Down to the Bone (6 page)

I lean over and smack her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the greatest friend
ever.”
There’s nothing like support when you need someone you trust by your side.

“I don’t care what they say, Shyly. I’m not going back there next year anyways. I’m transferring to Miami High. You’re coming with me.”

“Nope. I’m quitting school.”

Without a mother to look over my shoulder, I can do whatever I want, read and study what inspires me, and live my life as I please. If my mom doesn’t want me, then she’ll be in for a surprise if she ever decides to speak to me again. For sure, I won’t be the same person she left behind.

“What about your dream of getting a scholarship and studying art and architecture in Paris and teaching at Miami Dade College or U of M?”

“I can study and learn on my own, here. Let’s change the subject.”

I’ve always dreamed big. Even though I knew I’d never end up in France for lack of funds, what artist wouldn’t want to live where art and culture were born? Paris, a city bursting with cafés where ancient, dead authors and artists like Camus, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Sartre once roamed, inspires me. I’ve spent lots of time daydreaming about walking past the same table where Camus once sat.

I know I’m not destined to sit where past literary geniuses, existential thinkers and the intellectual elite once did, but it never hurt to wish.

In
The Sun Also Rises
, Hemingway wrote, “No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask a taxi driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotande.” I’ve always imagined walking hand in hand with Marlena through Paris, living together in a tiny attic somewhere, painting and making love at all hours of the day and night. I’d sell my paintings, and she could do whatever she wanted.

Now I know for sure I’ll never make it to Paris. I can easily immerse myself in studying at home. This is the United States. The place we came to run away from communism. Everything is at our fingertips, readily accessible if we search for it.

Soli and I talk about the Incident. I tell her every single detail that happened after Fart Face dragged me out of class.

She wags her head from side to side. “Those teachers are out of control. They need a good roll in the sizzling sack.” Abruptly, she surprises me. “I told Mima about you and Marlena being together.”

“What?” I spring up on my seat. “Are you
insane
? You know Marlena thinks people will believe she’s a sicko who goes around checking out girls’ boobs.”

Poor Marlena. The shadow of homophobia with its pointy fangs and massive claws follows her everywhere. I’m scared too, and always have been. But she feels terror. She’s actually told me if anyone finds out, she’ll kill herself. Marlena’s obsessed with wanting people to think she’s straight.

“That’s insane.”

“Not really. Look at the way CC and Olivia acted.”

I throw her a steely look. “You shouldn’t have told on us, especially on a day like today. Marlena can’t find out.”

Leave it to Soli to tell her mom about me after what I’ve just been through. And besides, just because I’m in love with Marlena doesn’t mean I’m ever going to label myself a lesbo. I prefer wandering across the world (or at least my corner of it) without a stamp on my forehead. At this point I won’t put my personal life out there for everyone to keep gossiping about.

I tremble inside to think Soli will start telling other people and it’ll soon reach Marlena’s and my mom’s ears. “Chill.” She twirls a teeny dreadlock around her index finger. “I told Mima the day I caught you guys doing the Tongue Tango, almost a year ago.”

“Holy pube!” I cover my face with my hands. “Your mother’s known
all
this time?”

Soli’s mom is the sweetest, kindest lady you’ll ever meet. Honestly, she’s like a living saint. Just last year she had fifteen strangers who came from Cuba living in her teeny rental duplex. She fed them, found them jobs under the table cleaning houses, and cheap efficiencies for them to live in. I guess I shouldn’t be too worried about her knowing. I’m sure she won’t spread the word.

Unlike Viva, most older Miami Cubans are religious and conservative. Some embrace gay guys but find girls together disgusting. Some gay Latino boys are more open about their sexuality. They’re praised as “fabulous” and “funny.” Some right-wing Latinos are so whacked. They think lesbians are a perverted breed out to destroy common decency.

I know my culture has come a long way, but the homophobes need to read everyday stories about girls who like girls. That way, we’ll be seen as “normal.”

“Yup, Shylypop. You know Mima’s amazing because of her belief in metaphysics
.
She’s known forever and has never treated you or Marlena bad, and she’s never told anybody about it.” She lifts her pencil-thin right eyebrow. “She loves you like hell even if you
are
a homo.”

