The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  chapter cuatro

  You know the fairy tale about the tortuga and the hare, the one where the crazy rabbit is so fast it can easily win the race but ends up losing in the end to the turtle? That’s me, the tortuguita. My father says being a tortuga is the only way brown people have a chance in this country, and that on the inside I have the great strength of a turtle.

  I didn’t know if I had any great strength on the inside. And I was less sure if it was even flattering to be nicknamed after a turtle. I mean, come on, at least make me an eagle or a tiger or a mighty falcon or something, but a turtle? However, I did know that when it came to brown people in El Norte, the odds were stacked against us big and tall.

  Por ejemplo, my new history teacher had just told us that there were now more brown-skinned men in American jails than in American universities, ¡Increíble! Then again, it does seem like everyone I know has at least one relative in prison.

  Usually I try to ignore stats like that when I hear them because they hurt too bad. It’s just way too depressing to think about the realities of most brown-skinned people here in America: at the health care clínicas, the way the policía treat us, the fact that we do most of the toilet cleaning in the restrooms of all the hotels, and on and on and on. I mean, there are so many of us here in this country, yet most Latino people live as if we are holding a second-class bus pass on a first-class train. No matter where I go, I feel like an outsider.

  I don’t complain, though. I’m the type of person who would rather just lock up all my feelings on the inside and drown out the pain, like how La Llorona drowned her children, so I can spare the other parts of me from more deep sadness. Maybe that’s why I work like a Mexican mule on a dry piece of farmland in 110-degree heat. Work takes my mind off reality. I don’t talk, I don’t protest, I try not to cry, and I don’t use my voice to speak the truth. Nada. I just work.

  I guess a part of me thinks that if I work hard enough I can make all the sorrow in this world go away. Of course I know I’m wrong, but it feels nice to lie to myself. Lying to myself protects me from deep despair.

  Sí, entiendo La Llorona pero mas de lo que yo quiero. I understand La Llorona more than I want.

  With all these heavy thoughts running through my brain, I walked through the front door of mi casa and headed for the dining room table so I could sit down and finish my class assignments before I had to prepare dinner, wash the dishes, and put my younger brothers to bed. Freshman year had been tough because I hadn’t slept as much as I should have. This year I knew that if I got my schoolwork done earlier in the evening, I wouldn’t have to stay up until all hours of la noche finishing assignments. Math was done, yes, but this year I had a crazy man named Mr. Wardin for World History, and he was already pounding us with giant amounts of work I didn’t even hardly understand. I could already tell it would take a whole lot of effort to keep up in his class.

  I parked myself down at the dining room table and opened up the eight hundred-page World History textbook. Of course, I would have done my homework somewhee else if I could have because I was sitting in the middle of the living room, which meant that I was also sitting right in the middle of all our family noise and chaos. But there was nowhere else.

  The dining room table was the only place in mi entire casa where I had space to study. And sometimes I was lucky to even have that. I turned to Chapter One.

  “Sonia…ayúdame.”

  I closed Chapter One.

  Mi ama was calling me from her favorite place in the whole wide world—her bed—hypnotized by a telenovela. I once tried to watch a telenovela with my mother so we could have a little ama-mija bonding time, but the story line was about a lesbian who had decided to sleep with a man for the very first time, and it turned out that the guy was her unknown twin brother, so of course she ended up getting pregnant with the incestuous baby of a long-lost sibling. Ever since that day I have thought telenovelas were the stupidest thing ever to hit our planet. Stupider than telesales people or government politicians, even.

  Still, mi ama loved them. She was literally addicted, watching telenovelas for hours and hours every day.

  In her hand she held a late notice from the gas company. The only reason she’d called me in was because she needed me to read it.

  Though mi papi made all the money, Ama paid all the bills, and she had a special system to running the economics of our house. The first bill that came, the one that said when the money was due, would always get thrown away. Then the second notice would come telling us again that a payment was due, and she’d throw that one away also. Only the third bill, the one that said FINAL NOTICE, would get paid, and even then she’d wait until the last day before the money was actually due to pay the cash we owed. It was my mother’s way of holding on to our family’s fortune as long as possible before spending it.

