Down to the Bone (20 page)

I jam my hands into my pockets and kick away a bit of mud that fell off my boots. I cough and turn my eyes toward the crew. “I . . . I . . .”

He interrupts. “Look. It’s
your
life. You think you can fall in lust and love with London?”

I shrug. “Maybe attraction grows.” I remember Marlena’s words about Rick and I cringe. She did the same thing I’m doing now. Funny, but I understand her decisions much better at this moment.

Tazer smiles, a wicked funny, twisted smile. “Well in that case, I’m not a girl so your mom shouldn’t care. And besides, if you can fall in love with
any
one, then include me.” His lips reach mine and he goes in for a much deeper kiss.

14—Up Yours!

I have an urge to be thrown into what I’ve never known and get rid of all the nostalgia for what I had.

Now, I’ve got the opportunity to change my life. No one can dictate who I’ll date but me. I’ve only intimately known one girl. Our breakup isn’t a life sentence; it’s a chance to get to know others, and who I belong with, in a much deeper way. Girls who like girls aren’t an endangered species. No one has the right to kill us off. I know what I’ve liked and loved but I need to destroy that because it didn’t work for me.

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not a hypocrite. I just need to leave behind what I once considered sacred and delve into the unknown to see if it takes me to where I really belong. Personally, I know that’s with my mom and Pedri. My heart is only open to whatever will lead me to them.

I ride fast and furious after work to Pedri’s school. He has learning disabilities in English and had to enroll in an after-school program.

It kills me Pedri has no one to help him with homework or run to for support. I know he still sobs about my having been thrown out of the house. I hate that I’m not allowed to be there for him. My mom won’t tell him, “Everything’s going to be okay. Your sister’s coming back soon.”

I’d always find a way to get Pedri out of any sad mood whenever he was in trouble. “You don’t want Mami to see you crying. If you act like a little man and tell her, ‘I learned my lesson and promise to clean my room when you tell me to,’ she’ll come around and forget your punishment.”

I long for Pedri to bury his little face inside the curve of my neck and tell me how much he loves me. What was I thinking? Why has it taken me so long to come up with this life-changing decision? Why have I been so selfish?

I reach the fence and park my bike. Pedri runs to me.

“Shyly!”

“Little Punk!” I swing him around. “You grew about ten feet since last week.” I goof around and fill his little mushy face with kisses.

“Yeah!” He squishes his head against my stomach. “I’m big now.”

In the distance, the roar of kids’ playful screams fills the schoolyard. I’m never happier and sadder, all at the same time, than when I come to see my little love.

Red Road is jam-packed with cars stretching off to who knows where. It’s growing cloudy and dark. Cars honk their horns and kids rush to climb inside parents’ cars. I feel truly happy for the first time since Mami kicked me out. Around this time, the day starts closing in on me, and I can’t think of anything but try to figure out a way to go back home to Pedri without throwing Marlena under the bus.

I sit on the steps and put him on my lap.

“Do you know I miss you more than the whole mysterious universe?”

“Me too.” He wraps his arms around me and I allow his love to soothe me.

“One day, when I’m even bigger, I’m going to take you to Italy.” I point to Pedri’s favorite Italian pizza place set in a building that looks like the Eiffel Tower across the street. The Tower has a tilted heart, symbolizing the way my heart is leaning.

“But you are big already, Shyly. Let’s go tomorrow.”

“I mean when I’m an adult. Look.” I jut my chin and he turns his neck again. “There’s a real place that looks just like that in Italy. I’ll take you to see beaches with mountains and a place full of Michelangelo paintings.” I used to show him art books from all my favorite painters.

“I remember him!”

“We’ll eat all the pizza we want on picnics on a gorgeous park.”

“Let’s do it, Shyly. Let’s do it today! Pleeeeeeeeeease.”

“I can’t so soon. I know Mami will be here to pick you up any minute, but I had to come to let you know something important.”

“What?”

I kiss his sweet freckly cheeks. “I’m going to work it out with Mami so she lets me move back home.”

He leaps off me and jumps up and down. “Really?”

“Yup. But it might take a few months. You know how she is and I have to do it slowly. Can you be patient and wait for oh . . . I don’t know, about half a year?”

