“Sorry. That’s my ride. But I’ll bring them back tomorrow, okay?”
“But wait, I have the money right here.”
Honk.
“Sorry,” I say again, already walk-jogging away. “Tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget—save Enchanted Castle for me!” one of the girls shouts after me.
Maribel’s scowl matches mine when I get to the car.
“Geez, didn’t you see me? Or hear me?” she demands, turning the key as I hop into the front seat. “I have an appointment with a client. You’re going to make me late.”
“I was about to make a sale,” I argue. “Maybe two.”
She waves off my complaint as though shooing a mosquito away from her face. “They’ll be first in line tomorrow. Just watch.”
CHAPTER TEN
The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
—ABIGAIL ADAMS
Maribel was right.
Of course.
Beth Murphy, one of the seventh graders from yesterday, is waiting for me when I get to school the next morning. “You remembered to bring the lip gloss, right? Enchanted Castle?” She holds out six dollars.
“I have it right here.” I let her follow me into the building and down the hall. “But there’s another color you might like, too.”
Last night, Maribel replaced the four glosses I sold during lunch with four new ones, all in Sugar Plum. For each one of them I sell, she’s promised me an extra fifty cents off the forty dollars I owe her. The more items of the month on her sales sheet, the bigger her bonus. And as far as I’m concerned, an extra fifty cents is another step closer to bringing Dad home.
Beth and I stop outside my classroom. I dig into my backpack for a tube of Sugar Plum lip gloss and offer it to her.
“It’s really… purple,” she says doubtfully.
“Well,” I scramble, trying to remember the lines I had practiced in the bathroom mirror last night. “It… it looks better when it’s on. You should try it. Here, I have a mirror.” Maribel had sent me to school with one of those, too.
I flip open the mirror and give the lip gloss to Beth. I take the top off for her to make it even easier to try on.
She applies a thin layer and presses her lips together.
“See? So… plummy,” I say, trying to sound encouraging. Beth doesn’t seem convinced, though.
“Mmmm.”
She smiles into the mirror. Then pouts. “Can I see Enchanted Castle again?”
“Sure. Let me find it.”
I try not to sound too disappointed. At least I tried. At least she still wants to buy something. But when I find Enchanted Castle in my backpack and hand it over to Beth, she doesn’t trade in Sugar Plum. Instead, she holds on to both lip glosses, a tube in each hand, as though she’s weighing one against the other.
“Dad did give me a little extra money this week,” she says to herself. “It was supposed to be for pens and stuff at the student store, buuuut…” She slips both glosses into her jeans pockets. “I’ll take both.”
“Both? Are you—”
I’m about to ask if she’s sure. Maybe she really needs those pens. But then I think, she probably has plenty of pens already. And anyway, it’s not really any of my business how she spends her money.
“I mean, are you going to wear Sugar Plum to class?” I ask instead. “Or do you want to wipe it off and wear Enchanted Castle? I have a pack of tissues if you need one.”
Mrs. Ramos-McCaffrey takes us to the library to research our Living History Museum projects. I find a portrait of Lady Bird Johnson wearing a yellow dress like the one on my teacup, only in this picture she’s standing next to a man in a tuxedo. He has bushy eyebrows and a joking smirk, and looks like he could be anyone’s grandpa. The kind whose ears are a little too big, and who knows a couple of magic tricks and a bunch of terrible knock-knock jokes.
While that man was president, Lady Bird traveled the country, planting wildflowers along the roadsides and in dreary city parks where children couldn’t play anymore. She fought for a law to make the highways more beautiful, even though people made fun of her for it.
As much as I love flowers, though, and as much as they make me remember gardening with Dad, I’m more interested in something else I find out about Lady Bird Johnson: She had a business, too. After her mom died, Lady Bird bought a radio station, one that owed so much money it was about to shut down. Just like Dad’s business.
But somehow she saved it. Somehow she turned that radio station into a company that turned her into a millionaire. Nothing I read explains exactly how she did it, though. And that’s the part I really need to know. I wish there were some way to ask her.
By Friday afternoon, I’ve sold twelve tubes of lip gloss, including all four of the Sugar Plums. Six girls have already told me they want to buy some on Monday, after their parents give them their allowances over the weekend. I might be able to pay back my sister sooner than I’d thought.
Still, twelve isn’t even close to five hundred. I’m going to have to work fast if I want to qualify for the Fresh New Face contest. Four-lip-glosses-a-day fast. Even on weekends. The longer I think about it, the more I wonder whether it’s even possible.
When I get home from school, I go to the bedroom to put my backpack away for the weekend.
Maribel is at her desk, counting and calculating.
“Here.” I give her my week’s earnings.
“Good timing,” she says. “Your starter kit came today.” She points to my bed. A small purple box rests on top of my rumpled blanket.
Maribel adds up dollars and quarters while I flop onto my bed with a pair of scissors to open the Alma box.
“Twenty-four dollars, plus two more for selling the item of the month,” she announces after counting twice. “Pretty good for your first week.”
“But not good enough.”
And then I think, maybe I can’t ask Lady Bird Johnson for business advice. But there’s always Maribel.
