I didn’t know things could get any worse at home, but apparently they can. The apartment feels like the play The House of Bernarda Alba, but much less interesting. Just like the crazy and grieving mother, Amá keeps all the blinds and curtains drawn, which makes our cramped apartment even more stuffy and depressing.
Because of my punishment for going into Olga’s room, all I can do is read, draw, and write in my journal. Amá also took away my phone. I can’t even close my bedroom door because she opens it as soon as I do. When I tell her I need privacy, she laughs and tells me I’ve become too Americanized. “Privacy! I never had any privacy when I was a girl. You kids here think you can do whatever you want,” she says.
I don’t even know what she thinks I might do if I’m alone in my room. There’s no way I’d try touching myself with her yelling and lurking all the time. I don’t bother looking out the window because all I can see is the building next door. And now I can’t go into Olga’s room, not even at night when they’re sleeping, because Amá installed a lock and I can’t find the key. I’ve looked everywhere. As soon as I can bust out of here, I’m going to the Continental Hotel to see if I can find anything about Olga. I’ve tried calling Angie about a million times from a land line, and she still hasn’t called me back. She has to know something.
I usually go inside my closet to cry so my parents don’t hear me. Other times I just lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, imagining the kind of life I want to have when I get older. I picture myself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, climbing pyramids in Egypt, dancing in the streets in Spain, riding in a boat in Venice, and walking on the Great Wall of China. In these dreams, I’m a famous writer who
wears flamboyant scarves and travels all around the world, meeting fascinating people. No one tells me what to do. I go wherever I want and do whatever I please. Then I realize that I’m still in my tiny bedroom and can’t even go outside. It’s like a living death. I almost envy Olga, which I know is completely fucked up.
If I tell Amá that I’m bored, she tells me to pick up a mop and start cleaning. She doesn’t believe in boredom when there’s so much to do around the house, as if cleaning the apartment were as entertaining as a day at the beach. When she says stuff like this, I feel the anger bubble in my guts. Sometimes I love her and sometimes I hate her. Mostly, I feel a combination of both. I know it’s wrong to hate your parents, especially when your sister is dead, but I can’t help it, so I keep it to myself, and the resentment grows through me like weeds. I thought deaths were supposed to bring people together, but I guess that’s just what happens on TV.
I wonder if other people feel this way. I asked Lorena once, but she said, “No, how could I possibly hate my own mother?” What was wrong with me? But that’s probably because her mom lets her do whatever the hell she wants.
—
I don’t like most of my teachers because they’re as interesting as buckets of rocks, but English with Mr. Ingman is always fun. There’s something about Mr. Ingman that I liked right away. He looks like a dorky suburban dad, but his eyes are friendly and his weird, jagged laugh is kinda funny. And he treats us like we’re adults, like he actually cares about what we think and feel. Most teachers talk down to us, as if we’re a bunch of immature dummies who don’t know anything about anything. I don’t know if anyone’s told Mr. Ingman about my dead sister, because he doesn’t look at me as if I were some sad cripple.
As soon as we sit down today, Mr. Ingman makes us write down our favorite word and says we’ll have to explain it to the rest of the class.
I’ve loved words since I learned how to read, but I’ve never thought about my favorite ones. How can you choose just one? I
don’t know why such a simple task makes me so nervous. It takes me a few minutes to come up with anything, then I can’t stop.
Dusk Serenity Flesh Oblivious Vespers Serendipitous Kaleidoscope Dazzle Wisteria
Hieroglyphics Sputter
By the time Mr. Ingman gets to me, I finally decide on wisteria.
“So what’s yours, Julia?” Mr. Ingman nods toward me. He always says my name exactly how I pronounce it, the Spanish way. “Yes, well, um…I had a lot of words, but in the end I picked
wisteria.”
“What do you like about that word?” Mr. Ingman sits on his desk and leans forward.
“I don’t know. It’s a flower, and it…it just sounds beautiful. Also, it rhymes with hysteria, which I think is kinda cool. And maybe this sounds weird, but when I say it, I like the way it feels in my mouth.”
