The Fresh New Face of Griselda

by Jennifer Torres

  I have nothing to draw. Nothing as beautiful as Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey’s postcards, anyway. How do I draw the vacations we didn’t get to take? The strawberries in my old garden that are someone else’s to pick? The flower bulbs I never planted?

  My heart beats faster as, all around the room, my classmates start whispering about beach houses and roller coasters and summer camps and science museums. I tap my pen against my cheek. I have nothing to add to the conversation. My parents can’t pay for any of that stuff anymore, I think, but don’t say. The most interesting thing I did this summer was water the toilets in Nana’s garden.

  Before I’ve had a chance to think of anything to write about, Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey announces that it’s time to share. “Who wants to start us off?”

  Logan raises his hand. He holds up a drawing of a skinny green snake with yellow stripes. “This summer,” he says, “I trained Magdalena—she’s my pet snake—to play hide-and-seek.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey asks.

  “She’s better at the hiding part.”

  Everyone laughs.

  “Thank you, Logan. Next, let’s hear from…” Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey looks down at the roll sheet. “Zachary. Zack—do you go by Zack?—tell us about your summer.”

  Logan’s postcard has given me an idea. I have just enough time to scribble out a drawing and a few short sentences before Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey calls my name four students later. Luckily, Nana’s camellia is the botanical version of a big, messy scribble.

  “This summer, I helped my nana take care of this wild old camellia bush she has growing near her driveway. It… um… it still needs a lot of work.” I remind myself to look up, to enunciate, to project like Mom is always reminding me. “But at least it’s a start.”

  I say the last sentence like it’s a question. At least it’s a start? Mom hates that. “Are you telling me, or are you asking me?” she would have said. “Say it like you mean it.”

  I don’t relax my shoulders until Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey says, “Very nice,” and moves on to Ava without asking any follow-up questions.

  “Thank you for sharing such lovely memories,” she says, after everyone has had a turn. “If you think about it, social studies is sort of like the memories of a whole country.” She holds up a textbook. “And you can think about this as a collection of stories about ordinary people, just like all of us, who did ordinary things like get married and take trips, and maybe even train their pets.” She points at Logan, who takes a bow from his desk. Everybody laughs again.

  “But they also did extraordinary things that made our world what it is today. That’s why the Living History Museum project is such an important part of the work you’ll do this year. It’s your chance to really experience the stories of some of the great individuals who have shaped our country, sometimes in big ways and sometimes in small. But all of them important.”

  Once again, all I can think is Great.

  The sixth-grade Living History Museum is sort of like a pageant, a night when all the sixth graders, dressed in homemade costumes, have to stand around the auditorium, giving speeches as famous Americans from the past. Me and Sophia went last year to get ideas.

  “I hope I get to be Sammy Lee,” Sophia had said afterward. “The first Asian American to win a gold medal at the Olympics.” She grabbed hold of my wrist. “Oh, Geez! Do you think there are any famous American gardeners? Because, if there are, that’s who you should be.”

  Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey takes a pile of bright pink papers off her desk. “March might seem like a long way off, but it will be here sooner than you think,” she says, sending a stack of the papers down each row. “Take one and pass the rest down. This is some information for your parents—just the basics: dates, deadlines, expectations. That sort of thing. They’ll hear more at Back to School Night.”

  I read the handout. It’s filled with bullet points like blaring warning signs:

  • Mark your calendars! This year’s sixth-grade Living History Museum will be held March 3 at 5 p.m. You won’t want to miss it.

  Attention! Everyone is going to notice when Dad’s not there.

  • Students will be assigned a historical figure to study and impersonate. Grades will be based, in part, on the costume your child designs, so it’s important to start planning right away.

  Caution! Costumes cost money, and that’s something we don’t have right now.

  • Students will have plenty of time in class to research and write their speeches, but they will need your help preparing to present them in front of a large audience.

  Danger! Public speaking means talking. Like, in front of people.

