Bulletproof Vest (6 page)

“Good,” I say. “I'm getting straight A's.” I had never been a straight-A student, but without “my gang” to distract me, I had actually started paying attention in class—taking notes and asking questions even. I had always been more of a high-D or a low-C student—not a complete lost cause, but always hovering just below average. Only once had I tried for straight A's, when I was in third grade and had decided that I wanted a pet monkey. I waited for Chemel to come home from work, and the minute I heard his truck on the gravel driveway, I went running out to meet him, already asking if he would buy me a pet monkey before he was even out of his truck.

“What do you want a monkey for?” he asked, picking me up and carrying me back into the house. I told him that I was going to teach it to do tricks and make it sit on my shoulder, like the one I had seen on television. He made a deal with me—if by the end of the school year I had straight A's, he would buy me a monkey. I applied myself, and when classes ended, I had all A's and one B.

“Straight A's, that's great,” Ms. Flint says, as a smile flashes across her face, gone before it has fully formed. She explains how the classes I'm in are not really preparing me for college, and that if in a year or two I decide that I do want to go to college it will be too late. She suggests that I meet with my counselor, see about switching up a level, and offers to stay after school and tutor me.

After that day, going away to college is the only thing that matters. I had no idea that financial aid was an option, that college was a real possibility. Not only is college my ticket out of my mother's house, but it's also a way to keep running; if I keep moving, go even farther away, I just might be able to outrun my past—especially my brother, who always finds me in my dreams. Each time I see him, I run to him, and though there are so many things I want to say, each word I utter is trapped inside a bubble, and I watch everything I will never be able to say to him float away, forming a long strand, like a pearl necklace unfurling from my throat to the stars.

A few days later, I finally work up the courage to go talk to Mr. Nelson, my counselor.

“Switch up a level? Why would you want to do that?” he asks. “You're getting straight A's.”

“I know, but the classes I'm in are not preparing me for college,” I say.

“You want to go to college?” he asks, furrowing his brow. “Remind me, what is it that your parents do for a living?”

Oh, come on, not again, I want to say. Who cares what my parents do for a living, because they won't be paying for my college. I will get a job, take out a loan—take out ten loans if I have to—but I'm determined to go away. I explain that my father is gone, and that my mother owns a small grocery store.

“I see,” he says. “And how much revenue does your mother's store generate?”

“Not much.”

“Not much,” he says, glancing behind me, where other students are waiting for their turn to speak with him. “This is what I think you should do,” he says. “I think you should stay in the classes you're in now, and then after you graduate, if you still want to go to college, you can enroll at the community college for two years, take whatever other courses you need, get your electives out of the way, and then transfer to a four-year university. That would be more economical.”

“I don't want to go to a community college,” I say. “I want to go away.”

He removes his glasses and presses the tips of his fingers against his eyelids.

“Why don't we do this,” he says, readjusting his glasses back onto his nose. “If by the end of the semester you still have straight A's, and if you can get me a letter of recommendation from two of your teachers, I'll let you move up one level across the board.”

*   *   *

We are about halfway through the semester when one of the older guys comes up to my locker. I've noticed the way a group of them huddle around their lockers, whispering and staring as they watch me pass.

“Hi,” he says, pulling down on his baseball cap. “So, are you a foreign exchange student?”

“No,” I say. “I'm a freshman.”

“Holy shit, you're only a freshman?” he says, glancing back at his buddies. “We kept trying to figure out where you were from. We thought for sure you were an exchange student from Spain or Brazil, or some strange place like that.” He stands there, watching me switch my books out. “So, where are you from, anyway?”

“Mexico,” I say.

“You're a Mexican?” He wrinkles his nose as if he just caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “No way. You're too tall to be a Mexican.”

I probably give him the same blank look I gave Natalie when she called me sophisticated. “Too tall to be a Mexican”—what did that mean? Was there a height limit for Mexicans? A line drawn on a wall, which we best not surpass?

I close my locker and walk away.

*   *   *

It's probably close to midnight and outside a few flakes are free-falling onto the frozen ground. It's midterm week, and I'm sitting at my usual spot at the head of the dining room table, next to the large bay window. My book, calculator, pencils, and scrap pieces of paper are strewn about the table. Math is the only midterm I have left, and how I do on the exam will determine whether I keep my A in the class, whether I will be allowed to switch up a level across the board—to have or have not. Why can't everything be as easy as my literature class? I've never been a math person.

What was two plus two anyway? I had been two years old when my parents left us in Mexico. Two years later they had sent for us when I was four—that was two plus two. My brother had been back in Mexico for two years before he was killed. Dead at twenty-two—was that two plus two? Two years was not such a long time, and yet it was eternal. So many problems staring back at me, so many formulas waiting to be memorized: fractions, equations, decimals, and radicals. How does one isolate the radical? Is that similar to capturing the criminal and placing him in solitary confinement?
Isolate the radical.
We'd already heard that the thirty-nine-year-old guy who killed my brother had been released from prison. He had pleaded insanity, was transferred to a mental institution somewhere in Guadalajara, and was later released. Nine months is all the time he had served.

The headlights from my mother's station wagon come shining through the bay window. The beams send the shadow of our Christmas tree across the living room and onto the wall where my brother's guitar now hangs next to my mother's china cabinet. He had bought her that china cabinet, her bedroom set, and the dining room set where I'm now sitting before he left for Mexico. It had all belonged to one of the couples that went to her church. “When will I ever be able to afford something so beautiful,” my mother said when she heard the couple was moving and selling the furniture. Chemel had made them an offer, brought the furniture home, and surprised her.

