“Oh, go on, change and go paint. My favorite show is coming on.”
Mary put on an old T-shirt and her painting overalls and then went to check on Mama one more time. She reminded herself to move and massage her legs in an hour or so.
Out in the backyard, Mary stared hopelessly at her painting of the irises. A sinking feeling came over her every time she looked at it. Where did the pleasure of painting go? Who took it away? It made her angry to feel that way about painting. She wished she could feel excited about painting, the way she used to feel.
She had just begun to listlessly mix colors on the palette when she heard a whistle from the Domínguezes’ house. She took a deep breath. She wasn’t in the mood to make conversation with anyone, much less with nosy Mr. Domínguez. But when she turned around, she saw Marcos instead. “What are you doing there?” she asked.
“I saw you from the street.”
“You saw me from the street? You can’t see my backyard from the street.”
“Yeah, you can. If you drive real slow and lean your head way out of the car, you can. I saw you coming out of the shed.” He grinned. “I was driving by to see a friend who lives over on Dale.”
“You don’t have to come through my street to get to Dale.”
“Your street?”
“That street.” Mary pointed toward the front of the house. But he stood there very sure of himself, as if he was waiting for Mary to realize that he had come looking for her. “And why are you in Mr. Domínguez’s yard? Do you just walk into people’s yards whenever you want?”
“I’m not hurting anything. I’m just standing here talking to you.”
“What if Mr. Domínguez comes out?”
“If he comes out, he comes out. He’s not going to shoot me, is he?”
She reached down to the ground and picked up the wooden box with her paint tubes and brushes. Then she stood there not knowing what to do. She looked at the painting and realized she was not going to paint. “You just — shouldn’t do that,” she managed to say.
“Can I come over?”
“Where?”
“There.” He pointed to where she was standing.
“Here?” She looked down at her feet. She could hear her heart thump. “Why?”
“Just in case the guy that lives here decides to shoot me.” He sounded as if he was teasing her.
“Why did you come here? Really.” She lowered the paint box to the ground.
“Okay, so I wasn’t on my way to see my friend. I need to ask you something. But I don’t want to talk to you from someone else’s backyard. What I need to say won’t take long.” He sounded sincere.
“Ask me what?” Was he going to ask her to go out with him?
She must have had a very scared look on her face, for he said, smiling as if he had read her mind, “Don’t worry. It’s business.”
“Business?”
“It has to do with painting,” he said.
She hesitated and then gave in to a new and unaccustomed impulse. “Okay.”
She started walking toward the gate to the backyard, but he took a few steps back and then leapt over the fence. “Ay!” he said as he landed in front of her. There was a mixture of self-satisfaction and pain on his face.
She stepped away from him. “That was silly,” she said, even though she was amazed by his feat. The fence stood as high as his chest.
“Is there a place we can sit down? I think I just twisted something.”
She pointed to the wooden chairs under the willow tree. He limped toward them and sat down. He took off his black shoes. “Look,” he said, pulling down his sock, “the ankle’s starting to swell. Would you get me a bag of ice?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Oh. Okay.” He rubbed the ankle.
“What is it you wanted to ask me?”
“You seemed nicer that day when I drove you home.”
She remembered that day and that ride with him. “I didn’t mean to be,” she said.
He tried to stand up, grimaced with pain, and sat back down. “I can’t believe I landed crooked. Usually I clear fences without any problem.”
“When you’re running from the police?”
“You’re funny,” he said, grinning. “And strange.”
“Strange?”
“I mean you talk strange. Most people would say ‘cops,’ but you say ‘police.’ You don’t use words like other kids.”
She stayed quiet. She always stayed quiet when people called her strange. Kate thought they were weird too, because they didn’t talk like anyone else. But what was strange about saying police instead of cops?
“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said. He stood up. He had left his shoe off and was now holding it in his hand.
“I don’t hear you using the words kids use either, whatever those are.”
“That’s cause I try to clean up my act when I’m around you.” He took a step on the bad foot. “Ouch!”
“I’ll get you some ice,” she said.
“No, really. I’ll drive home. It’s my left ankle, so I can still push the accelerator and the brake with my right foot.”
He began to hop to the gate. Mary blurted, “You didn’t say why you were here. You said you had something to ask me.”
“Oh yeah. To be honest, part of the reason I came was because I wanted to see you, you know, kind of get to know you.”
She tried to hide any expression that she was flattered. “And the other part?”
“The other part is kind of hard to explain.” He was having trouble keeping his balance on one foot. “Mind if I sit down again for a second?” He hopped back to the chair, sat down, and looked up at her. “It’s real hard to talk to you when you’re way up there.” He reached out and moved the other chair toward her.
She looked at the painting of the irises on the easel, then walked over slowly and sat down. He was looking at the space between his feet, and he began slowly, like he was embarrassed about what he had to say. “Turns out that I was told I have to do a mural on one of the outside walls of this community center over in Socorro.” He waited for her to ask him a question, but she didn’t. “Anyway, I never done a mural before. All I’ve done is these drawings and some . . . you know, signs and stuff on walls.”