“I’m not homo, turkey. Labels are so constricting. I don’t want a target on my back. I’m just in love with Marlena.”

Soli’s talking about my being lezzie, and I keep telling her I’m not gay; I’m just me.

The thing is I don’t know
any
thing about living a lesbian life. Soli thinks my loving Marlena stamps me as one. Like I said, I want to be free to be myself without being branded, especially at this crucial time in my life. I’m not a cow. I’m a human being.

“Sure. You’re not a lesbo, and I’m not an Afrrrrrro Cubanita.”

I smile simply because she thinks she knows it all. And what the hell. Maybe she does. But then again, she might be wrong. I jam up the radio, squeeze Neruda to me and stare at the cars rushing by us. She swerves in and out of lanes, passing cars as smoothly as if she were gliding down a water slide.

I lower the music. “You think Olivia, CC and Aracelys will forgive me for lying?” These were my good friends at school, since I can remember. I dread the response.

“They were the
worst
. You know how dramatic Olivia and CC are. The drama queens said they’d rather lick scum off toilets than be your friend again. They’re pissed you fooled them. If they don’t get over it, they were never your friends.”

My heart is feeling something heavy.

“Don’t stress, Shyly. You’ve got
me
and all my friends. Who cares about those stupid thugs, anyway.”

Soli never hung with CC, Olivia or Aracelys. I’d spend time in recess either with them or with Soli and her friends. They didn’t dislike one another; it’s just that they had nothing in common. CC, Olivia and Aracelys are into impressing others with the schools they plan to attend, like Yale and Harvard. The truth is the only thing their parents can afford is a community college. To Soli, those three are transparent, self-indulgent, ego-centered snobs. To me, they’re just giving the world glimpses of what they’d really like to do if they had the money.

On the other hand, CC and Olivia dislike Soli because she says it like it is and spends far too much time with me.

Soli asks me to tell her every gory detail about what happened with my mom. I let it spill.

“Your mom’s a nutsack.” She slaps my cheek. “You’ll be all right, Shylypop. You’re staying with us. Don’t you worry. Mima and I adore you.”

I love Soli to death and back to resurrection, too. I guess I’m lucky to have a great friend I’m tight with.

As she drives and we bop our heads to the music, I think about some of the wacky things Soli and I have done. Like the time she motivated a bunch of school friends to spy on our science teacher, a renowned celibate, Ms. Asunción (better known as: Ms. Ass) with a remote control robot we’d given her as a present—Soli bought it at a spy store, and it had a teeny hidden microphone installed deep inside its head. We, and the rest of our mutual friends (the ones we both like), were thrilled to hear Ms. Ass talk about us in the staff room. We felt she was far too stunning to be celibate. The entire school thought she and Ms. Mariela Lagos were lovers. Sadly, we never found out anything scandalous.

I bet next year CC and Olivia will tell Ms. Ass what we did. Luckily, I won’t be there to get in trouble. Unfortunately, I’ll miss our good-humored tricks no one found out about because we were such exemplary students.

Soli dumps me in her front yard and yells to her mom, “Mima, Shyly’s in bad shape!”

Viva comes to me, picks me up by the waist, and swings me around. “Shylita!” Her eyes light up so much, it makes her pastel pink polyester housedress look even brighter. She doesn’t make me feel ashamed or embarrassed, like Mami, Fart Face and my “ex” friends made me feel. So I try to act normal and give her a bunch of
besitos
on her cheek.

Soli lets Neruda loose from the front seat. She runs full speed to me, as if I were a steak on the loose.

“Later, gators!” Soli waves goodbye. She booked just two people for haircuts today and is leaving for work early. She works cutting hair at Heads Up, where she meets more guys than most people have hair on their head.

Don’t let Soli’s stories of one day wanting to climb snowcapped mountains and teaming up with me to turn black burbling oceans from capsized oil into crispy clean waters veer you from her true nature. Her biggest passion? Boys.

I carry Neruda in my arms so she doesn’t run after Soli’s car. I sing to her, “Nerudini Miniweeni wore a size three bikini. I took the poet to the beach, now she thinks she’s a genie.” In case you’re wondering, I have two sides to me: a deep thinker and a ditzy blonde.

