Delia's Heart (4 page)

She wouldn’t be caught dead going to the party? I guessed she’d hired a hearse to bring her to it, I thought, and laughed to myself. It felt like I had won a small victory and any victory, no matter how small, was an achievement in this house.

But I should have remembered what she and her girlfriends were so fond of saying all the time.

“He who laughs last laughs best.”

“B
onjour, Delia. Comment allez-vous
?” Christian Taylor asked me as we were entering French class.

This was the one class that Sophia and I did not share at the private school.

Considering her opinion of Mexicans, I found it ironic, even amusing, that Sophia had chosen Spanish class over French class, something most of the students at the school actually had done. There were only eight students in our French class, but because this was a private school, the class could still be conducted.

Of course, the students who chose Spanish, thinking it was far easier, claimed they chose it because it was more practical to learn Spanish in our community, with so many Latinos working and owning businesses here. There weren’t only people from Mexico. There were people from Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Costa Rica, as well as some other Central American countries.

“
Je suis très bien, et vous
?” I replied.

“
Bien,
” he said, and then looked worried that I would continue speaking only in French. I could see it clearly in his face, a face I would be the last to deny was quite handsome, with his luminous blue eyes highlighting his classic Romanesque nose, high cheekbones, and strong-looking firm lips. He had rich light brown hair gently swept behind his ears and halfway down his neck. Six feet tall, with a lean swimmer’s physique, he was the school’s track star and thought to be a shoo-in for a sports scholarship at some prestigious college. Most of the girls in our class and the class below swooned over him, and the problem I saw was that he knew it far too well. He had an arrogant strut, and when he walked through the hallways, he wore a self-satisfied smile that, in truth, put me off despite his drop-dead gorgeous looks. I thought that conceited smile was just another mask.

Ironically, avoiding him seemed to be just the right thing to do to win his attention. Either it bothered him very much that I wasn’t doting on him as were most of the other girls, or he was genuinely intrigued and interested in me for being so indifferent to him. Whatever the case, I was not going to become another one of his conquests, nor would I forget Ignacio to be with him. In fact, just thinking about Christian made me feel guilty.

He tried to ask in French if I were going to Danielle’s party but gave up after “
Etes vous
” and added, “going to Danielle Johnson’s birthday bash?”

“
Mais oui
,” I said, and then hurried to my seat.

Monsieur Denning, our teacher, had entered. He was very serious about the class, annoyed if we wasted
a second of our time. We were at the point where he wanted us all to try to say anything in class in French and would make a student look up the words and attempt the correct pronunciation, no matter how long that took.

I glanced at Christian, who was sitting two rows over, and saw him smiling at me warmly. I also saw how some of the other girls in the class were looking at me with shadows of envy darkening their faces, but I did not smile back at him.

Just before I had celebrated my
quinceañera
, my fifteenth birthday, in Mexico, a birthday that was very significant for us, a time when we were moving from being a girl to a woman, my mother passed on some of her advice about men.

“You must be careful about the messages you telegraph to them, Delia.”

“Messages?”

“In your eyes, in your smile. The secrets in your heart can be revealed very quickly. Be careful,” she said, and then told me a saying her mother had. “
Mujer que no tiene tacha chapalea el agua no se moja
.” It meant, a woman who’s innocent can splash around in the water and not get wet.

“Be careful where you splash,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes.

So, although I felt a smile trying to come out to answer Christian Taylor’s smile, I recalled my mother’s advice and looked away quickly. I concentrated on my French to avoid thinking about him, and not once during the remainder of the class did I look his way.

However, now I really was caught in a paradox. Seemingly, no matter what I did, Christian saw it as
encouraging. It continued. The more I ignored him, the more he pursued. Perhaps it had become a matter of pride for him. After all, what other girl in this school would turn down his attention?

