“Sure I do,” she said.
He leaned over and buckled the seat belt across her lap, tugging the loose end until it was snug. Then he lay hard on the gas and the wheels spun a few rounds before gripping a dry patch and sending them lurching forward, ripping up a circle in the soggy pasture, bits of turf flying by and landing in their wake. She squealed, rode that truck like a roller coaster, arms stretched out the window, letting the sudden shifts in speed and direction tug her body where they would.
He brought the truck to a stop and turned to Charlie. They were breathless and mottled with mud splatter, eyes bright. “No,” she said, giggling. “I mean the doughnuts you can eat.”
“Ohhh,” he said, smacking his forehead with his palm. “I knew that.”
They drove twenty miles west to the Do-Nut Hole off the interstate, sandwiched between a Western Union and an aerobics studio in a drab strip mall. The light in the window was blinking, which meant they were frying up a fresh batch.
“Follow my lead and keep cool,” Manny instructed. He glided up to the counter and got the cashier’s attention. “I’ll have a baker’s dozen, half glazed, half jelly, half chocolate.” Charlie, beset by sudden shyness, reached up toward his ear and whispered, “Sprinkles.”
“Half sprinkles.”
The cashier bit her lip. “So . . . three of each.”
“She’s smart, ain’t she, Charlie?”
The cashier arranged the doughnuts in rows, taking her time. She returned with the box and rang them up.
“’L be four dollars, please,” she said, her gaze blatantly fixed on the swath of chest that showed at the collar of his shirt.
“That’s a steal,” Manny said. He reached in his pocket, then put his hands back on the counter. “You know what? One more box just like it, please and thank you.” When the cashier turned around, so did Manny, carrying the box of doughnuts, and he cruised right out without paying. Charlie followed him and played it cool. By the time the woman turned around they were back in the truck.
They parked under a billboard on the way back to Pecan Hollow and ate, the box between them. The air hung heavy and damp except when a passing car sent an occasional breeze their way.
“That was crazy,” Charlie said halfway through a sprinkles doughnut. She wanted to ask him why he kept stealing these little things they could easily have paid for, but she didn’t want to offend him. “Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”
Manny looked at her, amused. “What? You never slipped a pack of gum in your pocket? Never took a dollar out of your mama’s wallet?”
She smiled behind her hair. “No, I mean, you know how you were saying to my mom that you weren’t trying to go back to prison?”
“Ah,” he said, mid-chew, nodding. “Look, I’m not trying to hide it, I was in prison all that time. Since before you were born probably.”
Charlie’s eyes popped open. “No shit?” she said, thinking his crimes might have been more serious than walking out with a box of doughnuts. “What for?”
Manny chuckled. “Armed robbery.”
“Wow . . .” Charlie said, uneasy. “Well, shouldn’t you be a little more careful?” She held the remains of her doughnut.
“Nah,” he said. “I do the small stuff because it doesn’t matter. Who’s gonna bust me for a Coke?” He stuffed half a plain glazed into his mouth. He chewed for a bit and swallowed. “I just want you to know, I would have been here for you if I could.”
As Charlie took this in, she studied his features. His skin, lashes, hair were each a different shade of brown, like hers. But his eyes were blue like there was sky behind them, and she liked the way the creases at his eyes stretched down to his jaw, even when he wasn’t smiling. She looked at her large hands, with their long tapered fingers, and saw they were his.
She imagined herself with eyes like his and wondered if the world looked different through them. She had certainly noticed being treated differently than her light-eyed, fair-haired classmates. People used slurs in that stupid way that was supposed to be friendly, as if to prove how not a big deal it was to call you that. There were a few openly hateful people in town, but most everyone was that kind of rude that made it hard to pinpoint. The way her teachers expected less of her, and yet she never could seem to please them, no matter how hard she tried. The way she would find out about parties a week after they happened, that her invitation had “gotten lost in the mail.” Sadly, she had no group to identify with when the slurs came. She imagined if she had actually been Mexican (or known who the hell she was), these names might hurt a lot more, but she would have the solidarity of a culture behind her, too. When he caught her looking she turned away.
“So, like, are we Mexican, or . . . what are we?” she asked.
“Ah,” he said as he finished off a jellied and sucked the goo from his fingers. “I can’t speak for your mama; she’s some kind of orphan mongrel, but being from Texas, she’s bound to have some Mexican somewhere.” He licked his lips and wiped them sort of primly with a hankie. “But me and you, we’re Cuban.”
She tried to remember what she knew about Cuba from social studies class: Cuban missile crisis, Cuban cigars, Fidel Castro. But they were vague impressions that had no personal impact, just two-dimensional images culled from what little information had made its way to her in Pecan Hollow. Black beans and plantains, salsa dancing, rusty cars from the fifties. She felt ashamed of her small life.
“Is that where you’re from?”
“No, no. I don’t even speak much Spanish to tell you the truth. I grew up in Florida. My father—your grandfather—came over and wanted us to fit in, so they spoke English at home. He wanted so badly to be American he kind of scribbled over the Cuban parts of him and pretended they weren’t there.”
Charlie noticed there was something canned about the way he spoke, as if he’d said these things in just this way a dozen times before, but she brushed it aside. When he described her grandparents, it didn’t seem real. She thought of the photos on her wall at home, the ancient people she never knew. At least she had stories of Eleanor.
“Do you have any pictures of them?” she asked Manny. He seemed taken aback.
“Why would I have something like that on me?” he said. This time she detected not smoke screen but an unpleasant truth. Again, she tucked it aside.
“So what was she like?” she said, changing the subject.
He jerked his head back a little, squinted at her. “My mother?”
“No,” she said. “Mine.”