The Tequila Worm (4 page)

TaCO HeaD

Mama used to pack two bean tacos for my school lunch each day. Every morning she’d get up at five to make a fresh batch of flour
masa
. She’d roll out and cook one tortilla at a time until she had a big stack of them, nice and hot, and then she’d fill each with beans that she’d fried in bacon grease and flavored with chopped onion in her huge cast-iron skillet.

And each morning I would sit at the kitchen table and say, “Mama, can I please have some lunch money too, or a sandwich instead?” But the reply was always the same: “Why, mi’ja? You already have these delicious bean tacos to eat.”

It wasn’t that the tacos weren’t good; it was that some kids called all Mexican Americans beaners, so the last thing I needed was to stand out like a big stupid sign. All the other kids either bought their lunch at the cafeteria or took nice white sandwiches.

I started going to the very end of the cafeteria, to turn my back and gobble up my tacos.

Then I started eating each taco by first putting it in a bag.

It would take me all of five minutes to eat, and then I’d go outside to the playground. I was
always
the first one there, often the only one for quite a while. But I didn’t mind, except on really cold days, when I wished I were still inside.

On one cold day, I so dreaded going outside that I started eating my second taco rather slowly. “Hey, you!” someone shouted. I turned and found a big girl standing right smack in front of me, her arms crossed over her chest like bullet belts.

“What’s in that paper bag?” She glared and poked at the bag with her fat finger.

I was stunned stupid. She grabbed the bag.

“Taco head! Taco head!” She yelled. In seconds I was surrounded by kids chanting “Taco head! Taco head!”

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Not only was I found out, but the girl had caused my taco to fly open and splatter all over my white sweater.

This nightmare went on forever, until Coach Clarke, the girls’ PE teacher, blew her whistle and ordered everyone back to their seats.

“Sofia,” she said, “don’t pay attention to them. They’re just being mean and silly.” She took me to the teachers’ lounge and helped me clean up.

For two days after that, I went directly to the playground and didn’t eat my lunch until I got home after school. And then for two days after
that,
I ate inside a stall in the girls’ restroom.

The next Monday, Coach Clarke stopped me in the hall. “Sofia, how about we eat lunch together in the cafeteria?”

When the lunch bell rang, I found Coach Clarke sitting in the middle of the cafeteria, with students standing all around her. She looked up and waved me over.

“Here, Sofia,” she said as she pulled out the chair beside her. “Everyone else was begging to sit with me, but I said no, that I was saving this chair for you.”

I sat down, feeling sick, nervous.

“How about we trade?” Coach said. She opened her lunch bag and pulled out a half-sandwich wrapped in plastic. “I’ll trade this for one of your tacos.”

All the kids were staring at us.

“Oh, please, I really want to trade.”

I hesitated and pulled out my lunch. I unwrapped the foil.

“Those look good,” Coach said, reaching for a taco. “Better than any stupid sandwich I’ve ever had. See for yourself. Take a bite.”

I carefully unwrapped the half-sandwich and took a little bite. It was
awful,
something between sardines and bologna.

“Ha! Told you!” Coach Clarke said, laughing. “Here,” she said, taking the rest of the sandwich, “you don’t have to eat it. Have your taco instead.”

As I ate one and Coach Clarke ate the other, she kept making all these loud
mmmmm
sounds. I knew everyone in the cafeteria could hear.

And the next day we ate lunch together in the middle of the cafeteria. We traded. Again, her half-sandwich was truly awful.
Do all sandwiches taste like something between
sardines and bologna?
I wondered.

But this time, as she ate one taco and I the other, she told me stories about herself: about how she became a coach because she’d fallen in love with sports at school; how she loved playing soccer most but had also been good at playing field hockey and softball. We laughed when she described the funny skirt she had worn playing field hockey.

I told her I liked to play soccer too, with my father and cousins in the street. Then I remembered Clara and her stories, so I told Coach Clarke about Clara and how she told me that I had inherited my great-greatgrandmother’s gift for kicking like a mule. I hesitated, then said, “I wish I’d kicked the girl who made fun of me.”

“Sofia, learn to kick with your head instead.”

“Like in soccer?”

“No, like with your brain. And you know how you can really kick that girl, and really hard?”

“How?”

“By kicking her butt at school, by beating her in English, math, everything—even sports.”

Coach Clarke and I had lunch together the rest of that week. She asked me for the recipe for the tacos. I had to ask both Papa and Mama for this, since Papa cleaned and cooked the beans before Mama fried them.

After that, I wanted to “kick that girl” so bad that I asked Coach Clarke if I could go to the library to study after lunch instead of wasting time on the playground. She arranged it for me. She also told me, “Part of ‘kicking that girl’ is to eat your tacos proudly, and right in the middle of the cafeteria.”

That year I kicked that girl in all classes and sports, especially soccer.

