While I wrote to describe my days, my school experiences, and my longing for us to be together again, my eyes drifted to Danielle Johnson’s party invitation. I was always reluctant to go to any of these parties, but in the end, I usually did, just to keep anyone from suspecting anything. Why I was invited before Sophia was invited did puzzle me. I was beginning to believe that whoever invited me was afraid that if Sophia wasn’t invited, I would be unable to attend. If Sophia knew that her social standing was so dependent on me, she would be inconsolable, and I didn’t need another reason for her to despise me.
So, usually, I did not reply until she was invited, or if I were asked in school, I would say something about Sophia, and that would trigger an invitation. She did hang out with a different clique of girls at the school, and more often than not her friends were not invited to the same parties, but Sophia, not to be outdone by me, certainly, always attended and almost always had bad things to say about the girls, the party itself, or even the food. Unless it was something she did or chose to do first, it was never any good.
Usually, I did not mention social activities when I wrote to Ignacio. I didn’t want him to think I was with other boys and having a good time while he suffered because he was away from his family and those he loved. I spent most of my letter describing my schoolwork, my life in the hacienda, and the things Edward and Jesse did for me. I knew he would like to know I was being so protected.
Edward and Jesse really were like two mother hens, I thought. They called me at least twice a week and returned to Palm Springs almost every other weekend to take me to the movies or to dinner or just to hang out with me in the house. I always told Edward when I was invited somewhere, and he would give me advice about the girl’s family, if he knew them, or advice in general about how to behave with what he called “the poor little misunderstood rich kids.”
As if he could sense when I was thinking about him, he called.
“What’s new on the battlefield?” was always his first question, and I always laughed.
“Your mother has been very busy with business and business dinners this week,” I said. “I’ve seen her only twice.”
“Lucky you. Jesse and I won’t be there this weekend. We have some research papers and will sleep in the library, but we’re thinking of coming down the following weekend,” he said.
“Oh.”
“You don’t sound happy about it. Have you fallen in love or something?”
“No, but I have another party invitation for that Saturday night, Danielle Johnson.”
“Johnson? Yes, that should be a nice party,” he said immediately. “They have a beautiful property in Palm Desert. Her father built himself his own golf course on the property. He owns a railroad in Canada, you know, among other things. Well, you’re at the top of the food chain now, Delia.”
“Food chain?” I laughed. “What are they eating?”
“Each other. It’s called social cannibalism. Did you tell my mother?”
“Not yet.”
“What about Sophia?”
“Not yet,” I said.
He was quiet a moment. I could almost see the realization settle in his face.
“She wasn’t invited?”
“I’m sure she’ll get her invitation tomorrow. Mine came today. It’s happened before,” I reminded him.
“I see. So, you haven’t mentioned it yet. You’re getting pretty smart, Delia. We’ll be down anyway. We can spend Friday night with you and some of Saturday, and we’ll love to hear the blow-by-blow about the party on Sunday morning before we head back to Los Angeles.”
“I love you both,” I said, “but you don’t have to worry so much.”
“Hearing you say that makes me worry more,” he replied. “Tenga cuidado.”
“Be careful yourself, Mr. Big Shot college man,” I said, and he laughed. I heard Jesse ask him what was so funny. When he told him, Jesse laughed, too, and then got on the phone.
“I met an exchange student from Costa Rica today,” he said, “and she was very impressed with some of my Spanish. Thanks to you.”
“I met an exchange student from Texas, and she was impressed with my English, thanks to you,” I replied.
I never heard either of them laugh so hard.
“We miss you,” they chanted together, and then we said good-bye.
Despite my telling them I didn’t need their protection so much, I loved to hear from them and to see them. They were truly sunshine for me on any dark, rainy day in this house. It was comforting knowing they were always there.
As usual, the moment I hung up, Sophia burst into my room without knocking first. If she heard my phone ringing, she perked up like a sleeping snake. I wish I could lock my door, but then I thought that would only make her more suspicious and more intruding. Somehow, it was all right for her to lock her door when she wanted it locked, but it was not all right for me.
“Did you get an invitation to Danielle Johnson’s party?” she demanded immediately. “Well, did you?” she asked, her hands on her hips. “I was just on the phone with Alisha, and she told me about it. She wasn’t invited, and neither were Delores or Trudy,” she added, mentioning her three best friends, the girls who had been with us that fateful night when Bradley was killed. “I told them that if we weren’t invited, you certainly wouldn’t be.”
I didn’t answer immediately. I had always thought that lying to Sophia wasn’t as terrible as lying to anyone else. Lies were so much a part of who and what she was that it was as if they were her own language. She was comfortable with them, and she would rather be lied to and remain happy than to be told the truth and be angry or hurt. She took baths in deception. It was second nature to her.
But I was suddenly filled with a raging desire to hurt her in some way. Her arrogance and her meanness were just spilling over.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I was.” I picked up the invitation and showed it to her.
I could see that despite what she had said and probably told Alisha, she was anticipating this.