“You mean graffiti.”
“Yeah. Anyway, the reason I came, part of the reason I came” — he smiled — “was to see if you could help me with the mural, you know, give me some pointers. I’ll do it. I mean, I got to. But I don’t even know where to start.”
Mary could see Aunt Julia standing behind the screen door, snooping. From the expression on Aunt Julia’s face, she wasn’t sure what to make of Mary talking to a boy, especially a boy with only one shoe. Mary stared at her until she disappeared into the house. “Why do you have to paint a mural?”
Marcos turned to follow Mary’s gaze, but Aunt Julia was no longer there. He sniffed and then cracked his right index finger with his left hand. “This judge told me I had to.”
“A judge? So it’s like a sentence,” she said.
“You mean instead of like going to jail? Kind of. I guess I could have gone to jail. Turns out graffiti is a felony in Texas. The judge gave me a break.”
She paused to look at him closely, perhaps more closely than she had ever looked at him before. He was a weird mixture of childlike interior and tough-looking exterior, and all the pieces fit together and contradicted one another at the same time. “That’s so bad.” Her voice trembled a bit.
He must have noticed the flash of fear in her eyes. He said, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything obscene or violent.”
“What difference does it make what you sprayed?”
His ankle was slowly turning purple. “It was the name of a friend of mine. His name was Carlos.”
“Why did you do that?”
“He was killed a month ago by the Calle Cuatros.” Marcos grabbed the bottom of the chair with both hands. “I — You probably
won’t understand this, but marking that bus was something I needed to do.”
“Why?”
“I owed it to my friend. I wanted him to be remembered somehow. It’s the only way I knew how. Do you understand?”
She thought about the portrait of Mama she had painted before Mama’s accident. “Why are you painting that? I’m so ugly,” Mama had said after Mary had finally gotten her to pose.
“You’re beautiful, Mama, and I want to always remember you that way.”
“Do you think I’m going to turn ugly?” Mama had objected, laughing.
Mary turned to Marcos and answered his question. “Yes, I understand,” she said softly.
“Even if I didn’t want to do it, I’d have to.”
“Last time you said you had no choice about being in a gang. Now you have no choice about spraying buses. Do you get to choose anything for yourself?”
“You wouldn’t say that if you understood.”
“I guess I don’t understand, then.”
“Being in a gang is the best way some of us have to survive. You don’t know,” he said quietly. “There’s not a whole bunch of choices where I live.”
“I know there’s always a choice,” she said.
“Yeah, you’re right.” There was regret in his voice. “It was a mistake for someone like me to come here.” He started to lift himself out of the chair, but he stumbled and grabbed on to her.
She held on to his arm for a few moments until he steadied himself, her heart suddenly thumping again. Then she let go of him. She stood up and walked to the gate with him, far enough away that he wouldn’t think she was encouraging him to lean on her. When they got there, she opened the gate. He stepped through and then she asked, “What kind of help were you looking for? For the mural?”
He stopped hobbling. His eyes lit up for an instant. “I was hoping you’d take a ride with me to Socorro some day after school or a Saturday and give me some pointers. I’m good with spray cans, but I don’t know anything about brush painting. I think the mural needs to be done with brushes because the wall is big and we’d need about a zillion spray cans to spray-paint it.”
“Did they tell you what to paint?”
“The guy who runs the community center says it’s up to me, so long as it’s clean and I tell him what I’m going to do beforehand.”
“Well, what are you thinking of doing?”
“I don’t have the slightest. I’m not good at drawing people. I like to draw the kind of designs I showed you back in school. I’m going to stay away from people if I can . . . and horses.” He grinned. “Maybe some mountains with a lake and some boats.”
“Are you sure that’s appropriate for El Paso?” she said. “It’s all desert around here, remember.”
“See, that’s why I need someone like you, to help me come up with some ideas and then tell me how to do it.”
She started walking again and he followed. “You’re the one that got sentenced.”
“I’ll put in the sweat labor. All I need is a little help.”
They stepped onto the driveway. “Shit,” he said, when he realized he had left his shoe by the chair.
Mary was a hundred percent sure that it was the first time anyone had uttered the word shit in their house. “That must be a kid’s word,” she told him with a smile. She had never made fun of anyone as much as she was making fun of him. She walked back and grabbed his shoe by the shoelaces, then brought it to him as if she were carrying a dead mouse by the tail.
“Thanks,” he said. He took his shoe and resumed walking to his car.
“Looks like your ankle is getting better already,” she said.
“I need to have good feet to climb the ladder and paint that wall. It’s a monster. It’s going to take a couple of months.” He gazed into her eyes, a serious look on his face. “I’d like to do a good job on it. It’s a nice community center. That wall’s going to be up there for a long time and it’d be good if it was nice, you know.”
She nodded. She knew how it felt to want to create a work of beauty that was lasting. He opened the door to his car. “All right,” she said softly, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear it.
But he did. He turned to face her. “You’ll help me?”
