B0061QB04W EBOK (32 page)

In Mexico, most of the children I had known had the same body shape: a big, round belly full of roundworms and really skinny legs and arms. Carlos, Mago, Betty, and I were no exception. But there was one kid, a boy named Pablo, whose abdomen swelled beyond
anything we could imagine. He looked as big as a pregnant woman. Abuelita Chinta said Pablo had a serious case of roundworms. I used to have nightmares of his belly exploding and hundreds of white wiggly worms spilling out.

Sometimes Abuelita Chinta would give Mago, Carlos, Betty, and me unripe guavas blended to a pulp. We would drink this concoction unwillingly because sometime later the pains would come. Horrible pains as if our intestines were twisting and twisting like wet clothes being wrung out before going up on the clothesline. We ran to the outhouse and emptied our bowels. No sooner had we come back into the house than we had to run back out again. Once, Carlos started screaming, and when we went to check on him, he was squatting on the ground as a worm wiggled out of him.

Sooner or later the worms would be pooped out. Abuelita Chinta said she was sorry to see us in pain, but we barely had enough to eat as it was, and the parasites were taking away the precious nutrients we ingested.

When we asked her why she wouldn’t give this drink to Pablo, Abuelita Chinta said that no amount of her guava drink could help the poor boy. She told Pablo’s mother that if he didn’t see the doctor soon, he would have serious health issues. When Pablo was nothing but a skeleton with a big belly, his family sold what few possessions they had and took Pablo away to Mexico City. The next time we saw him, his big stomach was gone! He had a scar on his abdomen, and he told us he had to have surgery to get the worms removed. It was a hideous scar. Raised and swollen, the stitches like the legs of a crawling centipede. After that, we hadn’t balked at the remedies Abuelita Chinta would give us. But even though Pablo was better, my nightmares took a long time to go away,

Mila went to the living room to watch a telenovela while Mago, Carlos, and I stayed in the kitchen to eat her spaghetti. I strained to hear the theme song playing in the living room.
Mi vida eres tú y solamente tú …

I loved that telenovela. It was called
Cristal
and was from Venezuela, so the characters spoke with a strange Spanish accent. The story was about a girl whose mother had abandoned her as a baby, so she had grown up in an orphanage. Now, as a young woman, she was on
her way to becoming a supermodel, and best of all, she and a rich handsome young man were in love! It was a Cinderella story, one of my favorite fairy tales, except I couldn’t go watch it with Mila because she didn’t like us eating in the living room.

Always, Mila and Papi would eat first, and when they were done, they would call us into the kitchen so that we could eat. I didn’t know why they arranged it like that, but it made me feel bad that we couldn’t have dinner together, as a family. I thought of that, and the new doorknob Papi had installed on their bedroom door, and I wondered if he was trying to tell us something.

“You’re going to have to eat, Nena,” Mago said as she slurped down her spaghetti. “Papi will get angry if you don’t.”

“It’s pretty good,” Carlos said as he raised a strand of spaghetti over his mouth and then sucked it in really fast, making the strand wiggle as it went into his mouth.

I looked back at the spaghetti and the red sauce. I thought of Pablo again and the surgery he had to get the worms removed. I thought of the scar like a crawling centipede and I just couldn’t bring myself to grab my fork and eat.

Papi came out of the bedroom to grab a beer, and noticing my full plate, asked me why I wasn’t eating.

“I’m not very hungry, Papi.”

“Well, Mila made this meal for you and now you’re going to have to eat it. I won’t have you being ungrateful.”

“I can’t eat it, Papi.”

Papi started to yell at me, and pretty soon I felt tears sliding down my cheeks because I didn’t know how to tell him about Pablo. I kept my eyes on the floor while Papi called me an ingrata, and how could I be so willing to throw away food that he had worked so hard to buy?

Mago said, “The spaghetti reminds her of lombrices, Papi.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Now, eat it!”

I forced myself to grab my fork, but I knew, as I twirled the spaghetti around, that I wouldn’t be able to bring it to my mouth, no matter what. I put the fork down and said, “I can’t, Papi. Please, don’t make me.”

Papi picked up my plate, and I thought he was going to take it away, but the next thing I knew he dumped the spaghetti on my head.
I started screaming as the spaghetti slid down my face and over my eyes. All I saw inside my mind was Pablo’s belly exploding, and the worms coming to get me.

Mago and Carlos didn’t move. They sat there staring at me with pity, and I wished they would look away. I wished I could get up and run all the way back to Iguala, back to my grandmother’s arms. I wished, for the first time, that I were back in Mexico and back to being a little orphan. I wanted to be like Cristal, beautiful and loved by a handsome rich man who would take me away from here.

Papi went back into his room with his beer, and while Mago helped me clean up in the bathroom, Mila made me scrambled eggs, even though I told her I wasn’t hungry. Now I would have to eat the eggs because Papi would beat me for sure if I didn’t eat Mila’s food for the second time that night. As I showered, I cried and thought about my sweet grandmother. She would never have dumped a plate of food on my head. And I wouldn’t have had to tell her why I couldn’t eat the spaghetti. She would have known why right away. I thought about the Man Behind the Glass. He, too, wouldn’t have dumped the spaghetti on my head because he was with me all those years, and he had listened to me tell him about my fears and my dreams. But the father in this house didn’t know me. He didn’t know me at all.

And I didn’t know him.