I regret that last part because all the guys start laughing. I should have known.
Mr. Ingman shakes his head. “Come on, guys. Let’s show Julia some respect. I expect you all to be kind to each other in this class. If you can’t do that, I’ll ask you to leave. Understand?”
The class quiets down. After we get through everyone, Mr. Ingman asks us why he made us do this exercise. A few people shrug, but no one says anything.
“The words you choose can tell us a lot about yourself,” he says. “In this class, I want you to learn to appreciate—wait, no—I want you to love language. Not only will I expect you to read difficult texts and learn how to analyze them in smart and surprising ways, I expect you to learn hundreds of new words. See, I’m teaching you standard English, which is the language of power. What does that mean?” Mr. Ingman raises his eyebrows and looks around the room. “Anyone?”
The room is silent. I want to answer, but I’m too embarrassed. I see Leslie smirk next to me. What a jerk. She always looks like she’s just sniffed a dirty diaper.
“It means that you will learn to speak and write in a way that will give you authority. Does that mean that the way you speak in your neighborhood is wrong? That slang is bad? That you can’t say on fleek or whatever you kids are saying these days? Absolutely not. That form of speaking is often fun, inventive, and creative, but would it be helpful to speak that way in a job interview? Unfortunately not. I want you to think about these things. I want you to think about words in a way you’ve never done before. I want you to leave this class with the tools to compete with kids in the suburbs, because you’re just as capable, just as smart.”
After Mr. Ingman gives us a short lesson on the importance of American literature, the bell rings. This is definitely my favorite class.
—
On Saturday morning, Amá is making flour tortillas. I can smell the dough and hear the rolling pin from my bedroom when I wake up. Sometimes Amá lies in bed all day, and other times she’s in a cooking-and-cleaning frenzy. It’s impossible to predict. I know she’s going to make me help her, so I stay in bed reading until she forces me to get up.
“Get up, huevona!” I hear her yelling from the other room. Amá calls me huevona all the time. She says I don’t have the right to be tired, because I don’t work cleaning houses all day like she does. I guess she has a point, but it’s a weird thing to call a girl if you really think about it. Huevos means “eggs,” so it means that your
eggs (balls) are so big that they drag you down and make you lazy. Telling a girl her balls are too heavy is bizarre, but I never point this out because I know it will piss her off.
After I brush my teeth and wash my face, I go to the kitchen. Amá has already covered the table and counters with rolled-out tortillas. She’s bent over the table, stretching a little ball of dough into a perfect circle.
“Put on an apron, and start heating these up,” Amá says, pointing to the tortillas scattered throughout the kitchen.
“How do I know when they’re done?” “You just know.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“What kind of girl doesn’t know when a tortilla is done?” She looks irritated already.
“Me. I don’t. Please just tell me.”
“You’ll figure it out. It’s common sense.”
I study the tortillas as they heat on the comal and try to flip them before they burn. When I turn the first one, I see that I’ve left it too long. That side is almost burned. Amá tells me that the second one is too pale, that I have to leave it on longer, but when I do, it gets too crisp. When I burn the third one completely, Amá sighs and tells me to roll them out instead, while she heats them. I take her rolling pin and try my best to shape the little balls into circles. Most of them end up in weird shapes, no matter how much I try to fix them.
“That one looks like a chancla,” Amá says, looking at my worst one.
“It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t look like a slipper. Jesus.” I feel myself grow more and more frustrated. I take a deep breath. I don’t want to fight with her because I heard her crying in their bedroom last night.
“They have to be perfect.”
“Why? We’re just going to eat them. Why does it matter if they’re not in perfect shape?”
“If you’re going to do something, you have to do it right, or else you shouldn’t do it at all,” Amá says, turning back to the stove.
“Olga’s were always so nice and round.”
“I don’t care about Olga’s tortillas,” I say, throwing off my apron. I’ve had enough. “I don’t care about any of this crap. I don’t see the point of going through all this trouble when we can buy them at the store.”
“Get back here,” Amá yells after me. “What kind of woman are you going to be if you can’t even make a tortilla?”
