"You kids!" her mother scolded. She bent him over her lap and started pounding him on the back in an attempt to dislodge the army man.
"But I didn't do anything," Carolina wanted to say. Instead, she dared to say, "Mom, I think the army man is in his stomach."
"Carlos!" Her mother called Carolina's father. "Carrrrrlooooos." She continued to pat David on the back. She stopped. "Look at my nails. You kids! ¡Cómo friegan!"
Carolina judged that it was time to leave the kitchen. She returned to her bedroom and covered her ears when her parents began to argue—her mother yelled that it was her father's fault for buying army men in the first place. He argued, "My fault? My fault? You're the one always going shopping." Carolina couldn't understand either one's logic and reacted with a disgusted look when the two finally calmed down and her mother suggested they check David's stools for the army man. It would have to come out soon.
Sorry. Her mother said that she was a sorry person, and Carolina didn't know how to respond in a dignified manner. With her little brother in tow, she hurried to school, but not before depositing her letter to Miss Manners in the corner mailbox.
"What did you put in there?" David asked. He was already eating part of his lunch. His fingers and his teeth were orange from Cheetos.
"None of your business."
"I'm going to tell."
"Tell what?" she snapped.
"Tell you put a bomb in there."
Carolina prodded him along. She muttered, "I wish I was from another family." She didn't feel guilty admitting that her loyalty lay elsewhere—who wanted to share a life with a mother who was angry all the time, and a father who spent his evenings tallying box scores of baseball? And she certainly deserved a better brother than one who gobbled army men like candy.
A sixth grader, Carolina still ventured out to the playground—though she had given up tetherball when she got smacked on the nose. Even her interest in kickball, her favorite noontime sport, waned that year when a boy tripped her rounding second base. Her recess was given over to playing catch with her friend Elena, the two of them openmouthed in semiterror as the Softball floated skyward and quickly descended. They would play awhile and then sit on the bench and talk, their knees pressed together in a polite grown-up manner.
But that morning their relationship changed.
"Elena!" Carolina called, but not too loudly. She raced to see her friend but slowed when she saw that Elena was sitting with a boy. The boy was the lout who had tripped her the year before and called her clumsy, among other things, after she told her teacher on him. She wondered what Miss Manners would do at such a moment, which worsened when Carolina noticed that Elena had nudged herself closer to the boy.
Disgusting. Carolina brooded. Still, she approached the two and greeted them brightly with, "Good morning." She stood in front of them and eyed Elena and then the boy as she waited for an introduction. When it didn't come, she volunteered, "My name is Carolina."
The boy laughed.
Carolina smiled.
The boy laughed harder.
Still, Carolina continued. "And what's your name?"
The boy laughed and said, "You're such a nerd."
Elena lowered her face and chuckled.
Carolina's face reddened and the machinery behind the eyes that produced tears began to start up. "That is not very polite." She was most hurt that her best friend would laugh at her. "Elena, why are you doing this to me?"
Elena hid her laughter in the sleeve of her sweater.
The boy hee-hawed like a donkey, and Carolina seized the notion that he had in fact a donkey's brain in what she felt was an unshapely skull. Thus, she reasoned, he should be pitied, because in the end, in adulthood, he would be working at a donkey's job.
But as for Elena, one of the smartest girls in class, Carolina could find no excuse for such poor behavior, poor form. Then she realized their friendship had ended—gone were the times when they played in Elena's tree house, took swimming lessons together, dressed up for Halloween. She knew for sure when Elena took the boy's hand into hers.
"Excuse me," Carolina said before the tears surfaced. She picked up her backpack and left to write Miss Manners on the stationery she always carried to school. "What should you do when you discover a friend is no longer a friend?" she composed on her Hello Kitty stationery. She wrote in purple ink, though she felt the question she posed really required storm-cloud black. She wiped away tears and through the blur of a crushing hurt could see how people—even best friends—could be cruel. She finished her letter, unpeeled a stamp, lined it up correctly on the envelope, and gave the letter to the school secretary, who promised that it would go out in the afternoon mail.
