Intrepid (2 page)

Ringo reached down to grab the spool of barbed wire. “Let’s call it a day, okay?” The sun was already falling asleep behind the trees, casting salmon-sorbet colors across billowy clouds. I breathed the sunset into my lungs and followed Ringo to the pickup waiting for us down the hill.
 

There was no road, but Ringo already knew the ranch inside and out. He directed the wheels to avoid all the ditches and pits, but I still bounced in my seat with teeth rattling like maracas. A brief relief came when Ringo got out to open the gate towards the Ortizes’ ranch, and I felt my stomach rumble uncomfortably. I was starving, and I could barely remember a Thursday night when we didn’t have dinner with the Ortizes. “
Mijo
, you can’t let the girl live on Spaghetti-Os,” Mrs. Ortiz told Ringo once when he tried to protest the gesture. She was right. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably turn into a package of Ramen Noodles.
 

Whenever I thought of Mrs. Ortiz, I saw her eyes first. They were the same as her son’s—green against dark skin. Those eyes observed everything the earth had to offer, then she’d turn anything into a story. She made up entire worlds, and she’d give them to me as gifts while she cooked.

It was a simultaneous expansion of culinary and oratory imagination:

“
Trata esto…
” She’d hand a four-year-old me a spoon of arroz that burned images of exploding universes on my tongue while she told a story of a world where nothing existed but water.
 

“
Trata esto
…” The caldo stained my seven-year-old tastebuds with thoughts of alien fruits as she told the story of the KinTu-KinTu tribe from a planet nicknamed Marbled Eye.
 

“
Trata esto…
” Tamales were their own form of godliness as she explained the religion of the Temple of Thought to a ten-year-old imagination.
 

I wanted her to write books. I wanted her to share her stories with people more deserving. Instead, she shared them as she tried to teach the thirteen-year-old me how to make tortillas. She kneaded the flower into a mound and pounded it flat with her fist. “We put so much symbolism in all things round,” she said. With flour stained hands, she took the rolling pin to create perfect circles. “For example,” she continued. “We speak in the cyclical all the time. Spring to summer to fall to winter to spring, or we wear wedding rings to show there is neither a beginning nor an end to love. But the Trubanalas take that one step further. After marriage, they tattoo interlocking circles to their mind’s-eye as a constant reminder that love is a perfectly painful commitment. To dedicate yourself to another, you must be willing to sacrifice the idea of self. I think it’s a bit on the extreme side, myself. The part must always be able to live without the whole, if you ask me, and no matter what, no circle is ever perfect.”
 

She had one thing right. No circle was ever truly perfect, and I proved that by the bell-shaped tortillas I rolled. The circles never rounded their edges for me, and the flour covered more than just my hands by the end of the endeavor. I’m pretty sure I looked like a powdered ghost as I single-handedly destroyed her kitchen. “
Mija
, it’s okay,” she said when the frustration finally got the best of me. “These will still taste beautiful. You don’t always have to fit the round hole into the square peg, no? This, like all art, is what you put into it, and you gave it your best. Sometimes, that’s enough.” She always seemed to know just what to say and how to say it.
 

So Thursdays were a treat, and my stomach made noises that reminded me just how lucky I was to have them. By the time we came upon the Ortizes’ house, the sun had all but disappeared. Lights bulged out of the opened windows, and as I got out of the truck, I could hear the clanking of plates in the dining room. Voices muffled through the cracks of the house and buzzed in my ear as a family that wasn't mine congealed like it did every night.
 

“At least, since Iago missed work because of football, I might not have to deal with him at dinner,” I grumbled.
 

Ringo turned off the engine and sighed. “Why do you hate the boy so much?”
 

“I don’t—”
 

“Don’t lie. Whatever it is, you need to get over it. It’d mean the world to Mrs. Ortiz if you could be a bit more polite to her only son. They’re family, and the truth is, if you really loved Mrs. Ortiz, you’d try to be kind to her son.”
 

