Facts of Life (9 page)

The boys guessed the churro guy who worked their street. Their father guessed the six o'clock news anchor on Univision. Laurita shrugged. She could come up with only someone eating a hot dog at a baseball game.

"
Ay, dios mio,
" her mother uttered. "It's so easy. I'm
American Idol.
"

The next day they started home.

"
Tu sabes,
I miss Mexican food," her father remarked as they drove down a long winding road, bugs splattering against the windshield, wind whistling through the window, something going
clunk
in the truck. While camping, they'd eaten hamburgers and grilled chicken, pork and beans, Vienna sausages, six flavors of potato chips, plus a puny fish that Miguel Dos had caught. "Tres
días de
pork and beans!
Vamos a comer comida Mexicana en un restaurante.
We'll stop somewhere."

The kids were astonished when they stopped at a Chevys restaurant. The family seldom ate out, unless buying churros from the churro man and eating them on the curb counted.

"
Camarones para mi
" their father crowed after he examined the menu as large as a newspaper. "It's expensive, but we're on vacation."

When the waitress came, her father looked up at her smiling face and studied her name tag.

"Madison, I would like to order," he started in stiff but correct English. "Let's start with the kids."

After the waitress left Laurita said proudly, "Dad, your English is great!" She was also proud that he hadn't remarked that the server was white, not Mexican. He didn't show prejudice.

"I'm learning." He took a sip of water. "I learn a little here and there, and everywhere." He chuckled. "Yes, everywhere. I even learn English from you three
chamacos.
"

"No, Dad. You talk like you're the president of the United States."

Her father nodded. "A piece of cake!"

Laurita's mother looked confused. Was he ordering I a piece of cake? Is that what he wanted? But her daughter explained that "a piece of cake" meant something easy.

"I'll be right back," Laurita told everyone, slinging her pink plastic purse over her shoulder. On the ride down the winding mountains toward home, Miguel Dos had somehow gotten gum in his hair. As big sister, Laurita had taken it upon herself to comb it out. Now her hands needed washing.

As she strode past the tables, she noticed a man and woman who seemed familiar. She had seen them somewhere. In the restroom, as the water bubbled over her hands, Laurita remembered where and when. They were the flag-wavers at the anti-immigration protest on the busy street in front of Kmart. The woman was the one who had shouted at her to shut up.

They don't like Mexicans,
Laurita told herself,
but they want to enjoy the food. They want the people to grow the food and then prepare the food. They want them to wash the dishes and sweep the floors.

Laurita returned to her table, cutting a quick glance at the couple. Their plates were smeared, and the woman was working food from a tooth with her finger. And there it was, on her hand: the berry-sized ruby ring.

There's blood inside it,
Laurita told herself.
That
woman should know better.
She should know about nature, where birds fly, where whales swim, and how seeds float on currents to new lands. She should know that people just want to live.

But Laurita knew she was a citizen of the world, a girl who was born in Mexico, a girl who liked Chinese food, a girl who could yodel, a girl who could even dance an Irish jig.

Still, she fumed, a dark cloud of anger inside, but since they were on vacation—at least for another hour—she put on a happy face. This was another kind of charades, played in secret. The food had yet to arrive, hot and steamy. She had no intention of ruining her family's appetite for the Mexican food they knew so well.

BEN FRANKLIN HAD smartly counseled other cheapskates of his generation, "A penny saved is a penny earned." I, in turn, chanted this piece of wisdom as I went to work for Uncle Joe, a nice cheapskate. I leaped up his front steps, peered through the window of his little house, and caught him asleep with his hands across the valley of his stomach. He was bundled in two sweaters, for the thought of wasted body heat made him shiver.

I tapped on the window and called, "Uncle Joe, it's me!" Uncle Joe sat straight up like a revived corpse in a coffin, spookylike, and all bones. He smacked his lips as though he'd just realized that he was asleep, not dead. His seventy-plus ticker was still pushing blood through it's chambers. Narrowing an eye at me, Uncle Joe bellowed, "You were supposed to be here this morning!"

I had intended an early-morning visit, but two friends and I had a dirt clod war in a vacant lot that concluded with me taking one to the forehead. Through the window I shouted this explanation, gently tapping the knuckle-hard lump on my skull.

