“No hay tal cosa como diversión para toda la familia.”
“There’s no such thing as fun for the whole family.” — Spanish Proverb
I awoke Sunday morning to a cold, forbidding sky and a white mist that obliterated the usually spectacular view of the Flatirons. The air felt damp and clammy, so unlike Colorado’s usual crispness. I clicked my tongue like my mother in a gesture of disgust. As they say, if you don’t like the weather in Boulder, wait fifteen minutes, and it will change.
I tucked my hands and feet under the covers to warm them and tried to piece together the strange dream I’d had of alebrijes, those brightly colored Native American fantasy animals. In my dream, the painted wooden figurines reminded me of the department faculty, smirking as they paraded across a blood-red background. A skeleton resembling Eddy, bone white in contrast to the vermillion backdrop and leering like a coyote, led the procession in a sort of macabre medieval dance of death.
I shivered. Why had I cast Eddy as the skeletal leader? He, Mrs. Webber, and Olivia Oakes were about the nicest people I’d met in the department so far. To be fair, I also had my classes. Most of the students appeared eager and bright,. And thank heavens I was left on my own to teach the way I wanted.
Pounding on my front door roused me from my reverie.
“No need to break the door down. I’m coming.”
I shrugged into my red flannel bathrobe and stumbled from the bedroom. On my way past the kitchen, I squinted at the espresso machine’s clock. 7:03 AM. “Jesús!”
I cracked open the door with the chain attached, and immediately closed it, unhooked the chain, and opened.
“Angela! What brings you here so early? It’s not even a school day. Want an espresso?”
My fourteen-year-old sister trailed me into the kitchen. “Some of us have important things to do every day,” the girl said in her isn’t-it-all-too-boring? monotone.
But her face was flushed, and her blond hair, the legacy of some Galician ancestor and the bane of her existence because it made her look so so Angla, frizzed around her head like a halo askew. Bad sign. Who was yanking her chain now?
Yawning, I felt for the button on the espresso machine. As I prepared the coffee, I said, “Some of us had to stay up late to prepare our classes. Contrary to popular belief, a professor’s job doesn’t end when class is out.” I could pout, too, especially at this outlandish hour.
“Ay, that explains it.” Angela dumped her backpack on the floor and dropped onto a kitchen chair.
“Explains what?” I narrowed my eyes, bloodshot from the restless night I’d had.
“I guess I don’t exactly mean ‘explain.’”
I set two little black steaming cups in their saucers on the table. I took a seat opposite my sister and sipped the reviving brew. “Then you should say what you mean.”
The Devil made me say it. I know that provoking Angela when she’s in a snit never results in anything good. The teen stared at me with her deeply set eyes so dark they were almost black. Worse sign: they were flashing.
Angela took a gulp of coffee. “I mean, that’s the excuse you’ll use for why you didn’t join us in the march for Lupita González yesterday afternoon.”
I thumped my forehead. “Must be going senile.”
Lupita, a young woman from the barrio in Denver, had married an out-of-work macho man. He beat on her whenever he felt life was cutting him a raw deal, which was half the time, or when he got drunk, which was the other half. One fine day, Lupita got fed up and struck back. With an onyx paperweight from Chihuahua, the closest object at hand. The blow killed the worthless frijol and landed Lupita in jail.
As far as the police were concerned, it was one more barrio domestic dispute turned violent. Without money for a hotshot legal team to prove self-defense, Lupita was on her way to getting peeled, stuffed, and fried like a plump Anaheim pepper.
The Aztec Liberation Front (acronym FLA), along with feminists and human rights activists, rallied behind her. They organized a march to the state capitol to broadcast her plight and raise money for her defense. I’d meant to attend, but the rehearsal and my whirlwind date had sent thoughts of Lupita González flying out the window.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “Had to go to a play rehearsal at the college.”
“Not that estúpida medieval play?” Angela drummed her magenta-colored acrylic nails on the tabletop.
“The play is not estúpida. It’s a good play.”
Angela stuck out her chin. “Juventino Guerrero and the FLA say it’s estúpida.”
So, my pugnacious colleague was mixed up with the FLA. Not to mention my little sister. A thought struck me. “The FLA doesn’t plan to picket the play, do they?”
“Why do you care? ‘Fraid we’ll poke a dent in your precious ivory tower?”
“Angela,” I tried to explain nicely, but somehow it came out sounding condescending, “the play is being staged for the entire community, not just the university crowd.”
“So why don’t they stage something that takes on real issues like immigration and workers’ rights, huh?”
I felt the all-too-familiar solid wall, thicker than any our current national administration could build, rise up between us. I defaulted to teacher mode, partly for protection and partly because I knew it annoyed Angela. “I’m sure the play’s theme gives valuable insights into contemporary society or Professor Calderón wouldn’t have selected it. I’ve heard some of the roles are quite thought-provoking.”
“Don’t talk to me about roles!” Angela pushed away the half-drunk coffee and made a face. “You’re supposed to be a role model for me, but all I see you doing is buying into the Anglo establishment. You don’t even have time for your family.”
“Pero, Angela—”
“Don’t come down on me with that per-persnickety ‘pero, Angela’ tone. What makes you so superior, huh?”
“Angela, I’m not—”
“What do you know about life to tell me what to do, huh?” Tears of frustration brimmed in her Madonna eyes. “You’ve never even had a boyfriend!”
She pushed away from the table, tipping the cup and spilling the coffee. Then she jumped up, grabbed her pack, and stomped out the door.
I stared at the rich chocolaty liquid as it streamed to the end of the table and dripped like black blood on the cream-colored tile floor. Persnickety? A realist, for sure. And if truth be told, sometimes a tad bossy. But persnickety? Where did my sister learn a word like that? Too much social media, undoubtedly. My throat tightened.
What makes Angela such an angry person? We both come from the same background. My sister even grew up in more comfortable circumstances because Papi had a successful restaurant by the time she came along. That my little sister is young, earnest, and naïve, with all those hormones throbbing through her blood, is to be expected. But the vitriolic outbursts—I don’t understand them.
Angela’s virulent comment about my personal life hit the mark. True, as yet I’ve not had a serious love interest. Not that I’ve never dated. For instance, there was the Latino grad student who’d taken me out when I was a senior. He spent half of the evening telling me what courses I should take and how he knew everything there was to know about the Generation of ’98 in Spain, his thesis topic. I never learned how the second half of the evening would have panned out because I asked him to take me home before we made it to the art film theater.
Then there was the gawky Anglo-Spanish major with the thinning hair who crowed about how he knew what kind of housekeeper his dates would make because he could see the dust bunnies on top of their refrigerators. Vaya!
Maybe I’m too much into this career thing. My gaze wandered around my kitchen. What am I doing anyway with a deluxe espresso machine and a two-bedroom condo with its cream-tiled kitchen, eco-smart wood-burning fireplace, and scenic view if I have no friends to invite over and no one to share it with?
I felt my eyes water. Grabbing a sponge from the sink, I furiously wiped up the mess. No use crying over spilled milk. Or, in this case, coffee.
I brewed another espresso to take to the bathroom, where I began my ablutions. My runt sister wasn’t going to ruin my day. Today I was going on a picnic with my colleagues. Strange as these people seemed, they shared my love of literature, teaching, and research. I belonged with them. The memory of Eddy’s herbal-musky scent and the pressure of his hand on mine stirred a long-buried thrill of excitement. Perhaps later today I would prove Angela wrong.