The lady smiled and pointed to the chairs at the table. Seb and I waited in silence as she pulled a couple of tamales out of the fridge and popped them in the microwave.
"Mami, estamos aqui!" A little boy"s voice rang out. A few seconds later, a chubby kid wearing the navy pants and white polo uniform of the local elementary school stomped into the house, followed by a thinner girl with waist-length straight black hair.
"Tienen hambre, mis amores?" the woman asked her children as each one came and gave her a hug.
The girl peeked at me nervously, grabbing her hair and twisting it into a knot. She was dark, like her mother-a lot darker than Star-but she had the same kind of straight nose, strong cheekbones and full lashes that Star did. I wondered if Star would look like her when she got a little older.
She was much more timid than Star, though, because she pulled on her mother"s ap.r.o.n until the woman bent over and listened to her whispering. When she was done, she ran off down the hallway, and I didn"t think she had any plans to come back.
The little boy, on the other hand, was completely undisturbed and immediately joined us at the table.
Another tamale was added to the microwave.
"Mami, quienes son?" From his seat beside me, he peered up at his mother, waiting for an explanation as to why two strange people were in his house.
"Uh, hi," I answered before she had a chance. "I"m Alex, and this is Seb. I used to live here in this house."
"Oh." The boy nodded. "You lived in here when we wasn"t."
"Yeah. I came back looking for my mom...but I guess no one knows where she is."
"Que dijo?" The woman asked, and the boy translated what I had said for her. She shook her head, her forehead creasing into deep, dark lines, like she was angry.
But she wasn"t angry at me, apparently, because the tamales were soon placed in front of us. I split mine in half, encouraging Seb to do the same so it would cool off.
"My mom makes very good tamales," the boy said, his plump stomach folding onto his lap as he scooted toward his plate.
"Yeah, I bet." I chuckled.
One bite later, I was forced to agree. The tamales were warm and fresh, and the shredded chicken inside was perfectly spiced. I couldn"t remember the last time I"d tasted anything so good. The meatloaf at Ms. Loretta"s maybe-but that was a totally different dish, and it was hard to compare.
"These are delicious. Gracias Gracias," I added, acknowledging the lady who was still leaning over the stove.
"El dice que los tamales son deliciosos, y gracias," the boy translated again.
I rolled my eyes.
"De nada." She set some gla.s.ses of juice in front of our plates, right on the doilies. Then she pointed to Seb. "El es muy timido, no? Como mi hija."
"Shy? No...he"s not shy. It"s just that he can"t talk...es que no puede hablar."
"Ah." She nodded thoughtfully. "Bueno, voy a traer las fotos." Wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n again, she headed down the hallway and into my mother"s room.
Or into her her room. room.
A moment later, she returned with a stack of photographs. She pa.s.sed them to me, pointing to a skinny boy at the top of a slide with his arms thrown in the air and a wide smile on his face.
"It is you, no?"
The hand I"d felt at Mimi"s-the one that seemed to think I shouldn"t be breathing-squeezed down on my chest again. It was was me in the pictures, me and Mimi and my mother. We"d gone to a park with a disposable camera when I was in the third grade and snapped pictures until the whole roll of film was finished, for no reason other than the fact that we"d had the time and the camera on our hands. me in the pictures, me and Mimi and my mother. We"d gone to a park with a disposable camera when I was in the third grade and snapped pictures until the whole roll of film was finished, for no reason other than the fact that we"d had the time and the camera on our hands.
These were the photographs I"d kept in my dresser.
Mimi was posing in most of them, on the balance beam, or just leaning against a tree-she was a show-off like that. At fourteen, she was fully developed and you could tell she was proud by the way she stuck out her chest in each picture. She didn"t wear too much makeup back then, and her hair was loose and wild and untamed by gels and she looked absolutely beautiful.
There were only two pictures with my mother, since she"d been handling the camera most of the time. Her hair was already blond, and she was probably too made-up for an afternoon at the park with her kids. But she was beautiful, too, resting on the park bench and draping her arms around me. Beautiful and young and happy.
I didn"t even look at myself in the pictures. I didn"t want to think about the boy I"d been. Of what hopes I"d had for the future or what faith I"d had in my family. I didn"t want to relive the disappointment.
