What Can't Wait

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  She stares at the stain on the carpet where the water from the bathtub leaks out a little sometimes.

  I tilt her chin up so she’s looking at me. “You love your libros, right? You know how you’re always waiting for somebody to read them to you? Well, what if I help you learn to read them all by yourself?”

  Anita takes in a shaky breath and moves her hand away from her mouth. “Good,” she whispers.

  “There’s just one thing,” I say. “A girl who’s learning to read is way too big to wet her pants. So you’re going to have to really work on that.”

  “OK.” Anita jabs her fingers into the carpet. “Can we start now?”

  When Gustavo walks past the kitchen table on his way out, I don’t even look up from the picture book in front of us. Forget him.

  I show Anita the word “cat,” and together we sound it out. Then she finds the word “cap” in the book and sounds it out herself. She doesn’t even cover her mouth when she smiles.

  We’re so busy with the alphabet and the naughty cat in the story that I almost forget about calculus. Almost. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my math book through the mesh of my backpack. My mind drifts to Ms. Ford and the list of requirements for the UT engineering program, but I push the thought away. Calculus can wait. Anita can’t.

  chapter 10

  Just fifteen minutes left, and my test is nearly blank.

  I meant to study after work last night, but stupid Mr. Vargas made me stay late to help clean before some company inspection tomorrow, and then I slept through my alarm clock again this morning.

  I bite my lip and try another problem. I write some stuff down, but I don’t have a clue. Stupid calculus. Staring at the empty test makes me feel even crappier, so I raise my hand and turn it in.

  Right before the bell rings, Ms. Ford slips me a note telling me to come see her during lunch.

  At 12:30 I walk over to Ms. Ford’s room. When she sees me, she puts down her sandwich and points to the two living-room chairs crammed by her desk for conferences.

  I take the nearest one, brown leather with white stuffing poking out in spots. Ms. Ford sits in the one that has a floral design and blue ink stains on the arms.

  “So, can you explain to me what happened today?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?” I say. I can’t meet her eyes, so I look down and watch her foot jiggling like crazy.

  “The test.”

  I shrug and start tugging at one of the fluffy tufts sticking out of the chair.

  “Hey! Don’t pick at my chair!” She sounds genuinely pissed off.

  “Sorry.” I tear threads from a worn spot on my jeans instead.

  Ms. Ford pulls a paper off of her desk and drops it into my lap. There’s a grade circled at the top in ugly red ink: 29. I hand it back and stare at the hole in my jeans.

  “This isn’t like you at all. First missing homework and tutorials, now this.”

  “I, it’s just . . .” My voice goes into hiding.

  “Well?”

  “It was hard,” I say, hating the words as soon as they leave my mouth.

  “Newsflash: this is AP calculus. But you quit after three problems!” Her foot shakes harder, rubbing up against the side of the chair. I wonder how much more friction it’d take for the chair to just burst into flames.

  “I couldn’t do it, that’s all. I tried to get ready for the test, but it didn’t work out.”

  “You have to be smart with your time.”

  “I couldn’t, miss. There was no chance to study,” I say.

  “You’ve got a lot going on. Stuff at home, your boyfriend. But you can’t get so caught up in everything and everybody else that you lose sight of your goals.”

  I don’t say anything. So I’m supposed to tell Anita, sorry, but reading with you doesn’t fit in with my goals? I pull another thread from the hole in my pants.

  I can feel Ms. Ford staring at me. It gives me that shitty feeling you get when somebody thinks they know everything about you, but you know they’ve got it all wrong. She’s thinking my life could be simple if I would just follow some stupid goal-planning worksheet and come to tutorials. She’s thinking, These Mexican girls, why won’t they take their futures seriously? She’s thinking, This Marisa, if she were more like me, she’d go far.

  “You can’t give up on yourself,” she says.

  “I’m working really hard, but . . .”

  “I wish it were easier, but you’ve just got to make hard decisions. Education is your ticket.”