  “Please have a parent sign the bottom of the form and return it to me tomorrow,” Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey says. I fold mine in half and stick it inside my backpack.

  “When do we get to pick names?” Taylor Lu asks.

  “If we get through everything we need to cover today, maybe this afternoon.”

  Taylor squeals happily. I slouch lower in my chair and look down at my shoes.

  When it’s lunchtime, I stand near the end of the cafeteria line, not quite in the line, but also not quite out of it, so that everyone who comes in after me has to ask “Are you in line?”

  Instead of actually deciding, I keep letting them go ahead of me. I should have gotten up earlier and made lunch at home. I didn’t know it was going to feel like this, like everyone can see.

  “No one is going to notice, you know.”

  “What?” I turn around. Logan is looking down at the blue-and-white-checked cafeteria tiles instead of at me.

  “I mean… My mom said you guys… I mean, you’re getting free lunch now, right?”

  “Your mom’s been talking about us?” My cheeks burn.

  “No… Well, yeah. But not in a bad way. Don’t be mad.” He finally looks up.

  I’m not mad. I am mortified. What else has she been saying?

  “Anyway, you are, right? Getting free lunch, I mean?”

  “It’s only until…” Only until when? I don’t know, so I swallow and nod.

  “You never thought it was a big deal that I did, right?”

  “Of course not.” I had never even thought about it.

  “Exactly.” He steps in front of me and takes a tray off the top of the stack. “When you get up to the front, you hand them your student ID. No one else will even be paying attention. Not that it’s any of their business, anyway. Come on.”

  I step in line behind Logan. I take a ham sandwich, an apple, a cup of chocolate pudding, and a carton of milk. I carry my tray to the register but can’t bear to look up at the cashier. She holds out her hand.

  I hold my breath and give her my card.

  “Thank you,” she says, giving it back.

  Logan waits for me near the register. “See? That’s it.”

  I smile. “That’s it.”

  “They should just make it free for everyone, you know?” Logan says, carrying his tray away to a table at the other end of the cafeteria. “Then no one would feel different.”

  I sit down across from him, but before I start eating, I look around for a black ponytail and sunburnt nose. I didn’t speak to Sophia all summer, except when I lied and told her I had food poisoning that time she invited me to swim at her family’s club.

  I’m listening so hard for her squeaky laugh that I don’t hear Logan at first when he asks me a question.

  “Huh?” I say, finally realizing he’s talking to me.

  He pops a grape into his mouth. “Never mind.”

  “No, what?”

  He swallows and wipes his hand over his mouth. “I was just saying, do you remember how we used to play handball against my garage door all the time?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know. I guess I remember beating you at handball all the time.”

  “Like one time.”

  “Um, like every time.”

  “If it makes you feel better,” he says, reaching over to pat my shoulder. “Anyway,
I was just thinking, maybe we could play again if you want to come over sometime. And then maybe you can help me with Magdalena. If she ever comes back. I’m trying to fix up her aquarium. You know, so she’ll actually want to stay there and stop sneaking out.”

  He stops, looks away, then adds, “You never come over anymore.”

  I open my mouth. I want to tell him that’s not true. But it is. “Sure, I’ll come over. I guess I can come over anytime. Now.”

  Both of us are quiet. Logan looks up as if he expects me to say something else. To talk about it. When I don’t, he starts stirring his chocolate pudding.

  I reach into my backpack, not searching for anything in particular, except for maybe a way to fill the awkward space between Logan and me. My fingers wrap around something I don’t recognize at first. It’s not a pencil—too thick. It feels like it could be a marker, but Mom and I didn’t buy any.

  I pull it out. Maribel’s lip gloss. I must have knocked it into my bag with the school supplies this morning. I hold the tube between my thumb and index finger, tilting it one way and then the other, watching the glitter slowly swirl inside.

  “What color?”

  Kennedy Castro is leaning over my shoulder.

