Chapter Six

January 7, 2017

The Cascade City Chronicle

“Cascade Cattle Farm Donates Dung to Community P-Patch Near School—Students In a Stink About the Stench”

Charlie got up with Trey at five a.m., gave him a bottle, and rocked him to sleep at seven thirty. Letting Charlie give him one bottle a day allowed Julia to sleep in now and then and make an occasional grocery store run by herself. Every minute she had without a kid crying or attached to a nipple helped. She felt sort of guilty about giving him a bottle. A truly devoted mother would nurse her chiquito one hundred percent of the time. Baby Love Magazine said Trey was too young for a bottle as it might disrupt the mother-child bond. Screw Baby Love Magazine, she told herself. A bond? What bond?

She pulled on a pair of gray sweats and wrapped herself in a squishy, comfy robe. A light rain drizzled, and the outside thermometer registered thirty-eight degrees. Condensation dripped down the single-paned windows of their ninety-one-year-old house, adding to the indoor chill. While Charlie lit a fire in the wood-burning stove, Julia brought in two bowls of Apple Cinnamon Os, two spoons, and napkins on bamboo trays. Charlie settled on the sofa. Julia straightened out the cream chenille throw blanket on the rocking chair so it hung at precisely the angle she saw in home decorating magazines and the Dori and Jon Love Where You Live! Show.

“Carlton wants me back,” she said between spoonfuls.

Charlie set his bowl on the coffee table. “You mean he wants you to work so he can sleep at his desk.”

“He’s in all-day meetings with upper management. Something big’s going on over there. He said so himself. I’ll call Jerry later today. He’ll know the scoop.”

“Have you answered any of Jerry’s texts or calls?” Charlie asked.

“No, and I’m sure he’s royally pissed off with me. I haven’t been in the mood for talking with friends—or humankind. Maybe we should get a dog, so I have a nonhuman to talk to.”

“No,” Charlie mouthed.

Jerry, her best bud and company busybody, covered arts and entertainment for The Chronicle. He wanted to be an investigative reporter, but there wasn’t much to investigate; plus, the paper wasn’t big enough to have a dedicated position. Aside from the occasional car prowl and porch pirate incident, the most scandalous story in Cascade City happened when a retired Florida senator got into a protracted battle with the city over a building permit. Whoop-dee-doo. But it didn’t keep Jerry from looking for his big break to slink around, build alliances with underground sources, ask hard questions, and blow the lid off a juicy story of injustice, corporate greed, government misconduct, prostitution, etc.

Charlie threw up his hands and did his best “I’m outraged” look, which came off as menacing as a gerbil. “I knew Carlton wouldn’t leave you in peace. What a jerk. Seriously, I hate that guy.” He tipped the cereal bowl and drank the milk. “Well, I guess ‘hate’ is a strong word. But I don’t like him.”

It took a lot to get on Charlie’s bad side, and Julia had only told him about a fraction of Carlton’s sexual innuendos and bigoted jokes. Carlton had no shame, tact, or lack of protruding nose hair, although he could act like a dignified business leader if it benefited him.

She’d thought about turning him in—many times—but wanted his job, and filing a complaint might backfire on her. Plus, the whole thing embarrassed her. Did she want to repeat lines like, “Do you have a sunburn, or are you always this hot?” to someone in a position of authority?

“Yes, Carlton’s a turd, but this isn’t about him. They’ve got a staffing shortage, Kelvin doesn’t have the authority to hire people, and Carlton’s MIA most of the time.”

“What happens if you don’t go back now?”

“I’m concerned about my employees, honey.”

“Geez, Julia, go ahead. I can tell you’ve made up your mind anyway. I support you, hon. Whatever makes you happy, but I can’t stand that boss of yours. No one should treat you with disrespect like that, and you shouldn’t put up with it. That guy needs to be knocked down a notch—or ten.”

“I’ll call Kids’ Korner and see if Trey can start on the sixteenth.” Julia held a spoonful of cereal to her mouth and paused. “Oh crap. What am I going to wear?” She set the spoon down. “I still look six months pregnant.”

Charlie held up his hands. “I don’t know, babe.”

“It was a rhetorical question, Charlie. You can eat anything you damn want and never gain weight. It’s so unfair.”

“You’re beautiful just the way you are, Julia. Gorgeous even. A stunner.”

“Uh-huh. I want to be someone who has to stand on a chair to reach the top shelf,” she whined. “I want my feet to dangle when I sit on a barstool. I want to see my hip bones to prove they exist. Is that too much to ask?”

“Your dad was a big guy with a size-thirteen shoe. At least you come by it honestly.”

At five feet eight inches tall, with size-nine feet, “big-boned,” and big-boobed, she towered over every other female relative and family friend in her Mexican-American family.

