I love her theatrics. My mother dedicated her entire life to caring for us. She also spent an unhealthy amount of time watching her Spanish novelas. Palming my face, she offers me a comforting smile before exiting my room.
Fear and failure, the double f’ers, as I will refer to them going forward, have held me hostage long enough. Questioning my every life decision and highlighting the ones that always led to negative outcomes and wasted tears. I had been wrong about Juan Carlos, wrong about moving away from Corpus Christi, and, as my mother would remind me, wrong about cutting five inches off my hair last week.
I would not be wrong about this, though. It was my job toprove everyone in Hillcrest wrong about Isabella Sandoval. Their stereotypes about me may reflect a small part of my story, but I would never let it define who I am at my core or determine my self-worth.
Fluffing out my hair, I check the mirror one last time, admiring the way my scrubs fit on me. I pull my hair up and put on some small working-class hoops.
Walking into the kitchen, I find Junior sitting at the table with a plate of eggs, bacon, a cup of fruit, and to the side, a large glass of chocomil. Desmond and I look at each other and then at the large breakfast. We don’t say it, though. Hell hath no fury like an abuelita being told she is spoiling her grandson.
The same woman who threw us packets of Bimbo muffins for breakfast was now insistent that her grandson had the entire food pyramid catered to him. She waits on the twelve-year-old as if he were the heir to her lost terrenos in Mexico.
“Traded in the apron for some scrubs! Órale!” Desmond says before taking a sip of coffee.
“How do I look?” I ask my brother, showing off the black scrubs with my Nike Cortez shoes.
“Firme. Dad would have been proud of you.”
My heart squeezes in my chest. I miss my dad so much, and this house still feels empty without him. This small home has been a sanctuary for me on numerous occasions. I can still hear the laughter echoing through the walls. Desmond, our older sister, Lourdes, and I chasing each other. Lourdes and I fighting about sharing a bathroom. Lourdes and Desmond fighting about pretty much everything. We weren’t those kids anymore, though.
For one, Lourdes had been taken by the white people, like an alien invasion. One minute she’s running in the streets, drinking horchata in pink jelly slides, and the next, she’s marrying a white man and playing “keeping up with the Joneses” in her suburban neighborhood.
Conversations with Lourdes were always centered on checking for preservatives and red dye in all our food, or the latest pyramid scheme she had gotten sucked into. I don’t even blame her husband, Tom, for any of this. He’s a nice guy who loves her dearly. She has always been high-strung.
Desmond was taken by the white people, too, but he was taken in handcuffs. He had been in and out of jail most of his life, but the last time cost him six years. Six years that had changed him.
“Junior, ride the bus home after school today, okay?” I say and kiss him on the cheek.
He gives me a thumbs-up sign and continues to watch videos on his phone. Grabbing my work bag, I prepare to leave the house for my first day at the oncology center. My mother stops me before I can reach the door.
“Mija, have you talked to Manny about the car?” she whispers.
I follow her line of sight out the window to the 1969 Pontiac GTO sitting on the curb under the large oak tree. The car my father had left for me. My mother refused to drive it. Desmond was convinced my father’s spirit was haunting it after it died on him at the gas station while he was buying beer. I got too emotional just looking at it. It just sat there, day after day, fading in the Texas heat.
I know I should sell it. It was just sitting there taking up space. But it was one of those things that kept my father’s memory alive. I look at the car and then back at the stack of bills.
“Please, Isa. You and Manny were so close. He’s been picking up Junior every Friday and taking him to his dad. If you would just stick around one time to talk to him.”
I let out a sigh but shake my head in agreement. She’s drowning in debt. Both Desmond and I are helping the best we can, but it’s not enough to cover the medical bills.
Putting up a barrier to anything other than Junior thattethered me to Juan Carlos, meant avoiding Manuel Chavez. Trying to explain barriers or boundaries to my mother, though, was a battle for another day. I didn’t want to talk to Manny, but if it eased her anxiety, if there was a chance he could help us with the car, then I had to try.
2
ISABEL
Beef Tallow and the deprecation of La Pepto Bismol
My oldest sister has been the most difficult person to tolerate since moving back home. When we were forced to interact through social media, it was easy to ignore her or mute her cringey posts. Reality doesn’t give me that option.
Sundays are reserved for family. It was also the only day when I felt like I needed a shot of tequila with my morning coffee. Most days, I could get out of church with my mother and Lourdes by saying I was studying for an exam. Clearly, I would need another alibi since I graduated and no longer have exams to attend.
What I had instead was a massive headache. Church is Lourdes’s turf. Not in the way that Jesus was like “only Lourdes can enter,” but in the obnoxious way she was engrossed with the organization. Something about the way she and her church friends would put on this immaculate show was disturbing to me. They would greet each other, calling each other sister, and then later, Lourdes would tell us all their business.
Did I say business? No. I meant “prayer requests”. Slapping “prayer requests” over someone’s struggles means you weren’t gossiping about them in Lourdes’s eyes. Judging by thelooks everyone was giving me, I knew Lourdes had mentioned my situation.
That’s not even the worst part. No, the worst part is my mother trying to pimp me out on the Lord’s Day. That’s right, Socorro Sandoval made sure I gavepazto every single bachelor in the church. At one point, she dragged me five pews down just to give Jacob Kellings a handshake.
The communion wine wasn’t enough. As soon as I got home, I grabbed one of Desmond’s canned Micheladas and downed it in my room before heading back downstairs for lunch, where I am now, being forced to listen to Lourdes’s new life purpose.Beef tallow.
