Look Both Ways in the Barrio Blanco (8 page)

Miss was smart, but some things she couldn’t understand. She didn’t know that her creamy skin opened doors — doors that would slam in my face. I chose a two-piece suit that came with a swim shirt to go over it, so people wouldn’t see my back.

We stood in line to buy it.

“Jacinta, keep this to yourself. About the swimsuit. Don’t lie. Just — don’t mention it. Promise?”

“I can’t tell Mamá when she calls?”

Miss blushed. “I wouldn’t ask you to keep a secret from your parents. I’d just rather this didn’t get back to Liz Espinosa. But if you’re coming to the rec center with us, you need a swimsuit. So please don’t brag to your friends.”

I coiled my hair around a finger. “Okay, Miss.”

But it was too late.

Angélica had called that morning, inviting me to join her and Miss Linda, going to the movies. I’d told Angélica I’d be shopping for a new swimsuit with my
own
Amiga. The famous one. Kathryn Dawson Dahl.

Sorry
.

But I wasn’t sorry. I’d used all three of Miss’s names. As a weapon. I’d wanted to hurt Angélica, like she’d hurt me all those times, telling me about
her
wonderful Amiga. I didn’t mention that Miss had agreed to be my Amiga only until her lawyer could force 5News to give her back her old job — reading the news on the anchor desk. Then Miss would be working nights, so she wouldn’t be able to take me places after school.

I stood at her elbow while she paid for the suit. Then I remembered to be
gracious
. “Thank you, Miss. You’re awesome.”

She smirked. “The Grand Canyon is awesome, Jacinta. Save that word for when you need it.”

Maybe
gracious
is something only kids have to be.

We were about to leave the store when Miss stopped. She stared at me. At my clothes. “Would you like a new sweater?”

I clutched Mamá’s sweater. “No, Miss. No, thank you.”

“Fine. But you’ll need a new sweater for school this fall.”

My stomach swooped. Like when you think an elevator is going up but it goes down instead.
Will Mamá be back before school starts?
Every week when she’d call, I’d ask her when she was coming home. She’d say, “I need to stay as long as Abuelita needs me.”

I still wouldn’t wash the sweater, even though it smelled like dirty socks instead of Mamá. I’d had to dig it out of the laundry hamper. Then I hid it under my mattress so Rosa wouldn’t find it. It was wrinkled as well as grubby and smelly. But I needed to wear it until Mamá came home, no matter how long it took.

But it wasn’t easy to say no to Miss. She didn’t act like an
amig
a — a friend. She called herself my
mentor
. I wasn’t even sure what it meant.

I wanted
reassurance
.

So as we walked through the mall, I took her hand and asked, “When can I go to your house?”

“
My
house?”

“I want to see it.”

I listened to Miss’s heels click across the tiles. “Jacinta, please don’t take this the wrong way, but — I don’t enjoy having guests. After working all week, I’m just not up to it.”

I let go of her hand. But I don’t think she noticed.

Her heels continued clicking on the hard tiles. “Will Rosa be back by the time we reach your place? I’d like to get her a swimsuit, too.”

I’d said Rosa was with friends when Miss wanted to take us both shopping. Miss wasn’t supposed to know we traded off babysitting Suelita while Papi worked.

Two years ago a white lady in our building called
la policía
because our neighbor left her kids alone while she was at work. The kids got taken to
foster care
, and our neighbor sees them only on weekends.

Mamá and Papi had taught us to say they were in the shower or napping if anyone asked where they were — so no one would know how much they were gone. I could see trouble ahead. Miss would probably think Papi was the cleanest, most well-rested man in Maplewood.

I folded my arms. “Why does Rosa need a swimsuit? You aren’t
her
Amiga.”

“She could still come with us.”

The green beast poked me with one thick claw. I imagined Rosa with my Miss at the mall, laughing and talking. Miss holding Rosa’s hand the way she held mine — with Rosa’s pinkie wrapped around Miss’s pointer finger.

