Houston, We Have a Problema Read online

  “No. I’m painting her. Because she’s paying me a lot of money.”

  Jessica took a deep breath. Okay. Well, that wasn’t such a surprise.

  Guillermo went on, clarifying his explanation. “She did ask me to sleep with her . . .”

  Jessica’s deep breath left her all at once.

  “. . . but I said no. Because if I did, she’d want the painting for free.”

  Drawing the blanket tightly around herself, Jessica shoved past him, into his bedroom, to get her things. He followed her, with no attempt to cover his own vulnerably naked self.

  “Why are you upset, chiquitita?” he asked, as if genuinely puzzled. Within moments, she had on her skirt, backward, and her blouse, inside out. He watched, amused, as she gathered her purse, sandals, and underwear from the floor.

  It was a good question. Why was she so upset? She’d come here to have sex with him, and she’d had it, and it’d been good. Who cared what he did when she wasn’t around?

  “You shouldn’t be so jealous over me,” he said.

  His words made Jessica pause. Was that it? Was she jealous?

  He jumped back to avoid the sharp kitten heels dangling from her fist as she shoved past him again, this time to the front door, which she managed to slam behind her. He followed and continued making his case, calling out to her as she hopped across the rocky drive.

  “Even after she pays me, I’m going to tell her no. Chiquitita, come on. You know that I don’t like skinny women! I like them round and big . . . like you!”

  The last thing she saw as she peeled out on the gravel was Guillermo standing naked in the moonlight, with his fellow dogs running in stupid circles behind him.

  As she sped down the empty highway back toward the city lights, her Virgin Mary rocked back and forth. It seemed to be saying, No, no, no.

  “Oh, hush,” Jessica said. “I know. I know.”

  5

  A much bigger plastic Virgin Mary stared at Jessica from her mother’s porch on that humid Saturday morning. An orange cat rubbed against it and then threaded through the aloe veras, meowing lazily as Jessica opened the screen door.

  “Mami! It’s me!”

  “M’ija.” Her mother met her at the door, kissed her cheek, and led her into the rosy velour living room. “There’s barbacoa on the stove. Make you a plate.”

  Her mother walked to one end of the couch, where she was in the process of folding socks and boxer shorts and piling them into little pyramids. Her father sat on the other end, with a plate of tacos on his lap and an open can of Tecate on the coffee table. Jessica couldn’t help but notice the beer and the fact that it was barely eleven a.m. At least he was wearing socks this time, and his undershirt. Half the times she visited, he’d be sitting there in his pajama pants and nothing else.

  “Jessi!” He raised an arm for her hug.

  “Papi!” Jessica kissed her father’s cheek.

  Jessica went and made herself a plate of barbacoa, beans, and tortillas, then added a pineapple empanada for good measure. She joined her parents in the living room, where Sábado Gigante played on the gigantic TV with the sound down low.

  “How’ve you guys been? How’s work, Mami?” Her mother was the longtime secretary of Jessica’s alma mater, Hawthorne Elementary.

  Her mother didn’t look up from the laundry. “Oh, you know. All the kids are going crazy, ready to be out for the summer. Then my boss is after me to finish up some free lunch report he should have done back in January.”

  “Those people wouldn’t know how to run that school without your mother there to do everything for them,” her father explained. Jessica knew this well. She herself had been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt. Papi turned to Mami and said, “You should do what I do, vieja. Tell them to go to hell.”

  “Sure. Then they’d fire me and we wouldn’t have money for those beers you like to drink.”

  Jessica turned to her father. “How about you, Papi? What’s up at the plant?”

  Her father shook his head with the mock angry face that always reminded Jessica of the matador in the velvet painting they used to have. “Those lazy burros never want to fill the bottles fast enough, and then the bolillos upstairs give me lip, so I tell them all to kiss my ass.” He meant the guys who worked under his supervision, who all happened to be Latino, and his managers upstairs, who all happened to be white. “Listen to this . . . The other day, one of the district managers came to inspect the plant. He comes up to where I’m working, all dressed in his fancy suit, and says, ‘Hey, you — you speak English?’ ”

  “What’d you tell him?” said Jessica.

