Facts of Life (5 page)

That night she hardly slept. She listened to a dog overturn the garbage can—or was it the new Ana digging through the trash, gathering information about their family? She peered outside but saw no one.

During spring break the original Ana learned that her family would be moving. Her father and mother had spoken many times about a new house and often went to open houses on the weekend. Now it was really going to happen—and soon. Her father had gotten a promotion at work and they were moving to Escondido, thirty miles north of their house in Chula Vista.

"The new place has a pool," her father said.

A pool! Ana pictured herself diving into the water and fetching a dime on the bottom. She pictured having friends over for a swim party.
I'll be the new girl!
she thought.
I can make afresh start, and that Ana can have my stupid old school.

"It's going to be nice," she mumbled in bed at night, and wondered about the stick-on stars on her ceiling. They'll have to stay, she assumed, and the girl who lives in my bedroom will have something to look at at night.

On the first day at her new school Ana was nervous.
Will they like me?
she wondered. She dressed in her new clothes, and pocketed a cell phone, her first, which she habitually opened and closed.

Her mother escorted her to the office, where Ana was introduced to a counselor, a woman with a face like a pretty flower and who smelled like a flower when she extended her hand. Two girls, office helpers, said hi. A boy, seated in a chair and with a bloodied elbow—he was still hugging his skateboard—managed to put a smile on his face.

It's nice here,
Ana told herself as the counselor led her from the office. Ana could see that the school was clean and modern. The flower beds were flush with yellow and red flowers, and a custodian was mopping up a spill in the hallway.

"Here she is, Ms. Carroll," the counselor announced lightly.

Ana's new teacher approached. Ana liked her right away, and liked how she took her hand in hers.

"I hear you're a very good reader," Ms. Carroll encouraged.

"I guess," Ana answered simply.

Together they entered the classroom, Ms. Carroll prodding her gently. Another girl was hunkered down at her desk, holding a pair of large scissors.
What is she cutting?
Ana wondered, then surmised that she was making a collage.

Ms. Carroll said to the girl, "Ana, I want to you to meet..." She stalled, uncertain how to continue. Then she said it: "I want you to meet Ana Hernandez, our new student. Funny, you both have the same name."

The girl glared at Ana, and her scissors chopped at the air. That day, the original Ana became the new Ana. The
new
new Ana couldn't help but falsely praise, "What a nice collage." She brought her hand to her hair and the bracelets on her wrists jangled. The students entering the classroom asked, "Who's she? What's her name?"

"Me?" She turned around in a neat pirouette. "I'm Ana Hernandez."

FROM HIS BEDROOM, thirteen-year-old Hector Bustos could hear his parents' voices. They echoed like voices coming down a concrete hallway at a baseball stadium, at a hospital, or the back entrance of a hotel, where bundled trash is tossed into a Dumpster. You open the door, hear freeway noises, and toss.

They were discussing
him.
He could make out his name, but they might as well have been saying "toast" or "bobby pin" or "Doritos." There was not much passion, or nerve, or anything like a tug-of-war. He could never remember them fighting. For years, there had just been a lot of sighing over a toilet seat not put down, or a hand closing like a stone at the kitchen sink when one of them discovered a poorly washed fork. And the laundry? Why did he always hang his shirts so sloppily on the line? And their Lexus? Didn't she know not to park next to a Ford Taurus sure to ding their door?

Hector heard a coffee cup setting back into the saucer. That's how his parents were, nice and tidy, with no rings on their maple furniture. The flowers in the vase were artificial, and the "Great Writers" leather-bound books on the shelf had never been opened. There was an ormolu clock on the mantel, but a spring inside had broken.

"Hector," he heard his mom calling. She called a second time, and her voice grew slightly angry: "Hector, we want to talk with you."

He had already concluded that it involved their divorce. All of his friends' parents were divorced or divorcing. It was nothing new.

"Coming!" he shouted. He breathed in deeply, blew out a lungful of air, opened the door of his bedroom, and walked down the hallway into the living room.

They were there, looking neither happy nor unhappy. It was something in between, like when you get in your car and just drive, your eyes lifting to see in the rearview mirror where you've been.