—
After two weeks of no TV, no phone, and no going out whatsoever, Amá says maybe she’ll end my punishment today. Little does she know that I’m going to the Continental after school. I’m tired of waiting for permission to go anywhere, and something about Olga is driving me crazy. Maybe I can convince Lorena to go with me.
I put on bright red lipstick, my favorite black dress, red fishnets, and black Chuck Taylors. I flat-iron my hair until it falls straight down my back. I don’t even care that I look kinda fat or have a giant pimple throbbing on my chin. I’m going to try my best to have a good day. Well, as good as it can be when your sister is dead and you feel like you might lose your mind at any moment.
When Amá sees me come out of my room, she makes the sign of the cross and doesn’t say anything—that’s what she does when she hates what I’m wearing or I say something weird, which is always.
I put the leather journal Olga gave me for Christmas in my backpack. It was one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received. I guess even when it didn’t seem like it, Olga was always paying attention.
When Amá drops me off at school, she kisses me on the cheek and reminds me that we have to start looking for a dress, that I can’t show up to my party looking like I worship Satan.
Lorena meets me at my locker and gives me a hug before class. Sometimes I don’t know how Lorena and I are still best friends. We’re so different and look like complete opposites. People even look at us funny when they see us together. She likes spandex, and bright and crazy patterns and colors. She wears leggings as pants. I prefer band T-shirts, jeans, and dark dresses. Most of the clothes
in my closet are black, gray, or red. When I started listening to New Wave and indie, Lorena got into hip-hop and R & B. We always argue about music—and everything else, for that matter— but I’ve known her forever and we understand each other in a weird way I can’t describe. She can tell what I’m thinking just by looking at me. Lorena is ghetto, loud, and acts ignorant as hell sometimes, but I love her. She’ll fight anyone who even looks at me funny. (One time, Faviola, a girl we’ve known since grade school, made fun of my pants, and Lorena knocked her desk over and told her she looked like a scared Chihuahua.) The bell rings before I can ask Lorena to go downtown with me after school. I run to algebra before I’m late. Not only do I hate math with every fiber of my being, I suspect my teacher Mr. Simmons is a racist Republican. He has a handlebar mustache, and his desk is covered with American flags. He even has a tiny Confederate one he probably thinks we don’t notice. What kind of person would have something like that? He also has a dumb Ronald Reagan quote about jelly beans taped to the wall, which is another obvious clue: You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans. What does that even mean? How exactly do people eat jelly beans differently? Is that supposed to be deep or something? No one else seems to notice or care about these kinds of things, though. I tried to explain it to Lorena, but she just shrugged and said, “White people.”
While Mr. Simmons goes on and on about integers, I work on a poem in my journal. I only have a couple of pages left.
Red ribbons unraveling with the noise of my chaos. A light beating like a drum.
I opened my wings and took
a swim in a warm, euphoric dream of hands pressed to faces,
opened to the mad dancing
and combusted into a new constellation. The dream too warm
for the flesh, too rough for the soft touch of fingertips, holding my universe
in a single grasp. Everything sank, falling to the ground, became blue.
The sunsets raining behind me like a monsoon.
As I’m daydreaming about more images for my poem, Mr. Simmons calls on me, of course. He probably noticed my hatred for him pulsing around me.
“Julia, what is the answer to problem four?” He takes his glasses off and squints at me. He says my name the wrong way (Jewlia), even though I already told him how to pronounce it. Amá has never let me say it the English way. She says she’s the one who named me and that people can’t go around changing it for their own convenience. We agree on that, at least. It’s not like it’s hard to pronounce.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know,” I tell Mr. Simmons. “Were you paying attention?”
“No, I wasn’t. Sorry.” “And why not?”
My face feels hot. Everyone is watching me, waiting for my humiliation like vultures. Why can’t he just back off? “Look, I said I was sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Mr. Simmons is really pissed now. “I want you to come to the board and solve the problem,” he says, pointing at me. I guess he was never taught that it’s impolite to point at people.