That day Carolina ate alone, a napkin in her lap as she nibbled her sandwich—tuna with a pickle and sheet of lettuce. She wished her mother had cut it into halves. Sandwiches looked better when cut, more sophisticated and delicate.
"When I grow up, I'll cut all my sandwiches into quarters." She picked up the sandwich and ate carefully. She enjoyed the crunchy sound of her carrot sticks and wiped the corners of her mouth when she was through. With nowhere to go, with no one to talk to, she sat on the bench. From there she watched two boys filling their mouths with water from the drinking fountain. They would fill up and then chase each other around, spurting water on each other. They laughed.
"You ugly frog!" one boy called. He was wiping water from his eyes.
Carolina bristled when she discovered the voice belonged to her little brother, David. "The brat," she muttered.
When David cupped a hand into his armpit and began to produce flatulent sounds, she was inclined to get up and make him stop. Instead she deposited her lunch bag in the garbage can and went into the library. There she did some of her work and thumbed through a National Geographic magazine, stopping to size up Shetland ponies. They're so cute, she thought, and ran a finger down their manes. How she wanted to pet that pony and whisper in its ears, "You're beautiful." She wanted to mount the pony and ride it through the green fields to a river. She could free herself from school and ... family. She turned the page of the magazine to discover Queen Elizabeth staring at her. The ponies, the article said, belonged to the queen and were pastured at Windsor Castle. Carolina appraised the photograph and noticed the queen's posture. It was straight, dignified, and—That's it!—royal.
"I wouldn't mind being a pony," Carolina confessed at last, "as long as I got to live at the castle." She imagined herself eating an apple from the queen's outstretched and gloved hand.
When the bell rang, she stood up and pushed the chair in. That's what the queen would have done—pushed the chair in even though she was royalty. Things, after all, had to be in their rightful place. She felt happy, but within a few steps her spirit sagged. Elena was walking with her hand around that nasty boy's arm. Carolina slowed to a halt. She let them move ahead of her and disappear into the hordes of students. She then felt a nudge when someone clipped her with a backpack.
"Watch where you're going, stupid!" the boy snarled.
Carolina ignored the boy and other bully types knocking her with their backpacks. Her mind was spinning into a dark hole where creepy dreams brewed their sticky liquids. She understood that the relationship between Elena and her had really changed, that she was on her own, alone. Then she heard the word Sorry rise above the students running toward their classrooms. "Sorry!" someone yelled, but it could have been, "You're sorry."
David tightened his fists.
"Come on!" Carolina scolded. "Let me see!"
He unfurled his hands and turned them over, revealing palms with rivers of dark, grimy lines.
"I knew it," Carolina remarked. "I knew they would be dirty. You're disgusting."
"So?" David replied. He sucked the mucus in his nostrils and swallowed.
"You're going to get sick," she warned him. "And blow your nose!"
"I'm already sick." He wiped his nose against his sleeve.
"And I saw you s
pitting water at that kid today."
"But he spit water at me first." He inhaled his mucus again. "It was fun."
Carolina exhaled in frustration that her little brother was a lost cause. She went to her bedroom to write in her diary about Elena. Why, she wrote, why would a friend since first grade laugh at me? And sit so close to that boy!!! She let her emotions flow on the unlined pages of her diary and was feeling better when the phone rang. She rose, remembering to scoot her chair against her desk, and screamed, "I got it!" Then she fumed at herself. "Don't scream. It's not polite." She also winced at the words "I got it." The phrase was barbaric. She hurried to the telephone in the hallway and answered the phone on the fourth ring, "Hello, the Garcias' residence."
"Hi," a boy's dull voice mumbled.
"Who is this?"
"Me."
Carolina could make out giggling in the background. The giggling belonged to Elena, her ex-friend, the subject of today's diary entry. She figured that the two had gone to Elena's house to make this prank call.
