Salva had heard the whole spiel a thousand times. How education, education, education was the answer. How all the Resendez children were going to have a better future because they had the chance to go to school here in the United States.
“Your mother and I, we work very hard,” Papá continued, “all so you, Lucia”—here the speech departed from form—“can waste your time and money by flunking all your classes.”
“Papá, I’m not—”
“And my son.” The vaunted son line. “Who has all the brains and every opportunity to make something of himself can throw it away. On nada!”
Salva’s head throbbed like the inside of a guitarrón.
“You both”—Señor Resendez pounded the mantel—“go to pass the afternoon outside. Turn the earth and plant the garden. And think what your life would be like planting onions for los gringos. Or back in México for los ricos.”
Salva flinched.
Lucia was propelling her brother toward the back of the house. “¡Sí, Papá!” she shouted, pausing long enough in the kitchen to grab two sets of work gloves from a cabinet. She slapped Salva’s against his stomach, then dragged him out the door.
“Brillante,” she said. “What did you do?”
He didn’t answer, just went to the tools propped in the corner of the patio, grabbed a shovel, and headed for the far left corner of the property. The entire backyard was the garden.
Lucia followed him. “Por favor, Salva, tell me. I’ll find out anyway. I have friends at your school, you know.”
He jammed the shovel into the earth.
“Mira,” she said, “it’s not the end of the world.”
He stepped on the flat upper edge, driving the blade deeper. Four years. Four years of solid A’s and one B. Seven months of study sessions. All so he could become yet another of his father’s disappointments.
Beth struggled to find her courage as she stared, from behind the gate, at the entrance to the Resendez residence. The door was green. Faded. With no relation to the color scheme of the porch or the rest of the single wide, as though someone had painted the entrance with grander plans and then forgotten to finish the job, or run out of money.
She had never knocked on this door before, a failure that made the decision to do so now—three hours after she and Salva had both been sent to the principal’s office—much worse. Why had she never suggested they go to Salva’s house to study? Or taken him his homework on a day when he was sick?
Because he’s never sick.
That was, he had never missed school, even when he was sick.
She would have noticed.
Stop it, Beth Courant; you’re stalling.
She gathered the folds of her grandmother’s gown to avoid ripping it on the gate, then lifted the latch and headed up the short path. There is nothing wrong with telling him he got an A on his project. Except that she wasn’t really here to talk about the project. Well, she was. In a way. She couldn’t just leave things as they were, without asking. Or trying to ask. What that kiss had meant.
Though going over to his place could be viewed as desperate.
He made the first move. It certainly wasn’t me.
But she was making one now.
She had run out of space on the path. The porch was clean. Immaculate. No weeds grew up through the cracks in the wood. And the hand-carved BIENVENIDOS sign hung perfectly horizontal. Chimes with silver moons and suns dangled above her. The doorbell, Beth. Push the bell, and maybe he’ll answer it.
The green door swung inward. Not Salva.
His father, the large confrontational man who had asked about her parents, as if he thought she was plotting against the school and misleading the principal about whom to call. Which wasn’t the case. She knew her mother was just too busy to answer the phone.
Backbone, Beth. “H-hello, sir. Is Salva here?”
The only response was a frown.
“I’m Beth.” She felt compelled to reintroduce herself even though it was obvious by the frown that he had not forgotten who she was. She stretched out a hand, then pulled it back when he failed to acknowledge it. “I-I’ve been helping Salva in AP English. Well, actually we’ve been helping each other. It’s a challenging class.”
“My son is not here,” he said.
“Oh.” Until this moment, she had not been 100 percent certain of whether she wanted Salva to be home. Suddenly, she realized how much she had wanted it. And how important it was that his father not hate her.
“I know we made a mistake today.” She twisted the chiffon strands dangling from the belt at her waist. “And we’re both sorry for that.”
“Are you?” Mr. Resendez raised his eyebrows, his dark forehead folding together in wide furrows.
“Yes, sir. But…” After serving her suspension in the office, she had gone to see the Mercenary. “I wanted to let Salva know that it wasn’t all bad. I mean, all the work we put in wasn’t wasted.”
The man glanced over his shoulder, as if he might walk away.
Beth rushed to explain. “We earned an A on our project.”
The muscles in his face didn’t relax.
Her left arm began to sting. “Could you tell him that, please?”
His gaze went to her elbow.
She realized she’d wrapped it in the chiffon and begun to cut off the circulation.
“You earned an A on your project.” He repeated her words.
“Yes,” Beth said, hurrying to unwind the fabric. “Our Shakespeare project. It was very important—worth a third of our grade.”
“I understand your message,” he said.
And the green door swung shut in her face.
“What is this message about from the school?” Ms. Courant’s worn voice grated through the darkness from the threshold of Beth’s bedroom later that evening.
Beth rolled away from the question, burying herself behind her eyelids and regretting her failure to climb under the bedcovers. She’d heard the tires on gravel, the fight with the screen door, and the footsteps. But she hadn’t had the forethought to plan ahead. Her eyes burned from exhausted tears, and her head throbbed. She didn’t have the strength to deal with this tonight.
