The Book of Broken Hearts (5 page)

“We need those, Juju.” Papi took the box from my hand and dropped it back into the cart, then added a few more. The store kid smiled awkwardly. Thankfully, I didn’t recognize him from school.

“Anyway,” Mari said as if we weren’t approaching code-red in the tampon aisle, “I’m deleting my Match profile.”

I tried to steer the cart away, but Papi wouldn’t budge.

“Do yourself a favor, son.” His voice rose as he swiped boxes of feminine-hygiene products into the cart faster than I could put them back.

“Juju?” Mari asked. “What’s going on?”

My throat tightened as I held off a sob. I couldn’t do this without her, without Celi or Lourdes. Mom was working so much and Papi was getting worse and everything was falling apart. . . .

“Papi’s upset,” I said. “He’s freaking out and—”

“Where are you?” Her tone went high alert. “Can you call Mom?”

“She’s at work. What do I do?”

“What about Zoe, Juju? Jude!” Mari was frantic. “Do I need to call the police?”

Police?
The word sent a jolt through my heart, shook me out of my panic. Cops would make things more embarrassing for Papi—for all of us. I had to handle it. We could buy the tampons if we had to—stock up for the next decade if it would get us out of here quickly.

I took a deep breath. “No. I got it covered. Sorry . . . false
alarm. But you’re breaking up. Call you later!” I clicked the phone off and slipped it into my pocket, reaching for Papi with my other hand.

“If you ever have girls,” he told the stock boy, “buy shares in this company. By the time you’re my age, you’ll own Tampax, Kotex, and any whatever-ex out there.”

“Okay, Papi,” I said. “Good advice. Let’s get home for lunch.”

“Lourdes, your sisters will kill me if I go home without this stuff.” His voice was getting louder with every word.

“We’ll come back later,” I said. “I don’t know what kind they like.” The phone buzzed against my hip bone. Mari.

“It’s this kind. I’m sure.” He dropped a different box into the cart—a pregnancy test.

“They definitely don’t need that.” I tried to put it back on the shelf, but he grabbed my arm.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s a pregnancy test, Papi. I thought we were getting tampons?”

And that wraps up the top-ten things a girl should never have to say to her father. . . .

Papi snatched the test from my hands, chucked it back into the cart. “Young lady, I think I know what kind of shoes my own daughters wear.”

The lump was back in my throat, threatening to choke off the air. My phone buzzed and buzzed and the overhead lights hummed and I gave Papi’s hand a gentle squeeze and leaned
in close to whisper in his ear. “Please, Papi. I’m starving. Can we go?”

“I’m not hungry.” He slipped out of my grasp and spiked a package of yellow-wrapped pads into the cart.

“Jude?”

I turned toward the voice at the end of the aisle: Zoe, hands on hips, red-gold curls lit by the fluorescent overheads. “What’s—”

“Oh, good! Mariposa is here. Is this the kind you like,
querida
?” Papi reached for her as she approached, holding up another package of pads so she could see.

“Papi,” I said gently, “this is Zoe. Mariposa isn’t here.”

“Zoe?” He looked at her as if she were a stranger, as if she hadn’t spent most of her childhood camping out in our backyard and sneaking ice cream sandwiches from our freezer. I nodded slowly, praying that Zoe wouldn’t say anything to further scramble the circuitry between his ears.

His face filled with recognition. “Do you . . . do you girls need a ride to school? Or . . . no. First I have to get some things for Araceli, then . . . are we at Burger Barn?” He drifted off, his eyes suddenly red and watery.

I wanted Zoe to leave. To turn around without saying another word, to forget she’d come here. Because if anything was worse than seeing a grown man lose it in the tampon aisle, it was seeing a grown man cry because he didn’t remember how he’d gotten to the tampon aisle in the first place.

Zoe didn’t move, and Papi turned his head from side to
side as if that would help him get his bearings. The stock boy returned to his arranging, but he was straightening the same boxes over and over, his neck and ears bright red.

Papi continued to look around, baffled and humiliated, and I closed my eyes, silently repeating the mantra the social worker doled out after we got the news:
It’s not my father, it’s the disease. It’s not my father, it’s the disease. . . .

“We’re at the pharmacy,” I told him. “We had Burger Barn the other day, so let’s try the Cantina. I’ve been craving their chips and guacamole.”

