Biker Shorts

I remember sitting on my quilted bedspread, my puffy white sneakers dangling a couple of feet off the ground. They still do that, I think. I was doing the thing my father does with his thumbs when he is thinking, and the Hello Kitty clock seemed to be ticking inside my head. I never knew how to tell my mother bad things. The thing is, I never really did bad things.

I waited for my sister to come upstairs and tell me if my mother was home yet. We always knew it was her because her shoes would click-clack on the ceramic floors. When I heard someone running up the stairs, I felt myself tense up, knowing that it was Eli coming to tell me. She was home.

My older sister Isa’s warning came to mind as I started to panic. De seguro te va a fajiar, she had told me, “She’ll probably hit you with the belt.” As I was thinking about how it would hurt, I came up with a brilliant plan. Put on more underwear and biker shorts! I was sure it wouldn’t sting as much. I ran to my closet, mad at myself that I hadn’t had the idea before. She had to be almost upstairs! I just had to hurry up and put on my uniform skirt so she wouldn’t notice. As soon as I was done buttoning up my skirt, the door to my room opened.
I walked into the room and said hello to my mom, with a kiss. She immediately knew something was wrong. “What happened, Victoria?” She asked me, using my full name. She always calls me Vicky. I hung my head, and said, “Mami, I have to tell you something.” Impatiently, she asked again, “What is it?”

“Something happened at school today,” I said, as I took the neatly folded paper from my uniform’s breast pocket. I slowly opened it and handed it to her, looking at my shoes. She read the detention slip in silence, and the more time passed, the more nervous I got. “Look at me,” she said, and I brought my eyes up to her face. She pursed her lips, shook her head, and said, “Wait for me here.”

I sat back down on the edge of my bed, with my tiny fourth-grader heart beating so fast I could feel it in my ears. When the door opened again, I stood up, and saw she was carrying one of my father’s belts. Isa hadn’t been giving me a hard time. My mother walked up to me, and told me, “You already know that these things aren’t tolerated in this house. You insist on trying me, but this is the limit. What do you think your grandmother would have done to me if I had shown up with a detention slip in her house?” I looked at her, and said in the smallest voice, “I don’t know.” She looked at me, pursed her lips again, and said, “Yeah, you never know, right?” She shook her head again and said, “She would make us kneel on rice for hours. Would you rather do that?”

“No,” I heard myself say. “Bueno,” she said. She looked at me for a long time, and all I could do was hold my tears and try to ignore Hello Kitty. After what seemed like an hour, she walked to the door and said, “Bring me one of these again, Victoria.” As soon as the door had closed, I felt my tears running down. I heard my sobs as I stood in the middle of my room, with four pairs of underwear and three biker shorts on.