The light flipped on, followed by a sigh. Something scraped across the floor, then papers crackled and something else shuffled.
Why can’t she respect the barrier? There was no safety in this place anymore. Ever.
“Tell me about the phone call,” the invader said.
“It’s nothing.” Beth silently cursed the raw croak in her voice.
“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t be pretending to sleep in that dress.”
Because I wouldn’t have to pretend. You wouldn’t bother coming to talk to me.
Beth rolled up into a seated, huddled position, her head down, her arms hugging the wrinkled skirt of her grandmother’s dress to her knees. It was probably ruined now. Like everything. Beth felt trapped in the maelstrom of the events of the day, ending with that green door shut in her face. “It’s just Principal Markham making a big thing out of nothing.”
The bed mattress tilted as her mother sank down at her daughter’s side. “Well, just what is this…nothing? You know I can’t take off work, but I am going to return that call; and if I have to hear it from him first—”
“We did our Shakespeare project today.”
“What?”
You don’t know. Because you don’t care what’s happening in my life.
“Beth.”
My name used as a weapon. “It was a performance for AP English. My partner and I did the death scene from Romeo and Juliet.”
“‘O happy dagger.’”
The quote shook her. She had forgotten her mother had been an English major before dropping out.
“That’s quite a scene,” added Ms. Courant.
An incredible scene. And now it was ruined forever.
Beth had allowed herself to hope, she realized. Fear, anxiety, hesitation: they had all been present
as she had climbed those porch steps to Salva’s home. But the most dangerous emotion had been hope, crushed now by his father’s anger.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, wanting to talk with someone other than her mother. But there was no one. After facing Mr. Resendez’s disapproval, Salva would probably never speak to Beth again. And Ni had gone on vacation yesterday and still didn’t know about him. Unlike the entire rest of the school.
“We earned an A,” Beth croaked. As if that mattered. As if it mattered to anyone.
“Impressive.”
Was that sarcasm? Or just a prompt to dig out an explan-ation?
Beth tried to steel herself for the task. And failed. Her hands were cold, and goose bumps ran the length of her arms. Her mother had no tolerance for boys. Boys were a problem who got you pregnant, then abandoned you so you had to drop out of school, live in a trailer, and raise a child you didn’t want.
Just get it over with. Maybe if she yells it will numb the rest of the pain. The words burst forward in a suicidal rush. “Well, there was this kiss in the death scene, and Principal Markham got all disturbed by it because there aren’t supposed to be any public displays of affection at school.” Beth stared very hard at a whirlpool print on her bedspread.
Her mother’s response was expressionless. “You were acting?”
“Yes.”
“The death scene from Romeo and Juliet?”
“Yes.”
“And the principal was upset by a kiss in the performance?”
“Yes.”
“Oh…” Her mother let out a long, relentless breath. “Is that all?” She stood, without waiting for the answer, and withdrew, muttering something about the small-time thinking in this town. Leaving her daughter once again.
Alone.
14
MELTED ICE CREAM
“Mira, Salva.” His father aimed the metal spatula away from the backyard grill toward a plate on the red plastic-covered picnic table. “Tome este plato a Charla.”
Salva eyed the plate heaped with barbecued chicken in poblano salsa, fried greens, jalapeño cornbread, gazpacho salad, and pineapple flan. Char would never eat that much in her life. “Papá.” He tried to tell his father she would probably rather select her own food.
“¡Llévelo a ella!” the older man insisted, giving Salva a push across the Resendez patio toward the folding lounge chair, where Char had stretched her long bare legs out in the sun.
Señora Mendoza vacated her own seat, beside her daughter, and took another place on the opposite side of Lucia.
Salva groaned. When were los adultos going to accept that he and Char were not getting together?
The impromptu barbecue between the two families had been Papá’s idea, a sudden inspiration as Señor Resendez and Char’s mother had been yakking on the steps after church. It was an extraordinarily warm day for the first weekend of spring break. Talia, Casandra, and Char’s younger brother, Renaldo, were dripping Popsicles all over the cement.
Señora Mendoza glanced at her sticky son, then shook her head, smiling. “¡Vaya al agua!” She waved at the younger kids to go cool off in the front-yard sprinkler.
Salva envied their escape as he tried to deliver the plate.
Char arched her shaped eyebrows and shook her head at the food. “I’m not eating,” she said.
He turned around.
“What?” Señor Resendez had abandoned his post at the grill. He put a hand on Salva’s shoulder and rotated his son back toward Char. “How can you come to a barbecue and not eat? You have to eat.”
“I’m going over to Linette’s house for dinner at four,” she replied.
“Is only one o’clock now,” said Papá. “Lots of time to be hungry again.” He waved his spatula as if that was the end of the topic, then turned to make a comment in Spanish to her mother.
Salva set the plate down at Char’s feet. She’d be better off if she just picked at the food. It would save her the exhausting experience of arguing with his father. “Would you like a drink?” Salva asked.
“A gentleman, your son,” Señora Mendoza said in careful English. “I wish more boys in this town were like him. Sí, Charla?”