She stepped forward to rip it from my fingers and read it.
“A night in Paris? How ridiculous. Just because her mother came from France, she thinks she can parade about with her oui, oui and pardon moi’s.”
She ripped the invitation in half and tossed it into the little trash can by my desk.
“Well, you won’t go,” she said.
“Why won’t I go?”
“You’re my cousin. You live in my house. If you’re invited and I’m not, you just tell them no thanks.”
“Maybe you will be invited,” I suggested.
She looked at me suspiciously for a moment. “If I get an invitation now, I’ll know it was not really sincere.”
“Since when did you care about that?”
“About what?”
“Being sincere,” I said.
Her expression dissolved. “Very funny. I want to be with you tomorrow when you tell her where to go with her Paris party. I’ll tell you exactly how to say it,” she said, turned, and marched toward my bedroom door.
“I can’t. It’s too late,” I said.
She spun around. “What?”
“I already called her this evening and told her I would be there. You know I’ve been taking French.” I smiled. “When she answered her phone, I said, ‘Merci, Danielle. Je serai heureux de m’occuper de votre partie.’”
Her mouth opened and closed.
“I have a wonderful dress to wear,” I continued, rising from my chair. “You remember it, I’m sure. It’s perfect for an evening in Paris.”
I opened my closet and started to pull the dress off the rack, but when I turned around, she was already gone.
Even Abuela Anabela would be unable to hide a small smile, I thought.
But then she would chastise me and tell me to ask God for forgiveness.
Later, I thought, I would pray for forgiveness. I was enjoying the moment too much right now, and I knew that pleasure
was not going to last very long.
Sure enough, in the morning at breakfast, something we rarely shared with Tía Isabela on weekdays, Sophia complained to her mother about my being invited to the Johnson party and her not being invited. Tía Isabela was genuinely surprised to hear it. I could see a look of amazement and then a faint smile of amusement when she glanced at me.
Either to help Sophia feel better about it or maybe to make me feel less happy, she said, “I’m sure Angelica Johnson asked her daughter to invite Delia as a favor to me.”
“Well, what does that say about me, Mother? She didn’t invite me. Is that a favor for you?” Sophia asked, wagging her head so hard I thought she would give herself a headache.
“I’m sure it’s probably because of the girls you hang out with. I have told you many times, Sophia, that I don’t approve of the friends you’ve made. You make your own bed. Apparently, Delia’s making some nice friends.”
“Huh?” Sophia said. She thought a moment and then threw her spoon down and folded her arms. “You mean you’re going to let her go to the Johnson party even though I’ve been snubbed?”
“You’ve been invited to things I haven’t been invited to,” I said softly.
Rarely did I interject myself between them when they argued, but I also rarely heard Tía Isabela defend me, for whatever reason she had.
“She has a point, Sophia.”
“A point?”
“Do you want me to ask Danielle’s mother about it? I’m sure I can get her to invite you.”
“Absolutely not! Do you think I’m desperate to be invited to parties, desperate for friends?”
“So why are you making such a ruckus about it?” Tía Isabela asked.
I kept my eyes down, but I could almost feel the heat and frustration coming from Sophia.
“Forget about it,” she finally said. “If you don’t care, I don’t care.”
“Good,” Tía Isabela said.
I looked up at her. She was too pleased, I thought. She wasn’t only trying to teach Sophia some lesson. She was hoping for something else. It was so hard to live in a house with two spiders weaving their webs in dark corners, hoping I would fall into one of them.
The silence started to weave its own cocoons around each of us, but Sophia, never one just to accept and retreat, made a new demand.
“When are you going to decide about my having my own car? I have to wait for her after school if I want to come home in our limousine or ride in that stinking car with Casto. It’s embarrassing! You don’t like me riding with Alisha, who happens to have her own car even though her parents don’t have a quarter of our money.”
“When I think you’re responsible enough to have a car,” Tía Isabela said, “I’ll get you one. And I told you, I don’t want you riding around with Alisha.”
“If my father was alive, I’d have it by now. I’d have had it on my sixteenth birthday! He would want it. He left me a fat trust fund, didn’t he?”
“And when you’re old enough to have control of some of those funds, you can waste them any way you like, Sophia, but once you do,” Tía Isabela added, her eyes quickly glowing into hot coals, “you won’t get any money from me.” She sat back. “And I doubt you would get any from Edward.”
“No,” Sophia said wagging her head. “I wouldn’t get anything from Edward. He’d give it all to her,” she said, nodding at me. “The two of them don’t fool me, even if they fool you,” she fired back at her mother.
“Fool me? Fool me about what? What are you saying, you idiot?”
“Nothing,” Sophia replied, picking up her cereal spoon again and smiling. “Only…you’d better start wondering why Edward and Jesse spend so much time alone with her.”
Tía Isabela looked at me.
The implied accusation now brought a crimson tint into my face.