“Hey, Mari?”
“Hey, what?”
I turn over the box. Packing peanuts and lip gloss boxes tumble onto my bed. “Well, what if you wanted to sell four or five of these every day?”
“Geez, I sell, like, eleven or twelve of those every day.”
“But if you were me, I mean. How would you do it?”
“If I were you?” She gets up from the desk and sits on my bed so the makeup pile is between us. With her back against the wall and her bare feet hanging off the edge of the mattress, she looks like my sister again, not the slick, all-business saleswoman she has become over the past few months.
She picks up one of the boxes and studies it. “What would you say was the most popular color this week?”
“Everyone asked for Once Upon a Time, but you only gave me that one, and there aren’t any in this box. Maybe when I order again next time, I can ask for extra—”
“No, that’s good,” she interrupts. “You need some exclusive shades. ‘Get it now or lose it forever.’” Those, she explains, will get the attention of customers like Kennedy, people who like having things that other people can’t have and who, most of all, like to stand out.
“Do you have an extra notebook? Start keeping track of the other popular colors and make sure you always have a lot of them.” Those, Maribel says, aren’t for people who want to stand out, but who want to feel as if they belong.
I take my black-and-white composition book out of my backpack and write Glass Slipper inside the back cover.
At first I mistake the splashing sound that wakes me up the next morning for the birdbath in our old backyard. But after I rub my eyes and clear my head, I realize it must be Nana, filling a bucket with water to scrub Grandpa’s Crown Victoria. I’m up, anyway, and since Maribel and I have been borrowing it so often lately, I feel as though I should help her. I change into a tank top and shorts and walk outside in flip-flops.
When Nana sees me, she points at a bucket at the e
dge of the driveway. She’s wearing her chanclas—a pair of old bath slippers—a checkered shirt, and faded black sweatpants, cut off just below her knees.
On the ground next to the bucket, Nana has left a pile of rags made from old T-shirts and bleach-spattered towels. I pick one up, dunk it in the sudsy water, wring it out, and carry it, dripping, to the passenger side of Grandpa’s car.
Nana doesn’t say anything, and I like the quiet. The only sounds are the splash and swab, splash and swab of our rags, and the twittering of finches in her apple tree—one more thing that grew where no one expected it to. The fruit is small and bitter, though. Only the birds will eat it.
After we’re finished washing, I hose away the soap while Nana goes back inside for some fresh towels. By now the sun is bright enough to help us along, and we finish drying the car in only a few minutes. Satisfied, Nana dumps the bucket over the lawn and gathers up the rags.
“I’ll be right in. I’m just going to pull some of these weeds… from the toilets.”
Nana chuckles. “Ándale.”
The weeding doesn’t take long. Before I go back inside, I pull up some of the mint, too. It’s just going to grow back, of course. I know it will. But I’m sick of seeing it spread and not doing anything about it.
“Bring me some of the mint leaves, mija,” Nana calls out the window. “I’ll put it in some iced tea. They say it’s going to be another hot one today.”
Mom is on the phone, alone in the kitchen, when I get back with the mint. She’s rubbing her temple with one hand while the other one clutches a letter so tightly, she’s crumpling its edges.
I fill a glass with water, stick the mint inside, and leave it on the windowsill above Nana’s sink.
“I see,” Mom says. “Well, thank you for your time.” I turn around when I hear the phone thud against the table.
Mom squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them and sees me, she blinks again, and the lines between her eyebrows soften.
“You got an early start,” she says. “Nice of you to help your nana.”
“Dad coming?” He usually gets to Nana’s house before breakfast when he visits on weekends. He likes to drive early, when the roads are still clear.
Mom gives me a sad half-smile, one I recognize from her old news tapes. It is a smile that promises the bad news she’s about to deliver isn’t actually as bad as it might sound. Trust her.
She breathes in through her nose—one, two, three, I count in my head—and out through her mouth. “He really wanted to visit,” she says. “He misses you. So much. But he has a project coming up, and he needed to stay and get ready. It’s only a small job, but who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to something bigger. Wouldn’t that be great? Just what we need right now.”
We both glance down at the paper Mom’s still holding. She slides it under Nana’s fruit bowl.
Dad used to drive up to see us every weekend, back when we first moved in with Nana. It didn’t last very long, though. Pretty soon, two weeks would slip by between visits. Then three. I try to remember the last time he was here. It’s been about a month, I think. I would have been more surprised if he had actually shown up this morning.
“You’re not too disappointed?”
I shake my head. I feel worse about Mom having to tell me than about my having to hear it.
She gets up and musses my bangs. “Good. I’m going to go shower. Why don’t you give Sophia a call, see if she’s free to come over?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I sit down at the table and take a banana out of the fruit bowl. When I hear the bathroom door click shut and the shower water start to run, I pull out the letter she left behind.
It’s from the mechanic, about Dad’s truck.
PAST DUE, it reads at the top.
Vehicle will be repossessed and sold if balance is not paid within 90 days.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
What day is so dark that there is no ray of sunshine to penetrate the gloom.