I reached for my hair and started twisting. “Sorry, Miss. Rosa will be gone all day.”

MISS PROBABLY THOUGHT
I’d pick going to the movies for my birthday. But when she asked how I wanted to celebrate, I said, “Can we go to your house?”

Her eyes went wide in surprise. Then she sighed. “Fine.”

On the day of my birthday, I got to sit in the front seat of the van because I’d turned twelve. My heart danced in my chest, all the way up a hill, past huge houses. Then my jaw dropped.

I knew her house would be nice, but I didn’t expect it to look like a stone castle. I imagined Tinker Bell flying out of the sky and fireworks going off.

Like in the beginning of kids’ movies.

She pushed a button on her car’s sun visor, and the garage door opened.

Magic
.

“Miss, can I push the button next time?”

“Next time?”

I didn’t exactly feel welcome. Miss had allowed me to cross
la línea
— the line into the private part of her life. But she wasn’t planning to let me stay.

Inside, light came from windows in the ceiling.
What would it be like to live with so much light?
More windows looked onto the backyard. I never knew a family with a backyard to themselves.

Our “garden-level apartment” was just a basement.

Miss glanced around, her face growing red. In three steps she reached a window and slid it open sideways.
A door to the backyard!

“Guys, get in here.”

I heard her boys laughing. Ethan bounded in, like a big shaggy dog. “Hi, J.J.”

He meant me — Jacinta Juárez! I’d never had a nickname before.

“You wanna play in the hammock?” he asked.

I didn’t know what he meant. I’d never heard of a hammock, but I didn’t want him to laugh at me again. Fortunately Miss interrupted.

“Ethan, what are you supposed to be doing?”
Nag-O-Matic
.

He rolled his eyes. Cody followed him into the kitchen, where they started loading the dishwasher.

Miss nodded. “Your psychic powers are truly remarkable.”

Our family never used the dishwashers in our apartments, even though Rosa and I begged Mamá to try it. She said people who wouldn’t wash a dish were lazy.

I went to join the boys in the kitchen.

I stopped.

A cake with colored sprinkles. Curly letters spelled
Happy Birthday Jacinta
in pink icing. “You made this for me?”

She snorted. “If
I’d
made it, it’d be inedible. Cody’s the chef.”

I stared at him.
Cooking and cleaning?
I’d never thought of marrying a white boy. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea.

But if Cody was in love with me, it didn’t show on his pale little face. He shrugged. “It’s from a mix.”

“Let the guys work, Jacinta.” Miss led me through the glass door to the backyard. “Explain again why Rosa didn’t come.”

I was irritated that Miss kept asking. It was
my
birthday. Miss was
my
Amiga. So the truth slipped out. I kinda let it slip. “Papi saw her making out.”

Miss stopped halfway across the covered patio. “With a
boy
?”

“He touched her”— I stopped, but it was too late —“T-shirt.”

Miss’s lips pressed together. I got mad at myself for telling on Rosa, but I was also glad, because Miss would know that
I
was the good one.

Then I forgot about Rosa. I was too busy staring. Miss’s yard looked like someone had dumped a truckload of flower seeds, then left them where they fell.

“I love the pink ones! How did you plant so many?”

“I didn’t. We can’t afford a gardener anymore, so the Mexican primroses are taking over.”

“You don’t like them?”

She studied my face, then smiled. “Actually, I do. They can survive anything. The others are too much trouble.”

“Why don’t you pull them out?”

She shrugged. “Once you take on something, you feel obligated.”

A thought came to me. If I’d known the word, I’d have said it was a
premonition
. A hint of a time when I might be too much trouble, and Miss would still feel
obligated
.

Then she said, “The only flowers worth the time are roses.”

Roses?
I thought of my sister Rosa. The green beast hissed. “
I’m
named after a flower, too.”

