Arizona Allspice (17 page)

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We’re really struggling right now to make ends meet. We live in Cadence now in a place called
Merjoy
Trailer Park. You’d think, “Oh a trailer park! Well that shouldn’t be too expensive.” Think again. Anything is expensive when you’re jobless. Right now the government is helping us get by. And a nice lady named Mrs. Roberts is helping us, too. She’s the park manager’s wife. Mr. Roberts is okay too, but he’s a guy so I’ll never trust him. But Mrs. Roberts lends me books to read from her personal collection. Whenever I stop by the park office where she’s the secretary there is a new book and a casserole ready for me. I never have to ask. Somehow she knows. I have yet to see her children. We’ve been here for two weeks and when I ask how her son and daughter are doing Miss
Marna
says they’re fine and out with friends. She says her daughter reads a lot like I do.

I can bury my nose in a book and not worry about Mom for a few minutes. And I don’t have to worry about the guys in the neighborhood I see outside my window, my future classmates. I’m not ready to have to introduce myself and explain myself and prove myself to these dudes. My friends back in Drexel already understand me. They already know me. I lied earlier. I do really miss my friends.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud...” William Wordsworth

A pang of sadness flutters through me at Joey’s mention of my mother and the way I spent my days that summer before high school. I was fourteen, with my then friends and Manny’s friends every day, hanging out at Mr. Jeremy’s convenience store or
Bartolo’s
, swimming at
Amo
Lake, hitching a ride in the back of an older friend’s truck to Tucson to window shop at the mall or go to a concert, roasting marshmallows over a camp fire out in the desert night where we flirted with the boys and exchanged dirty jokes. Mom and Dad let us run wild, but my brother and I looked out for each other and we stayed out of trouble. Our friends, however, developed an appetite for drama. I turn to his next entry.

I’ve been reading William Faulkner and he’s so good it makes me ashamed to dare put a pen to paper ever again. Of course Miss
Marna
lent me the book. It’s called The Sound and the Fury. She says it’s one of Elaine’s favorites. I see why. It’s complex; something a smarter person than me would understand better. I’ve been here in Cadence for a month now and I’ve been hanging out in the park office a lot because Miss
Marna
is cool to talk to. Mom and I don’t have a television in our trailer yet so I can watch TV in the office. Spending so much time there, I thought I would run into her son Emanuel and her daughter Elaine but I never see them. Miss
Marna
is cool, so I figured her kids would be cool people too. I do see a lot of Mr. Roberts though and, frankly, I would like to see less of him. The way he talks to Miss
Marna
, ordering her around, makes me feel uncomfortable. Something is under the surface of their conversations. I’m beginning to worry about her. I think that whatever is going on is the reason their kids stay away…

I glared at Joey’s words. My father would never boss my mother around. Secondly, she was a strong woman who would never take disrespect. Manny and I weren’t around during the summer because we were out having fun instead of staying home and doing chores. Even back then, Joey had his nose in our family’s business.

Like a lightning bolt, insight strikes me. After knowing my parents for only a couple of weeks, Joey sensed that my parents were hiding something.

Why hadn’t I?

 
…I’ve been working on my body, doing push-ups and curls and running. I get up at 4 AM. No one gets up earlier than 6 AM around here, so the whole neighborhood is serene. I pick up my soccer ball, hold it under my arm and jog to the soccer field. I dribble the ball around, do some tricks with it, shoot some goals, do crunches and some pull-ups on the top bar of the goal, and jog back home by 5:30 in the morning. Pretty soon I’ll look like Richard, like my real dad, and no one would dare lay a hand on me again. My first day of high school is tomorrow. I haven’t really thought about it any further than that. I hope that’s how it will be: thoughtless, simple. Of course, things never are.

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My first day of high school, the beginning of “the best years of my life” as Principal Wright said at the Freshman Welcome Rally, started off with a bus ride with eight year olds. Because there are only four school buses that serve all of Cadence, they only send one school bus down to
Merjoy
Trailer Park. Everyone piled onto the bus and naturally segregated themselves, with elementary kids at the front of the bus, middle school students in the middle seats, and Lorenzo High students at the back. It was a tight squeeze, three small kids to a seat, two teenagers to a seat. Miss
Marna
drives her kids to school, so they’re lucky. I had to share a seat with a kid named Mario. We introduced ourselves, and he told me about the bonfire parties he went to and blah
blah
blah
. I told him about how I once put a man in the hospital to shut Mario up. He just continued, telling me that he bench presses blah
blah
blah
and asked if I was Irish because of my hair. Then all these other kids got in on the conversation, and some idiot, Raul, said I was too tall to be Irish, so I let everyone know he was an idiot. Did he think Ireland was populated by leprechauns?

 Everyone tried to stifle their laughs. Raul was pissed. It bothers me that I have such obvious Irish characteristics (red hair and freckles) because no one believes I’m a quarter German from Mom and a quarter Italian from Dad. My schoolmates asked me if I played any sports. I lied, said I used to play lacrosse back when I was living at a prep school in Connecticut. They nodded, believing it. I told them I played soccer too. Raul laughed, said he’d love to see it. I told him he didn’t have to ask me twice. In the space of twenty minutes I was already on the bad side of one of the Park Kids’ ringleaders. Not that I cared…

A corner of my mouth goes up. Raul wasn’t the smartest person in the world, but who would describe themselves as smart when they were fifteen years old? Joey was right; I never guessed he was anything other than Irish. Reading about Joey’s first day is bizarre. I know what is going to happen to him. He’ll end up a member of the
Chupasangres
’ soccer team and consequently good friends with Mario, the team’s captain.

