Efrain's Secret (2 page)

“I don’t blame you, Mami.” When I turned fourteen, my moms encouraged me to get my working papers, work part-time, and make my own money so long as it didn’t interfere with my school-work. She always held a full-time job, but truth be told, I don’t put it past Rubio to have discouraged her from going back to school. Dude be
machista
like that. Moms probably worked because they needed her to, especially when Mandy came along. “You did whatever you thought was right for us.”

She squints at the form in her hand. “Your father has to fill out this one.” My mother hands it to me. It says, “‘Noncustodial Parent Financial Information Form. If your parents are separated or divorced, and the parent you live with has not remarried, your noncustodial parent must satisfy this additional requirement to
complete your aid application. Both parents are asked to provide their financial information so we can determine their individual contributions to your college education.’”

I suck my teeth and cast the form aside. “Whatever.”

My mother leaps for the form. “Look, I hate to discuss money with Rubio, but this is for your education. Remember, Efrain, whatever it takes. And I’m sure your father will want to help put you through college.”

“How can he now that he has that baby?” My mother avoids my eyes by examining the form. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Then she suddenly bursts into laughter. Hey, if there’s anything remotely amusing about writing in intricate detail how much money your family
doesn’t
have, let a brother in on the joke. “What’s so funny?”

My mother reads from the form. “‘In the interest of confidentiality, your noncustodial parent’s information is submitted separately using this form, which is available from this office and on our Web site in printable format.’” She lets out a belly laugh, dropping the form on the table.

I don’t get it, but I smile anyway. It’s mad rare to see my mother cut up like that. “I guess the school wants to help a dude hide his assets.”

“What assets?” Moms yells in hysterics. “They think I don’t already know that Rubio doesn’t have shit?” This counts as one of those laugh-to-keep-from-crying situations, so I just whoop it up with my moms. She catches her breath to say, “
’Chacho
, if money were that important to me, I never would’ve dated your father, much less married him. Unless he has another job I know nothing about, there’s no secret here.”

No, Rubio has no secret job. But for a long time, he did have secret expenses. And once he had assets, too. He just decided to trade the three of us in for younger models.

Pertinacious
(adj.)
stubbornly persistent

The late bell for zero period buzzes, jolting me awake. That 1650 haunted me all weekend, so I must have dozed off while waiting for Mrs. Colfax in front of her office. She turns the corner with her keys in one hand and her “Teachers have class” mug in the other. I pick myself off the floor and say, “Hi, Mrs. Colfax.”

“Oh.” She slows down. “Good morning, Efrain.” Maybe I’m just trippin’, but I think I annoy Mrs. Colfax because I make her earn her paycheck as the college advisor. She probably came to AC thinking she wouldn’t have to do any work because the students here barely graduate, never mind head to college.

“So let me guess,” Mrs. Colfax says as she unlocks the door to her office. “You need another fee waiver.” I follow her inside, and while she opens the drawer where she keeps the manila envelope with the waivers, I reread the poster above her desk for the thousandth time. The photograph is of a basketball hoop, and under it in gold letters it says, “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

“I need two, actually.”

“Two?” she says, hugging the manila envelope like it contains her life savings.

“One is for Princeton; the other is for Yale.” And please spare me the speech about how these two waivers make a total of four, and that is the maximum she can give me. I don’t need Mrs. Colfax to remind me that from here forward, I have to come
out of my shallow pockets for the fee to every college application I complete.

Mrs. Colfax sighs, sits down, and motions for me to take the seat across from her desk. She says, “So you’re applying to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia—”

“No, not Columbia.” Nothing against Columbia, except that it’s in New York City. I got mad love for my hometown, but isn’t college about expanding your horizons, learning to be on your own, and all that? When I graduate from law school, I’ll come back, no doubt. Get a good-paying job, help my mother, and give my sister a leg up. But to do for them, I first have to lift myself up, and that means I have to bounce for greener pastures.

“Are you applying to any of the CUNY schools, Efrain?”

“Oh yeah. Hunter, Lehman, and City.” If push comes to shove, and I don’t get into an Ivy League college, I’ll just go to CUNY for a year, then transfer. But that’s plan B.

“Good, Efrain, because …” Mrs. Colfax pauses like she’s trying to deliver some tragic news. Pulling two cards out of the envelope and laying them across her desk, she says, “You have to be realistic about your chances of being admitted to an Ivy League college. They’re very competitive schools, and—”

“I know.” Who doesn’t? Last year Harvard received almost twenty-five thousand applications for only two thousand seats. That’s what makes it Harvard.

“Did you receive your SAT score yet?”

“Yeah.” I hesitate to answer. “I scored 1650.”

Mrs. Colfax yells, “Efrain, that’s wonderful!” One minute she discourages me, the next she acts like I just won the Nobel Prize. “Now, I have to check,” she says, all giddy, “but I’m almost positive you broke the school record—”

“Yeah, but I have to take the SAT again and score much
higher,” I interrupt. “Plus, I’m in the honors program, and I’m probably going to be valedictorian, right? All that counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but please understand, Efrain. Even if you were to get into one of the Ivy League colleges—and the chances are very slim—I’m afraid you’d be in way over your head. The honors classes here at Albizu just don’t compare to the advanced courses that your peers at other schools are taking. For example, they’re taking calculus.”

