American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [90]
“Georgie has a new girlfriend,” I said, and there was truth to it. A girl in George’s class at school had followed him home, giggling and grinning like an imbecile.
“I do not,” George said, and scowled at me.
“He does?” My mother’s face brightened. She sat up in the chair as if a harness had been lifted from her.
“Oh, yes, you do,” I said, standing up and facing him now, my hands on my hips like a martinet. “And she’s a real princess, too. A narigona.” One with a big honker.
“She is not my girlfriend,” George screamed. Red was climbing his neck, red as the eye of the incense. His tic was dancing, wild.
I was exhilarated by the sight of my brother’s quaking face. Perhaps it was because I was bored, perhaps because I’d had a surfeit of gloom. But I felt a perverse pleasure in goading the god I had worshiped so long. Blow the cone, make it glow. It felt good to bicker. Felt right.
“And another thing,” I gloated. “She’s a potona.” A fat ass. I jumped up and waggled my tail.
“Ya, ya, Marisi,” Papi chuckled, in spite of himself. “That’s enough.”
George sputtered.
“I don’t know why you find it so surprising,” said Mother, “that Georgie would have a new girlfriend—that is, if he does—”
“Do not!” he screeched.
She winked at him knowingly. “Remember when you told me how you loved Antonio, Mareezie? Do you remember that? And do you remember when you fell in love with the young man who called on Tía Chaba?”
“Now I’m in love with Nub,” I confessed.
“Nub? Your cousin?” said Papi. “Dios mío. What next? You’ll have to get a special dispensation from the Pope. Your great-great-grandparents on my side were first cousins, too, you know. That’s what they had to do.”
“Well, maybe she’s not thinking of marriage just yet, honey,” Mother said. “Maybe just love between friends, eh?”
“Love friends,” I said, and nodded.
“Aha, I see,” said my father, smiling. “Better not tell your husband about those,” he added, and winked.
“Love friends, my butt,” said George under his breath. “There’s no such thing.”
“Is so!” I barked.
“Is not!”
“Is so! Mother has one!”
And then a hush fell over the room as I gaped around like a stunned animal.
“Mother has one,” I repeated, more softly this time. There was a scent of danger in the air, but I yipped my way through it. I wanted to prove to them that I knew what I was talking about.
“A love friend?” Mother said, and leaned into the room, smiling thinly, her elbows on her knees.
Fermata.
And then me again. “Yes. You have one. A love friend. In Cartavio. I saw you sitting with him on the couch. You were staring in each other’s eyes. One of the solteros. The tall one with the yellow—”
“Enough!” yelled my father. Presto. He stood now, a coal fire behind his eyes. Georgie was frozen on the floor, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. Vicki got up and banged her way into another room.
“I can’t imagine who you think you saw. In Cartavio or anywhere else, Mareezie,” my mother said in a voice full of calm. “I can’t imagine.”
“It’s true!” I yelled. “You were over there! He was over here! I saw you. You know it’s true!”
Papi whirled around, slapped the newspaper down on the table, and lunged for the front door. The screen door snapped back with a loud slam, then shuddered against the frame. My mother stood and walked into the dining alcove. Her back to us, she pressed her knuckles down against the table, pushed her shoulders up into a shrug. But she didn’t say a word.
He didn’t come home for dinner that night. I lay in bed sick with worry that he would never come home again. That I had driven him out to a hellhole in Hanna, somewhere between Walcott and Medicine Bow. When he staggered back through the front door at about four o’clock the next morning, I heard a sharp thwack and then a whoosh, as if air were rushing out of a tire. I crept from my bed, peeked into the living room, and saw an empty bottle with a dapper little man on its side, doffing