Love in English

by Maria E. Andreu

  I run to the tangle of bodies.

  I push my way through the crowd. I have a sick feeling that I need to see, although I don’t know why. At the center is a blur. Two people, I think. One has the other in a headlock. They are swinging widely. It’s all blurry, voices, grunts. A voice I recognize.

  Neo.

  It’s Neo in the headlock, swinging his arms, connecting with a thud on the other boy’s lower back. He pulls Neo tighter.

  The other one is the guy from the hall, the one with the crew cut and the stupid comments, the one who tried to knock the meatballs out of Neo’s hands the day of the potluck.

  I jump into the circle. “Hey! Stop! Stop!”

  Neo wrestles free from the headlock and jumps on the other guy. He has blood on his face.

  “Neo, stop! He’s not worth it! Stop.” I try to grab his arm, pull him away. The other guy shoves my left shoulder, throwing me off-balance.

  Then all at once there are teachers, a gym teacher and some other ones I don’t recognize, and Neo and the other guy are being pulled away. I run after them.

  “Hey, he didn’t do anything,” I say to the gym teacher, pointing to Neo. “It’s not his fault.”

  “They’ll figure this out in the office,” says the gym guy. He’s big, and square, and isn’t looking at me.

  I stop, my heart thumping sickeningly. I have to tell them Neo didn’t do anything. That he wouldn’t. I have to make sure he is okay.

  I run to the door where they went in.

  Upside-Down Cake

  They don’t let me in to see Neo at the office. They don’t even let me sit inside. I sit outside on a bench where people line up for late passes in the morning. The minutes tick by in what feels like an eternity.

  Finally, the door to the office swings open. The other boy walks out. He gives me a dirty look but, luckily, doesn’t say anything. It’s several more minutes before the door swings open again.

  It’s Neo. I spring up. He has a cut on his cheek, but it’s stopped bleeding. He’ll have a moretón there tomorrow. Black and blue, as they call it in English. And the cut may scar.

  “Neo, are you okay?”

  It takes him a minute to focus his gaze on me, like someone trying to figure out where a dangerous noise is coming from. “Ana. What are you doing here?”

  “I had to make sure you were okay.”

  He shoves his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and starts walking toward the door. “You shouldn’t have waited,” he says.

  I catch up to him. “Hey, come on. What happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Neo, please talk to me.”

  “That stupid kid has been telling me . . . It doesn’t matter.”

  “Please. What?”

  “Just ugly things. Threatening me. Like every time he sees me outside ESL. And why does he have a problem with me, anyway? I never do anything to him.”

  “So don’t worry about him.”

  He shakes his head. We’re at the door to the outside. He leans his shoulder into it. He winces but pushes it open. “No,” he says.

  “What do you mean, no?” I step outside behind him.

  “I mean no, it’s not worth it. I thought I could do something here. But . . . no. I’m done.”

  “Done how? I don’t understand.” I jump in front of him to block his path. He stops walking.

  “I mean I’m done with this school. With this country. Nothing is the way I wanted.” He looks off to the distance, then back to my face. His eyes aren’t crystal as usual, but cloudy, like the day.

  “What? No,” I say. “You’re just mad.” He can’t possibly mean what it sounds like he’s saying.

  “They suspended me. I tried to explain he jumped on top of me. I tried to explain all the things he says. But they didn’t listen.”

  I want to hug him.

  Neo continues. “This place is for some people. Maybe you too. But not me. I’m going home.”

  Home?

  “What do you mean? Home to your apartment? Come on, I’ll walk with you,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “To my country. To my people. I’m going to Cyprus.”

  How can he want to go home? After he’s worked so hard? After we both have? I feel my heart is sinking to the ground. I feel like it is beating outside my body.

  “Neo, please. You’re mad now. I’ll come to your place after school. How long are you suspended?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Ana. I have been fighting here for a long time. I want to go home.”

  “Neo, will you please wait a minute? I’m so sorry about before. And now this happened and I know it’s not the time to talk about it, but you’re saying these things about going home, so I just want you to know. I’m sorry about this morning. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything to you. And then we kissed and I . . . I should have told you about Harrison, but then my dad was mad and I didn’t know how. If I had known earlier how you felt, I would have done things differently.”

  He stares at me. Finally he says, “No, Ana. You knew how I felt about you. You’ve known it since New Year’s. And you knew what you felt about me. But you wanted your American boyfriend. Well, what is that saying Mr. T. says? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

  He walks past me and starts in the direction of his place. The set in his shoulders makes it pretty obvious he doesn’t want me to follow. I stand and watch him getting smaller and smaller, until he turns right past the chain-link fence around the soccer field and disappears from view.

  There’s nothing left but to go home. I take the walk slowly, Neo’s words rattling in my brain. That saying that used to make no sense: have your cake and eat it too. I get it now. It’s about not wanting to choose, even when you have to.

  Take off the helmet and put on a mask

  Breathe in the air

  That filters through me

  To walk

  Through this world

  With the right face

  Descarada—

  Like I don’t want to be.

  Faceless—

  The old me stripped away.

