The Princess of Las Pulgas

by C. Lee McKenzie

  How can he know anything about the “adjustment” Keith and I have to make?

  “It has taken me over five years,” he says.

  “What?” I don’t try to hide the shock in my voice.

  “I stopped teaching at Channing a few years before you started.”

  I’m glad he’s not looking my direction because I have time to close my mouth.

  “I’d spent a great deal of my youthful energy getting into trouble, but I stayed out of jail from the time I was fourteen—”

  “Jail . . .” I bite down on my lower lip to shut myself up.

  “Luckily someone saw a flicker of intelligence in me, and even a speck of moral decency buried behind some purely bad behavior.”

  If Mr. Smith had socked me in the stomach, I wouldn’t have been struck this dumb.

  “I started studying, made it through college with a good man’s help and graduated with honors. I felt fortunate to find a position at Channing.” He smiles, but it’s at a memory, not at me. “Now I’m here. It’s been an interesting journey.”

  If my vocal cords weren’t paralyzed, I’d ask him why. Why not Channing? Why Las Pulgas?

  “I’m glad I could persuade you to take on K.T’s role,” he says, getting to his feet. I was concerned that we might have to cancel this year’s junior play when she broke her leg.”

  I don’t look at him for fear he’ll read my thoughts about K.T.

  “She’s assertive, so in the end I believe her accident gave us the strong stage manager we needed.”

  People around here choose very strange adjectives. Assertive? K.T. is a bitchy tyrant.

  His eyes are on me and I’m sure he’s reading my mind. “It also gave us a very fine Desdemona. I have papers to grade before lunch period ends. I will see you tonight at rehearsal, Miss Edmund. Remember, we’ll begin practicing on the auditorium stage from now on.”

  He’s gone before I think to tell him he has to change that scene in Act II. I’m not kissing Juan Pacheco.

  Chapter 27

  After an early dinner, Mom puts the dishes into the sink and sets the leftover soup in the refrigerator. “Keith, you take care of the clean up. Carlie has rehearsal.” She walks with me to the front door and asks, “What time are you through?”

  “Mr. Smith said by nine.”

  “Maybe I should drive you. I worry about those front tires.”

  “I’ll be fine.” The tension between us has eased since Monday. My guess is Mom and Keith have talked, but I don’t care why. I just care that Mom has stopped biting down on her words as if she’s severing small heads. At dinner even Keith grunted at the right places to show he was listening.

  “My next paycheck I’m getting two tires and our cell phones back. I want to be in touch with you when you’re out at night.”

  I have my keys in my hand and start across the pool area toward the gate when two guys I recognize from the halls of Las Pulgas come through the gate and cross toward me. I circle around one of the tables in hopes they're on their way somewhere and not interested in me. No such luck. They block my path.

  “Where you going in such a hurry?” The one closest to me smells of locker room.

  “Play practice.” I try to sound calm—but I don't.

  “Didn't know you lived in this place,” he says again, looking around the complex. I know that tactic. Pretend not to be interested in the prey, then pounce when they’re off guard. “We got a friend here. You know Anthony?”

  “Not really.” I shake my head for emphasis.

  “You will,” the one standing behind his friend says. His eyes are close set and when he talks he squints as if he's bringing me into focus “You and your brother will get to know him real good.”

  “We don't want any trouble.”

  “Too late for that.” He pushes his friend aside and shoves his face inches from mine. “You already got a pile of trouble. Channing people should stay where they belong. That ain't Las Pulgas. You got that?”

  I have nothing to say and if I did I couldn't get the words out because I’ve clamped of my mouth shut to keep my chin from quivering. I'm also not able to move—the pool is behind me and they're in front, blocking me. Screaming is out of the question because nobody here would pay any attention to it. Even my family’s immune to the loud voices we hear that always sound like cries for help but aren’t.

  The gate into the pool area clangs and the woman from Apartment 147 swaggers toward us. “Any of you got change for a buck? I gotta do some laundry and I need quarters.”

