B0061QB04W EBOK (31 page)

When I entered the main office, Mila stood up.

“Ready?” she said, grabbing her purse. I followed my stepmother out the door, feeling stupid. I’d forgotten Mila was going to pick me up to take me to my dentist appointment.

For the past few months, I had been suffering from toothaches. They had become so painful, Papi finally had no choice but to deal with the problem. We didn’t have dental insurance, and Papi said he
and Mila didn’t have money to pay dental fees, so Mila figured out a way around that. We would use her daughter’s insurance.

As we drove, I looked out the window and wished it were Papi who was taking me to my appointment, but I understood that he didn’t want to risk losing his job by taking days off, although that wasn’t the only reason. Since he didn’t speak much English, he felt uncomfortable going places. As a handyman, he was comfortable with a drill, paint brush, or wrench, and he could work in silence while his expert hands did the work. But outside of home and work, it was Mila who had to take care of everything that needed to be done.

As we neared the dentist’s office, Mila reminded me of what to say. “Answer to the name Cindy,” she said. “And remember that you’re nine, not ten.”

Cindy was ten months younger than I was. She was a lot prettier too, with long glossy black hair and beautiful eyes framed by thick eyelashes. She didn’t come to the house very often, and when she came, she would stay by Mila’s side and wouldn’t talk to us or play with us. She wouldn’t talk to Papi either and would pretend not to hear him when he said hello to her. At first I would get angry at Cindy for giving my father the cold shoulder, but then I would think about Rey, at how I had hated him on the spot for the simple fact that my mother had chosen him over me, and I could understand Cindy’s behavior. After all hadn’t it been the same for her?

The only difference was that Mila, unlike my mother, never gave up on her kids. I imagine now how it must have hurt her, to be standing there in the courtroom, fighting to get her children back, and that her older son had had it in his power to choose. And he had chosen not to go with her. But just because she had lost them that day didn’t mean she had given up the fight. And she never did.

But Mila’s conflicted relationship with her children would affect the way she treated us. She had been living with my father for three years when one day my siblings and I had ended up at her doorstep, three children she hadn’t been expecting. Although she and my father had not legally married yet, she had become our new mother, whether she wanted to be or not. She was nice enough to us, although sometimes, especially when her own kids were around, she would go out of her way to treat her children a lot better. Now that
I’m a mother, I can understand the predicament she found herself in back then—leaving her own children, only to have to raise another woman’s offspring. And yet, the sting of her indifference still hurts. She wasn’t an evil stepmother, not like in the fairy tales I loved to listen to. But she also wasn’t the mother I so desperately wanted to have. How could she be? I understand it now, but back then, I could not see past my need.

I had never been to the dentist in my life, and luckily we hadn’t really had tooth problems. In Mexico we never had money for candy, but we also hadn’t had money for things such as toothbrushes. We would have to scrub our teeth with our fingers coated with baking soda.

I couldn’t help feeling a little afraid about going to the dentist. In Mexico, Abuelita Chinta had given me mint leaves to chew on when my molar started to bother me. I didn’t think I was going to get mint leaves this time.

Mila and I sat in the reception area to wait. I glanced at the pictures of a turkey, a pumpkin, and a pilgrim’s hat taped on the door. There were similar decorations in my classroom. Mila fidgeted in her seat. Once in a while she would pat her wavy black hair. I found myself admiring her skin, as I’d done many times. It was two shades lighter than my own, and it looked good in soft pinks and peaches. Her makeup, as always, was perfect. She had roses blooming on her cheeks and her lips were glossy. She had a faint scar from her nose to her upper lip because she was born with a cleft lip, but that didn’t take away from her looks. Mila wasn’t beautiful, but she was pretty and she was classy.

The dentist’s assistant came out and called out a name. When I didn’t answer, Mila nudged me and stood up. I went into the dentist’s room, and he asked me to lie down on a big leather chair. I jumped off as soon as it started reclining. The dentist laughed and said something in English, while pointing to the chair. All I understood was the word “Cindy.”

I sat there wondering how Mila felt about the dentist calling me by her daughter’s name. The few times Cindy had come to the house, I had noticed how uncomfortable she seemed around Mila. She didn’t
come very often, and when she did come, it was because Mila had practically forced her to. Mila’s older son didn’t visit often either. Her second son had never come over, not even once.

Mila said my molar had a huge cavity and would have to come out to let the new tooth grow in. For the rest of the hour, Mila had to translate for me what the dentist said.

“Open your mouth, Cindy.

“That’s a good girl, Cindy.

“We’re almost done, Cindy.”

Mila didn’t look at me when she translated. She looked at the wall.

While the dentist worked on my mouth, I began to fantasize about what it would be like to be the real Cindy. To be Mila’s daughter. Would Mila not have fidgeted the way she was doing now while she stood nearby? Would she have allowed me—just as she allowed the real Cindy when she visited—to go into her and Papi’s bedroom without knocking, to lie down on their bed and watch TV? Would she have brushed my hair up in pigtails in the mornings? Let me sit in the kitchen and help her make dinner? Would she have stood by while Papi hit me with his belt?