I touched Papi’s elbow, and his eyes cleared. He looked from me to Zoe with renewed focus, sharp and determined.

“My daughters asked me to pick this stuff up for them, can you believe that? But I do it. Because we do what we can, right?”

Zoe forced a smile. “Jude, um, let’s get coffee another day. I’ll tell Christina . . . um . . . call me when you get home, okay?”

Her eyes were glassy and frantic, and she zoomed toward the door as if the place were on fire, and a woman behind us whispered to her companion, “I think that’s her father, poor thing.”

“Let’s go eat.” I tugged on Papi’s shirtsleeve, but he shook me off immediately.

“Jude Hernandez, you will settle down and behave yourself in public.”

I was five years old again, wilting in the Colorado heat, whining to go home after a long day of errands. People were watching us; the burn of their collective stare scorched my
skin. My phone kept buzzing in my pocket, and my tongue was fat and stupid and useless. “Papi—”

“¡Cállate!”
His command was short and firm, and I did as he ordered: Shut up. He dropped another box into the cart and I stared at a crack in the floor, wishing it would expand and swallow me down into the deep red earth with the dinosaur bones. But it didn’t, and people kept passing by and jostling me, and Papi was loading up the cart and—

“It’s my favorite Hernandezes.” Emilio clomped down the aisle, arms loaded with enough candy and chips to feed the whole garage. When he noticed the disheveled pyramid of boxes in our cart, his eyes went wide.

I didn’t have time to worry about my own mortification. Papi was three minutes from a full-scale nuclear meltdown. We needed to vacate.
Rápido
.

“We’re leaving,” I said. “Just had to get some things . . . for my mother. And my aunts. And all my cousins.”
Even though they live in Argentina, where they grow their own tampons.
“Ready, Papi?”

Papi turned to Emilio, his fingers closing on another pregnancy test. “Do you have kids,
júnior
?”

Emilio looked at me with raised eyebrows, but I didn’t have answers. Was there a right one? A wrong one? Anything could snap him back to reality or send him into the abyss.

“No, sir,” Emilio said. “No wife yet either.”

Papi clucked his tongue. “Good-looking guy like you? I don’t believe it.”

“I know, right?” Emilio loosened up, his smile genuine. “Glad I ran into you guys. I found this vintage Harley blog and—”

“Harley? I used to ride. Sixty-one Duo-Glide,” Papi said.

Emilio’s eyebrows drew together, but I shook my head, like,
Don’t ask, just play along,
and he pressed on. “Yeah, I heard.”

“Life throws different things at you though. Can’t hold on to the past.” He held up the pregnancy test and tossed it into the cart. “Do you kids know if they have the . . . What are they called?” Papi made a balling-up gesture with his hands.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“You know. The . . . thingies. For the . . .” He closed his eyes, face contorted with concentration and frustration. “Damnit! God damnit!”

Emilio met my eyes across the cart. My skin crawled with panic, but his gaze didn’t waver. “Sing, Jude.”

Papi made a fist and slammed it against the cart handle, pounding and pounding, cursing with every blow. The stock boy finally got up from the floor.

“Miss?” he said. “Do you need me to call someone?”

Emilio held up a finger, put the stock boy on pause. “Jude, does he have a favorite song?”

“I don’t—I have no idea.”

Does he?

Papi kept on hammering the cart, and I scanned my memories as far back as they would go, searching for a note, a lyric, a verse. My mind served up happy birthdays, television theme
songs, Mom’s tango CDs, but nothing I could remember him singing, nothing he cranked up the car radio for.

Everyone has a favorite song. . . . Why don’t I know his?

“I should get the manager,” the stock boy said.

“We’re fine,” Emilio told him. “Jude, sing something. We need to distract him, get him calmed down.”

I cleared my throat and started singing “Many a New Day” from
Oklahoma!
, which I hoped Papi would appreciate, since he’d been on that western kick. My voice was shaky at first, but Papi stopped pounding, smiled even, and I kept on.

Never have I wept into my tea over the deal someone doled me.
 . . .

At the end of my Grant’s Pharmacy concert debut, Papi abandoned the cart that only moments earlier had been his entire world. “You’re an angel, Juju. How come you don’t sing anymore?”

