Surviving Santiago (6 page)

“You get what I'm talking about?”

I think of Max's cousin, whose mother and stepfather threw him out because he was gay, and how Max's family took him in, even though they live in a tiny apartment. Putting the kid out really sucked, and I hated those parents even though I never met them. I sweep the cards into a ragged pile, destroying my game. “Sure, I get it. I go to an alternative high school. Half the girls at my school are lesbians.” I glare at him. “How do you know I'm not?”

That's right. He hardly knows me and hasn't made much effort in the past four days to change that situation. I hardly know him, either, but what I'm finding out, I really don't like.

“I didn't hear this,” Papá says. He slaps the ball from the table with his wrist splint. His strong right hand clenches into a fist. He never hit me like that in Madison, only with his open hand, but I'm not taking any chances. I push away the cards, ready to make a fast break for upstairs. He scrapes his chair back, but instead of going at me, he lurches out of the room.

T
he next day I pretend to nap upstairs while Graciela blasts
Oye, Nino
, which she listens to every day between noon and one while she cooks. I don't want to hear his voice again. Last night's encounter still creeps me out,
but I'm proud of myself for sticking up for my aunt and letting my father know he was acting like a jerk.

A few minutes after the show ends, Tía Ileana comes home from work. She wants to take a walk before eating, which sounds good to me because I'm not hungry. I still haven't gotten used to eating a big meal in the middle of the day and nothing before bed except a few tasteless leftovers.

“What happened last night between you and your father?” she asks as soon as the gate clangs shut behind us. She speaks in a hushed voice, even though there's no one on our narrow street.

“Did he say anything to you?” I ask, tugging the hood of my finally dry sweatshirt over my head. The air is damp and heavy, again threatening rain.

“He had a bad night. I'm surprised you didn't hear him.”

“I had my headphones on. I was writing letters. To my
friends
.” I recall the times in Wisconsin when my father woke up screaming. “Did he have a nightmare?”

She shakes her head. “He told me he said something to you that he probably shouldn't have.”

I kick a stone farther up the street. It crashes against the low wall in front of a house on the corner. The graffiti in black on the wall reads “
nunca más
”—never again. Next to it is a sketch of the blue, white, and red Chilean flag outlined in black. Another one for our side.

“Did he say what it was?” I ask my aunt.

“No.”

In the middle of the next block of duplexes, a medium-size dog with matted black hair and no collar trots up to me. It's a lot less skinny than the dogs I saw on the way here from the airport, but it reeks of rotten fish and poop. Tía Ileana claps loudly and hisses to shoo the beast away.

“Could you tell me what he said, Tina?” she asks stiffly as soon as the dog slinks off.

“He called you a lesbian. But not nice words.” I hope she isn't mad at me for telling her.

She grunts, as if she's heard it before. “And then?”

I tell her exactly what I said back to him, expecting her to find it amusing. When she doesn't laugh, I say, “I chased him from the room.”

My aunt presses her lips together. “This isn't a joke.” I send another rock flying into a cinder block wall with red-and-black graffiti and a stenciled portrait of Che in blue. The rock pings on Che's nose.

At the next corner a boy in his late teens with olive skin and short dark brown hair adjusts something on the back of his motorcycle—closer up, I see it's a grimy plastic milk crate attached with a bungee cord to the silver and black
moto
. He wears an orange rain jacket with the logo of a sneaker.

Was he the guy who splashed me on Tuesday when I got caught in the rain? He gives me a slight nod, as if he's seen me before.

Tía Ileana turns right and crosses into a different neighborhood, one that has sprawling one-story houses with terra-cotta roofs and huge yards that separate each house from the one next to it. The block ends in a cul-de-sac of thick-bladed grass, flowers in a rainbow of colors, and palm trees. Wild parrots fly free beneath the purplish smog clouds.

We're long out of our neighborhood and the sight and earshot of Motorcycle Boy when Tía Ileana speaks up again. “I don't like that you're around your father when he's drinking. Neither does he. He said to take the TV from his room, put it in yours, and for you to go there after supper.”

I dig my clenched fists into the front pocket of my sweatshirt. “Why are you guys punishing me? He started it.” It will be a long boring summer—except that it's winter—ahead of me, full of cheesy war movies,
telenovelas
, and variety shows because they don't have
St. Elsewhere
and
Hill Street Blues
here.

“One of these days you're going to set him off,” Tía Ileana says, nudging me forward.

I turn from my aunt and gaze at a red, yellow, and black bird with a pointy beak perched on a palm frond. “He never hit me when I was little.”

Tía Ileana lays her arm across my shoulders. “I'm sorry,
amorcita
,” she says, like someone died and will never come back.

