Look Both Ways in the Barrio Blanco (6 page)

Aside from Rosa and me, there wasn’t one Mexican at the pool. And everyone else wore swimsuits. We usually just swam in shorts and a T-shirt.

We watched Miss’s boys dunk each other, laughing. Ethan didn’t look like he could be in high school. Cody — who was one grade ahead of me — was so tiny that even Ethan could throw him around. Cody would land with a splash, come up grinning, and push back through the water to Ethan, who’d throw him again.

Maybe Ethan will throw me in the water!
I hoped so. Rosa never played with me in the pool. She would flip and swirl — underwater — the whole time. She didn’t even have to breathe. She looked like she was dancing, her eyes open and everything. Papi called her his Little Mermaid.

But we were shy. There were white boys at school, but they never talked to us.
What if Ethan and Cody don’t like us?
I looked at Rosa.

She shrugged and stepped into the pool. I followed, enjoying the cool water moving past my legs.

A sharp trill broke the air. The lifeguard waved us over, taking the whistle out of her mouth. She wasn’t much older than Rosa. “Girls, you can’t swim without suits.”

My heart belly-flopped into my stomach.

Rosa cringed. Like she’d been slapped. “We grew out of them.”

“I’m sorry. Those are the rules.” The lifeguard didn’t seem sorry. She chewed her gum and swung her whistle back and forth. I hoped she knew CPR, because I was having a heart attack.

“Is there a problem?” Miss’s voice. My heart jumped back to life.

The lifeguard’s eyes widened. “Aren’t you —?”

Miss gave a nod and something like a smile. Her mouth turned up at the corners, but her lips were thin, and her eyes didn’t sparkle. “Kathryn Dawson Dahl.”

I’d only heard Miss tell people to call her Kate. Why would she tell someone all three of her names? The lifeguard flapped her hands like she was doing the chicken dance. “My mom watches you all the time!”

I told Miss, “She says we can’t go swimming!”

“We do not have swimsuits,” Rosa added. For once it was her, and not me, whose eyes were leaking.

The lifeguard blurted, “It’s okay. Just for today.”

Rosa and I grinned at each other. I felt light. Pink soap bubbles floating over blue water.

Miss gave another smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile to the lifeguard. “I appreciate it.”

She’d used her name in a way I’d never seen before. A name is something to be called, but sometimes a teacher would use a name as a threat.
Do you want to visit Principal Stroud?

Or a name can be a warning.
¡Ven aquí
,
Jacinta Juárez Castro!
When Mamá said
come here
and used all of my names, I was in trouble.

But this was the first time I’d heard a name used as a
tool
. In my mind I saw Papi using a crowbar on a smashed car at the auto-body shop. Miss used her name to pry open a door.

There’s a word for that. It’s called
leverage
.

Without knowing the word, I knew that’s what I needed. Something I could use to make Miss my Amiga.

Leverage
.

YOU’D THINK
that hungry girls who’d been swimming all afternoon would find
something
in a menu as big as a book.

But that was just it. The menu was
too
big. I was used to menus hanging on a wall.

The cover of this menu read:

For someone so worried about politeness, I was surprised Miss would take us to a place where the menu was rude. But the girl who served us was nice. She wanted to take our order, but Rosa and I couldn’t decide. She said she’d give us “a few minutes.”

But it’d been more than a few minutes.

Miss sighed. “Ladies, it’s dinner, not brain surgery.”

My face burned.
We should’ve gone someplace normal. Where food comes in paper bags, handed through a window to your car
.

The boys were sword fighting with their straws.

“Guys,” said Miss in her tired voice. The one Ethan called the
Nag-O-Matic
.

He made a huffing sound, but they stopped. Ethan and Cody weren’t snobby, even though they were rich. They were the
opposite
of snobby, but I didn’t know the word for that.

The word is
inclusive
.

And even that sounds too snobby for the Dahl boys.

At the pool they showed us how to play Marco Polo. And we had a water fight. I could dunk Cody, but not Ethan. Not by myself, anyway.

The server girl came back to our table with coloring papers and crayons.

“How about some kids’ menus?”

Miss looked relieved.

When the girl walked away, I asked Miss again, “Will the recreation center really let me take gymnastics for free?”

After we’d finished swimming, Miss had led Rosa and me down the hall to the gymnastics room while Ethan and Cody played in the recreation center’s arcade.

The gymnastics room was big enough to be its own building. Girls flew through the air in every direction. I had to be one of them.

With puppy-dog eyes on maximum power, I focused on Miss. She got me a
scholarship application
at the center’s front desk.

A free class?
For real?
I couldn’t stop talking about it during the drive to the restaurant, so Miss got annoyed when I brought it up again. “We’ll
see
. Have your dad fill out the form.”

But Papi would want me to wait until Mamá got home. Who knew when that would be?

And there was something else.

“How would I get to gymnastics, Miss? Papi has to work nights.”
Days, too
.

Miss hesitated.

Puppy-dog eyes.

