The Tequila Worm (8 page)

“So let’s celebrate!” Papa said. “I’ll be right back.” He returned with Berta in one arm and a tiny bottle of mescal in the other.

“Sofia!” Berta beamed. “I told you our dreams were connected.”

Papa poured five
copitas
of mescal. Mine was a drop.

“To Berta’s and Sofia’s dreams!” Papa said, toasting. He gulped his down. I gulped. Coughed.
Whoa!
Everyone else took a sip.

“And, Sofia, always remember Clara’s cure for homesickness—the tequila worm.” Papa fished the worm out, dangled it between his fingers, then bit it. He started chewing it,
slowly
.

“Yuck!” we all said.

“Sofia, here’s your half,” Papa said. “I left the best part for you—the head. And remember to chew it slowly. It won’t dissolve like a holy host.”

Yuck!

“Berta, want a big bite?” I said.

“No way!”

I took the head of the tequila worm.
Squishy
. I put it in my mouth.
Squishy
. And started chewing. It felt . . . I swallowed.
Squishy
.

“Gross, Sofia!” Everyone laughed.

“And,” Papa said, “once you go, I’ll be sure to send you a whole tequila worm in the mail.” I laughed, but anxiety flooded me.

I’d been so intent on getting my parents to let me go that I hadn’t thought about actually leaving.

Five “NeW”DReSSeS

The phone rang early the next morning. Berta. “I can’t believe you ate the tequila worm.
Gross!
How did it taste?”

“Terrific! But it didn’t cure my problems.”

“A tequila worm cures homesickness, not problems.”

“Well, I’ve got two big ones.”

“What are they?”

“How to get those five new dresses and the four hundred dollars,” I said. “I told Mama that you and I had a plan. I even called you my
comadre
.”

Berta laughed. “You’re quick, Sofia. Let me come over and show you the
quinceañera
pictures. Then we can talk and talk about a plan like real
comadres
.”

“You mean your
zillions
of pictures are back already?”

“Yeah, and I made extras of you and your mama dancing!”

“And how many did you make of you and Jamie kissing? A
zillion
?”

“
Two
zillion!”

The most daunting thing about going to Saint Luke’s was not that it was over three hundred miles away, or that it was Episcopalian, not Catholic, or even that it was way up on a hill, away from anything and everything. No. It was having to dress up every evening—Monday through Friday—for a formal sit-down dinner.

This had worried Mama, too: “So even if we decide that you can go, Sofia, what are we going to do about your clothes? You only have one decent dress—the one you wear to Mass.” I thought of the piggy bank Papa bought me years ago in Mexico. It contained about three dollars, not enough for even
one
dress.

I kept having the same nightmare over and over again: I was sitting down to dinner in my Sunday dress, and there were seven other students at the table, which was set with the finest silver, china, and crystal. They all stood up and started pointing and laughing at me. I looked down and was horrified to find that my nice white dress had turned into one taped together with pieces of Tía Petra’s rolls of plastic. I woke up in a sweat, remembering “Taco Head!”

Mama and Lucy were visiting the
abuelitos
across town. Papa was on the front porch, watering his Mexican jasmine and listening to his singing canary. I made a fresh pot of coffee and was putting out a plate of pumpkin empanadas when Berta came into the kitchen carrying two huge photo albums and a big bag.

“Wow!” I poured coffee. “It’ll take us years to—”

“And these are only the really good ones.”

After our third cup of coffee and our third empanada, we were only halfway through her pictures.
I’ll die if I see
one more shot of her kissing Jamie,
I thought.

“Okay!” She slapped the albums shut. “You’ve done a really good job at being my
comadre
by looking at my pictures. You even got the props down—kitchen table, coffee,
pan dulce
. So now let’s talk about
you
and those dresses.”

“Not until we talk about you and Jamie. What’s it like kissing him?”

“Sofia!”

“No, really. It’s important that I help you, too. . . . Remember what Tía Petra said.”

“My dream is not about kissing Jamie.”

