Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass (5 page)

I scan the blur of faces in the lunchroom, looking for the pitcher of today’s fastball, but I already know exactly who it is. Most of the girls at the Latin table have their backs to us. All, that is, but one.

Yaqui.

I recognize her immediately thanks to her yearbook picture. She doesn’t crack a smile as our eyes meet. She’s sitting next to Alfredo. After she’s stared me down, she turns back around slowly.

Meanwhile, Miss Posey, the lunch aide, comes running before I’m even on my feet. She’s huffing with the effort of moving across the cafeteria so fast on her bunions. Chocolate milk is dripping down the walls, over the edges of the table, and onto the floor. She stares at the scene with disgust.

“Who threw it?” she demands, as though we’re the guilty ones. None of us answers, too stunned to speak. “Custodian!” she barks into her walkie-talkie. “Custodian, do you copy?” She stops me from trying to get up. “Don’t move. Any of you.”

Inside, I’m flipping her the bird. Chocolate milk seeps through my shirt and jeans to my underwear.

The custodian rolls his bucket of murky water across the floor. His name is Jason, and he’s young enough to still have acne on his neck. I try not to look at him as he works. Not at him. Not at the guys all over the lunchroom who are pointing and cracking up. Milk drips from the ends of my hair. I’m a loser for all to see.

“Pick up your feet,” he says.

I know what he thinks as he starts pushing his Pine-Sol mop in circles: we’re easy targets. Weak. Weakness means that you deserve to be hated, that you deserve everything you get.

My fists are clenched; I want to punch someone. Rob is perfectly still, like his spirit has risen out of his body and nothing is left. Darlene rummages through her bag for her striped gym-suit top.

“My shirt is ruined,” she fumes. “It was expensive, and now I’m going to
clash
.”

I grab her arm before she storms off to the lockers.

“What?”
she snaps.

My voice is almost a growl.

“I need to find out more about Yaqui Delgado.”

Darlene rolls her eyes and cocks her head.

“Gee, ya
think
?”

I walk home that afternoon in a daze. My shirt smells like baby vomit, and my hair has stiffened to peaks that I can’t comb through. Chocolate milk is one of those things I remember loving as a kid. Now that memory’s ruined.

“Hey.”

When I look up, I’m surprised to find myself in front of the old building. My feet must have gone on autopilot. I’m like one of those African elephants that finds her way home, no matter how far she’s roamed.

Joey Halper is sitting on the stoop, eating a frozen Popsicle, even though the October cold is biting through my jacket. He’s grinning at me in that way of his. He has a new haircut — buzzed close to the scalp like a prisoner. He tries to look vicious, but it never really works. Even the day the cop car brought him home for shoplifting, he looked like a scared little kid to me. I’m pretty sure he was crying. I never asked him about it, though. I don’t ask Joey about a lot of things. And now his hair is so wispy that it looks like duck down, so soft you want to touch it. I know better, though. It’s been a long time since Joey and I sat around catching caterpillars on the ends of twigs.

“Hey back,” I tell him.

He squints, like it’s an effort just to think about me, but at least he doesn’t make any crack about my stained clothes.

“Didn’t you move?” he asks.

“You noticed.”

I can see the damaged staircase through the dingy glass. A plywood ramp covers the steps. Yellow
CAUTION
tape is pulled tightly all around, as if it’s a murder scene. An unopened box of tiles is stacked in the corner.

“They still haven’t fixed the steps?” I ask.

He shrugs.

“Who cares? But don’t think I forgot that you owe me five bucks. I won the bet.”

This makes us both smile. The day before the stairs went kaput, Joey and I had swayed on them like surfers.

“Five bucks says they don’t last more than a week,” he’d said as we rocked. It was like we were little again, back before Ma labeled him trouble and forbid me to cross the threshold to his apartment. I should have known that a kid like Joey could predict disaster better than I could. He has had a lot of practice watching for it. His dad drinks and drinks until his anger explodes. For Joey, timing a disaster is a science.

“So why are you back?” He chomps off a bit of Popsicle. “You miss me or something?”

My cheeks flush. He’s cute for a future convict — even Mitzi used to think so — and the question catches me off-guard. Joey does that sometimes. Like the time he said, “What’s worse? Having no dad or having a mean son of a bitch like mine?”

“Well?”

His question makes me feel especially silly in my chocolate-milk shirt. I think fast and point at the row of dented mailboxes inside.

“I came to pick up our mail and stuff.”

He flashes a big smile. One of his front teeth has a tiny chip that I like.

“No way. People write to you, Toad?”

“Funny. Who writes to
you
besides your JD officer?”

“Ribbit,” he says.

So much for a homecoming.

I step past him and press Lila’s bell, but I can feel him watching me. Maybe it’s my shaky ass at work again. I don’t mind, though.

“Who is it?” Lila’s voice is breaking up through the static.

“Piddy. Buzz me in,” I say into the intercom. It feels weird not to live here anymore, not to have a key to unlock the lobby doors. I’m about to say so to Joey, the one kid I’ve known my whole life besides Mitzi, but when I look back through the glass doors, he’s already gone.

The TV is blaring in Lila’s apartment. She’s a
novela
junkie, and
Los Diablos y el Amor
is her favorite. Three p.m., Monday through Friday, she’s tuned in.

Lila blows on her wet nails and waves me in from the living room.

“Hurry up! You’re just in time!” she says. “I think she’s going to get her vision back today.” On-screen, Yvette, our heroine, is in a hospital bed, her eyes bandaged. She’s flanked by her husband —
and
her mother-in-law, who secretly engineered the accident a few episodes ago. There’ll be hell to pay any minute, just the way Lila likes, with lots of yelling and threats. I drop my things and flop down on the sofa, not too close in case she gets a whiff of me. It feels good to be home.