Which would have been a great time for Char to mention Pepe, though he didn’t exactly come off as the gentleman type. Still, if things were moving as fast as he claimed, it was about time Char had the guts to acknowledge her relationship with Salva’s best friend.
“I’ll have a Diet Coke,” she said.
The cooler had only Diet Pepsi, but Salva didn’t stick around to clarify details.
Unfortunately, the drinks weren’t far enough away to avoid the conversation. “Where you go to college, Charla?” Señor Resendez glanced at Señora Mendoza, who nodded back.
Char didn’t answer.
“You have to make a decision soon, no?” he kept after her. “I ask my son, and he say he waits to hear back from more colleges. But you have to know kind of already.”
Char shot a glance across the striped back of her chair at Salva.
Like he was going to rescue her? No way. At least not as long as she kept holding out about his best friend. Salva picked up a Pepsi for himself, then plunged his hand into the ice for Char’s drink.
She finally answered, “I guess maybe I’ll take some classes at the job center.”
Both her mother and Señor Resendez frowned. “That’s not going to college,” Papá replied. “That’s just basic skills. You don’t want a basic job.”
Salva cringed.
Just because Char didn’t have a father didn’t mean that Papá had to act the part. Papá had never really understood how hard school was for her. And there was the whole illegal thing. How did he think she was going to get around that?
“You apply for Lucia’s school?” Señor Resendez continued. “You could be her roommate.”
“¡Papá!” Lucia said. “I’m going to graduate this year!”
“We’ll see.” His tone was not convinced.
She abandoned her emptied plate and marched off in a huff, across the very well-turned garden.
Señor Resendez kept talking to Char. “Maybe Salva could help you fill out the applications.”
Oh God. No more. No more driving lessons or extra tutoring or delivering plates.
Salva dropped off the Diet Pepsi at Char’s side, then followed Lucia.
She was leaning, her spine against the high scalloped boards of the backyard fence. “He doesn’t get it,” she said, banging her knuckles on the wooden surface. “Like Friday. No one in college waits until five P.M. on Friday to begin their vacation. They just take their last class and go.”
“At least he’s not trying to hook you up.” Salva leaned his back against the nearby gate.
Lucia’s grimace turned into a smirk. “So…this girl who played Juliet…”
Well, that hadn’t taken long. He wondered which of her friends had gabbed on him. Salva shook up his pop can and cracked the lid, letting the liquid shoot in his sister’s direction.
Lucia dodged the spray. “She’s the one who was helping you study this winter, right?”
Was his sister’s mind hardwired to this stuff? He took a drink and rotated, leaning his arms over the chest-high gate.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
“Beth.” Salva exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath since Friday.
“Mmm-hmm. Is she pretty?”
He shrugged. “She’s okay.” From an unbiased viewpoint that was honest, wasn’t it? He hadn’t realized she was beautiful until he’d gotten to know her. Well, he’d known her a long time, but he hadn’t really—
“Uh-huh. So you aren’t dating yet. You know you should probably tell Papá you’re interested. Give him a little time to get used to the idea.”
Right. The only thing his father would hear was the fact that she wasn’t mexicana. “Beth doesn’t deserve to be treated like she’s second-class,” Salva found himself saying. “She’s a much nicer gi
rl than the chica Papá thinks I ought to be going out with.”
Lucia shot a glance toward the patio. “Yeah, well, that’s because he doesn’t know what la chica is up to. But I didn’t ask about Char.” She poached the Pepsi. “I asked about Beth.”
“All right, she’s pretty,” he admitted.
“And smart?”
“And smart.”
“Good,” Lucia said. “It’s about time you found somebody who was.”
Was it? He changed the subject. “I’ve had enough familia this weekend, you know.” He pricked himself on the wire holding the gate.
She laughed. “You were working at the plant yesterday.”
“Yeah, with Papá. And he got me signed up for all of spring break.” Salva knew the hours weren’t part of his punishment, but it felt like they were. “Nice of him, isn’t it?”
Lucia took a drink from the pop can, then flipped it over and shook out the final drops. “I don’t know, Salva. I don’t know whether it’s better to be you, with too much familia, or me, with not enough.”
He started fiddling with the twisted wire. “You really think you’re gonna finish school this year?” The answer was more important than he wanted to admit.
“Yes. I might need to retake a course during the summer, but then I’m coming home. And help take care of Talia and Casandra.”
“You really want that?”
“Sí,” she said, and set the pop can down on one of the fence posts.
He knew his desire to believe her was selfish—that he wanted her to stay. To alleviate the guilt he was going to feel at leaving his younger sisters. But Salva also wanted to believe—somehow—that he wasn’t robbing Lucia of her future in order to live his own. “You could apply to go to nursing school,” he said, “instead of just working at the retirement home.”
She wrinkled her nose. “With my grades? You go be the doctor in the family.”
No. He’d seen enough of doctors when he was thirteen—doctors who couldn’t offer his mother anything but bills. And guilt, about the fact that she hadn’t come to the hospital earlier.