  Like I don’t know that! It’s like she’s reading right off one of those stupid motivational posters from middle school. I can feel the heat in my cheeks, and I want to tell her to back the fuck off. Those are the very words fighting to get off my tongue. Because she doesn’t know my life. She doesn’t know me.

  I fight to keep the anger in and cook up my most serious sincere-student look. “I’ll try harder,” I say. I force my eyes to meet hers.

  “Don’t just try, do it. There’s a big difference.” Her lips are set in a tight line that makes me think of a minus sign. All of a sudden the minus sign goes blurry, and my eyes are wet.

  “Look.” The white smudge that is Ms. Ford’s face moves closer to me. “You can retake the test. You’re a good worker; you’re just stretching yourself too thin. I know how it is.”

  But she doesn’t. She doesn’t.

  “Just come in tomorrow after school and try the test again.”

  “I can’t, miss.” I blink until the tears clear.

  She looks surprised. “Monday, then.”

  “I still can’t, OK? I just can’t.”

  “Marisa, you’ve got to . . .”

  “Trust me, I want to. The problem is that it’s not just me that I have to worry about. I have responsibilities to other people, promises I can’t break.”

  “I’m on your side, remember?” Ms. Ford says. There’s nothing mean in her voice now; she just sounds disappointed. “But you have to do your part. And it’s going to get easier once you’re in college. At UT . . .”

  “I don’t care about UT! You want me to be this perfect success story, the college girl from the barrio.” My voice rises, and I don’t realize until I say this next thing just how much it’s bothering me. “UT didn’t send me nothing, get it? They probably don’t want me, so do me a favor and forget about it!”

  “Marisa!”

  I grab my bag and head for the door before she can say anything else.

  Ms. Ford’s words eat at me all day long. My mood is so foul that all I can think to do is scribble black lines in the margin of my physics notebook until my pen tears through the paper. I try awarding myself some imaginary blue ribbons for being such a super aunt, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

  Somebody has gotten Mr. Gordon off the topic of thermodynamics by bringing up motorcycles, which he’ll gladly talk about until he forgets to assign the homework. Usually I’d rather learn physics, but today I don’t care. I scrawl “UT” over and over just so I can X it out. Ms. Ford never should have even mentioned UT to me in August. Just one more thing to want and not get. She had me all excited about solving real-world problems, designing bridges, all kinds of bullshit. Maybe Alan will draw me a picture of Ms. Ford so I can put her face on Gustavo’s dartboard and use her for a target.

  The P.A. system clicks on, and the principal starts talking about an all-day practice standardized test scheduled for Monday. We start groaning, because what this means is being stuck in homeroom all day, filling in bubbles on a stupid Scantron sheet. But then good old Mr. Dominguez crackles back over the intercom and says, “The seniors are exempt from the test and will now receive additional instructions for their activities on Monday.”

  Mr. Gordon reads from a printout, and the scoop on Monday is way better than just getting out of the test. Seniors who are passing all of their required courses get the entire day off. All we have to do is come to the school office on Monday morning to sign the attendance
roster. That way, as far as the state is concerned, we came to school. Because in Texas, attendance equals money. Whatever, as long as we don’t have to spend the day in school or sitting on the bleachers in the gym waiting for everybody else to finish the exam. By the time Mr. Gordon gets to the end of his announcement, nobody is listening. “Free day” is all that matters. The class buzzes with plans for the unofficial holiday, and cell phones pop up under desks. I text “WOOHOO!” to Brenda and Alan. After today, I deserve a break.

  chapter 11

  On Monday I leave for school at my usual time because I don’t want my parents to know about the senior holiday. There are at least three things I should be doing with my time off: (1) working extra hours, (2) watching Anita so that Mami can go to Mass like she likes to, (3) busting my butt studying calculus.

  But I’m too mad at Ms. Ford to even look at my math book, and I have this feeling that’s crowding out my thoughts of Mami and work. It’s so strong that if I was in a cartoon, there’d probably be rays of light coming out of my chest.

  At school I sign the roster and stop for a second to talk to Brenda. She says Alan has already come and gone. I ignore her exaggerated winks and start walking.

