Edward and Jesse had both been accepted to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, but they were home so often people wondered if they were really enrolled in a college. My aunt continually complained about it to him.
“Why are we paying all this money for you to attend college if you’re not there?” she demanded to know.
“I’m there for what I’m supposed to be,” he replied.
“College is more than attending classes. It’s a whole world,” she said.
He didn’t reply.
In my heart of hearts, I knew that Edward was worrying about me all the time, how I was being treated and what new injury or pain my aunt and his sister were planning for me.
I tried to assure him that I was fine whenever he called, but he was still concerned, despite how unafraid I sounded. I did have far more self-confidence now, and I think my aunt realized it. I would never say she accepted and loved me. It was more like a truce between us, or even a quiet respect and awareness that I was no longer as gullible and as innocent as the poor Mexican girl who had just lost her parents. The events of the past few years had hardened me in places I had hoped would always be soft. I didn’t want to be so untrusting and cynical, but sometimes, more often than not, those two ingredients were important when building a protective shield around yourself. Here, as everywhere, it was necessary to do so, especially for a young woman my age, whose immediate family was gone and whose future depended not so much on the kindness of others as it did on her own wit and skill.
In one of her softer moments, when she permitted herself to be my aunt, Tía Isabela admitted to admiring me for having the spine to return and face all the challenges that awaited me, challenges that had grown even greater because of the previous events.
But her compliments were double-edged swords in this house, because she often used them and me to whip Sophia into behaving. As a result, Sophia only resented me more.
“Instead of always doing something behind my back or something sly and deceitful, Sophia, why don’t you take a lesson from Delia and draw on some of that Latin pride that’s supposedly in our blood,” she told her once at dinner when she discovered Sophia had been spreading nasty lies about a girl in the school who disliked her, the daughter of another wealthy family. The girl’s mother had complained bitterly to Tía Isabela. “Believe me,” she told Sophia, “people will respect you more for it. Look how Delia is winning respect.”
Sophia’s eyes were aching with pain and anger when she looked at me. Then she folded her arms, sat back, and glared at her mother.
“I thought you weren’t proud of your Mexican background, Mother. You never wanted to admit to ever living there, because you were so ashamed of it, and you hate speaking Spanish so much you won’t even say sí.”
“Never mind me. Think of yourself.”
“Oh, I am, Mother. Don’t worry, I am,” Sophia said, and smiled coldly at me. “Just like our Latin American princess,” she added.
Frustrated, Tía Isabela shook her head and returned to eating in silence.
Most of the time, silence ruled in this hacienda, because the thoughts that flew about would be like darts if they were ever voiced. They would sting like angry hornets and send pain deep into our hearts. It was better that their wings were clipped, the words never voiced.
There was little music in the air here as well. Oh, Sophia clapped on her earphones, especially when she went into a tantrum, but there was no music like there was back in Mexico, the music of daily life, the music of families. Here there was only the heavy thumping of hearts, the slow drumbeat to accompany the funeral of love, a funeral I refused to attend.
Instead, I sat by my window at night and looked out at the same stars that Ignacio was surely looking at as well at the same moment, somewhere in Mexico. I could feel the promise and the hope and vowed to myself that nothing would put out the twinkling in the darkness or silence the song we both heard—nothing, that is, that I could imagine.
But then, there was so much I didn’t know.
And so many dark places I couldn’t envision.
1
Dark Place
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Sophia told me one evening just after the start of our senior year. She had called me into her room when I came up to go to mine and start my homework.
“And what is this deal?”
“I’ll do our English homework if you’ll do our math. You’re better than I am in math, because you don’t have to speak English to do numbers.”
“I’m better than you are in English, too,” I said.
Tía Isabela had tried pressuring her into working harder last year by saying, “A girl who barely spoke English a year ago is now achieving with grades so much higher than yours it’s embarrassing, Sophia.”
“The teachers feel sorry for her and give her higher grades out of pity, that’s all,” was Sophia’s response.
“Every teacher? I doubt that.”
“Well, they do! She puts on a look so pathetic sometimes that it is…pathetic.”