CHAPTER 26: THEN

Me and Eddie sprawled out on Pelón’s bed, his cell phone between us. It must have been a weekend because Pelón said we could talk as long as we wanted, and he only did that when it was free.

We had the phone on speaker, and it was on maybe the fourth or fifth ring.

“Shit,” Eddie said, “they’re not answering.” He reached for the phone like he was going to hang up.

I pushed his hand away. “Just give it a second, man.”

We were calling Regina out in California because it was her birthday. A couple of rings later, our grandma answered. After I said hello and she called for Regina, I could hear her saying, “Go on, talk to him, that’s your hermano.” Finally Regina got on the phone.

“Hello?” Her voice was soft, and I could barely hear her over the shouting and laughing in the background.

“Hey, chiquita! Feliz cumpleaños!” Eddie said.

“Yeah, how does it feel to be seven?” I asked.

“Abue and Tía Julia made me a cake. With ice cream inside.”

“We’re gonna send you a present real soon, okay? Just tell us what you want,” I said.

“I’ve already got lots of presents,” she said. There was even more noise, and she started laughing. Somebody was singing in the background. “Stop it, Tío!” Regina giggled.

“You still there, Regina?” Eddie asked. “You want more presents, right? Everybody wants more presents.”

“No, that’s okay. They’re calling me now to do the candles. I got to go. Bye.”

Then Abue came back on the phone. “She’s just excited about her party, mijo,” she said. “Don’t take it wrong.” But she knew just as good as we did that Regina didn’t really want to talk to us anyway.

After we said good-bye, we just stayed there on the bed for a while, not talking. It was like we both knew that we weren’t really part of Regina’s life anymore, but we didn’t want to say it out loud. I sat there thinking back to how small she was when she came home from the hospital. I could still remember how it felt to hold her, how me and Eddie were scared we might hurt her just by looking at her.

There was this one time me and Eddie had to figure out how to cut her fingernails. At the beginning, Tía Julia did it, but when she went back to her family, it was up to us. We sat there for the longest time staring at the clippers and her perfect little claws that were scratching us up. But it turned out okay because Regina started laughing at the click sound the clippers made when they closed on her nails.

In the old days, we took care of Regina and taught her everything, even how to tie her shoes. And now she didn’t even want to talk to us. Maybe I should have been glad that she had a new life away from us so we couldn’t mess things up for her. It wasn’t like me and Eddie were Boy Scouts. But I couldn’t help wishing she missed us just a little.