“I’ll help,” she said. She felt excited for some strange reason.
“All right! How about tomorrow after school?”
“Do you even go to school? I haven’t seen you since that other day.”
“So you’ve been looking for me, huh? I go to school now and then. Tomorrow after school?”
“I can’t after school.” There was no need to tell him why her afternoons were taken.
“Saturday?”
“Maybe. I’ll have to check.”
“That’s cool. I’ll call you. What’s your cell?”
“I don’t have a cell.”
“That’s all right. I’ll find you.”
She stood by the gate and watched him settle in the driver’s seat. The engine started with a roar. “I’m not getting in that car unless you put in a seat belt for me,” she yelled at him.
He gave her a thumbs-up. Then he waved and drove away slowly.
God, what did I just get myself into? Mary said to herself.
Kate had to take the bus after school to the Red Sombrero, since neither Simon nor Bonnie could give her a ride. It was just as well. She needed time to think, to relive the conversation she had with Reverend Soto yet again. He had said the truth required that she consider all the options, that she look at all of them squarely. She leaned her head against the window of the bus and tried to do just that. She went to Stanford, and Mary and Mama stayed with someone. That was the top option, the only one she had considered so far. Who would Mary and Mama stay with? Aunt Julia would be best, but her aunt had never given any indication that she would be willing to take on that responsibility. Besides, it would be cruel to saddle Mary with Aunt Julia. Finding someone to live with Mary and Mama and paying that someone with the insurance money was a better solution. But was it realistic to have someone take care of Mama for four years or maybe longer while she went away first to college and then to medical school?
The bus stopped and a lady with a canvas bag full of groceries started to get on. She had trouble making it up the steps of the bus. She ambled slowly to an empty seat, and as she passed by, Kate saw her thin brown legs. Every night, before Kate went to sleep, she poured rubbing alcohol on her palms and massaged Mama’s legs so they would not atrophy. When she first started doing it, she kept expecting Mama to open her eyes, to sit up, say thank you, hug her. But as time went on, the nightly hope gave way to a sense that the limbs she was touching were devoid of energy, that life would never come back to them.
The bus passed a sign pointing toward Ascarate Park and she remembered suddenly her mother playing volleyball during a picnic game. It was a school outing, and Mother had volunteered to serve as chaperone. The rest of the mothers sat together talking, but not Mama. She saw that players were needed for a volleyball game and she jumped in uninvited. Kate remembered her bare feet and how she ran to get the ball, laughing with all the joy of an eight-year-old lost at play.
“Mama, we need to let you go,” she whispered.
But the thought that she wanted to let Mama go for her own convenience stuck in her head like a painful splinter she could not remove. She’s no longer alive. Reverend Soto’s words kept coming back to her. Andy’s words. The images of her mother’s limp legs as she massaged them and of her chasing a volleyball, full of life, whirled together in her head one after another. And she saw Andy’s soft hands, his fiery eyes and thick black hair. She tried to shake the feelings that came with the thought of him, but then she remembered his sermon and the way he gave it, the emphasis he placed on certain words. This is crazy, Kate kept telling herself, hoping she could regain her senses. But it was no use. She felt like a rock hit by a sledgehammer and now there were pieces of her scattered all over the place.
When she got to the Red Sombrero, she was distracted for the first time since she began waitressing. She took food to the wrong tables. She spilled water on a customer’s lap. She wrote down the wrong orders. The other waitresses, Simon’s father, and even José, the cook, asked her if she was okay. She smiled and nodded that she was fine. She tried to regain her focus, but the efforts lasted only a moment. Then the thoughts, the images would come back like angry bees.
Her shift at the Red Sombrero ended at eight p.m., but sometimes, when the restaurant was crowded, she would stay longer to help out. Tonight it was almost nine when she got in the car with Simon to go home. She was feeling slightly drowsy, but the drowsiness felt good. Work hadn’t made the thoughts disappear, but it had slowed them down to a manageable speed. Now she could see them float before her without menace, as options rather than threats.
“Are you all right?” Simon asked as soon as they were out of the restaurant’s parking lot.
“Sure.” She reminded herself to be careful. She didn’t want Simon to know her thoughts, especially about Andy. And yet a part of her did want him to know she had been thinking of someone else.
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like how?” She slouched in the car seat.
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m carrying a bottle in my purse.”
“What?” Simon’s head snapped in her direction.
“I’m kidding.”
He slowed down, maybe so he could focus on the conversation. Kate saw a small bubble of peace in her brain about to be disturbed. “What’s happening to you?”
“What is happening to me? I’m not sure I know.”
They drove in silence for a couple of blocks. Simon tapped the steering wheel with his fist a few times. She could tell he was trying to decide whether he should hold in what he wanted to say or let it out. Finally, he said, “Ever since we talked that day in your backyard, you’ve been different. I thought you’d be happy that I talked to you about us getting married, and instead it seems like it’s one more thing for you to worry about.”
“All I said was that I needed more time.” She didn’t understand why she felt suddenly angry.