Dad would always tell me stories about this woman. I leaned against the window, crossed my left leg over my right thigh, and plopped my chin into the scoop of my hand. I gazed out the window at the light blue sky filled with its fluffy white marshmallow clouds that let in shiny rays of sunlight into the car. Even the stiffest trees were swaying and moving in a rhythmic pattern under the sun’s delightful warmth.
We reached our neighborhood’s most annoying stoplight. This stoplight would always make us stop for at least five minutes, as if it were taking a nap and only woke for about five seconds to flash green before going back to sleep. It wasn’t even located in an important place with big roads and crossings, so it was pretty much useless.
Dad secretly reached into his left pocket and pulled out his black leather wallet with its ripped and folded edges. He pretended to check his credit cards and wad of cash but then paused, slipping his index finger and thumb into a smaller compartment of his wallet and gently pulling out the black and white image of the woman who used to be everything for him. The photo itself was small and square with many wrinkles and an edge that seemed to be burnt off by a lighter. It had dark stains all over the back from pencil markings and coffee marks. There was also a date written on the back in faint numbers. I couldn’t make out what the date was, and I never asked him since he seemed so secretive about it. On the front was an image of the woman and Dad. They had their arms wrapped around each other tightly and the woman’s head fit snugly into his neck. It must’ve been warm and pleasant. It’s been ages since I ever actually hugged Dad. They both had warm smiles in the photo, and Dad seemed happier. Or maybe he’s still happy. Not exactly sure. What I do know is that whenever he looks at that photo, he smiles back at the woman as if she were standing right in front of him.
I pretended not to notice he had pulled out the photo and instead decided to take advantage of this perfect moment. Maria, you’re a genius. Pressing my lips together, I tried not to allow a giggle to ruin my magnificent plan. As casually as Dad reached for the photo, I inched my hand towards his phone. I quickly grabbed it, opened it, and began another level of 4 Pics 1 Word, determined to beat WangKai1000. * We had been driving for awhile now. Ugh. Still three more hours? Driving to Las Cruces, New Mexico has got to be one of the most boring trips ever. But I guess it saves more money compared to taking a flight there. And the scenery is worth it, although I’ve already taken more than 200 photos of the still mountains and the grazing cows. I took some with Dad too, but all of them showed him facing forward with both hands on the top of the steering wheel. His thick, dark beard had already started showing scattered silver hairs poking out here and there. Now and then he would rub his beard a couple times and straighten out his bushy eyebrows before massaging his smooth, tan forehead to stay awake while driving.
“What happened mi amor?” “Can we please stop somewhere Daddy? Por favor?”
I pouted my mouth, tilted my head back, and wiggled my feet around, yearning for a break. A chocolate milkshake also sounded good right about then. The entire lower half of my body had grown numb from sitting, and I was squirming around my seat to stop my leg from falling asleep for the hundredth time.
“Can’t it wait?” “No becau-” “We’re almost there.” “But Da-” I started to complain. “Okay okay, we’ll stop at the next exit, how about that?”
He let out a deep breath and switched to the slow lane to look for rest stops. After about five minutes, we took an exit, made some bumpy turns, and finally parked in a small lot with a nearby gas station that was so rundown it looked like it was about to collapse. I glanced out my window to see a few men at the corner of Mars Cheese Castle lighting their cigars and having a competition to see which one could burp the loudest. They let out loud chortles and guffaws- I’m sure they were drunk too.
I got out of the car and looked around. Other than the flickering lights of the Mars Cheese Castle and the gas station, there were few cars and it looked empty. There were cacti every few blocks and too much dust in the air from the dirt road. I heard a scrunch sound beneath my foot and I looked down to find a piece of a saran wrapped tortilla with a cactus wearing a sombrero on the cover. The cactus had eyes, hands, and a smiling mouth with the caption Tortill-icious!
