Ronaldo shook his head and gave me a hug. I hadn’t realized how much that had bothered me until then and it was nice having my cousin there. “The other day I was in class and this kid called me a spic because it was unfair that I got straight As in Spanish since it was cheating. It sucks. I’m sorry.”
We went home and, he didn’t tell me, but he broke up with Horacia that night.
That explains why the next morning Horacia showed up at my house with her mother and asked to speak to my mom. It was the weekend, and my mom’s only day off, but she let them in. They said it was important, that Mrs. Móntes was thinking about our family’s “well-being” and that she’d want to know about my behavior. See, Horacia had brought over this photo of me. She’s obsessed with these disposable cameras and she took one of me at the Corner with Miguel. It was at the exact moment that he handed me my Star Wars pin. But because of the angle and the cigarette tucked behind his ear, it looks like he could be handing me anything. Specifically, DRUGS.
”I’m not doing drugs!” I shouted as soon as I shut the door on Horacia’s self-righteous, lying ass.
Nothing I said seemed to matter. My mother was yelling about me being one of “those girls” from bad neighborhoods who have no business being around boys. That she watched on a news special on Telemundo how even the scent of marijuana would cause me to become a zombie and ruin my life. As punishment for something I didn’t even do, I couldn’t leave the house except to go to the quince rehearsals and I was lucky I even got to do that. And they tell me that TV will rot my brain.
I kept the photo that Horacia left behind. Miguel didn’t look angry. He was smiling. AT ME. It sparked something in my gut. I didn’t care about Horacia or her mom. I didn’t care that my own mother didn’t believe me. The more I stared at that photo the more I realized I was different than the girl Horacia once knew. I was a good girl, even if it didn’t match the definition my mom had. A wild sensation stirred in my heart, waiting to be unleashed, and I knew just where to start.
I asked Alyssa to come over the next day with the supplies I needed. Bleach and pink hair dye. We went down to my uncle Toto’s basement apartment because he’s hardly ever home. It took five hours, but my hair turned out the exact color of Gabby’s quinceañera dress. I stared at myself in the full-length mirror while she looked at the picture he had framed of me and Lily on the coffee table.
“Hey doesn’t your uncle still live here?” Alyssa asked.
“Yeah, why?” I asked.
She picked up a stack of papers from the coffee table and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but it said Astoria Apartments and it had my uncle Toto’s government name and someone else’s. “Who’s David Santos?”
Alyssa shrugged. “Looks like a new apartment lease.”
My uncle was leaving us. He was moving out. Why hadn’t he said anything to anyone? There was already so much happening that I couldn’t handle it. I left the papers there and went back upstairs. There was a slick, hot sensation in my heart that told me things were about to change in ways I wasn’t ready for.
The next morning, my mom saw me and freaked out. “Why? ¿Por qué? Why?” She kept saying. Good Ecuadorian girls don’t dye their hair without permission. They don’t act out, apparently.
“We’re going to church,” she shouted.
“Why do you care what I do now?” I yelled back. “You’re never even home!”
That might have been too much because my mom stopped yelling. Ecuadorians love yelling. It’s actually our normal tone of voice. It’s how we communicate anger and love and friendship. But mostly anger. So when my mom shut down and turned away, I knew I’d said something wrong.
Ñaño Toto walked in at that moment. He looked flustered and hesitated. “You can’t talk to your mother like that, Paola.”
I was tired of everyone. I know I shouldn’t have said it. But I was mad at him too. What was I supposed to do if he left? Who would I have? Gabby and Ronaldo lived upstairs but they had their own family unit. All I kept thinking was the stack of papers with his new home. He hadn’t even told us he was leaving. He’d made this decision already and we didn’t matter. I was helpless and my only weapon was my words. Words can hurt just as badly as any punch, remember?
“You’re not even going to live here anymore so you can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my father.”
He was too shocked to reprimand me. He never yelled at me. I was more than his niece. I was his friend. His little sister. His daughter. All of those things in one.
It’s hard to explain the anger that I had in my chest that day. I could blame everything on Horacia, but I know that I didn’t have to say those things to my mom and Toto. I know that there are things I don’t understand like why my mom bottles her feelings or why my uncle kept such a big secret from us. I want to understand so much. But sometimes it’s easier to just lash out. To let that anger loose. The only problem with that is that now I’m left with the aftermath and I’m not sure what to do.
We kept living with that silence. School and work don’t stop just because feelings are hurt. Besides, there was a quince to celebrate, and my mom had already put the deposit down on the dress.
We went to the party. Everyone stared