  Of course, her system resulted in lots of late fees and we’d end up having our phone, lights, water, and heat turned off all the time, but mi ama was convinced her schemes kept us richer than we would have been had she not figured out the secret to wealth and prosperity in America.

  “Sólo es el segundo,” I said, handing her back the letter. Only notice number two.

  “Bueno,” she replied, tearing up the paper. The gas bill people would have to send at least a third request if they wanted their money. I shook my head. The last time my mother screwed with the gas company, we took cold showers for eleven days.

  “Sonia…ayúdame,” she said, reaching out her hands for me to help her out of bed.

  I know it’s not nice to think of pregnant people as fat, but mi ama was swelling up like a burrito gordo. My new brother and sister—we had already found out that Ama was carrying twins, one boy and one girl—would be children number six and seven in la casa. Really, they should have been eight and nine, but my mother had had two miscarriages a few years ago. We were never allowed to mention them, though. In my familia there were always things like that which were known to everyone but no one was ever allowed to mention. Stuff like miscarriages and homosexual relatives always got swept under the rug.

  Of course, I know that giving birth to nine children sounds like a lot in the United States, but back in Mexico, it’s nothing. Mi abuelita, my grandmother, had fourteen children, and many of them had nine to thirteen kids of their own. I have so many cousins that if we ever hold a family reunion we’ll need to rent the Grand Canyon.

  “Mira,” mi ama instructed as we walked into the kitchen. She wanted me to take a look at a special letter she’d received in the mail. I scanned the top line.

  YOU HAVE ALREADY WON 10

  MILLION DOLLARS!

  “Es basura,” I said, telling her it was garbage. But mi ama knew all too well what the letter said. She’d seen the commercials of people who had won millions of dollars many times before from letters like these, and she wasn’t about to just let me throw away her opportunity to sail on luxury yachts and drive Rolls-Royces.

  “Dime,” my mother instructed as she led me to the dining room table so I could inform her about how we could claim our prize. Ama felt one hundred percent sure that people in the United States loved to give money away for free. All she wanted was her fair share. She pushed my schools books aside.

  “Oye, farthead,” my drunkle called from his reclining position on the couch to my younger brother. My drunkle always called my younger brothers by offensive names. They loved it.

  “Bring me a cerveza” he said in Spanish.

  Miguel, though he was only eight years old, eagerly ran to the kitchen to fetch my drunkle a beer. He returned a few seconds later.

  “Hey, estúpido,” my drunkle complained when Miguel delivered him the bottle. “When you bring someone una cerveza, you need to open it for them.”

  “Pero I don’t know how,” my younger brother answered with an innocent look on his face.

  “You don’t know how to open a cerveza? What are you, some kind of retard?” my drunkle replied. “Go get the opener, ass fa
ce. I will teach you.”

  I raised my eyes and stared at mi ama with a “look.” Latinos are the champions of communicating things with “looks.” Mi ama lowered her gaze and pointed back to the 10 MILLION DOLLARS! letter, trying to ignore what was going on between my brother and her brother, two feet behind us.

  Miguel raced in and out of the kitchen, more excited to learn than at any other time in his educational history. When he handed my drunkle the bottle opener, my drunkle sat Miguel in his lap and began to teach him what he considered to be a very important life lesson.

  “Now, you hold one hand around the neck, and the other hand grips the opener and…¡Pssst!…¡Abierta!”

  “¡Fantástico!” shouted Miguel as some fizz rose out the top of the bottle. They both smiled.

  “¿Quieres?” my drunkle then asked, wanting to know if my eight-year-old brother cared for a sip of beer.

  “¡Sí!” shouted Miguel, eager to taste the brew.

  I raised my eyes and glared at mi ama. She paused, then slowly turned to my drunkle.

  “Ernesto…” mi ama pleaded, but she pleaded so weakly, I knew there was no way he was going to listen.

  “Relájate,” her brother replied, telling my mother to relax herself. “One little sip isn’t going to hurt him. It’ll make him a man.”