“We’re almost done, Cindy,” the dentist said, and maybe it was the grogginess from the anesthesia, but I really liked the sound of that name. I began wishing I could stay in the dentist’s office forever, because as soon as we walked out that door, I would once again be Reyna.

“Your daughter was very good,” the receptionist said as Mila and I went out the door. Mila held me by the shoulders because I was feeling a bit dizzy and my mouth was numb and my lips felt three times their usual size. My lips throbbed as if they’d been stung by a scorpion.

“Thank you,” Mila said. I waved goodbye to the receptionist and gave her a groggy smile.

On the way home, Mila was very quiet. I wondered if she was thinking about her daughter.

“Are you in pain yet?” she asked as we pulled into the driveway.

“No, Mamá Mila,” I said. Maybe it was the anesthesia that had made me say that.

Mila took a deep breath and then looked at me. “Just call me Mila. I’m not your mom so you can’t call me Mamá. Just Mila, okay?” She
said it gently, and yet I felt as if she had yelled at me. The harshness in her voice was very subtle, but I could hear it clearly.

With tears in my eyes, I said, “I’m sorry, Mila. I won’t do it again.” Then I got out of the car and went into the house, where I saw that my brother and sister were back from school.

“That’s what you get for being a traitor,” Mago said when I told her what I’d done. “She’s right. She’s not our mom. Why are you always trying to find mothers everywhere you go?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Besides, she broke up our parents’ marriage,” Mago continued. “And now you want to call her Mamá?”

I lowered my head in shame.

When we first arrived in the U.S., Mago and I went into Mila and Papi’s bedroom to look at her pretty clothes in the closet and to smell her perfumes. I knew Mila had noticed we did because a few days later Papi installed a new doorknob that locked, and from that moment on they would lock their door every time they left the house. But Mago and I were intrigued by Mila, the woman who, in part, was responsible for breaking up my parents’ twelve-year marriage. We wanted to know what it was that had made Papi prefer her over Mami. We thought that by looking at her clothes, or going through her toiletries, we would find the answer.

Maybe it was the pretty clothes she wore. During the day she wore her white nurse’s uniform because it was required at work, but on the weekends she wore capri pants and pretty blouses, leather sandals with delicate straps. For going out she had nice sets of skirt suits and silk blouses. Her jewelry box had faux pearl necklaces, pearl earrings, gold chains, fancy watches. She had different-colored high heels to match her outfits. Her perfumes were beautiful high-quality scents, not like the perfumes Mami used.

But beside her pretty looks and taste in clothes, Mila had other advantages Mami did not. Mila spoke English, which meant that Papi relied on her for nearly everything because he spoke only Spanish. Mila was a U.S. citizen. She wasn’t invisible in this country, as Papi was back then, and as Mami was while she was living here. Also, even though
Mila was born in Mexico, she had been in this country since she was thirteen years old. She was forty years old when we came to live with her and Papi, and by living in the U.S. for most of her life, Mila wasn’t the typical Mexican woman. She wasn’t afraid of Papi. She didn’t cater to his every whim as women in Mexico are taught to do, as Mami had done while living with him. She also had an education and knew her way around this American society in a way Papi did not.

While in Mexico, Mami was so worried Papi would leave her for a gringa. Instead, he found Mila.

I told my sister that she was right. I was being a traitor to my own mother. But how could I make myself stop yearning for a mother when, ever since I was four years old, that is what I had done? And even to this day, I sometimes find myself yearning for her still.

“We have a father,” Carlos said. “That’s good enough for me.”

“You’re right,” I said, glancing at the kitchen where Mila was chopping vegetables. She didn’t like us to be in the kitchen with her. As a matter of fact, she didn’t really like us to be in any room with her. It wasn’t something that she would say to us, but it was the way she would tense up the moment we walked into the room. It was the way she would look at us, as if wishing it weren’t us, but her own children.

Papi came home and asked about my tooth. I took the blood-stained cotton out of my mouth so that he could see the gap where my molar used to be.

“I’m glad everything worked out,” Papi said. Then he walked into the kitchen and sat at the table to keep Mila company while she cooked.

“I’m not doing that again, you understand?” I heard Mila say. Papi opened a can of Budweiser and didn’t answer.

4

O
NE EVENING,
M
ILA
made spaghetti for dinner. The few times Mrs. Giuliano had made it at her house, I claimed not to be hungry so I wouldn’t have to eat it while I waited for Mago to pick me up. I loved Mrs. Giuliano’s food, except for the spaghetti.

Now Mila was putting a plate full of spaghetti in front of me, and at the sight of those long white strings I felt like running to the bathroom to throw up. I held on tight to my chair and looked away from the plate and tried to think of something beside Pablo and his worms.