“So what is it about?”

“Well . . . it’s about being with him, about how he makes me feel about myself.”

“And how’s that?”

“Like I’m in a dream . . .”

“And kissing him, what’s that like?”

“That’s . . .
personal.
. . .”

“Come on, Berta. You can’t treat me like a kid and tell me to stop being one.”

“Umm . . . kissing him is like . . . well, going outside yourself. You feel wobbly and all.”

“And you
like
that?”

“It’s hard to explain. I don’t really understand it either.”

“So how do you want me to support all this?”

“Well, you can help me not flunk math. It’s hard to study when you’re in . . .”

“Love?”

“Sofia . . .”

“Okay, okay. I’ll help you with your math.”

“Thanks. Now, those dresses . . . Why don’t you do what I did with my
quinceañera
? Get yourself some dress
padrinos
and
madrinas
to sponsor and buy them!”

I sat up in my chair. “I can’t do that!”

“But why not?”

“Because . . . it’s not me. I have to do this my way.”

“
Sofia!
What’s wrong with getting other people to help you? That’s part of learning to be a
comadre,
anyway.”

“I know. It’s just . . . well . . . It’s just like Papa. . . . You know, how he wanted a guitar and then went about making one in his cabinet shop, using his tools and stuff. That’s how I am too.”

“You’re going to make these dresses
yourself
? You can’t even button your buttons straight. I told you to take home ec with me, but no! You took advanced algebra.”

“I know, but . . .”

“But
what
?”

“Well, you took home ec, so you must know something about sewing, and . . . How about we take my
dama
dress and you help me make it into one of my new dresses?”

“Your
dama
dress?”

“I’ll think of you every time I wear it. It’ll just hang there in the closet otherwise. Please, Berta? ”

“But what about the other four?”

“Well . . .”

“Oh!
I
have an idea! I’m bigger than you, right? Remember that blue dress I wore to the drive-in? Do you like it?”

“Yes, it’s nice.”

“That’s dress
two
!”

“What?”

“It’s yours. I’ll just make it fit you!”

“No! I’m not taking your dress.”

“You’re not
taking
it. I’m
giving
it to you. It’s a present.”

“No.”

“Yes! Part of being a
comadre
is learning to receive. So we have
two
dresses, and only three to go.”

Papa walked in. “Berta, how wonderful you looked at your
quinceañera
!” Berta showed him the picture of me dancing with Mama.

“Ah! My two girls look so beautiful. And that
dama
dress, Sofia, makes you look so grown-up.”

I kicked Berta under the table when she blabbed to Papa about our plan for my new dresses.

He took out his thin wallet and pulled out a crisp ten-dollar bill. He handed it to Berta.

“I want to be the proud
padrino
of the third new dress,” he said, beaming.

Papa poured himself some coffee. “I have all the faith in the world that you two will conjure up the other two somehow.” Then he went outside.

“Sofia, how much money do you have in that tequila worm of yours?”

“About three dollars. Why?”

“That’s
perfect
! I’ve got it all figured out!”

“Figured
what
out?”

“Your other two dresses! How we’re getting them! And for only about three dollars!”

I’d heard wrong.

“Maybe even cheaper. On Saturdays everything goes on sale—for thirty cents a pound!”

“A pound? What’s selling for thirty cents a pound?”

“Your new dresses!”

“What?”

“Yes! We’re getting your other two dresses at Johnson’s
Ropa Usada
.”

I shot to my feet. “We can’t go
there
!”

Johnson’s
Ropa Usada
had been a running joke between Berta and me for years now. The name conjured up the whopping shock we’d gotten when we’d first walked into the massive concrete-and-cinder-block warehouse near downtown McAllen. It was a colossal room covered wall to wall with fifteen- to twenty-foot-high mountains of bras, panties, plaid shirts, fuzzy slippers, baseball caps, T-shirts, snow pants, overalls, work gloves, jackets, dresses, boots—everything and anything, even yellowed wedding dresses.