  They ignore her and head toward the stairs.

  “Bullies. Hate bullies.” She lights a cigarette. “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Better get yourself some mace, honey. Around here a girl needs protection.” She returns through the gate and goes into the laundry room at the end of the carport.

  The loud neighbor with a vocabulary that would fill a dictionary of banned language has just rescued me. Her mace suggestion is a good one. A bulky bodyguard is a better idea.

  It takes me a minute to make my legs move, and then I run for the Tercel and lock myself inside, where I sit shaking until I can steady my hand enough to start the car.

  I back the car out slowly, as if I can take the Tercel and sneak out from the carport without being seen or heard.

  I’ve memorized my Act I lines, but that’s because I don’t say very much. While I don’t have many lines in Act II either, I do have that sticky scene about Desdemona’s dad. I hate that I have to say any of those words, but I totally can’t stand that I have to say them with Chico and put up with his Iago glares. Every time I rehearse, my throat dries up and I choke, even when I’m practicing alone in front of the mirror.

  And in Acts III and IV Desdemona never shuts up.

  It’s after six and I run from the student parking lot across from the auditorium. The front door is unlocked and I hurry into the entrance hall. There are only night lights on and they cast eerie shadows. I was jumpy enough already. Now I’m really freaked.

  As I rush into the auditorium Mr. Smith is on stage. Next to him is Anthony, who tracks me as I come towards them. Then, without taking his eyes from me, he says something to Chico, who licks his lips.

  “Come up, Miss Edmund. I know some of us still need scripts, but it’s time we practice moving and interacting with the other characters. I am going to be “blocking”—by that I mean telling you where to stand and when to move. This act may be a bit rough, but let’s see what we can do with it. Desdemona, I’d like you to use this prop.” Mr. Smith hands me a small white handkerchief.

  He places a metal chair at the front of the stage. A folding table in the wings has water bottles, candlesticks and fake daggers. Off stage to the left, there’s a light panel where Jamal and K.T. huddle around switches that control the curtain and all the lights.

  Once we’ve started, Chico stumbles on every other line, so it’s hard to believe Iago could trick anyone into believing Desdemona and Cassio are an item, but he’s definitely been typecast. The evilest Las Pulgas male is playing the evilest Shakespearean villain. When it comes to the scene between Juan and me, I can’t concentrate. I avoid looking directly at him, which is exactly what Mr. Smith keeps directing me to do.

  “Even I don’t believe Desdemona is innocent,” Mr. Smith calls from his seat down stage. “She has to look Othello in the eye.”

  Easier said than done. First, I keep losing my place in the script. Then I keep remembering the feel of Juan’s hand around mine and his closeness on the steps earlier today. I fidget so much with my handkerchief that I drop it twice before the stage directions even call for it.

  K.T. shakes her head and, in a stage whisper that everyone can hear, says, “Better get us an understudy ready.” When I look at her, she glares back. She may seem not so tough to Juan, but I’ve seen her fight, so I don’t like turning my back on her, even with witnesses.

  Mr. Smith gets out of his chair and scoops up the handkerchief. �
��Let’s try it this way. Othello says, ‘Your [handkerchief] is too little.’ He pushes her hand and the handkerchief falls. Now, you can’t see it fall, either one of you, and you won’t if you are looking at each other, correct? Othello says blah blah blah, and Desdemona says, ‘I am very sorry that you are not well.’” He speaks her lines with a falsetto voice and everyone laughs at the tall, elegant black man flicking the lacy handkerchief like a girl.

  The tension melts and I get through the small scene. I have a long scene coming up that I don’t know at all, so I find a table and chair backstage and sit down to study. It’s hard to concentrate with Juan’s voice booming from the other side of the curtain. Phrases like kisses on her lips, and her sweet body keep distracting me as I try to learn my lines.

