very dark furniture in the tiny living room, or maybe it was the thick curtains that were always shut tight. Miss Griselda’s house smelled stale, old, dusty. But none of that mattered, because all you had to do was open one of her binders and it was all bright colors and Disney characters, Barbies, Spider-Man, soccer fields with green-sugar grass, candy goalposts, and cookie-crumb players, hearts, teddy bears, baby booties, treasure chests filled with chocolate coins—anything we could ever wish for on a cake.
Miss Griselda didn’t make a living doing this. Actually she didn’t charge much at all because everyone in the neighborhood was broke. Her daughter, Griseldita, was the one who supported them. It seemed like she was doing pretty well. She’d gotten two new cars and always wore new clothes. She bought entire suitcases of items from Miss Martha across the street, who brought things from Panama, and it was this woman who spread the rumor that Griseldita was in with a wayward crowd. That’s how she said it: “a wayward crowd.” Griseldita was blond, very white, and she always wore heels that made her look really tall. She came home at four in the morning a lot, making a ton of noise screeching her brakes, jangling her keys, and click-clacking her heels. What no other woman in the neighborhood would do, Griseldita did.
One day we went to pick out the cake for my eleventh birthday, and as soon as we got inside, my mom, who was in front of me, sent me back outside. But I got a glimpse. Miss Griselda was lying on the floor, her robe askew, her panties showing, and she looked dead. I screamed. My mom was furious, and she sent me home. Then a little later I saw Miss Martha run across the street, then Miss Diana and Miss Alicita. Then the whole block was out on the street. They were shouting for Don Baque, the neighborhood watch, to come help. We peeked out the windows in spite of our mothers’ shouted threats.
It seemed that someone had called Griseldita because she arrived shortly, more angry than afraid, and shooed away all the women who had surrounded her mother. She shrieked like a madwoman for all the nosy old ladies to get out, that there was nothing wrong, shitty old ladies, to mind your own business, you bunch of old whores, don’t you have your own houses, you bunch of old bats. Miss Martha stood on the sidewalk murmuring, “The nerve of that girl, her calling us whores. And while we’re helping her mother.”
My mom was the first to come home because she didn’t like all the ruckus. She said just that: “I don’t like all the ruckus.” She had blood on her hands, and we got scared and started to cry. “Miss Griselda fell down, everything’s fine, she’s all right, she slipped because she’d just mopped the floor.” Later I heard her talking to the other women. Miss Griselda smelled of alcohol, Mom told them, she’d fallen down and busted open her forehead. She was covered in vomit, Mom whispered, and dirty. The other women said that Griseldita might have hit her, that she beats her senseless. They repeated “senseless.” My mom didn’t believe it. No way, how could a daughter do that to her mother, that’s atrocious, no way, no way. The other women said it was true, it was true. And that both of them hit the bottle hard, they hit it hard. They repeated, “They hit the bottle hard, they hit it hard.” And that when she came home drunk, she beat her mother. Or when she found her mother drunk, she beat her. That when she was sober, she beat her mother. That it was an everyday thing.
That year on my eleventh birthday, I didn’t get my cake. Mom didn’t want to order it from Miss Griselda after all that, so we had a sad sponge cake covered in white meringue, Agogó candies for sprinkles, and a candle shaped like the number eleven. Mom promised me that I would have the most spectacular cake in the world for next year, and I started picturing a super tall, super blond Barbie with a crown and a pink princess dress with silver ruffles, all made from layers of cake with caramel in the middle. Miss Griselda would make me the most beautiful Barbie cake in the world. I could already see it, so perfect, in the center of the table. My classmates would die of envy. Bam, bam, bam. One after another, like cockroaches sprayed with Baygon.
That Christmas was brutally hot, and half the neighborhood was already out on the street when we heard the gunshot. Boom. Like a thunderclap. Bats took off with terrifying squeals. Dogs started barking. Everyone crowded in front of Miss Griselda’s house, but no one dared go inside.
Some police officers brought her out wrapped in a white sheet that was getting soaked with more and more blood, the stain only growing.
“What did Doña Griselda do?” my mom cried. “Or what if it was her daughter?” Miss Martha gasped. And they covered our eyes and sent us home, but none of us went. We just stood a little farther away. The lights from the police car went round and round. Everything was red. In the distance Christmas firecrackers were going off. And the stain kept growing, growing, growing, and a hand escaped from under the sheet. Just one hand, like she was saying, “Ciao, you guys have to stay here.”
A few days later a truck came to take away all of Miss Griselda’s furniture and a bunch of boxes of her stuff, the cake binders too, I guess. Her daughter left the neighborhood that same day. We never saw her again.
I had shitty round cakes for my birthday the next few years, but honestly, I didn’t give a damn about cakes anymore.
NAM
She’s getting naked. Something either very bad or very good is happening. Happening to me. Whatever it is, my parents can’t find out. I’m at a friend’s house. Nothing strange there. But my new friend, halfgringa, half-Ecuadorian, is taking off her uniform, her sports bra, her thong, her shoes. She leaves on her socks, short ones, with a little pink ball at each heel. She’s naked, her back to me, staring into her closet.
It’s awkward and dazzling. Painful. My head down like an ashamed dog, an ugly, short-legged dog, I try to look the same as I did a moment before, when we were both dressed, when that image, the one of her body, hadn’t exploded like a thousand fireworks in my brain. Diana Ward-Espinoza. Sixteen years old. Five-foot-nine. Star player on her high school volleyball team in the United States. Green cat eyes, radioactive. The bright white smile of the people from up there.
Diana, pronounced Dayana in gringo, talks and talks, always, nonstop, mixing English and Spanish or making up a third language, hilarious, making me squeal with laughter. With her, I laugh as if there were nothing wrong at home, as if my dad loved me like a dad. I laugh as if I weren’t me, but some girl who slept peacefully. I laugh as if cruelty didn’t exist.
She repeats the words the teachers say like tongue twisters, and never gets them right. Maybe because of this, because they think she’s dumb, or because she lives in a little apartment and not in a majestic house, or because her mom is the English teacher at school and so she doesn’t pay tuition, or because she jogs through the neighborhood in tiny shorts, blue with a white line that makes a V on her thighs—because of all that, or because of some obscure hierarchical logic made up by the popular girls, no group has accepted her. She’s blond, white, she has green eyes, her tiny nose is dotted with golden freckles, but no group has accepted her.
They haven’t accepted me either, but with me it’s the same as always: fat, dark, glasses, hairy, ugly, strange.
One day our last names are paired up in computer class. One right next to the other. It’s everything. I learn that BFF means Best Friends Forever.
Then we’re best friends forever. Then she invites me to her house to study. Then I tell my mom I’m going to spend the night at Diana’s. Then we’re in her tiny room and she’s naked. She turns around to cover her cream-colored body with a denim dress. She turns on music. She dances. Behind her, a gigantic American flag on the wall.
Covered in a fine white fuzz, her skin has the appearance, the delicacy, of a peach. She talks about boys (she likes my brother), about the exam we have the next day (philosophy), about the teacher (he’s funny, but what the fuck is being?). About how she’s never going to understand things