"I can't hear a word you're saying!" Uncle Joe screamed. He advanced toward the door, in a bad mood. He let me in real quick to keep the furnace heat inside. We had to go through the house to the backyard—he had no gate on the side because the lumber and latches would have cost money. But first in the kitchen, he swallowed three prunes like goldfish and said, "You can have
one
if you want." He thrust a nasty-looking jar at me.

I said, "Nah, Uncle Joe, I had my Cap'n Crunch this morning. I'm here to work."

In the yard he pointed out my chore: leaves carpeting one end of the yard to the other.

"Right-o," I sang.

Instead of returning inside Uncle Joe watched my handiwork and occasionally corrected my rake action.

"When you rake, keep your elbows in," he advised.

"Why?" I questioned.

"Saves energy, and energy costs money."

Uncle Joe kept watching and swung his body into an old wicker chair. He asked if he had ever told me the story about how the tips of his boots got run over by a supply truck in the Korean War.

I told him, "Yeah, lots of times, and the one about making a broom out of twigs in 1957."

He stood up and roared, "I don't know how your teeth stay in your face, always talking that way. Don't you know how to respect your elders?"

Every thirteen-year-old boy has numerous people inside his body. Inside me lurks a smart aleck, who, I suspect, might be the real me—time will tell. I corrected my manners, and said, "Gosh, Uncle, I don't know what's wrong with my mouth," and worked the rake with my elbows in.

He burped loudly and said, "Pickles and prunes don't go together."

Disgusted, I got to work stirring up the leaves to find some air sweeter than what he had just released.

"What grade are you in?" Uncle Joe asked after he released a more polite burp.

"Seventh," I answered.

"That's a good grade," he proclaimed. "I was there two years. Had problems with math." He then clipped up the porch steps and quickly opened and closed the door—the heat loss, you know.

While he was away doing whatever old men do, I raked the yard clean and pulled up a few weeds as a punishment for smarting off. Uncle Joe returned and paced the yard, his head bowed as he inspected my work. He had slipped into yet another sweater, each button a different color and design, a sign that he had salvaged the sweater from somewhere. "Pretty fall days don't cost nothing," he quipped and smiled at the sky. I twirled the rake and muttered, "That's why you never had a girlfriend. They cost money." Then I wanted to smack my mouth for such a comment. What was wrong with me?

Uncle Joe made his busy eyebrows rise and fall. He wagged a finger at me and said, "I didn't hear what you said, but I know it was something smart-alecky. Are you makin fun of me?" He narrowed a miserly eye, then pointed. "You missed a leaf over there."

"Nah, Uncle Joe. I respect you," I answered and retrieved the renegade leaf. And I did respect Uncle Joe, thin as a rake because he survived on nearly nothing. He lived on prunes, oatmeal, saltines, and stuff he grew in his garden. His shoes were laced with string, his eyeglasses were taped at the bridge, and his chino pants were so old they were back in style. He saved rubber bands on doorknobs and was not above hunting for cans in the alley. For fun, he collected bottle caps and glued them to cardboard and played solitaire by the light of a 40-watt bulb in the kitchen.

I'm going to be nicer,
I told my shameless self,
beginning now!

When Uncle began talking about germinating tomato seeds in the first week of May, I made a thousand different faces to illustrate my interest. He gave me three quarters for my work, and I said, "Gee, Uncle Joe, I might go buy me some tomato seeds."

"What?" he asked.

I answered, "Nothing, Uncle." With one hand on the rail, Uncle Joe climbed up the porch steps and from that rickety perch gave me a wise appraisal. He asked, "Boy, how far do you think you'll go with the money I've given you over the years?" I looked around the yard, a smirk playing on my face, and I answered, "Maybe to that rosebush there or far as the orange tree."

Uncle Joe roared about how in the world I was going to make it in the world with a mouth like mine! I told him, "With dentures." With that, he came down the porch steps, twisted open my palm, and rolled those quarters back into the leathery pouch of his tightfisted hand.

I was back three days later. A few leaves had fallen from the sycamore, but Uncle Joe had a different task for me. He had gathered tin coffee can lids and ordered me to the roof. "Boy, get up there, and wherever you see weak shingles, nail down these lids. I hear it's going to rain lots."