“I wanted to take calculus,” I shout. “It’s not my fault they cut it.” Only five students registered for calculus, so the principal canceled the class. Mrs. Colfax explained that since calculus was an elective, a class of five was too small to justify the cost of offering it. Everybody was heated, especially me. When an admissions committee sees that you didn’t take math during your senior year, it’s not going to think
Maybe the school doesn’t offer calculus
. No, the committee will think
This lazy kid is just doing the minimum course work necessary to graduate
, especially coming from a school like AC.

“The point remains, Efrain, that first-year course work at a Harvard or Yale would be new to you,” says Mrs. Colfax. “But it’ll be familiar to students who have gone to elite high schools. They’ll have already read the books—”

“So I’ll get a list and read them over the summer.”

“Even if you get in, you’re going to be so overwhelmed!”

“Why do you keeping saying that?” But I know what Mrs. Colfax means. The woman doesn’t believe I can even get into any of those schools. Either she cops to it or falls back. As if a Latino kid from the Bronx who went to an “academically challenged” high school never got into, never mind graduated from, Harvard or Yale before. The damn high school’s named after a Puerto Rican who did just that!

Mrs. Colfax tries to clean up. “You should apply to even more city colleges and a few of the state universities, too.” Then she ODs again, reaching across her desk to put her hand over mine. “C’mon, Efrain, even if you were to get into Harvard, you’d be a little fish in a big bowl. But at a school like Lehman or Hunter, you’d be a big fish in a little bowl just like you are here at Albizu Campos. Don’t you want to be a big fish, Efrain?”

I yank my hand away, snatch the fee waivers off her desk, and toss them into my book bag. Mrs. Colfax looks hurt, and I feel bad, but only for a second. “No disrespect, Mrs. Colfax,” I say, “but I ain’t no fish.” I throw my backpack over my shoulder and leave.

Validate
(
v
.) to confirm, support, corroborate

“How many of you have seen this movie?” asks Señorita Polanco. She holds up a DVD of
The Bronx Is Burning
. I wanted to see that joint, but it played on ESPN, and when Rubio left, so did the cable.

Marco raises his hand but still calls out, “Yo, Miss P., you gonna show that?”

“Yeah, Miss Polanco,” yells someone in the back of the room. “Show us that movie.”

Don’t these clowns know by now when Señorita Polanco’s set to throw flames? She only speaks English during class when she’s livid about something. Last time she broke out in English, she had overheard GiGi González and Leti Núñez raving about Jennifer Lopez in
El Cantante
. Señorita Polanco went off about how stereotypical J. Lo’s performance was, how the movie placed too much emphasis on Hector Lavoe’s drug use instead of his musical legacy, and on and on and on. She worked herself into such a tizzy, she forgot our
Don Quixote
test. Instead, Señorita Polanco gave us a crash course on the salsa scene in New York City during the seventies, and the next day she brought in a documentary about Fania Records and some CDs from her own collection. Only on Friday did she slap us with the
Don Quixote
test with a bonus question about Lavoe at the end.

Everyone gets a kick out of Señorita Polanco’s political rants yet hates the extra assignments they often lead to, especially all her extra vocabulary lessons. She detests when we use
“Anglicisms.” You know, when we don’t know the correct word for something in Spanish and resort to an English word with a Spanish twist.
“¡Esto no es un tro!”
she yelled one time while banging her fist against a picture of a truck.
“Esto se llama un camión. Es un camión, ¡no es un tro! ¡Díganlo bien ahora!”

“Es un camión,”
we respond to her demand that we use the right word.

Since Señorita Polanco’s rant about
El Cantante
, Leti is on a quest to get back on her good side. Today, she calls out, “That’s the movie about all the things that happened in New York City during the summer of 1977, right?”

Stevie yells, “Yeah, there was a mayoral race, the Yankees’ run for the World Series, Son of Sam, a heat wave, a blackout—”

“¡En español, Esteban, en español!”

“¡Ay, señorita!”
he grumbles.
“Yo no tengo suficiente vocabulario para describir todos esos fenómenos.”

“¡Pues, aprende, chico!”
Señorita Polanco walks to the board and writes the words
heat wave
. Then she translates them into Spanish.
“Ola de calor.”
She writes that on the board, too.
“¡Díganlo!”

“Ola de calor,” we
repeat.

Then she writes
blackout
on the board followed by
apagón. “¡Díganlo!”

“Apagón.”

“¿Y cómo tú no sabes eso
, bro
?”
I yell to Stevie. “Don’t you go to DR every summer, where there’s a heat wave or a blackout, like, every other day?”

Everybody laughs, including Señorita Polanco. Stevie throws his hands up and asks,
“Pues, Señorita Polanco, en el verano de setenta y siete en Nueva York, ¿cómo se dice en español
, Things were poppin’
?”

We crack up again, and I give Stevie a pound for that. Finally, Señorita Polanco hushes us.
“Quiero se preguntarles, en la
miniserie
The Bronx Is Burning,
¿cuántas veces mencionó a los puertorriqueños?”
Even those who saw the miniseries can’t seem to remember, so she says in Spanish, “Well, I finally watched it this weekend, and the only time it mentions Puerto Ricans is in reference to terrorism.”

Everyone’s amnesia disappears as they shout “Yeah, that’s true” and
“Es verdad.”
Marco says, “A group of Boricuas called the FLAN bombed two buildings in Manhattan.”