All about Skin (29 page)

The Veronica herself obeys the English-only rule well enough, although she lapses into Spanish phrases now and then. When she does, she gasps and covers her mouth, as if she has inadvertently cursed. For all I know, she has.

She came from Mexico bearing crosses and a note. The crosses were gifts from Taxco, a little town outside of Mexico City whose winding cobblestone streets hold stores filled with silver.

Tía Mari no longer practices and the Veronica herself has self-identified as atheist, although I don't know where the bad spirits figure in. I think Tía Mari must have known how Catholic Mom was and sent the gifts in a show of goodwill, as if to say her daughter was living under our Catholic rule now and should be judged accordingly.

The Veronica stood before Mom as she read the note, her eyes downcast, her hands behind her back, a smile playing on her lips. It offered salutations, many thanks, and concluded, “If she misbehaves, send her back.” Mom looked up from the note to give me a troubled look. These words begged the question, what could the Veronica possibly do that would merit familial deportation?

We had yet to find out.

I have my guesses as to what vices she's into, though. For one, I'm pretty sure she's had sex. She admitted as much when I asked if she had a boyfriend.

“I used to. He wanted to do it all the time.”

“Do what?” I asked.

She started to answer and then remembered herself. “Uh, he wanted to hug all the time. Yes.”

Right.

The phone rings and we let the answering machine get it. I've finally managed to convey to her the beauty of screening calls.

“Hi, Olivia, this is José. I heard that I'm scheduled to give the ‘Renouncing Satan and His Works' talk. But I'd like to exchange it for the ‘Accept Jesus as Your Savior' talk, if that's possible. Anyway, call me back.”

This merits lifting our eyebrows at each other.

The Veronica saunters to the kitchen. “Mmm, chocolate! No!” and there's a slapping sound, which I recognize as the Veronica slapping her own hand. She appears in the doorway, gathers up her belly in her hands, and pleads, “Look at me! I am fat!”

She does this, a lot. Usually after a grand meal of pizza and hot sauce, or that hazelnut spread she loves. She pulls her shirt up in ritualistic manner and slaps on her belly like it's a drum. When she hits her belly, a little shockwave travels through it and the rhinestone in her navel winks from the pudginess like a buried gem.

We'd like to tell the Veronica not to exaggerate. But the truth is when she lets her
pansa
hang out like that, it looks very round and big indeed. It's an impressive
pansa
, and we should give credit where credit is due.

My cell phone rings this time and it's Mom calling to ask what we're up to. She will be late tonight, going to visit her aunt, just returned home from the hospital. I tell her I have plans to go to a party down the street. Sonia Mendoza invited me at church last week. “And La Veronica?” Mom asks.

“What about her?”

“You could take your cousin with you.”

“It's not for high school kids, Mom. She can't go.”

“Why not? Will there be drinking?”

I'm not twenty-one yet. “No.”

“Then you can take your cousin.”

The party is only a few blocks away, across from the park, so we walk. I want to tell the Veronica, for God's sake, don't take your
pansa
out in front of anyone. And if you could rub off some of that blue eye shadow, I'd appreciate it. But of course I don't. I'm a little nervous because there will probably be people I know from grade school there. Sonia still keeps in touch with them. I don't even talk to anyone from high school anymore.

Louisa Campos is standing outside the house smoking. The Veronica makes like she's going to ask for a cigarette but I shake my head no.

“How you been?” she asks me, but her eyes drop before she finishes the question.

“OK. This is my cousin Veronica. She's visiting from Mexico.” I feel a little relieved actually that the Veronica gives me something to say.

“Hi,” Louisa says and blows smoke.

“I am the daughter of her mother's cousin,” Veronica says, a little too enthusiastically.

I look at her. “That's what I said.”

“It's kind of lame in there,” Louisa says, nodding toward the house. “But there's beer in the kitchen. And Greg Ríos is here, I can't believe it.” Her lethargy actually lifts and her eyes light up when she says his name.

“Greg Ríos is here?”