“I know. I love hyacinths. I have tons of them.”

I stopped again. Mamá always said her girls were a flower garden. Suelita’s name meant “little lily.” I’d seen lilies in church at Easter. But I’d never seen a hyacinth. “Where are they?”

“They’re not in bloom right now.”

“Can you show me anyway?”

So she showed me the shriveled brown stems.

“Oh.”

“I told you, they already bloomed this year.”

My chance to see a hyacinth. And I was late.

Miss went to take a shower, saying she needed to get the TV makeup off her face or she’d break out like Mount Vesuvius.

The boys joined me in the backyard. Ethan ran to get into the hammock, stretched between two trees.
Oh!
A
hamaca
. Abuelita had one on her veranda in Mexico, where I used to take my naps as a little kid. I didn’t understand how you could play in one. But that was before I’d met the Dahl boys.

“Let J.J. go first,” said Cody. “It’s her birthday.”

So Ethan got out, and I climbed in. He said, “Grab the sides and wrap it around you. Cover your face.”

Cover my face?
I got
suspicious
. But I did it.

They started pushing, and the hammock started swinging. My stomach did a flip. I screamed, then laughed.

“Hang on!” shouted Cody.

I rose and fell, my stomach never catching up to the rest of me. I felt the leaves of the trees brushing the sides of the hammock. I laughed so hard, I couldn’t breathe. Then I was upside down! The boys kept pushing. I kept swinging around and around and upside down.

It was probably the most fun I ever had.

I helped Ethan set the table while Cody took the
lasagna
out of the oven. I wished my family could eat together every night, but with Papi working two jobs and Mamá in Mexico, most nights it was just me and my sisters. I felt a lump in my throat as I thought of my last birthday, when Mamá made tamales.

Then I remembered my news. “Miss, I forgot to tell you! I can take gymnastics!”

She looked up from the milk she’d poured. “You have the application?”

“At home.”

She went back to pouring. “It’s too late for summer gymnastics. You’ll have to wait until fall. We need to work on your memory.”

Nothing was wrong with my memory. Every day I’d begged Papi to sign the paper. He agreed the day before, when he’d asked what I wanted for my birthday.

I’d said, “The only thing I want is to take gymnastics.”

I’ve said many stupid things in my life, but if I could take back only one, that would be the one. I wish I’d said, “I want our family to be together,” and hugged him tight.

Instead I folded my arms and waited.

Papi looked at me. Then he got up and shuffled through the papers by the phone. From his shirt pocket he pulled out a pen and started answering the questions on the scholarship form. When he got to the place for an address, he left it blank. So the people from the city wouldn’t know where we lived. So we’d be safe.

Papi was careful. But he wanted me to be happy on my birthday.

Right now — wherever he is — I want him to be happy.

After dinner Ethan started to put in a movie.

“Miss, I should go home.” I’d told Rosa I’d be back early.

“You sure?” Ethan flipped the cover of the movie at me.

I forgot all about my promise to Rosa. This was one movie I hadn’t seen. At church they said it was bad. So I
had
to see it. And I kept waiting for the bad parts.

After it was over, I asked Miss, “Why do people think that movie is bad? The boy saved everybody.”

“Because there’s magic in it.” Then she looked concerned. “Will your parents be upset that you watched it?”

“No, Miss. They know magic isn’t real.”

“Then don’t worry about other people. What do
you
think?”

“I loved it!”

“The book is better,” said Ethan.

The boy in the movie walked through a brick wall to enter a magical world. I didn’t know it, but I was going to do the same thing — cross into an enchanted land just by saying the magic words “I want to read that book.”

But right then it was time to go home. When we got to our apartment, Miss came inside to get the paper for the gymnastics class. Suelita must’ve been in bed, but Rosa stared at the TV, her face frozen. “Mamá said to tell you happy birthday.”

My heart slid into my stomach.
“She called?”

“It’s your birthday.”