Bulletproof Vest (5 page)

It was a cold October day when we arrived in the Chicago suburbs. The sky hovered low and gray over the two-story brick house, which sat on a small hill and was surrounded by tall evergreens. My mother was not there when we arrived. She was at the hotel where she worked cleaning rooms. Eventually she came home, though I have no memory of that reunion. I had been two years old when they left, was four years old when we were reunited, and went straight into kindergarten.

“So, have you learned English yet?” my uncle asked me a month later, while we were all sitting around the kitchen table. I nodded. “Let's see,” he said, looking around, eyeing my father at the head of the table. “How do you say papá in English?” I looked at my father and everyone fell silent. I stared at his beard, at his fingers wrapped around his fork, as if the word might suddenly appear. “Well?” my uncle said. They were all waiting, and my eyes finally came to rest on my father's white T-shirt, on his gut. It was round and hard and pressing against the edge of the table like a balloon.

“Pues, el inflado,” I said, and everyone burst into laughter, including my father.

“The inflated one?” my uncle roared, and told me that I best start paying attention in class. I don't remember learning English. It was like I had fallen asleep dreaming in one language, and had awoken speaking in another.

By the time I was in first grade, it was clear that I was having trouble focusing in class. Whenever I didn't understand something, I blurred my vision until I could almost see the empty playground beyond the cinder-block walls, and I imagined myself on one of the swings, the wind in my hair as I gained momentum, until the chains were jerking in my hands. I could practically smell the rust coming off them while the tips of my sneakers almost touched the blue sky above.

“Maria, what is two plus two?” The teacher was pointing at the numbers on the board, and I imagined that if I were to let go of the chains, I'd go soaring over the distant treetops and vanish. “Maria!” She was then leaning over my desk, the scent of coffee emanating from her. “What is two plus two?” I was aware of how the other kids were all looking at me, and though I could hear her, I was unable to utter a single word. I felt so overwhelmed that I shut down, had gone, momentarily, mute.

“When was the last time you had your ears checked?” she asked. A few giggles erupted in the classroom, and I stared at my shoelaces and shrugged. She sent me to the nurse's office with a note. The nurse sent me home with a different note. One of my sisters translated it for my parents. The note stated that I might be hard of hearing and that they should take me to see a doctor as soon as possible.

That Saturday morning, after dropping my sisters off at the Laundromat with what seemed like sixty loads of laundry, my parents took me to a doctor. I sat on a blue leather cot, feet dangling, while they stood in the doorway watching as the doctor inserted a cold metal funnel in my ears, and then placed a large dry Popsicle stick on my tongue and told me to say “ah.” He shone a light onto the back of my throat, as if the problem with my ears might be somewhere on the inside. My ears were fine, he concluded, but maybe the muscles behind my eardrums needed to be strengthened, and the best way to do that, according to him, was by chewing gum.

On Monday morning I returned to school with my doctor's note and a full week's supply of Wrigley's, Hubba Bubba, and Juicy Fruit. Whenever the teacher made other kids spit their gum out, they always pointed at me.

“She's chewing gum too,” they complained.

“She has a medical condition,” the teacher always replied.

Medical condition or not, I ended up being held back in the first grade, and years later I found out that chewing gum is often prescribed to kids with attention deficit disorder. Though it would be longer still before I learned exactly where my deficit stemmed from.

We lived in that house on Shady Lane for nearly three years before it started slanting to one side and was condemned to be demolished. We were given a month's notice to move out, and since then, we had continued to move. Every three to four years, it seemed, we were packing. This being the fourth and, hopefully, last time we'd be moving. We drive over the railroad tracks and turn right onto Route 145, where the speed limit is higher and the road stretches long and smooth for miles. Rolling fields give way to apple orchards until, finally, in the distance, the outdoor movie theater comes into view, like a beacon.