  How can Othello be such a dope? Iago’s a sleaze, and if Desdemona weren’t so lovesick and blind . . . Well, there wouldn’t be a story then, would there

  I’m so tired. Between play rehearsals, Keith’s trouble, the commotion in the apartment next to ours, the loud music that blasts me awake at odd hours, and now this latest crap from Chico and Anthony and his friends—I’m not sleeping very much anymore. I put my head down on the table next to my script and close my eyes.

  “All cast and crew on stage, please.” Mr. Smith’s voice snaps me awake.

  Yawning, I gather my script and grope my way around the curtain.

  “All right everyone, based on tonight,” he looks at the cast, “we have to add a few hours of rehearsal.”

  A collective groan interrupts him.

  He ignores the students who sink into their seats or hold their heads. “And on Saturday nights we’ll add another hour of practice until we open.” He holds up his calendar. “Anyone have conflicts?”

  “As long as it’s after two on Saturdays, I can make it,” Juan says. “I work until one-thirty.” He looks at me and I pretend to make notes on my schedule.

  “All right, cast and crew. I will see you tomorrow, with eyes bright and homework completed.” Mr. Smith shuts down the lights, leaving the flood on at the back until everyone files out, then he locks the stage door. “Gentlemen, we shall walk the ladies to their cars, if you please.”

  I wait until Anthony and Chico head out to the parking lot, then I pull out my keys and hurry toward my car. Juan falls in next to me, his arm brushing mine. “So are you ready for our big scene, Princess?”

  “I’ve already written a letter, telling my mother to notify the police if anything happens to me on that stage.”

  “Oh, Princess, I’m hurt.”

  “I don’t want to be.” We reach my car, and I say, “Thanks for the escort.”

  “My pleasure.” He walks across the now empty parking lot toward the street.

  I follow behind, my headlights casting a giant shadow of him over the pavement. When he reaches the sidewalk he turns right and keeps walking. Where’s he parked? Then it hits me. He doesn’t have a car. I slow and roll down the passenger window. “Want a lift?”

  “Are you a safe driver?”

  “Get in.”

  We drive past the school to the main highway. “Which way do I go?”

  “South to Escondido, then left. I’ll tell you where to stop.”

  Escondido’s the opposite way I take home. I shouldn’t have offered him a ride. I’m going to be later than I told Mom I’d be.

  Soon he says, “Stop here.” He points to a hotel with an iron barred front door and ground floor windows. On the second and third floors light glows from behind drawn curtains.

  “Is this home?”

  “Home to many.”

  The front door swings open and the bars clank shut behind the man who’s leaving. He’s reached where I’m parked when the door opens again and a woman sticks her head out. “¡Bastardo!” she shouts.

  “¡Calla la boca!” the man shouts over his shoulder, then gets into a car and guns the engine. His tires squeal as he backs up and makes a quick left on Escondido.

  “Carmen and Miguel are at it again,” Juan said.

  “Yes, I see.”

  “That sounds a bit like the Super Princess talking.”

  “Get off the princess stuff, okay? I’m just not used to people yelling at each other on the streets. Is that a crime?”

  Juan shrugs. “People get upset. They yell. It’s no big deal.”

  “We don’t do that.”

  “We?” He arches one eyebrow.

  “Look, I’m tired. Let’s just forget it.” I fiddle with my seat belt.

  “By we, you mean the upper classes in Channing?”

  “Holy crap, Juan. You are such a pain. I didn’t mean we in any big sense. I meant my family, that’s all.”

  “So you don’t yell because you’re not Mexican like me or,” he nods toward the hotel, “those people.”

  “What? Look I don’t care if you're Mexican, Martian or . . . Malaysian.”

  His laugh barely ruffles the air in the car. “Go ahead and lie to me, but remember what our favorite playwright said, ‘To thine own self be true.’”

  I need to ward him off, along with the headache that’s ready to pounce behind my eyeballs. “I don’t have anything against Mexicans or anyone else from Las Pulgas.”

  For a moment he looks up and stares at the roof of the Tercel.

  “Now what?”

  He turns his head so his eyes to meet mine. “It’s no use.”