"Please don't call again," Carolina said coolly, and lowered the phone, done with Elena for good but not before the two pranksters shouted "Nerd!" in her ear. She walked slowly away and sat on the couch. After a moment tears filled her eyes. She buried her face in her sleeve.
"Why are they so mean?" she blubbered. She figured she would devote the time after dinner to answering that question in her diary.
"Who's mean?" David asked.
She looked up.
"Go away!" She wiped away her tears with her sleeve and buried her face again.
David stood watching his big sister cry. Then he said proudly, "It came out."
"What?" she asked, her shoulders heaving, but not looking up.
"The army man."
At first Carolina didn't understand his meaning. Then she remembered the army man from the night before. She pictured her brother on the toilet and his face pleated from a long, painful strain. "Ah, you're gross!" She got up from the couch and stomped to her bedroom. She put on her coat and left the house, mindful of the time—four-fifteen. Their mother would be home from work soon, and their father, a carpenter, possibly even earlier, or maybe not at all.
Carolina was expected to take care of David and see that he stayed out of trouble, which meant out of the refrigerator—her mother was scared that he was "turning into a little pig"—to use her words. Still, she left her brother alone and stood first on the porch and then sat on the greenest part of their lawn. She watched a truck roll slowly past, its speakers pumped loud and throwing out rap that she—maybe others, too—couldn't understand. Words or no words, the sounds were threatening.
Then she rose as she saw the mail carrier crossing the street, his leather sack on his shoulder nearly empty because theirs was the last block on his route. The mail carrier was Herman Gonzalez, who had won a million dollars in the California lottery. His smiling face appeared in English- and Spanish-language newspapers, plus a Chinese-language newspaper, she had heard. When he was asked by a reporter if he would quit his job, he said, "No, I like my work." Carolina, then ten, had to wonder if he did, or if he just wanted more money. But the mail carrier was forced to take off work for six months because desperate people, even thugs, began to follow him on his delivery route. They would ask—beg with their hands out—for some of his million dollars. He would smile, laugh it off, and say that he wasn't Herman Gonzalez the millionaire but Henry Gonzalez the mail carrier with flat feet. But he was a bad actor, and they followed him until the police escorted him for a day and then advised him to take time off or perhaps work at a desk job for the postal service.
"Hey, little one," the mail carrier sang. He handed her their mail and hurried away as if she were going to ask for some of his million.
She looked through the mail and nearly jumped when she fingered among the bills a letter from Miss Manners.
"Oh my," Carolina chirped. She sat on the front porch, mindful of her posture and that a special moment was upon her, one that might never occur again. She carefully opened the letter. With her hands shaking, she read: Because of the many letters she receives, Miss Manners is unable to respond to you personally. She regrets that she cannot reply to your problem but suggests that you seek advice from your parent(s), special aunt or uncle, pastor or rabbi, or older person whom you trust. She wishes you well.
It was signed, Personal Assistant to Miss Manners.
"Personal assistant to Miss Manners," Carolina remarked dreamily. She reread the letter—the note, really—and wondered what a personal assistant did. She imagined this person opening the door for Miss Manners. She imagined the personal assistant plucking wilted roses from the vase on the desk where Miss Manners wrote her advice. Maybe she addressed the letters and pressed the stamps in the corner— I can do that! Carolina told herself. I'm sure I can!
Carolina would have conjured up other tasks for the personal assistant, but her father's truck squeaked up the driveway. Her mother was in the cab and sitting far from her father. Her look was the look of dark clouds and thunder.
"I told you the car was no good!" her mother yelled as she got out and slammed the door.
"You told me a lot of things!" her father fired back.
"What does that mean?" She stopped and propped her hands on her hips. "What does that mean, you dropout!"
Her father had no answer.
Carolina was quick in picking up the conversation. Her father had bought a car from a friend and the car, it seemed, had broken down. But Carolina wasn't quick to get out of their way as they stomped up the porch. Her mother pushed her aside without a greeting and her father stepped over her as if she were a hurdle. They went inside arguing, the screen door slamming behind them.
