Flor and Miranda Steal the Show

by Jennifer Torres

  Anyway, we knew better than to ask for treats at the ballpark.

  But last year, during the sixth inning, when I couldn’t even see what was happening on the field because the sun was shining right in my face, a vendor walked up and down the aisles with a big metal box strapped to his chest. “Churros!” he called. “Warm churros! Four dollars! Churros here.”

  Normally, I would’ve ignored him. This time, though, some lady one row down raised her hand to order one. The vendor walked over and stood there, right next to me, in a cloud of cinnamon-sugar. I couldn’t help myself. My parents would’ve said no if I asked. So I didn’t. My arm shot up to order one too. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand everything Dad was always saying about sacrifice. It was just that always sticking with his plan, never doing what I wanted, felt like wearing a jacket that was too tight.

  The vendor opened the metal box and handed me a churro so hot it warmed my fingers through the waxed-paper wrapper.

  “That’ll be four dollars, please.”

  I tapped Dad’s shoulder. “Four dollars,” I said, wearing my best stage smile, sweeter than the sugar I could already taste.

  Dad looked startled. He started to say no. But I was holding the churro and everything, so he didn’t have much choice but to reach for his wallet.

  When Ronnie and Junior saw, they threw down their potato chips. “I’ll take one,” Junior said, reaching over Dad. “And me,” said Ronnie.

  The vendor started opening the box again, but Dad was back in control of the situation. “No. Just the one. We can share it.”

  “Four dollars,” he grumbled, folding the change back into his wallet. “For a doughnut.”

  I broke off pieces for Mom and Ronnie and Junior, and licked off the cinnamon and sugar that stuck to my fingers.

  I tore off a piece for Dad, but he waved my hand away and twisted the cap off a warm bottle of water from Mom’s purse. “No, mija,” he said. He ruffled my hair. He chuckled. “It’s yours. You eat it.”

  So now I felt sorta bad about having a whole churro to myself—cream-filled because Flor said those were best—except I couldn’t stop to even taste it, not if I wanted to keep up with her.

  “Milk shakes next? They’re so thick you can’t drink them through a straw. You need a spoon. You should try the peanut butter–chocolate. Come on.” She didn’t wait for an answer. She just started walking.

  We had left Mikey and the pink gorilla back at the games. He had already eaten lunch and anyway, he was still trying to help his big brother win that bonus. “I only have nine dollars left since I bought that animal food at your zoo,” I’d told her. “Will that be enough?”

  “Feed,” she had said. “We call it feed. But that doesn’t matter. You won’t need any money.”

  “I won’t?”

  “We’re family at Barsetti and Son. We look out for one another.”

  She was right. Before long, and without spending even one more quarter, I had the churro in one hand, and in the other, an extra-thick peanut butter and chocolate shake, plus a paper bag of candied almonds that I clung to with my pinky.

  “What about the nachos?” I called out.

  She was too far ahead to hear me, though, and all I could do was follow her deeper into the Food Pavilion. Flor seemed to know exactly where she was going, but I was lost. Completely.

  Dad had researched Barsetti & Son way before we signed on, before the show even came to our town. He told us it wasn’t the biggest carnival company in California, but it was the best. Mr. Barsetti had carnivals in more cities than anyone else in the business, and he kept things running all year round.

  Chasing after Flor, I couldn’t even imagine what a bigger carnival might be like. She and I had stopped at four different food booths and walked past at least fifteen more by the time I gave up and stopped counting.

  When I finally caught up to her, she was standing in line at the deep-fried pickle booth.

  “Do you want them with plain ranch dressing or Cajun?” she asked. I had already told her I didn’t really like pickles to begin with, but she insisted I had to try them. “Maybe you should try the Cajun. It’s extra spicy.”

  “Plain, I guess?”

  “Are you sure? Because Cajun is their specialty.”

  “Well, okay. I mean, if it’s their specialty.”

  We made it up to the order window and Flor tapped on the screen. “Gabby? Are you in there?”