  A girl I don’t recognize

  In my place.

  I want to turn my face to the sun

  And be all of me in one place.

  Amiga De Verdad

  When I get home, I sneak my phone back and text Altagracia about what happened. She writes back that she’s coming over. Even though I am still grounded, my mom says it is okay. I think she can tell that I need my friend.

  Altagracia comes up. Her face is bare, her hair bunched at her crown, and she’s in a jogging suit.

  I meet her at the door and walk her to my room. My mom says a quick hi and goes out to the market. My dad is working. I feel a little lighter knowing it’s just Altagracia and me in our apartment.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with no makeup on before.

  “Letting my pores breathe.” She fans her face and laughs, her dimples pronounced. She looks so very young without her usual face on. “But you look awful, no offense.”

  I take a breath.

  “Okay, tell me everything,” she says, getting serious.

  “Ugh. Everything’s a mess, Altagracia. Everything. My dad is still so mad at me. And Neo told me he’s moving back to his country.”

  “What? Because of the fight with that Neanderthal? I heard about that. He’s not worth that.”

  “I don’t know. That, but other things too.” I look at her guiltily. “I kissed Neo.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me. “Oh,” she says.

  “Yes. That was not a good thing to do.”

  She looks at me. “Can I tell you something? And stop me if you think I’m off base.”

  “Of course.” I have to think for a moment what off base means, but then I remember it’s about baseball, how you are only safe if your foot is on the base.

  “Ever since you told me you liked Harrison, I tried to see it, you know?
And even though you seemed into it, there was something missing. Honestly, I think you liked the idea of Harrison more than you ever liked the reality of Harrison.”

  I let this sink in. Maybe she is right. Why did I like Harrison, after all? Because he looked like the boys from the movies? Because everything seems so easy and American with him? He is everything I thought I wanted—and that stopped me from seeing the real thing right in front of me.

  I take a deep breath in. I hadn’t imagined it was this complicated. Isn’t love supposed to be something you just know, like running after someone in a prom dress, or kissing a boy over a birthday cake?

  “You said I was brave for going out there, for trying. But I hurt two people who didn’t deserve to be hurt. I disappointed my parents. I scared them. And Neo said this thing, that I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.”

  She sprawls backward on my bedspread made of patches of blue-and-gold bohemian fabric that my mother stitched together on an old Singer. She says, “Girl, cake tastes good. You made a mistake. It doesn’t make you a bad person. What you do after, that’s what shows who you are. I’m a big believer that things happen the way they’re supposed to, even when they hurt. Like you coming here, and us becoming friends. I’m better because I know you.”

  I smile. She’s going to make me cry if she keeps this up. I hug her. “I’m better because I know you too,” I say.

  She breaks the hug, raises her eyebrow mischievously. “Damn straight you are. Look at how on point your eyebrow game is right now.”

  I throw my head back and laugh.

  She leans in conspiratorially. “Now let me tell you what happened with Letitia.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “We kissed.”

  “What?!”

  “I know. And let me tell you, I could kiss her for days. I finally get it.” I soak in every little detail. It makes me so happy to see her this overjoyed.

  The Hard Conversation

  I have thought a lot about what Altagracia said, about how it’s what we do after mistakes that shows who we are. I want to be the kind of person who does the right thing after making mistakes.

  “Thank you for talking to me, Harrison,” I say. My heart is thumping. We’re sitting in the rotunda. It’s lunchtime, but it’s quiet. He’s in a green hoodie and jeans. He still looks like always—scrubbed and bright-eyed, full of certainty that the world is good. But there’s something else, too, a guardedness. It hurts my heart to think I had something to do with that look.

  We sit down after brief hellos. “So what’s up?” he says. Not unkindly, but not friendly, either.

  I take a deep breath. There are many ways not to have the right words. “I’m . . . I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry. You were sweet to me. And I made a mistake. You didn’t deserve that.”

  He looks away. “It was shitty to find out like that. With some other dude putting a flower on your locker.”

  “I know. I messed up. Things were kind of up in the air with us and it just happened. Not that those are good excuses. You deserved better.”

  He’s quiet. “You were the first girl I liked that much in a long time. That way,” he says, finally. His face looks pained.

  His words smash over me, like a wave that takes your feet out from under you. “I should have done better,” I say. “I really am sorry.”

  “You liked him the whole time?” he says.

  “It wasn’t like that. I really thought . . . honestly, I thought for a long time that what I liked about him was that he knew what it was like to be from somewhere else. It took me a months to realize it was something else. I wish this relationship stuff came with instructions.”

  He laughs sadly. “Yeah.”

  “Can I give you a hug?” I ask. “Would that be okay?”

  He nods, and I hug him. It’s quick, and chaste, but it feels like the start of forgiveness.

  Suddenly there’s not much more to say. “Goodbye, Harrison,” I say, standing up. “Thank you for listening.”

  He scrunches his mouth in a sad smile. “Goodbye, Ana,” he says. He leaves in the direction of the cafeteria. I go the other way.