  When I turn onto Alan’s street, I see that only his truck is in the driveway. I’m so relieved I almost laugh out loud. I mean, I want to surprise him, but I would have choked on my buenos días if his mom or dad had answered the door.

  I walk fast, passing homes just like the ones in my neighborhood, flat-roofed houses with patchy grass in the front and carports overflowing with junk. Vicente Fernandez’s voice drifts out of a window along with the smell of burnt chorizo.

  I knock twice before Alan answers. He opens the door and pulls down his earphones. “Hey, you,” he says. “I thought you were working.”

  “Nope,” I say really softly. I’m afraid he doesn’t want to see me, but I try to sound cheerful. “Here I am!”

  He kisses my cheek and invites me inside, and I’m OK again. We’ve been an “us” for over a month, but when he touches me I still feel all shivery and warm at the same time.

  “You want a Coke?” He’s already tossing ice cubes into a glass.

  “Sure. Jimmy didn’t put you to work at El Ranchero?” El Ranchero is this big Mexican restaurant that’s popular with Mexican families and white people, too. It’s always busy, and Alan’s brother Jimmy always has work for him there.

  “Nah, I told him I might not feel like playing ball for him anymore if he didn’t give me the day off.”

  “That’s such a lie,” I say. Alan complains all the time about having his brother for a boss and a baseball coach, but really he loves it. Jimmy is cool, even though he picks on him.

  “True,” he says. “But I got to keep Jimmy in line. I can’t let him get too used to bossing me around. Next thing I know he’ll be telling me how to tuck in my uniform and comb my hair, stuff that’s way too personal. Coming from him, I mean.”

  “So I can tell you how to tuck your shirt in?”

  “Hell, you can do it for me si quieres.” He grins.

  “I hope you don’t have any secrets back here.” I cross the kitchen to the door to his room. I’ve been in there once before, the only other time nobody else was home when I came over.

  It’s an old porch that Alan, Jimmy, and his dad closed in a few years back. It’s cramped, and the floor sort of slants to one side, but Alan doesn’t care. He likes the extra windows and the door to the backyard because he can sneak out at night to draw when he can’t sleep. I know because every once in a while I get a text message at two or three in the morning with a photo of what he’s drawing. I like to imagine him out there in the silent yard, his face half glowing with moonlight, half darkened by shadows.

  Alan touches my shoulder with the cold glass of Coke, and I jump.

  “Welcome back to Palace Peralta,” he says, kicking open the door.

  “Yeah right.” I sweep two dirty socks and a T-shirt off of his desk chair and then take my glass of Coke with both hands. The damp coolness of it feels good against my clammy skin.

  “What’re you working on?” I ask. His sketchbook is propped up against a heap of blankets on his bed.

  “Nothing important.”

  I shoot him an uh-uh look. “Don’t even say that. Your drawings are so good. Let me see?”

  Alan flips the book open to an ink drawing and hands it over.

  There’s a girl in the middle, and even though her face is clenched in pain, I recognize Alan’s little sister. Jessica’s body is stretched out, and her legs are super-long and twisting like rubber down toward the left corner of the page. Her pregnant belly swells huge in the center, and her arms are lifted in a way that reminds me of Anita when she wants to be picked up. There’s a giant faucet, and under it, a huge bathtub drain. Then I get it.

  She’s being sucked down the drain. Behind her, smaller, there are other girls, a lot of them. They have different faces, but the pregnant belly is the same, and they’re all twisting down toward the drain. Around the edges of the page, the words SAME OLD STORY repeat over and over. I can’t look away from it.

  “God,” I whisper.

  “Yeah, I know it’s weird, just scribbling,” he says. He starts to close the sketchbook.

  “No.” I stop his hand. “Not weird at all. It gets to me. You aren’t scribbling, you’re . . .” My voice quits on me, but suddenly I get brave and scramble from the chair over onto the bed.

