With these majestic violins, you’d think we were in some castle on the English moor instead of a dingy church basement in Chicago. If I’m going to be forced to dance, I want to do it to the Smiths or Siouxsie and the Banshees, but Amá refused, of course. What would the family think? And why do I have to always listen to Satan music?
I feel like a fat sausage in this tight and tacky dress covered in frills, ruffles, and sequins. I can hardly breathe in my girdle, which I bet is rearranging my internal organs. Girdle: such an ugly word, a word as gross as what it does. Amá even chose the worst color imaginable for my skin—peach. It’s as if she did it on purpose.
I’m the bad daughter who didn’t deserve a quinceañera, but my parents wanted to throw a party for my dead sister. It didn’t matter that the last things in the world I wanted were to pile my hair into a bunch of stiff curls on top of my head, wear this disgusting dress, and pretend to be happy in front of the whole family right before my sixteenth birthday. What a joke.
Thousands of dollars down the toilet, and here I am, dancing to this awful waltz with all of my boy cousins, some of whom I hardly know, most of whom don’t even like me. It took weeks to learn the dance, and now I’m forgetting all the steps. I’m not graceful or smooth like I’m supposed to be, and Junior, my chambelán de honor, looks angry when he spins me around and I lose my rhythm. Pablo sighs and shakes his head. I try forcing a smile to ease the tension, but it seems as if they all want to kill me right now.
Finally, the dance is over and everyone claps. I bet they just feel sorry for me because I ruined the whole thing.
Now I have to sit in a chair someone has placed in the middle of the dance floor. It’s time to give my doll away to my little cousin and change into a pair of heels, which is ridiculous, because I haven’t played with dolls since I was seven and I’ll never wear high heels again in my life.
My parents approach me with a pair of shiny white shoes on a satin pillow. They slip off my flat Mary Janes and replace them with the new heels. I want to crawl into a hole and die, but I make myself smile, and everyone claps.
Then my cousin Pilar brings me a doll, and I walk over to my baby cousin Gabby, who is wearing the same exact peach dress as I am and is spinning in circles all around the dance floor. I guess the idea is that she’s supposed to be me as a little girl. More clapping!
The DJ asks for a moment of silence for Olga, and Amá clasps her hands together and begins to cry. Apá looks down at the floor. I just stand there like a stump of a person.
Gabby runs to her mom, and I wobble over to Apá for the father-daughter dance. I don’t understand why we have to do this, pretend I’m Daddy’s little girl when he hasn’t paid attention to me in years. He doesn’t know anything about me. If you ask him what my favorite band or food is, he couldn’t tell you. I can smell the beer wafting from his clothes and skin. Standing so close to him makes me uncomfortable. I don’t remember the last time he’s touched me. As he twirls me around the dance floor, everyone is smiling like crazy, as if this were the most precious thing they’ve ever seen. Some of my tías are crying, which probably has little to do with me and everything to do with Olga.
“Are you enjoying your party?” Apá asks. “Yes,” I lie.
“Good.”
Finally, the song winds down and the show is over. According to this tradition, I’m a woman now. I’m available to men. I can wear makeup and high heels. I can dance! But if this is what it means to be a woman, maybe I don’t want to be one.
I sit down and wipe the sweat from my face with a napkin. I’m sweating so hard I think I can smell my own crotch beneath all the layers of fabric. I bet my makeup has melted off.
I decided to invite Juanga to my party in my attempt to be less of an asshole. His parents kicked him out again, and he’s been staying on his cousin’s couch. My life is shitty, but at least I have a home, I guess. It makes me wonder how Amá would react if I were gay. Maybe in some sort of weird way, she would be relieved, since she’s so afraid of men.
Juanga is wearing a suit one size too big and a skinny purple tie. He runs to me and kisses both cheeks. He says that’s how they do it in Europe.
“Oh my God, that dress is a monstrosity, but you still look beautiful,” he says. “Right, Lorena? That face. I mean, wow. Who did your makeup?”
“My cousin Vanessa. My mom said I couldn’t be trusted to do it myself.”
Lorena laughs. “Yeah, the makeup is bomb, but the dress…” “I know,” I say. “I can’t stand to look at myself.”
I ask Lorena to help me with my dress while I pee. She smells sweet like perfume and sweat. Her makeup is smeared under her eyes, and her giant orange-blond curls are starting to fall flat.
My dress drags on the wet and dirty floor of the handicapped stall. I ask Lorena to unzip me for a second because it’s been smashing my stomach and boobs all day, and I can’t take it anymore. Amá insisted it had to fit this way because otherwise it would be “indecent.” I try loosening my girdle, but I’m completely strapped in with a series of hooks and buttons. Can this be considered child abuse?
Tía Milagros comes into the bathroom as we exit the stall. I don’t know how it’s possible for a person to look worse when they dress up, but she’s managed to do it. Her green dress is short and exposes the varicose veins crisscrossing up her legs. I try not to roll my eyes, but it’s become a reflex whenever I see her.
“Ay, Julia. What a nice party. I bet Olga is so happy for you right now.” She sighs.
“Olga is dead.” I know I should probably shut up, but I’m tired of everyone pretending Olga is an angel looking over us.
Tía Milagros shakes her head as she looks at herself in the mirror. “Que malcriada. What happened to you? You weren’t always so angry, so…I don’t know…”
“What? I wasn’t always so what, tía?” I feel the loud music vibrating all of my insides like jelly.
Lorena’s eyes open wide, and she sucks in a big gulp of air. She knows I’m about to pop off.
“I don’t know, never mind.” Tía Milagros shakes her head and applies another coat of her light orange lipstick in the mirror.
