Oscar Casares (16 page)

“Well, maybe I can buy a used one.”

“It's because of that store.”

“What's wrong with the store?”

“It's putting ideas in your head.”

“Frank, what ideas?”

“Ideas! Is there some place I haven't taken you?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

“Francisco.”

“Don't ‘Francisco’ me.”

“Baby…”

“¡Qué no!”

They were beginning to remind me of one of my mother's novelas, which she was probably watching in the living room at that very moment. Things like that usually made me want to laugh—and I did a little, into my pillow, but it was only because I couldn't believe I was actually hearing it, and I could see Frank Castro pounding me into the ground with his big forearms if he ever found out.

“No! I said.”

“I'm not Trini.”

“I never said…”

“Then stop treating me like her. ¿No sabes qué tanto te quiero, Francisco?”

It got quiet for a while after that. Then there was the sound of something hitting the floor, the sound of two bodies dropping on a bed with springs that had seen better days (and nights), the sound of Yolanda saying,
Ay, Diosito,
over and over and over again—just like my tía Hilda did the day her son, my cousin Rudy, almost drowned in the swimming pool at the Civic Center—then the sound of the bed springs making their own crazy music, and the sound of what I imagine a bear is like when he's trying to make little bears.

Yolanda kept getting a ride to work with my mother, and Frank kept bringing her home in the afternoons. My mother had offered to drive Yolanda to the DPS office and let her borrow our car for the driving part of the test, but Yolanda said she'd changed her mind and didn't want to talk about it. I heard my mother telling my father what she'd said, and they agreed it probably had something to do with Frank. El Burro, my father let out when they didn't have anything else to say.

It was the Fourth of July when I got sick that summer. I remember my mother wouldn't let me go outside with Lonny He kept yelling at me from the street that night to stop being a baby and come out of the house so I could pop some firecrackers. We'd been talking all week about shooting some bottle rockets in the direction of Frank's house. It didn't feel like anything at first, just a fever, but the next morning we knew it was the chicken pox. My mother had to miss a few days of work, staying home with me until I got over the worst part. After that, Yolanda volunteered to come look in on me when she wasn't working. But I told my mother I didn't want her coming over when I still looked like those dead people in that
Night of the Living Dead
movie. My mother said Yolanda would understand I was sick, and if she didn't, that's what I'd get for watching those kinds of movies. So for about a week she came over in the mornings and we watched
The Price Is Right
together. Yolanda was great at guessing the prices of things, and she said it was from working in a grocery store and having a good memory. I told her I thought she should go on the show. She laughed and said she probably wouldn't win anything, since she'd be too nervous. What I meant to say was that she should go on the show and be one of the girls who stands next to the car, smiling. She was prettier than any of them, but I never told her that, because I got embarrassed whenever I thought about saying it.

If Yolanda came over in the afternoon, we'd watch
General Hospital
together. She said she'd been watching it for years. There wasn't anything else on at that hour, so I didn't really care. Once, she brought over some lime sherbert, and we played Chinese checkers in my room until she had to get home to Frank Castro. Each time she left she'd reach down and give me a little kiss on the cheek, and each time her hair smelled like a different fruit. Sometimes like a pear, sometimes like a strawberry, sometimes like an apple. The strawberry was my favorite.

This was about the time when Frank said that from now on, he would take Yolanda to work in the morning—no matter how out of the way it was for him, or the fact that he and my mother were always pulling out of the driveway at the same time. A week or two went by, and then my mother told my father that Frank had started showing up at the store in the middle of the day, usually during his lunch hour, but sometimes also at two or three in the afternoon. He wouldn't talk to Yolanda, but instead just hung out by the magazine rack, pretending to read a wrestling magazine. Yolanda tried to ignore him. My mother said she had talked to her in the break room, but Yolanda kept saying it was nothing, that Frank's hours had changed at the airport.

There was one Saturday when he was off from work, and as usual, he spent it in his front yard, sitting in a green lawn chair, drinking tallboys. He had turned on the sprinkler and was watching his grass and half the street get a good watering. Lonny and I were throwing the football around. Frank sat in that stupid chair all afternoon. He only went in to grab another beer and, I guess, take a piss. Each time he got up and turned around, we shot him the finger.