A thin layer of dust has settled on his guitar and stayed there. Each time it's my turn to dust the living room, I dust around his guitar, afraid of knocking it off the wall. Soon it will be Christmas. It will come and go as the others have come and gone and we will go to my mother's church, witness the birth of baby Jesus, and then stay up until midnight to open our presents, as we've always done, and none of us will breathe his name—it's almost like he had never been.

“You haven't gone to bed yet?” my mother asks when she comes through the door that leads from our garage into the kitchen.

“I have an exam tomorrow,” I say.

“I don't know why you're wasting your time with those books,” she says, making her way over to the dining room table and setting her heavy black purse down. “You should be reading the Bible, that's what you should be doing.” She pulls out a chair and takes a seat. “If Jesus were to come back tonight, what good would all of this studying do you?” she asks, raising her brow and looking at me. I don't say anything. I go back to plugging in numbers, hoping she'll get the hint and leave me alone. “What good will all of this studying do you if you lose your soul, huh?”

“Ya amá,” I say, because I know that if I don't stop her, she'll keep going, she'll pull out her Bible and start preaching to me, and I'm sick of being preached to.

“Ya amá,” she mumbles under her breath as she reaches over and grabs an orange from the fruit bowl that sits on the center of the table. She starts peeling it, and I go back to my problems. “So, have you heard the latest news?” she asks.

“What happened?” I ask, looking up from my notebook, already knowing that whatever it is must have something to do with my father.

“Your father will soon have a new family,” she says, glancing over at me. “The vieja he's living with is pregnant.” She places the orange peels in a neat pile on the table in front of her. “He always told me that any time he wanted to, he could go off and start a new family,” she says. “That man never cared about anyone but himself. He never loved you guys.”

This is something she's been saying since the day he left, practically.
Your father never loved you guys.
I always knew that I wasn't one of his favorites. Assumed it was because I was the only one with dark skin in the family—la negra. He had never taken me on the secret runs to McDonald's that he used to take with Jorge and Yesenia, and though he'd tell them not to say anything, inevitably one of them would end up bragging about it, and after one of their trips my mother had found me lying in bed with my pillow over my head. She asked what was wrong, and between gasping for air and wiping the tears away I had managed to tell her that mi apá didn't love me because he never took me to McDonald's. A few days later, he ushered me out of the house and into his truck and we went to McDonald's—just the two of us. On the way home, my feet were dangling off the seat, and my hand was in my pocket, rubbing the toy from my Happy Meal. When we pulled into the driveway, I reached for the door handle, and he reached for my bony knee. “Now don't be telling people that I don't love you,” he said, giving my knee a slight squeeze, and I clutched the toy in my pocket until something snapped.

Let him have a baby, let him have ten babies for all I care. The more kids he has, the less likely he'll be to ever come back. As far as I'm concerned, his having left is the best thing that ever happened to us. There are no more sleepless school nights, or the fear that he will come home in the middle of the night, blaring his music, shooting his gun, and waking the entire neighborhood. Though our new neighbors, who are all white, would probably not put up with his antics.

*   *   *

After Christmas break, we go back to school and there's a new girl. I hear about her before I actually see her, because everyone says that she looks like me, looks like she could be my sister. That's impossible, I think, as I'm the only brown person in the entire grade, my skin a few shades darker than everyone else's. The new girl is smart—really smart. Though I was allowed to move up one level in all my subjects, except math, physical education is the only class we have together. When she walks into the locker room on that first day, I know it's her. She's tall, slim, and has long, dark, straight hair. She's wearing a denim miniskirt, an oversized forest green sweater, and a pair of brown leather Frye boots—no one in that town wears tall leather boots. I want her outfit—the sweater, the skirt, and the boots—all of it.

“Hi,” she says when she notices me staring at her boots. I'm standing there in my black polyester gym shorts and my black padded bra that is so worn out the stitching is coming undone. “I'm Sophia.”

“I'm Maria,” I say, as I let my white turtleneck drop onto the bench between us.

“I have that exact same shirt,” she says, looking at my turtleneck. “Except mine is green. My mother bought it for me at J.Crew,” she says. “Where is yours from?”

“I'm not sure,” I say, because I'm not about to tell her it's from Kmart. I reach into my locker and pull out my stinky yellow gym tee. She picks my shirt up off the bench and looks at the label. It's black and has
Jazz
written across it in silver stitching.

“Oh, it's not from J.Crew,” she says, letting my shirt drop back onto the bench.

I decide I don't like her.

A week later, a sign is posted in the girls' locker room. Cheerleading tryouts are coming up. I think I'll give it a shot, figuring it might be a good way to meet people. A few days after tryouts, the list goes up in the locker room and a crowd of girls gathers in front of it. I scan it, reading every name from top to bottom: Rachel Burns, Melissa Cunningham, Gina Mancini, Liz McCarthy, Trisha Shultz, until I get to the very bottom of the list and there is my name—Maria Venegas. Though I haven't practiced gymnastics in years, it's amazing how much my body still remembers.

*   *   *

Right before classes let out for summer, we hear that the guy who killed my brother has turned up dead. His body was found in the desert in Mexico, in Mexicali, somewhere near the Tijuana border. He had been stabbed over fifty times.

“Do you think it was mi apá?” I ask my mother.

“Probably,” she says. “Your father is capable of anything.”

*   *   *

That summer, we take a road trip to Texas, a family vacation of sorts—the one and only. There is a Christian youth convention in Brownsville and we caravan down with other members of my mother's church. When we return, we haven't even finished unloading the car yet when the phone rings.

“Hello?” I say.

“Where were you guys?” he asks. Though I haven't talked to him since he left, I recognize his voice immediately, and I find myself wishing I hadn't been the one who picked up the phone.

“Texas,” I say.

“Who gave you permission?”