“Just say it,” I insist. “What is so terrible about me? Why does everyone treat me like I’m a disappointment? Who are you to judge me, huh? Tell me. Like you’re so great—all bitter because your husband left your ass years ago. Get over it already.”
Tía Milagros’s eyes glisten. She presses her mouth shut as if to keep herself from saying anything else.
“Holy shit, Julia,” Lorena whispers as tía Milagros storms out of the bathroom.
—
Lorena makes me dance with her cousin Danny, who I’ve never seen before. I don’t even know how he got in because he wasn’t invited. Before I can protest, Lorena pushes me right into him on the dance floor.
Danny is not my type at all—shaved head, shiny shirt, snakeskin boots, and a gold chain that looks like a rosary. Plus, he smells like vinegar. That’s the opposite of what I like, and Lorena knows it. She’s always making fun of me for liking dorky white guys in the movies we watch, and tries to set me up with dudes I would never in a million years touch with a latex glove. Danny doesn’t say much, and neither do I.
I can barely keep up with the fast cumbia. As Danny spins and jerks me around, I can feel Amá’s eyes hooked to my back. According to this party, I can dance with boys now, but she doesn’t seem happy about this.
—
I keep thinking of tía Milagros the rest of the night. She had it coming, but I know I’m screwed. Gossiping is her favorite pastime. If she had a dating profile, it would probably read something like: “My hobbies include knitting, cooking, teasing my bangs, talking shit, and collecting polyester dresses that look terrible on my body.”
Toward the end of the night, Angie comes in with a giant yellow gift bag. She looks so much better than the last time I saw her. Her curly hair is in a loose bun, and her green eyes are outlined with dark eyeliner. Her blue wrap dress hugs her body perfectly.
I pretend I don’t see her, but she walks toward me anyway. “Happy birthday. Congratulations,” she says, handing me the
bag.
“It’s not my birthday, and I’m practically sixteen.” “Oh yeah. Then why…” Angie scrunches her face.
I don’t feel like explaining. “Why are you here?” I know that’s rude, but I’m still angry.
“Your mom invited me.”
“Yeah, I guess the party is more for Olga than it is for me.” “What do you mean?” My little cousin Gabby runs between us. “Forget it.”
“Well, I just wanted to say congrats.”
“How nice of you! I’m so delighted.” I’m not entirely sure if Angie knows I’m being sarcastic.
“No problem.” Angie looks at the door like she wants to leave. “Did Olga have a boyfriend?” I say before she walks away. “Or
girlfriend?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Why did you say that thing about her love life the last time I saw you? Did she?”
“First of all, I didn’t say anything about Olga having a love life; you put those words in my mouth. Second of all, you’re her sister. Don’t you think you would know? How would she be able to keep that from your family? You really think Olga would be able to have some sort of secret relationship without your mother finding out?
You know better than anyone that you can’t get anything past your mom.”
“What do you mean by that? Why would you say ‘secret relationship’? That’s really freaking suspicious.”
Angie sighs.
“There’s something you’re not telling me. I know it. That’s why you’re acting so weird.”
“Calm down, Julia.”
One of the things I hate most in life is people telling me to calm down, as if I’m some out-of-control lunatic who isn’t entitled to have feelings.
“Don’t talk to me like that. Just get out of my face. Just…just leave, okay?”
Angie walks away, and I grip the bag until my knuckles turn white. I remind myself to breathe. When I turn around, she’s hugging Amá. She’s probably telling her that she stopped by only to drop off the gift, that she has another obligation.
After the music stops and people start gathering the leftovers, I see tía Milagros talking to my parents. Apá furrows his brow and shakes his head. Amá covers her mouth with her hand. I sit at an empty table and eat the rest of my cake. It’s peach, the same color as my dress, and so sweet, it makes me sick, but I keep shoveling it into my mouth anyway. Maybe I can poison myself with sugar.
—
We ride home in a thick fog of silence. The apartment smells funky because we forgot to take out the garbage before we left. Apá flicks on the light, and the roaches scurry in all directions, looking for dark corners to hide in. We do the cockroach dance, which consists of stomping all over the kitchen floor, because they have a party whenever we’re not home. This time I have to lift my dress and kill them with my new white shoes.
When we’re done, Amá sweeps them up and flushes them down the toilet, in case some of them still have babies inside them. Usually, she mops the floor with bleach or Pine-Sol, but it doesn’t seem like she’s going to do that tonight.
Amá comes back from the bathroom, and they both turn toward me.
“Your aunt told me what you said to her in the bathroom.” She comes closer. “All this money we spend on your party, and you act like this and embarrass us?”
“It was her fault,” I say, looking away. “She never knows when to shut her mouth.”
“Is this how we raised you, cabrona? To disrespect your elders? Who do you think you are?” Apá yells suddenly. This is probably the most he’s said to me in years.
“Julia, I didn’t raise my children to be disrespectful. Why are you like this? What have I done to deserve this?” Amá keeps using the plural, even though I’m the only one left. She turns to Apá. “Rafael, I don’t know what to do with your daughter anymore,” which is what she says when she’s mad at me. Suddenly, I no longer belong to her.
Apá doesn’t say anything, as if he’s so angry that words are useless to him.
Amá sighs and wrings her hands. “Maybe Bigotes is right.
Maybe this country is ruining you.”
“Like living in Mexico would fix anything,” I say. “My life sucks, but it would suck even harder in Mexico, and you know it.”
I wonder if Amá is going to cry, hit me, or both, because she looks like I annihilated her. And it startles me.
Amá just shakes her head. “You know, Julia, maybe if you knew how to behave yourself, to keep your mouth shut, your sister would still be alive. Have you ever thought about that?” She finally says it. She says what her big, sad eyes were telling me all along.
