurgles, and the smell of afternoon espresso snakes its way through the house. Roli is back in our room, sleeping. Maybe. Or spying. I just can’t tell anymore.

  “I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I got confused and nervous and suddenly . . .” His voice drifts off.

  “Roli told me what’s going on,” I say. “You do know what happened. You don’t have to lie to me anymore. You have Alzheimer’s.”

  Lolo folds his hands in his lap. They’re trembling a little.

  “I suppose that’s true,” he says after a few seconds.

  “You should have told me,” I say. “You kept a big secret, and we’re not supposed to have those in the Suárez family.”

  Lolo sighs. “You’re right,” he says.

  My voice is shaky as the anger in my belly swells. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? It’s not fair to treat me like that. You should all be grounded forever.”

  “Blame me,” Lolo says. “Not anyone else. I made them all promise a long time ago not to tell you until we had no choice.”

  It feels like he’s slapped me. Lolo and I have always told each other everything — or at least, I thought so. But now I see that he was the one to cut me out on purpose. My eyes fill up.

  Lolo stares into his hands and continues. “I wanted to enjoy our time the way it has always been for as long as possible. What’s coming is coming, mi cielo. Why think about drowning before we reach the river?”

  Is that what losing your memory is like, I wonder? Drowning? The whole idea makes me shiver. Lolo is right here, talking to me, the same as always, but he’s disappearing a little bit at a time. How can a grown-up forget how to walk across the street, and come to explain himself the next day?

  I stare at the tin of dominoes, blind anger rising suddenly from my toes. Roli’s words crowd inside my head, making me hate this game. Lolo will forget how to count and match the tiles one day. He’ll forget all the rules. In the next few years, Lolo might not be able to remember us, Merci. He won’t even remember himself.

  My eye pulls to the edge, but I don’t even try to coax it back. There’s no cure for what Lolo has, no pill that can take this away forever. Even if Roli becomes the best scientist in the world one day, he won’t have time to fix Lolo the way he wants to.

  My thoughts race faster and faster, balling up into an angry fist. Who will go to the twins’ Grands Day? Or walk the twins? Or help Papi on the job? Who’ll crack bad jokes at El Caribe and dance with Abuela?

  With one sudden swipe, I send the tin flying away from us. The clatter of the tiles spilling on the floor sounds like glass shattering.

  Mami and Abuela come running into the room. When she sees what I’ve done, Mami is on me in two steps. Her hand clamps down on my shoulder.

  “That’s enough, Merci,” she says. “I want you to pick this up right now.”

  Lolo steps forward. “Let her go, Ana,” he says softly.

  I back away from them all. “This is what it’s like when someone changes and scares you. How do you like it?”

  Lolo has a broken expression on his face. He steps forward slowly. “You’re frightened,” he says.

  I stand there, gaping. As soon as he says it, I know that it’s true. I know that one day Lolo will look at me and not remember who I am at all. There won’t be Lolo and me. I’ll be forgotten with everything else.

  My shoulders hunch as I start to sob the way I used to when I was little. I feel Lolo’s arms close around me, but I don’t have any energy left to fight or squirm. He lets me cry, waiting until the last drop is out of me.

  When I’m finally sucking in ragged breaths, he kisses my head.

  “I am frightened, too,” he says. “We all are. But we are the Suárez family, Merci. We are strong enough to face this together.” His words echo inside his chest as I listen. Already he sounds far away.

  EDNA IS COVERED IN sea lice bites.

  Her arms and neck are bumpy with flaming welts that are almost a perfect color match to our blazers. It looks like acne — the kind that needs a doctor to cure. The calamine lotion that’s smeared all over her legs doesn’t seem to be helping, either. She’s constantly scratching under her desk. Then I notice that it’s the same for Jamie, Rachel, Michael, and a few other kids, who are all scratching at themselves miserably. It must have happened when they went swimming at her party. Hannah’s overprotective mother finally came in handy. When Mrs. Kim saw the blue flags posted in the surf report, she kept Hannah home. And Lena didn’t go, either, I guess.

  Ms. Tannenbaum stops at my desk.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your car accident,” she whispers to me, kneeling near my desk. “I happened to be in the office when your mother called yesterday morning to excuse your absence. Linda McDaniels shared the details. We’re all so glad that you’re all right.”

  I suddenly feel everyone’s eyes on me from around the room.

  “This is for you.” Ms. Tannenbaum hands me an envelope. “Your fellow scholars in third hour wanted you to have this.”

  It’s a card.

  Accidents Happen is on the front, along with a picture of a puppy that has a bag of ice on its head and a thermometer in its mouth. Inside it reads, Glad you’re OK.

