My dad did his best to support my academic aspirations by suggesting I attend San Francisco State University and continue to work and live at home. I knew he was worried about money, but I also knew that between my scholarship and a guaranteed on-campus job at Powell Library, I would work hard to not cost my parents a dime. If I focused and graduated in four years with a chemical engineering degree, I could get a job at twenty-two making more money than my dad would ever make on the Safeway management pay scale. I was determined to move my family forward, and byforward, I meantupward. Financially it would be a lean four years for the Arroyos, but I swore to myself that after graduation I would give back to my family. I was convinced this formula couldn’t fail.
“Z, you’ve heard me say behind Lou and Coco’s backs that my two years at UCLA were the best days of my life.” When I close my eyes, Ican still vividly picture myself striding across Royce Quad, hurrying to class to hang on every word of my professors in the chemistry department and engineering school. I enthusiastically took a course load my adviser was sure I couldn’t handle, but I knew I could. “I would wake up before my roommates and go to bed way after they were asleep. I held on so tight to time and facts that I’m pretty sure my roommates thought I was a bore.”
“Oh, they definitely did,” Zwena concludes, perhaps hinting that I’m starting to bore her right now too.
“There was one class I really loved that I had never even heard of before going to UCLA. It was microeconomics, and I was stuck on the intense baby-faced PhD candidate who was my professor. He had dark skin like my mom’s and flawless cheekbones. He wore his hair in a high fade, and if I had to guess, he must have been older than me by six or seven years. I had a serious case of first nerd love and a growing interest in business.”
“Okay, now I’m actually listening. I want to hear more about this professor.”
“My flirting strategy was visiting his office hours and asking about problem sets I had already completed. Perfectly, I might add. I was sure that in a sea of hungover White student faces, my eager Brown face would stand out. But I never got anything more personal than ‘excellent work’ while he looked past me to the next person leaning against the hallway wall waiting for help.”
“Toni, you have the goods.” Zwena waves down my body. “Unless that man was dead inside, I guarantee he noticed you.”
“Well, whether he noticed or not, it didn’t even matter. Early one morning, a week into the fall of my junior year with Professor Smoke Show, Tía Fernanda called to tell me my father had been killed in a car accident on his way to work.” Swallowing, I feel the lump in my throat that arises on the rare occasion that I bring up my father’s death.
“That call did me in. But I had to replace my grief with thoughts of David, Gabriel, and my mom’s survival. What were they going to do for money? My brothers were in eighth grade, too young to work, andmy mother had never held a job in her life. She went straight from her father’s house to my father’s house.”
Even though it’s been almost two decades since my father died, Zwena knows talking about it is still challenging for me. Her left arm envelops my shoulders, squeezing me tight. I rest my head against her. “I could barely lift my feet walking to the bursar’s office to withdraw from school. I packed up my dorm room and all my potential and caught an overnight Greyhound bus back to San Francisco. With two years of college under my belt, I had more education than both my parents. I knew it was my responsibility to pick up the family’s financial burdens and provide for Mami and my brothers.”
Remembering the sorullitos, I turn off the stove and pour the hot grease into an empty can. “I balanced lots of low-paying jobs and did what was expected of me. You know how it goes, Z.” Without question, in our family, loyalty and survival ultimately reign supreme, even at the expense of individual dreams.
“Sad story aside”—Zwena winks and smiles, letting me know she’s redirecting the conversation off childhood struggles before we both burst into tears—“what does your past have to do with what got you so turned around that you almost dumped Mrs. Eisenberg on the cold concrete?”
“Listen, Z, to say I woke up to the opposite sex,ehrm... on the later side of puberty would be generous,” I hint, not eager to dive deeper into my amateur dating history that started with a seismic crush on an economics professor who didn’t know me by my student number let alone by my name.
“Like sixteen?” Zwena inquires, picking up a sorullito and blowing to cool it down.
“Sixteen? I’m talking more like twenty. My first crush was on that economics professor.”
Zwena drops her snack.
“Let me get this straight, it took a numbers nerd to ignite your lady parts?”
“Supply and demand is surprisingly sexy,” I try to convince Zwena.
“Sure, if you’re the one in demand.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, I wasn’t. I promise you, he really didn’t know I was alive. The class met in an auditorium that could hold a Rihanna concert.”
“Help me out here, because I am not connecting the dots. Your professor has to do with Mrs. Eisenberg’s near-death experience ... how?”
“I saw that professor in baggage claim.”
Zwena’s narrowed eyes tell me she’s still confused, so I spell it out for her. “Mrs. Eisenberg’s Black grandson was my economics professor at UCLA, and I almost killed his grandmother in front of him twenty years later.”
“I thought you said you didn’t almost kill her?” Zwena accuses, completely missing the point she had just been needling me to make.
“Fine, I didn’t, but I did almost drop her. This man spotted us and started jogging our way like he was gonna grab us.” I mimic for Zwena what I remember seeing—a deliciously handsome guy, albeit older and balder than I recollected, with his arms slightly out to the side like he might be about to take flight.
“Did you think he recognized you, too, and was coming in for a hug?” Zwena assumes every man is out to cop a feel.
“Girl, please. Hell no. Or at least I don’t think so, because even though I recognized him, it didn’t click for me who he was until after he walked off with his grandmother to get her suitcase. In that split moment, I didn’t know if this man was coming right for us or going to blast right past us, so I started to pull back on Mrs. Eisenberg’s wheelchair to move her out of the way. And right as I was pulling back, she was stepping off.” I act it out for Zwena.
“Oh no, oh no, I don’t want to hear the rest.” Zwena covers her face with her hands, making a peephole with her middle and index fingers so I can see only the whites of her eyes.
“Yanking her chair back made Mrs. Eisenberg fly forward. Luckily my professor has incredibly long legs and reached Mrs. Eisenberg just in time to catch her. Those open arms were for his grandmother.”
“Now, that’s impossible. How could this man have known Mrs. Eisenberg was about to go down?”