  A woman with white-blond hair tied back with a pink bandanna pulled open the screen and leaned out. “Is that Flor I hear?”

  Flor stepped back. “Oh! Paula. Are you working pickles now?”

  “Just for a couple of hours. Gabby’s had a toothache for weeks, you know. She found a dentist here in Dinuba who agreed to open up on the weekend, so I told her I’d cover her shift. How’s your daddy?”

  It was the same conversation we’d had at every food cart and snack hut before this one. I almost knew it by heart. The cashier would ask how Flor’s dad was doing. Flor would say he was fine. The cashier would finally notice me.

  “And who’s this?”

  “I’m Randy,” I said, standing on tiptoe to wave at Paula through the window.

  “She’s new,” Flor said. “She’s with us.” It was all she had to say.

  “You girls hungry?”

  Flor nodded.

  “Hmm.” Paula looked us over, taking in the churro and milk shake in my arms and the banana split in Flor’s. I didn’t know what else to do but smile back at her.

  “It looks to me like you’ve found plenty to eat already,” she said. “And like you started with dessert.”

  Flor’s cheeks turned pink. “Please, Paula?” She was talking into the ground. “I really want Randy to try the pickles.”

  “Well…” She looked up at the ceiling, pretending to think about it. “All right. You’ve twisted my arm. What’re you having?”

  Flor looked up again, smiling. “One order of deep-fried pickles with spicy Cajun ranch, please.” She stopped and turned to me. “Wait, should we get a double order?”

  “A double order?” Paula and I said together.

  “Just one, please,” I said. “That’s enough for me.”

  Paula dipped a slotted spoon into a big glass jar of dill pickle slices and pulled out a scoopful. She shook off the juice, then dropped the pickles into a tray of thick yellow batter. Finally, she dunked them into the deep fryer, and hot oil sizzled all around them.

  I was beginning to think my brother and sister and I were missing out on more than just baseball stadium hot dogs and a pet goldfish. Flor seemed to know just about everyone at the carnival. And they knew her. They liked her.

  A few people in the audience recognized me every weekend. But they didn’t know me know me. Not like this.

  Paula pulled the pickles out of the fryer a minute or two later and shook them, all toasted brown and steaming, into a cardboard tray.

  “One order of deep-fried pickles,” she said before squeezing a drizzle of creamy orange sauce over the top, “with spicy Cajun dressing.” She passed the tray through the window. “Now, scram.” She winked. “I have paying customers to serve.”

  I almost tipped the tray over trying to balance it in the same hand as the churro.

  “That was a close one. If I get grease stains all over my skirt, I won’t have anything to wear later.”

  Flor paused for the first time since we’d started our food run. “We’d better be careful, then. Let’s go.”

  “Hey,” I called, scampering after her. “Don’t you think we should stop for a minute and maybe eat some of this?”

  She didn’t slow down. She didn’t look back. “I thought you wanted nachos.”

  The nachos at Carolina’s Cantina came in a plastic bucket. A big red bucket of chips, with scoops of sour cream, a dribble of salsa, piles of tomato, chunks of chicken, globs of guacamole—and nacho cheese oozing all over everything.

  If we didn’t find someplace to stop and s
it, I was going to be performing in a nacho-covered skirt. Even Flor looked like she needed a break, only every seat on the covered patio outside Carolina’s was taken. Flor stood right in the middle of the tables and turned around and around in slow circles, looking as lost as I’d felt a few minutes earlier. “Maybe we can just… sit on the ground?”

  But Carolina’s Cantina was basically an outdoor taquería, and I knew taquerías.

  I put my hand on Flor’s shoulder to stop her spinning. “I got this. We aren’t going to sit on the ground. Just be ready to move.”

  Flor’s mistake was looking at the tables. What you had to do was look at the plates. “Now!”

  I almost dropped the churro leaping to a table where a woman was chewing her last bite of taquito and wiping a smudge of avocado from the corner of her mouth. The woman sitting on the other side of the table shook her cup. Nothing left inside but ice cubes.