That night, I heard Frank's voice loud and clear. He wanted answers. Something about a phone number. Something about a customer he'd seen Yolanda talking to a couple of days earlier. Did she think he was blind? What the hell was so funny when the two of them were talking? How many times? he wanted to know. ¡Desgraciado! Where? Goddammit! he wanted to know. What game show? ¡El sanavabiche! Something shattered against the wall and then a few seconds later Yolanda screamed. I sat up. I didn't know if I could form words if I had to. What the hell were you doing listening anyway? they would ask me. There was another scream and then the sound of the back door slamming. I looked out my window and saw Frank Castro chase Yolanda into their backyard. She was wearing a nightgown that came down to her knees. Frank had on the same khakis and muscle shirt he'd worn that afternoon. He only ran a few feet down from the back steps before his head hit the clothesline, and he fell to the ground, hard. Yolanda didn't turn to look back and ran around the right side of their house. I thought she'd gone back inside to call the police. Then I heard footsteps and a tapping on my window. It was Yolanda whispering, Open it, open it.

I didn't say anything for a long time. Yolanda had climbed in and let down the blinds. We were lying on the bed, facing the window. She was behind me, holding me tight. I finally asked her if she wanted a glass of water or some Kool-Aid. I made it myself, I told her. It's the orange kind, I said. I didn't know what else to talk about. She said no, and then she told me to be quiet. I kept thinking, This has to be a dream and any minute now my mother's going to walk in and tell me the barbacoa is sitting on the table and to come eat because we're going to eleven o'clock mass and don't even think about putting on those blue jeans with the patches in the knees ¿me en-tiendes? But that wasn't happening, and something told me then that no matter what happened after tonight, this was something I'd never forget. There would always be a time
before
Yolanda crawled into my bed and a time
after.
As she held me, I could feel her heart beating. Then I felt her chiches pressed against my back. And even though I couldn't see them, I knew they were perfect like the rest of her. I knew that they'd fit right in the palms of my hands, if only I had enough guts to turn around. Just turn around, that's all I had to do. I thought back to when she was tapping on the window, and I was sure she wasn't wearing a bra. I was sure there was nothing but Yolanda underneath her nightgown. I could have sworn I'd seen even more. I'd been close to a woman's body before. But this wasn't like when my tía Gloria came into town and couldn't believe how much I'd grown, and then she squeezed me so hard my head got lost in her huge and heavily perfumed chiches. And it wasn't anything like the Sears catalog where the girls had a tiny rose at the top of their panties. No, this was Yolanda and she was in my bed, pressed up against my back, like it was the only place in the world for us to be.

I could go on and tell you the rest of the details—how I never turned around and always regretted it, how we stayed there and listened to Frank crying in his backyard, how Lonny's dad finally called the cops on his ass, how Yolanda had a cousin pick her up the next morning, how she ended up leaving Frank for a man who worked for one of the shampoo companies, how it didn't matter because she'd also been seeing an assistant manager and would be having his baby soon enough, and how it really didn't matter because the assistant manager was already married and wasn't about to leave his wife and kids, and how, actually, none of it mattered because she'd been taking money out of the register and was about to be caught—but that's not the part of the story I like to remember.

In that bed of mine, the one with the Dallas Cowboy pillows and covers, Yolanda and I were safe. We were safe from Frank Castro and safe from anybody else that might try to hurt us. And it was safe for me to fall asleep in Yolanda's arms, with her warm, beautiful body pressed against mine, and dream that we were riding off to some faraway place on an Appaloosa.