I opened the door to get out. I knew my father had a point, and I wished I could forgive Iago for being a colossal asshole. I just wasn’t ready to, and I wondered if I ever would be. I shut the door of the truck behind me and listened to the space between the click of metal and the sigh of air being trapped. “Fine. I’ll give being nice to him a half-hearted attempt.”
 

He rapped his knuckles on the hood of the truck in an absentminded gesture. “Man, kiddo. You sure know how to make a dad proud.”
   

Chapter Two
 

“
Mija,
hand me that dish?”
 

I reached over to grab the pan from the stove and handed it to Mrs. Ortiz.
 
As she dipped the pan into the suds, I noted every crack and wrinkle in her skin, and when she reached for the sponge, these cracks and wrinkles trapped sudsy bubbles.

I thrummed my own fingers against the ceramic countertop, trying not to let my boredom show, but I was never good at hiding things from her.
 

“When you were a little girl, you used to love helping me do the dishes.” She shook her head and salt and pepper curls danced around her face. “But that’s the way of growing up. We learn that work is really more of a duty than a game, no?” Even when she spoke with wisdom, her voice sounded smooth and young. Every word was silver, and every syllable was optimistic. She looked younger than she was, and the only indication that she was well into her forties were the wrinkled crows feet around her eyes.
 

“I can do the dishes!” Mina chimed in from the table, unintentionally proving Mrs. Ortiz’s point. She was eight years worth of freckles and gapped teeth, and I couldn’t tell which was brighter—her hair or her eagerness.
 

“Mina. You can help by reading the next poem. You still need twenty minutes of guided reading this week.”

“But Mami, Melissa Suthers said her mom just signs the stupid paper and doesn’t make her read. Why do I—”
 

“And Melissa Suthers is a blithering moron. Do you want to be a blithering moron?” Mrs. Ortiz responded.
 

“
Que es
blithering?”
 

“
Es estúpido,
” Mrs. Ortiz explained.
 

She giggled. “You’re right. Melissa Suthers is kind of stupid.” Mina was Mrs. Ortiz’s long standing foster-child. She showed up at the age of three, and it constantly amazed me that no one snatched her up. I mean, if I were a family looking for a kid, Mina would be like stumbling across the gold mine of goodness.
 

The kid sighed and turned the browning page of the large green volume. Mrs. Ortiz always had the most obscure books, and this one was the strangest.

Mina’s voice pulled out the words and danced them into our ears:

“As for the Unswaying Atalanta,
 

Had she been but a man

The chase would not have
 

Been her doom.
 

Some say she was distracted by

Mere baubles.”

The pause came before the question. “
Que es
baubles?”

I smiled. The scene was so familiar. I could travel back in time within my memory and put my own body in that tattered chair, eight years old, knobby knees, rat-nested hair, asking Mrs. Ortiz questions in half-hearted Spanish, as I learned to read big kid books. “Trinkets,” I answered. “Things that look expensive, but aren’t.”
 

Mina nodded and finished up the poem:

“The sheen, shining apple.

The gold in her eyes.
 

Some say she was impressed
 

With trickery.

The sheen, shining deception.

The gold in his eyes.
 

It is believed she was doomed

When transformed into the other.

But I say she was set free.

For the shape she took allowed her to roar

All the things she was never allowed to say.
 

I say

Envy the sharp power of
 

The sheen, shining teeth.

The gold in her mane.”

Mrs. Ortiz handed me the pan to dry, and asked me, “Do you remember the story of Atalanta?”
 

I nodded. “She didn’t want to marry, so she challenged each suitor to a race. If they won they could marry her; if they lost, she got to behead them.”
 

“And?”

“And she beheaded many a man until Hippomenes prayed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, who gave him three golden apples. Atalanta gave him a head start like she did every poor sucker, and every time she’d catch up, he’d distract her with an apple so he’d get another head start. She eventually lost the race.”
 