Tía Isabela wasn’t wrong about the friends I had made and the friends Sophia already had. At lunchtime, we sat far apart from each other in the cafeteria. Otherwise, it would truly be like trying to mix oil and water. I had quickly learned that in one way or another over the years, Sophia had alienated, insulted, or somehow embarrassed most of the girls I found as friends. They were all somewhat suspicious of me in the beginning, because Sophia was my cousin, and I lived in her
hacienda
, but eventually it was easy for them to see how different we were. Also, the fact that Sophia was so obvious about her dislike and jealousy of me pleased them.

Sophia did little to help me adjust when I first entered the private school. I didn’t know it at the time, but that turned out to be a blessing. When Edward and Jesse arranged for me to return from Mexico, he and my aunt, with Sophia sitting in and sulking, discussed why I should now attend the private school. They were worried about my continuous exposure to other Mexican teenagers at the public school who knew about Ignacio and his friends and my involvement with them. Edward thought some would blame me, and in the end, it would only bring more trouble to the family. My aunt, to my surprise, agreed quickly and was willing to spend the thousands of dollars for my private-school tuition. Of course, Sophia was not happy about it.

The private school had a far better language tutor
than Mr. Baker could ever have been, and with my previous experience in the public school’s ESL class, I made very quick progress. There were a few other Mexican students, one being the daughter of a family who owned a chain of Mexican restaurants. I didn’t immediately make friends with her. I could sense she was being snobby. She spoke fluent Spanish but usually avoided it. I thought she had begun to see me as some sort of competition. Her name was Estefani, but she insisted on being called just Fani. She was tall, nearly five-eleven, with a runway model’s figure. Her father was from a wealthy Mexican family in Houston, Texas, and her family was very close to the family of the most influential Indian families in the desert.

The Indians here owned a great deal of land and made money on the land leases. They also ran casinos and were very wealthy. All of the politicians courted their favor, so Fani was at grand events and parties and often had her picture in the local paper and magazines. The friendliest thing she said to me that first year was, “Maybe I can get you a job as a waitress at our Palm Desert restaurant. We’re always looking for authentic Mexicans.”

“What’s an authentic Mexican?” I asked. She just smiled. I knew what she meant was someone not as fluent in English and dirt poor.

I avoided her, which pleased Sophia, because Fani’s friendship was something most of the girls craved, even Sophia. With Fani, Sophia could admit to her mother being Mexican without feeling inferior.

“We’re alike,” she would tell Fani. “We come from aristocratic Mexican family lines.”

Sophia concocted some fantastic tale about her
mother’s family being descendants of wealthy Mexican businessmen and politicians. I was the only poor relative they had.

If the girls she told these things to could see where my aunt really had lived, the house she had lived in, they would probably laugh in Sophia’s face, but because no one knew the truth about Tía Isabela, Sophia could make up anything she liked. As long as I didn’t contradict her, of course.

That first year, she was quick to lay down that rule. She did it as we walked into the building, seizing my wrist and tugging me back.

“Don’t you dare tell these girls how poor my mother’s family was. Whatever I say, you just nod, and if you’re not sure, you don’t say anything, understand? I’m warning you,” she threatened. “I don’t like you being here, and I don’t want you to embarrass me.”

I pulled my wrist out of her grip, but said nothing.

Those early days were very difficult for me, and on more than one occasion, I considered quitting, but gradually, I made more friends and became more and more comfortable, especially with my teachers. Before the first year ended, I was on the honor roll and cited at a school function as the transfer student who had made the most improvement of anyone with language disadvantages. They meant in the history of the school, too. My aunt accepted the congratulations as if it had all been her idea. Sophia was burning up with so much jealousy one of my friends, Parker Morgan, suggested we spray her with one of the school’s fire extinguishers.

On this particular day, Parker, Katelynn Nickles, Colleen McDermott, and I had just begun eating our
lunch and talking excitedly about Danielle Johnson’s party, when Christian approached with his tray of food and asked if he could sit with us. Since he had not shown interest in any of the other three, they all looked at me as if it was to be my decision. Whether I liked it or not, I had to be the one to say yes or no.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Only you will be bored. We were just talking about dresses and shoes.”