We went inside the restaurant and ordered two regular cheeseburgers, fries, and a chocolate milkshake. After picking up our food, we made our way over to one of the tables near the window. I slurped the milkshake and began to unwrap my burger. It was brown and grey in the middle and looked pretty wet. I took off the bun and saw the plastic-like American cheese plastered onto the burger. It didn’t look very good, but my stomach growled its order, so I chowed it down anyway. I had finished half of the milkshake already before I started thinking about my friends back at my school. There was a field trip to the zoo, but Dad signed a permission note saying that I could be excused for this road trip.
They must be having loads of fun. I was missing out, but I knew for a fact that this was much more important. I was finally going to meet Mom, and I wouldn’t have changed this chance for anything. Not even if it meant hanging out with Eric for the last time before graduating from my fifth-grade class. I first met Eric in Social Studies class. He was tall and lean with black hair, and most importantly, he belonged to the popular group in our school. The more I got to know about him, the more I felt like I had feelings for him.
The way he asked me out was like the new Mission Impossible movie. I was at my desk reading a book about the world’s biggest waterfalls during quiet reading time when Eric got ready to make his move around Mrs. Gale’s desk. I’m sure Mrs. Gale wouldn’t have noticed, since she was too busy reading a book about King Tut and the implications of tourist attractions to the pyramids, occasionally pushing up her glasses with her knuckles. Eric made his way over to the edge of the room to sharpen his pencil. He kept looking over his shoulder, turning the sharpener handle round and round until the lead of his pencil broke off.
On his way back, he hastily glanced left, right, and then left again to make sure that absolutely no one suspecting him. He slowly made his way back towards his seat, and on his way, he quickly dropped a small crumpled piece of paper on my wooden desk. Then he slouched on his seat, flipped the pages of his book, and looked uninterested after completing his long mission. No one really noticed the white ball of paper except Gabby and the two other boys at my desk group. I quietly placed my book down and uncrumpled the white, wide ruled piece of paper. I tried to make out the words, but it looked like he only had three seconds or so to write the message down before Mrs. Gale would have given him a pink slip, making the writing seem scraggly and unorganized.
Do you like me? Circle YES or NO. Choose only one. (underlined twice).
I leaned back on my chair with the book facing open on my lap and both my hands covering my face in an attempt to hide my excited smile, dumb-founded as my future tempted my imagination with her loose, silk robes.
All the girls knew the rule. I had to wait a minimum of one day to answer him, or else I would seem desperate if I handed back the slip of paper before then. I mean, I guess not as desperate as the girls who used all their bathroom passes to excuse themselves just to stuff balls of cheap, brown paper towels into their bras in hopes of impressing their crushes. I guess they just wanted to look like the skinny supermodels I’ve seen on TV once when Dad wasn’t watching. I kind of understood their desire, but what if the boys at recess playing kickball found out? There would be no end to the teasing.
“What do you think?” I whispered to Gabby, who was staring at me wide-eyed and eager to see which answer I would circle. “I don’t know. I heard he did that to a few other girls too. Just saying.” She shrugged her shoulders, head tilted to the side and palms facing the ceiling.
I did notice Eric’s sly behaviors around the other girls in my class. He would always choose Rebecca during Heads Up Seven Up, and I mean more than twice, which had to mean something fishy was going on. I also noticed that he would always stand at the end of the line when we had to make a single-file line to go to music class just so he could stand closer to Ashley and talk about her favorite TV shows. What if he cheated on me?
When I really thought about it, I didn’t think I could ever have a relationship like the one Mom and Dad did. Theirs was one of a kind. Dad always poured his heart out to Mom. To me, they always seemed faithful and inseparable, despite what grandma always told me.
“Mi reina. Mi cielo. The most beautiful woman in the world,” he would say with his Spanish accent. “My baby bear,” my mother would gently reply before planting enormous kisses all over Dad’s face. She never called him by his real name, which was Michael.
I really hoped Dad’s smiles would return soon from their long, unnoticed vacation.
