The big day arrived! Dad dropped Carmen, Mom, and me near the Race for the Cure festivities, while he and Jimmy searched for a parking spot. The “Race for Lisa” group planned to meet by the flagpole fifteen minutes before the starting gun went off. We had arrived an hour early, so we had time to look around. Mom wanted to see the sights too, but she quickly got out of breath.
“And to think I wanted to do the whole walk,” she said. She lifted a foot to show off her tennis shoes. “Next year,” she vowed.
I gave her a hug. “Next year, you and I will run the 5K.”
“We sure will,” she agreed. “But for now, I’m going to sit over there.” She pointed toward a row of chairs in front of a stage where an emcee introduced a speaker from the city council. I was glad Mom had come, even though she didn’t feel well enough to walk the 5K. She planned to sit near the finish line and cheer for us. “You girls look around, okay?”
“Okay,” we said.
Carmen and I walked through the parking lot of the Alamodome, San Antonio’s big stadium. The newspaper article I had seen in the valley said that last year, thirty thousand people came.
“I wonder how many people are here today,” I said to Carmen.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “but I don’t plan to count them.” I smiled, glad that she was getting closer to normal.
Nearly everyone wore the official T-shirt, including Carmen and me. Some people went beyond the shirt by dyeing their hair or wearing pink wigs. One lady had wrapped a pink boa around her neck. She kept sneaking up to people and tickling them with its feathers. Other ladies wore pink bracelets or earrings. And the dogs had pink collars or leashes. One man had dyed his poodle so it looked like a ball of cotton candy on legs. There were so many shades—the pinks you find on roses, lipstick, bubble gum, pencil erasers, and pigs. Even the guys wore pink.
Carmen and I made our way to a tent called the Pink Hat Café. It served strawberry yogurt, apples, bananas, bagels, Gatorade, water, and pink lemonade. Then we peeked through the windows of a giant inflatable castle filled with kids jumping around, and we visited a booth where a woman painted the breast cancer awareness ribbon on our cheeks. At another booth, we got autographs from Spurs and Silver Stars players, and farther down the aisle, we laughed at people singing out of tune with a karaoke machine.
Then, we found the Tribute Tent. When we went inside, Carmen said, “It’s just like el cuarto de milagros.”
I had to agree. I felt as if we had traveled back in time to the day we visited the valley and left our special items at the shrine. Lining each side of the tent were walls. One was called the Wall of Hope, and the other was called the Memory Wall. They had bulletin boards so people could tack up pictures and letters. I saw photos of smiling women, and some of women who were bald from chemotherapy or had arms swollen like my mom’s. The letters on the Wall of Hope were mostly prayers, and some were promesas. One woman promised to work at a soup kitchen every day for a year. One husband promised to stop watching TV. And a child promised to do his homework “forever and ever.” Other letters were thank-you notes or narratives from women who had survived cancer. On the Memory Wall, people who had lost someone wrote letters, many addressed to the women who had died. “We miss you,” some said, or “We wish you were here,” or “Can you believe that Señora Chavez is dating a younger man?” And, just like in el cuarto de milagros, tables were filled with roses, hundreds of pink roses; and teddy bears, candles, balloons, greeting cards, and small statues of saints; and souvenirs like thimbles, refrigerator magnets, baseball caps; and T-shirts from all over the world.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Dad said. He was holding Jimmy’s hand, trying to keep him from grabbing the items. Jimmy kept saying, “Gimme! Gimme!”
“Do you want to jump in a castle?” Carmen asked him.
“Gimme castle!” he said.
Carmen took his hand. “Let me take care of Jimmy for a change.” We nodded as she led him out. She’d been taking care of him all week. Maybe Mom and Dad told her to, or maybe she was being nice. After all, she had been helping me with math, and little by little, I was starting to understand.