  When you walk in the sun and think it is honest

  When you step off a curb and think it is kind

  When the words in your throat flutter off in the silence

  When the people you love turn their heads as you whisper

  When the world seems indifferent to all that you say

  When you think you are heard but all is confusion

  Then you tip your head up to the blue and you ask it

  Will it ever be right or will it always be so?

  Will I ever feel sure like the Earth on its axis?

  Or is meaning always lost in a tangle of sky?

  The Last Day of the Brain Jock Rebel

  I would give anything not to be at this party, but there’s nowhere I would rather be, either. Mr. T. has organized a goodbye party for Neo. It’s been days since I’ve seen him. He hasn’t been in school because of his suspension. He hasn’t been answering any of my texts. I can’t believe that it’s over. I can’t believe that he won’t let me explain. But if I was in his shoes, would I? Probably not.

  I look over at him. Neo seems sad, but something else, too, a mixture of resigned and relieved. That probably hurts most of all. I am only now beginning to understand just how much I thought we were in this together, learning how to make our way through the bramble of this foreign land. But now he is leaving, and I’ve never felt more alone.

  Mr. T. clinks a plastic fork on a red Solo cup. “Okay, listen up, people. I’ve put together a little video of Neo’s time here. So everybody, take a moment.”

  A video? He turns off the lights and turns on the smartboard. It’s black. Then it fades to a picture of us on the first day. When did he take that picture? I don’t even remember. Outside his car holding up McDonald’s bags. A video of Neo holding empanadas and doing the “tips of the fingers to the lips/yummy” sign. A picture of one of Neo’s drawings of a skyscraper, the detail exquisite, almost like metal lace. A long shot of us playing soccer on the grass. I had totally forgotten that moment. A picture of him all bundled up in the snow. A shot of the back of our heads through the window in the library media room. I squint and I see the TV, with a shot of Pretty in Pink when Duckie is driving his bike past Andie’s house in the rain. When did Mr. T. get all these pictures?

  I want to cry so much it hurts my throat.

  Thankfully, the video is short. Neo’s eyes are a little glassy too.

  “Neo, you’ve been an important part of this class, and I hope you remember your American adventure fondly,” Mr. T. says.

  “I will remember with much fond,” says Neo with a sad smile.

  “Okay, everyone, how about we go around the room and tell Neo one thing we appreciated #### him. I’ll start. Neo, I appreciate you giving your all to the work. You are a cool kid.”

  Bhagatveer says, “I appreciate you helping me understand the homework sometimes.”

  “I like how you draw.”

  “I like that ride you gave me on your scooter.”

  “I am grateful for the way you stood up for me when that boy was picking on me.”

  “Ana?” says Mr. T. when it’s my turn.

  “I . . . there’s a lot,” I say. Mr. T. nods gives me time to figure out what to say. “You always had the best snacks for our movie watching.” Neo studies me. His eyebrows look just the slightest bit disappointed, a formal cast to his face, like he’s holding himself back from me. Or like he thinks that’s what I’m doing with him.

  Mr. T. laughs. “The way to a girl’s heart is through her stomach.”

  I’ve never heard this saying, and it grosses me out a little, but I think I understand what it means. It reminds me of my grandmother. Barriga llena, corazón contento.

  There is more I want to say, but not here, not in front of everyone.

  The bell rings. Everyone clusters around Neo to give him
a hug. I hang back. I want to be the last one.

  Finally, when it’s just us, we walk to the door. “I have something for you,” I say. I pull it out of my bag. It’s a T-shirt that says

  Brain

  Jock

  Rebel

  Recluse

  Princess

  There’s a hint of a smile on his face. “The ‘princess’ will be a little hard to explain back home,” he says. “Thank you.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  We’re at the door of the classroom now.

  “Neo, I’ve been trying to text you.”

  “I know. I don’t know what to say.”

  “But I know what to say.”

  “It’s all in the past.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  He shakes his head. “Ana, I am grateful for all those movies and all that . . .” He drifts off. He looks uncomfortable, like he’s trying to hold himself in tightly, not say too much. “Anyway, I have to go now.”

  “I can walk with you,” I say.

  He shakes his head again, then looks off like he’s thinking about something.

  “I have to go,” he says. He gives me a kiss on the cheek, sweet, soft, sad. Then he walks away. I turn in the direction of my locker before the tears that are threatening to escape fall out of my eyes.

  When I turn back around, he’s already gone.

  I before E except after C

  Or when used in “ay”

  As “you light up my day.”

  Also except as in “weird”

  And “albeit”

  And “forfeit”

  And “fancier”

  In a language full of exceptions to the rule

  I should have seen the exception that is you.

  The Things That Call You Home

  Scrape.

  Tink.

  Chew.

  Dinner with my parents is excruciating now. I wonder if my dad is really just going to be mad at me forever. I eye the clock. Neo’s flight is tonight. In his small apartment that already lacked any sign of hominess, every last thing is being put in a suitcase or in a box by the curb, and nothing will be left of him, not his sketchbook with the beautiful buildings, not that charcoal button-down he wore to New York, nothing.