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(Continued)
I can see she hasn’t
thought about this. “That might not be for a long time,” she
says uncertainly.
“It could be tomorrow,”
I tell her. “My father got a call just yesterday saying how
Fidel was dead. It was just gossip that time, but one of
these days... it’ll happen one of these days. It has to.”
Ada doesn’t appreciate my
practical outlook. She falls silent, brooding. “I’ll be happy
if I’m with John,” she says eventually, “wherever we are.”
She smiles at me, defiant. I start to say something, but she
nudges me away. “You better go dance. They’re calling for you.”
And they are. My mother
scurries over and takes me by the hand, giggling almost girlishly.
She leads me over towards a clump of boys. I flush with excitement
when she places my hand in Antonio’s. He’s not so good-looking
as Pedro, but handsome all the same.
The photographer poses us
quickly for a few pictures, and I think I’m going to burst with
happiness. I don’t even notice the sharp pains gathering in my
stomach. It’s just me, Antonio, and the music. Just as we’re
about to start dancing, just as his sweaty hand tightens around
mine and I feel my heart jump, just as I’m silently blessing my
mother for making me go through with this whole thing after all,
just then I feel it, warm and wet against the back of my thigh.
My period has arrived a week
early and made a dramatic entrance on the back of my white fiesta
de quince dress. I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t
escape.
My mother must see the stain
at almost exactly that moment, because she whisks me away from
Antonio in a move so smooth it looks like we’re dancing. “Into
the house!” she hisses, shielding my back with her body. She
smiles at the guests as she hustles me inside, raising her index
finger at them as if to say, momentito, we’ll be just one
little minute. Of course she is wrong about that. I am never
leaving the house again.
Later, my mother tries
valiantly to coax me out. No one noticed, she says. We’ll wash
it out while it’s still wet. She begs. She threatens. She
bargains. Still, I don’t budge. I lock myself in the bathroom
and cry and cry. The guests are puzzled. Rumors circulate among
the girls, mean rumors, because none of them, after all, are
really my friends. Hours go by, and people go home. I open all my
presents the next morning, alone, my face still swollen from
crying. My mother makes me write letters of apology to all the
guests, explaining that I was suddenly taken ill.
***
We find the dress some
twenty years later, after my father has died. My mother is sorting
through boxes, disposing of things with ruthless efficiency, when
she pauses. “Marisol,” she says.
I don’t immediately
recognize the bundle of lace spilling from her hands. The glowing
white has faded over the years. It has been so long. My mother
sees my confusion and takes the dress by the shoulders. She holds
it up for me, swishing the skirt like a girl dancing.
“You remember?” she
asks, and then of course I do.
At first I think she means
it as a guilt-trip, to remind me of all the money that my parents
wasted on me that day. I look at my mother, ready to argue,
preparing to defend myself. But, to my surprise, she turns the
dress over in her hands and begins to laugh.
“Mira,” she says,
“still here.” And there it is, a small rust-colored stain that
has survived the years, visible to only the most discerning gaze.
This is the first, the only
time in my life I have ever heard my mother giggle.
It starts off small, one
short snicker, like a naughty girl in class, and then grows. She
can't control it; the giggles swallow her. She sees my
embarrassed, shocked expression and, still laughing, buries her
face in the dress's lacy folds.
My father is dead, El
Dictador is living, and we are still far, far away from home.
I watch my mother and know that there is nothing left for us to
do. I laugh, too.
_
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HESTER YOUNG recently received her MA in English from the University of
Hawaii at Manoa. After living in Boston, London, Tucson, and Honolulu, she has settled for a quieter life with her boyfriend and cat in the wilds of New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in
Flyway, First Class, and Shades of December.
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