That's what he was thinking. They get in their car and drive a lot—to work, to the store, to a pastry shop to put sweets in their mouths, to places where he imagined they sat and looked straight ahead. They would look into the rearview mirror now and then and see nothing but blackness.

"Yeah," he said. He stood like a penguin, his arms like useless wings at his sides.

His parents' mouths retracted into small puckers. Neither liked the word
yeah,
but they contained their displeasure. They had more important things to say.

"Hector," his mother started, then paused.

Hector noticed her smoothing her lap, as if she were inviting him to come and sit. But the last time he had climbed into her lap—he was five, he remembered, and he was holding a baby tooth that had just fallen out—she had told him to get down, that he was big enough to sit in a chair. He did as he was told. From across the living room, he'd held up the tooth and said, "See?"

"Hector," his father began. His face was moist with something that was not tears.
What is it?
Hector wondered.
Worry?

"Hector," his mother repeated. "You decide."

Hector had been prepared by Trent Johnson, a friend at school. Trent's parents were divorced and he'd had to decide who he wanted to live with. Trent had decided to live with his father, who had promised him a bow-and-arrow set. He would get a car when he turned seventeen.

"Yeah, I know," remarked Hector, the new taste of bitterness in his mouth.

At the use of the word
yeah,
his mother winced and crumpled the Kleenex in her grip. It looked like a white carnation.

"What do you mean you know?" his father asked. His tie was loosened, but he still seemed choked by work.

"I just know. You want me to decide who I should live with."

"So you know everything," his mother nearly snapped. She crushed the Kleenex again.

"I didn't say that," Hector risked arguing and added snidely, "I'm only getting Bs." He was surprised how that came out. Was he getting braver?

His father sighed, leaned forward, and palms out, said that they both loved him. Hector had to be mature and decide who he would like to live with. Would an hour be long enough?

"Yes," Hector answered this time.

He returned to his bedroom, where he sat on his bed, a little mousy squeak coming from the springs. He pressed a flashlight against his palm: blood bright, blood dark, blood bright, blood dark. It was a signal to someone far away, a beacon to commandos to land and retake the shore. But he stopped the flashlight game and took a drink of his soda, a hardy gulp that burned his throat and misted his eyes.

"I don't want to be with either of them," he muttered. He looked up at the poster of Alex Smith, quarterback for the 49ers, once a great team but now full of players who fell over like bowling pins. Still, he wished Alex Smith were more than a picture on a poster, wished he could say, "Hector, meet me out back."

Hector had the urge to crawl out his bedroom window into the evening's darkness. The urge became real when he unlatched the screen and backed out, feet first, wiggling for the touch of ground. He scraped his elbow when he leaped to the lawn, as soft as a grave. He dabbed spit on his scrape and moved quickly away from the safety light that had come on.

Alex Smith wasn't waiting in the yard with a squirt bottle in his hand asking, "Thirsty?" There was no one, just a small plum tree tossing it's head back and forth in the autumn breeze. Hector had helped plant the tree the year before and was scolded because his shovel had grazed the ball of roots. His father complained under his breath that the tree was now ruined, and if it didn't have plums in two years, they would know why.

Hector left by the side gate and hurried away, thankful that the neighbor's dog didn't bark, that his parents were in the living room looking straight ahead or maybe at the floor, the shag rug crushed underfoot.

He jogged for a block and then slowed to a walk. The houses, Hector realized, stayed after a family split up. True, the lawns browned for a while, but there was always fertilizer to bring them back. Flowers could be plugged into the ground and new families would applaud the colors. The sound of the water features outside could hide the screaming inside.

And who ventured out for Halloween? Hector had dressed up as Batman for two years and every time he flew up the steps of a house, porch lights turned off. He could see the flicker of televisions and people ghosting about in their bathrobes. But they wouldn't answer the door. One woman had opened her mail slot and passed him a packet of chewing gum, but she was the only one. No one is nice here, Hector brooded after that experience. You can fall off your bike, and your neighbor turns the other way.