  “Excuse me?”

  Flor stood behind me and whisper-hissed in my ear. “Stop! They’re still eating.”

  But if we waited around for them to finish, someone else would snap up the table first.

  “Excuse me?” I said again. “Are you leaving?”

  The women looked at each other. The one with the taquito swallowed. “We were just finishing up, as a matter of fact. Would you girls like the table?”

  I set my milk shake down in reply, and the women started clearing their plates.

  “Sorry about that,” Flor mumbled as they walked away. “Thank you for the table, though.”

  We arranged the food between us: The banana split was quickly melting into ice cream soup, the cherry half buried under a drooping tower of whipped cream. Both churros were squished in the middle where we had been holding on to them. Cream was oozing out of mine. Then there were the almonds, the shakes, the nachos, the pickles.

  “Where should we start?” Flor asked. “Did you want to try the pickles first?”

  But I had already cleared a space in front of me for the bucket.

  “It’s flawless,” I murmured.

  “It’s nachos,” said Flor.

  She didn’t understand. She couldn’t.

  Usually by the time the nachos got to me, the only chips left were the ones without any cheese on them. Or else the sour cream was all runny and the guacamole had turned brown.

  These were practically gourmet. I almost hated to disturb a single chip. Almost. I pulled one, smothered in cheese, from the middle of the bucket, then used another chip to top it with some chicken, a tomato cube, and a little avocado. A perfect bite. And then another.

  Next, I reached for the churro, stopped for a spoonful of milk shake, then finally moved on to a slice of deep-fried pickle.

  It was crispy on the outside and tangy in the middle. The Cajun ranch was spicy, but nothing compared to the salsa I was used to eating. “Not bad.” I popped a second into my mouth.

  It took me a while to notice when Flor had stopped eating. She was just swirling her spoon around the ice cream puddle. “What are you humming?” she asked.

  I hadn’t noticed I was humming either. “Oh, it’s just this song we made up, my brother and my sister and me. It’s really good. I was hoping we could sing it in our act. Only, our dad, well, he won’t let us. But if he would just listen…”

  “You don’t get to pick your own music?”

  “Dad has a plan.” I shrugged and ate another pickle. “What about your dad? Does he let you try new things at the zoo?”

  She twirled the ends of her hair around a finger. “It depends. We have this pig I’m trying to train. That’s new, and he doesn’t seem to mind. Or even notice.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think we’d be better off if he did have a plan.”

  Then she dropped her spoon. “How are you still eating? Are you sure you’ve never had fair food before?”

  Maybe I should have paced myself, but it was the first time in weeks that my food hadn’t come out of a microwave or a can, or both.

  “Tough stomach,” I said, crunching on another pickle. I pushed the tray over to Flor. “You better take these before I eat them all.”

  Miranda y los Reyes played a lot of quinceañeras and a lot of Taco Tuesdays. We booked baptisms and retirement parties too, and, once in a while, a wedding.

  It was good word of mouth, Dad always said. Good exposure. That’s how you build an audience.

  “They always give you food at the end,” I told Flor. “Only it’s always the leftovers.”

  Enchiladas after they had been sitting in a warming tray for hours so the cheese had turned all rubbery. Or albondigas when all that was left in the pot was just some onion and carrot floating in broth—no more meatballs. The burned bottom layer of a dish of rice.

  “Whatever they give us, Dad says, ‘Fill up. This is dinner.’” I licked Cajun ranch dressing off my fingers. “You’re lucky. You get to come out here every day? We’re always too busy.”

  Flor sat up straighter. “We’re busy too, you know. This is just a quiet day, that’s all. Maybe it’s because one of the main-stage acts canceled and no one’s ever heard of the replacement.”

  My last drink of milk shake went down harder than all the rest. “I didn’t mean you weren’t busy. Just that I wish I came out here more often.”

  Flor relaxed, leaned back in her chair, and covered what was left of the pickles with a napkin. “Sorry.”

  “You’re not going to eat those?”

  She slid the tray back over to me.