Carolina got up, crying, "Darn!" Her mother's angry footwork up the porch steps had torn a hole in Miss Manners's letter. Carolina smoothed the letter and almost cursed, but she was aware that Miss Manners would not approve. She turned and spied through the front window her mother making stabbing motions at her father. Her father was waving his hands around as if he were drowning. Her brother was on the couch, swigging from the liter bottle of Dr Pepper and watching the scene between husband and wife. It was all sick, and Carolina nearly became sick in the rosebushes that stood scraggly in front of the porch.
"Help me, Miss Manners," she whispered as she walked down the street. "Help me; help me grow up and get away." Yes, Carolina thought. I'll grow up real pretty and smart and become Miss Manners's personal assistant. I'll open doors for her; open some letters, too. Carolina bit a fingernail as she wondered if Miss Manners would really hire her. Yes, she will, she concluded. I have manners; I have dreams; I'll change the flowers on the desk for you. She saw herself opening a letter not unlike the ones she had sent and personally answering it. She would help someone far away, and that person would grow up to be pretty and smart, too.
Carolina wandered her neighborhood in search of something. In fact, her attention was drawn to houses, parked cars, cats on porches, dogs behind fences, balls on roofs, and even Christmas tree lights still hanging from eaves in April. She couldn't stop her desperate search and had to admit that she was seeking some sign of Miss Manners. She believed she found it when she stopped at one house and narrowed her eyes.
"Oh," she squeaked.
She crossed the street toward what looked like the prettiest flower she had ever seen, something that she wished she could pluck and place in a vase as a surprise on Miss Manners's desk. But as she got closer she discovered that the exotic flower was no flower but a red soda can someone had tossed in the bush. Her soul sagged for the second time in one day. Did beauty and manners really exist?
"Help me," Carolina nearly sobbed as she stepped backward and clutched Miss Manners's letter. The world, she realized, was a sad place when from a few feet away trash could fool someone who walked in beauty.
Yeah, Right
One day Javier Mendoza rode his bike by his aunt Marta's house and saw that she was hol
ding a yard sale on her front lawn. He circled in front of her house, his face hidden in a 49ers football helmet he had found earlier in the alley. His aunt had rigged clothes on a line and had run an extension cord to the yard. A television was turned up loudly and roaring with the sounds of a NASCAR race. On a blanket lay shoes, kitchen utensils, toys, a lamp, and other stuff from closets.
Javier pulled to a halt.
"Hi, Tía," he said as he tugged off his helmet. He was glad to get it off; it smelled. It was heavy, just like a real professional one. But he was too smart to believe that he would be so lucky as to find such a relic in an alley. He was nobody's fool.
It took his aunt a while to recognize her nephew. "Oh, honey, it's you. I'm glad you're here." She was wearing pink slippers and a robe. A huge roller crowned her hair. She looked like she was going to bed.
His aunt had Javier move some boxes from the garage to the front yard, plus climb the roof to turn on the water valve to her cooler. It was April in Fresno and spring break for kids. With the days heating up, kids were already running through sprinklers. Boys his age, thirteen, were going shirtless. That is, if they had strong bodies.
By the time Javier was done with his chores, he was sweaty. His own T-shirt, with BART SIMPSON printed on the front, had come off and then back on when he recognized a girl from school. He had forgotten her name, though he remembered her from his third-grade class. Every week during show-and-tell, she would bring weird stuff. One time she brought penguin eggs, though to him they looked like the eggs his mother had cracked open for morning burritos. Another time she brought a lightbulb she said Thomas Edison had used in an experiment. True, the lightbulb looked old, but come on!
"Hi, Javier," the girl sang sweetly. Her greeting carried the scent of watermelon Jolly Ranchers.
"Hi," Javier said as he lowered his head and tried to recall her name.