  “What color?” she asks again. “It’s Alma, right? From the Fairytale Collection?”

  “Um, yeah. How’d you know?”

  She doesn’t answer, just rolls her eyes like it’s obvious. “Can I see it?”

  I give her the lip gloss, and she untwists the applicator wand. “My cousin has Poison Apple and Stroke of Midnight,” Kennedy continues, swiping a shimmery smear of gloss across the back of her hand. “She never lets me borrow it.”

  She holds her hand up to the light. “But she doesn’t have this one. It’s pretty. Where’d you get it?”

  I don’t answer right away. Kennedy thinks the lip gloss is pretty. I wish the truth—that it’s just a free sample I got for helping my sister talk a stranger into buying face cream that she probably didn’t need and that definitely wasn’t miraculous—weren’t so boring. It’s been months since I had something a little bit special, something someone else wants. Since I’ve felt someone wish they had what I have. And I don’t want to let the feeling go.

  And then I realize: Kennedy isn’t letting go either.

  Her grasp on the lip gloss only tightens when Ava Davis appears at her side and asks to try some on.

  “I got it from my sister,” I say, finally pulling the tube back. “She’s an Alma…” I don’t remember the title at first. “An Alma Glamour Associate. I could ask her to get you some, or maybe—”

  An idea, small and fragile, is beginning to blossom. Kennedy and Ava lean in closer.

  I look across the table at Logan. He has finished his pudding and is scraping the sides of the near-empty cup, pretending not to listen.

  I think about Maribel, about what she would do. If she were here trying to sell a tube of lip gloss, it would seem as though she wasn’t actually trying at all. Maribel would sound casual, cool, like she didn’t care very much, one way or the other, whether the girls wanted to buy it. No pressure or anything.

  “Or what?” Kennedy asks.

  I clear my throat. “Well, it’s just that I don’t really like this color, anyway. And it does look really nice on… your hand. I guess… I could… I don’t know, sell it to you?”

  I wave the lip gloss like a wand. “I mean, if you like it. Or whatever.” I start to put it away.

  Kennedy’s eyes widen. “Wait.” She swings her backpack off her shoulder, unzips the front pocket, and frowns.

  “All I have is four dollars. Is that enough?”

  Ava nudges her shoulder in front of Kennedy’s. “I have five dollars.”

  “Hey, she offered it to me.”

  I pluck four dollar bills out of Kennedy’s fist and give her the lip gloss. Maybe this is just as easy as Maribel always makes it look. “Sorry, Ava. But don’t worry. I bet I can get more.”

  As they walk away, Logan raises his hand for a high five. “Four dollars. Not bad. What’re you gonna do with it?”

  I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. Buy more lip gloss, and then sell that, too.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

  —ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  The Fresh New Face of Alma Cosmetics. Remembering the contest from Maribel’s brochure, I write long division problems in the margins of my notebook paper to try to figure out how long it’ll take me to get to five hundred if I sell five tubes of lip gloss a week. What about ten? Fifteen? Could I even sell fifteen in a week?

  My hair is thick. Wavy like Dad’s, and I almost always wear it tied back in a braid that falls halfway down my back—except for my bangs and the loose, flyaway strands that curl over my ears. I tug one of them and twirl it around my finger, trying to imagine my hair loose and flying out behind me as I ride in the front seat of a shiny silvery-purple convertible. The Spirit of Success!

  I can just about picture it. Almost. But I can’t hold on to the picture. I can’t quite believe in it.

  I look nothing like the girl in Maribel’s catalog. But I try not to think about that. If I think about it, I’ll never go through with my plan, and it’s the best plan—the only one, really—I’ve had since we moved in with Nana.

  Instead, I think about what Dad had said in our living room that afternoon last spring. “Game over.”

  Maybe if I win, I can show him it isn’t. Maybe if I win, we’ll finally stop losing things. I know five thousand dollars isn’t enough to get our house back. But it might be enough to get Dad’s truck fixed, or to repay some of the money he owes so he can come live with us again. It might be enough for that fresh start we’ve all been trying to find.

