“Hello—”
“I wasn’t down with that. But what did you expect me to do? I was young. And because of that you of all people should know better than to do that to your own—”
I get yelly. “HEY!”
“You get your ass back home, right now. How much is that now? Two days of school? Or more? What else don’t I know?”
“You’re not even giving her a chance to speak her—”
“What, so she could tell me what I already know, Sujei? She thinks she knows everything! She thinks!”
“That’s right, she does think,” I say, particularly freakin brave on the other side of a phone. “For my damn self. You can’t tell me who to be. You think you know, but you don’t.”
My dad slaps his forehead and paces.
His wife Simone: “Que mejor que no ven aquí—”
“What?” my mother roars. This would be the part in the comic where she grows one hundred feet tall and her clothes rip off. “What did my daughter just say to me?”
“She said,” Sujei says, chewing gum, I can tell, “you can’t be telling her—”
“Cállate, Sujei! I know what she said!”
“You do? Because it’s funny. You always say you want her to surpass you. But that only works if you two are in different lanes. Can you see yourself? You’re chasing behind, pushing her to the finish line you never got to. She needs her own lane, stupido!”
“Oh, so you think you can call me stupid because you a big-ass profesor!”
“Big ass?”
“Holy shit, should I just hang up? Because I’m am obviously not in this conversation.”
My dad waving frantically: “Por favor, no cuelgue en su, please!”
“You wouldn’t dare,” my mother warns.
I wouldn’t. My mother put me in this world, and I know she could take my culo out. “No. But. But Mami. What is home? What exactly are you expecting of me?”
“What is home? Home is the place I bust my ass paying for. Like your clothes. Your food.”
“I can’t ever thank you enough for doing that. I love you, Mami. But that’s not home. That’s a place. A home is where you are loved.”
“What kind of bullshit is that? Me working two jobs doesn’t show that?”
“It does. It does, but . . .” my hand drops at my side.
Sujei: “I got to go to the bathroom.”
My dad takes a step closer to me. “She won’t get that, Verdad.”
“Is that your father? What? He gets it? You think he’s ‘home’?”
Flush. “Listen.” Pants zip. “What we have here is a failure to communicate. What we need to do—”
My father grabs the phone. “What she needs, ladies, is to get a shower. Get some sleep.”
Simone rescues me and motions me to follow her.
“Don’t tell me what she needs,” my mother shouts into my father’s ear on the phone, loud enough for me to hear even though I’m halfway up the stairs.
My father holds the phone away from his ear: “Verdad! Don’t go looking for bread at the hardware store. You hear me?”
Hear her? There are dudes at NASA picking her voice up on satellite. I still hear her voice while I turn on the shower. I have to set the stage. I prop up my cell and play some music. I stand in a puddle of my clothes and wait for the room to steam. Under the showerhead, I shed skins I’ve outgrown. Down the drain goes my pain and uncertainty. What I’m left with is the girl who had her first kiss. The girl who snuck out of her mother’s house and spent the night in a cemetery.
My scar, my bullet hole, for once doesn’t make me want to run away from everything but reminds me I’m still standing. I cry because of who isn’t. My tears blend into the shower water and go down the drain.
I wrap my head in a towel, borrow the guest robe hanging on a hook, and leave the clouds of my tears behind me.
The room is crisp, clean, and pale blue. Pastel paintings of flowers hang on the walls. Ribboned vases are filled with silk flowers. Simone has removed the “show pillows” and replaced them with pillows I won’t feel guilty drooling on. I swan dive under a layer of cool sheets and thick comforter. Dream of bakeries serving hammers. Hardware stores serving bread.
……
There’s a knock. I sit up in a strange room in a strange bed. Somehow, I fell asleep in a department store showroom. My backpack and violin have been placed in an open closet with pink silk hangers. I check my phone. There’s a text from Nelly, saying she can meet me this morning before school starts. At her new school.
Reality sinks its teeth. I keep reading and rereading the text. Does she get that I just want to talk, or did I accidentally challenge her to a fight?
