Chapter 9
Maria and I shared the last Pepsi and ate some leftover pepperoni pizza she had heated in the microwave. She beat me to the last piece, took a huge bite, and dripped cheese down her chin. Her black eyes sparkled. A strand of hair fell over her face onto the pizza in her hand. I wiped it off with a napkin and tucked it back behind her ear. I was thinking how much I loved her. Being there, alone with her at the kitchen table, it was almost like we were married.
I was wearing only my jeans. My T-shirt was tossed somewhere in Maria’s room, along with my underwear, socks, and shoes. Maria had tied her silky, purple robe loosely around her waist. When she reached across the table for the Pepsi can, her robe separated above the tie. I got turned on all over again. We’d already used up the three condoms, but I knew I had time to run to the drugstore to buy another one.
Over the stove, a red, yellow, and black Mickey Mouse clock clicked its tail back and forth. We’d come into the kitchen at 3:15 for something to eat. Now, Mickey said it was 3:30. Time was moving too fast. When Maria had called me at noon, she said her stepfather went to play soccer and wouldn’t be home till 5:00 or 5:30. It seemed like we had forever. A long, long Saturday afternoon. And we didn’t even have to ditch. Now we only had about an hour left. I could probably get to the drugstore and back and we could do it again and I could still get out of there by 4:30. Maybe I could chance it and leave at 4:45. I was reaching for the Pepsi when we heard a soft knock on the front door. Both of us jumped up. I pushed back from the table. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.” Maria looked at the clock. “It can’t be him. He wouldn’t knock.” She looked around. “Go in my bedroom.” She shoved me toward her room. “Hide in the closet or something. I’ll see who it is.”
I hurried into her bedroom, into the closet, and pulled the door closed, leaving an inch or two so I could hear what was going on. If it was her stepfather, I’d have to spend the night in the closet because I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him see me. I leaned back against Maria’s clothes. A red sweater fell from the shelf over my head, covered my eyes, and brushed against my bare shoulders. I pushed it out of the way. I could hear myself breathe in the dark.
I tossed the sweater aside and peeked out the door. Maria’s bed was all messed up. The purple bedspread had fallen off the foot of the bed and was crumpled on the floor. My T-shirt was in a heap next to Maria’s jeans and yellow blouse. One of my Nikes was under the table that held the TV. The other was sticking out from under the bed. Even if her stepfather, or whoever it was, didn’t find me, they’d find my clothes. I wondered if I had time to dash out of the closet and gather them up. I heard somebody crying. I wondered if it was Maria. Maybe I’d left something in the front room, something that gave us away.
The door to the bedroom swung open and I fell back into the closet, catching my breath. “It’s OK,” Maria called. She walked into the room. “Where are you?”
I let out my breath. I swung open the closet door and held out my arms to her. Maria was holding her robe closed around her neck. As she walked toward me, she dropped her hands and her robe fell open at the neck again.. She casually untied it and grabbed her ties to close it again. I went to her and reached my arms around her inside the robe. I traced my hands up and down her back. She leaned into me, reaching her arms around my neck.
She pecked me on the cheek. “We can’t. It’s Sandra…” she said, but I covered her mouth with mine and moved my hands down below her waistline. I didn’t care about Sandra. I was ready to go again, condom or not. We’d made love without a condom before and nothing bad happened.
I lifted my head. “Is she gone?”
Maria pulled away from me, all business. She tightened the ties of her robe around her waist. “Eddy beat her up bad.” I didn’t want to listen. I reached to untie her robe, but she grabbed my hands.
I felt my heart squeeze, my stomach sink. I just wanted to make love again. “Come on,” I whispered. “Please.” We still had an hour before her stepfather came back.
Maria pushed me back. “What’s the matter with you? She’s beat up.” She turned her back on me and walked out of the room. Sandra was someone I was really starting to hate. I followed Maria into the living room.
Sandra sat on the blue and pink flowered sofa, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She was still crying. She had on a red sweater with a big scoop neck that hung off her shoulder. Angry red and purple bruises covered her arm and shoulder.
Maria sat beside her. She put her arm around her shoulders. “Did you go home, yet? Does your mother know?”
Sandra shook her head no. “I came right over here. Angel will kill him.” She lifted her face. Both of here eyes were swollen and turning purple. Her lip was split and her right cheek puffed out so much her right eye was a slit.
“You should tell your mother,” Maria said. “You want me to call her?”
