Bulletproof Vest (10 page)

There are four blasts in the distance, and four rings of fire burst against the dark sky behind the bleachers, lighting up the faces in the stands. I almost expect to see my father sitting among them and shooting his gun into the air. The two girls on either side of me take a step forward, and leap into the air. I lose my balance, but manage to stop myself before hitting the ground. The fireworks keep going off, one after another, like gunshots—what a relief that he was gone, and gone for good.

The other girls go running off the field and I follow them, my gaze already fixed on the exit, as I take two steps to the left, then three fast ones to the right. It feels like the ground itself is shifting under my feet. I go past the line at the concession stand, catching a whiff of popcorn, and then I'm going through the opening in the chain-link fence. Once I'm on the sidewalk, I scan the cars across the street, spot Lisa, and make my way toward her.

“Maria.” I hear a man's voice and my stomach plummets, because even before I turn around, I already know who it is. “Have you been drinking?” Mr. Johnson, the principal, is walking toward me.

“Nope,” I say, struggling to stand up straight.

“You're not driving, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Who's driving you home?”

“Lisa,” I say.

“Has she been drinking?”

“Nope,” I say, and he lets me go.

On Monday morning during announcements, after the football team is praised for their victory on Friday night and Julie Baldwin is congratulated for qualifying for state in cross country, there is a list of students who get called down to the office, and I'm one of them.

“Does your mother know that you drink?” Mr. Johnson asks, when I take a seat in his office.

“I don't,” I say. Though I've been to bonfires and parties where other students are drinking, and I'll have a beer here and there, I've never been drunk. “That was my first time,” I say, and I know by the way he's looking at me that he's thinking, sure, that's what they all say.

He explains that I'm not being kicked off the drill team, but I am being suspended from school for two weeks.

“Two weeks?” I say, suddenly feeling scared. “But I'll fall behind in my classes.”

“You should have thought of that before,” he says, glancing out his window. “I'll tell you what,” he says and leans forward. “If you enroll in a rehab program and can bring me proof of it, I'll allow you to return to school after one week.”

“Rehab?” I say, feeling like the filth of the earth. “I don't need to go to rehab.”

“It's up to you,” he says. “Two weeks, or one plus rehab.”

I agree to go to rehab. He tells me to have my mother call him after I've spoken with her. When I leave his office, I'm already plotting, devising a plan for how I'm going to deal with this. There's no way I'm telling my mother—she doesn't know I was ever a cheerleader, or that on Friday nights, when she thinks I'm at work, I'm out there prancing around in a polyester miniskirt for all those eyes to see. I had ended up applying at Kmart, and the best thing about having a part-time job, aside from having my own spending money, is that it provides me with an alibi. I decide that I'll tell Sonia everything and have her call Mr. Johnson.

The following day, I get ready for school and leave the house at the same time I always do, but instead of driving to school, I drive the brown Chevy Nova, which Salvador gave me when he moved to Pennsylvania, to the local library. The lot is empty and I pull up next to a green Dumpster. Inside, I find a quiet spot on the second floor, in a cubicle that's next to a window. Within two days, I've already finished the reading and writing assignments for the week, and most of the extra credit. On the third day, I drive to the next town over, about thirty minutes away, to meet with a counselor. She gives me a form and a questionnaire to fill out.

Why do you drink?

How often do you drink?

Do you ever drink alone?

How many beers does it take to get you drunk?

Do you drink when you feel sad?

Is there a history of alcoholism in your family?

I fill out the form and answer all of the questions as honestly as possible. The counselor concludes that rehab would be a waste of my time, and says she'll give Mr. Johnson a call.

When I get home, later that day, my mother and Mary are sitting on the couch in the living room, waiting for me.

“How was school today?” Mary asks when I come through the front door, and I know that they know, because no one ever asks me about school.

“Fine,” I say, wondering how much they actually know. Do they only know about the drinking and the suspension, or do they also know about the box I keep stashed under my bed, the one with my pom-poms, sweater, and polyester miniskirt.

“Where have you been all day?” my mother asks.

“At the library,” I say.

“Cómo no,” she says. “The studious young lady has been at the library all day.” She looks at me as if she wants to slap me, but I know she won't because she has never laid a hand on me.

“Your school's principal called today,” Mary says. “And he said that you were so drunk at the football game on Friday night, that you could barely stand up straight.”

“What a liar,” I say. “I only had one beer, and the only reason he knew I had been drinking is because he smelled my breath.”

“You're the liar,” my mother says, glaring at me. And I want to say, you're right. I am a liar. I'm a liar because you have made me one. I had tried being honest, had tried asking for permission to go to a movie or the mall with my friends on Friday evenings, but I hadn't even finished asking the question, when she was already shaking her head and saying, “No, no, señorita, no. A young lady has no business outside of her home after dark.” There was no reasoning with her. I knew that if I was going to have any sort of social life, lying was the only way. I gave up asking for permission, decided I would do what I wanted when I wanted and deal with the consequences. “This is great,” she says. “This is all we needed. For your father to leave so that you could pick up where he left off.”

“If you think you're going to live here and do whatever you want, then you can start paying for food and rent,” Mary says.

“Fine,” I say, waiting for my mother to deliver her verdict.

“In Mexico, only whores drink,” she says, refusing to even look at me.

*   *   *

Spring semester is well under way and I'm sitting at the head of the dining room table where, on school nights, I'm a permanent fixture. Though I don't have Ms. Flint for any classes, we meet after school twice a week and are making our way through the ACT prep book, one subject at a time. One week it's mock essay questions, another it's word problems. Easy to solve the word problems, simply memorize the formula and plug in the numbers: If a train leaves the station at 10:00 a.m., and is traveling at a speed of eighty miles per hour, and its destination is two thousand miles away, at what time will it reach its final destination? Speed equals distance divided by time.