Greg Ríos was my first crush, the boy I saw nearly every day for eight years and who starred in my middle-grade fantasies as assuredly as any Hollywood actor since. In third grade he tugged on my cowgirl braid in the Halloween parade. In fourth grade he laughed when I called a dog a chichihuahua. And there are countless other such encounters fraught with potential romance. I want to see him alone, without my depraved blue-lidded Mexican cousin as sidekick. Surely a long-awaited reunion is worth the Veronica blackening her lungs a little.

“Louisa, would you mind if Veronica hangs out with you for a while?”

She shrugs, which I take to be acceptance.

“I'll be back,” I tell the Veronica. “Just wait here for me.”

She nods and winks at me. I'm not sure why. But I know she'll be fine. She's not shy, at all.

I walk into the house and it's crowded and dark and loud. There's someone playing DJ in the corner. I search for a good spot to stand and get trapped between two girls discussing a third girl's pregnancy and a fourth girl's indecision on a major. I scan the room, but I don't see anyone I know. Too much time is passing and I'm thinking of leaving. I've had my fill of disbelieving parents and shattered dreams. Oh, and the pregnancy too. And then I see him. Greg Ríos.

Back in grade school he carried around some baby fat. Now he's tall and brawny. And he still has those gorgeous brown eyes.

He's making his way to the kitchen, where I realize I'm strategically standing by the beer cooler. He stops to talk to a few people. He was always popular. When he's near enough, I say, “Hi, Greg.”

“Hi.” His smile is genuine.

When he doesn't say more, I say, “It's me, Monique. From Cantwell.”

“Monique, is that you?” He grabs a beer from the cooler and straightens. “How are you?” He wraps his arms around me for a hug and for a moment I'm smothered.

“I'm good,” I say when I'm released. “I'm going to USC now. It's so good to see you. I mean, really really good. I remember you from school. I mean, wow.”

He's gazing at me now. He licks his lips and moves closer.

“Monique, you wanna go somewhere?”

“Go somewhere?”

He puts his hand on my waist and whispers in my ear. “We could go upstairs, catch up.”

This is happening too fast. Go upstairs with Greg Ríos? Catch up? I fumble to stall. “That's an idea. Hey, have you seen my cousin? The girl from Mexico?”

He frowns like he used to when taking one of Mrs. Larchmont's math tests. Then he appears to have a thought and smiles. “Is she the girl doing tequila shots with Grumpy?”

“Tequila shots?” My heart stops. Grumpy?

He leads me to the backyard and there's the Veronica at a picnic table, all glassy-eyed and smiling, swaying even though she's sitting down. She picks up a shot glass and throws it back, wipes her mouth with her forearm.

Shit.

“Your turn!” she yells at the guy sitting across from her. He must be Grumpy and he's massive, straining the buttons on his plaid T-shirt, his keychain dragging on the floor, sweat glistening on his face. Grumpy is not smiling. He looks decidedly uncomfortable. I've arrived just in time to see him gag and stagger from the table to rush out of the yard.

The Veronica shoots up to applause. “I win! Monique!” She makes it out of the table easily enough, only to begin retching all over Sonia Mendoza's shoes.

“Gross!” Sonia shrieks and grabs onto Greg, who is laughing so hard he's caught off-balance and they fall to the grass.

I'd like to tell Sonia to let go of Greg, but I also don't relish the thought of her tearing into me over her shoes. And I have the Veronica to deal with. I haul her out of there, pulling her through the yard and away from the house.

Louisa is still standing out front alone. She blows smoke after us. “Told you it was lame.”

We arrive home to find Mom watering the lawn. She turns off the hose when she sees me practically dragging a near-unconscious Veronica up the driveway.

“What happened?” she demands.

For one shining moment I think I could be rid of the Veronica, of her screaming making me feel like a ghost in my own house and having to entertain her and all the Nutella gone after one day. And I have never lied to Mom.

But it comes so easily I surprise myself. “I gave her a drink, to try. I'm sorry.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“That must have been one big drink.”

I look away. She is examining me and I'm not sure what to do. I'm not usually in trouble like this. Finally she lets out a breath. “You put her to bed and make sure she drinks lots of water.”

The next morning, I am groggy. Veronica yawns like crazy and is a little more subdued than usual. But otherwise she's no worse for wear.

I'm doodling. I find it calms me.