5

A
FTER HAVING LIMITED
access to a television all our lives, Mago, Carlos, and I couldn’t get enough of it now. Even though we couldn’t understand English very well, we loved to watch
He-Man
,
ThunderCats
,
Transformers
,
Beverly Hills Teens
, and
Jem
. For a minute we’d also owned an Atari. One of Papi’s tenants had given it to us after she bought her son a Nintendo, but then Mila took it away and gave it to her own children without even telling us. I missed playing Frogger.

One day, while we were watching
ThunderCats
, Santa Claus appeared on the screen during one of the commercial breaks. Christmas was three weeks away, and we were worried because we didn’t have any money to get Papi a present. He would only give us a dollar once in a while. As soon as we got it, we would run down to Barney’s
Liquors and Market on Monte Vista Street and buy Now and Laters. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, Papi would give us a dollar each, and we would pool our money and buy a ham and cheese sandwich from Fidel’s Pizza on Avenue 50.

Santa Claus said something I couldn’t quite understand. But a telephone number flashed on the screen.

Mago rushed to the rotary phone.

“What are you doing?” Carlos said.

“I’m calling Santa.”

“I thought Santa doesn’t exist,” Carlos said.

“What do you mean he doesn’t exist?” I asked. “Don’t you see him there on the TV?”

Mago punched Carlos on the arm. “This is the United States, pendejo. Everything exists here.”

Mago dialed the number and called Santa. She frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Carlos said.

“It’s in English,” Mago said.

“Doesn’t Santa speak Spanish?” I asked.

“Shh,” Mago said. She listened intently, her eyebrows pulling together as she concentrated. Then she smiled.

“Is it really Santa?” I asked.

“It must be,” Mago said, covering the receiver. “He’s talking too fast. All I could make out was ‘Ho, ho, ho.’ So it must be him, right?” Then she motioned for me to be quiet and got back on the line. “Alo? Santa Clos? I want Barbie. I want bike. Please. Me good girl. Tank you.” She gave the phone to Carlos.

“Alo? Alo?” Carlos said, smiling his crooked smile. “A Nintendo. A Nintendo to me. Please.”

“My turn, my turn!” I said, jumping excitedly.
Wait, but I don’t know how to say “skates” in English!
I turned to Mago and asked her. Carlos gave me the phone, and I clutched it tight in my hands. “Come on, he’s going to hang up!”

Mago kept thinking. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know, Nena.”

Frustrated, I put the phone to my ear. “Alo? Santa Clos? Yo quiero patines, por favor. Mándeme unos patines para Navidad. Tank you.” Mago took the phone away and hung up. “Do you think he understood what I said?” I asked them.

“He’s Santa Claus. I don’t see why not,” Mago said. “Don’t worry, Nena.”

We turned back to the TV, but I was no longer interested in
ThunderCats
. I thought about my skates. In Iguala nobody I knew had skates. You can’t skate on dirt roads. But here, oh, this was the perfect place to own skates! But now I’d ruined my chance of getting them because I was sure Santa Claus hadn’t understood a word I’d said.

“I can’t believe you asked for a Barbie,” Carlos teased Mago. She punched him in the arm but didn’t say anything. Instead, bougainvillea blossomed on her cheeks. I knew why she had done it. When Papi bought me my Barbie, Mago wanted one also, but Papi said she was too old. What my father hadn’t understood was that we had never owned a Barbie. So what do you do when all your life you have yearned for such a thing?

“What are we going to do about a present?” Carlos asked. Christmas was the following day, and we still didn’t have anything for Papi. I glanced at the Christmas tree Mila bought at Pic ’n’ Save. It wasn’t real, but it was the most beautiful tree we’d ever owned. I thought about the branch Tío Crece painted back in Mexico. Though we did a good job decorating it, nothing could compare to that six-foot-tall green beauty shining with colorful lights and glittering with silver garlands.

Mila sent us to Barney’s to buy a bottle of Mazola oil because she had just run out. As we neared the store, Mago stopped and said, “We’re going to do something we have never done before. But at this point, we have no choice.”

“What?” Carlos and I asked. Then Mago shared her plan, which involved stealing. Back in Mexico, we had stolen fruit from people’s property, but we had never stolen anything from a store. The liquor store had mirrors on the walls, and the Koreans who owned it would never take their eyes off the customers. I’d been there enough times to know that.

“What if we get caught?” I asked, already thinking about the spanking we would get. By then Papi had made it clear what his favorite form of discipline was.

“We won’t,” Mago said as she pulled us into the store. We split up. Mago said she would distract the owner while Carlos and I took whatever we thought would make good gifts. The thing was that I wished we had discussed what exactly a
good
gift was. The liquor store didn’t have much. As I walked around, my stomach churned from fear of getting caught. The Korean lady kept looking at us. Our images were reflected in the mirrors up above. Luckily, her husband wasn’t there, and she couldn’t keep her eyes on all three of us, could she? Could she tell we were up to no good?

Nothing seemed good enough for Papi. Canned food, laundry items, diapers, sanitary napkins, toilet paper, soda bottles, chips.
What do I take, what do I take?
I glanced at Carlos. He was by the front looking at the bottles of tequila displayed behind the counter.
What does he think he is doing?
I thought.
Those bottles are totally unreachable, and even if he could steal a bottle, why would we want Papi getting more drunk than he already gets?

Mago picked up the bottle of Mazola oil and took it to the counter. There, she knocked over the newspaper rack and the Korean lady yelled at Mago and hurried to pick up the newspapers. I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed an item and hurried out of the store. Carlos came out next, and Mago was last. We rushed up Avenue 50 as fast as we could, our hearts beating faster than when we trespassed into El Cuervo’s mango grove. If we got caught, we wouldn’t be shot at. We would get deported by Papi.