It wasn’t long after my lunches with Coach Clarke that some of the other Mexican American kids started eating their foods out in the open too. And sometimes when I pulled out my lunch, I got offers to trade for sandwiches. But I always ate both my tacos before heading off to the library.

The FanCY SChOOL

MRS. West was reading to my ninth-grade English class when a boy from the office walked in and handed her a note. She glanced at it and then looked straight at me. As she started toward me, I froze.

Mrs. West handed me the note. “Go see Mr. Thomas.” Mr. Thomas was the school counselor. “Take your books. You might be gone for a while.”

What did I do wrong?

As I headed down the hall, I started panicking.
Someone died!
No, no. I prayed now that I
had
somehow gotten into big trouble.

“Good morning, Sofia,” said Mr. Thomas, waving me to the chair in front of his desk. “I have some exciting news. A doctor is funding scholarships to send four Mexican American students from the Lower Rio Grande Valley to Saint Luke’s Episcopal School in Austin. His own kids are there. It’s a terrific school.

“Since you’re at the top of your class, I want to recommend you. You’ll still have to go through tests and interviews. But I think you have a
great
chance. And going to such a good school will open many doors for you.”

He handed me a brochure.

On the front was a picture of a beautiful white stone chapel on top of a hill. It was all aglow. The photo must’ve been taken around Christmas, for the chapel was surrounded by hundreds of lighted
luminarios,
and another photo showed the inside, decorated with red poinsettias and tiny twinkling lights. What did it mean to go to an Episcopal school? Were the chapel services anything like Catholic Mass?

Inside the brochure, I saw that the school buildings were made from the same white stone and that they surrounded the chapel in the shape of a rectangle, like a fortress. The playing fields were beautiful and green. Thoughts of running down those fields, kicking a soccer ball, filled my head.
No more street soccer
. And there was a girls’ soccer team too, with crimson uniforms.
Wow!

The images of the school seemed like a dream. They made me think of the mansions on the other side of town, where the lawyers and doctors lived. When I read that all the students there graduated and went on to college, I thought of Coach Clarke and learning to kick with my head.

“So what do you think?” said Mr. Thomas, breaking my trance.

“Eh . . . how far is Austin from here?”

“Oh, about three hundred and fifty miles.”

“Oh.”
So far away!

“But it’s a boarding school, so if you get in, you’ll be living in a dorm with the other students.”

Silence.

“But you’ll be able to come home for the holidays, and for summer.”

I wanted to play soccer on those beautiful playing fields. I wanted to get better at kicking with my head so I could go to college. I could get a good job and make enough money to buy a nice house for my parents and Lucy.

But to go and
live
at a school?
Without my family?

“Sofia, do you think that’s too far away?”

“Well . . . my parents . . . you know . . . ,” I said.

“Yes, of course. It can be especially hard for the parents, having their child go away to school. But it’s a terrific school, and you have already gotten to the very top of what we can offer here. It
would
be a great opportunity to challenge yourself.”

Silence.

“So let me suggest this: go talk this over with your family, show them the brochure, and then come see me again next Wednesday at ten. Okay?”

I talked to Berta first, on the porch.

“Sofia, you’re crazy! You’re the best at everything here. Why not stay, graduate as the McAllen valedictorian, and get a full scholarship to college? Just look at these pictures,” Berta said, punching the brochure with her finger. “These are
rich
kids. Snooty. With parents who went to college and all. You might even flunk out!”

“I know, but . . .”

“But
what
? We’re fourteen. We should be planning our
quinceañeras
. And here you are planning . . . your, what, your escape!”

“I’m not trying to escape.”

“Austin is nine hundred miles away!”

“It’s only three hundred and fifty.”

“That’s far, Sofia, really far! It’s not like you can still live at home and board a bus every morning. . . .”

“I know, Berta.”

Silence.

“And what about your papa, mama, and Lucy . . . and
me
?”

Silence.

“Sofia, tell me something:
why
do you really want to go?”

“I just . . . want to see what’s out there. . . .”

“But what’s wrong with
here
?”

“Nothing. But the Valley is not the whole world. . . . I just want to see what’s out there.”

“Do you want to go to the moon, too? I mean . . . and here I was looking forward to planning our
quinceañeras
.”

“Berta, I
don’t want
a
quinceañera
. I love it here, but what I want is to go see new things. I want to go to college, make money, and buy a nice house for Papa and Mama. And maybe become a . . . lawyer.”

“A lawyer ? Women aren’t lawyers, Sofia. And especially not Mexican women. They’re wives, mothers, and if they’re lucky, teachers or nurses. But you can try marrying a lawyer, if you only start dressing better.”

The porch door flew open and out jumped Lucy. I stuffed the brochure into my shirt pocket.

“What are you two talking about?” Lucy said.

“Nothing,” I said. Berta and I took off.