Sandra shook her head no. “She’ll just get mad at me. She’ll say it’s my own fault.”
I felt awkward. I felt like I should say something, but I didn’t know what. I sat down on a big, green, leather-like chair. It was cold against my bare back, so I leaned forward. There was a rough spot on the arm where somebody had tried to glue together a rip and I played with the edge, rubbing my finger back and forth over it. I heard Mickey’s tail in the kitchen, clicking away my time with Maria.
Sandra said that it hurt to breath, that Eddy had socked her in the stomach over and over again. Crying like that and all beat up, she didn’t look tough like she usually did.
“Get her something to drink,” Maria said to me.
I went into the kitchen, but all I could find was the rest of the Pepsi Maria and I had shared. I poured it into a glass I found in the cupboard, put some ice in it, and took a sip. It was flat, but it would have to do. Sandra didn’t notice me come back into the living room, so I handed the glass to Maria. She held it while Sandra talked.
“I told Eddy I had to tell Angel it was over so he drove me over there. I went in his house and I was talking with Angel. He says, “OK, baby, whatever you want.” He’s so sweet. So then he took me in his arms, you know, for a last kiss because Eddy and me were thinking we might move in together. And my mom won’t care. And so Angel’s giving me this really good kiss, and Eddy just comes in the door like it’s his house. But Angel doesn’t see him and he’s starting to get all turned on, you know, and he’s unbuttoning my blouse, just like for a last time. So Eddy grabs my arm and doesn’t say anything, just pulls me out the door. He’s lucky he didn’t get killed going in there. All the way back to his house he’s yelling at me for coming on to Angel and I keep saying that I wasn’t. It was just a last kiss, and he’s yelling at me about Angel’s hands on my tits and he drags me inside and his parents were at the park with his little sisters and I thought we were going to make out or something, but as soon as we got inside, he started beating on me.”
Man, I don’t know how anyone could ever hit a girl, but Sandra sure did play Eddy and Angel against each other.
“Did you tell Angel, yet?” Maria asked.
“I don’t want him to know because he’ll kill Eddy and then the cops will put him in jail and I won’t have anyone.” She started to cry again.
Maria handed her the glass. “Here, take a drink of this.”
Sandra took a sip of Pepsi, then stared down at it, holding it with both hands between her knees. Maria went into the kitchen to get a wet cloth. I felt stupid. I leaned back on the chair, but it was still cold so I leaned forward again. I rested my arms on my knees and looked down at my bare feet. My toenails needed cutting. When I glanced up, Sandra was looking at me. “Maybe you should see a doctor,” I said, but she just shook her head no and looked down at the Pepsi again.
Maria washed Sandra’s face and put on some Neosporin where her cheek was scraped. It was getting close to 4:30 and Maria
told me I’d better get dressed and get out of there. I went into her room and picked up my T-shirt from beside the bed. I pulled it over my head and grabbed my shoes. I found one sock under the bed, but couldn’t find the other. I hollered from the bedroom for help.
“I don’t want to go,” I said when Maria came into the room to help me look for the sock.
“My stepdad.”
I looked at the clock beside her bed. 4:35. “I got twenty-five minutes,” I said, playing with the ties on her robe. “Can’t she wait out there? She’ll be OK.”
“What if he comes home early?” she said, but I kissed her, trying to untie her robe. “Come on, Ricky,” she said pushing away from me. “If he comes home he’ll kill me. Besides…Sandra’s hurt.”
Maria ruffled through the blankets and sheets on her bed and found the sock twisted up in the top sheet. She gave it to me and went back to the living room. I finished putting on my shoes and socks, ran my fingers through my hair a few times, then went out to the living room.
I mumbled goodbye to Sandra, said I hoped she’d feel better, and gave Maria a quick kiss at the front door. As I pulled the door closed behind me, they were calling Sandra’s mother to find out if she could spend the night with Maria.
On the bus, I leaned my head against the cold window. My emotions were all mixed up. I was sorry for Sandra and mad at her at the same time for busting in on us. I was pissed at Eddy for beating up a girl like that. I was in love with Maria, and I was going to ditch every day until her mother came back from El Salvador. And I was scared of Frank beating me up again when he found out.
I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn’t wake myself up. I knew if I could wake up, my head would stop hurting. I’d be OK. My eyes were stuck together. I could only see inside myself. Everything was red. Like a fire, only thicker. Like lava. Or blood.