Tiny squealing kids squirmed all over these colorful mountains: rolling down their sides; chasing each other over piles and piles of clothes to where their mothers sat in craters, sifting, piece by piece, through the mounds around them.

Anything the Salvation Army and Goodwill didn’t want eventually came here to Johnson’s
Ropa Usada
to get picked over one last time before getting shipped off to the Third World. For a flat fee, you could buy a whole bale. They would open it for you and you could choose whatever you wanted inside, leaving the rest to become part of one of the mountains nearby.

So if you bought something here, you also acquired the dubious honor of wearing a shirt or dress that everyone else in the entire country had rejected and cast off, even those who got their clothes at secondhand stores.

The first time we went, Berta and I had laughed so hard we fell into a pile of clothes, tears running down our faces.

“No way!” I said as we parked in front of Johnson’s.

Berta began to laugh.

“Berta!” I said. “You’re supposed to be helping me. People
died
in those clothes. . . . Everyone will laugh at me.” My nightmare came back to me. Taco Head at a formal dinner.

“Don’t worry!” Berta said. “When I’m done with them, they’ll look tailor-made—perfect. No one will ever know where you got them.”

I thought of what Tía Petra had said about Berta: she often bit off more than she could chew.

I left Johnson’s
Ropa Usada
carrying a couple of old dresses, a bathrobe, a tangle of neckties, and a king-size bedsheet—all for $2.35. Berta had insisted, “Trust me, Sofia. You’ll see. Anyway, you should be
thrilled,
since my mother agreed to help us transform all our stuff. You’ll be like Cinderella.”

For the next two weeks I spent every afternoon and evening at Berta’s house. Under her mother’s supervision, Berta measured, cut, and sewed. I helped the best I could, by counting buttons, cutting, and doing anything Berta and her mother asked me to do. But mostly I climbed on and off a chair, to stand and get pins stuck everywhere.

My
dama
dress only needed to be shortened. Berta’s blue dress with the glass buttons in front was the second one. The third came from Wal-Mart, bought with Papa’s ten dollars. It was bright yellow, with white piping and a smart white belt.

When it was time to work with the bathrobe, the tangle of ties, and the king-size bedsheet from Johnson’s, I shuddered as I got onto the chair.

“
Trust me,
Sofia!” Berta kept saying.

Jamie would sometimes stop by for a Coke. That was when I did my best to help Berta with her dream by telling him stories about how smart, kind, wonderful, and pretty Berta was. Then I kept watch for Tía Belia so the two could sneak a kiss or two.

And every night, I helped Berta with her math.

Somehow Berta turned the bathrobe into my fourth dress. It was red cotton with a bow Mama made from the tangle of ties. We laughed long and hard, remembering all of Mama’s crazy creations, especially the tequila worm Halloween costume and her panty-hose baby.

“Berta, you’ve done terrific magic so far, but I’d rather die than be seen wearing a bedsheet to dinner!” I said, as she started tracing a pattern on the king-size sheet.

Berta laughed and just kept on tracing, cutting, pinning, sewing. As she snapped the thread with her perfect teeth, I kicked my foot, worrying.

A few nightmares later, she called.

“Sofia! Your fifth and best new dress is ready!”

She met me at the door with a green dress on a hanger.

Well, it does
look
like a dress,
I thought as I put it on. But everyone would instantly know what it was made from!

Mama and Lucy came over to marvel at the five “new” dresses. They insisted I model each one. “The green is by far the prettiest! So elegant!” they all agreed, clapping. It was emerald silk, with a narrow waist, three-quarter sleeves, a rounded neck, and a delicate black Asian design.

Mama thanked Berta and Tía Belia over and over.

“Now, Berta,” said Mama. “Has Sofia been a good
comadre
to you, too?”

“Oh! Yes!” said Berta. “I would’ve flunked math without her.” And not gotten to kiss Jamie so much, I added silently.

I smiled at her as she adjusted my belt. Helping her was nothing compared to what she’d done for me.

Lucy looked longingly at us.