  “I said, ‘Sí, señor. I es-speak inglés . . . I speak enough English to understand that you don’t know worn-out couplings from a hole in your ass!’ ”

  Jessica laughed. Papi raised his beer to emphasize his point, and she quickly bent to slide one of her mother’s crocheted coasters under the can. She knew her father was exaggerating. He actually got along with his bosses very well, or else he wouldn’t be a supervisor at all, considering that he had no degree and hadn’t even been a citizen when he’d first started at the plant so many years before.

  But he still liked to tell his stories, in which he was the beleaguered brown man standing up to the Anglo-Saxon masses threatening his dignity. And, in a way, Jessica couldn’t blame him. She remembered more than one incident from her youth where white people had assumed that her father didn’t speak English — that, and worse. It didn’t happen anymore, but she saw how things like that could make a man bitter.

  Her father had been through a lot of drama since coming to America. Jessica knew, for instance, that watching his oldest daughter marry a white man had almost been too much for Papi. He’d complained for months, asking why a Mexican man wasn’t good enough for Sabrina. Jessica felt sorry for him, knowing that he took the whole thing very personally. But, eventually, Papi had realized that David made Sabrina happy, and he got over it.

  But that had been two years ago, and Papi never said a word about it now. In fact, he got along with his son-in-law, David, very well. So as far as Jessica was concerned, he deserved to talk a little trash in the privacy of his own home. It wasn’t as though he were actually racist. He was just blowing off a little steam.

  “I’m glad you’re just making up stories, viejo,” said Mami. “Because if you really did smart-talk your bosses like that, you’d lose your job.”

  Papi rolled his eyes and waved dismissively, then looked over at Jessica. “Stand up, m’ijita. Turn around. Let me see how pretty you look.”

  Jessica gave him an exasperated smile but did what her father said. She got up and did a quick turn. She’d recently been to her stylist’s, so her dark brown hair gleamed with fresh caramel highlights. Although she was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, she’d chosen the jeans carefully, along with high-heeled sandals, to make the most of her healthy figure. Her stomach was still relatively flat, but her butt was what kept her from buying pants in single-digit sizes.

  “You look good,” Papi said. “You look like a movie star.”

  “Jessica, are you gaining weight?” her mother said, squinting at Jessica’s hips. Unfortunately, Jessica had always been a little more full-figured than her mother.

  “Mami —”

  “No, vieja. She looks fine. She looks perfect,” said her father.

  Grateful for her father’s defense, Jessica pushed a cat off the upholstered side chair and sat back down. Her father continued, “Don’t let your butt get too much bigger, though, m’ijita. You don’t want all the men at your job chasing you around.”

  “Papi!”

  “Be quiet, viejo,” said her mother. “She doesn’t work with a bunch of dirty old men like you.”

  “Hmph.” Papi took another sip of beer. “I wouldn’t have to chase anybody if I had a woman who wanted to look pretty for me at home.”

  Jessica knew her father was just teasing, like always. Her mother did still look good for her
age. She stood there at the couch in a cute pink tracksuit, not at all fat after having two kids. Her face was still pretty, even if it showed a few wrinkles from frowning right at the moment. Was it just Jessica’s imagination, though, or did Mami’s bun of long brown hair suddenly have more gray streaks than before? Still, she looked good for her age. Papi just liked to tease her.

  “You’ve got a hardworking woman at home,” Mami told him. “That’s more than you deserve.”

  Papi’s eyes flashed. He turned and appealed to Jessica with his next shot. “I bought your mother a pair of high heels. Beautiful red ones. But does she ever wear them? No.”

  “Where am I going to wear them to? The laundry room?” Mami said.

  “Why do I have to take you somewhere? Why can’t you just wear them for me here, at home?”

  Her mother just shook her head and kept folding, folding, not even bothering to reply.

  “Maybe you have been wearing my high heels,” Papi said. “To work, to look sexy for your boss.”