It sits at a four-way intersection on the outskirts of town, and is the highest structure for miles around. After clearing the intersection, we drive past the marina and across the one-lane bridge that stretches over the Somerset River and leads right into the heart of town. We make our way down Main Street, go past Mancini Brother's Pizza, the Custard Ice Cream Shack, O'Brien's Bar and Grill, Aunt Tillie's Pancake House, and the Somerset Savings Bank before turning left at a Catholic church on the corner of Berry—our new street.

It's been five months since my father left, and if he were to change his mind and return to the old house, thinking he'd walk through the front door and reclaim his seat at the head of the table, he would not find the table or a single chair to sit in. The only evidence that he and his family had ever lived in that house may be a splintered floorboard in the living room, where one of the bullets he had shot off in the house had ripped through the grain before ricocheting and vanishing into the drywall.

*   *   *

On Monday morning, I show up for school and almost immediately notice how other students stare at me. They come to the doorway of the classroom, necks craning over and around each other as they try to catch a glimpse of the new girl.

“Stop staring at her,” the teacher says. “She's not an animal at the zoo.”

I'm the only Mexican girl in the entire grade. There is one Mexican boy and one Puerto Rican boy, but other than that, everyone else is white. I don't know if I'll get along with these white girls, have never had a white friend before, am not even sure I like them. A few days later, I find out there's one other Mexican girl in my grade. Her name is Rosalba, but she only attends school half the day, has classes with the special ed kids, and she won't be going to high school, because she's pregnant.

We are lining up after recess one day, shortest to tallest, and I'm still at the back of the line where I've always been. Natalie Miller, the girl who stands in front of me, flicks her hair back and squints at me through her glasses.

“Oh my God,” she says. “You're so sophisticated.”

Sophisticated—I have no idea what that word means, but there's something about the way she says it that makes it feel like an insult. I don't really like Natalie Miller, because not long ago, she had pointed out that I talked funny, saying “it's Shicago, not Cheecago.” When I get home from school that day, I pull out the dictionary and look up the word, thinking, if it's a cut down, I'm going to go back to school tomorrow and kick that girl's ass.

Sophisticated: Having acquired worldly knowledge or refinement, a person who lacks natural simplicity or naiveté, someone who has been altered by experience, education or circumstance.

I read the definition several times trying to decide what she meant by it. I would have never let anyone offend me and get away with it. Especially not since the warning my father had given me when I was in sixth grade and he had caught Frida and me skipping school. We were sitting on the couch watching television when he came through the front door and surprised us. His yellow construction helmet was tucked under his arm, the green stainless steel thermos dangling from his index finger, and there were wet specks of rain on his jeans and Timberland boots. “Why aren't you at school?” he grunted over the blaring television. The minute I opened my mouth, I was already lying, telling him how Ramona, the big fat girl at our bus stop, had started picking on me, and that I was afraid of her, so I had run back home, and since Frida didn't want to go to school without me, she had run after me. “What do you mean you ran away?” he said, the door slamming shut behind him.

“She's a lot bigger than I am,” I said.

“I don't care how big she is,” he said. “Next time someone picks on you, even if you know you're going to get your ass kicked, you stay and you fight like a man,” he said, taking two steps toward me. “Never again do I want to hear that you are running away from anybody, do you understand?” I nodded, though I was utterly confused by his anger, and it would be years, still, before I found out where that warning stemmed from.

He made us get ready and drove us to school, but after that day, if anyone so much as looked at me the wrong way, it was enough to instigate a fight. A few weeks later, I had just gotten on the bus after school and settled into my seat when a backpack came flying and landed next to me. Even before I picked it up, the whole bus was already chanting: “Throw it back, throw it back.” I picked it up and flung it back, watched it soar through the air and hit against the emergency exit door on the back of the bus before landing on the ground. I hadn't even turned all the way around when I felt the immense sting of an open hand smacking against my face. Everything went gray, and once I regained focus, my upper lip was throbbing, and a hot stream was running from my nose and filling my mouth with the taste of aluminum.