… Walking into my classes was like stepping into a freak show exhibit. I was the freak, the new guy. I was being observed and evaluated by everyone. To add to the discomfort, in my morning classes, almost all the white kids sat on one side and the Mexican kids sprinkled with a few white
Merjoy
kids on the other side. I only saw about three black students walking in the halls but I didn’t have any classes with them. I asked Mario about it when I saw him in science class. The Village Kids and Park Kids prefer to stick to themselves. When I lived in Drexel it wasn’t so disunited. My friend Alex was part Native American and Dion was African-American and nobody cared that we were buddies.
Except for Mason.
Alex and Dion never questioned why they could never come over to my house. I have a feeling they figured out on their own that my stepfather was racist.

After being stared at and whispered about all morning, someone actually talked to me during lunch. A group of Village Kids, two guys and two girls with coordinated outfits and matching highlights, came up to me while I was eating outside in the courtyard.  They were so certain I knew who they were that they never introduced themselves. “We would like to personally welcome you to our high school,” one of the dudes said, “and give you an exclusive invitation to the Freshman
Inaug
Bash tonight at ten at B’s Pizza Parlor. We rented out the entire party room,” he bragged. “See you there,” his girlfriend added. All four gave me a simultaneous head nod and walked away. One Village guy’s girlfriend looked back and winked at me suggestively with her mascara encrusted eyelashes. Her boyfriend caught her, gripped her skinny arm real tight and pulled her along. My stomach turned. I don’t run with dogs like him. I’m sure they knew I was a Park Kid so I was confused as to why they approached me. Maybe it’s because they heard something about me playing lacrosse at a prep school. I didn’t make any effort to find out their names and
hell no are
they gonna find me at their party tonight...

Joey is an attractive white guy. That is the sole reason the Village Kids approached him. They wanted an attractive person to join their ranks in hopes his appearance would rub off on them. Those guys are nothing but superficial opportunists. They came up to me once, too. Only after hearing the rumor that I was going to get rich off of my dad’s ownership of
Merjoy
Trailer Park and the surrounding land. 

 … After lunch, things picked up. I had English class which is easy since the novels and poetry we’ll study I’ve already read. I went to my locker after class to put my English book away and this girl comes up to me. She’s talking to me but she’s looking at everyone but me and talking loudly. She actually asked me to go to the movies with her but she hardly looked me in the eye when she did. I had to stop myself from laughing. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but her fidgeting and loud talking was silly. I pulled her to the side, away from all the traffic, and I learned why she was acting so weird. She told me she wanted to be the first one to go out with me because “all the girls want you.” I laughed in disbelief at first and then, I admit, I felt pretty fly. It was good to hear that my summer of working out was appreciated. My arrogance was replaced with frustration. No one, except for Mario maybe, wanted to know anything about me. How was I supposed to make real friends?

I told
Morghan
she was a pretty girl and not to worry about what people think. She didn’t seem satisfied with that answer. I was so thankful for P.E. class. Coach decided we’d start off doing soccer. I was ready to let off some steam. I did some tricks with the ball when I got bored; fake kicks, spins, and double cuts. Raul and everyone couldn’t pull their eyes away. It felt so good to get the ball past the goalie over and over again. It felt so good to give them something true to gossip about. In the locker room I was bombarded by dudes who wanted me on their neighborhood soccer teams. I didn’t give them any straight answers. I’d actually like to be part of a team and compete and stuff, but I need time to think it over and get to know people before I make a commitment.

Last class of the day was Spanish. I chose it as my foreign language since I didn’t think I’d be conversing with a Pierre or Juliette ever in life. I walked in and immediately saw that I was one of two white people in the class. Everyone else was Mexican. I guessed they wanted the easy ‘A’. I recognized Mario so I sat next to him. He was doing his Algebra homework, breezing through it. He glanced over at me and said, “Nice work on the field today.” He smiled, I nodded, and he went back to his work. The teacher started lecturing. While she handed out textbooks I asked about the lack of diversity in the class. He explained that the Village Kids take French because it’s “a language of the upper class,” unlike Spanish. Well, I think Spanish is a very melodic language. Everyone knows that girls want the Latin Lover type guy, not the beret-wearing weenie with a tiny moustache. My first day was…a long day.

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I’ve made up my mind. I’m joining team
Chupasangres
. Mario is the team captain. He was there that day in P.E. when I was showing off and he didn’t try to suck up to me and get me on his team like his life depended on it. When I was rude to him on the bus that first day of school, he let it slide right off of him. He loves soccer, but he has other goals in life. I admire that. I didn’t like him that first time I met him on the bus. He’s actually a good guy and my teammates are cool like-minded people too. I went to see Miss
Marna
this afternoon after school. She asked me how my first few days of school went. I told her I made use of the notebook and pencils she’d given me. Then Mr. Roberts walked in. He gave her this look and walked into his office and she knew she was expected to follow. She hurried after him and closed the door behind them. He’s yelling and I try to distract myself with something on TV when I hear this big crash. All I can think about is he hit her. He’s throwing her around in there.