Salvation (14 page)

Because it hadn’t felt like she had. It had felt like maybe she had wanted that kiss as much as he had. Like she might not mind if he did it again.

Señor Resendez’s hand tightened on Salva’s shoulder, breaking into his son’s thoughts, and escorted him out.

The only sounds on the pickup ride home were the rattle of the dash, the jerking of the gearshift, and the coughing of the engine. Salva knew better than to talk first. He had never before been on the receiving end of his father’s silent treatment. But he had seen the silence explode—the year Miguel had been kicked out.

The vehicle choked and died about twenty feet from the single wide, then coasted the remaining distance.

Señor Resendez failed to exit. Leaving his youngest son trapped against the nonfunctioning door.

“You work with this girl on a project for English class?” his father finally said.

“
Sí,
Papá
.”

“You do not have a relationship with this girl?”

“No.” Salva didn’t, at least not in the way his father meant.

Señor Resendez climbed out of the pickup, allowing his son to follow.

Lucia’s half-ass car was already parked by the gate.
Not good.
She wasn’t supposed to show up at home until after five o’clock.

But she was reading on the couch in the Shrine. Or pretending to read, a massively thick textbook titled
Psychological Theory
. “
¡Papá!
” she said, acting surprised.
“¿Qué pasó?”
Salva noted she didn’t mark her place when she set the book down.

Señor Resendez launched into the Lecture. “I am
home,
” he said, “since I receive a phone call
que se requiere
I leave my place at work without warning. Because my
son
is a disgrace to the school.”

Lucia’s eyes went wide, though for once she kept her mouth shut.

Papá
strode up to the perennial altar above the fake fireplace.

Salva looked away. From the candles that smelled like his mother, the dried flowers he knew sat beside them, and the photo that threatened to tear him apart.

His father continued, “But the answer to your question, Lucia, is that I am
here
because your mother no want you to grow up ignorant, serving berries to the
gringos
and
turistas
in Michoacán. Because when she becomes pregnant with Casandra she says she will not raise any more children in
la pobreza
.”

“And then,” he added, “when I want to go north without her, she say I can get a visa for her also, or I can get a divorce. So I work for all the wrong people to get the bribe so my whole
familia
can come into
los Estados Unidos
. Then your mother, she works pregnant, so the farmer won’t accuse her of lying and send us back.”

Salva had heard the whole spiel a thousand times. How education, education, education was the answer. How all the Resendez children were going to have a better future because they had the chance to go to school here in the United States.

“Your mother and I, we work very hard,”
Papá
continued, “all so you, Lucia”—here the speech departed from form—“can waste your time and money by flunking all your classes.”

“
Papá
, I’m not—”

“And my son.”
The vaunted son line.
“Who has all the brains and every opportunity to make something of himself can throw it away. On
nada
!”

Salva’s head throbbed like the inside of a
guitarrón
.

“You both”—Señor Resendez pounded the mantel—“go to pass the afternoon outside. Turn the earth and plant the garden. And think what your life would be like planting onions for
los
gringos
. Or back in
México
for
los ricos
.”

Salva flinched.

Lucia was propelling her brother toward the back of the house. “
¡Sí, Papá!
” she shouted, pausing long enough in the kitchen to grab two sets of work gloves from a cabinet. She slapped Salva’s against his stomach, then dragged him out the door.

“Brillante,”
she said. “What did you do?”

He didn’t answer, just went to the tools propped in the corner of the patio, grabbed a shovel, and headed for the far left corner of the property. The entire backyard was the garden.

Lucia followed him. “
Por favor,
Salva, tell me. I’ll find out anyway. I have friends at your school, you know.”

He jammed the shovel into the earth.

“Mira,”
she said, “it’s not the end of the world.”

He stepped on the flat upper edge, driving the blade deeper. Four years. Four years of solid A’s and one B. Seven months of study sessions. All so he could become yet another of his father’s disappointments.