I woke up. I had to go to the bathroom. My clock said 2:15. My head felt like it was going to split open. I staggered across the hall, quietly shut the door behind me, went to the bathroom, and stood over the sink, splashing cold water on my face. I found aspirin in the medicine cabinet. I popped two of them in my mouth, bent over, and scooped water into my mouth with my hand.
Back in bed, I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t. I twisted and turned until the sheets got wrapped all around my legs. I ached all over. First I was freezing cold. Then I was so hot I couldn’t stand to have the blankets touch my skin.
Finally, I gave up and rolled out of bed. It was 4:30. I pulled on my jeans, snuck into the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee. The aspirin hadn’t helped my headache at all. I wondered if it was OK to take more or if I should wait. Maybe I could take one more. The bottle said two, but if my headache didn’t quit, I was going to take a third one whether it killed me or not. I put three spoons of sugar in my coffee and some milk, and sat hunched over the kitchen table. Later I got cold, so I pulled a blanket from my bed, wrapped it around me, and went back to the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee.
I heard Frank moving around about 5:30. He came into the kitchen in his boxers, scratching his hands in his hair, like he was trying to wake up. He needed a shave.
“How come you’re up so early?” he asked.
“I got a bad headache so I made some coffee.”
“You don’t look so good,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m OK.”
“Then make a fresh pot of coffee,” he said, as he turned and went into the bathroom. I heard the shower running.
I made another pot of coffee, and when Frank was finished, I took a shower and let the hot water run on my neck. When I got out, I knew Imelda must be up cooking breakfast because I smelled fried eggs and onions. The smell made me sick to my stomach. I pulled on the jeans and shirt I’d worn the day before, and felt in my pocket for the little black cross. Maria. More than anything, I wanted to ditch to her place. The shower had helped my headache a little, but I dumped some aspirin in the pocket of my jeans and took off for the bus stop.
Trouble is, Maria wasn’t at school. She usually met me on the front steps, but she never showed up. The 7:50 bell rang. I waited five more minutes, and finally decided to go to biology.
So far it had been a rotten day. My head hurt. Sitting in biology and listening to Mr. Stamos lecture about photosynthesis was boring. I wanted to lay my head down on my desk and go to sleep, but I knew he’d send me out.
At nutrition I hung out with Marco. I still wasn’t hungry, so I gave him my food and drank the juice. We sat on the concrete wall by the shop building. A police helicopter circled, but didn’t move on to the next high school like they usually did. Whenever I saw them circle like that, I wondered what was going on close by. Armed robbery? Murder? Someone with a gun who might climb the chain-link fence beside the baseball field and hide out at the high school. I shivered. I wished I’d worn a jacket. “It’s cold,” I said.
Marco tossed an apple core across the walk to a trashcan. “Three points,” he said. He opened his carton of juice, drank it, squashed the carton, and held it up in one hand, like a basketball. “Three seconds left in the game. Quintanilla has the ball at half-court. He fires.” Marco tossed the carton to the trashcan. He hit it dead center. He held out his palm and I slapped it.
“Where’s Maria?” he asked. We didn’t usually talk much about her after the fight we’d had when Maria and I had first stared going together, but it was unusual for one of us to be at school and the other one absent.
“I don’t know. I think she stayed home cause Sandra got beat up and came over to her place yesterday for help. Sandra didn’t even want to tell her Mom.”
“Who did it?” Marco took my empty juice carton, crumpled it up, and hooked it toward the trashcan. It landed three feet on the other side.
“You missed,” I said. He jumped down from the wall, picked up the carton, and held it in both hands for a free shot. “Eddy,” I said. “The guy in sixth period.”
Marco whistled. He shook his head, shot the carton toward the trashcan, and sank it. “Jerk. He’s supposed to come to my house tonight. We’re working on our group report for tomorrow.”
“You think he’ll come?”
“I guess so. He called me last night and said he would. Said he had to because his probation officer’s been on his butt about his grades, so he wants to do the group stuff. Anyway, my mom’s making dinner for everyone.”
The bell rang and we hopped off the wall. “Is she OK?” he asked. I shrugged. He added, “Eddy’s stupid.”
“So is she, but he really hurt her,” I said.
“He’s a thug.” We dumped the rest of our trash and took off for third period.