“Yeah, Shyly! I’ll wait! I’ll wait! But make it fast! Can’t it be faster? Like tomorrow. Pleeeeeease?”

“I’ll try. But no matter how long it takes, I’m almost sure I’m coming back home.”

***

I find Viva outdoors. She’s watering the organic tomato and cucumber seeds I planted for her, wearing a large, multicolored two-piece bathing suit, and a pink shower cap so her hair won’t get fried. I notice a garlic clove stuck inside her belly button.

I rush to her and pinch her butt. “Vivalini! Are you growing a garlic tree?”

“
Ay,
Shylita!” She lets out a silly laugh and throws her arms around me. “
Hola, mariposita
. Garlics keeps evil espirits and
vampiros
away.”

Neruda leaps all over me. I squeeze her in my arms. “Nerudi Rudi!” She licks and bites my nose with the sweetest baloney breath. I scrutinize her fur, it seems way lighter. “You dyed Nerudi’s hair?”

“No. No. I promise. She be out in the sun too much.”

I see a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on top of the lounge chair and give out a sigh of relief. I point to it. “What’s that?”

“
Ay,
it’s only nontoxic
peroxido
.” She crinkles up her nose. “I put a little in the floor of our crib because she pee inside. I use the rest to make Nerudi a blondie.”

“Nerudi peed in our
crib
?” I want to die laughing when she says “crib,” but instead I act upset and throw my hands up. “Teaching you how to train a puppy is like teaching a noodle to run.”

“
Ay,
Shylita, you is such a pain in thee butt.” She pinches my cheek.

I go indoors feeling as if it’s a perfect day. I can be in high spirits even when things around me are falling apart. But today’s different. I’m on top of the world and nothing is crumbling around me! I was stupid to have rather gone homeless for Marlena than live with my family. It seems incomprehensible now that the solution has been staring me in the face all this time and I didn’t see it. I can’t believe it took so long to figure it out.

I shower, then Soli helps me make
fricasé de
tofu with lots of chopped organic veggies, stir fried onions, garlic, salt, green olives, ginger, olive oil, tomato paste and dried spices. I serve it with a side of wild rice. After dinner, Viva goes outdoors with Neruda to chill on the hammock and read astrology and saint magazines. Soli and I are hanging out on the floor, facing each other, just chilling, listening to my primeval vinyl records on Viva’s archaic record player. I don’t know why I’m the type of person who doesn’t like the music everybody listens to. I either go for primordial tunes or new sounds no one’s ever heard of.

I bite off a piece of nail that tore from my index finger and spit it on the ground. “You won’t believe what happened. London showed up at work today and Tazer—”

She smoothes down the hem on her spandex miniskirt and interrupts. “Shyly, later on
that.
Damn, I think I got an STD or herpes or something. I’m all swollen. It itches and hurts like crazy.”

“Shit, Soli, you haven’t been using condoms?” I can’t even think about her being bed bound with AIDS and in extreme pain. It would be too much for Soli, Viva
and
me to bear. Soli’s in my heart. I love her like a sister, deep, deep down to the core. I don’t want her to ever suffer.

“Of course I
always
use protection.”

The dark circles under her eyes make her face seem droopy. I see her worried expression and hug her to me. “Don’t fret, Hootchi Momma. I’ll go with you to the gyno. I’m sure it’s nothing.” I’m concerned, hoping the condoms she used didn’t tear and it isn’t AIDS. One never knows. It could only take one time to get it. On the other hand, I’m a bit of a neuro when it comes to sex. If Marlena had been with Rick, I’d have never been with her because I had no clue who he slept with. I’m sure Rick wasn’t a saint and probably got some from a lot of girls in Puerto Rico.

I talk to her for a while about what she’s feeling and about Diego. I hate she’s so down in the dumps. She’s madly into him and says, “I won’t be with him again till I know what I’ve got. He couldn’t have given me anything. I don’t want to spread something to him either, in case it’s from a past boyfriend.” I’ve never seen her so upset. What bad luck. I want to make sure she knows I’m here for her no matter what.

After I make her call the gyno for an appointment, she says, “I talked it out with London at work. He’s a good guy after all. I bet you freaked when he went to see you.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t ready for him.”

“He’s so into you. Did you like making out with him the other night?”