  Flor

  (4 P.M.)

  The line was long, but it always moved fast. Randy didn’t know that, though.

  “If you don’t feel like waiting, we can just find something else,” I offered.

  Something slower, I thought, and not so spinny. Like the carousel or even the kiddie coaster.

  Randy gazed up at the sign above the Gravitron. DEFY GRAVITY! it dared above an airbrushed painting of two spaceships locked in battle, firing lasers across a purple-black sky. EXPERIENCE THE POWER OF CENTRIFUGAL FORCE!

  The Gravitron was a good ride. It was probably one of the best in the whole carnival. But just the thought of being whipped around in circles after everything we had eaten put a sour-sick taste at the back of my throat.

  “You might think it’s boring.”

  The milk shake, churro, and nachos combination should have been enough to make her queasy at least. But even after the deep-fried pickles, she was bouncing on the balls of her feet like she could’ve topped it all off with a bacon-wrapped Twinkie and a plate of Tater Twists.

  When I had told her we would get on some rides after lunch, it seemed like a good idea, right in line with my plan. If the food didn’t make her sick, the Gravitron would. Now I wasn’t so sure my stomach could handle it. And I wasn’t sure hers couldn’t.

  Randy stood on tiptoe to try to peek inside the Gravitron. It was one of the older rides. “Only one on the West Coast!” Mr. Barsetti used to brag. But he was always saying that kind of thing. “Friendliest petting zoo this side of the Rockies,” I’d heard him tell people about Rancho Maldonado. “Sweetest lemonade in the state!” It made me wonder if anyone was actually keeping track.

  The Gravitron was dull silver and shaped like a flying saucer. At night, bands of red lights raced up and down its sides. Every few minutes, the doors slid open and thumping dance-party music poured out. Riders stumbled off, straightening their glasses, tucking their shirts back in, taming flyaway strands of hair. When they had all filed out, another group of riders would step aboard. The doors would clatter shut so we couldn’t hear the music anymore, just a few muffled screams that slipped through as the Gravitron began to spin.

  Randy chewed on her thumbnail. She dropped her heels to the ground. “Let’s do it.”

  I clutched my stomach and followed her into line behind four girls about our age. They wore matching blue jerseys like they had come to the festival straight from a game or from practice or something. One sat on top of the railing and braided another one
’s ponytail. They passed around a cone of cotton candy, each one pulling off a chunk of pink floss. Being part of the carnival was the closest I had ever come to being part of a team. Otherwise, I didn’t belong to anything the way those girls belonged to one another.

  “Do you ever miss it?” Randy asked, still gnawing on her fingernails.

  “Miss what?”

  She pulled her hand out of her mouth and held it behind her back. “Having friends. Being normal.”

  I crossed my arms. “Mikey’s my friend. And Maria. Libby was too, before she left. Then there’s Johnny and Lexanne. They’re older, but they’re still friends. We’re all normal.”

  “But, I mean, going to school. I miss school. I miss knowing everyone. I miss how it was when everyone wasn’t a stranger.”

  Maybe we wouldn’t be strangers anymore if the Reyes family left their motor home and actually talked to us once in a while. Maybe their dad wouldn’t have been so quick to tell Mr. Barsetti to drop us from the lineup. But I didn’t say so out loud.

  The Gravitron stopped. Riders stepped off, rumpled and ruffled. Riders stepped on, antsy and anxious. The line lumbered forward. Deb was at the front of it, taking tickets. She had a clear blue visor that cast a blue-tinged half-moon shadow over her freckled nose.

  “Well, hello there, Ms. Flor. It’s been a while since you came around to see me. Where’ve you been?”

  “Helping my papá mostly. Since Mamá started that new job.”

  She nodded slowly. “That’s right. Yes, that’s right.” Deb was tall; I barely came up to her shoulder. She had been a professional volleyball player before she came to the carnival. She was always offering to keep an eye on us kids after closing time if the carnival parents wanted to have a date night. They were usually too tired, though. “And who’s this? New friend? It’s about time.”