Maria was waiting for me in the hallway at the end of third period. Maybe the day wasn’t going to be so rotten after all. She said that when her stepfather had seen Sandra that morning, he’d insisted she call her mother. Her mother picked her up and was taking her to a clinic. We ditched fourth period under the football bleachers until the bell for lunch. I didn’t want to leave, but Maria was anxious to get out to the ROTC area to find out what was happening with Angel and the rest of Locos. I still wasn’t hungry, so on my way through the lunch area, I bought a coke from the machine. I popped the top, took a couple aspirins out of my pocket, and swallowed them down.
By the time we got behind the ROTC building, most of the Locos were there. Angel was saying he was going to make Eddy pay. He didn’t care if he got suspended or expelled or went to jail. He was going to make Eddy sorry. He wanted to know if anyone had seen Eddy at school yet, but nobody had. Then Angel stepped away to try to call Sandra to see what they said at the clinic. Things calmed down a little bit. When Angel stuck his phone back in his pocket, it got real quiet. They wanted to know how she was, but Angel said she hadn’t answered. Leonardo’s girlfriend said, “Eddy’s bragging about it, too. That’s what I heard. He’s telling everybody abou
t how she cheated on him and he caught her at it.”
“Marco didn’t know anything about it,” I said. “Eddy talked to him last night about going over to his house tonight for a group thing for sixth period.”
“Marco Quintanilla? He don’t know nothing about Eddy,” said Leonardo.
“He’s not a homey,” Maria explained to me. “Eddy’s gonna be bragging to his homies.” When the bell rang for fifth period, I asked Maria if she wanted to ditch again, but she and Angel had the same fifth period and she wanted to talk to him. She told me she’d meet me after school on the front steps.
At 3:00 I took Maria’s backpack and walked her to her bus. “Sandra texted Angel in fifth,” she said. “Told him Eddy broke some bones in her face. We’ve got a Locos meeting and I have to go, but I’ll see you at work.”
I nodded. I was tired of hearing about Sandra and Eddy. “You want to ditch tomorrow?” I asked. “Is your stepfather working?”
She smiled and nodded yes. When her bus left, I searched out Mr. Wilkerson. After the last of the school buses left, he motioned me to follow him inside. I told him I needed some more condoms and he gave them to me.
“Going to all your classes?” he asked.
I nodded. I’d just ditched fourth period, but Mrs. Martinez hadn’t had a chance to see my attendance check yet and blow up about it or do whatever she was going to do.
“Good,” he said. “Keep it up.”
I said thanks for the condoms, took a couple more aspirins at the water fountain, and hurried to my bus stop. My headache had started throbbing.
Maria didn’t have to be at work until 7:00 that night, so I’d already been handing out Big Macs and bacon double cheeseburgers for two hours before she got there. The smell of the food got to my stomach, especially the French fries and the fish. I concentrated on my work because the last thing I wanted to do was vomit behind the counter at McDonalds. I was scooping up French fries when Maria came in. She walked straight over to me. “Angel and some others are going to get Eddy tonight.”
I’d been so intent on scooping fries, I hadn’t really heard what she’d said. “What?”
“Angel and some others are going to get Eddy tonight. He said maybe he and Sandra are getting back together. Maybe even getting married. Sandra called me and said she thinks she’ll go back with Angel because she hates Eddy now.”
“What’s Angel gonna do?”
“The gang has a gun. He’s going to wait for him.”
I set down the French fries and the metal scoop. “What?”
“Not kill him, but maybe wound him. Sandra says Angel knows where he is tonight, that he’s going to wait outside for him.”
Eddy was at Marco’s house to work on the group report. I’d told Locos that myself at lunch. “I gotta go,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I just gotta go,” I repeated. I looked around for the shift manager.
Maria grabbed my arm. “They’re not going to kill anybody. Just scare him. That’s all.”
I saw the shift manager taking drinks to the drive-up window. “I’ll call you later,” I said to Maria. I walked over to the manager and told him I was sick and asked if I could leave. I was going to leave even if he said no, but I didn’t want to get fired if I didn’t have to. I must have looked pretty bad because he said yes, that I didn’t look so go good, and he thought I should go home. He was headed to my register when I left.
I ran down the block to the bus stop. I was scared. Maybe nothing would happen, but maybe…I had to get to Marco’s house, just in case.
It seemed like the bus crawled down the street. And it seemed like at every stop, some old lady with a cane took forever to climb up the steps and get seated. I got off at the stop three blocks from Marco’s and ran the rest of the way. At his building, I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, ran down the hall to his apartment, and pounded on the door.