  “I’m tired. I’ve got tons of homework to do and two scenes of dialog to memorize. If you think I’m some kind of bigot, you’re wrong, but I don’t have the energy to argue about it tonight.”

  “Well, you are a very pretty bigot.”

  “Merde.”

  “See?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “French.”

  “So because I study French, I’m a bigot?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “That’s so . . . dumb. It’s important to know another language, appreciate a different culture. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Sure I do, but why do you study French? Because you live in the middle of a densely populated French-speaking state?” He leans over and kisses me, stifling my witty response. “Adios.”

  I don’t have time to react to his kiss before he’s out of the car, loping across the lawn, dodging broken bicycles and shopping carts. He doesn’t go in the front door, but goes heads down the driveway alongside the hotel.

  That was so . . . unfair, untrue. I crank the car into a sharp U-turn. Absolutely baseless! “Grrr.”

  Why is he making me crazy? So what if he lives in a hotel with Carmen and Miguel and who knows how many more people? What’s that to me?

  I live in a dump of my own, so we have a lot in common. The difference is he doesn’t care if I see his dump. How can he be so sure of himself? He was even sure I’d let him kiss me. As I turn onto the main highway I trace my lips with my fingers. “I’m not letting him do that again."

  Chapter 28

  By the time I ease the Tercel into the carport, I have a strategy for getting through this play. I’ll be the super-prepared Desdemona, knowing all my lines. I’ll square off with K.T. and look her in the eye the next time she has some ratty thing to say about my acting. So far I’ve survived two run-ins with her and lived. I might as well go for a third time and see how charmed my life is. As for Chico and Anthony and Juan, I’ll pretend they don’t exist except as Iago and Cassio and Othello.

  I park the car, get out and wait by the door, listening, looking into the shadows, my fist curled around my keys so I can use them as a weapon if I have to.

  A cat yowls and something with a long tail scampers across the driveway to dive under a dumpster. My throat closes and feels like it did when I came down with the mumps. I flash on a memory of Dad, sitting on the edge of the bed, pushing tiny spoonfuls of ice chips into my teeth, mouth, then stroking my hair and telling me I’m beautiful in spite of my bullmastiff jaws.

  “Carlie love, this is going to take
time. Be patient. Take small pieces and let them melt slowly. That’s my girl.”

  “This is worse than the mumps, Dad.”

  Locking the door, I hurry from the car toward the gate. I wish I had my cell phone. Calling Mom, hearing her voice while I cross from the carport to the apartment would make me feel much safer.

  Once inside the pool area I run toward the apartment complex and mount the stairs, holding onto the rickety handrail.

  I sprint to #148 and, hand shaking, jab the key at the lock. On the second try the key slips in, but won’t turn. The carport gate opens and clangs shut. Someone’s entered the pool area. Still twisting the key, I pound on the door until it swings open, pulling me forward.

  “Carlie? What on earth?”

  “Key—got stuck.” I focus on removing the key, so I don’t have to look at Mom. I feel like all the blood has drained into my feet and my face must be the color of paste.

  “You’re later than you said. I was getting worried.”

  “Sorry.” I suck in oxygen before facing Mom. “I gave someone a ride home.”

  “A ride? Carlie—" She’s on alert, code red. I’ve broken a major rule.

  “It was a friend from the cast, Othello . . . I mean Juan Pacheco who plays Othello.”

  “Oh.” She takes a deep breath. Her exhale is a loud sigh. “I don’t—never mind. I’m glad you’re homr safe.” She locks the deadbolt on the door. “Nicolas Benz called twice. He said he’d call again about ten.” Mom tilts her head questioningly. “Date?”

  “Maybe.” I can’t think about a date while every nerve in my body is still short-circuiting. I need to be alone in a quiet place, somewhere I can concentrate on something besides the scary track team members out to get any Edmund they catch alone. Unfortunately, that quiet place is the room next to the loud smoker and her husband, Gerald. “I have to get some homework done,” I tell Mom.