When they were gone, Dad said, “Here’s your backpack.” He handed it to me. It stored my camera, a bottle of water, and the rest of Mom’s bikini tops. I had brought them for good luck. I pulled out the hot pink one, remembering how Mom had left a bikini top at el cuarto de milagros. That seemed like years ago. Since then, she’d had surgery and several weeks of radiation therapy. She had a couple of more weeks to go. Then we’d have to wait six months before the doctor ran tests to see if the cancer had disappeared. I knew those were going to be the toughest six months, and that every day, we’d silently ask ourselves, “Is Mom going to be okay?” So here I stood between the Wall of Hope and the Memory Wall, glad that Mom was still with us but also afraid that next year, things might be different.
“Do you really believe in promesas?” I asked Dad. “Do you think miracles happen if we keep our promises?”
He put his arm around me and took a deep breath. After a long moment, he said, “I don’t know, mija. Sometimes, I think promesas aren’t for the sick person. We do them for ourselves, so we can feel like we’re helping in some way. But in the end, it’s not in our hands.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. I wanted Dad to be as confident about promesas as he was when we visited the valley. I wanted certainty, an answer as straightforward as the answers Carmen got when she counted things.
Dad reached into his pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and tacked it onto the Wall of Hope.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The receipt from last week’s visit to Chuck E. Cheese.” He laughed to himself. “I could hardly hear a word your mother said, and I spent most of the time chasing Jimmy. The pizza was cold, and the soda was warm. It wasn’t like our first date at all, but we had fun. As much fun as we had the first time we went to the movies.”
Dad didn’t know Mom’s future, but he knew her present and her past. He was going to celebrate and hope and be grateful, and so was I. So I placed the bikini top on a table and left it in the Tribute Tent.
When we stepped back outside, we saw Jimmy and Carmen. “Look who I found,” she said.
The Robins were beside her. Roberto carried the banner, rolled up for now. Patty was kneeling as she put hot pink shoelaces in her tennis shoes. She must have found them at one of the booths. Shawntae had pink tennis shoes instead of pumps, and when she caught me staring at her feet, she shook a charm bracelet in my face. All the charms were pumps, each a different color. Iliana was there too, arm in arm with her brothers. They wore their football jerseys with pink bandanas tied over the sleeves.
I could only sigh. They were so cute. Maybe someday they’d see me as more than “another little sister.”
“We decided to register so we can run,” they said. “See you guys later. We’re going to warm up.”
I watched them disappear into the crowd. Was it acceptable to put your friend’s older brothers on your Boyfriend Wish List?
“Where’s your mom?” Patty asked.
“Near the stage,” I said. “Let’s go find her.”
We headed to the stage and found her talking to a few other women.
“Meet my new friends,” she said as she introduced us to fellow cancer patients who planned to cheer for the people walking in their honor. We talked to them for a while. They were going through a hard time too, and it was nice to know that Mom wasn’t alone.
“Time to make your way to the starting line,” the emcee said.
“We better hurry,” I told the Robins. “The race starts in fifteen minutes.”
Before I left, Mom grabbed my hand. “I wish I could walk with you, mija, but I get so weak.”
“I understand,” I said.
She pulled me toward her and kissed my cheek. “I’m very proud of you. I’ll be thinking about you the whole time you’re out there.”
“And I’ll be thinking of you,” I said as I gave her a hug.
At the flagpoles, an army color guard hoisted the Texas and United States flags. Then the soldiers did a short routine, twirling their rifles in unison before marching out. Roberto and Patty rolled open the banner, each holding an end, and we gathered behind it.
“Let’s race for Lisa!” I yelled, and everyone cheered.
All of a sudden, thousands of people packed themselves behind the starting line. The starter stood on a platform and spoke into a microphone, his voice booming through huge speakers.
“Are you ready?!”
The crowd roared with excitement.
“Then get set!” The runners positioned themselves. “Go!” We heard the loud pop of the starting gun and the crowd lurched forward, some running, some walking, but all going in the same direction.
