Until I Find Julian (9 page)

It's morning. We can't wait
to eat any longer.

“Kids will be going to school,” I say.

“If the store owner asks, say
holiday.
”

“Holy day?”

She slaps her head. “Say
‘I've been sick.' 
”

“Sick. I've got it.”

I go into the bathroom and turn on the water in the shower. It's icy cold, but there's soap, and I try to clean my clothes. I have to look decent.

I dry myself, and the clothes. Better, much better. I see the old Mateo in the mirror.

I walk along the street; kids weave back and forth. One tosses a ball to his friend, and I duck to get out of the way. No one pays attention to me, not even the police in a car that rolls slowly down the street.

If only I could go to that factory right now. But we both have to eat. I can't imagine Julian in a place like that. I picture his face, the time he planted a small tree out back, and painted that same tree on our bedroom wall. I hear him singing that frog song. What else about him? I hear him say:
“A house in the woods. Watching the fox at night, the geese and birds in the morning.”

Coming along next to me, someone says, “That kid is talking to himself.”

He means me.

I have just time to see his face and sandy hair. He rams into me, his elbow sharp against my ribs, and I feel that old pain from the desert. My feet go out from under me and I sprawl on the ground. He steps around me and dashes away, and I see…

Do I really see?

With both hands, he holds bills over his head.

My money!

He's already at the corner. He turns and is gone.

I lie there for another moment, catching my breath. It's too late to go after him, even though he isn't bigger than I am. If I see him again, I'll push him against a wall. I'll go through his pockets. I'll take my money back.

Ridiculous. He'll probably spend the money within the next few minutes.

I scramble to my feet, holding my side. I'm so hungry, and what about Angel? I think of beans and bananas, cold soup. Abuelita's chicken.

I think about stealing. The food store is just down the street and outside is a bin with fruit and vegetables. I'm fast; I could scoop up two pears, or a bunch of carrots, before the man in the apron could come after me.

I see the man's kind face.

I can't steal.

Something crosses my mind, a vague memory. Something about Julian. Yes, I'll write about it when I can.

I walk back to the house slowly and go in the back door. Angel is still sitting at the table. She looks up and it's almost impossible to tell her what's happened. “I'm going to try for a job.”

“Where's the food, Matty?”

“Someone took my money.”

Her eyes widen. Then she really looks at me. She must see how sorry I am, how terrible I feel. “We'll think of something.”

And then the memory crosses my mind again, the quickest thought. I raise my hand to my forehead, but it's gone.

Something about…a secret.

That makes me think of Angel. What is it she doesn't want to tell me? But before I can try to ask again, she says, “Are you writing something about me in that notebook?”

“Sure. Why not?”

She doesn't answer. Head high, she walks away.

I stand at the back door. What should I do next? I go into the living room, and my notebook is gone. I know how to look for things now. I look all over the place.

It's in the kitchen litter basket.

“Why would you do that?” I yell. “Why?”

“It's a nuisance. In my way.”

“It belongs to me.” I'm still shouting.

“Sorry.” She raises one shoulder. “You're making so much noise. Do you want the police to come?”

I take a breath. It's all too much. I take the notebook and toss it on the table.

“Sorry,” she says again. “I guess I shouldn't have done that.”

“No. But now I need to get a job, to get some money so we can eat.”

She nods, sits at the table. “I'd go, but the police saw my face. Maybe I'd better stay in here.”

She's right. I tell her I have to learn English. “Teach me some words, Angel.”

“What words?”

I say them slowly in my own language. “I need a job, please. I'm a good worker.”

She looks up at the ceiling. Is she trying not to laugh at me?

“We'll starve to death if I don't work.” I push away thoughts of Mami and Abuelita cooking in our kitchen. What are they eating? Will the tablecloths bring them enough food for a while? Are they as hungry as we are? And poor Lucas.

Angel says the words over and over. They seem strange on my tongue; they don't fit in my mouth.

Angel raises her hand to her mouth to hide her smile as I repeat them.

Fifty times?

Sixty?

Then I hear myself getting closer to what she's saying until, at last, I have it.

“Ineedajob.”
I take a breath. Count one-two-three-four.
“I'magoodworker.”

“Slow down.” Angel nods, looking pleased with the way I sound. We go through other words:
string beans
and
meat, sweep
and
dust.

By this time it's afternoon, after school. And I'm ready. I don't have to think about
holy days
or
I've been sick.

“You'll get a job,” Angel says. “Don't worry.”

“At that grocery store.” I feel as if I just might be able to do it.

I straighten my collar and smooth down my every-which-way hair, even though it pops up again almost immediately. “How do I look?”

“Good.” She leans forward. “Matty, hurry. I don't think I've ever been so hungry.” She shakes her head and speaks in English. “You look spiffy.”

Spiffy.

