“So,” she said, “you want to get ice cream?”
Carlotta’s parents both worked in the diner. Her mother ran the cash register and waited tables. Her father managed the kitchen—although Se?or Diaz’s management consisted mainly of sitting around, reading the Bible and the sports pages, and occasionally yelling at the cooks for not moving fast enough.
“Hey you!” he called, as Carlotta led me in the back door. “Where have you been?”
“Walking to and fro on the earth,” said Carlotta, with a nod to the Good Book in her father’s lap. The crack earned her a scowl that could have come from the Old Testament God Himself.
“That’s not funny, Carlotta. Your mother has been looking for you. She needs help out front.”
“Yeah sure, in a minute,” Carlotta said. She ducked into the walk-in freezer, leaving me alone with Jehovah.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Jane.”
Se?or Diaz cleared his throat like he was going to spit. He started to return to his Bible study, then looked up again and gave me this long, thoughtful stare.
“You’re the new girl,” he finally said. “At the Fosters’.”
“Yeah, that’s me. The new girl.”
“You’ll be staying with them a while?”
“Looks like.”
“So you’ll be going to school here, then.”
I hadn’t given it any thought, but of course he was right. The prospect didn’t thrill me. “I guess so.”
He nodded. “And how are you planning to get to school?”
“I don’t know. I guess…Is there a bus?”
“Ah! A bus!” He waved the idea away. “Why would you want to take a bus to school?”
“Well…”
“I’ll tell you something—Jane, is it?—the school bus here, it’s not very good.”
“No?”
“No. I would never let my daughter take the bus. We drive her to school. You could ride along with her, if you’d like.”
“I could?”
“Yes. In fact, I think that would be an excellent idea.”
It sounded like an OK idea to me, too, but there was obviously a catch. “Well,” I hedged, “of course I’d have to ask my aunt and uncle first…”
“Oh, I’m sure they won’t object. You just let me talk to them. Here!” He stood up, and dusted off the stool he’d been sitting on. “Here, sit down, relax! Would you like some ice cream?”
Later, Carlotta told me what was up. The previous spring, she’d been kicked off the school bus twice for fighting, and after the second time, the driver refused to let her back on without a written apology. But Se?or Diaz wouldn’t hear of it: “He wanted the bus driver fired, you know, for violating my civil rights? But the superintendent wouldn’t do that, so now my father wants to send me to a private school, only he wants the superintendent to pay for it. So we’ve got this lawsuit, but until we win, I’ve still got to go to the public school.” But not by bus. Instead, Carlotta’s mother would drive her to school in the morning, and her brother would pick her up at the end of the day. “Which is OK, except it means a lot of waiting, especially in the afternoon. Felipe can’t leave the gas station before somebody else takes over for him, and some days that’s not until five or six.”
“So you’ve just got to hang out at the school until then?”
“Well, I don’t have to—I could walk back, it’s only like two miles—but my father gets real mad if I do that. He says it’s too dangerous, especially now, with the death angel.”
“The who?”