The race was amazing. Music bands were positioned at different points along the route. We heard Scottish bagpipes, a drumming circle, a children’s choir, jazz and rock bands, mariachis, and country and western groups. There were dancers too—cloggers, tap dancers, belly dancers, and young men doing something called capoeira, which looked like a combination of martial arts and break dancing. We saw air force recruits marching in full dress uniform, and the Spurs Silver Dancers doing routines with their pom-poms. A whole group of health professionals from the Cancer Therapy and Research Center walked in pink scrubs, followed by groups of firemen and police officers. And others had banners, too. Some were from companies—Saks Fifth Avenue, Teachers Federal Credit Union, Trinity Baptist Church, and my dad’s company, USAA—and others from private groups like mine.
At one point, we had to cross a bridge that went over the railroad tracks. I stopped a moment to take a few pictures and found myself in the middle of a huge river flowing with pink, each person like a drop of water. I looked at all the faces passing by, and even though they were strangers, I saw traces of my mother, my sister, and my friends because I felt related to everyone. After all, we were like a team, an army, fighting for those we loved.
It took us an hour to walk the 5K. When we crossed the finish line, Mom, Dad, and Jimmy cheered.
“Come on,” Mom and Dad told us. “We want to show you something.”
The Robins and I followed them to a huge sign shaped like the graduated cylinders we used in science class, only instead of milliliters, the sign measured the number of sponsors who had donated to this year’s Race for the Cure. It was called “The Top Ten Fund-Raising Teams.”
“Erica, look!” Iliana said, all excited as she pointed to our team, Race for Lisa, which was number eight on the list. I had collected 526 names!
“I told you! I told you!” Shawntae said. She started jumping like a jackpot winner. “I’m a psychic! I’m a psychic!” she kept saying.
“What are you talking about?” Patty said. “Did you dream about this sign last night?”
“No,” Shawntae replied. “But don’t you get it? Don’t you get it?”
We all looked at one another. “Get what?” Roberto finally asked.
“The dream I had about Erica’s mother winning the lottery. It wasn’t about the lottery at all, at least not literally.” Shawntae put her hands on my shoulders and faced me. “My dream was telling me that you’d collect five hundred names. The lottery was a symbol. It wasn’t about money. It was about sponsors. Don’t you see? I am a psychic after all!”
The old me would have pointed out all the details that did not quite match and insisted that Shawntae was over-interpreting things, but the new me looked at my family, my friends, and all the people still crossing the finish line, many smiling even though they wore shirts that said, “In loving memory of,” and others, so many others, with shirts that said, “I’m a survivor.” And then I looked at my mom and dad. I had always thought they were the strongest people in the world. I thought Dad could toss cars as easily as footballs. I thought everyone did what Mom said, not just me, Carmen, and Jimmy, but the neighbors, the teachers, the president of the United States. I thought my parents had the answers to everything, like the meaning of every word, the solution to every problem, and how to answer the big questions like why is there good and evil or why do some people, good people, get sick. I could never imagine my parents being babies once or toddlers or teenagers, going through everything I was going through. In my mind, they had always been adults, and they would always be there to help me. But then I saw Mom sick and Dad all nervous. Suddenly, they needed me. They weren’t weak, exactly, but they weren’t as strong as I thought. So I had to be strong. Even though I was still a kid, I had to do grown-up things like help around the house and keep everybody calm. But I couldn’t do it alone.
I glanced at my ring, expecting it to be pink even though it wasn’t a color on the mood ring color chart. Then I looked away from it. I didn’t need my mood ring to tell me how I felt. I could see my feelings in the faces around me. When I was sad, they were too, and when I was happy, so were they. I still didn’t believe that Shawntae was a psychic and even though I had fulfilled my promesa, I couldn’t be 100 percent sure that Mom would be cured, but after today, I most definitely believed in the people who loved me and that the real miracles happened when we worked together.
Roberto and Patty lifted the banner. “Race for Lisa!” they cheered. Carmen and I joined in: “Race for Lisa!” Then Iliana and her brothers shouted, and finally my parents. Soon, lots of people, including some we’d never met, were chanting, “Race for Lisa! Race for Lisa!” as we celebrated our five hundred names in pink.
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