“¡Aye, tu hija es grandota!” her mother’s diminutive Mexican lady friends clucked during a card game the week of Julia’s eighth birthday. To which her five-foot-nothing, ninety-pound mother, with wrists the diameter of churros, responded, “I just put her on the cabbage soup diet. You know I’ve tried everything else.”

When the ladies left the house, a wounded and embarrassed Julia and Paloma loaded her light-colored and large-patterned clothing into a box for donation to the church.

“Light clothes make you look chunkier, Mijita,” Paloma said. “Dark colors give the illusion of a longer and leaner frame. You can’t go to school in these.” She held up light blue corduroy pants in one hand and a cream-colored cotton shirt with a shiny panda design in the other. “Pull anything with horizontal stripes and large patterns out of your closet and drawers and put them in a garbage bag for the poor.”

“We’re poor, Mamá,” Julia whispered.

“We get by. I’m trying to teach you something important here. Full skirts, puffy coats, skinny jeans, and wide belts must go. Belts cut your look in half, and we’re aiming for svelte. No belts. No stripes. Do you understand?”

In fifth grade, the boys called her “Jumbo Julia.” The one nice girl made pouty lips. “Don’t you mind those nasty boys, Julia. You’re fat, but you’ve got a pretty face.”

By high school, she blossomed into an intelligent, hard-working, dark-eyed beauty with achievements that would impress any college admissions officer: GPA: four-point-zero, senior class president, drill team captain, state debate team champion, SAT score: fourteen sixty-six, and the Most Likely to Win a “Sophia Vergara Lookalike but Taller and with Curlier Hair Award,” bestowed on her by fellow students.

Still, she avoided clothing on her mother’s no-no list. What good would an impressive list of notable accomplishments be if all people thought was, “Too bad she’s so fat.”

Her scholarship to Seattle University brought her to Washington—the perfect coastal spot for a girl itching to leave the hella-hot Lonestar State with its giant cockroaches, cowboy hats, boots that made for sweaty feet, and a delicate-boned mother.

She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, a Minor in Vocal Performance, and a ring on her finger from a hot Swede.

Standing proudly after her graduation ceremony, with honors cords and medals around her neck and Charlie at her side, Paloma leaned in and spoke into her ear.

“Come to Texas and find one of your own kind to marry. This one’s pale as a raw potato. And that sash around your neck is a horrid shade of green. It doesn’t suit your skin tone.”

****

January 15, 2017

The Cascade City Chronicle

“Lost Boa Constrictor May Be Linked to Poodle Disappearance”

Carmen sat in the school library and watched the people who came and went, inventing enviable life stories for each to escape her own. One student exited the elevator, pulled off her pink, lavender, and yellow ombre beanie cap, and shook her long blonde hair. A young man standing at a copy machine waved her over. They kissed to the woosh-woosh sound of papers sliding into a tray.

They’ll get married, work at a tech company on the east side, live in a condo with a view of Lake Washington, and have two children in a program for the academically gifted. Her millionaire parents will invite them over for every holiday, and his flashy parents, who live nearby, will take them on cruises every summer.

She turned away from the couple, stared at her English assignment, and wondered what the professor would think of her response to the question about the author’s quote and her use of the imaginary “Ben” to make her point. Would the professor get nosey and ask questions?

She pulled her handwritten notes from her backpack and typed them into a school computer.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with the author. She wasn’t talking about an inanimate object like a candy cane or coffee cup; she was talking about someone’s life. And what got lost wasn’t a set of keys or a sock; it was a person. Ignoring a painful past leads to more of the same.

Take Ben, a friend of mine with a traumatic childhood. He learned to lock things away—the insults, the slaps, and worse. “Stop your sniveling,” he was told. “Don’t be a baby. Tell, and you’ll be sorry.”

But bottling it up was like overfilling a dam with a thousand cracks. He had trouble sleeping, thoughts of suicide, and dreams of elaborate plots to exact revenge.

As unlikely as it may sound, Ben found the remedy in reliving his trauma. He cried about his life, punched a pillow, and screamed at the top of his lungs. He shared the nightmarish experiences he’d kept secret with a trusted friend, and only then could he allow in the positive energy required to build the better life he wanted.

Avoiding the truth can lead to consequences of disastrous proportions. The keys are facing the ugly truth and acting with intention.

She opened her notebook to a blank page and wrote: Find a trusted friend.

****

January 15, 2017— continued

With less than eight hours before returning to work, Julia glanced at her “Night Before Work” checklist. Select and hang work clothes in the bathroom. Stock baby bag (consult baby bag supply checklist). Lay Trey’s clothes on changing table. Transfer six frozen breast milk bags to the fridge.

She slept three hours and woke up crabby.