Often it would be late afternoon or even early evening by the time they started the four-block walk home. Ceci and Pablo would be hungry—grateful to munch on whatever treats Serena happened to bring out to them from the bar—potato chips or peanuts or even hunks of tough beef jerky. Sometimes a nice man from the bar would come find them and bring them hamburgers with real french fries.
Chances were, as Serena pushed the cart along, she would be singing or giggling or both. She never really walked straight after she’d been inside the Roundhouse for an hour or so. Ceci would spend the whole trip home praying to the Holy Mother that they wouldn’t meet any of her friends from ‘hoot along the way.
Sitting in the stifling living room, waiting for her other to return, Ceci Grijalva felt incredibly lonely. She missed her father. Even though her mother and father used to fight a lot, she still missed him. And she missed her grandmother, too. The happiest hours of Ceci’s life had been spent at the rickety table in her Grandmother Grijalva’s tiny house watching the old woman make tortillas. Grandma was blind, from something Ceci could never remember, something that started with a g. But even blind, the old woman’s practiced hands still remembered how to make tortillas—how much flour and water to put into the bowl, how to pat the soft, white dough into perfect circles, how long to leave them on the hot griddle, and how to pluck them off with her thumb and finger without ever getting burned.
Waiting for her mother to return, Ceci ached for the comfort of her grandmother’s ample breast and wondered if and when she and Pablo would ever see their father’s mother again. Serena had said they might go down to Douglas at Christmastime, but Ceci didn’t see how that was possible. Douglas was more than two hundred miles away. They didn’t have a car. Two hundred miles was too far to push a grocery cart.
Blinking back tears of loneliness, Ceci fingered the beads that lay in her lap, the ones she usually kept hidden under her pillow. Grandmother Grijalva had given her the string of black beads last year when she made her first communion. Nana had told Ceci that saying Hail Marys would help her feel better, no matter what was wrong. In the months since Ceci’s mother had left her father and brought the children to Phoenix, Ceci had often used the hidden beads to put herself to sleep, slipping them out from under the pillow only after the lights were off and her mother had left the room.
Ceci didn’t really need to hide them from her mother. Serena was sort of a Catholic, even though she hadn’t been to mass since they moved. The real problem was Serena’s mother, Ernestina Duffy. Nana Duffy, as she liked the children to call her. Nana Duffy was a Baptist, Ceci could never remember what kind, and she was always telling Ceci and Pablo that the pope was evil. Ceci didn’t believe it.
“Holy Mary, mother of God . . .” she whispered. As the beads slipped through her fingers, Ceci’s eyes grew heavy. Gradually she drifted off into a troubled sleep. Only this time the return of her mother’s clattering grocery cart didn’t wake her. Pablo did. He was standing in front of her in his underwear, frowning, both hands on his hips.
“How come you’re sleeping there?” he demanded.
Ceci’s eyes popped open. It was morning. Where the street light had glowed hours before, now bright late-summer sunshine filled the window. She shifted stiffly in the chair. The foot that had been curled under her was sound asleep. As soon as she moved it, needles and pins shot up her leg.
“Where’s Mom?” she asked.
Pablo turned on the TV set and squatted in front of it. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe she already went to work. I’m hungry.”
“She isn’t here?” Ceci asked.
Pablo didn’t answer. When the needles and pins went away enough so Ceci could walk, she limped into Serena’s bedroom. There was no sign of the laundry basket. Hurrying to the back door, she looked outside. The grocery cart wasn’t where it belonged, either. Dismayed, Ceci realized her mother had never come home from the WE-DO-YU-DO Washateria.
Ceci felt sick, but there was no phone in the ‘ house; no way for her to call someone and ask for help. She did the only thing that seemed reasonable tit the time.
“Turn off the cartoons, Pepe,” she said. “Get dressed. We’ve got to get ready for school.”
CHAPTER ONE