Hector thought of his uncle Rudy, a cowboy type, rough from banging tumbleweeds out of his way, wrestling steer, bucking hay, and spitting into the wind. He didn't think twice about dropping a hatchet on a chickens neck or about bats hanging in the barn, their eyes red as coals. He hissed at rattlesnakes, hammered fences into the earth, and stared down coyotes that raised their lean heads from the arroyo. He'd told Hector that once, when he couldn't find a razor, he broke a beer bottle and used it to shave his stubble.

Hector wondered how far he had to walk to get to Uncle Rudy's place across town and beyond the railroad tracks. Where he lived was kind of like the Wild West—neighbors yelling, dogs and roosters fighting, radios screaming, mud and mosquitoes everywhere, and the moon always orange and hanging over them. Kids with rickets ate oatmeal morning, noon, and night.

"I want to live with you," he muttered under his breath. He spat. That's what his uncle would have done if he'd been told, "You decide." He should have spat right on the rug, and maybe released a bigger one on the plasma TV.

It seemed to Hector that the orange moon, muscling itself into the tainted sky, was a good sign. That would be his big flashlight, his beacon, his shiny path sparkling with glass. His uncle would be sitting on his back steps, his boots off. Who cared if his socks didn't match or were full of holes or if they smelled mightier than the skunks that came to visit?

"I'm going there," Hector moaned. "I'll live with Uncle." He pictured himself opening a can of spaghetti and eating right out of the can. So what if it was cold? So what if he ate that slop with a knife? He would sleep on the floor and read westerns in which the heroes used barbed wire to floss their teeth. Their combs for their dusty pompadour hairstyles? Big old pitchforks.

He was debating how to find Uncle (follow the banged-up moon to the poor part of town?) when out of the shadows appeared a ragged dog the color of dirty water. Leaves were hooked in his fur. His left ear was nearly gone, one eye was half closed, and fur was missing around his neck. The dog was a refugee, but from where? He had certainly known fights in his time.

"Hey, pooch," Hector greeted and snapped his fingers.

But the dog didn't have time for Hector. He began limping down the street, his eyes shifty in his small head, determined to get somewhere.

"You know where you're going, huh?" Hector sang as he trailed the dog, whose nails clicked on the asphalt. He was determined to keep up with the dog; whether he got to his uncle's place became unimportant. He just felt the urge to journey with a dog that frolicked, fought, and tramped through his years.

A year ago, they had a dalmatian, which had always made Hector think of illness. The dog was quiet. His nose was dry as a leaf. When you showed him his bowl of water, he whimpered. When you petted him, fur came off in your palm. They got rid of the dog when his mother bought new living room furniture.

Hector tagged along, and the dog hurried, scared not by Hector but by something from the east—the coming night when the bats would unlatch themselves and circle the hairdos of pretty girls? The dog was rushing away from badness, or toward goodness, following some dog philosophy of survival.

Hector began to think that the dog had fallen out of the back of a truck and that his instincts were telling him,
Go this way. This way is home.
His own instincts told him to lick a finger and hold it up.
Go where the wind blows, where all the debris gathers along a fence,
he told himself.
Cows will bellow beyond the fence and become your friends.

The dog suddenly stopped to drink from a puddle. He rolled his purplish tongue over his chops. He sniffed the wind, let his stream flow down the trunk of a tree, and chewed at a flea in his fur. Finished with his doggy business, he began to trot, with Hector in tow.

But three blocks later, Hector paused when he heard a voice call, "Yoo-hoo." An elderly woman was in her driveway, a small stool at her side, in the near dark.

"Me?" Hector replied, pointing a finger like a gun at his heart. He ran over to her.

The woman had locked her keys in her car and had been trying to work a coat hanger inside the window to lift the knob of the lock. She would try, fail, sit down on her stool, weep because no one would help, and try again. She had been at it for nearly an hour.

"Silly me," she chimed, lowering herself onto her three-legged stool and smoothing her lap in a motherly way. Her face was overly painted, her teeth red from lipstick. Clouds of perfume rose from the folds in her neck. She dabbed her brow with a handkerchief and whimpered, "Poor me, silly me."