  My whole class has signed their names, even Edna and Jamie in their matching swirly script.

  My face flushes and a knot rises in my throat when I see all those names. I can’t help but wonder if Miss McDaniels made them all sign. She’s no stranger to forced notes of apology, after all.

  Still, I tuck the card inside my notebook for safekeeping.

  Ms. Tannenbaum lowers her voice even more. “And I don’t want you to think that I’ve forgotten about your costume, either. We’ll try to get to the bottom of things in the coming days when things settle down.”

  I look up at her blankly. I hadn’t thought about the ruined costume — or Edna’s party — since Friday at the fall festival. It seems like a million years ago now instead of four days. It’s the kind of thing that belongs with old toys that I’ve given away. In fact, if I were Miss McDaniels, I might file it in my Utter Nonsense folder.

  “Michael’s costume, you mean,” I say. “It doesn’t really matter anymore.”

  She nods and pats my hand as she straightens. “I suppose perspectives change based on events. What’s most important is that I hope this week will be better.”

  I glance at Edna, who’s squirming in her seat. She’s jammed her pencil inside the back of her shirt trying to reach a spot between her shoulder blades.

  “Yes, miss. I think it will be.”

  I still like Ms. Tannenbaum, but I’m not so sure about social studies anymore.

  I don’t want to talk about anybody’s death, not my own near experience that everyone keeps asking about. I don’t even want to talk about Egyptians who died thousands of years ago. Corpses, tombs, or burying treasures with important people. No matter what, all of it comes back to death, which comes back to Lolo being sick, and that makes me so sad that all I want to do is stare out the window.

  So I stay quieter than usual and answer questions only when she calls on me. I ask for a lunch pass to the library, too, so I don’t have to get grilled at our lunch table. (Was Roli drinking? Were we speeding? Did it hurt? Was anyone killed?) I just want to be by myself for a while. I sit at a computer and look up everything I can find about Alzheimer’s disease. Some things make me feel better, but others make me feel worse, especially the interviews with people who know they’re getting sicker every day. No place I look says there’s a cure.

  Today Ms. Tannenbaum announces that we’re finally going to start building our Great Tomb. We’ll work on it for the next few weeks, she says, right up to the winter break. On the last day, our adoring public — meaning Dr. Newman, our whole school, our parents, and even a reporter from the Palm Beach Post — will come see what we’ve made. So it’s got to be our best work.

  I’m barely listen
ing when the peace in our class is shattered by what she says next. She announces the person in charge of the mummy committee this year.

  “Congratulations, Lena,” she says.

  For a second, there’s total quiet while it sinks in. That’s the most important job. Without a mummy and sarcophagus, there is no Great Tomb Project at all. It’s the spotlight job. The mummy maker almost always gets their picture in the paper with Dr. Newman and Ms. Tannenbaum. Like everybody else, I more or less assumed it was going to be Edna. She has the highest grades, and she can get people to do what she says.

  Which is probably why Edna raises her scabby hand right away.

  “Shouldn’t Lena at least have a cochair, Ms. Tannenbaum?” she says. “Someone who has, you know, good grades and stuff? Our whole tomb depends on it. No offense, but you can’t give that job to just anybody.”

  “Just Anybody” Lena doesn’t even flinch.

  Ms. Tannenbaum takes a deep breath.

  “I have every confidence in Lena. But as it happens, she will have help because, you are right, creating our mummy is a very big task. And since Lena will be the committee chair, she will have the option of choosing her assistants,” Ms. Tannenbaum says. “Lena, you may pick two associates.”

  Edna turns to face Lena and crosses her arms, waiting to be picked first. Lena doesn’t change her expression, though, even when everybody starts to whisper, “Pick me!”

  “Would you like to think about it?” Ms. Tannenbaum asks, because it’s taking a little long.

  Lena shakes her head. She closes her eyes the way she did during her interpretive dance for the class. The blue points of her hair quiver a little, like a porcupine’s quills on alert.

  “Merci.” My name rings out clear as a bell. “Hannah, too.”

  “Oh my God,” Rachel says.

  LENA’S BLUE HAIR MAKES PEOPLE notice her now, which is strange for somebody who mostly seems to want to keep to herself. In fact, she is the only kid who walks around alone and never looks lonely. Maybe that’s why we haven’t really been friends. But now that I am working with her, I notice that she’s kind of interesting. She’s a notebook doodler, and she’s so quiet that you can walk by her and not realize she’s there. Once, I saw her doing a yoga stretch near the Sierpi´nski sculpture even as people were walking by. She’s always reading something that looks good, too, like a comic book or graphic novel with the words in another language. “How do you know what it says?” I asked her.