“Do you remember the rest?” Mrs. Ortiz asked, and I shook my head no after searching the caverns of my memory. She tisk-tisked and continued. “You see, no gift is ever free, and Hippomenes was supposed to pay a price for winning. A simple sacrifice, but he forgot to make it because he was too excited over his victory. Aphrodite took revenge and consumed them both with desire in front of a temple belonging to a powerful god named Zeus. When they, what is it you kids call it these days? Bumped uglies?”
 

“Mrs. Ortiz!”
 

She handed me a plate and slid me a sheepish smile with it. “Well, they ticked off Zeus, who turned them into lions. It does well to remember not to get distracted by shiny things when it comes to men. Atalanta came up with a sure-fire way to protect her heart, but when it boiled down to it, men are tricky when it comes to desire.”

Mina bounced up and down in the chair as a lightbulb of understanding went off. “I get the poem! I get it! They were turned into lions because the Hippo man didn’t sacrifice something as a thanks.
Transformed into the other.
That’s the Lion.”
 

“What’s the clue that tells you that?” I asked.
 

“Roar. She can rawwwwr.” Mina made mini-claws with her tiny fingers and scrunched up her nose as the sound thundered out.
 

I put another dish in the cupboard and laughed. The kid was too cute, and she didn’t even know it.
 

“Mami… I asked Mrs. Gallighar. She said there’s no such thing as Greeks.”
 

“Well, Mrs. Gallighar has no imagination,” a familiar, grating voice said from the doorway.
 

“Iago!” Mina screeched and leapt up from the chair to fling herself into his arms. She squealed when he gave her a bearhug, and with the child in his arms, he leaned over and kissed his mother on her wrinkled cheek.
 

Mrs. Ortiz slid her hands back into the water to grab some silverware that had sunk to the bottom of the sink. “How was practice?”
 

“Oh. You know. Coach yelling this. People doing that.” He set Mina down and headed towards the fridge for his dinner. Every Thursday, it was bundled up neatly, waiting for Iago to claim it. He set the plate on the counter next to the wet dishes I hadn’t yet dried and began shoveling food into his face. “Hey, Texi,” he said, spilling rice out of his mouth. Each piece that fell looked like a red maggot bouncing unceremoniously off his chin until it fell back onto his plate for a second attempt into his mouth.
 

“You could always heat that up, you know?” I said. “Or… you know… sit at the table?”
 

“Naw. S’okay.”
 
His voice crawled into my ears with the poison ivy of annoyance as he bulldozed in another bite.

“You’re the epitome of class, Iago.” I tightened my jaw and focused on drying a cup. The towel made a squeegee noise on the glass, but I kept drying it anyways. It gave me something to do rather than swipe his plate to the floor accidentally with my elbow.
 

It hadn’t always been this way with Iago. There were pictures of us playing in sandboxes and climbing trees at dangerous speeds. Embarrassingly enough, there was even one of us in the bathtub with rubber duckies floating all around us. Since he was two years older than me, he was basically the only big brother I had, but these past couple years I had trouble remembering those days. Sure, we had our little spats growing up, but he used to stick up for me on the bus rather than be the one to cause the hurt.
 

I was in fifth grade when the inevitability of eventually happened. He was too cool to be seen playing games with me. He made it clear that I was just a stupid kid, and he no longer had time to search for the Monks of the Hidden Humanity or fish for the bat-dolphins in the Suniuchu Lake because the games we made up from his mother’s stories were a waste of time. Then he said, “You. Are. Nothing.” He made each word a fist and sucker punched me in the gut with them. It hurt more than it should have because part of me always felt like nothing… like I didn’t deserve the things I had and that I deserved to lose all the things I’d lost. He only nailed the coffin shut on these feelings, trapping them in my heart forever when he added, “Stop pretending my mother is yours. You lost yours. You can’t have mine.”
 

It was a speech that replayed in my head over and over again until I had every word memorized. You can’t tell an eleven-year-old to get over her dead mother and expect to be forgiven within a lifetime. That kind of concept doesn’t exist for eleven-year-olds, and I was pretty convinced it didn’t even exist for anyone of any age who lost someone to something as stupid as death. I mean, I was almost seventeen, and I still couldn’t shove the words he said into the realm of forgiveness.