Beth struggled to find her courage as she stared, from behind the gate, at the entrance to the Resendez residence. The door was green. Faded. With no relation to the color scheme of the porch or the rest of the single wide, as though someone had painted the entrance with grander plans and then forgotten to finish the job, or run out of money.

She had never knocked on this door before, a failure that made the decision to do so now—three hours after she and Salva had both been sent to the principal’s office—much worse. Why had she never suggested they go to Salva’s house to study? Or taken him his homework on a day when he was sick?

Because he’s never sick.

That was, he had never missed school, even when he was sick.

She would have noticed.

Stop it, Beth Courant; you’re stalling.

She gathered the folds of her grandmother’s gown to avoid
ripping it on the gate, then lifted the latch and headed up the short path.
There is nothing wrong with telling him he got an A on his project.
Except that she wasn’t really here to talk about the project. Well, she was. In a way. She couldn’t just leave things as they were, without asking. Or trying to ask. What that kiss had meant.

Though going over to his place could be viewed as desperate.

He made the first move. It certainly wasn’t me
.

But she was making one now.

She had run out of space on the path. The porch was clean. Immaculate. No weeds grew up through the cracks in the wood. And the hand-carved
BIENVENIDOS
sign hung perfectly horizontal. Chimes with silver moons and suns dangled above her.
The doorbell, Beth. Push the bell, and maybe he’ll answer it.

The green door swung inward. Not Salva.

His father, the large confrontational man who had asked about her parents, as if he thought she was plotting against the school and misleading the principal about whom to call. Which wasn’t the case. She knew her mother was just too busy to answer the phone.

Backbone, Beth.
“H-hello, sir. Is Salva here?”

The only response was a frown.

“I’m Beth.” She felt compelled to reintroduce herself even though it was obvious by the frown that he had not forgotten who she was. She stretched out a hand, then pulled it back when he failed to acknowledge it. “I-I’ve been helping Salva in
AP English. Well, actually we’ve been helping each other. It’s a challenging class.”

“My son is not here,” he said.

“Oh.” Until this moment, she had not been 100 percent certain of whether she
wanted
Salva to be home. Suddenly, she realized how much she
had
wanted it. And how important it was that his father
not
hate her.

“I know we made a mistake today.” She twisted the chiffon strands dangling from the belt at her waist. “And we’re both sorry for that.”

“Are you?” Mr. Resendez raised his eyebrows, his dark forehead folding together in wide furrows.

“Yes, sir. But…” After serving her suspension in the office, she had gone to see the Mercenary. “I wanted to let Salva know that it wasn’t all bad. I mean, all the work we put in wasn’t wasted.”

The man glanced over his shoulder, as if he might walk away.

Beth rushed to explain. “We earned an A on our project.”

The muscles in his face didn’t relax.

Her left arm began to sting. “Could you tell him that, please?”

His gaze went to her elbow.

She realized she’d wrapped it in the chiffon and begun to cut off the circulation.

“You earned an A on your project.” He repeated her words.

“Yes,” Beth said, hurrying to unwind the fabric. “Our Shakespeare project. It was very important—worth a third of our grade.”

“I understand your message,” he said.

And the green door swung shut in her face.

“What is this message about from the school?” Ms. Courant’s worn voice grated through the darkness from the threshold of Beth’s bedroom later that evening.

Beth rolled away from the question, burying herself behind her eyelids and regretting her failure to climb under the bedcovers. She’d heard the tires on gravel, the fight with the screen door, and the footsteps. But she hadn’t had the forethought to plan ahead. Her eyes burned from exhausted tears, and her head throbbed. She didn’t have the strength to deal with this tonight.

The light flipped on, followed by a sigh. Something scraped across the floor, then papers crackled and something else shuffled.

Why can’t she respect the barrier?
There was no safety in this place anymore. Ever.

“Tell me about the phone call,” the invader said.

“It’s nothing.” Beth silently cursed the raw croak in her voice.