She said, “Maybe I could drive you when we go swimming. Just until you make some car-pool friends.”

My heart did a triple flip.

My sister tied the paper wrapper from her straw into knots. Miss noticed. “Rosa, do you want to take gymnastics, too?”

“No, Miss. No, thank you.”

We couldn’t both take gymnastics. One of us would have to watch Suelita.

It’s only fair. I found Miss first
.

The girl came back for our food order. She wrote everything down, then thanked us and walked away.

“She’s nice.”

“Who?” Miss asked me.

“That girl.”

“What girl?”

“The server girl. The one who brought the crayons.”

“You mean the
waitress
?” Ethan’s laugh broke over me, loud and sharp. I scowled. How was I supposed to know the English word for
mesera
if I’d never been in a restaurant?

A smile tickled Miss’s cheek, but she told Ethan, “That’s enough.”

He laughed until tears leaked out his eyelids. The water in my eyes wasn’t from laughing.
How can someone so nice be so mean? And Miss is smiling, too. Smiling because I don’t know stuff
.

Blood rushed to my face. Under the table Rosa took my hand and squeezed. I decided — right then — Miss would be my Amiga, no matter what I had to do. Not because I liked her.

Just then I hated her.

But I would follow her, like a greedy goose at the park. I would gobble her words like bits of tortilla. My brain would grow so fat that no one would ever laugh at me again.

Miss dropped us off in front of our apartment. She couldn’t see down the stairwell, so she never knew about the broken glass outside our front door. Rosa and I picked our way through the shards.

Our front window was shattered.

Papi emerged with a broom and a trash can. His face was hard. I was afraid and relieved to see him.

“You are late,” he said in Spanish.

“¿Qué pasó?”
asked Rosa.

“Carmen told you to be back by seven.” His voice was a knife.

Rosa swallowed. “No, Papi. Tía did not say that.”

I dropped my eyes. “
Sí
. She told me.”

Then I glanced up. Papi’s look was sharp. I stepped back, feeling the glass crunch under my flip-flops.

Papi said, “When Carmen wasn’t home to make Victor’s dinner, he came looking for her. He was drunk. He broke our window when she wouldn’t open the door.”

I imagined Victor’s angry face, the crooked scar on his eyelid. Most of the people in our neighborhood never caused trouble. No one wanted
la policía
to come. But Victor was what Papi called
una oveja negra —
a black sheep. I swallowed. “Is Tía okay?”

“She took him to the hospital. He cut his hand on the glass.”

“Suelita?” Rosa’s voice sounded small.

“She’s in your bed, along with your cousins. I had to leave work.”

“Sorry, Papi,” I whispered.

He pointed at me. “Tomorrow I have to fix the window before Mr. Spitz sees. Do you know how much that will cost?”

Tears rolled down. “No, Papi.”

“I don’t get paid when I don’t work. Mr. Spitz needs his money. He has a family, too.”

I didn’t think of that. That someone like Mr. Spitz could have a family. I wiped my face with my hands. “Sorry, Papi.”

“Sorry isn’t enough. We need money to pay for Abuelita’s medicine. We need money for your
mamá
to come home. Don’t you want to see her? Don’t you want your
abuelita
to get well?”

“Yes, Papi,” I sobbed.

“You girls shouldn’t be out with strangers when your family needs you. No more going out with Miss.”

“No, Papi! Please!”

“No more going to the youth center. For either of you.” He started sweeping the broken glass.

Rosa turned on me. There’s a word for her look.

Malice
.

I’d forgotten the first rule of being Mexican.

Family comes first
.

AFTER SCHOOL
the next day, us girls crowded around Angélica. My heart thrummed in my ears — a drumroll. Like a magic trick, Angélica whipped out the phone her Amiga had bought for her. Pink jewels covered the case.

Angélica pretended to be bored, which was totally fake. “Miss Linda knows she’s not supposed to buy me stuff, but she
has
to be able to get ahold of me.”

What would it be like to have an Amiga who cared so much whether she could reach me?
The green beast in my belly kicked. I swallowed a moan.

Walking home from school, Miss’s supersize smile on the billboard
taunted
me. Angélica’s eyes followed mine to the sign. “Has she called you?”

I hadn’t said anything to Angélica about the night before. I hadn’t wanted her to know that Papi said we couldn’t go to the youth center anymore. I was still trying to find a way out of it. So I shrugged, examining my flip-flops as I dragged my feet across the pavement.

Angélica grinned. But I heard the smirk in her voice.
“¡Qué pena!”
— what a shame!

My head shot up. “I went swimming with her last night. She brought her two sons. Then we had dinner. In a
restaurant
.”

She studied me, trying to decide if I was lying. I didn’t blink. She yanked out her glittery phone. “Call her.”

“She’s at work.”

“I call my Amiga at work.”

“I don’t have the number.”

Rolling her eyes, she pressed a few numbers into the phone, then spoke into it. “Denver, Colorado. 5News.”
Pause
. “The newsroom.”