Lila pushes a plate in my direction without a word. It’s our usual afternoon snack: a sleeve of saltines and can of Goya Vienna sausages that Ma calls poison. I stuff my cheeks and slip off my spattered shoes. Heaven.

When the commercials come on, Lila turns to me.

“What do you think?”

She holds up her perfect almond-shaped nails. They’re painted black with a hint of red sparkles. “‘Wicked.’ It’s new in the catalog this fall.”

Cotton balls stained with her usual red polish are littered on the coffee table. The smell of acetone is a bad mix with sausages and sour milk. I try not to sit too close.

“New shipment?” I ask.

She plucks a cracker off my plate with the pads of her fingers and arches her brow as she takes a dainty bite.

“It arrived just this morning. And I should tell you that we’re running a special, Miss Sanchez.” Lila is using her businesswoman voice. She likes to practice on me before she wears down her good heels knocking on doors. “This polish is only $3.99. Regularly five dollars.”

I try to picture vampy black-and-red nails on any of the tired-looking ladies on our block, but I realize Joey Halper would make a much better prospect. Black nails might look good with his do-it-yourself knuckle tattoos. Poor Lila. Ma’s right. She’s her own best customer.

“Hey, what happened to your shirt?” She scrunches up her nose at the stink. “And your pants?” There’s a chocolate starburst pattern on my right thigh.

“Food fight in the cafeteria,” I lie quickly. “What else have you got?”

“Have a look,” she tells me, and turns back to the TV. “But don’t steal all my samples like last time.”

Her Avon case is open at her feet, and I’m happy to dig in. We’ve always called this case the Treasure Chest. Going through it makes me feel like I’m six again — in a good way. It’s an old-fashioned model that looks bulletproof — black and hard on the outside. Lila could get a modern one, but this is the one she likes. She says it’s the only way to keep all those pressed powders and glass bottles safe.

I pull out a small bottle shaped like a girl in a hoop skirt. She comes apart at the waist if you twist her hard enough. Her skirt is filled with a heavy jasmine splash. When she’s drained, Lila will add her to the collection of bottles decorating her windowsills. Dried-out geishas, roses — breakable things of every kind that she can’t bear to throw away.

The music swells on-screen, and I look up just in time to see that Yvette’s bandages are being removed. Lila’s eyes go wide in anticipation; she holds her breath, grabs my sticky knee. Even I can’t help but stare at what’s coming next.

The camera does a close-up on the girl who can miraculously see again. It cuts to the mother-in-law, then to the clueless husband. All at once, the credits run.

“¡Maldito sea!”
Lila shoves the coffee table with her foot. “We have to wait to see that hussy get what’s coming?”

“Please. You know what’s coming.” I rub perfume on my wrists and sniff. It’s better than sour milk, and it reminds me of fancy department stores where I can only browse. I stuff a few samples in my pocket. “It’s going to end the way all the
novelas
end. Everybody happy.”

She shoos away my idea like it’s a bad smell. “So what? Nobody gets happy the same way. That’s what’s interesting.”

She glances at the clock with peacock feathers all around the rim and then gets a good look at me. I tuck my hair behind my ears, trying to look natural, but I’m a mess and she knows it.

“Mami working overtime again?” she asks.

I nod. There’s a big sale this weekend, and extra shifts are the only way Ma could swing the move. She won’t be home until nine tonight. I won’t have to dodge her questions or make up stories about my clothes, but I’m in no hurry to sit over there all by myself, either.

“I can stay awhile. If you want.”

Lila smiles. She always likes company.

“¡Perfecto!
Then we have plenty of time.”

“For what?”

“To pamper ourselves, of course.” She leads me to the bathroom and drags in a chair. “You think I look this way without some work?”

In no time, my dirty clothes are in a pile, and I’m wrapped in one of her full body towels. She puts my head back, and soon the milk knots dissolve in the coconut shampoo. I close my eyes as she makes circles at my temples, just the way she does for her best customers at the salon. For the first time today, I almost relax and let my troubles wash away.

“You doing okay at that new school?” she asks after a while.

The whole awful day comes back behind my eyelids, searing me with shame. I hate lying to Lila, but I don’t want to talk about it. I squeeze my eyes tight so no part of it escapes.

“Yes.”

“But you haven’t told me anything about it. That’s not like you.”

“You sound like Ma now,” I say, annoyed.

“Ouch.” Lila glances at my pile of soiled clothes and uses her soapy pinkie to flip on the radio she has perched on her hamper. It’s tuned to La Mega FM. “How about some music, then, grouch?”

I don’t say anything else as the sputtering radio fills the room. Lila wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be hated. Everyone loves her; everyone wants to talk to her at a party. Men dream about her. Women want to be her. I don’t know that secret charm — at least not at DJ, where I’ve become a loser just like that.

Before I can help it, a tear slides from the corner of my eye and grazes my temple. I turn my head just in time to make it disappear in the water. Did she see? A shiver rises through my spine, but Lila doesn’t say a word. She hums to the music like it’s a lullaby and rinses me clean.

Ma thought she’d be a piano teacher once. She studied all the way to the third-year examinations in Cuba, but once she got here to the States, there was no money for fancy lessons, much less any time to spend on hobbies. That’s the only dream she’s ever told me about, but she won’t say too much else, since piano music reminds her of my father. Our piano is a relic from when my parents were together, so I don’t know why Ma keeps it if she won’t play it. Lila says Ma used to play a mean
tumbao
, but now she acts like the Steinway is just a place to prop up knickknacks. I’d love to be able to play some of those Latin grooves myself, but no matter how many times I’ve begged Ma to teach me, she says no. I even bought Latin sheet music and started teaching myself to tempt her, but she wouldn’t bite. And it’s hard to teach yourself to play the piano when you can barely read music.