I consider asking her to enroll me in school so I could meet kids my age and have something to do. Like homework when I'm stuck in my room. And something to help me forget about my new
papá
—like some decent weed if I'm lucky enough to find a source. Mamá gave me the choice, but I couldn't see going to school for three months now and then having nine more months at home. Even at my alternative school there are papers and tests and having to wake up early.

School's an option for when I get truly desperate, but I'm not there yet.

Before returning to our neighborhood, I ask Tía Ileana, “Why do you put up with this anyway?”

She squeezes my shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“You moved in with him and do all this stuff for him, and he hates everything that you are.”

Tía Ileana quickly puts her finger to her lips to shush me, though I don't think I was talking that loud. Anyway, the boy with the motorcycle is now gone. “You have to be careful. There's even more prejudice here than in your country. Sometimes there's violence, too, which the police do nothing to stop.” Her jaw clenches, and I see the veins pulsing in her neck.

“Have you ever been attacked?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “It's worse for men. For us women, it's, ‘How cute, they're best friends holding hands' when you're younger. Then when you're twenty,
the same people tell you it's time to get married and make babies.”

“And if you don't? Do they kick you out?”

“You're the maiden aunt expected to devote the rest of your life to any family member who needs help.” She presses her lips together for a moment. “Of course it bothers me that my brother's the way he is. But ever since your grandmother died, he's the only family I have.”

My grandmother died while Papá was in prison. Mamá said Nonni Rosa died of a broken heart, knowing what the government was doing to her baby. And there was a sister between Ileana and Papá, who would have been my Tía Cecilia, except she and her boyfriend were killed in a car crash when she was nineteen.

Tía Ileana continues, “And because you and Daniel are so far away, I'm the only family he has. You take care of family.”

“Have you told him how you feel?”

“He knows prejudice is wrong. He just doesn't apply it to himself.”

The cold concrete of my father's neighborhood closes in on me. Even if he isn't my old
papá
, someone has to tell him that it makes no sense. Just like it makes no sense that he'd demand visitation rights for the summer and then never be around. Or that when he is around, he'd rather drink than spend time with me.

C
HAPTER
5

Friday, June 16: 66 days until I go home

B
efore she returns to her office, Tía Ileana gives me a grocery list and directions to a nearby shopping center. I take the same route, but instead of turning at the corner and going through the fancy neighborhood, I walk straight one more block to a major street and turn left. The trip is about a kilometer, which is six-tenths of a mile, and I'm not used to walking that far, breathing so much pollution, or making my way through hordes of people who push past me. At the first block of apartments above repair shops and hair-and-nail salons, the sun comes out and the temperature rises. By the time I get to the shopping center, I'm out of breath and sweaty. Then the wind picks up and I shiver.

The entrance is narrow, crowded, and shabby, with faded paint, dirty windows, and papers blowing all over. It doesn't look at all like the one my aunt said her company is building—more like what I remember from when I used to live here. Inside are two levels of
stores around an open plaza. The supermarket, about a quarter the size of the average one at home, is at the back end.

First I buy the items on my list—heavy things like condensed milk and tomato sauce. Tía Ileana said I could spend the money left over on whatever I want. I bypass the packages of cookies and lug the two plastic grocery bags through the Friday afternoon crowds upstairs to the bookstore listed in the directory I saw on the way in. Like most of the stores in the plaza, it has a small, hand-lettered sign and sun-bleached merchandise in the window.

I don't know what I'm looking for. Papá and Tía Ileana own a ton of books, and this store seems to have little besides Spanish translations of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and other writers I can get cheaper at home and in English.

After backing out the door, I notice a record store tucked between the bookstore and a children's clothing store. I hoist the bags higher on my arms because the plastic handles are cutting off the circulation in my fingers.

“Want some help?”

A boy leans against the rusted railing, smoking a cigarette. Although he has a black leather jacket rather than an orange rain jacket, I think he's the kid with the motorcycle who I saw before. He wears tight jeans and black Converse high-top sneakers. Close up, I notice
his razor-sharp hairline and solid lower jaw, his long lashes and dark brown eyes. He gives me a wide smile that reveals a small gap between his upper front teeth. On his lip is the trace of a mustache.

My mouth dries up.
Quick—think of something smart.

“Are you going to walk off with my groceries?” I say.
Um, okay.

He shrugs. “Depends on what you have. Steak, maybe. Books, no way.”

I glance back at the bookstore. “No way is right. Those books sucked.”

“The record store.” He points with his half-finished cigarette. “Much better.”

I hold a bag out toward him. He throws away the cigarette and takes both bags.

“I'm Frankie. Frankie Zamora. And you?” His first name doesn't sound Spanish, but he speaks
castellano
like a local.

“Tina Aguilar.”