"Who told you?" I stood at the bottom of the ladder.

"My bones. Especially my shoulder blades."

I climbed to the roof with a hammer so ancient I was sure that Thor, the Viking god of thunder, had used it to strike lightning in the fjords of Norway. The nails had been straightened out, and the wooden ladder was reinforced with rags tied around every other rung.

I did my job, climbed down, and was dusting off my palms when Uncle Joe said, "Boy, I told you about the tips of my toes getting run over by a supply truck. Did I ever show you the ribbon I earned for that tragedy?"

"Lots of times," I almost answered. But as I recalled the three quarters he had ripped from my palm, I changed my tune to, "Oh, no, Uncle Joe. Let's see."

Uncle Joe disappeared into the house and returned with a ribbon—orange and black and frayed. As I turned it over, I held it up to the light. I pressed it to my chest and said, "Gee, Uncle, it must be an honor to own it." I tried my best to pleat my face with wonder and even considered patting the frayed ribbon with a dab of spit to make it shine. Uncle would admire my thrifty action: Spit costs nothing.

"Guess what foot got run over?"

I pondered his black shoes, cracked and creased from his long strides and secured with his homemade shoelaces. They were long as the snout of an alligator.

"Your left one?" I guessed.

"Wrong!" he hollered. "It's the right one."

Soon I discovered that Uncle had a larger plan than having coffee can lids nailed on his roof or imparting another version of his history in the Korean War.

"Secretly, I'm a millionaire," he announced.

"Where do you keep your millions—in jars?"

Uncle Joe narrowed both eyes at me. "No, boy, I don't keep em there." He tapped his forehead and then the side of his head. "I keep 'em here. There's a million memories worth more than a million dollars."

I folded my arms across my chest and listened.

"Also, even at my age, it's not too old to become a
real
millionaire." Uncle Joe paused, expecting me to ask, "How, Uncle?"

I did.

"By invention, my young flame. And by those things over there." He pointed to what at first I thought were sticks and leaves he planned to burn in his fireplace. But I was wrong. He told me they were Christmas wreaths knitted together by his own crafty hands. He chuckled.

"What?" I asked.

He leaned his camel head near my smaller camel head. "I'm in the spirit of making money this season. How 'bout you?"

I began to wonder if Uncle Joe had been drinking a concoction stronger than the tea he kept in his jam jars.

He maintained that if people really believed in the holiday spirit, they would fork over six dollars for a homemade wreath adorned with red ribbon. Christmas, he said, was the biggest holiday, and the second biggest spending period was the week before Valentines Day. He would brief me on that moneymaking scheme when February got closer. For now, he was fired up about Christmas wreaths.

"But if you sell all those wreaths, you couldn't become a millionaire. There's, what, a dozen of them there?"

"Got a lot more in the garage," he reported in a low voice. The fleshy territory around his mouth sagged. I had seemed to put a damper on his mood. Poor old Uncle Joe! He was seventy-something, and I, his only nephew, wasn't touting his ingenuity.

"Gosh, Uncle Joe, you might have something." I gazed at the wreaths, misshapen and plain ugly, with poorly knotted bows. But I wasn't about to mention their lack of artistry.

"Nah, I might make a few bucks."

"No, I've seen people go into the dollar store at Christmastime and come out with their arms full of these grassy things."

"Wreaths, boy. Let's improve your vocabulary." Uncle Joe stood up and stretched so his suspenders yawned on his chest. "Does it seem like it's going to rain?"

I sized up the day: cold grayness, but no hint of rain. "Nah," I answered.

"If that's the case, my young weather forecaster, how 'bout you and me see if we can sell these wreaths."

I pointed out that it was only the first week in November and that the Christmas spirit hadn't yet hit people. Jack-o'-lanterns were still sitting on porches and I hadn't seen any store windows painted with reindeer pulling Santa.

"We'll beat em to the punch, then," Uncle Joe said, and swung at the air.

Thirty minutes later I was hauling a small red wagon through the better part of our town. Uncle Joe had given me instructions to go up the steps, knock on the door, and hold up a wreath while I announced brightly, "Get your Christmas wreaths early!" He had also suggested that I add "ho-ho-ho" to my delivery, but I vetoed that.