I took my HB number two pencil and slowly but confidently circled NO. * “Dad, when will we see abuelo and abuela again?” I sighed, making my tone as low and pitiful as possible so that Dad would take note of just how much I wanted to go back to their house in Johannesburg, Tennessee. We would always talk about new gossip from school and bake apple pies while watching the soccer games. In fact, we made an apple pie for Mom so that we could all eat it together when we reached New Mexico. It was in the back seat, probably cold by now, but apple pie is apple pie. I didn’t know much about Mom, but what I did know was that she would always drop whatever she was doing just to have a small bite of Grandma’s heavenly apple pie recipe.
I missed my grandparents. Quirky, doting, adventurous. When Grandma wasn’t too busy looking for Grandpa’s glasses, she would pull up her old rocking chair near the window and gaze out into the trees, then up into the sky, just waiting for wings to sprout out of her back so that she could break through the dirty glass window of her tiny apartment to fly away and allow the bed of clouds to take her to the gates of heaven. Poor Grandma.
She and Dad used to be enemies, because she would always give unreasonable explanations for why he and Mom couldn’t ever be together.
“You stole my daughter from me. She’s a successful doctor, and she deserves to be with someone much better.” “Like who?” “Someone Indian. not Latino!” Dad was at his breaking point. A few moments of silence passed by. “You just care about your fucking reputation.” He stood up from the sofa and made long, angry strides toward the door. Without looking back, he slammed it shut, and the coat hanger shook before falling down.
Grandma would go on and on about Dad and her daughter’s poor taste in men until my Grandpa gave her a glass of cool orange juice to gulp down. He would pat her back until the wet, tears stopped flowing down her cheeks and the sheet of tension remained still- hanging awkwardly in the air, not knowing whether to pack its bag to run away from Grandma’s stern and disappointed face or stay a little longer in case it was needed.
Mom opened the door and then closed it carefully behind her before pulling Dad to the side of the house near the bushes out on the front.
“I don’t know if this is ever going to work out, Michael.” “Oh! So now I’m Michael, and not Baby?” “I just want you to know that-” “That you’re tired of me? That you can’t even fight for me anymore?” “It’s harder than you think.” “It really isn’t, Aisha.”
She hated being called by her name, even more than Dad did, and she knew that he did it on purpose. Dad tried to convince her several times to run away with him and move to a different place to start over and have time to themselves, but Mom couldn’t bear to see her parents under a rainy, thunder-striking cloud on her wedding day in front of all her their doctor and lawyer friends. * We visited them almost every weekend. I think the secret was definitely the apple pie that we ate before finally agreeing to sit down and having a long, heartfelt conversation about Mom.
Whenever we visited them, Dad and Grandpa usually sat on the couch watching the Costa Rican soccer team Saprissa play, adding bits of comments here and there, while I helped Grandma in the kitchen and taught her new words in Spanish. She would also teach me new words in an Indian language that I kept forgetting the name of because it’s too hard to pronounce. * I woke up with the rays of the late afternoon sun, but I didn’t want to sit up and check the time. We were finally there after hours and hours of driving.
“Hmm, I don’t know if I can park here.” “I’m assured that you can Dad,” sleepily but proudly emphasizing the new vocabulary word that I learned in class, waiting for Dad’s reaction. He simply looked around, furrowing his eyebrows and pushing his head up above the steering wheel with his back straight like a goose checking left and right before waddling across the road.
We made a left turn, went straight for a while, made a U-turn, and finally ended up parking on the side of the road. The nearest parking lot was already filled with cars waiting for their owners to come back from the late afternoon fiestas. We got out of the car, and I decided to hold onto the apple pie until we got there. We had to walk for a couple of miles down the hill, past a playground, and then up another hill, and I held the pie tightly so I wouldn’t drop it. If I did, all the effort would be for nothing. Dad took long, slow steps beside me with his hands in his pockets, making sure I was watching my step between the twigs and leaves here and there.
When we finally reached the top of the hill, I followed Dad’s steps closely, since he had been here before to visit Mom. He knew exactly where to go. The long, waist-high grass turned into short, freshly mowed grass as we made our way toward the willow tree where Mom was waiting for us. Although it was getting harder to climb up the hill, I clutched the crumpled aluminum tray of pie tightly.