I throw off my sneakers. “Well . . . it was . . . hard, different. He’s got nubs. But he’s so persuasive, nice and sweet. He’s been texting me like crazy.” Making out with a guy will never compare to kissing Marlena. Kissing Tazer was better than making out with London. Now that I’ve established who kisses best, it doesn’t matter because I feel illuminated. I’m focused and don’t need to keep exploring.

“Shylypop, when you talked about kissing Marlena you were on fire. But:
nice
and
sweet
? Nice is lying on the ground and kissing the grass. Sweet is kissing a ladybug. You need to suck face with a girl again so you can see what you’re missing.”

I slap her cheeks as if they were bongo drums. “Well . . . in
that
case, Hootchi Momma . . . Tazer kissed me today. I know he’s not a girl, but unlike trans who get their breasts and ovaries removed, he still has breasts and everything else.” I tell her the whoooooole story about how it started back at the restaurant.

“Halleloo!” She slaps me a high-five, a low five and sings out, “I can’t believe you’ve kept it from me for so long. Shyly got kissed by a b-o-i!”

I have to let her know the truth, even if she won’t like it.

As a kid, when I broke something in the house, and didn’t want to get in trouble, I’d bury the figurine in my backyard. After days of my mom checking under chairs, beds, couch, searching cupboards, trash containers, closets and even the refrigerator, she’d ask me, “Where’s the stunning glass fish I placed on the coffee table, Shylita?”

I’d give her a sideways glance and shrug. “It disappeared, Mami.”

“It couldn’t have vanished,” she’d say. “Tell me where it is right now or you’re punished without your iTunes, TV, comics or sketchpad for a week.” Eventually, I’d give in and take her to the “cemetery” out in the backyard. When she found all her favorite collectibles broken into pieces and laid to rest, she convulsed with laughter. I then had to help her wash and assemble everything with Crazy Glue. Our home was a redesigned shrine to dismembered pieces put together with meticulous care, like the broken bone unit in a hospital with patients in casts, slowly recovering.

I won’t lie to Soli or shrug my shoulders and tell her I don’t know what my next move will be. I refuse to spend my life putting pieces of my heart together even if Soli will help glue me back together again.

“I made out with him, but I didn’t get butterflies in my stomach. I couldn’t see shooting rockets and planets didn’t collide. It’s true. Tazer is a fine kissing machine, he’s got this smooth, wild tongue action. But the firecrackers never went off. I let him kiss me, I really did. I stayed there and kissed him back. We kissed and kissed and kissed. No one can tell me I didn’t give Tazer a chance.”

She shakes me by my shoulders. “Tazer is a guy, Shyly. Kissing him is probably just like making out with London. He’s not your type. Now, if a feminine-looking girl you liked with luxurious hair cascading down to her shoulders had kissed you, you’d have melted on the floor; I’d’ve had to scoop you up and bring you back to life.”

There’s no hiding anything from Soli. She knows me better than anyone.

Beep-Beep!
Someone honks and we rush to the door. It’s Tazer the kissing machine. Soli zooms out the back sliding glass doors. “I’ll keep Mima company and leave you two alone. Kiss him again and again! You might like it the one
hun
dredth time! Think of it as the first step to getting you on to the second step: making out with a girl, not a boy, your type.” She slams the back doors shut.

I wish I’d told her my plans so she wouldn’t be so excited right now. Once I utter the words, I know I’ll feel lighthearted. My decision will bring months of loneliness to a halt. I know Soli will understand and support me.

I let Tazer in. His smile glows. It fills the room with warmth. “You bailed so fast after work.”

It’s true. After we locked mouths for about half an hour, I became jittery and practically ran out, telling him I had to finish working. After work, I rushed to see Pedri without even saying goodbye. If I had stayed longer, I’m sure I’d have fallen into a dreamy state, since he kisses so incredibly delicious. He’s disarmingly charming and yummy but that doesn’t mean he’ll help make my life better.

“I had to come home and cook.”

We plunk on the couch, facing each other. I notice that his chest isn’t flat. He didn’t bind his breasts, and he’s got medium-small breasts like mine. They stand out because he’s wearing an extremely tight white tank. He’s letting his bangs grow longer and keeps tossing them away from his face. It takes me a few seconds to get used to him looking so different.