Because of the lymphedema, Grandma had been driving for Mom, and while I was in school, she watched Jimmy. But by the end of the day, she was ready to go home. “Your grandpa gets cranky,” she explained, though I knew she got cranky, too.
When she dropped us off on Thursday, Carmen and I found Mom at the kitchen table, sound asleep, her cheek on top of a place mat. The swelling in her arm had finally gone down, so she had returned to radiation therapy. The treatment knocked her out, but Jimmy thought she was playing night-night, a bedtime game.
When he tugged at Mom’s robe, Carmen pulled him away. “Mom’s not playing,” she said, but he didn’t believe her. He curled up on the floor, closed his eyes, and said, “I go night-night, too.”
She was about to stand him up, but I stopped her. “Let him pretend,” I said. Then I gently shook Mom. She lifted her head, confusion all over her face. “Come on,” I said, helping her stand and letting her lean on me as I walked her to the bedroom. Once we got there, I pushed aside the blanket, and when she crawled into bed, I tucked her in and kissed her cheek.
She smiled. “Who would have thought?” she said sleepily. “You acting like the parent and me acting like the child?”
“You’re still my mom.”
“And you’re still my baby.”
She patted the bed like she used to when I was Jimmy’s age. I shook off my shoes and curled up beside her. I knew I was leaning near her sore side, but she didn’t complain. I was almost as tall as she, and I’d been washing clothes, vacuuming, and giving Jimmy a bath every night. I’d been trying my best to keep peace with Carmen even though she got on my nerves. But right now, I wanted to be a child again, Jimmy’s age because he was too young to understand what was happening.
Mom stroked my hair and hummed my favorite lullaby about little chicks who cried when they were hungry and cold. “Los pollitos dicen, pío, pío, pío, cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frio.”
That’s how I felt, like a pollito crying—not like Jimmy, whose shoulders shook, but like Dad, who got still as a wall.
As I lay there, I thought about the Race for the Cure and my project, both only a week away. Little by little, I’d been gathering names, but I still didn’t have five hundred. Last Sunday, I had asked Dad to take me to the Medical Center area because lots of hospitals were on the same street. I went to the lobbies, asking for sponsors, and leaving only when the security guards explained the “no soliciting” rule. I knew it was lying to pretend I didn’t know the rule, but each time, I managed to get several sponsors before getting caught. And I never really got in trouble. I just apologized and went to the next hospital. What else could I do? I had already knocked on every door in my neighborhood and called all my relatives. I had even bugged people after church. But it still wasn’t enough, and I was starting to panic because it seemed impossible to get five hundred names in time for the walk—in time for Mom.
After a while, Mom’s voice faded out, and her hand slipped away. She was asleep again. I wanted to stay and dream that things were back to normal, back to the time before Mom brought those nine bikinis home, but something fell in the kitchen and the loud crash made Jimmy cry. So I crawled out of bed, took a deep breath, and went to investigate.
When I got to the kitchen, I discovered the trash flipped on its side. Last night’s chicken bones were scattered on the floor, along with dirty paper towels and broken eggshells.
Jimmy was holding up a jar and saying, “Throw away!” It was a half-empty peanut butter jar. We’d made a few sandwiches from it, but the rest of the peanut butter was on his face, shirt, and hands. He even had peanut butter in his hair.
“How did you get this in your hair?” I asked.
He just held up the jar and said, “No more!” even though there was enough for several sandwiches.
“Why weren’t you watching him?” I complained to Carmen.
She didn’t answer because she was counting, her eyes staring at some invisible point. She said, “Twenty-three,” and a few seconds later, “twenty-four,” and a whole minute later, after I had time to dampen a towel and wipe Jimmy’s face, she said, “twenty-five.” That’s when I realized she was listening for cars passing by. We didn’t live on a busy street, and you could barely hear the cars from within the house, so counting them took a lot of concentration, something Carmen had gobs of right now. She looked obsessed, in my opinion.
“If you’re counting cars, you’ll never get to the end,” I said. “There will always be cars driving down the street.”
