ON SUNDAY MORNING I was really in the mood to eat tamales. Dad said it was a bad idea. “I’m hungry,” I said. “Enough with the turkey soup. No bueno.”
He shook his head. “No bueno, no bueno. Where do you get that? Have some leftover turkey and mashed potatoes.”
No tamales for me. Crap.
Sam sat across from me at Mima’s kitchen table—?two warm tamales on her plate. I just looked at her and said, “Sam, sometimes you’re not a very nice person.”
“I’m not the one who’s sick.”
“Perverse. You’re perverse.”
“I like it when you exhibit your erudite vocabulary.”
“I’m going to walk to the other room.”
“You’re pouting.”
“Yup.”
Mima was too tired to go to Mass. Nobody had to tell me that was a bad sign.
Mima
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON Mima was sitting at the table, looking around her kitchen. I sat down across from her. “It was a beautiful Thanksgiving,” she said.
I nodded. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. Then I just blurted out, “I’ve been getting into a lot of fights lately.”
She nodded. “I understand,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“Sometimes that happens to boys.”
“I don’t mean to. I mean, I don’t know. Something is mad inside me.”
She nodded again. “You’re a good boy.”
“I’m not, Mima.”
She smiled at me. “Listen to your Mima,” she whispered. “When you start to become a man, things start happening inside you. Maybe you think you need to be perfect. If you think of that word, don’t listen to it.”
She got up from the table and put her arms around me.
“I’m sad.”
“You won’t always be sad,” she said. She kissed me on the forehead. Then she let me go.
Leftovers. Lectures.
“AT LEAST WE’RE taking home a stash of tamales and leftovers,” I said. I was sitting in the back seat with Fito. Sam was riding shotgun. “Hey, I didn’t get any pie!”
That made Sam, Dad, and Fito laugh. I have no idea why they found that funny. Hilarious. Yeah.
“I’ll make you a pumpkin pie this week,” Dad said.
“I’m not going to share.”
“You’re a funny guy sometimes, you know that, Salvador?”
“Yup.”
“You guys want a real tree this year?”
“No. I like the fake one,” I said.
“I like real,” Sam said.
“Okay,” I said. “Then you get to water it every day, put ice cubes in the tree stand every evening, and sweep up the needles every morning.”
“Ahh,” she said. “So the Grinch in you comes out.”
“I’m just saying, Sam.”
“And have you finished your essays?” Dad wasn’t laying off on the college apps. He’d been leaving Post-it notes on our doors for two weeks.
“I’m turning it in on Tuesday. Then it’s all done.” Sam was proud of herself.
“I have a sort of draft,” I said.
“No bueno,” Dad said. “Finish it off. December first.”
“That’s only a few days away.”
“Yup.”
“I hate that essay thing,” I said.
“December first.”
“I like you a lot better when you don’t lecture, Dad. I mean, not that you do a lot of that. But right now you’re all schoolteacher about this.”
I could tell Dad had this snarky look on his face. “December first,” he repeated.
Sam texted me: I’ll help u
I texted back: My essay. I’ll do it
Sam: ?
I looked over at Fito. Maggie had her head on Fito’s lap, and he was asleep.
I texted Sam: Take a picture. U have better view
She turned around, smiled, and took a couple of pics. She texted them to me: Sweet
Me: Sweet, sweet, sweet
Then Dad said, “Why do you two text when you’re sitting a foot away from each other?”
“We’re discussing my essay,” I said.
“Sure you are. Don’t fib to your father.”
By Me
DAD SAID I should take a day to get my strength back. He didn’t want any relapses. By now Sam and Fito were on their way to school, and I felt a little left out. Before Sam left, I was lying in bed, and she texted me: Wftd = lethargy.
Me: Yup. Emotional lethargy
Sam: Idiot. There isn’t any other kind
Me: Leave me alone
Sam: WRITE UR ESSAY
Maggie was lying right beside me. I kissed her, and she started licking my face. Then she yawned and nudged herself against me.
I fell back asleep.
I woke up around noon, still groggy, walked into the kitchen, and grabbed some orange juice. Dad was teaching all afternoon, and he’d left a note: “Salvie, be patient with yourself.” I thought, Does that mean I should take a long, hot shower? Hmm. That’s what I did.
Then I sat in front of my laptop at the kitchen table. Kitchens reminded me of my Mima. Okay, I’m going to write my essay. That’s what I told myself.
I was trying to focus, but my mind was wandering. I felt like a piece of paper in the wind being blown this way and that way and wanting only to land on the ground, but the wind had other ideas.
I thought of Mima. When we were leaving her house, even though she looked more frail and weak than she’d ever looked before, she came outside to see us off. She’d always done that. Aunt Evie had to help her. I hugged her, and she looked at me and smiled. “Just remember,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to remember.
Then she pointed at my father, who was putting something in the car. “Him,” she said. Then she nodded.
Mima. No despair. She was dying, and there was not one sign of despair in her dancing eyes.
There I was, the piece of paper being blown in the air, trying to hit the damned ground.
I have to do this.
Fito had said he was glad he didn’t have to write an essay. “All I have to do is make good grades here at UTEP and then transfer to UT. No essays for me. And anyway, what the hell would I say? My father was a good guy who had to leave because my mom is a drug addict who likes to yell and my brothers took after her. I guess I could tell them that I spent about a year waiting for my old man to come back and get me, but then I said, Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. That about sums up my life.” That Fito. Dad said he was a walking miracle. See, it was so much easier for me to be thinking about everything besides my essay.
Sam had given me the opening lines toher essay, which she was putting the final touches on: “My mother used to leave me messages written in lipstick. She’d write them on my bathroom mirror, and when I was a girl, I would study each letter of every word.” I mean, she was already accepted.