  At that, Jessica’s mother finally looked up and threw a pair of his underwear at him. “Viejo!”

  Jessica sighed. Her parents never seemed to get tired of their mock arguments, but she and her sister, Sabrina, did. Time to remind them that she was still there. “So what have y’all been doing?” she asked.

  They both considered the question. Then they both shrugged. “Working,” said her mother. Jessica wasn’t sure what she’d expected them to say. Maybe that they were planning a whirlwind vacation? Or that they’d actually left the house over the weekend?

  Papi took another sip from his beer. “What about you, m’ija? How’s your work? Are they still paying you good?”

  “Good enough, I guess.” That reminded her — she would give them a little money before she left.

  “Have you called your sister?” asked her mother.

  “No. Why?”

  “You need to call her. She wants to know when you’re giving the web site to David. I told her you would probably take it to the barbecue today. It’s finished, isn’t it? Sabrina says David’s paying you a lot of money.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes, but not so her mother could see her. “Mami, I uploaded it and e-mailed him the link this morning.” It bothered her, the way her mother and sister would discuss what Jessica needed to do, as though she were six years old and not twenty-six.

  “Oh. Well, you’re still going to her barbecue, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “There’ll probably be a lot of David’s friends there,” her mother said, faux casually. Jessica knew that they conveniently took her age into consideration when it mattered to them. That was, it mattered to them that she was in her late twenties and still single. All she said was, “I bet.”

  “Be sure to wear something nice.”

  There was no use arguing, so Jessica said nothing. Ever since Sabrina’s wedding two years ago, she and Mami had been annoyingly enthusiastic about Sabrina’s plans to marry Jessica off to one of David’s friends. Jessica wasn’t ready to get married — especially not to some golf-shirt-wearing business major.

  “And?” her mother asked. “Anything else?”

  “What do you mean?” Jessica knew what her mother meant, though.

  “Don’t what-do-you-mean me. Have you been seeing anybody?”

  “Ma . . .”

  “Well? Come on, m’ijita. You’re twenty-six years old. What are you waiting for?”

  “I’m not waiting for anything. I’m just living my life.”

  “Jessica . . .” Her mother took a freshly folded washcloth and wiped at a water ring on the table. Now Jessica wished that she hadn’t interrupted her parents’ mock arguing. Mami scrubbed hard and said, “What was the point of going to college and moving away if you weren’t going to meet a good man and get married?”

  “I don’t know. So I could get a job and not live off my parents for the rest of my life?” Jessica’s voice was as sarcastic as she could get away with.

  “M’ija, we just worry about you,” said her mother. “What are you going to do for the rest of your life? Work every day until you die? Waste your time dancing and getting drunk with loquitos every weekend until you get old and end up alone?”

  Jessica sighed. Mami was referring to her gay-bar outings with Toby. She’d obviously been talking to Mrs. Jimenez, Toby’s mother, who lived next door. Between Toby’s big mouth and Mrs. Jimenez’s, Jessica could barely have a social life without everyone in the world knowing about it. At least, thank God, Mrs. Jimenez didn’t know about Guillermo. Otherwise, Jessica would undoubtedly be hearing about it right now.

  “Mami, Mrs. Jimenez just exaggerates. We don’t get drunk every weekend.” It was more like they got tipsy, and only every other week.

  “Baby, it’s not about you going out,” Papi cut in. “Shoot, if I could, I’d be going out with you. It’s that we worry about you living all by yourself. It’s not safe. Plus, you’re not getting any younger.”

  Jessica gasped. Not Papi, too.

  “That’s right, m’ija,” said her mother. “You’re not. And we only tell you because we care about you.”

  “Y’all —”

  Before Jessica could protest any further, Mami turned to Papi. “And what do you mean, you’d go out with her if you could? You don’t take me out, so you don’t need to go anywhere.”

  Jessica forgot about her own victimization, surprised at the vehemence in her mother’s voice all of a sudden.

  “What?” said Papi. “I would take you out. You never want to go!”

  “What are you talking about? You never offer to take me out. And don’t say for Mother’s Day — that didn’t count. I didn’t want to go to that beer joint with your stupid friends.”