She just said, “Twenty-six, twenty-seven”—long pause—“twenty-eight.”
I could only shake my head. My sister was going nuts.
I looked at Jimmy again. If I wanted to wash off the peanut butter, I’d have to give him a bath. Lots of kids probably cried about taking a bath but not Jimmy. He loved it. I filled the tub with bubbles and threw a bunch of toys in there. I helped him into the water, and then I sat on a stool beside the tub to make sure he didn’t drown. While he invented adventures with his pirate ships and toy shark, I invented a story in the journal GumWad had given me. I’d been writing in it every day. And GumWad was right. Having a place to express myself helped. Maybe it didn’t solve my problems, but it made me feel calmer. Often, I didn’t even mention my worries. I wanted to forget them, so I wrote whatever came to mind—stories, lists, conversations I’d overheard, or letters to famous people.
Today, I wrote a story about a girl who liked to count. First, she counted the cans of soup in the cupboard. “It took her twenty-two seconds,” I wrote. Then, she counted the lightbulbs in the house, which took five minutes and forty seconds. She went outside and counted the trees on her street. Since the street was long, it took over an hour. She then made her way to the grocery store to count the cars in the parking lot. Cars weren’t like trees. They kept leaving and arriving. The girl had to start over numerous times. Finally, around midnight, when the last person left, she finished counting. One car. “The girl wondered who it belonged to,” I wrote, “since all the customers and employees had gone home. Finally, she looked at the sky and started to count the stars. She’s still counting because you could never figure out how many stars there are. It would take a lot more than one lifetime to get that number.”
All my stories were short and simple. When I had time, I went back and drew pictures. Sometimes, I read my stories to Jimmy, very quietly—not because of Dad’s rules but because I didn’t want Carmen to overhear.
I was just about to read him this one when Dad walked in. He sat on the edge of the tub, scooped up some bubbles, and threw them at Jimmy, who was too preoccupied with his toys to notice.
Then Dad said, “The counselor from your school called today.”
“Is Carmen getting another award?” I asked, already dreading the news.
“No,” Dad said. “She called about you.”
I thought for a moment. The counselor called only when it concerned Carmen, usually to invite my parents to some type of recognition ceremony. No way was I getting an award. I hadn’t done anything special. That could mean only one thing. The counselor called because I was in trouble. Of course I was in trouble. I’d been falling behind. My grades were okay, but I’d missed some assignments and my quiz scores were low Cs.
“She wanted to schedule a conference with some of your teachers next Monday,” Dad said. “She mentioned Mr. Leyva. Isn’t that your math teacher?”
Of course, I thought, dropping my head. “Yes,” I said, my voice small because I felt like such a loser.
When the school called about Carmen, it was because she’d done something spectacular, like gotten a perfect score on a national test that’s for seniors in high school. But when the school called about me, it was because I was… well… I was not spectacular. And because I was not spectacular, I was failing math. Sure, I could count, just like everybody else, but the most interesting thing I did with numbers was remember my locker combination.
“Any idea why he’d want a conference?” Dad asked.
“I think I’m failing his class,” I admitted.
“Really? What’s your average?”
“If I were good with numbers, I’d tell you.” I couldn’t help being sassy. After all, who cared about my average? I was failing, plain and simple. It didn’t matter if my average was a sixty-two or a twelve because it was still an F in the grade book.
“I don’t understand,” Dad said. “Your sister…”
I stood up. “Don’t even go there,” I warned. “I’m so sick and tired of hearing how smart Carmen is and how dumb I am.”
“I didn’t say you were dumb.”
“You were going to tell me to ask Carmen for help. To ask her for tutoring. That’s what everybody tells me. They think Carmen has all the answers, and guess what… she thinks she has all the answers. And I’m the one who has to hear it all the time, who gets corrected. So excuse me if the last thing I want is to give her another reason to wave her superior intelligence in my face!”
With that, I stomped out. I knew Jimmy was still in the tub, but I thought to myself, Let Dad deal with it!