My dad pokes his head into the room. “Hey, mija, want some breakfast?”
I scan the guest room, the scent diffuser and the box of Kleenex by the bed. The bathroom door is open, revealing hotel hand lotions on the sink. The same jealousy I felt about Danny’s friends resurges. What guests have they had? Why is this a guest room and not my bedroom? But I swallow my bitterness because I have a vagenda today. And also because I smell pancakes and I’m freakin on the brink of starvation.
“Papi, I need your help.”
“I don’t have money, Verdad. No matter what your mom has been telling you.”
“That’s so gross, Papi. I wasn’t gonna ask for money.”
“I’m sorry. What do you need?”
“I have to make restitution.”
“I think you better let your mom cool off for a couple of days or she’s going to restitute your ass.”
“No, not with her.” I sit up and stretch my back. It feels like I’ve been sleeping in a cemetery or something. “With someone else. A girl. A girl I wronged.”
I explain how I got Nelly into trouble and he agrees I have to apologize.
My dad says he’ll drive me to meet her, on one condition. We both go to morning Mass—damn it. But first, family breakfast.
In the kitchen, Simone is working the sausage grill. My dad and I sit down to sausages wrapped in apple pancakes.
“Young lady.” Simone turns her head in my direction. “Un tenedor?” She points to the unused fork next to my plate.
“Whhhdmopf. I mean it’s like a sandwich.” I think I just got syrup in my hair.
“So, Verdad,” my dad says, neatly cutting his pancakes into rectangles, “how often do you eat alone?”
I roll my eyes. I’m under his roof for less than a full day and he’s already opening a freakin FBI file on me. “That’s insulting to Simone. Her pancakes are to blame.” Simone actually smiles and flips a pancake. Wow, that was charming of me, even with three sausages in my mouth.
“That’s my chair, Papi! She’s sitting in my chair.”
I look up. Ms. Monster High is standing there whipping around a wolf’s tail pinned to her culo. I make a big show of checking my phone calendar: “No. Not Halloween. Still September. You auditioning for the circus?”
“Verdad.” My dad wipes my mouth with a napkin, his eyes darting between me and Ms. Monster High. “You know, you two have a lot in common. A flair for the dramatic. A love of costumes.”
“Costumes?” Monster High stomps. “I’m not wearing a costume. Ick, she got my spot all sticky!”
Holy shit. I stand up. “I’m finished. Later.”
This I hear as I head for the shower: “I can’t believe you let a homeless person sit in my chair.”
“Mija, hold up. Let Papi clean that up for you. She didn’t know . . .”
Oops. I get lost. And accidentally take a shower in her bathroom by accident. Forget to flush. Use half a bottle of rose-scented foot lotion from an extensive collection and think, Prisha and Sarah would love these glittery ones. Before I step out of the princess’s palace, I take note of the walls. It’s like a parallel universe. Monster High has been in almost as many plays as me. I wonder how many of her shows my dad attended. I scan the photographs for evidence of treachery, and yup, I find it.
There’s my dad, handing her flowers. Just for that I filch her expensive-ass perfume—oh look at the tag: Love, Papi. Since I’ll give it to Prisha and Sarah, it doesn’t count as stealing. It’s a donation. Also, it’s a public service. Them girls stank.
I call shotgun. My dad is driving Veronica to school before he takes me on my odyssey. Monster High is sitting in the back seat smelling me, I know it. Tee-hee. I can feel her mal de ojo tryin to bore into my cranium, but I’ve faced off with my mother. This kid can’t penetrate my head space.
I use my theater voice as Veronica slams the car door and heads toward the school: “Have a wonderful day! It’s so wonderful to get to know my little sister!”
My dad raises an eyebrow at me as he drives off. “You are just like your mom.”
“Hardworking? Dedicated? Goal-oriented? Thank you.” Yeah, I’m mad at my mother, but he better not talk smack about her.
“Relentless.”