I want to get all Bartleby about it, tell him I don’t fucking feel like it, but I know I shouldn’t. I’ve gotten in enough trouble lately. But why does he have to pick on me? Doesn’t he know my sister is dead? My heart is racing, and I can feel a thick pulse in my left cheek. I wonder if my face is twitching.
“No.”
“What did you say to me?” “I said no.”
Now Mr. Simmons is pink as ham. His hands are on his hips, and he looks as though he wants to bash my skull. Before he says anything else, I shove my stuff into my backpack and run out the door. I can’t deal with this today.
“Get back here right now, young lady,” he yells after me, but I keep going. I can hear everyone screaming, laughing, and clapping as I walk out the door.
“Damn, son!” I hear Marcos yell.
“Oh hell no, she told you!” I think that’s Jorge, which makes me almost forgive him for having a rattail.
The sky is clear—a blue so bright and beautiful that it hurts to look at it. Maybe I should’ve waited until the end of the day to see if I could convince Lorena to go with me, but there’s no way I’m going back inside now. The birds are carrying on, and the streets smell like frying chorizo. Cars are honking. Men and women are selling fruit and corn from carts. Mexican music is blaring from every direction. Most of the time I hate walking through my neighborhood because of the gangbangers and guys whistling from their cars, but today nobody even looks at me.
I know I shouldn’t have left school, but Amá is always talking about how it’s a sin to waste this and that and it feels like a sin to waste a day like this. Besides, now I don’t have to wait all day to go to the Continental.
As I walk to the bus, I watch a helicopter fly toward downtown until it disappears into a tiny black speck. I can see the hazy skyline in the distance. As long as I can find the Sears Tower, I know I can’t get lost.
A green balloon floats past a power line, then gets tangled in a tree. I remember a movie I watched in first grade about a red balloon that chased a French boy throughout the streets of Paris. I imagine this balloon coming loose and chasing a little Mexican girl throughout the streets of Chicago.
I walk into the most unappetizing diner in the whole entire city. The counters are avocado green, and most of the stools are torn. Even the windows look greasy. It makes me feel like I went into a time machine. It reminds me of the painting Nighthawks, but
even more depressing. I’m not sure where I am exactly—I think I’m near the South Loop.
I sit down at the counter, and the waitress asks me what I’ll have in a thick European accent. Maybe she’s Polish or from one of those other countries in Eastern Europe. I can’t tell exactly. She looks tired but pretty in a way that doesn’t call too much attention to itself, in a way that doesn’t say, “Hey, hey, look at me!”
I only have $8.58 in my pocket, and I still have to get back on the bus or train, so I have to choose carefully. What I really want is this meal called “The Hobo,” which is made of eggs, hash browns, cheese, and bacon—practically everything I love—but it’s $7.99. I won’t have enough left to get back home. I order a cheese Danish and a cup of coffee, even though the smell of bacon makes my mouth drip.
I read the newspaper on the counter while I drink my coffee, which is so awful I can barely stomach it. It tastes as if they boiled old socks and dumped the liquid into a coffeepot, but I gulp it down anyway because I’m not about to waste my two dollars. And the Danish is stale, of course. I should have seen that coming. I scoop out the cheese and eat it with my finger.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” the waitress asks as she refills my mug.
“Yeah, I should be, but one of my teachers was being a total jerk.”
“Hmmm.” She raises an eyebrow; she seems suspicious. “He was, I swear.”
“What did he do?”
“He called on me to solve a problem on the board. I didn’t know the answer, but he kept insisting. It was so embarrassing.” I realize how stupid this sounds when I say it out loud.
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” she says.
“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t, huh?” We both laugh.
“Well, I think you should probably go back before you get in trouble.” She smiles.
“My sister is dead,” I blurt out. “What?” she asks, as if she’s misheard.
“She died last month. I can’t concentrate. I guess that’s the real reason I left.”
“Oh no,” she says, her pretty face now sad and severe. Why did I tell her this? It’s not her problem. “You poor girl. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” I say, still not knowing why I just told her about Olga. She squeezes my hand, then walks to a table behind me.
