Facts of Life

by Gary Soto

  Letty was perturbed that her grandmother hadn't listened. And what was this about not liking boys? She bristled when her mother said, "Boys like long hair."

  But Letty checked her emotions and held in her disappointment. Was this her family?

  "Elena," her grandmother began. Letty considered correcting her grandmother by saying, "No, I'm Leticia," but she figured her grandmother's memory was perforated with holes. She had six other grandchildren. She couldn't get their names right every time.

  Her grandmother sipped from the Big Gulp and smacked her lips. "Could you walk the dog?"

  The pug was curled up on the rug in the corner of the bedroom. Poor Sammy, a loyal dog, was mostly imprisoned indoors and just plain old. Letty was glad to leave the house. She got the leash from the kitchen and whistled. "Come on, Sammy. Let's go for a walk."

  Her grandmother lived across the street from a park. Fall leaves carpeted the lawn. The trees rattled their remaining leaves, and the afternoon sun blazed weakly. The squeak of the swings reminded Letty of her childhood and how her father would push her high.

  She paused when her cell rang. It's Miguel, she thought, and didn't bother to bring the phone out of her front pocket.

  Letty parked herself on a bench and let Sammy roam the lawn, nibble at a flea in his fur, and poke his flat nose into a puddle of water. When she got up and clapped her hands, the dog didn't look up.

  "Poor thing," she murmured. "He can hardly hear anymore." When she called the dog loudly, he hurried to join her at the swings. She kicked herself up to a dizzying height. But it wasn't the same as when her father had pushed her and the cold sang through her hair and froze her ears.

  She jumped from the swing when Sammy began to wander toward a couple pushing a stroller. "Sammy, come back," she ordered. She slapped her thighs and whistled, but the dog advanced toward the couple.

  Silly dog, she thought, and began running, something she hadn't done in a long time and that made her feel like a little kid. There was happiness inside her—she, a thirteen-year-old, chasing after a dog. Was there anything happier in life?

  As she got closer, she recognized the young woman—a girl who had moved away from the neighborhood a year ago. Oh, my gosh, Letty thought as her trot slowed to a walk. The girl was maybe sixteen and already had a baby in a stroller. The scene struck Letty like a revelation and sent chills racing down her back. The young mother hadn't gotten rid of her own baby fat—it was around her middle and eventually, Letty suspected, would spread down her thighs and wobble up her arms. It was only a matter of time.

  "Sorry." Letty flashed a quick smile as she lifted Sammy into her arms.

  But neither of them responded. There were tears in the girl's eyes and something like boredom in the boy's. Neither turned to coo loving words to the baby who had begun to cry and kick it's pink blanket.

  Letty hurried away. She dropped on the lawn, re-leased Sammy from her hold, and glanced at the couple, now sitting on a far bench. The baby was crying, and neither made the effort to bring the baby into their arms and comfort her with baby talk.

  "I'm not going to be like them," she told herself. She was going to save her money for the architecture class at San Jose State.

  A leaf floated down from a eucalyptus tree and tapped her shoulder. She crushed it in her palm, and the rush of childhood returned when she closed her eyes and breathed in it's aroma. She wove a ring out of grass and slipped it onto her finger, then made a small grassy crown for Sammy. She could see for herself that she was only thirteen and had a future. No matter how often Miguel called, she wasn't answering.

  The Ideal City

  REBECCA MARTINEZ was gazing into her lunch bag-sandwich, carrot sticks, and three star-shaped cookies (all broken but still sweet)—when Sylvia Gonzalez set a piece of paper on her desk. At first Rebecca assumed Sylvia was showing off an old report card. Then she thought, It looks like a claim check for the dry cleaners. But that didn't seem right, either. What was it?

  "My dad said you could fix it," Sylvia stated boldly.

  Sylvia was the newly appointed president of the sixth-grade class. She had been promoted when the previous president moved away, taking with him the rumor that he had stolen the ice cream money during a fire drill.

  "What do you mean, 'fix it'?" Rebecca asked.

  "You know."

  Rebecca shrugged. She didn't know.

  Sylvia sighed in frustration, her breath blowing across Rebecca's arm.