Time for morning Mass. Time to take all my belief in my ultimate goodness and douse it with hellfire.
We enter the foyer. I mechanically bless myself with holy water. A church no longer feels like a sacred space. I was baptized, I have taken communion, and I have been confirmed. Blanca and I always imagined a formal church wedding, her to Chadwick Boseman, me to whomever. I never imagined myself having to worry about whether I’d even be allowed to get married. I am no longer a VIP, one of God’s chosen people, guaranteed a first-class ticket to paradise. I am officially on the highway to hell.
The pews are filled with the ancient ones, who are always at the very front of the church. It’s funny the progression you make: in the way back as kids, way up close and personal the closer you get to the pearly gates. We recite the Our Father. Our Father Who Art in Heaven, you’re just like my dad—always in my head, but never with me. Do you even want me here? Now that you know the real me? How long before my dad asks me to leave his house?
The priest is doing the homily now, something about sheep and straying from the path of righteousness. If only sheep knew their literary significance when they were being sheared for sweaters.
Time for communion. I’m kneeling and laying out my sins.
O my God I am heartily sorry for having offended you . . .
But my brain does not cooperate. I stare at the cross, at the being who is 100 percent human and 100 percent divine at the same time. The being who is at least three things at once in the Holy Trinity. So all of us sitting here accept transubstantiation, but we can’t accept that a kid can be transgender?
Mass is over. My father signals me to kneel in the aisle before we go up front to get our confessions heard. We sit in the first pew outside the confessional and prepare our hearts with prayer. I squint at my dad, who’s got his chin up, hands clasped, and eyes closed.
I close my eyes and think about what my mother would want me to confess. Anything to do with sex. Anything to do with Danny.
But, Jesus, why does sex have to be considered impure? I am sorry, but humanity would’ve been so much better off if Mother Mary just had sex. I sign the cross and shiver. I don’t believe in so many things anymore, but belief in hell I can’t shake.
My dad taps my shoulder. He’s already been to the box and back. What did he confess? Has he confessed to betraying me and Mami? Has he been forgiven? Not by my ass, he hasn’t.
I step out of the aisle, kneel, sign the cross, and head to the box. Part the curtain and step inside. “Good morning, Padre. It has been almost a year since my last confession.”
“Good morning, child. What do you have to confess?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Should I be confessing my first kiss? That I like a boy? Who,” I mumble, “isn’t entirely a boy?”
“How old are you, my dear?”
“Fifteen.”
“Ah. Well, let me ease your mind. Thinking is not a sin. To think makes you human. To be human makes you part of the divine. By the way, to be a teenager is not a sin either.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Jesus was a teenager. Imagine what was going through his head.”
“That’s pretty mind-blowing. But Jesus made all the right decisions.”
“He did. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t tempted. And don’t forget he had Mary and Joseph. Who is helping you make your decisions?”
“Right now? My best friend is MIA. My mother and I aren’t on speaking terms. My dad and I barely know each other. Right now—me, myself, and I.”
“Can you think of any decisions me, myself, and I made that maybe weren’t the best?”
I think of Danny. Wanting Danny was instantaneous. But being with Danny is a decision. He’s one of the best decisions I ever made. Sorry, not sorry, Padre.
But what is glaring, what rises to the surface like a body formerly tied down with a rock—what I did to Nelly. Or didn’t do. I went after Nelly in class because she made me uncomfortable, and then I threw her under the bus in Ms. Perez’s office to save my own hide. “Yes. I was a chickenshit when I shouldn’t have been. And I’m sorry.”
“Then I absolve you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Recite three Hail Mary’s and one Our Father and think about how you can make better decisions in the future. But also, remember you are not alone. No. Matter. What. God loves you. And I suspect your parents love you more than you know.”
“Love and acceptance are two different things.” People think they know what love is. They confuse it with conformity. “Peace, Padre.” I step out of the confessional.
18
“This is Our Lady of Angels!” my dad exclaims, pulling to the curb in front of Nelly’s school. “God works in mysterious ways. This is where we want to send Veronica.”
