She forced a laugh. “Nah, Hector. I think I made it right this time. You’d better taste and make sure.” She had to hide her feelings. She couldn’t be too sentis. Unless she was drunk. And no one liked her when she was drunk.
Gabe pulled his green truck onto the treads of dead grass his tires had rutted into his mother’s lawn, home from picking up two-year-old Lana from her mother, Katrina. She was a hurricane all right.
Through the open gate Lana flung herself into Bianca’s arms. “Bee!”
“Hey, pretty girl. Qué chula.” She picked Lana up, both smiling. But it also hurt, holding her. She wasn’t Bianca’s daughter. Though she could swear she saw a trace of her in there.
“Wanna play?” Lana’s voice squeaked like a baby bird. Stuck them to the nesting place.
Bianca carried Lana toward the patio, where Esme scooped her away.
“Mi preciosa, mi princesa. Come to Nana.” Esme snatched her so quickly, her voice and expression changed so suddenly, Bianca went cold. Lana was Esme’s granddaughter. She was also a broken record in Bianca’s memory. The Valley had a way of beckoning back its children. Children having children.
Clasping her arms across her chest, Bianca dug her nails into her skin as she watched Esme dance with her first and only granddaughter. Maybe Bianca shouldn’t have returned to the Valley when Dad died. Her second semester of freshman year, she’d packed up before midterms and never returned. Maybe she should have stayed at Holy Cross on the coast, stuck it out there, stifling and dogmatic as it had been. Now she was stuck here in the desert—the way she imagined Dad, purgatorial.
Selena crooned the mariachi “Tú Solo Tú” in her husky voice.
“Come here, son. Man this grill,” Hector called. With cerveza in hand, he marched over to Esme and grabbed her waist, pulling her to his gargantuan body and dancing her around the patio. “After twenty years with you, vieja, you’re still the only one.”
Lana squirmed out of their arms and toddled toward Bianca. Gabe pulled a bottle of beer from the cooler and popped the cap off with his teeth, letting it fall to the ground. He swigged half the beer in one gulp, watching his parents dance.
As the evening sun dipped behind the fence, the backyard barbecue had turned full swing. The rest of the familia, compadres, and comadres had arrived, parking their cars in the alley and funneling through the back gate carrying six-packs and paper bags of liquor. More food had been piled atop the plastic folding tables surrounding the wooden picnic bench, now mostly conchas and cakes, and people sitting or standing nearby occasionally waved the flies away.
Bianca had whisked away a pink concha before anyone else could and stuffed it in pieces between her cheeks as she helped Gabe put Lana to bed; the bright-pink pan dulce was her favorite, reminding her of girlhood holidays at her abuela’s house. Reminded her of sweet things, this sweet bread. Reminded her of innocence. She was spilling the crumbs onto Lana’s bedspread, but she didn’t care. Gabe lay on one side of the queen-sized bed and she the other, with Lana in the middle as they watched Strawberry Shortcake. And as the little girl between them closed her eyes, Bianca whispered, “Sometimes I wish she were mine.”
Gabe sprawled across his daughter’s grand bed, a bed fit for a princess, his big feet hanging off the side, hands tucked behind his head. He closed his eyes briefly before answering. “I am sorry, Bee.”
They’d spoken these words before.
When they were sure the baby was asleep, they crept out of her bedroom. On the patio Gabe grabbed three more beers. He handed Bianca one, chugged one himself, then opened the next as he sat in a lawn chair near the picnic table. Everyone prattling and laughing, Bianca perched at the edge of a bench, sipping a beer. Hector would be more generous in front of his friends. This was their chance to ask him for the loan. But how to break into the senseless banter?
Hector’s compadre Frank complained his marriage had gone to shit when his wife went back to work. Hector laughed. “She stop making your tortillas, compadre?”
“You kidding? She never made tortillas. Even before that.”
“Not like our mamis used to? Back in the good ol’ days.”
“Not with all this feminist independence mierda.”
“Bee’s a feminist. She’s a college girl. Es verdad, Bee?” Hector was drunk.
Bianca nodded, though she was actually a dropout who’d soon be a college student again. After Dad’s funeral, she’d found a job taking classifieds at the local newspaper, the Desert Herald, which was closer to writing than cashiering at Savers. She’d signed up to start community college in the spring (since she’d missed the fall deadline). She would retake the classes she’d dropped, sans biblical history, swapping it for contemporary poetry. That counted as a college girl, right?
“My daughter Adriana works at the bank,” Frank said. “What about you?”
Bianca meant to say she worked at the Valley Press. But she’d been drinking and instead, she told him she was a writer.
Hector held his beer across his heart. Gabe rolled his eyes.
“A writer? So you don’t want babies?” Frank joked.
Of course she wanted babies. That was her problem. She’d always wanted babies. Even when she’d let Esme and Gabe talk her into letting one go . . . for their future.
She nodded.
“I thought writers live alone, drink all day long, travel around Europe.”
“I could take my kids with me to Europe. Or México.” She used her Spanish accent, which she’d perfected when she’d taught herself to speak Spanish. Mama hadn’t spoken Spanish to her or her gringo father. Another reason Bianca resented her.
“She wants to write about our people?” Frank winked at Hector. “Una gringa por la causa.”
“My mama is Mexican,” she said. If anyone heard her, they didn’t respond.
“You’re mixed up, Bee. You’d better pick: writer or wife. Right, Frank?” Hector laughed.
She chugged her beer, wiped her mouth, spoke up loudly. “All you do is sit around objectifying women as if we’re set in stone. You relegate us to roles you’ve assigned and bark orders at us: Mujer! Grab me a beer. Make me a plate. Go get the ice. Why don’t you get off your ass and get it yourself?” Her heart pounded. She couldn’t believe she’d stood up to Hector. She didn’t dare look at Gabe. They were supposed to be getting on Hector’s good side, not accusing him of being a machismo pig.
But Hector laughed, then turned toward the grass behind him and spit. “Qué cabrona. Listen to this girl talk. What else, La Bee? Tell us more.”
She knew he was making fun of her, but she didn’t care. She was burning inside and the only way to keep from imploding was to let it out. “You think we like serving men?”