Little’s mamá and auntie did up a feast on the dining room table. Hilachas on the far end. Next to them is a plate of rice fried up with some cut-up carrots. And peas too. There’s Guatemalan chow mein noodles with more cooked carrots and raw green onions on top. Cooking in the steam. Ketchup’s next to it. I never had chow mein before I came here to stay with them, so I didn’t know having ketchup with them was weird till Wizard took me to this Chinese place on Imperial and I asked where the ketchup was. He said, What are you, a chapín now? Get out of here with your fucking ketchup on noodles. There’s fried platanos too. A bread basket for bolillos. My favorite bread in history. And there’s chuchitos made of super-soft masa. Chile slices on top. This is mainly for Jimena. Weekend meals are all about her.
She loves food. Loves it. Wants to be a chef. She thinks about it all the time. Wonders what’s in stuff. Tries to just close her eyes and name ingredients. Mrs. Matta will always be putting different little things in the recipes to see if Jimena can taste it. Random stuff. It’s a game they play, cuz the more Jimena’s brain is locked on something, the less seizures she seems to have.
Little leans on my shoulder and says, “My mom misses you. She wants you to come back.”
It feels good to hear that. And weird.
“I’m not even her kid,” I say.
He nods to the kitchen’s entrance. “Don’t tell her that.”
And there’s Mrs. Matta staring at me. Smiling. I disrespected this woman in her own house. Yelled in her face. And here she is smiling. Big brown eyes behind her glasses crinkle up. And that smile tho? It turns to a frown when she sees my face all messed up. She comes over. And she’s like half a foot shorter than me. It don’t matter tho, cuz she gets up on her tiptoes and hugs me. Like moms should, you know? Not like how mines ever did. Like they do in commercials and movies tho. And I don’t even feel like I deserve it. She doesn’t let go till I hug back. And I wanna cry. I want to just say sorry for everything right there. And tell her how scared I am about this gun and …
I choke it down.
I say, “Lo siento mucho. For real, Señora Matta.”
She slaps my shoulder. And then she’s out of the room and back in it again with some rubbing alcohol and dabbing my face with a cotton ball. And that shit burns. I take it tho.
Cuz, all this? It makes me never want to leave this place. And it’s scaring me how deep that feels. How I just want to be in this house with the Mattas. Don’t want to go outside. Don’t want to see Wizard. Don’t want to hear bad news from him. And even if I could say how I’m feeling in Spanish, it wouldn’t matter. Cuz Mrs. Matta isn’t about conversations. She’s about food. And she wants us all to sit. Eat. Now. Before it gets cold.
So Little picks up the bowl of refried black beans right when his auntie rolls into the room with a little drinks tray and shuts him down. Everybody’s got to hold hands in this house first before food gets passed. Mrs. Matta puts her head down and prays in Spanish for the whole table. She’s grateful for the food. And she blesses it. And she calls for Him to guide and protect our absent loved ones. Little’s auntie squeezes my hand then. It’s for my mom. I squeeze back for her brother, Little and Jimena’s dad that got deported right after the riots cuz of some bullshit he got caught up in. And then we eat.
I start with a big bite of hilachas. All salty tanginess with the fat of the meat getting in there too. It gives me tingles all over my body. First thing I’ve eaten in two days that’s not cereal. Eating this, it’s like I’m living again.
And Little must be looking at my face while I’m thinking that. Cuz he says, “You could come back whenever, you know. Get a job. Help with rent. She’d like that.”
“That’d be good.” Too good, I’m thinking, so I whisper, “Except I’m about to get snatched up on some bullshit.”
“Like questioned, or arrested?”
I shrug. “Dunno. Prolly arrested.”
Jimena’s ears are too damn good, cuz she says, “Who’s getting arrested?”
This sets off her mom and the aunt. They wanna know what’s being said and about who. Little’s all over it.
“Nobody,” he says, “come on, Jimenita. We’re talking about this one episode of Cops where a dude got stuck in a bush after he tried to jump it. That was crazy.”
I smile. I nod. Jimena’s eyes shoot over to me like she knows we’re lying. She can’t prove it tho.
So I switch it up on her. “You figure out what the secret ingredient is yet, Jimena?”
She frowns. She knows what I’m doing. She’s still about figuring out that ingredient. She has me pass the chow mein over. One time, Mrs. Matta did a carne guisada with pistachios in it. She ground them up and tried to hide them from Jimena. I don’t know how Jimena guessed it around the heavy tomato taste of that sauce. She did tho.
When she’s all busy with tasting again, Little leans over. “Arrested for what?
Under the table, I make my hand into a gun shape and show Little.
He rolls his eyes up at the ceiling.
I lean back and whisper again, “Wizard might’ve done something. And his parole officer heard he might’ve did it so he came over and searched the spot. And supposedly they found it … you know. In my room.”
I take a bite of noodles. They don’t taste so good anymore tho.
Little brings his napkin up to his face and whispers behind it, “So this is what you need help with?”
I nod. “I need to know who got that gun into Angela’s house. Cuz that gun got dropped way over at Scrappy’s house. Wizard said so.”
Little’s got his jaw set now. He’s taking it in. He says, “You sure it wasn’t Angela’s?”
I’m shaking my head at that when there’s a knock at the sliding door. On the glass. It’s loud too.
Mrs. Matta wants to know who it is. Little looks at the wall clock with the cat on it that he got her at a yard sale. He tells everybody it’s just a friend he told to come over and forgot. He’s slick like that. Always has answers.
We keep talking as we leave the living room. I say, “Angela always said never to have contraband shit in her house. She knew what type of risks there were in putting up a parolee.”
“Don’t stress on it,” Little says. “I was just wondering. I’m not exactly sure how I’m about to figure this all out, though.”
“You’re crazy smart,” I say. “You can find out shit other people can’t.”
He looks down. Says nothing.
At the door, we check who’s behind it. I pull the curtain. We both look out. And what we see is Wizard. Just the sight of him so fast makes my heart sink way down. He’s looking at the ground. Stepping on ants coming out of a little ant hole in a crack of the concrete. He’s not looking happy. Little unlocks the door so he can slide it.
When it goes, Wizard looks up and nods his chin at me. “I’m here for you, man. We’re rolling.”
I think I’m gonna throw up when I hear that, so I try to look as cool as I can when I say, “Where we going?”
Wizard makes a face like he’s swallowing some nasty-tasting medicine. And he says, “We’re getting our asses caught. Get ready for some fucking bracelets.”
I bite my lip so hard I bleed inside.
I taste it. Like metal.
All so I don’t cry. Right here. For having to leave. For not having a choice.