“Yeah? I heard it was top notch.” I slouch into my seat and fold my arms. “They do violin lessons here and everything.”
“Verdad,” my dad says, rolling to a stop, “we need to talk about that.”
“Yes.” I unbuckle. “Let’s talk about God’s mysterious ways—and yours too—at dinner.”
“Damn, the mouth on you.”
I visor my eyes. “There she is!” One of three black/brown kids out of dozens and dozens of white girls, standing by the door.
My pulse picks up as I step out of the car. Nelly would be well within her rights to give me a fat lip. I assess the scene to verify if she’s bringing any of her peeps with her. I hope I can talk things out with her, but I’m prepared for the worst. What I’m not prepared for is a cop pulling beside my dad.
Red and blue lights flash. The officer motions for my dad to roll down his window. “You have a student here, sir?”
“No, but—”
“Then you need to move along.”
“My daughter.” He motions with his head. “She has a friend here.”
I nod, turn on the video of my cell, and walk over. “Hi, officer. How do you know my dad doesn’t have a kid here?”
“Quiet, Verdad,” my dad commands, all patriarchal. “Officer, I can just circle the block till she’s done.”
“Yeah. That makes us nervous. Someone circling the block of a girl’s high school.”
Seriously? What’s he trying to say? I scan the double-parked streets. Dodge Caravans, check. Jeep Wranglers and BMWs, check. A 2013 Subaru with bullet holes in it—not so much. There was a drive-by near my dad’s work and he figured people would be less likely to try to steal his car if he just left it like that.
“Sup, Maquina.”
I whip around. “Nelly!”
The officer stares at Nelly. She pulls a lanyard out of her blouse and holds up her ID. What. The. Fuck. He finally rolls up his window. He lets the car idle, talking into his radio.
I button up the oversized jacket I’m borrowing from Simone. It’s cold. “Jesus,” I say, nodding toward the police car.
“Yeah,” Nelly says, leaning on her hip, “just imagine what it was like for my dad when he first tried to pick me up—and the second time. And the third. Sucks, doesn�
�t it?”
I nod. My dad takes a call. The officer finally finds something better to do like IDK, his job?
“You know what else sucks?” I stuff my hands in my pockets. “I do.” I look her straight in the eye. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what exactly?” She looks at my eyes like she’s picking a lock. “ ’Cause you had nothing to do with why I am here.”
“I don’t?” What the—?
“I’m here because a security guard decided to act like a police officer and treat a school like a jail. Treat a kid like a criminal. To be honest, I’ve been a thorn in the administration’s side for a while. They been looking for an excuse to get rid of me. Whatever you said or didn’t say in Ms. Perez’s office wasn’t gonna make a difference.”
Wow. This from Nelly, who I really thought was gonna knock me out. Why? Because I didn’t expect a black girl to be able to engage in civilized dispute. Why am I so messed up?
I look past the gates to the literal ivory tower behind it. “Well, I’m still sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t act differently in class. I’ve replayed those moments so many times. Seems that’s something I do a lot.”
Nelly pulls up her hood. “How do you see it playing out?”
“I shouldn’t have got up in your face, first off. And when everything was going down, I should have stood up. For you. I should’ve at least texted you to see if you were all right afterward. So that’s why I’m sorry.”
“I accept your apology.” She tucks her lanyard back in her blouse. “The world still owes me one.”
“No question. What now, though? The school. Brooke and Annie are still there. That’s messed up.”
“Annie and me don’t have no bad blood anymore. She actually showed up for the rally.”
I blush in embarrassment.
“Anyway, my sisters gave me some advice about how to fight the powers that be. We’re suing the school district. Admin thinks they plucked me out, but I’m gonna make sure and leave a scar. And thanks to my girl Frida’s protest, I got a news interview lined up. I’m getting the chance to really do somethin. I’m not gonna blow it.”
“Words to power,” I say.
“So.” Nelly checks her cell. “We done?”
The Truth Is Page 15