I'm plugging in the numbers when I hear the music. My pen stops moving and I strain to listen a little harder. I can't tell exactly where the music is coming from, but the sound of the drums and horns is unmistakable—it's my father's music. I sit still, listening to the music as it draws near, until out of the corner of my eye I see the sheen of a black car gliding under the streetlight like an enormous fish. Its headlights are off, its tinted windows are rolled down a bit, and the music is blaring from it. Though I can't see who is behind the steering wheel, I realize that whoever it is has a clear shot of me, sitting under the light of the chandelier.

I jump up, hit the light switch, and run through the living room and down the corridor that leads to the bedrooms. Yesenia and Jorge are already in my mother's bedroom, sitting in the dark and watching as the car drives to the end of the block and stops at the intersection. It sits there for a very long time before turning left and making its way around the back of the house.

“Do you think it's Joaquín's brothers?” I ask.

“It's probably your father,” my mother says.

“What should we do?” Yesenia asks.

“Are all the doors locked?” my mother asks.

Jorge and I run through the house checking the back door, the front door, the garage door, and the door that leads from the basement into our kitchen. Soon we're back in my mother's bedroom, listening as yet again the music comes thundering down the street. The car comes to a full stop at the end of the block and sits there with the music blasting for what seems like an eternity.

“Should we call the police?” I ask.

“What for?” my mother says. “What are the police going to do?” The car turns left and goes around the block a few more times before leaving.

If a southbound train pulls out of the station in the dark and is traveling at an unstoppable speed, at which point will there be a collision?

 

6

RUNAWAY TRAIN

 

 

HE MISJUDGES HIS SPEED
, and when he hits the only curve that sits between town and La Peña, the wheels of his truck catch the gravel and it begins to roll. Within minutes, the whole town is abuzz with the latest gossip—Jose just flipped his truck at the curve. When Manuel arrives in town he hears the news and turns his truck around, thinking that perhaps he can lend his brother-in-law a hand.

He has not seen Jose since the last time Pascuala was in town, several months ago. It was a few days before she was to leave, to return to the other side, and Manuel and Pascuala were at their mother's house, sitting around the kitchen table when there was a knock at the front door. And then Jose was standing in the kitchen's doorway, saying that he wanted to have a word with his wife. By then, the whole town already knew that he had taken up with a younger woman; they had been seen strolling through the plaza and the mercado, arm in arm, like a couple of honeymooners. Manuel didn't like to meddle in the business of others, so when he saw Jose in the doorway, he pushed away from the table and stepped out of the kitchen, telling his mother that she should do the same, that whatever problems existed between Jose and Pascuala needed to stay between Jose and Pascuala.

As far as Manuel was concerned, he didn't have any issues with Jose. In fact, ever since he and Jose had become in-laws, they had always gotten along, had always lent each other a hand. When Jose and Pascuala had needed someone to take their six kids across the border, they had asked Manuel if he would do them the favor. Though Manuel had no desire to go to the other side, he had agreed to do it. On the day of the trip a storm was raging; the muddy water ran a foot deep through the streets and no one thought the bus was going to be able to leave, but it did.

Manuel had taken the two seats at the back of the bus with the six kids, and by the time it was winding around the curves of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, the youngest of the six, the four-year-old, had started complaining that she had a stomachache, and before Manuel could find a plastic bag for her, she had gotten sick and had set off a chain reaction. The bus had to pull over in the next town, and the driver made Manuel pay for the cleanup. While the bus was hosed down, Manuel purchased a sack of oranges from a nearby fruit stand, thinking the sweet citrus might be soothing for the kids. But once they were all back on the bus, he realized he had made a mistake—what he had thought was a sack of oranges turned out to be a sack of grapefruit.

Though Manuel had not planned on staying in the United States, once he made it across, Jose talked him into it, telling him that in Chicago there was so much work, they couldn't find enough men to cover all the jobs. That he could easily find work in a factory, a farm, or a restaurant, and since he had already made it across, he might as well stay and work, save up a bit of money, make the trip worthwhile. Manuel agreed to stay, and on the night after they arrived to Chicago, there was a knock at the door. It was immigration. Someone had tipped them off, saying that a truckload of Mexican men had just arrived at that house. The agents took Manuel and Jose away, held them overnight, and on the following day, they gave each a work permit and let them go. For six months they had lived under the same roof, eaten at the same table, shared the occasional cold beer on the weekends, and never once had they had an argument or even a disagreement.

Even before Manuel reaches the curve, he can see the crowd that has gathered around the truck, which is lying on its back like a giant beetle that rolled onto its shell and was unable to right itself. Manuel pulls over, and as he makes his way toward the crowd of men that are hollering over the truck and trying to pry its doors open, just above the voices of the men, on a much higher register, he hears the unmistakable whimpering, which can only be that of a woman. He thinks nothing of it, until he is squatting down and looking through the cracked windshield. Jose still has one hand on the steering wheel, his hat is lying upside down on the hood next to him, and sprawled under and around the hat are the blond-orange dyed locks of the concubine. She stares back at Manuel, wild-eyed and sobbing; a streak of blood running from her nose cuts across her forehead and disappears into her dark roots. Manuel takes one look at her, glances back at Jose, and pushes himself to his feet. To help Jose was one thing, but to help him and his concubine, well, he'd be damned. He walks away, his cowboy boots traversing the same ground he's just covered, as if by doing so he could erase his footprints, make it as though he had never been there.

Ever since that day, Jose's focus starts shifting. It's like all the fury that had been barreling toward his wife like an unstoppable train had jumped the tracks and was now speeding toward a new destination. Almost immediately after the crash, everyone starts warning Manuel, even his own mother.