I shrugged, but inside, shame clawed my stomach. I’d manipulated him. Tricked him like you would a little kid throwing a tantrum, offering up a shiny new toy to get him to stop.

“Well, you should.” Papi put his arm over my shoulder. “You hungry,
queridita
? Can we get some lunch?”

Just like that, the rage and confusion lifted, and everyone in the store returned to their prescriptions and greeting cards and sunburn-relief gel as if nothing had happened.

Calm followed chaos, a temporary relief, false and tricky.

That’s how El Demonio rolled.

“How’d you learn so much about motorcycles?” I sat on the workbench and flipped open a Coke. Now that Emilio had finished the whole bike-whisperer gig, I really hoped my job as silent spectator was over, especially since Papi was down for an afternoon nap and Emilio still hadn’t mentioned yesterday’s Great Tampon Incident, and one more falling feather of silence would crush me.

Emilio shrugged. “My pops was into bikes. And my uncles. None of my brothers liked ’em, though.” He held my eyes for a second, and something crossed his face like a shadow. Regret, maybe? Guilt? I swallowed back my own, hoping he wouldn’t bring up my sisters.

“What’s up with your dad?” I said. “Still riding?”

Emilio wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “He’s in Puerto Rico with my grandma. I only see him for Christmas.”

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s here with me.”

“They’re divorced?” I didn’t remember Celi saying anything about that. Maybe it was recent.

“No, still together. They’re just . . . weird.” He looked like he wanted to say more but then the shadow passed and he motioned for me to come closer. “Check this out.”

I knelt beside him and peered into the guts of the bike. He pointed to an accordioned piece below the gas tank that looked like a giant
V
capped with twin metal plates.

“You know why people call Harleys different nicknames, like panhead or shovelhead?” he asked.

“This one’s a panhead.” I’d looked that up first thing, no way I’d forget.

“Yeah, but why?”

I took another sip of Coke, scanning the archives for a clue.
File not found.
“I forget.”

“It’s the shape of these rocker arm covers.” He popped off one of the metal plates and handed it to me. “See how they look like pans?”

I nodded, and he pulled a manual from a stack he’d brought and flipped to a page in the middle that showed all the different models.

“That’s a shovelhead,” he said, pointing. “That one’s a knucklehead. Valentina’s a Duo-Glide panhead, which means she has the pan-shaped covers and the kickstart. You have to jump on it to get her going.”

“Like yours,” I said. I’d noticed it when he left here the other day.

“Exactly. But mine’s an aftermarket addition. It could start with the key, but I like the jump. In sixty-five, Harley rolled out the Electra Glide, which was the first one with an electric starter.” He dropped the manual and pointed again to the bike, his whole face lighting up. “Now the Duo-Glide is an FLH model, the H meaning high compression—more power than the FL bikes. ‘Duo’ is ’cause it’s the first Big Twin with suspension in both the front and the rear . . .” He trailed off and looked away, running a hand through his mop of hair, bandannaless today. His face was still glowing. “Sorry. Your pops probably told you all this, right?”

“Only a little.” Papi hadn’t gotten into the mechanics or the Harley history, but he’d told me everything else about Valentina. How he’d saved up, searched for months for the right one. “She spoke to me, Juju,” he’d said. “Called my name.” To hear him tell the story, it was no less than magic, an ancient jewel fated to him by the prophecy.

“Not for nothing?” Emilio said. “It’s cool as hell you guys are doing this. Not a lot of girls would be into it.”

“Girls can’t be into Harleys?”

“That’s not what I—”

“What can we be into? Being barefoot in the kitchen and pining over you?” I’d meant it playfully, but it came out sharp, and Emilio raised his eyebrows.

“Hey, don’t let me stand in the way of your dreams or anything.”

I opened my mouth to put that jackass in his place, but
instead of my witty retort, a giant belch escaped.

“Nice!” Emilio laughed. “You went primal for that one,
princesa
.”

“It’s the soda! And why do you keep calling me princess?”

Emilio flashed me another dimpled smile, but then he just shrugged and turned back to the bike. He poked and prodded, leaned in close to check out the engine.

And then he started humming. One note, two, the first line, the second . . .

Beauty and the Beast
, tale as old as time. It was last year’s school musical. I’d starred as Belle.