—MARY TODD LINCOLN
I didn’t realize they could just sell his truck like that. There’s no fresh start without Dad’s truck. Even if I wanted to, I can’t invite Sophia over today. I need to sell lip gloss. Four tubes a day, I remind myself. Even on weekends. I need ideas. I need help.
I need Maribel.
She’s in our bedroom, frowning at eye-shadow palettes and moisturizer jars and perfume bottles as if they are pieces in a puzzle she’s trying to put together. Already stacked next to her makeup bag are fifteen boxes of Sugar Plum lip gloss.
She’s so focused on packing up makeup that she doesn’t hear me come in and jumps when I clear my throat.
“Geez!”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“Dad’s not coming after all.”
“Shocker.” She rummages through containers of blush, in every shade from strawberry lemonade to fruit punch.
I pick one up. Gorgeous as Guava. “So, can I go with you today?”
“Put that back.” She swats at my hand. “What? No. Sorry, Geez.”
“Come on. Why not?”
“Listen, I know you’re all sad and lonely and confused about everything, but not this time. This is business.” She hasn’t done her hair yet. It’s loose and wavy, and when it falls into her face, she twists it into a bun that she holds in place with her pencil.
“But I go door-to-door with you all the time.”
“Geez, I’m not going door-to-door today. I’m going to Ms. Dominguez’s.”
“Tía Carla’s friend? With all of this?” Ms. Dominguez wears a lot of makeup, but still. Maribel has already packed enough to last her years, and she keeps adding to the pile: brow pencils, bronzers, nail polish.
“She invited some of her friends over for a party,” Maribel explains. “I’m going to make them over, show them some samples, and you know”—she squeezes an eyelash curler open and shut before tossing it into her bag—“get them to buy it.”
The women in Ms. Dominguez’s living room can’t be so different from the students in the El Dorado School cafeteria. I could learn so much just from watching Maribel. “But I don’t understand why I can’t go with you.”
“This could be a really important new market for me, and it’s all about word of mouth. I have to make a good impression. Another time, okay?”
It feels like a door shutting in my face. But if there’s one thing I’ve already learned from my sister, it’s never to give up before you find another way in. I start building a tower, stacking mascara boxes one on top of another.
“How did you get so good at business, anyway?” I try to sound casual, not daring to look Maribel in the eyes. “Did you take classes for it? Like, in high school or something?”
She pulls a mascara off the top, and the whole tower tumbles. I help her reorganize the boxes and pack them into her satchel. “Classes? No. I don’t know. I guess I’m just good at figuring out what people want.”
“You mean it comes naturally? I bet I could learn a lot from you.”
She lays her hands on my shoulders. We’re almost nose-to-nose, and I can’t help but look her in the eyes. “Geez, I know what you’re doing, and I already told you. Another time.”
But I don’t have time to wait. “I could help you. I can write down the orders and open up boxes so you have more time with the customers.”
She doesn’t say anything, just gets back to work. I consider it progress.
“Plus, the more I learn from you, the more I’ll sell. And the more I sell, the more money you make.”
She stops and turns around to face me. “What I don’t understand is why you’re even doing this.… You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Fine. If it means you’ll quit nagging me, you can come. As my assistant. My silent assistant.”
“Thank you!”
“As long as you do everything I say and stay out of the way.”
“Promise.” I hurry to the bathroom down the hall to showe
r and change while Maribel finishes packing.
Carolina Dominguez, one of Tía Carla’s clients from when she was just starting out, from long before she became a hairstylist to the rich and glamorous, lives somewhere inside Valle del Sol. When Maribel stops at the security gate, a guard walks out of the shed and up to her window. She rolls it down and smiles. “Good morning. We’re here with Alma Cosmetics to see Carolina Dominguez.”
The guard nods. “Name?”
“Maribel Zaragoza.”
He looks over at me.
“And Griselda Zaragoza.” He writes down our names and gives Maribel a parking permit to hang from her rearview mirror. The mechanical gate lurches open, and the guard waves us through.
“Wait!” Maribel calls, after he’s turned around to go back inside his shed.
“Is there something else I can assist you with, miss?”
She unzips her bag and reaches inside. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I couldn’t help but notice that your cuticles are looking a little dry.”
He holds his hand up in front of his face, then buries it in his pocket.
“It’s really no wonder. You must be in and out of the sun all day. I just want to leave you with this sample of Light as Feathers hand cream by Alma Cosmetics. It’s dye-free and scent-free—you won’t even notice you’re wearing it. But, I promise”—she holds a hand to her heart—“your nails will know the difference.”
The guard’s hand is still in his pocket. He doesn’t move.
Maribel shakes the sample-size bottle at him. “Here you go.”
Finally, he takes it.
“Enjoy! And, while we’re here, let me give you my card in case you decide to place an order.”
We’ve been sitting outside the gate so long it has swung shut again. The guard reopens it and we drive into the Valle del Sol Estates.
The streets here are narrower than outside, and lined with pink and white crepe myrtles, Dad’s old sketches come to life. We roll by a lush, green park. There’s a pond in the middle where ducks are swimming, and all around it, cedar benches and shade trees.
The Fresh New Face of Griselda Page 7