  Miguel eagerly reached for the bottle.

  “Ernesto, por favor,” mi ama repeated as my drunkle lifted the beer toward my younger brother’s mouth. But my drunkle continued, completely disregarding mi ama.

  “It’s only one sip,” he answered. “Besides, if it was up to you, all the men in this household would be pussies.”

  “Ernesto, your language.”

  “You see,” my drunkle replied with a smile. “Here, idiot boy…take a sip.”

  I watched my eight-year-old brother raise the bottle to his lips. Not being content to merely taste the brew, he greedily began to glug. After a moment, my drunkle pulled the bottle away and grinned, proud to have passed his wisdom down from one generation to the next. Me, I wondered if this was the moment in Miguel’s life that would one day lead him to become yet another brown-skinned alcóholico.

  “Uno más,” Miguel said eagerly.

  “No,” said my drunkle, suddenly the voice of reason. “Only one.”

  “Si, uno más,” said Miguel in a playful way as he quickly reached for the beer.

  “Oops.”

  A look of anger flashed across my drunkle’s eyes. Miguel had knocked the beer out of my drunkle’s hands, spilling it everywhere.

  “Sorry.”

  “¡Estúpido!” shouted my drunkle, his pants soaking wet. BAM! My drunkle smashed Miguel in the chest. A loud thump echoed through the room. The force of the blow knocked my brother clean off his feet, and he landed hard on his butt on the floor.

  Miguel looked up. Fear filled his eyes. My drunkle began to stand slowly, meanly, angrily, then took a step toward Miguel. A tear began to form in Miguel’s eyes, a tear which finally fell when my drunkle reached to unhitch his thick, leather belt.

  Miguel’s bottom lip started shaking as if he were standing outdoors in a short-sleeve shirt during a snowstorm. Everyone knew my drunkle was a man who firmly believed in the power of the belt, even on kids that weren’t his own.

  “Es okay, es okay,” mi ama said quickly, waddling to her feet. “Sonia, go clean it up,” she said, trying to stand between Miguel and my drunkle before my younger brother received a ferocious beating. “No es un problema,” my mother repeated, pointing to the spilled beer on the floor. “Sonia will get it.”

  “Me?” I said.

  Mi ama shot me a look.

  “¡Sonia, ve!” she ordered.

  I lowered my eyes, rose from my chair, and went to get some paper towels from the kitchen.

  “And when you’re in there,” mi ama instructed, “bring your uncle another cerveza.”

  “No hay más,” Miguel suddenly called out, trying to be helpful. Everyone stopped and stared at my brother. It was a stupid thing to say, even if it was the truth that there was no more beer. A new wave of rage flashed across my drunkle’s face. It was one thing to spill a beer. It was a totally different thing to spill the last beer.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry, Ernesto,” said mi ama in an effort to calm my drunkle down. “Sonia will go to the store and buy more.”

  “Pero I have homework,” I said.

  “Sonia!” mi ama snapped as she shot me another look. This one was filled with laser beams. She turned back to my little brother. “Es okay, Miguelito. Go into the bedroom and play with your toy gun,” she instructed, in order to get Miguel as far away from my drunkle as fast as she could. Miguel scampered away.

  “Sit, Ernesto, sit. Sonia will be back soon. Ten minutes at the most.”

  Mi ama reached into her bra and pulled out a huge stream of green twenty dollar bills that my father had just given her from cashing his weekly paycheck. Like the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, my drun-kle’s eyes got big, big, big when he saw the money.

  Mi ama handed me one of the twenties. “Sit, Ernesto, sit,” she repeated. “Sonia will be back soon. Ten minutes at most.”

  My drunkle paused, considering whether he wanted to beat the crap out of my brother or fart on the couch and wait for me to return with a fresh six-pack of cerveza.

  “You have a lot to learn about raising kids, Maria,” my drunkle finally said as he flopped onto the couch and grabbed the remote control. “Children need discipline or they grow up without values.” He put his feet on the sofa, dirty shoes and all. “You’re a bad mother, Maria. Your children have no respect.”