Through the haze, I could see Mike González taking his usual seat at the very back of the bus. His mouth was agape with laughter, and I wanted to reach into that black hole and rip out his tonsils. He was in eighth grade, two years older than me, and though he had never picked on me, he was always picking on my friends, slamming their lockers shut, pushing them down on the ice, or punching their books out of their hands. He didn't see me coming, and perhaps I didn't even realize that I was running toward him, until we were both flying backward onto his seat and before he had a chance to react, I had pinned both his arms under my knees and was throwing wild punches. The blood from my nose rained down on his face as the entire bus vibrated in unison: “Fight, fight, fight, fight.”

The bus driver pulled me off him and made us both go to the principal's office, but since it was self-defense, and there were eyewitnesses, I was allowed back on the bus. When I got home from school my father was in the driveway, the upper half of his body leaning into the open hood of his truck.

“What happened to you?” he asked, when he saw my bloodstained clothes.

“You should have seen her, Mr. Venegas,” Frida blurted out. “She beat up Mike González, and he's a lot bigger than her.” I opened my mouth to say something, but before I managed a single word, I burst into tears. My father looked at Frida, back at me, at my bloodshot eye, my swollen lip, and grimaced. “Go get cleaned up,” he said, leaning back into the hood of his truck.

Sophisticated. I can't decide whether Natalie meant it as an insult or a compliment, so I let it go, and she and I end up being friends, though it's a short-lived friendship. Eighth grade graduation is upon us, and in the fall we will be going to different high schools.

That summer, we receive a letter from the immigration office in Chicago. We've been given an appointment to appear in person and take a civics exam. How well we do on the exam will determine whether we'll be granted permanent residency or not. Since I've just taken the Constitution test at school, I answer every question the immigration agent asks, almost before he has finished asking it.

When high school registration comes around, my mother is in Mexico visiting her mother again. Sonia and I go to registration, pick up the forms, sign my mother's name, and drop them off on the first day of classes. There is a three-minute intermission between classes, and even though I switch rooms and teachers for each subject, the students in my class are always the same. Each time the bell rings at the end of intermission, the same sixteen students come clamoring into the classroom. The guys with their shoulder-length hair, ripped jeans, black Metallica or Skid Row T-shirts, and the girls with a freshly applied coat of electric-blue eye shadow. A cloud that reeks of cigarette smoke and Aqua Net hairspray following in their wake.

There are three levels in each grade, level one, two, and three—we are level three, which is the lowest. Physical education is the only period where there is any crossover between our level and the other two. The girls in my gym class wear silk blouses tucked into designer jeans, chunky sweaters, and a lot less makeup. The guys wear baseball caps and T-shirts with their favorite sports team logo, or the logo of whatever college they plan to attend.

“What do you plan on doing after high school?” Ms. Flint, my English teacher, asks me after class one day.

“I don't know. Work, I guess.”

“Don't you plan on going to college?”

“We can't afford it,” I say, though going to college has never even crossed my mind.

“What does your father do for work?” she asks.

My father? How to say that it doesn't matter what he does for work, because he is no longer a part of our lives. By then, we had heard that he was living back in La Peña with a younger woman.

“He doesn't live with us,” I say.

“What about your mother, what does she do?”

“She and her friend own a grocery store,” I say. Not long after my father had left, my mother quit her job at the towel factory where she had worked for ten years, and she and one of her church friends had opened a small Mexican grocery store in the next town over.

“Oh, that's wonderful, your mother owns her own business,” she says. “And how does it do?”

“Not good.” I shrug, though I know that the store is barely breaking even. That if it wasn't for Mary's beauty salon business suddenly booming, we probably wouldn't have a roof over our heads.

“It doesn't matter,” she says, and explains that if I want to go to college and I keep my grades up, I will probably qualify for financial aid—government grants, loans, and scholarships. “How are you doing in your other classes?”