I write in my journal for a little while and try to figure out what to do next. Might as well make a day of it since I’m already going downtown. Whatever I do has to be free or close to it, or else I’ll have to walk home. After some brainstorming and doodling, I decide on the Art Institute, which is one of my favorite places in the whole world. Well, in Chicago. I haven’t seen much of the world yet. They have a suggested donation, but I never pay it. Key word: suggested.
When I ask the waitress for my bill, she tells me someone’s already paid for me.
“What? Who? Wait, I don’t understand.”
“The man who was sitting over there.” She points to an empty stool at the end of the counter. “He heard you were having a bad day.”
I can’t believe it. Why would someone do something like that without asking for anything in return? He didn’t even hit on me or stare at my boobs or wait around for me to thank him. I run out to the street to find him, but it’s too late. He’s gone.
I take out my notebook and stare at the address for the Continental. I’m not very good with directions, but I think I can probably figure it out without a map. I walk northwest. It’s not that hard when you know where the lake is. The buildings are blocking the sun, so it’s starting to feel cold. I wish I would have brought a jacket.
A homeless man with no legs screams in front of a Starbucks. I think he’s drunk because I can’t understand what he’s saying. Something about a llama? A mother and daughter brush past me with two giant American Girl bags. I’ve heard those dolls cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I can’t wait until I have enough money to buy whatever the hell I want without worrying about
every single penny. I, however, would never spend it on something as stupid as a doll.
The Continental is small but lavish, lots of blue and off-white. It’s called a “boutique hotel,” whatever the hell that means. The woman at the front desk hangs up the phone when I approach her. “Can I help you, miss?” Her hair is drawn into a slick, tight ponytail that looks like it hurts, and her perfume smells like a dusty flower in summer twilight.
“Did you ever see this girl come in here? She was my sister.” I give her a picture of Olga at tía Cuca’s barbecue a month before she died. She’s holding a plate of food and smiling with her eyes closed. I figured it was best to use the most recent one I could find.
“I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to give any information about our guests.” She smiles apologetically. I see a tiny smear of pink lipstick on her teeth.
“But she’s dead.”
She winces and shakes her head. “I’m so sorry.” “Can you at least tell me if you’ve seen her?”
“Again, I’m so, so sorry for your loss, but I can’t. It’s against our policy, sweetheart.”
“Why would a policy matter if she’s dead? Can you just look up her name? Olga Reyes. Please.”
“The only people we’re allowed to give information to is the police.”
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. I know it’s not her fault, but I’m so frustrated. “Okay, well, can you at least tell me if this hotel is connected to the Skyline? Are they owned by the same company?”
“Yes, they’re a part of the same conglomerate. Why do you ask?” “Thanks.” I walk out the door, without bothering to explain.
—
Before entering the museum, I take a walk around the gardens outside. Everyone is desperately trying to hang on to the sunshine, enjoying the unexpected warmth before winter takes a cold gray crap on the city and makes us all miserable again.
Though the trees are changing colors, flowers are still in bloom, and there are bees everywhere. Everything is so perfect I wish I could keep it in a jar. A young woman in a flowered dress is breastfeeding her baby. A man with long gray hair is lying on a bench, with his head on his wife’s lap. A couple is making out against a tree. For a split second, my mind tricks me into believing the girl is Olga, because they have the same long ponytail, skinny body, and flat butt, but when she turns around, she looks nothing like my sister.
When I tell the woman at the counter that I will pay zero dollars instead of the suggested donation, she eyeballs me as if I were some sort of criminal.
“Don’t we all have a right to art? Are you trying to keep me from an education? That seems very bourgeoisie, if you ask me.” I learned that word in history class last year and try to use it whenever it’s appropriate, because Mr. Ingman always tells us that language is power.
The woman just sighs, rolls her eyes, and hands me the ticket.
She probably hates her job. I know I would.
I walk over to my favorite painting, Judith Slaying Holofernes. We learned about the artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, in art class last year. My teacher Ms. Schwartz told us something bad happened to her, but wouldn’t tell us what, so I looked it up after class. It turns out that her painting teacher raped her when she was seventeen. What a scumbag.