I waited until the
sobremesa
that evening to bring it up with Papa and Mama.
Sobremesa
was the time right after everyone had finished eating supper and was relaxing and sipping coffee or hot chocolate around the kitchen table. Papa and Mama took turns presiding over each
sobremesa
. Papa said it was a sacred time, like Jesus’s last supper, and that it was when we reconnected as a family.

There were only two rules for a
sobremesa
. One was that everyone had to take a turn and say something. The other was that you had to pay attention, listen to the person talking, and never,
never
interrupt.

Papa was presiding that evening, and Lucy went first. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy keeping the second rule when Lucy glared at me across the table and then turned red. She went on and on about how I had been talking to Berta out on the porch before supper and about how we were looking at some secret paper, but when she had come out to the porch, I had immediately crumpled it up and stuffed it into my pocket. And when she had asked what I was talking to Berta about, I had said “Nothing” and run away.

“Sofia, is this true?” Papa said, looking straight at me. I looked down. It was going to be even harder to tell them now.

“So, tell us about this secret?” Papa looked concerned and confused. “This is not like you, Sofia.”

“Yeah! Tell her to show us her secret paper,” Lucy said.

“Lucy, remember. You can’t interrupt,” Papa said.

I let out a long, heavy sigh and then took the crumpled brochure out of my pocket. I laid it on the table and tried to smooth it out. Papa took it and looked at it.

“Why is this such a big secret? It’s just a brochure for some school in Austin,” he said. He handed it to Lucy. “Okay, Sofia, it’s now your turn to talk. You know the rules,” Papa said.

Silence.

“Yes, and when you talk, I want to hear
all
about whatever you shared with Berta but refused to share with your own little sister,” Mama said.

I took a deep breath and told them about being summoned by Mr. Thomas, about the scholarship, the school. I showed them the pictures of the chapel, the playing fields, told them how everyone there went on to college . . .

“But it’s in
Austin,
” Mama said.

“It’s a boarding school, Mama,” I said. “If I win the scholarship, I’ll live there, in a dorm.”

Silence.

“But I’ll come home for the holidays and summer.”

“I was just starting to talk to my
comadres
about planning your
quinceañera,
” Mama said.

“I don’t want a
quinceañera
. I don’t want to dance around wearing a big silly dress, and—”

“That’s
not
what a
quinceañera
is about!” Mama said. “It’s about growing up, about learning to act like a
comadre,
and about finally learning to use your
don
to help yourself, your family, your community.”

“You mean you want me to grow up to be a
curandera
?” I said, suddenly remembering what Tía Belia had said years before.

“Ah, I think it’s my turn now,” Papa said, scratching his head. “Sofia, remember your two bags of Halloween candy years ago? And how I took you to the cemetery? Do you remember what you saw there? People were having a
sobremesa
of sorts with their visiting dead relatives. Do you remember this? And do you remember what you said on our way home that night, that you wished we lived on the other side of town because they lived in nice warm houses?”

I nodded.

“Mi’ja, do you really want to go away to this school, even if it means leaving your home here?”

I sat looking at the table.

I nodded again.

Silence.

“Can you please tell us why?” Papa said.

I shrugged. Part of me so wanted to go on this new adventure. But I also felt frightened. One of the pictures showed the students all dressed up, sitting down for formal dinner. I didn’t have clothes like that, and there were so many forks and spoons and knives by each plate. It would be like going to another world. The world of rich people.

“You want to go see what’s out there, on the other side? Don’t you?”

I nodded.

Mama spoke up. “But what about this side, your family, your barrio?”

Silence.

“Sofia,” Papa said, “do you remember what I also told you on the way home that night, about family, tradition? And how your mama cured Lucy of
susto
by getting all her
comadres
together, and how that was something the rich doctors from the other side couldn’t do?”

I nodded.

“Your mama and I want you to be happy, to always be happy. And for you to be happy, you need to
learn how
to be happy. Learning to be a good
comadre
is at the heart of this.”

“It’s now
my
turn at the
sobremesa,
” Mama said. “Sofia, your papa is right. So all I can say for now is that we need to have many more
sobremesas
to discuss this. You also need to go talk to your godmother. And
I
need to talk to all my friends.

“But, Sofia, I know
this:
this is really scary stuff. For us especially. You’re still young, and your papa and I don’t know very much about this other world. So you need to figure out
why
you want to go there.”

I nodded.

Mama then looked at Lucy. Papa was looking at Lucy too. Lucy was staring at the brochure. She looked up at me. “I want to go too,” she said.

I wanted to hold her, somehow missing her already.

I knew that leaving Lucy would be the hardest and scariest part of all. My parents were grown up and so would always feel connected to me. They knew how to connect even with the dead. But Lucy was still a kid. We had never been parted.

The thought of leaving her made me feel so lonely. As lonely as she would be without me. Still, I wanted to go. And it was then that I felt that somehow I was no longer a child.