"Uh..." I struggled to draw in a breath. "Was this it? Was there any more?"
"Quiere saber si hay otras," the boy told his mother.
"No." She shook her head slowly. "No creo..."
"Yeah," I interrupted. "In my mom"s nightstand. The nightstand in the bigger room at the end of the hallway. There were pictures in there. That"s where my mom kept them."
The boy translated, but she continued to shake her head. "Si habia una mesita de noche y unas cositas adentro, pero ningunas fotos."
"She say there was a mesita mesita and some things in there but no-" the boy began. and some things in there but no-" the boy began.
"I got it," I cut in. "No photos."
Seb had finished his tamale. I pushed the remainder of mine in front of him and he made quick work of that one, too. He must"ve been hungry.
"Dime," the lady said, finally taking a seat in front of us. "Como es que no sabes donde esta tu mama? Donde estas viviendo ahora? Con tu papa? O tu abuela?"
"She say how you not know where your mama is, and do you live with your daddy or your abuela abuela...ehh...your granny," the boy rattled off. Apparently, he was used to being his mom"s interpreter.
I shook my head. "No. I don"t live with..." I just barely stopped myself before blabbing out anything stupid. What was I even doing here? "Look, uh, thanks for everything, but we gotta go." I stood and yanked back Seb"s chair.
The lady came around the table and clasped one of my hands, smiling warmly. "Gloria. Me llamo Gloria."
"Oh, right. Well, gracias por todo gracias por todo, Gloria. We really gotta go."
Grabbing Seb"s t-shirt on the way, I darted past her and out of the house.
I sank down to the curb right in front of the fence. My hands went numb and the pictures slipped from my fingers, falling into a pile of wet leaves and fast food wrappers. "I"m sorry, Seb. It was stupid to come here."
He squatted beside me and plucked up the photographs, stopping at one of me on the swings. Then he ran his finger over the glossy surface and smiled.
Did he know how much those rare smiles of his did to improve my mood?
I pulled off his hat and wig combo and checked to make sure the streets were empty before nudging a sweaty lock of hair from his forehead. "Hard to believe, huh." I reluctantly glanced down at the young me. "I was such a scrawny f.u.c.ker."
Seb turned to study me, like he was counting the differences.
Suddenly self-conscious under his gaze, I flushed. "Seb...I keep making all these mistakes. Even if you could could understand me...even if you were...I dunno why you"d want to b-" understand me...even if you were...I dunno why you"d want to b-"
The rickety screen door of the house burst open, and the little boy"s voice interrupted me. "My mom say do you wanna stay for dinner?"
For some strange reason, Seb was still smiling. Maybe he"d liked the warm, inviting atmosphere Gloria had magically created in my home. It gave me me a sort of dizzying, this-does-not-belong feeling...but keeping Seb happy was my number one priority at the moment. a sort of dizzying, this-does-not-belong feeling...but keeping Seb happy was my number one priority at the moment.
"Sure. Why not."
Chapter 19: The Job of Family.
Frederico-the little boy-s.n.a.t.c.hed a book from a neat stack under the coffee table and climbed up on the couch beside me. He motioned for his sister Luz to join him, but she hung back shyly in the kitchen, helping her mother clean up the remains of our taco dinner.
As adorable as Star had been, I sort of wished she"d been more like that-more like the kind of girl who hid from boys.
"I gotta read for my homework," Frederico told me, his double chin wobbling as he nodded in agreement to his own declaration.
I didn"t really know why I was still there, now that our meal was finished. There was just nowhere else to go. And Seb was relaxed, pinching bits of the sheet that covered the couch and rolling it between his fingers. So I stayed, trapped in limbo-unable to move forward, and with nothing to go back to.
"Okay." I lowered the volume on the TV. "Go ahead."
The TV was new, too. Well, not new, but it wasn"t ours. So wherever my mom and Hector had gone, they hadn"t needed a couch or a table or my dresser, but they"d needed a TV.
"Can...N...a...n...Nan...see...the...bu...g... bug bug. Can Nan see the bug!"
Frederico pointed to the page he was on and looked up at me triumphantly. "It say, can Nan see the bug!"