“Sometimes the innocent look guilty because they are so embarrassed by the innuendos and they are so outraged they are too vigorous in their denials and fit Shakespeare’s great line in Hamlet, ‘The lady doth protest too much, me thinks,’” Mr. Buckner had said just yesterday during our reading of Hamlet. “The line between the innocent and the guilty gets blurred.”
I looked at Sophia when he told us that. She was doodling in her notebook and not paying attention, as usual. I wondered, if she had paid attention, would it make any difference?
“That’s not funny, Sophia,” Tía Isabela said. “What happens in this house reflects on me. Just remember that.”
“What happens in this house reflects on all of us, Mother. I live here, too. You, yourself, have told me that you think Edward dotes on her far too much. Well, maybe they do more than dote, and right under your nose.”
“That’s enough,” Tía Isabela snapped. “I have a full day today, and I don’t need to be aggravated before I even begin. You had better watch your own behavior, Sophia, and not worry about your brother.”
“Suit yourself, Mother,” Sophia said, keeping that infuriating smile. “If you want to bury your head in the sand, you have no problem. We live in the desert.”
Tía Isabela slammed her spoon down, rose, her breakfast half eaten, her coffee nearly untouched, and marched out in a fury.
I looked at Sophia. She was so content with herself for getting to her mother that I had to wonder if they ever loved each other. Did she ever cling to her when she was little? I couldn’t remember a time since I was here when she and her mother kissed or hugged.
“Satisfied?” she asked me, as if I had been the one to cause the trouble.
I didn’t reply.
Two days later, without my saying a word to anyone who might have said something to Danielle, Sophia received an invitation to her party. She came into my room that night wearing a very deep, satisfied smile.
“Well, look what came in the mail to me,” she said, showing me the invitation.
I started to deny having anything to do with it, but she stopped me.
“I know it wasn’t you. It’s my mother’s doing,” she said. “She was worried about her status in society, I’m sure.”
And then she tore the invitation in half and threw it into the wastebasket, just as she had done to mine. She spit on it as well.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead there,” she said. She turned and marched away, slamming my bedroom door behind her.
The following Saturday, however, she was out shopping for a new dress that would outdo mine, no matter what the price.
She wouldn’t be caught dead going to the party? I guessed she’d hired a hearse to bring her to it, I thought, and laughed to myself. It felt like I had won a small victory and any victory, no matter how small, was an achievement in this house.
But I should have remembered what she and her girlfriends were so fond of saying all the time.
“He who laughs last laughs best.”
2
Christian Taylor
“Bonjour, Delia. Comment allez-vous?” Christian Taylor asked me as we were entering French class.
This was the one class that Sophia and I did not share at the private school.
Considering her opinion of Mexicans, I found it ironic, even amusing, that Sophia had chosen Spanish class over French class, something most of the students at the school actually had done. There were only eight students in our French class, but because this was a private school, the class could still be conducted.
Of course, the students who chose Spanish, thinking it was far easier, claimed they chose it because it was more practical to learn Spanish in our community, with so many Latinos working and owning businesses here. There weren’t only people from Mexico. There were people from Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Costa Rica, as well as some other Central American countries.
“Je suis très bien, et vous?” I replied.
“Bien,” he said, and then looked worried that I would continue speaking only in French. I could see it clearly in his face, a face I would be the last to deny was quite handsome, with his luminous blue
eyes highlighting his classic Romanesque nose, high cheekbones, and strong-looking firm lips. He had rich light brown hair gently swept behind his ears and halfway down his neck. Six feet tall, with a lean swimmer’s physique, he was the school’s track star and thought to be a shoo-in for a sports scholarship at some prestigious college. Most of the girls in our class and the class below swooned over him, and the problem I saw was that he knew it far too well. He had an arrogant strut, and when he walked through the hallways, he wore a self-satisfied smile that, in truth, put me off despite his drop-dead gorgeous looks. I thought that conceited smile was just another mask.
Ironically, avoiding him seemed to be just the right thing to do to win his attention. Either it bothered him very much that I wasn’t doting on him as were most of the other girls, or he was genuinely intrigued and interested in me for being so indifferent to him. Whatever the case, I was not going to become another one of his conquests, nor would I forget Ignacio to be with him. In fact, just thinking about Christian made me feel guilty.
He tried to ask in French if I were going to Danielle’s party but gave up after “Etes vous” and added, “going to Danielle Johnson’s birthday bash?”
“Mais oui,” I said, and then hurried to my seat.
Monsieur Denning, our teacher, had entered. He was very serious about the class, annoyed if we wasted a second of our time. We were at the point where he wanted us all to try to say anything in class in French and would make a student look up the words and attempt the correct pronunciation, no matter how long that took.
I glanced at Christian, who was sitting two rows over, and saw him smiling at me warmly. I also saw how some of the other girls in the class were looking at me with shadows of envy darkening their faces, but I did not smile back at him.
Just before I had celebrated my quinceañera, my fifteenth birthday, in Mexico, a birthday that was very significant for us, a time when we were moving from being a girl to a woman, my mother passed on some of her advice about men.
“You must be careful about the messages you telegraph to them, Delia.”
“Messages?”