“You’re not old enough, I don’t think,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Evian hopefully. “I need some money. So I can get my own phone and save up for things.”
“What sort of things?” I asked, happy to change the subject from labor laws to hopes and dreams.
“I don’t know,” said Evian, putting her floppy sneakers on the dashboard. “Like a house, you know?”
“A house!” I said. “I thought you meant clothes. Or, I don’t know, an Xbox.”
“I’m not into video games,” said Evian. “But Sam, he loves them. No, I want to get my own house. I’m going to move to California or New Zealand.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly, I wasn’t sure how to respond, other than nodding enthusiastically, Muppet-like. We were zooming along 360, the mall coming up on our right. I concentrated on the road, murmuring, “I’ve never been to New Zealand.”
“Me neither,” said Evian. “Or California. I’ve never been anywhere except Six Flags once in San Antonio.”
“How was it?” I said, merging into the right-hand lane.
Evian didn’t respond. I followed the turn to Barton Creek Mall, passed rows upon rows of parked cars baking in the sun, then finally found an empty slot. I shut off the engine and turned to Evian, which was when I noticed she was crying.
“Evian?” I said, putting my hand on her back. Sweltering air began to seep inside the Bronco.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she leaned toward me. She stopped crying, rubbed her eyes angrily. “My brother threw up on the Pandemonium,” she said. “I told my mom he was too little, but she took him on it anyway.”
“Evian …,” I repeated.
“You’re supposed to be forty-two inches to go on the Pandemonium,” said Evian, looking up at me. I nodded. “My brother was only forty inches. She shouldn’t have let him go,” she said. “It was too scary.”
I paused. Like lobsters in a pot, we began to grow red-faced from the heat, and I wondered whether I should turn the truck back on. Was this what being a parent felt like? Confused, tongue-tied, wishing you had the right words or were somewhere else entirely? My stomach hurt. “What’s the Pandemonium?” I said.
“It’s a ride,” she said, annoyance creeping into her tone. “At Six Flags, in San Antonio.”
My head spun. “I’ve never been to Six Flags,” I said.
“My brother’s name was Bruce,” said Evian. “Even though we’re black, my mom named him after Bruce Willis.”
I turned the car back on, and air wheezed from the vents.
“He’s dead,” said Evian. “That’s why you’re taking me to the mall, right?”
“Um,” I said.
“Principal Markson, she told you I killed my brother, right?” said Evian.
I opened my mouth, but did not speak.
“It’s okay,” said Evian. “But you can see why I need a job. In New Zealand, nobody knows about Bruce.”
“I can give you a job,” I said.
“Awesome,” said Evian. “But can we get going? Sam told me to meet him in front of Foot Locker at two. He’s nineteen, so he can’t just come and pick me up. He’d be arrested, you know?”
“Uh-huh,” I said noncommittally. Sitting in the mall parking lot, as the car began to cool and the sun beat down on the windshield like a terrible beast, I wrestled to find something to say to Evian. Clearly, I was in over my head.
15
Carla
NEEDLESS TO SAY, we did not leave right away for America. The following Wednesday, when my mother called, I asked her for more money. She did not say anything, and then, just when I thought the call had been dropped, she said, “Carla … I’m having a hard time.”
“What is it?” I asked. My throat felt as if I had swallowed coins.
“I don’t want to burden you,” she said.
“Mami, what?”
“It’s just … life is not perfect for me,” she said, her voice as threadbare as Junior’s only pair of pants. “I will do what I can,” she said, in reference to sending money.
I looked at the floor of the Call Shop. It was dirty, covered with a film of the reddish dirt that makes up the hills that enclose Tegu. High in the hills, I had heard, there were rows of stores and sparkling restaurants. Guards with guns stood in front of every beautiful house; unlike us, rich people did not need to rely on cement walls lined with broken glass bottles for protection.
“I will do what I can,” said my mother again.
“Maybe we …,” I said, hope a cook fire in my chest, “maybe we … should come to Austin, Texas!”
“No no, Carla,” she replied sharply. “No, little one. Stay still, and I will save enough for a coyote. It will take time, but I … I will do it. Children die on The Beast, Carla. Children die and worse.”
Worse? I stood at the Western Union for four hours before a white envelope of lempiras arrived. I went to our empty house and waited for my brother, who was sniffing yellow glue and likely passed out somewhere. I waited for morning so I could go to the dump to pick though trash. Worse? I might as well begin with the Resistol myself. But I knew, even then, that I was meant for great things. Anyway, for better things.
How did I know this? Nobody told me so, for sure. But Humberto loved me, and I knew my mother was working hard … all for me and Junior. This gave me a sense that I was valuable. I was not garbage, yet somehow my brother was too weak to understand. I had to get him away from this place. But how?
I had a boom box, but its batteries had gone dead long ago. Still, I could play songs in my head, as loud as if they were real. For some reason, the only tape we had was the music of a blind black man named Stevie Wonder. Who knew where this tape had come from? I lay on the pallet with my hands behind my head, and I played “Isn’t She Lovely?” to myself. Stevie Wonder had written this song about his baby daughter. I imagined I had a father who sang to me. I imagined I was an American girl, in a pink bedroom with a bed that had a canopy over it. My father came home from work like the fathers in the movies, carrying a square bag (a briefcase) and singing to me. All I had to do was be lovely, and I would be loved.
Enough of that sentimentality.
I sat up to find I was being watched by a boy I had never seen before. He had a shaved head and a thick black number tattooed on his face, one eye framed. If you know anything about the gangs, you will know what the number was, and you will know why I’m not going to write it down. When that journalist was shot through his eye, it sent a message to us all, and don’t think you are safe just because you are in America! This gang had just begun to come to Tegucigalpa at this time. A boy my age with the tattoo was something I had never seen before. I had heard of the gang, though—whispers around the dump.