Mrs. Perez

H
er name was engraved in black cursive letters an inch above the finger holes:
Lola.
The ball's cherry red color and gold swirls made it look as if it were catching fire when she released it down the lane. People stopped to watch when she was up. First, she tugged on her wrist brace to make it snug. Then she dried her fingers over the air vent before she lifted the ball from the tray. Once she was on the floor, she stood absolutely still, her gaze locked on the pins. She was in no hurry. Approaching the foul line, her stride became more fluid as she bent her right knee slightly and trailed her left leg around the back with the grace of a young bride dancing with her new husband for the first time. The ball spun toward the left edge of the lane, held its position, flirted with the gutter, then hooked sharply to the right, exploding into the pocket between the number one and two pins. The destruction echoed through the bowling alley. Her compact size was the source of her power. She measured five feet two inches and weighed 164 pounds, most of it concentrated in her thighs and hips. The ball weighed fifteen pounds. While other sixty-eight-year-olds were slowing down, her body seemed to recover lost years each time she lined her feet up with the dots on the floor. Her living room was a testament to her God-given talent. Every space on the coffee table, windowsill, bookcase, and television held a trophy: Brownsville Ladies' Invitational, First Place; Rio Grande Valley Open, Most Valuable Player; Alamo City Ladies' Classic, Second Place; Blue-bonnet Queens Tournament, First Place; Chicago Queen Pins Invitational, First Place; Las Vegas Women's Senior National Championship, Honorable Mention. But this was before the cherry red ball was stolen.

Lola had been at the beauty parlor that afternoon. The girl at the parlor gave her hair an auburn tint that came close to matching its original color. Her hair held a perfectly round shape that rose a few inches and flourished in a curl just above her eyebrows. Women's league play was starting that night and she wanted to look nice. She drove home and couldn't help occasionally catching a glimpse of her hair in the rearview mirror. When she unlocked the front door, she thought she heard a noise, maybe footsteps. She had lived alone for the past sixteen years and had grown used to a quiet house. She put down her purse and listened, but the house was silent. And then right in front of her, somebody ran through the kitchen and out the back door. It happened so fast, she thought she'd imagined it, but there was no imagining the loud slap of the screen door. On the back steps, she saw a teenage boy toss her bowling bag over the chain-link fence and then jump it himself.

“¡Párate! ¡Güerco méndigo! ¡Desgraciado! Somebody stop him! Somebody!” But no one did, and the teenager had enough time to stop in the alley and laugh at the way the old lady was screaming. He was tall and wiry, nothing but skin and bones and a crew cut. His baggy jeans hung extra low on his nalgas. Holding Lola's bowling bag in his right hand, the teenager sauntered away as if he'd just been paged that his lane was ready.

Lola was still in shock when she called the police. She had to look at an old utility bill lying next to the recliner so she could remember her own address. After she hung up the phone, she went back to the kitchen. Off in a corner she found two banana peels on her linoleum floor. Then she noticed the back screen window was ripped open. She blamed herself for not having checked to make sure the windows were down. Not locking your windows was an invitation for somebody to rob you. In the bathroom, the toilet seat was up and the commode was full of bright yellow urine. It would be her luck to get a thief without the decency to flush. She couldn't believe the bedroom when she saw it. The dresser drawers were turned over and the contents were spilled onto the floor in one huge pile. Her underwear and brassieres were mixed in with toenail clippers and costume jewelry. Shoe boxes containing her important documents were emptied on top of this. Old photos that had been stored in a hatbox were scattered in a separate pile. The mattress was turned over and leaning against the wall, as if anyone were idiota enough to still leave her money under a mattress. The only things missing from the bedroom were an old pocket watch that didn't work and had belonged to her late husband, Agustin Perez, and her wedding rings, which she hardly wore anymore. It could've been worse. She made it a point not to keep any money in the house for this very reason. Lola sat in the living room and waited for the police. She thanked God the teenager hadn't touched her trophies. The twenty-three frozen lady bowlers had witnessed the break-in, but they were all in their usual positions. The only thing that was different about the room was the empty spot where she kept her bowling bag.

Her daughter Margie would have something to say about all this. She had been trying to get Lola to sell the small three-bedroom house and live with her in Houston. Her two other daughters were in agreement, but it was Margie who would use the robbery to build her case. Eventually, Lola would have to tell her to mind her own business. She'd lived too long to be talked to like a young girl. Nobody told her what to do or how to live anymore, not a daughter who lived more than three hundred miles away and not some cabrón who left banana peels on her floor.