The next day, Dad promised to pick us up around dinnertime so we could see Mom. In the meantime, Grandma was spending another day with us. She took Jimmy outside before it got too hot, while Carmen and I sat at the kitchen table, me with the Sunday tabloid and Carmen with the laptop. I loved glancing at pics of movie stars with and without their makeup, especially when they were doing normal things like buying groceries or pumping gas.
“Did you know,” Carmen began, “that there are different kinds of surgeries for breast cancer?”
I shrugged. I was not in the mood for one of Carmen’s lectures.
“A mastectomy and a lumpectomy,” she explained. “Do you know the difference?”
I lifted the tabloid to block my view of her.
“I figured you didn’t,” Carmen said. “And you probably don’t know what ‘sentinel lymph nodes’ or ‘immunotherapy’ are or what the word ‘metastasize’ means.”
“It means ‘spreading,’ ” I said, remembering the conversation with Dad yesterday.
“And the others?”
I put down the paper. “I don’t care, Carmen. You’re not my teacher. You’re my little sister, which means you’re supposed to do what I say. And I say quit being a pest right now.”
“You’re not my boss,” she snapped back.
“Am too.”
“Are not.”
We locked eyes for a stare-down. I was not going to blink first. Who cared about the strand of hair tickling my temple or the ceiling fan drying out my eyes? Carmen might be smarter than me, but she wasn’t tougher.
After a few intense moments, my phone pinged. Carmen blinked.
“Gotcha!” I cheered.
She just shook her head and went back to her computer screen.
I glanced at my text message. It was from Shawntae to all the Robins. “I’m totally bored,” she wrote. “Anyone free? If so, come over. Save me, plz!”
I peeked into the backyard to ask my grandmother if I could visit my friend for a while. “I’ll put Jimmy down for a nap first,” I said, so she wouldn’t have to worry about him crying.
“Sounds like a deal,” she answered.
So I texted back to Shawntae. “CU in an hour.” Then, I went back to the tabloid. I was just starting to read about the strange names stars gave their kids when Carmen interrupted.
“Did you know that the mastectomy rate in the United States is fifty-six percent?”
“I’m not a doctor,” I replied. “Why would I know something like that?”
She ignored me. “The rate in Central and Eastern Europe is seventy-seven percent,” she went on. “And in Australia and New Zealand, it’s thirty-four percent.”
I had to admit, I was a little interested. After all, this related to Mom. But what did it matter? All those percentages were meaningless to me. What did Carmen expect me to do with those numbers? When I thought about breast cancer, I didn’t see an equation. I saw a picture—Mom in a light blue gown, her hair spread upon the pillow, and a quiet tear when she realized that she wouldn’t wear bikinis anymore.
I folded up the paper and scooted back my chair.
“Where are you going?” Carmen asked.
“I’m going to get Jimmy. It’s almost time for his nap.”
“But don’t you want to learn more about breast cancer?”
“When you can tell me why our mom got sick,” I said, “I’ll listen.” With that, I headed out the door.
An hour later, I was at Shawntae’s. She lives on the next street over. Her bedroom is an explosion of color—bright yellow walls, a rainbow-striped bedspread, and a tall bookshelf for her pumps. She has so many pumps. She organizes them by color. Lots of people wear black, red, or gray pumps, but Shawntae has orange, green, and pink, too. She has pumps with animal prints and some with bows or buttons. She must have more than fifty pairs! I imagined she slept with them because the only time I saw her bare feet was at the pool.
When I stepped in, she said, “Thank goodness you’re here. I’m dying of boredom. Feel this.”
She held out her wrist, so I touched it.
“I don’t feel anything,” I said.
“You see? No pulse! Like I said, I’m dying.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I heard heaven’s boring, too. You don’t get to chase boys, and heels are useless when you’re walking on clouds. Plus, the only instruments they have up there are flutes and harps.”
“That does sound worse than being cooped up in my room all day,” Shawntae admitted. “At least I have a computer.”
I put my hands on my hips and cleared my throat.
“And cool friends like you,” she added.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s nice to be remembered. So who else is coming over?”
“Iliana and Roberto are busy,” Shawntae said, “and Patty…” Her phone rang. “Patty’s calling right now.”
She turned to answer it, so I decided to mess around with my own phone while she talked. I went to a screen saver site. I found one called “ribbons,” bands of color running across the screen like shooting stars or glow-in-the-dark eels. Another screen saver had glowing light like the aurora borealis, and another had fireworks. I finally settled on a screen saver with bubbles. They changed colors—pink, blue, and yellow. They floated and bounced against one another. I picked one and followed its trail across the screen.
“I don’t believe this!” Shawntae said, looking over my shoulder. “I dreamed about this.”
“You dreamed about the screen saver?”
“No. Yes. Kind of.” She took a minute to compose her thoughts or, rather, to make up one of her silly after-the-fact predictions. “In my dream, you were in a giant bouncy ball. It was see-through, like a bubble. You were screaming because you wanted to get out, but you couldn’t. There wasn’t a door, only air holes. And you were bouncing down the street. Sometimes you hit the side of a building and sometimes you bounced right on top of a car. When I woke up, I thought you were going to join the basketball team, but now I see that my dream was actually predicting that you would stare at the screen saver.”