“Oh, I’m very interested in dresses and shoes,” he said, slipping into the seat beside me. “I’m something of an expert on them. Just ask me anything.”

He smiled at me and started to eat.

“Oh? What do you think of kimono-sleeve dresses?” I asked, looking at the other girls.

He pretended to give it serious thought, which only titillated the other three.

“Well…if I were a girl,” he said, “I’d worry about the elbows. Most girls don’t know it,” he continued, leaning in as if he were going to impart a great secret, “but boys get turned on by elbows.”

Everyone laughed. I couldn’t help being amused, either. He turned those devastatingly beautiful eyes on me. I felt like someone trying to climb out of a grease pit. The more effort I made to ignore and avoid him, the more I went in the opposite direction.

“Anything you wear is going to look good on you, Delia. Don’t worry about it.”

I saw how my girlfriends’ eyes widened with surprise and jealousy. They exchanged quick glances. I blushed and ate my sandwich. Across the cafeteria, Sophia stared with a look of absolute amazement on her face. She whispered something to Alisha, and then all of them turned our way.

Edward hadn’t been wrong about why I should attend the private school instead of public school when I had returned from running away. Although the students here knew what had happened to Bradley and what had happened to Edward, of course, they didn’t know much about my involvement and certainly nothing about my flight through the desert with Ignacio. One of the conditions my aunt had set down for my attending the private school was that I was never, ever to talk about the events with anyone at the school.

Of course, Sophia was warned as well, but her friends knew it all, and keeping them silent about it was not as easy. Up until now, Sophia had managed to keep them in tow, but I was always worried that one day, someone like Fani or Fani herself would step up beside me in the hallway and say, “So, I just heard you were raped, and that was what started all the trouble.”

It wasn’t any different here from anywhere else. The victim never stopped being a victim and never lost the stain on her image. That was another irony I didn’t understand. Boys would easily go out with girls who were loose with their own bodies but would hesitate about going out with a girl who was raped. I had seen that in Mexico and knew the same was true here.

Wasn’t it enough that I carried the dark memory forever? Why did they have to add to the tragedy?

When the bell rang to go back to our classes, Christian walked with me.

“Any chance you might want to go to a movie with me this weekend?” he asked before we entered our social studies class.

He wasn’t the first boy to ask me out on a date. Most of the time, I said something that discouraged
them. I did go to a movie with a boy who was a senior last year, Stevie Towers. It turned out to do me good, because he came away from the date believing I was too proper and religious to be any fun and spread the word. Few boys bothered to ask me out after that, which pleased Sophia. She did not know why it pleased me, but she thought she was annoying me whenever she flaunted her dates. She even went on a date with Stevie Towers herself and then spent the whole next day telling me how much fun they had. When he didn’t ask her out again, I asked her why, and she told me she had decided he was too immature.

“But I thought you said it was fun to be with him,” I reminded her.

“Only as a distraction,” she quipped. “I would never go steady. I can’t imagine anything as boring as being with the same boy every weekend.”

“How do you expect to get married, then?” I asked her.

“I don’t,” she said. “Well, maybe when I’m tired of playing the field and just want someone to take care of me, someone who worships me.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It might be a long time before you get married.”

She didn’t understand what I meant, that no one would ever worship her. She just nodded as if I had agreed with her philosophy of love.

Although I should have anticipated it, Christian’s invitation threw me. I couldn’t think of a good excuse not to go out. Edward and Jesse weren’t coming, and there was no other event taking place to compete with a date.

“What movie?” I asked, to delay my response, hoping I could think of something.

“Whatever you like,” he said. “I’m not just going to a movie. I’m going to a movie with you,” he added.

The late bell was going to ring any moment. Other students walked by, every girl and even some of the boys looking at us with interest.

“Can I tell you tomorrow?” I asked.

“How about tonight? I’ll call you,” he pursued.

“Okay.” I started into the classroom, and he grabbed my arm.

Laughing, he asked for my telephone number. I smiled and gave it to him.