  “It’s the best thing you’ve ever shown me. It’s real, like, it means something. It makes me want to look and keep looking.” With my pinky finger, I trace the shape of the girl in the center. She’s Jessica, but at the same time she’s Cecilia and every pregnant girl I’ve ever known.

  “Sometimes,” he says, “I just have to draw. If I don’t, it’s like the feelings start to choke me.”

  The sun filtering through his windows lights up all the pieces of dust in the air so that they look like gold acrobats. Sophomore year, our biology teacher told us that most of the dust in a house is actually pieces of us, skin cells and stuff. Maybe it’s sick, but I take a deep breath in and imagine golden Alan-acrobats dancing through the darkness inside me.

  We’re both sitting cross-legged, like in kindergarten sharing circle, and I move closer to him until our knees are lined up. I tell myself to be brave. I put a finger over his lips. I link my eyes with his, and the look that goes between us is so strong that I swear I can feel his eyelashes brush against my cheek. When I set my right hand on his left knee, he puts his right hand on my left knee. Then he waits.

  I just watch him for a minute, loving how he’s looking at me the same way he looks at a drawing, like he’s seeing things nobody else can see. I love how his brown eyes smile before his lips do, and there’s this easy strength to his body that makes me crazy. I’m dying to kiss the chicken pox scar just below his mouth.

  My whole body is tingling from wanting him so bad. I lean closer. So does he. I smile. So does he. I slide my hand up from the knee, inching closer to his body. I close my eyes. His fingertips move slowly up my thigh, and I think I feel them tremble, like they’re still learning their way, too.

  We’re kissing and moving against each other, and I feel like something is changing in me, like all that light I felt earlier just thinking about Alan has dropped about a foot and a half and is now making me hot in X-rated places. I’m thinking that this is going way too fast, that this is not what I meant for us to do, not exactly. And I’m wondering what Alan’s thinking when, all of a sudden, the hand that he was sliding down my back slips under my leg. When he starts tickling me behind my knee, I laugh and almost bite his tongue before I pull back.

  He leans against the wall and pulls me close until I’m basically in his lap. His arms wrap around my stomach, and he rests his chin on the top of my head. I can feel his breath on my scalp. We sit there and watch two squirrels play in the backyard.

  A lot of things pop into my head. Like how glad I am th
at we didn’t have to have some awkward talk, that we just stopped before we got too crazy. Like maybe we both knew enough from our sisters’ lives to be over the “caught in the moment” thing. Like how soft the inside of his elbow is and how amazing it is to feel his thumb rubbing mine.

  But these are not the kinds of things you can casually mention, so I lean my head back against his chest and say, “How about you tell me a story.”

  “A story?” He drums his fingers on my stomach. “Hmmm . . . OK, I’ve got one. There once was an old man from Peru who dreamed he was eating a shoe.”

  “That’s the whole story?”

  “No. Now if you’ll let me finish, please.” He says it like he’s annoyed, but I can feel him smiling into my hair. “There once was an old man from Peru who dreamed he was eating his shoe. He woke up that night in a terrible fright and found out it was perfectly true!”

  “Very funny,” I say. One of the squirrels jumps up onto the windowsill and flashes signals with his tail. “That squirrel just called you lame. He said you should tell a real story. About us.”

  “Well, if the squirrel said so . . .” He starts to reach behind my knee, but in a flash I have my fingers poised to tickle under his arms, so he doesn’t even try it.

  “Good defense,” he says.

  “Don’t try to change the subject. We’re waiting.”

  “OK, this time for real.” Alan cracks his knuckles like he does before he puts on his baseball glove.

  “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady and a kindhearted, shaggy-haired beast.”

  “No,” I interrupt, “it should be a beautiful lady and a kindhearted, shaggy-haired gentleman.”

  “Fine,” he says, “now be quiet and listen.” His voice deepens a little as he settles into storytelling mode. “This gentleman loved the lady, right, but he was really poor, more of a servant boy. Every day he wanted to make her laugh. He saved up his best lines for the few moments when he saw her. Sometimes it was when he carried firewood into the room where she had her daily lessons. Other times, she came out to the stable to ride her golden horse.”