  “Oh, so now they’re stupid, huh? Am I stupid, too? Maybe I should go there now, so you don’t have to look at the stupid man you married anymore.”

  What was going on here? Jessica wondered. This was beyond the normal teasing she was used to hearing from her parents. This sounded like out-and-out fighting.

  “How about you go to the garage instead,” said her mother, “and fix the lawn mower? That way I won’t be the only person doing something useful all weekend.”

  “Fine,” said her father, slamming his beer on the table. He got up and started for the door, then turned and went to the kitchen. He emerged with a fresh beer and gave Mami one defiant look before going outside and slamming the door behind him.

  Her mother made a hand gesture of dismissal at Papi, muttering, “Good. Stay out there and drink all damn day.”

  Before Jessica could say anything, Mami gathered a pile of socks and hauled them to the bedroom. Then she swept back through the room and into the kitchen without stopping to note Jessica’s reaction. “Here, m’ija,” she called. “Let me make you a plate. Eat at your sister’s tonight, and then you’ll have this barbacoa for tomorrow morning.”

  Jessica followed her mother into the kitchen, knowing better than to ask questions. You didn’t mess with Mami when she was in plate-making mode. Jessica was reminded, suddenly, of Sabrina’s wedding, when Papi’d had a little too much tequila and started spinning David’s mother around all over the dance floor. Mami had gritted her teeth and packed up the entire wedding cake in neat, aluminum foil saucers that she’d pressed on everyone in range. Then, calmly as a robot, she’d crossed to the edge of the dance floor and stood, arms folded, just looking at Papi. When she’d caught his eye, he’d returned his comadre to her husband and, without another word, followed Mami out of the hall.

  Now, in the same meek way, Jessica mumbled thanks for her shiny package and made excuses to leave. Mami’s crossed arms prevented Jessica from handing her a twenty, so she left the money on the coffee table and got the heck out of there. She shot a sympathetic glance at the garage as she got into her car. She didn’t know what all that had been about, but she wanted out.

  6

  Jessica was so shaken by her parents’ arguing that s
he almost ran over a squirrel as she backed out of their driveway.

  “Be careful!” she yelled at it out the window. It wasn’t a black squirrel, luckily. She was pretty sure the superstition about black cats extended to black squirrels. This one was brown, but still — killing a squirrel probably wasn’t good luck. Jessica put on DJ Kabuki-Oh’s latest to calm her nerves.

  “Get your ass on the dance floor!” yelled Kabuki-Oh from the stereo speakers.

  Yeah, she wished. Jessica wanted to fast-forward to ten o’clock that night, when she’d be getting ready to party with Toby and forget all the stress and drama of this week. That was what Guillermo was supposed to do for her last night — help her relax — and look how that had turned out.

  Instead of taking the right on White Oak toward her own apartment, Jessica found herself heading left. Slowly her maroon Accord crept against the bayou, to the side of the Heights where the houses still had chipped paint. Unable to shake her feeling of restlessness, she let the car lead her. Really, though, she knew exactly where she would end up. She was going to get professional help.

  A little purple house with white shutters and black curtains stood where she finally pulled against the curb. In the window nearest the door was a flashing neon sign, a red hand inscribed with a white circle and star. The sign above the door, hand-painted in Gothic letters, read, MADAME HORTENSIA, PSYCHIC AND NOTARY PUBLIC.

  Jessica parked and walked up the porch steps. The door was ajar, so she went right in.

  Velvet-draped chairs and a card table waited in the center of the living room. Maroon chiffon scarves covered both lamps in the room, giving it a lighting scheme similar to the nocturnal rooms at the zoo.

  In contrast with this mysterious atmosphere was the bright kitchen, visible through the doorway. It held a small, wiry-haired old woman in a flowered T-shirt and polyester slacks, peeling a potato at the sink. She wiped her hands on a little towel before hobbling out to greet Jessica. “How are you, m’ijita? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Fine. Madame Hortensia, do you have time to do a reading?”