  “Miss Zaragoza, are you still with us?”

  “What? Huh?” I stop dividing when I hear my name.

  Quiet snickers flutter across the desks.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Come on up,” Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey says. “It’s your turn to pick a name.”

  I walk to the front of the classroom. I feel everyone watching. Only this time, it doesn’t bother me so much. This time, I let myself wonder if, just maybe, they’re all staring at the fresh new face of Alma Cosmetics.

  Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey shakes an old coffee can filled with little slips of paper. “Go ahead.”

  I reach inside. Only a few names are left, and I stir them up with my fingers before choosing one. I pull it out and unfold it: Lady Bird Johnson, 1912–2007, 36th First Lady of the United States. “Oh!” I look up at Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey.

  She takes the paper and reads. “Ah. Well, some of these names might not be as familiar as others, at least not yet. But I think you just might find you have some things in common. If you’d like to draw again, though…”

  I shake my head and take the paper back. “No, I want to keep it.” My luck is already changing for the better.

  When the last bell finally rings that afternoon, I walk out with Logan and see Grandpa’s gold sedan waiting down the block, near where Maribel had dropped us off that morning.

  “Want a ride home?”

  “Nah, my mom said she’d pick me up at the library. I need to do some research on snake habitats—for Magdalena’s aquarium, you know? And maybe I’ll get a head start reading about Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution. See you tomorrow.” He gives me a military-style salute, hikes up his backpack, and marches away.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I head for the Crown Victoria—until a tug on my backpack straps sends me stumbling backward.

  “Geez! Found you!”

  Back when we were in third grade, Sophia said I needed a new nickname. “Griselda is just… so… you know,” she had said, wrinkling her nose.

  I knew.

  “And Geez isn’t a name. It’s what you say when your dog chews up your best headband. So I’ve been thinking… what about Zelda?”

  She
had tried, I mean, really tried, but Zelda never caught on. Finally, even Sophia gave up and started calling me Geez, too.

  Hearing her say it again after so many months makes me remember something I had read about Lady Bird Johnson once. How her real name—the name her parents gave her, I mean—was Claudia. Which is almost as beautiful as Maribel, to be honest. Lady Bird was just a nickname someone gave her when she was really little. A nickname that stuck for so long that hardly anyone called her anything else after a while. I wonder sometimes if she liked being called Lady Bird, or if she ever wished she could be Claudia again but finally just gave up trying.

  Somehow, Sophia has always been Sophia. Never Sophie or Soph. Her name just fits that way.

  She cut her hair short over the summer, to just past her chin. It’s shiny black except for the ends, bleached reddish-brown from all the chlorine in the swimming pool. The last sunburn of summer is peeling off her nose. “I have to go. Mom and Lucas are already in the car, but I just had to see you. It’s been forever. I’m so mad we’re not in the same class this year, aren’t you? Sorry I wasn’t around for lunch. Mom pulled me out for an eye doctor appointment. Can you believe that? On the first day? I got to pick out new glasses, though.”

  Sophia and I have been friends since kindergarten, when her mom and my mom were room parents. They discovered our birthdays were a week apart, and we’ve celebrated together every year since.

  Sophia’s mom used to say that Sophia talked enough for the both of us. And it’s true. Only, I decided after a while, Sophia and I sort of go together, anyway. We might not be exactly alike, but we match the same way the bright yellow-orange ribbon from Nana’s gift-wrap stash balanced out the gentle blue of my shirt.

  “I heard your class already picked names for Living History Museum?” she continues. “You guys are so lucky. We ran out of time. Who’d you get?”

  “Lady Bird Johnson.”

  Sophia wrinkles her pink and peeling nose.

  “You know. The one from my teacup? First Lady?”

  “No, I know, but…” She puts her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. “Over there. Isn’t that your sister?