  “Sit, sit, watch,” mi ama answered, trying not to pay any attention to his words. “Sonia will be back in no time at all.”

  My mother turned to me. “Sonia…apúrate.”

  Apúrate means “hurry up” in Spanish. I looked over at my pile of schoolbooks that had been pushed aside. It would be a late noche after all.

  chapter cinco

  Some people may think it’s weird that my mother would send a fifteen-year-old to buy cerveza at the market, but around my neighborhood, the liquor store people only care about one thing: money. They’d sell teenagers anything we asked for as long as we had the cash to pay for it. Cigarettes, condoms, rolling papers, wine: if I could shell out for it, they would sell it to me. Money, like they say, makes the world go ‘round.

  Too bad no one told that to the guy who had just opened Santiago’s Pet Store, though. After all, the only thing he had to offer customers were pooper-scoopers, fish, and stuff like that. Didn’t he know that around this part of the city tequila outsold dog cookies by about one hundred million to one? However, I love animals, so I decided to go inside and check out the new neighborhood business. Plus, hopefully, my drunkle would be getting really thirsty back at the casa.

  I walked up to the door of the pet store and paused. Maybe I shouldn’t, I thought. I mean, there was still the beer to buy, dinner to prepare, and my younger brothers would, as usual, need help with their homework. After all, if I didn’t keep them straight in school, no one would.

  Yes, I thought. Best to get on with the other things I still had to do. The sooner I did, the sooner I could get back to my own schoolwork. I turned around.

  Then something pulled me.

  I know it sounds weird to say “something pulled me,” but this was a real pull, only not by a person. Now, usually I don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo “something pulled me” stuff, but this pull was strong, almost freaky. It was as if God himself was telling me I needed to walk inside that pet store.

  Two minutes after I entered, I understood why. It was love at first sight.

  His green eyes sparkled with a combination of emerald and caramel, the tempting, swirling kind that tastes really good on an ice-cream sundae. His lips were thin and elegant. And oh, mamacita, the heat that burned between us when we first looked at one another: you could have cooked came asada on an outdoor griddle w
ith all that fire. I almost had to turn away from all the pasión.

  Suddenly, while I was staring at him, he whirled around in the other direction and began to walk away, trying to pretend that he hadn’t noticed me. Obviously, he was playing hard to get. Of course, this only made me want him more. I sat there and watched his butt jiggle. For sure, there was an undeniable attraction between us.

  Maybe some creatures are really meant to be together, like Adam and Eve, Wilma and Fred, Tom and Jerry. All I knew was that I instantly wanted to hug him and hold him in my arms forever. He had adorable ears, a triangle nose, small feet, and a giant lump in his stomach, as if he had swallowed a big ol’ bean. That’s why I decided to name him Frijolito, slang for “little bean.” It was obvious that he was the runt of the litter, but this kitten was the most adorable creature I’d ever seen. It was as if Frijolito and I had known each other in a prior life.

  “Quieres cargarlo?” asked a voice in Spanish, inquiring if I wanted to hold the kitty.

  “Si,” I answered.

  The boy lifted the tiny cat out of the small kennel and gently passed him over to me. Frijolito started to purr.

  Wow, was he soft. It seemed that the muscle in his left ear wasn’t strong enough to hold the point of his ear all the way up, but his whiskers were amazing, a series of straight, intersecting lines that looked as if they’d been drawn up in God’s geometry class or something.

  I stood there petting the kitten while he purred and purred and purred. It’s a boy, right? I suddenly asked myself. I flipped Frijolito over, checked between his legs, and saw his two tiny little kitten balls.

  Yep, he was a boy.

  Once I confirmed his manhood, I flipped Frijolito back over, and he began to purr again. Holding him in my arms was the most relaxed I’d felt in almost two years.

  “He likes you,” said the boy who worked at the pet store. “And I think his taste is to be highly saluted.”

  I raised my eyes. The boy smiled. He had dark, smooth skin and glistening, white teeth. For a moment I was stunned.