I didn’t feel like arguing, so I said, “Hmm… very interesting.” Then I went back to looking at the bubbles.
“Wake up!” Shawntae said, snapping her fingers in my ear. “Why are you acting like a zombie?”
I sighed. “I can’t help it.”
“Because of your mom?”
I nodded. “She’s still in the hospital. She was so weak yesterday. She could barely open her eyes. It was like her eyelids were bricks or dumbbells or boulders. That’s how heavy they were.”
Shawntae put her hand on my shoulder. “I know it’s tough, but you can’t mope around all day. She’d feel awful if she knew you were moping around.”
“And the other thing that’s stressing me out,” I went on, “is my promesa.”
“What’s that?” Shawntae asked.
“It means ‘promise.’ I’m supposed to do something or make a sacrifice in honor of my mother. That way, all the angels will know she needs help. It’s like giving thanks. My sister’s cleaning the bathrooms, and I decided to walk a 5K, which is a bit lame, but what else can I do?”
“Maybe you can plant a garden,” Shawntae suggested.
“Maybe. But if the plants die, I’ll think it’s a sign.”
“Then write a poem every day.”
“I would if I could, but I’m not smart enough to write poems.”
Shawntae thought for a minute. “That’s it!” she blurted.
“You have a good promesa for me?”
“No, but I totally understand my dream now. It wasn’t about you staring at a screen saver. It was about you feeling trapped and hopeless. It’s like you’re bumping into things, with no control over where you’re going.”
“Gee, thanks,” I groaned. “I feel a whole lot better now.”
“Don’t blame me,” Shawntae said. “It’s not my fault you’re stuck in a bouncy ball. I gave you some good suggestions.”
“Suggestions for what?” Patty asked as she stepped into the room. She slurped through the straw of a giant Slush from Sonic, took a big swallow, and said, “Major brain freeze.” Then she kicked off her flip-flops and plopped on the bed. “Well?” she said, all impatient.
“Erica has to walk five whole kilometers for her mom,” Shawntae explained. “It’s so the angels will hear her.”
“It’s called a promesa, which means ‘promise.’ ” I glanced at my feet, imagining them in tennis shoes. “I wish I were more inspired.”
“I told her to think of another promise,” Shawntae said.
“It has to be some kind of sacrifice,” I explained.
“A painful sacrifice, huh?” Patty said, thinking about it. I nodded, even though I hadn’t mentioned pain. “Why don’t you promise to walk over broken glass or hot coals? I saw some guys do that on TV once. They didn’t even get hurt. You just have to put mind over matter.”
I shook my head, remembering how walking barefoot on the hot cement made my feet blister.
“How about fasting?” Patty said. “Or you could ask your dad to drop you off in the middle of the desert and then you can find your way back. That’s what the Indians did, and they always returned with the answers to the universe.”
“I don’t want the answers to the universe,” I said. “I want my mom to get better.”
“She had the operation yesterday,” Shawntae explained. “And Erica’s all stressed.”
Patty slurped from the giant cup again, and then said, “So have you seen your mom’s chest? Did it creep you out?”
“Don’t ask that!” Shawntae scolded.
Patty just shrugged. “Feeling creeped out is a normal reaction to something like this, right, Erica?”
I nodded. “Just thinking about it creeps me out.”
“So have you seen it yet?” she asked again.
“No. I visited my mom, but she was all covered up.”
“It’s not like she’s going to ask her mom to take off her shirt,” Shawntae said. “Things like that are private.”
I shivered as I imagined women without breasts. I didn’t want to think about it, but I also had this weird desire to know what it looked like.
Patty took another long slurp. Then she turned to me. “Your mom has joined a warrior tribe of women,” she announced.
“Because she’s fighting breast cancer?”
“Yes. I mean, that, too. But I also mean a real warrior tribe of women. Have you heard of the Amazons?”
“You mean the rain forest?”
“No, I mean Amazon women. Back in ancient times, they decided to live without men.”
“No guys?” I felt scandalized. How could you have a Boyfriend Wish List when there weren’t any guys around?
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Shawntae said. “I like guys, but sometimes they’re overrated. This world would be a better place with more women as mayors and presidents.”
“That’s what the Amazons thought,” Patty said. “But the men kept trying to take over. So they had to learn to defend themselves, and their favorite weapon was the bow and arrow.”
“That’s cool,” I said, imagining arrows arcing across the sky.
“But there was a problem,” Patty added. “The Amazons had big breasts that got in the way.”
Shawntae stood up, pretended to pull back on a bow. “I guess it’d be hard if you had giant boobs.”
“You want to know how they solved the problem?” Patty asked.
Shawntae and I nodded.
“They cut off the breast. Can you imagine a whole group of women walking around like that? But it worked. They were the best archers around.”
“They weren’t sick?” I asked.
“No, they weren’t sick at all. They volunteered to do this, and it made them stronger.”
I imagined a tribe of women warriors in the forest. They had long hair, muscular arms and legs, and white tunics, one side flat. But they were wrestling, swimming, and running through obstacle courses. And Mom was with them, doing all of those things—not sick but strong.