“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t be pretending to sleep in that dress.”

Because I wouldn’t have to pretend. You wouldn’t bother coming to talk to me.

Beth rolled up into a seated, huddled position, her head down, her arms hugging the wrinkled skirt of her grandmother’s
dress to her knees. It was probably ruined now. Like everything. Beth felt trapped in the maelstrom of the events of the day, ending with that green door shut in her face. “It’s just Principal Markham making a big thing out of nothing.”

The bed mattress tilted as her mother sank down at her daughter’s side. “Well, just what is this…nothing? You know I can’t take off work, but I
am
going to return that call; and if I have to hear it from him first—”

“We did our Shakespeare project today.”

“What?”

You don’t know. Because you don’t care what’s happening in my life.

“Beth.”

My name used as a weapon.
“It was a performance for AP English. My partner and I did the death scene from
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“‘O happy dagger.’”

The quote shook her. She had forgotten her mother had been an English major before dropping out.

“That’s quite a scene,” added Ms. Courant.

An incredible scene. And now it was ruined forever.

Beth had allowed herself to hope, she realized. Fear, anxiety, hesitation: they had all been present as she had climbed those porch steps to Salva’s home. But the most dangerous emotion had been
hope,
crushed now by his father’s anger.

She pressed her fingers to her temples, wanting to talk with someone other than her mother. But there was no one. After
facing Mr. Resendez’s disapproval, Salva would probably never speak to Beth again. And Ni had gone on vacation yesterday and
still
didn’t know about him. Unlike the entire rest of the school.

“We earned an A,” Beth croaked. As if that mattered. As if it mattered to anyone.

“Impressive.”

Was that sarcasm? Or just a prompt to dig out an explan-ation?

Beth tried to steel herself for the task. And failed. Her hands were cold, and goose bumps ran the length of her arms. Her mother had no tolerance for boys. Boys were a problem who got you pregnant, then abandoned you so you had to drop out of school, live in a trailer, and raise a child you didn’t want.

Just get it over with. Maybe if she yells it will numb the rest of the pain.
The words burst forward in a suicidal rush. “Well, there was this kiss in the death scene, and Principal Markham got all disturbed by it because there aren’t supposed to be any public displays of affection at school.” Beth stared very hard at a whirlpool print on her bedspread.

Her mother’s response was expressionless. “You were acting?”

“Yes.”

“The death scene from
Romeo and Juliet
?”

“Yes.”

“And the principal was upset by a kiss in the performance?”

“Yes.”

“Oh…” Her mother let out a long, relentless breath. “Is that all?” She stood, without waiting for the answer, and withdrew, muttering something about the small-time thinking in this town. Leaving her daughter once again.

Alone.

“Mira, Salva.”
His father aimed the metal spatula away from the backyard grill toward a plate on the red plastic-covered picnic table.
“Tome este plato a Charla.”

Salva eyed the plate heaped with barbecued chicken in poblano salsa, fried greens, jalapeño cornbread, gazpacho salad, and pineapple flan. Char would never eat that much in her life.
“Papá.”
He tried to tell his father she would probably rather select her own food.

“¡Llévelo a ella!”
the older man insisted, giving Salva a push across the Resendez patio toward the folding lounge chair, where Char had stretched her long bare legs out in the sun.

Señora Mendoza vacated her own seat, beside her daughter, and took another place on the opposite side of Lucia.

Salva groaned. When were
los adultos
going to accept that he and Char were
not
getting together?

The impromptu barbecue between the two families had
been
Papá
’s idea, a sudden inspiration as Señor Resendez and Char’s mother had been yakking on the steps after church. It
was
an extraordinarily warm day for the first weekend of spring break. Talia, Casandra, and Char’s younger brother, Renaldo, were dripping Popsicles all over the cement.

Señora Mendoza glanced at her sticky son, then shook her head, smiling.
“¡Vaya al agua!”
She waved at the younger kids to go cool off in the front-yard sprinkler.