I keep saying that to myself as I go to the kitchen door. It has a great sound.

I hop off the back step and head down the street counting as I go, four blocks one way, and then turn at the wide avenue with zebra stripes.

And there's the store on the corner. Up on top there's a sign:
Deli.
It blinks back and forth in orange.

I give my hair one last pat, take a breath, and open the door.

I walk in, looking at the rows of cans with pictures of oranges and pineapples. I pass a bin that has a few sad-looking plantains, pale, as if they didn't have a chance to ripen in a warm sun. Behind the glass counter are lumps of meat: red and pink. There are chickens too, pathetic things with skinny tan legs.

The man with the Abuelita apron watches me from behind the counter. His face is friendly, and he smiles under his droopy black mustache. He nods as I walk toward him, my hands behind my back, my fingers crossed. He remembers me.

I say the words slowly, to be sure he understands them. I even try an extra bit. “I swip,” I say, and make sweeping motions to be sure I have it right.

Maybe not. The man's mustache is quivering. He's ready to laugh. “Sweeeep.” He draws out the middle part, just the way Angel did.

“Dust.” I wave my hand at the fruit stuck in cans. And then I'm finished. This language wears me out.

The man bites his mustache. “What's your name?” he asks slowly.

Ah, I know that. I give him my northern name. “Matty.”

He points to himself. “Sal.” He nods toward the broom in the back hallway.

“Yes?”

He says something back. Who know what it is? But I take a chance and dive for the broom, glancing back at him to see if he's nodding, or frowning. But someone has come into the store. He turns away and I begin to sweep.

In the factory, Miguel used to scream at Damian and me. “That's the way you sweep? Everything just piled up in the corner?”

Damian would wait until Miguel went to bother someone else. Then he'd push all the dirt into another corner. We'd laugh, thinking Miguel would never know the difference. And sometimes he didn't. I remember once I fell over the broom, and even he had to grin.

But in this deli with its blinking sign, with dust all over the soup cans, I sweep enormously, back and forth, until there's not a speck on the floor, and Sal with the Abuelita apron is smiling. “Good job,” he says.

He's mixing up my words, but that's all right.

Without asking, I find a dust cloth in back. I dust every one of those cans of soup, and string beans, and corn.

And then, a surprise.

Sal beckons me into the back. “Supper.” He waves his hand at the table.

There's food on a paper plate: a roll with ham and cheese hanging out the edges. There's a long skinny pickle and a can of soda. I haven't had so much to eat since I left home. My mouth waters.

I'm not sure it's for me.

“Go ahead,” he says.

I don't sit at the table. Instead, I lean forward, standing, and ram half the sandwich into my mouth. I look at the rest, thinking of Angel. “Home?” I ask, pointing.

Sal shakes his head. “Eat it all,” I think he says. He goes out to the front and a few minutes later he's back with another sandwich, three bottles of soda, three of water, and the same friendly soup in a can that Angel and I love. “Home,” Sal says with a sweep of his arm.

I gulp down the soda, then keep my hands in my pocket so I don't devour the other sandwich.

He even gives me some money.

Wait until Angel sees all this.

I duck my head; I wish I knew what to say. “Spiffy,” I tell him at last, knowing he's giving me much more than I deserve for a little sweeping and dusting.

He nods, and I wonder if he knows I'm illegal.

And then I'm on the way home, carrying the bag of food. I'm going to sit on the couch with a soda, as if I'm rich. What will I write? I think about the boy who took my money today, and a time long ago, when I took something too. I'll write about that memory. Why not?

I stole once. It was after we'd eaten, my homework finished, and I splashed through the creek, dragging my feet along the sand.

And there was that miserable old woman's house, her broom resting on the porch, both the woman and the broom ready to come after me.

This time I'd go after the broom.

I crept up on the porch, my bare feet leaving wet prints, and I reached, reached farther for it.

Then it was in my hand. I backed down the step and ran along the edge of the creek in the growing darkness.

“Too bad, old woman,” I whispered to myself, and threw the broom into the high weeds that lined the creek.

It was so easy…

Until I told Julian.

“We can't do that, Mateo,” he said. “What does she have but her house, her broom? No family. No one to care about her.”

We went back to look for the broom, but it wasn't there.

“Maybe she found it,” I said.

“I don't think so.” He ran his hands through his hair. “It's here somewhere, but it's too dark.”

Julian took the money he'd been saving in his sock and bought her a broom, a much better one that wasn't filthy and falling apart. He carried it up to her porch with me in back of him.

The old woman stuck out her lip, not a bit grateful. But later Julian said, “Why should she be grateful? We're the ones who caused her broom to be lying in the weeds somewhere.”

That was Julian. “We're the ones,” he'd said, when he knew it wasn't any of his fault.

I took the coin Abuelita had given me for my name day and slipped it into his sock that night.