B0061QB04W EBOK (44 page)

16

A
FTER
C
ARLOS BROKE
his leg, things were not the same between Mago and Papi. It wasn’t something that one could see right away, but I knew my sister better than I knew myself, and I could tune in to her emotions in the same way I could twist the mouthpiece of my sax until I knew the sound that came out was just right.

Before, she would take pride in coming home on paydays and would happily hand over half of her salary to Papi to help him with the household expenses. Now, her fingers hesitated for a second too long before they released the bills. Papi didn’t notice it. He didn’t know her the way I did.

She no longer had the feverish desire to be the best in school because
it made Papi happy. Even though she was now the first person in our family to attend college, she was no longer concerned about being the “best and brightest” in her classes at Waterson College. Instead, she talked about looking for a full-time job so she could buy herself a car and pretty clothes. She talked about her desire to go out with her coworkers, who spent their weekends dancing at clubs.

“Papi wouldn’t want you to be out partying,” I would tell her.

She would shrug and say, “I don’t give a damn what he wants or doesn’t want.” And just like that, the father she had longed for while in Mexico, the father she had dreamed would be her hero, vanished in her eyes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same for me, and I could not so easily dismiss my desire to please him. My father’s acceptance of me had become my sole reason for being.

One day in November, as I was walking with Mago down Figueroa Street, where we had gone to make another payment at Fashion 21 for the clothes Mago had put on layaway, we passed by the shops and looked longingly at the shoes and pretty clothes the mannequins in the windows were wearing. As we passed by a dress boutique, Mago stopped abruptly and pulled me over to the display window. A mannequin was wearing the most beautiful quinceañera dress we’d ever seen.

I looked at Mago, wondering if she was feeling bad about not having had a real quinceañera. When she turned sixteen, Papi had actually thrown her a party, perhaps because he had felt bad she didn’t have a quinceañera. The party was held in the six-car parking lot at the apartments. Mago wore the long, puffy blue dress she wore at her junior-high graduation and had her hair permed.

Now, as she looked intently at the dress, I wanted to remind her of that party, tell her that a sweet sixteen party in a parking lot was better than no party at all. I thought about those nights in Mexico when we would go sell cigarettes and snacks with our mother at La Quinta Castrejón and watch the young girls with their beautiful quinceañera dresses. I recognized the look of longing in her eyes, and I knew that if I were to see myself in a mirror right then, it would be the same look I would see in my own eyes.

“Come on,” she said, turning around and pulling me away from the dress. She was deep in thought, and just as I was about to ask her
what she was thinking, she stopped and said to me, “You know what, Nena? I’m going to throw you a quinceañera.”

“What are you talking about? You’re crazy,” I said. “I already turned fifteen two months ago. And besides, where are you going to get the money?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll get it. I’ll ask my friends to be the godparents. But I’ll do it.”

I thought my sister had gone insane. Quinceañeras were expensive, and there was no way Mago, with her part-time job, could pull it off.

When we got home, Mago got on the phone with her friends and told them what was on her mind. She didn’t want to tell Papi about it. “This is
my
gift to you,” she said. “I don’t want him to have anything to do with this.” But I insisted that she tell him. Who knew? He might actually get excited about it. This might be a way for them to repair their relationship. Finally, I managed to convince her, but when she told Papi about it, he was even more skeptical than me. “Estás loca,” he said, and he didn’t offer to help.

I tried not to get excited about the quinceañera, knowing that pretty soon Mago would come to her senses and realize it wasn’t going to happen. To my surprise, on Sunday when we visited Mami and Mago told her about her plans, Mami got onboard with the quinceañera and offered to help get some godparents. Mago said she wasn’t very surprised at Mami’s response. She said, “Don’t you remember those nights at La Quinta Castrejón?” And I suddenly knew what she meant. Those nights at La Quinta, we weren’t the only ones watching girls blooming out of limousines like pink peonies. Mami was, too—Mami, who also never had a quinceañera, who was also once a starry-eyed girl with glittery dreams.

Not even a week had gone by before Mami called to tell us that a friend of hers would be the godparent for the cake, another would take care of the catering, and she would pay for the souvenirs. Mago’s friends offered to help pay for the hall, the mass, the photographer, the floral arrangements, and the DJ. Mago didn’t look for a godparent for the dress. She would be buying my quinceañera dress herself. She set the date for May 2, 1991, which left us a little over five months.

