“Venga,” he repeated. “Don’t be afraid, come on,” he said when I still hesitated. “I won’t bite you.” He laughed at my shyness.
I got into his sports car, and he drove off.
“Dónde está Sophia?”
“Con sus amigas que fuman el pote, yo estoy seguro.”
He was sure she was smoking pot with her girlfriends? Why would he tell me?
He laughed at the look of shock on my face.
If he knew where Sophia was, why was he driving down this street? I asked him.
“To see if you were walking along,” he told me, and smiled.
Then he turned left when he should have gone straight.
“Me? Why?”
“Why not?” he replied.
“Dónde vamos?” I asked him.
“Where are we going?” He thought a moment, then smiled and said, “Just for a ride. Let the wind blow through your hair in your chariot, m’lady.” He laughed.
And for a moment, only a moment, I wondered if Cinderella had found her prince.
10
Bradley
I asked Bradley where he had learned to speak Spanish so well, and he told me he had been brought up by his nanny, Maria De Santas, who always spoke to him in Spanish.
“I knew how to speak Spanish before I knew how to speak English.”
“Why were you brought up by a nanny? Where was your mother?”
“She left us when I was only six months old,” he told me.
“Left you? I don’t understand.”
“Me, neither,” he said. He paused and then added, “She ran off with the manager of my father’s auto-parts plant.”
“Where did they go?”
He looked at me as if I was asking a stupid question.
“Somewhere in Florida, I think. My father knew because of the legal stuff that followed, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.”
How could a mother leave her own child? Were all of the women in America as selfish as mi tía Isabela? Why wasn’t family as important here as it was in Mexico?
“I don’t think about it anymore,” he continued, now sounding more angry. “To me, it’s the same as if she died. My father finally remarried, and I have a young sister, Gayle. She’s six. Maria is still with us, so Gayle is speaking Spanish well, too. It doesn’t hurt to know how to speak Spanish around here, with all you Mexicans,” he added.
“It doesn’t hurt to know how to speak English, either,” I told him, and he laughed. Then he looked at me in the strangest way. It was as if he was looking at me really for the first time.
“You’re a very pretty girl, Delia, but I bet you know how pretty you are, right?”
“No,” I said, blushing. I wanted to tell him about the evil eye and why doting on myself was not good. Besides, he was supposed to be Sophia’s boyfriend and shouldn’t be saying such things to other girls. “Don’t you think Sophia’s pretty?” I asked.