Almost all the Renaissance and Baroque paintings we studied in class were of baby Jesus, which is not very interesting, so when I saw Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings of biblical women killing all those horrible men, my heart trembled. She was such a bad ass. Every time I see Judith Slaying Holofernes, I notice something new. That’s what’s so great about art and poetry—right when you think you “get it,” you see something else. You can find a million hidden meanings. What I love most about the painting is that Judith and her maid are slicing off the man’s head, but they don’t even look scared. They’re totally casual, as if they’re just washing dishes or something. I wonder if that’s how it really happened.
When Ms. Schwartz said that one of her paintings was at our museum, I decided I needed to see it right away. This is my fourth time this year. I love art almost as much as I love books. It’s hard to explain the way I feel when I see a beautiful painting. It’s a combination of scared, happy, excited, and sad all at once, like a soft light that glows in my chest and stomach for a few seconds. Sometimes it takes my breath away, which I didn’t know was a real thing until I stood in front of this painting. I used to think it was just some saying in pop songs about stupid people in love. I had a similar feeling when I read an Emily Dickinson poem. I was too excited and threw my book across the room. It was so good that it made me angry. People would think I’m nuts if I try to explain it to them, so I don’t.
I crouch down to get a better look at the bottom part, which I never paid much attention to before. The blood is dripping on the white sheet, and the fibers of the silk are so delicately painted that it’s hard to believe they aren’t real.
I can’t get enough of this place. I can be here forever and ever, studying all the art and walking up and down the dramatic marble staircases. I love the Thorne Miniature Rooms, too. I can spend hours imagining a tiny version of myself living in those fancy, little houses. I always have to come to the museum alone, though, because no one will ever join me. I tried dragging Lorena once, but she just laughed and called me a nerd. I suppose I can’t argue with that. I asked Olga one time, but she was going shopping with Angie that day.
As I wander around, I find a painting I’ve never noticed before— Anna Maria Dashwood, later Marchioness of Ely by Sir Thomas Lawrence. I gasp when I see the woman’s face, because my sister’s eyes are staring back at me. I never paid attention to that expression before—neither joyous nor somber, but as if she were trying to tell me something.
I walk around and around, and lose track of time. I look at my favorite paintings again—The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso, the Cybernetic Lobster Telephone by Salvador Dalí, and the one made of dots by Georges Seurat. Every time I see it, I promise myself I’ll go to Paris some day. I’ll roam through the city by myself, eating cheese until I burst.
—
It’s rush hour when I finally get on the train to go back home. The bus is too unreliable at this time. All the men and women in suits are all sweaty and tired. If I end up being an office lady who wears slacks and changes into white sneakers to walk home from the train, I’ll just jump off a skyscraper.
The train is crammed with people, but I find a window seat facing backward, next to a man in a filthy coat, who smiles and says, “Good evening,” when I sit down. He smells like pee, but at least he has good manners. I take out my journal to make some notes. I love to watch the city from above—the graffiti on factories, the honking cars, the old buildings with shattered windows, everyone in a hurry. It’s exciting to see all the movement and energy. Even though I want to move far away from here, moments like these make me love Chicago.
A couple of black kids near the doors start beat-boxing, which makes a man frown and shake his head. I think it sounds amazing, though. I wonder how they can make that kind of music with their mouths. How can they sound exactly like machines?
I go back to the poem I started in Mr. Simmons’s class, when a woman with a burned face makes her way through the crowded aisle, asking everyone to spare some change. When she gets closer, I see that her green T-shirt says God Has Been So Good to Me! The letters are so bright and shiny, they feel like they’re yelling. She puts her hand in front of me, and I reach into my backpack to pull out the rest of the money I have left. The mystery guy at the diner paid for my food today, so why not?
“Have a blessed day,” she says, and smiles. “Jesus loves you.” He doesn’t, but I smile back anyway.
I look out the window and watch the skyline lit up by the evening sun. The buildings reflect a dazzling orange-red, and if you glance, it almost looks like the buildings are on fire.
I bet the school has already called my parents and I’m in some deep shit again. It was worth it, though. I open my journal to a blank page and write, God Has Been So Good to Me! before I forget.