  Yuck, Rebecca thought. Her mouth curled up in disgust as she wiped her arm.

  "Let me tell you, then." Sylvia explained that her father had gotten a citation for parking in a yellow zone—he was there only three minutes!—and since Rebecca's mom, the only parking enforcement in their dinky town, was the person who had issued the citation, she could get rid of it.

  Rebecca gripped the throat of her paper bag, choking it as if it had done something wrong. Wouldn't her mom get in trouble? What Sylvia was seeking was against the law.

  "I can't do that," Rebecca replied. "I don't know how."

  "It happens all the time," Sylvia confided in a near whisper. "Your mom can fix it!"

  Rebecca shrugged. At that, Sylvia grew angry but remained cautious, as her eyes shifted occasionally to their teacher, Mrs. Lynch. If Mr. Gonzalez had to pay the parking ticket, Sylvia divulged, he wouldn't have the money to get her the coat he promised.

  Again Rebecca repeated her moral stance: No, she couldn't help.

  "Do it," Sylvia snarled. Her eyes became stoked with anger.

  Rebecca stepped back, frightened. The clock over the white board read 11:57. In three minutes she would be out the door and rushing toward the table where she always ate lunch with her best friend, Carolina.

  "You can too!" Sylvia was grim. "Just ask your mother!"

  Rebecca whirled around and fled, her hands touching each desk as she made her way up the row. She felt dizzy with fear.

  Because Carolina had to stay in class to make up a test, Rebecca ate alone. She wondered about her poor mother. She worked in parking enforcement and drove a little vehicle—half car, half scooter—a job that provided them with a house and food. For her efforts, she was often yelled and spat at and twice pushed. Why do they blame her? Rebecca argued. It was just her mom's job.

  As she finished her lunch, she kept her distance from the other students. From where she sat, she recognized danger: Two boys were fighting and Sylvia was right in the mix, her fists swinging.

  Rebecca was then surprised by a third grader in a dirty Disneyland T-shirt. He demanded the cookie in her hand, and she handed him a piece.

  He turned it over, baring his teeth like a shark, and remarked, "You got ugly cookies." He fit it into his mouth, turned, and left.

  Rebecca's heart sank. If she were president of her class, she would mandate that kids with dirty hands be taught manners!

  "They're not ugly," she muttered. She nibbled the other half of the broken cookie, hurt because the boy spoke the truth. Unlike fancier Oreos and Nutter Butters, the cookies her mother bought were cheaper and poorer quality. Still, they were sweet, not like Sylvia. Not like a lot of people.

  On the way home Rebecca spied Sylvia standing at a corner with two large girls. They were eating potato chips and doughnuts and sharing a forty-eight-ounce soda.

  "They're going to get me," she murmured, her heart fluttering like a little bird behind her blouse. She gazed up into the tree; a bird was chirping a sad sound.

  Rebecca tiptoed backward, hid behind a car, and, when it was safe, leaped across the street. She took a new route home.

  It was a scary odyssey. Large dogs behind chain-link fences snorted and showed their teeth, slobber hanging from the corners of their mouths. There were car parts on almost every yellowish lawn, and if not car parts, old couches, rusty swings, parts of refrigerators, dismantled bicycles, deflated blow-up swimming pools, and broken toys. There were men on porch steps, their eyes cloudy. None of them smiled at her, although one man wa
ved a flyswatter in her direction. Rebecca didn't understand why he was doing that, and she didn't hang around to find out.

  She hurried away, skipped even, hoping to look carefree. But she soon slowed to a walk and played a game: Step on a crack and break your mother's back. She treaded carefully, heel to toe, but froze when she again spied Sylvia with her friends. They were dragging sticks in the gutter, gathering leaves wet as paper towels.

  Rebecca turned and ran. Two blocks later she was forced sit on the curb and rest. She recalled the singsong phrase "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." But she didn't believe it. Words do hurt, and so do songs with bad words. She knew nasty people walked the earth doing bad. There were wars, famines, and earthquakes that destroyed villages in remote fog-shrouded valleys. Rebecca felt stranded in one of those valleys, crying, "Help, help, help me!"