Mago’s excitement was contagious. Even Carlos wanted to participate. He offered to be one of my escorts and helped me find a
chambelán. I gathered up my nerve to ask Axel to be my chambelán, but the next day he told me he couldn’t because his family wouldn’t let him participate. I also asked my girlfriends to be my maids, and luckily, their families accepted.

Mago hired a professional dressmaker to make me a dress. It cost $350. The bottom part was made of layers and layers of blue tulle. The top part was made of white satin, and the sleeves were decorated with blue satin bows. I looked like a princess, just as I had always dreamed.

I hadn’t done my first communion because Papi never took us to church, and after her heart was broken by that boy in junior high, Mago never made another attempt to go back to St. Ignatius. Without Abuelita Chinta to remind us to pray and to keep God in our hearts and minds, we had lost our religion.

But that day, I stood outside the church at Placita Olvera, about to have a mass in my honor. I was officially going to become a little woman in the eyes of God. The problem was that in order to have this mass we had to lie to the priest about having done my first communion. When the priest asked, Mago right away said that I had done my first communion in Mexico but didn’t have the certificate to prove it. He believed us, and I felt bad afterward for lying to the priest.

The organ player started to play, and my court, composed of six couples, walked into the church in pairs. I held on to my own escort, who was a friend of my brother’s. He was a sweet boy, but there was nothing romantic between us. It was strictly business. He was there to hold my hand, take pictures with me, and dance the waltz with me, but the next day, he could go on with his life and I with mine. I thought about Axel. I wished his family had allowed him to participate. I wished he were there with me instead of a boy I hardly knew.

My heart beat faster as I went into the church. My eyes fell on the statue of Jesus Christ hanging on the wall.
Forgive me for my lie, Jesus.
I held on to my chambelán as we walked down the aisle. People smiled at me and congratulated me. Papi and Mila were sitting to my left. Mago, Mami, Betty, Rey, and my little brother Leonardo were sitting to my right.

Too soon we got to the altar, and I was kneeling before the priest. Jesus looked down on me from his cross, and my eyes were starting to burn because I was about to commit a grave sin. I turned to look at Mago, who was sitting in the front pew. I wanted her to stop this. I wanted her to tell the priest we had lied and that I shouldn’t be having this mass. But she was so excited, my sister, so proud of what she had accomplished that day, that I knew I must go through with this no matter what. I could not ruin the party my sister had worked so hard to give me.

The dreaded moment came when the sacred Host was put onto my tongue and it stuck to the roof of my mouth as soon as I closed it. Tears filled my eyes as the Host began to dissolve, and I pictured Jesus bursting down from Heaven in a blinding beam of light and sending me straight to the worst Hell imaginable, a Hell where I would spend all of eternity alone, without my Mago, for even though I wanted to stop being overshadowed by my sister and her bigger-than-life personality, I was terrified of being without her, of being on my own, of making my way in the world without her by my side.
Forgive me, Jesus. Please, don’t take my sister away from me.

After mass, we took pictures outside the church. “Nena, ¿qué te pasa? Smile!” Mago said as the photographer took picture after picture. But I couldn’t do it, and in all the pictures I looked as if I were attending a funeral.

As we headed to Los Feliz to take pictures at Mulholland Fountain on the corner of Riverside and Los Feliz Boulevard, I told Mago what was on my mind. “I’m going to go to Hell. I’ve committed a great sin.” I started to cry. She laughed.

“Nena, all that is nonsense. First of all, there is no Hell or the devil. Those are just stories Abuela Evila liked to frighten us with. Come on, when are you going to stop believing in that? Use that imagination of yours for other things. Second of all, if there
is
a Hell, we’re already living in it.” She wiped away my tears and hugged me. From then on, I started to smile in the pictures, and I didn’t think about my fear of being punished for lying to the priest. Mago was right. We were already living in some kind of Hell in this strange place of broken beauty.

The reception was held at the Highland Hall on Figueroa Street. That night was a night when my wishes came true. I had wished to have my father and mother together in the same room. Now, there they were, although on opposite sides of the banquet hall. My mother was running around helping to serve food to the guests. She was wearing a black dress covered in sequins. She’d even had her hair done at a beauty salon. I’d never seen her looking so glamorous. My father was on the opposite side of the room wearing a dress shirt and tie, sitting next to Mila. She took sips of her soda while my father drank beer after beer as if afraid it would run out. The photographer called them over and took pictures of us. First, I took one with my mother. Then I took one with my father. And just as he was walking away, I pulled his arm back and I took one with both, my father and mother on either side of me.