“Well, it definitely smells like you have a teenage boy living here,” I say, and Manny winces, taking in the smell I’m talking about.
I hear the front door open, and Junior calls out for me immediately.
“MA! Is that you?” I turn to find him with an ear-to-ear grin. He gives me a big hug and tries to pick me up. He has some height over me, but still not as strong as he thinks he is. When he lets me down, he barges through to his room.
“Welcome to my crib,” he says.
“Junior, the groceries.” A feminine voice yells behind us, and I turn to see Dolly carrying a bag while helping an older woman up the front steps.
It takes a moment for recognition to set in, and I rush to greet her.
“Doña Candy.”
“Oh, Isabella. Look at you.” She smiles up at me.
I grab her hand that shakes lightly before pulling her into me. Time had changed us both, and the way time had changed her made me emotional. I cling to her a bit longer.My eyes shut, focused on the woman she had been before I left.
“Mija. It’s been too long. How are you?” she says when she releases me.
“I’m doing good. How are you?”
“Oh, you know. Old age, but these two keep me young,” she says, looking back at the car where Manny is helping Junior and Dolly unload the grocery bags.
“They remind me of you and Manny. Well, minus the huge crush Manny had on you. No. They are more like brother and sister.”
Her comment comes and goes like a quick slap in the face. The huge crush Manny had on me? Mexican women were lethal like that. They’d hide an insult or expose a secret in the middle of a conversation. You’d be left blind sighted by it while they’d continue on as if they never dropped the bomb. There’s no time to even respond or get clarification when Manny and Junior reach the threshold of the front door.
“Ma. Are we staying for the asada?”
“I don’t know,” I say, looking from him to Manny.
“Oh, you’re staying, mija. I didn’t make all this salsa for nothing,” Doña Candy says from behind me. Manny shrugs his shoulders, and well, it looks like the decision has been made for me.
6
MANNY
Cuando tengas hijos te acordarás de mí
Our Sunday night cookout has grown in size since we started it several years ago. Not all my siblings can make it, but the ones who stayed in Corpus can. Before my father passed away, it had been his last request: Keep the family together.
“Isabel looks good,” my mother says, looking out to the yard where my brother, Greñas, has taken over the Bluetooth speaker.
Greñas’s real name is Isaiah, and his hair isn’t long anymore, but when he was little, he refused to cut it. He also refused to brush it, so it was constantly mangled and it knots. The name stuck long after the hair was cut, and he established a better personal hygiene regime. But that’s how names stuck in the Chavez family. We had gordos that were no longer gordos, and flacas who were no longer flacas.
“Aye, Ma. No empiezas,” I groan.
This woman was relentless when it came to her attempts at matchmaking. She’d sent a fair share of women to the gym for training and made sure everyone knew her son was single.
My mother had front row seats to the years I had crushed on Isabel. She never meddled then. We were both too young, but I wouldn’t put it past her now. Especially with the way hereyes are narrowed to the patio where Isa and Junior are dancing. Isa laughs as Junior attempts to do the robot toAnd The Beat Goesby the Whispers.
I’m surprised that she’s stayed as long as she has. My entire family was happy to see her and eager to catch up.
“You know what’s meant to be always finds its way back to you,” my mother says.
“It’s been a long time,” I reply.
“Ah. Then why do you still look at her like you’re thirteen years old?”