  "You're too sensitive," her grandmother had once scolded. "That's your problem." Her grandmother made this remark after Rebecca had cried at the scene of a hippopotamus bellowing for her hippo child that had been eaten by a lion. They had been watching a show on Animal Planet about how animals, like humans, could feel grief.

  What had the mother hippo done to make her grandmother resent it's grief? Poor hippo, Rebecca thought. Poor, poor hippo.

  At home, Rebecca reveled in an Animal Planet special about a kindly veterinarian who helped chimpanzees in the wilds of Zimbabwe. They exuded happiness. They beat their chests with pleasure, jumped up and down, and showed their large teeth. The chimpanzees shared what they had and groomed each other, pulling crawly things from their matted hair. The program soothed her, and some cold lemonade made her feel better, too.

  "Animals are a lot nicer than people," she concluded.

  Rebecca planned to watch the next program about a giraffe until she remembered her chore: make a green salad to go with leftover creamy chicken from dinner the night before. Afterward, she took out a large binder that held her extra-credit project about saving the world. To Rebecca it was all so obvious. If adults and kids did a few simple things, they could save the world for future generations.

  On butcher paper Rebecca drew the Ideal City. She placed parks every five blocks. She colored the parks blue because she couldn't find the green crayon, but she figured that blue was the color of the sky (when not smoggy) and the sea (when not dirty with oil spills). She dotted her made-up world with trees, also blue, and made a note in the margin explaining that these were fruit trees. She predicted that people would give up candy and turn to eating fruit because such trees would be everywhere in the city. They could look up at any time, say, "Oh, an apple," and pluck it for free.

  "No police or soldiers!" she demanded. She took out a pencil and scrawled this directive in the margin. The people would be polite because they would have lots to eat and places to live. But if people weren't nice, flying drones would zap them with bolts of electricity. It's going to hurt, she told herself, but the drones won't kill them, just zap them to make them behave.

  "We'll need to have swimming pools," she pledged. She began to make little blue squares and then a long blue line: a river, clean, sparkly, and filled with fish. Citizens would fish when the fruit trees became bare in late fall. Rebecca felt guilty that some of the fish would have to die. But it couldn't be helped, she figured. The citizens of the Ideal City had to eat.

  The phone rang. When Rebecca picked it up, the caller—Rebecca was certain it was Sylvia—hung up.

  After they washed the dishes, Rebecca and her mother watched Jeopardy, a program they relished because they would get wild and scream out their questions, each pushing a make-believe button. It gave them joy, competing in a nice way. Rebecca made a mental note: In the Ideal City people would watch Animal Planet or Jeopardy, or something new, like the Star Planet channel or a game show based on Candyland.

  "What is Wyoming!" they screamed at the same time.

  "No, I said it first," Rebecca claimed.

  The answer was a state where Yellowstone National Park is located.

  The previous summer they had visited the park and had been dazzled by the depth of the night sky and it's pulsating stars. They had a decal from Yellowstone on the back window of their Toyota Corolla. It was starting to peel, but the memory was still there. A bear had sauntered up to their car and laid it's heavy paws on the hood, rolled it's large petallike tongue over it's mouth, and demanded something to eat.

  When Jeopardy was over, Rebecca revealed her problem at school. "This girl, she's, like, mean but the president of our class. She wants me to get you to fix a ticket or her dad won't buy her a new jacket."

  Her mother picked up her soda from the TV tray and drank it's strawberry sweetness, but she didn't pick up the thread of the conversation. She just looked at her daughter, expecting more.

  "This girl is mean, Mom. I know she beat up at least three girls this year and made a boy cry when she took his lunch."

  "Narrow-minded," her mother finally added. "People think I can do that—everyone, even your aunt." Rebecca's mother recounted how Aunt Norma had called her to ask if she could fix a parking ticket for her new boyfriend. Absently she added, "Everyone wants something for free."

  The two had been full of laughter, but now their mood had changed. Rebecca got up to turn on the lamp on the end table, but the light didn't brighten the tone.

  "What should I do?" Rebecca asked.

  "'Bout what?"