A gush of adrenaline rushed through my body as I started to walk faster and faster, running. Rushing. * “Are you sure about this?” Mom sat on the bed with her hands massaging her forehead. “I just want to be with you, mi amor. Is that too hard to ask?” Mom nodded her head slowly but quickly stood up. “We need to leave right now. They can’t ever find out.” Dad looked straight into her eyes, and no more than fifteen minutes passed when they finished packing their bags and headed quietly into the living room. It was 2 a.m. and they had planned everything accordingly- they were to meet a friend at a bus stop, pay for flight tickets and leave to Las Cruces, New Mexico the very next day.
They carried their bags slowly across the wooden floor on their tippy toes trying not to make a sound, but with every single step they made, the floor of the living room creaked with each tiny step. * We were almost there. My thighs and calves were burning as I used all the strength in my right leg to push against the wet ground on top of the hill to make that last stride. Mom was just a few feet away near the willow tree. We approached her and sat down next to where she had been lying. The light of the sun reflected off the opaque tombstone that read “Aisha Ozara.” * My earliest memory of Mom was from when I was just a few years old. I remember coming out of the closet to find my mother after counting to ten.
“Here I come!” I squealed.
She wasn’t anywhere in the house, Grandma told me, reading recipes on how to bake the perfect pastries. This was before she moved into that old, small apartment. I went out onto the wooden patio and looked all around our farm and wondered if she went out to the gazebo to meet Dad.
Yes, there she was, strolling around the farm with her pregnant belly, stroking each willow tree in her path. All I could see was her back. Her long, black, curly hair swayed left and right as she gazed through bright green grass. She was wearing a white, lacy summer dress with no shoes, and she was singing a song while waving her hands with the wind. I grabbed Mr. Fluffy and ran after her down the steps and into the yard.
Mom changed her pace, marching in quick successive steps after her eyes caught Dad trimming some branches in the gazebo. When she was just a few feet away, she leaped up to wrap her arms around Dad and kept quiet, trying so hard not to make let a giggle escape her mouth. Dad started laughing his big, hearty laugh.
“Who is this? My wife won’t be happy with this,” he teased, raising one of his eyebrows. “I’m already married, and I have another gorgeous baby on its way.” Mom couldn’t control her wide grin. She wrapped her arms around Dad’s muscular back. “Baby!” she hollered, and burst out laughing.
I remember that they laughed and laughed with their arms around each other, until they noticed me standing nearby looking a bit puzzled but delighted too at their playful joke. I dropped Mr. Fluffy to the ground as Dad picked me up and pushed a piece of my hair behind my ear, kissing me on the cheek and making me blush. * We sat down on the blanket, and I put the pie down for Dad to unwrap and cut. He cut two small slices out of the pie with a small white plastic knife and gave one slice to me on a napkin. He was silent the whole time until he took a bite into the crusty top. As he chewed the gooey inside of the apple pie, tears trickled down his cheek. He put his pie down, trying to hide his face from me. His cry was small at first, but as he swallowed, his cry grew louder until he was wailing and caressing Mom’s tombstone. I came over to his side and put my small hands around his shoulders, which didn’t seem so muscular now. My face got hot and a few tears ran down my cheek as I leaned against his shoulder, looking at Mom. I wished she was with us right now. I wanted her to come back, so she could at least taste the pie.
We went back into the car, this time blasting Ricardo Montaner’s hit song “Tan Enamorados,” which I think was sung just for Mom and Dad. This song reminded me that Dad may never have that relationship with anyone else again. The relationship that I dream of having someday.
Most of all, whenever I listened to this song, it reminded me of the taste of sweet apple pie. Dad turned his head to face me with red, puffy eyes and smiled the same soft smile that he gave the woman in the picture. My mother. I saw the wrinkled piece of paper sticking out of Dad’s wallet in the cup holder of the car and took it out to look at the photo closer.
“She’s so beautiful.” I stared at the photo with wide eyes. “Mhm, like you mi amor.” He looked into my eyes again for a couple seconds and then at the photo before looking back at the road. I flipped to the back of the photo with the rough markings, coffee stains and a familiar date. The date I came into their life.