“Yeah, we can’t all be serious bookworms like you, Naomi,” Chuy said. “Besides, you’re twenty-two, not eighty-two. Live a little.”
If only she could. There was a time when she had been able to act her age. During the first couple of years in college, she’d gone to a slew of fraternity parties. But everything had changed during her junior year, when her mother was diagnosed. Unlike other girls her age, she had had no interest in dating, even when her had mother prodded her. She had a feeling that her mother had been hoping that Naomi would find someone to lean on once she was gone.
After she’d died, Naomi hadn’t had time to grieve because she’d been busy taking care of her distraught father. In fact, if she hadn’t promised her mother that she’d graduate, she would have dropped out of college.
Javier and Chuy talked excitedly about the car as they walked toward the back yard. Naomi smiled. It seemed like things were looking up for all of them. A few weeks ago, Javier had started AA meetings and stopped drinking, placing all his energy into fixing up the Mustang with Chuy. Naomi had a new job as a caseworker for Child Protective Services that started in a couple of weeks. With more money coming in, she might even be able to afford to help Chuy with their grandmother’s mortgage payments.
“Mijita! You’re here. What took you so long?” Naomi’s grandmother rushed down the porch stairs and wrapped a pair of thin brown arms around her.
“Ow, Welita. You’re squishing me,” Naomi said.
Her grandmother—or Welita, as everyone lovingly called her—was tiny but strong. She wore her inky-black hair short, saying it was too hot to have it any other length. Years of hard work, raising her son, and then Chuy, had left her with little time to pamper herself, especially when it came to clothes. If anyone opened her bedroom closet, they would think they had been transported back in time to the seventies. Naomi had tried to convince her grandmother to upgrade from polyester to cotton and even offered to buy her a new wardrobe, but Welita had refused, saying that her clothes were perfectly fine and that someday they would be in fashion again.
“Ay, Dios mío. You’re still driving that thing. I told you you could have my Buick.” Welita marched past her and gave the bike her best evil eye. “Chuy, can you put it for sale on that thing … on the computer?”
“What thing?” Chuy looked confused.
“Cómo se dice?” Welita muttered then snapped her fingers. “I remember. Put it on Ebaze.”
“You mean eBay. Yeah, I can do that.” Chuy glanced at Naomi with an evil grin. “Or maybe I’ll keep it for myself.”
“No way! You’re not putting my bike on eBay.” Naomi slapped his arm. “I love my bike.”
“So much like Stacey,” Javier said.
“What?” Naomi eyed the beer that he carried and wondered if he had slipped. She had never cared for alcohol and hadn’t wanted it at her graduation party, but Chuy had insisted, saying it wouldn’t be a party without it. Naomi had been skeptical, but Chuy had promised to keep an eye on Javier.
“Your mother. You’re as stubborn as she was. Once she set her mind on something, there was no stopping her.” Tears glistened in his eyes, and he swallowed. “She would’ve been so proud of you today.”
“I miss her, too.” Naomi couldn’t count the times that she’d wished her mother was there to share the moment with her. She hadn’t realized how much she looked like her mother until that morning when she’d placed the black graduation cap on her head. She’d looked into the mirror and seen the same image that she had as her cell phone wallpaper. The only difference was that, in the photo, auburn hair spilled out of the cap rather than Naomi’s dark hair.
“She would’ve loved to see you like this. So grown up. If only her family had been able to drive down for the ceremony,” he said.
“I have all the family I need right here with me.” Naomi had never met her mother’s family, except through the annual postcard with a photo of the entire Hamilton clan sitting in front of a large Christmas tree. It wasn’t a secret that the Hamilton family, a well-to-do family from the Dallas area, hadn’t approved of their daughter’s marriage to Javier. They must have conveniently forgotten that if it hadn’t been for Javier’s tutoring skills, their daughter would never have passed her science courses. Naomi figured it must have been her unexpected arrival during Stacey’s senior year of college and the subsequent announcement that Stacey was not going to graduate school that alienated the family from the Durans.
Naomi placed an arm around her father’s waist as they walked into the back yard. When they rounded the corner, trumpets blared, and she jumped back with surprise. “Mariachis? You got me mariachis?”