“I had a step stool!”
“And still looked like you were trying to dunk.” I dodge the slipper she chucks and laugh.
“I’d rather fight gravity than have cheeks as white as the moon.”
My mouth slacks, and I do a double take at my so-called friend. “I’m eating everything I brought by myself when I get downstairs.”
“Don’t be sour!” Miriam yells through her laughter.
“As a Sour Patch Kid!” I grin and lengthen my stride to scoop up my rugby bag and change in the bathroom.
This, the jabs we toss back and forth, is one of my favorite things about her.
She’s funny as hell, with a sense of humor most will never see because of how quiet she is around groups. I love it, even if I’m on the receiving end of her corny jokes.
“My ass is fabulous,” I mumble to the mirror on the medicine cabinet.
I step into my boxer briefs. My toe catches on a strap on my open bag when I lift out a pair of sweats. It sends me backwards, straight into the shower curtain, which is clearlyunable to support my weight. I tumble into the damp tub, feet and bootyhole in the air.
Miriam rushes into the bathroom. “Are you okay?” She frowns when she sees her shower curtain wrapped around me like a toga.
“Win any design projects fixing a shower rod?”
A metal ring rolls off and smacks me in the head.
“Ow.”
Chapter 10
Miriam
“So you don’t want to talk no more, ah? Why I have to call you every time?”
Patricia Rojas is consistent with, if not dedicated to, guilt trips and Saturday morning cleaning. My mother calls at ten thirty every week, and she always acts like it’s been years since we last spoke.
The bright pitch of “Gotas de Lluvia” sways through mariachi instruments down the other end of the line. That song was a wake-up call before I’d spend hours cleaning the kitchen, bathrooms, and living room. My father had enough money to hire a full-time cleaning staff, but no stranger was seeing what our floors looked like.
Marcela and Iwerethe cleaning staff.
“Hi, Mama. How you doing?”
“I’m here,” she says, her words a hum above the Spanish lyrics about tears from heartbreak and no trace of love. A common soundtrack to dousing the house in Fabuloso and hanging the laundry on the clothesline outside.
“I was calling Xiomara,” she says about her younger sister.Here it comes. “But the phone just ring, ring, and ring again. She says she’s coming by,pero ya tú sabes.Ella no se acuerda de nada.”
“Mama, be nice.”
“I am!” She feigns innocence. “Just keeping it real, as you kids say.”
Tía Mara and my mother are like rubbing alcohol and bleach: a combination that makes chloroform and might compromise your organs.
Maybe you pass out, or maybe you die.
As a member of the youngest sibling committee who gets spoken about and to, I empathize with my tía. Marcela treats me the same way. Her heavy-handed tendencies are courtesy of the oldest child hardwiring that keeps her telling me what to do. Yet, we love each other without causing a chemical reaction or a state of emergency. Unlike my mother and her sister.
“You out of bed and on your way to work?” My mother’s West Indian accent is a heavy syrup over “out” that sounds like “oat,” and “work” that’s closer to “werk.”
Translation:The grace period for earning a PhD ran out. How are you paying bills?