I had a really strange, split-personality reaction, where half of me wanted to roll my eyes and turn the TV back up-the kind of thing I would have done with Andrew or Ryan at Ms. Loretta"s. But so soon after my time spent with Star, a different instinct won out.
"Wow, that"s really good. How old are you that you already know how to read so good?"
He stuck out six fingers proudly. "I have this many. It was just my happy birthday."
"You in kindergarten?"
"Yeah, but next year I have to go to first grade with my friends if I keep reading."
Kindergarten and he was already beginning to read. I wondered if Star knew how to read at all...if she even knew the alphabet...and then recalled I hadn"t come across a single book in that apartment.
Would she catch up, when she eventually got to school? Or would she always be a struggling student, the way Mimi had been? Would she find other things to occupy her time, the way Mimi had? Would she be the third generation of unwed teenage mothers in our family?
I knew it wasn"t Gloria"s lovingly-made-from-scratch cooking that was making me nauseous. To distract myself, I pointed at Frederico"s book.
"You read it good, but you see that squiggly thing at the end of the sentence?"
"Uh huh." He nodded. "But I forget it."
"It"s a question mark. That means you gotta read it like a question. Like this: Can Nan see the bug?"
"Oh, yeah." Frederico pulled the book away from my finger and placed his own on the words again. "My teacher say me that...Can Nan see the bug?"
I patted him on the head and looked up to see Gloria standing in front of the kitchen. She smiled and mouthed gracias gracias-I guess because she thought I was helping him with his homework.
And that didn"t seem like such an awful payment for dinner. It was better than breaking into our limited cash supply, after all.
"All right, Freddy. Let"s read the next one."
Five pages in to the incredibly boring tale of Nan and the bug, the front door of my house opened and an enormous man stepped in.
"Papa!" Frederico wiggled off the couch, his round little body barely reaching his father"s thighs when they hugged. Luz and Gloria also left the kitchen to greet the man, and I heard Gloria whispering to him in rapid-fire Spanish. Too rapid for me to make out.
After finishing his conversation with his wife, he strode over purposefully. "h.e.l.lo. I am Raul."
Seb stopped playing with the sheet, his face blanking out as he scooted further into the corner of the couch.
Was he scared? If he were, I wouldn"t really have blamed him. Raul was a man who could knock either of us out with one blow.
He was wearing overalls, stained with paint and crusted with splotches of plaster, and he smelled of sweat and burnt wood. Little flecks of soot dotted the stubble on his face. I figured he was a construction worker, or maybe just a day laborer. Whatever he did, it must"ve contributed to those bulging muscles, covered by only a thin layer of fat.
"Hey." I stood, because from the lower stance he seemed like an absolute giant, and I was starting to feel a little intimidated.
He gripped my hand with strong, calloused fingers and shook it forcefully.
"I"m...I"m Alex."
I forgot to introduce Seb, but that was probably because he was still seated, eyes glued to a carpet stain. I was pretty sure Mimi had made that, with an overturned cup of hot chocolate.
"My wife she say you can stay for coffee," Raul"s voice boomed as he ran his gaze over me suspiciously. He had a very heavy accent, but he spoke English with authority, not with the timid uncertainty Gloria had.
"Oh...thanks, but we"ll probably..."
"Vengan, vengan," Gloria interrupted, waving us back to the kitchen. "Tengo cafe y un poco de pastel."
When I didn"t move immediately, she came over and placed a mug in my hand. Seb stayed zoned out, so she left his on the kitchen table.
Raul dropped his heavy form into the recliner that sat in the corner of the room.
"Papi, read a story?" Frederico asked, grabbing another book and crawling onto the armrest of his father"s chair.
Nodding, Raul cupped his son"s head in one of his gigantic hands. "I will read a short one."
He called Luz over, and she skirted around me to join them.
The story Freddy had picked was The Cat and the Hat The Cat and the Hat. I recognized the cover right away-at least I"d learned that that in school-and couldn"t imagine a sillier book for someone of Raul"s size to be reading. in school-and couldn"t imagine a sillier book for someone of Raul"s size to be reading.
After clearing his throat with a mighty rumble, he began to read. His rich voice filled our little living room, sounding far too n.o.ble for the ridiculous scriblings of Dr. Seuss.