  "The girl at school. She's bothering me."

  "Ignore her," Rebecca's mother advised. She turned off the television and a smiling face selling toothpaste disappeared. "Did you do your homework?"

  "I don't have any homework." Rebecca was going to reveal her school project—the Ideal City—when the phone rang. She gripped the arm of the couch, not unlike their cat when she tried to put it outside, then got up and answered the phone.

  "Hello," Rebecca greeted. "Hello, hello?"

  Silence, two clicks, a faraway sort of silence—was Sylvia trying to play with her head? Right then Rebecca considered another possibility: no telephones in the Ideal City. If a person wanted to talk to another person, he or she would have to knock on his or her door.

  "As president of the class, I would like to thank you for your visit." Sylvia smiled at Dr. Sharon Dietz, who was only a little taller than the average sixth grader. Her hair was bushy red and her face looked orange against her white lab coat. The doctor had been invited to talk to the fifth and sixth graders about good eating habits. "As a token of our appreciation, we hope that you will accept our school T-shirt."

  Dr. Dietz accepted the T-shirt from the beaming Sylvia and held it in front of her like a matador's cape. She waved the T-shirt and jumped to the side as if a bull were rushing toward her.

  Sylvia's so fake, Rebecca surmised. Isn't it obvious?

  The program over, the students rose noisily from the benches, and the teachers began to escort them from the cafeteria. But Sylvia stayed behind for a photo op with the doctor and the dental hygienist, who had brought a huge set of teeth that opened and closed like a clam. The hygienist had used them to demonstrate how to floss. He had warned them about the harmfulness of sugar and the gunk that gets trapped between teeth. With a large toothbrush he had demonstrated how to brush with an up-and-down action.

  Rebecca was mildly upset that this person didn't receive a T-shirt. The poor guy stood to the side, the huge set of teeth in his arms. The teeth seemed to smile at the students shuffling away, and a few of the nastier boys bared their teeth at the man.

  "They're awful." Rebecca sighed. She vowed they would be the first to get zapped by the flying drones in the Ideal City.

  When Rebecca filed past, she waved vigorously to the man. He didn't see her at first, but then he rigged a big smile on his face. Right then she decided that if she could really build the Ideal City, he would be mayor. He seemed nice and was young enough to remember what it felt like in school. If he were mayor—no, she'd make him governor or even president of
the Ideal City—the citizens would be assured of sparkling teeth and healthy gums.

  After the assembly the sixth graders had silent reading, but the silence was broken when the speaker next to the clock crackled, buzzed, and seemed to belch. The entire class looked up.

  "Sixth graders, the freezer has broken." The voice belonged to Mr. Rafferty, the vice principal.

  There was a roar of excitement. It was only 10:34 in morning, and for the second time that day they got to leave the classroom. This was way better than a talk about health: The broken freezer meant they got to help eat the school's supply of ice cream before it melted.

  They lined up with Sylvia first—as president, she assumed she would lead. She elbowed the boy behind her, barking, "Get off me, stupid! You're standing too close." Then, like a centipede, the students left the classroom boisterously yelling like it was Christmas.

  In the cafeteria they were each presented with an ice cream—Drumsticks and Push-ups, Popsicles and Eskimo Pies—and a single napkin.

  "Goof off and you're back in the classroom," warned Mr. Rafferty, a skinny man with a twig for a neck. He didn't look like he could have enough strength to back up his words.

  The students knew they had to be quiet just for the time it took to devour a frosty concoction. They formed a circle as he had instructed and ate the icy treats, the only sound the slobber of ice cream being devoured.

  But Rebecca didn't indulge in the ice cream feed. She was determined to follow the wise instruction of the dental hygienist. Excess sugar is bad for you, she told herself.

  "How come you're not eating?" Carolina asked.

  "I'm not hungry," she answered.

  Rebecca waited and tried to avoid staring at Sylvia gobbling nastily on a green Popsicle. She had higher concerns and tinkered in her mind with the finer details of the Ideal City. She figured that in the future people would eat less, not more, so there would be hardly any deaths. Everyone would live for something close to forever. True, they would get old and move slower, but they would go on and on.