“You draw me,” the Veronica says.

“What?”

“I want my picture done.” She collapses on the couch with a laugh and throws her arms back over her head in a dramatic stretch.

“I'm not very good.”

“Please, please, Monique!”

I cave, and after a few minutes, she gets up to look at the page.

“I am bald!”

“I haven't finished yet. Besides the hair is an accident.”

“You don't like my hair?”

“No, it's an Aristotelian accident.”

“Is that really bad?” The Veronica takes her head in both hands and runs to the bathroom.

“That just means that your hair isn't what makes you who you are,” I call after her. “You could be a human being without hair. You could be Veronica Sandoval, without hair.”

“I don't think I'd want to,” she says, looking through the doorway, her hands tangled up in the dyed red strands. “Bald? Without any hair!”

“Never mind.”

The next time I look up she is crunched inside the doorway again. “I'm not moving till you give my hair back!”

I move the pencil to the page, then lift it. “Well, I don't know—”

“Monique, please!”

I scratch my head with the pencil, look at my nails, whistle. The Veronica starts shaking from all her giggling, and I start laughing, both of us waiting for her to shake the earth.

Emily Raboteau

N
ow that the days shuffle into each other like a deck of cards I can't remember which of the eight classes was the one where we learned about the Rapture. But I can remember the name of the woman who first told us about it—Beatrice—because it was on our short list of girl names. As it turned out I gave birth to a boy and we named him Clay.

Beatrice was a willowy white woman with long hair, a long face, and a long torso. She was a modern dance teacher and spoke about being thrown off the dance by her new center of balance. I envied her ankles, which remained slender as pilsner glasses, deep into the third trimester. Even though her due date fell a week before mine, she looked a lot less pregnant. Her posture was perfect. She wore her new belly like an accessory. I, on the other hand, was not a graceful pregnant woman. I was as big as America. You name it, I had it: varicose veins, edema, zits, nausea, heartburn, hemorrhoids, gas, bovine brain … The load was almost too much to bear.

My legs felt like they'd been torn off and then rejoined the wrong way in the sockets of my child-bearing hips. My swollen feet no longer fit into my shoes. Plus, I was afflicted by something called “round ligament pain,” which was far too anodyne a description for the stabbing sensation it produced in my groin when I walked. I had new sympathy for the little mermaid in the fairy tale, who, having traded her fish tail for love, felt on her brand new legs that she was stepping on knives. I'd never felt so uncomfortable in my thirty-five years. I'd never felt so powerful.

“So when are you due?” Beatrice asked. An ice-breaking question, so it was probably the first or second birthing class. It was probably the break and we were probably standing with our husbands by the snack table, munching on rice crackers, wasabi peanuts, or carrot sticks dipped in hummus. And we were probably smiling.

“May 21,” answered my husband, Anthony. He patted my navel, possessively. He was always doing that then, as if to assure himself the pregnancy was real. I stopped myself from patting his middle in return, something I liked to do in bed at night to reassure myself that he was real too, that we were indeed a family. Over those nine months we gained the exact same amount of weight at the exact same rate. There was a term for that too—Couvade syndrome—though to my husband it was just an embarrassing spare tire he masked by leaving his shirt untucked. Secretly, I preferred him this way, a little bit fat. That's who Anthony was—substantial and solid but soft. He was fat when I first met him. Then he got successful, married me, and went on a diet, though not necessarily in that order. Before he knocked me up and started growing back alongside me he was a big man masquerading in a thin man's body.

“May 21?” Beatrice's husband gave Beatrice a meaningful look. It was half-pointed and half-playful and he had to raise his eyes to deliver it because she was taller by half a head. I can't remember his name. Dave or Nick or something equally forgettable. He was a sad-sack, a balding tax accountant who favored plaid and clearly adored her. His face was perpetually anxious, except for the time he got overexcited while watching the orgasmic birth video and Beatrice had to smack his shoulder to get rid of his grin. They'd met on an online dating site. So had everyone else in the class aside from the couple with matching haircuts who met in a college a capella group, the lesbians who worked together at the botanical garden in the Bronx, and Anthony and me. We liked to think we had the most romantic story of all.