She licks my face as if I were a snow cone.

“Nerudi is full of sand, Shylita. You need to take her a bath.” Viva pushes my hair away from my face. “Soli tell me what happen
.
” Her tiny slanted eyes show concern. “I is so sorry,
mijita.
Your mami and those teachers has a lot to learn in this life. Your mami will come around. She just be in shock. You and Nerudi is welcome to stay here until she lets you back. And if she no let you back home, you stay here forever.”

I let out a long sigh of relief that must have been stuck in my spleen.

You can fool yourself into believing people you care about will always love you, no matter what. It isn’t until they take action and prove it, one way or the other, that you’ll truly know for sure.

“But you must keep in touch with your mami and tell her where you is living. Keep tings organized and take care of Nerudi so she no ruin nothing. She cannot do
caca
or
pipi
in the duplex. Okay?”

I kiss her café-colored cheeks. “Thanks, Vivalini. I’ll organize every day. And don’t worry. I’ve trained Nerudi to not poop or pee indoors.”

If she’s so kind to help me, I’ll make sure I’ll be at my best behavior and help her as much as I can, too.

I place my little mud-ball on the ground and she runs after a lizard.

Viva starts in about how I need to register at another school right away and finish my education.

“I’d rather pierce my eyeballs and get a tattoo of Sai Mu on my chin than go back to school.” Sai Mu is a swami guru with an Afro she’s in love with, but she won’t admit it. She drools when she looks at his pictures, which, by the way, are in a collage framed and hung on one of her bedroom walls. I try to be funny, just to get out the pain that’s stuck inside me.

“
Ay
, Shylita.” She lets out a sweet laugh, like a lullaby.

I dash through the doors and pass Viva’s altar to Sai Mu surrounded by mangos, bananas, tangerines, stones and leaves. The duplex smells fruity fresh and it livens my spirits.

Viva scoops up my little fleabag and follows me indoors. I leave a text for Soli:
pick up my things from behind the cherry bush after work.

6—La Gringa

Viva left to clean a house—what she does for a living—as I was scrubbing Neruda clean. Finally, I’m showering.

I’ve been blocking thoughts from my brain while soaping myself and humming songs my dad sang to me as a kid. He’d make his voice go deep and strong, then high and soft. He’d sing:

Shylita, my chiquitica

is the cutest mariposita . . .

Every day when he arrived from work I’d hide behind the front door and “boo” him as he walked inside. He’d place a hand to his heart, turn his head left, then right, and say in a quavering voice, “Bring back my daughter, spirit. I can’t live without her.” I’d appear before him and fling my arms around him. He’d pick me up and swing me around. “She’s alive!” he’d scream and eat me up in little kisses. There was nothing like curling up in my dad’s arms and feeling loved, safe and protected.

I miss my dad. If he were alive today, he’d have put those teachers in their place. Papi would have never allowed my mom to kick me to the curb.

I hear loud bangs and turn off the shower.
Boonga-boom-boom!
I can tell it’s Soli banging on the front door. She’s got a key. I know she’s knocking just to bother me.

I’ve stayed to sleep here many nights. The first time she knocked that way I thought she needed my help. I dashed to open the door with my heart in my mouth. She cracked up at my expression. Her ways don’t fool me anymore; I’m onto all of them.

Neruda rushes to the door and barks up a storm.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” I dry up in Soli’s room and scramble around in my bag for my jean shorts and green, holey, sleeveless T. I slip on my sandals, jump over piles of Soli’s clothes, get to the living room, and swing the door open.

Soli bolts through it. I try my best to crack a smile. “Wasss up, Hootchi Momma?”

“
You’re
up, Shylypop! And I won’t let you get bummed!” She picks me up, throws me over her shoulder, drops me on the flowered peach and orange couch, and holds my wrists down.

I struggle to get out from under her. “Get
off
me!” She’s got me pinned down good and has started to tickle my stomach. Twisting and turning, I howl, “Stop!”

“See, I win every time, ha!” she smiles triumphantly. She takes my face with both hands, presses her lips to my forehead, and kisses me with her usual loud,
Muuua!
“Eat your Wheaties for breakfast and spinach for dinner, you big wussy. You ain’t nothin’ but a wimpy fembo.”