“Can’t I come with you?” My voice had a pleading note to it. I glanced at the woman. She turned away from me.
Oscar jerked his head toward the pile of newspapers. “No.” He stepped close, and his voice turned a titch more civil. “You get caught here, we are all in trouble. You understand, Minerva Sinclaire?”
I really didn’t follow—what kind of trouble?—but I nodded anyway. He pushed past me toward the front door, muttering for my ears only, “And,por favor, don’t make her more angry.”
The door slammed behind Oscar, and I heard him call for Roman and Angel. I looked out the window to see them jump into the Ford. In a moment, they were gone. I turned to the woman. She looked ready to bite, her chin jutting and her sharp, dark eyes narrowed into folds of bronzed skin.
As intimidating as this woman was, necessity overcame my fear. As I contemplated how to make myself understood and the humiliation that would follow if I could not, the kitchen door opened,and a gust of fresh air breezed in... along with a beautiful girl who didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.
It was the girl from Lester’s party, the one who served the drinks and had gaped at Max, only this time she wore a striped blouse and a long, shapeless skirt that reached almost to her ankles. She rushed to me with brown eyes as friendly as the old woman’s were hostile. “You are awake! I am very glad of it.” She took my cold, pale hands in her warm, tawny ones.
My heart thumped, thinking of Oscar’s fervent instruction. I’d already failed him.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “Roman told me of you in secret. I won’t tell.” She pulled me into the light of the window. “You are so beautiful. He also told me that.”
“I’m... Minerva Sinclaire,” I offered as the girl looked me over from head to bare feet.
“Forgive me.” A lovely pink blush colored her dark skin. “I am Guadeloupe Francesca Martina Garcia.” She said her long name very quickly, and a charming dimple pierced her cheek. “But you call me Lupita.”
“You can call me Mina.” Only Max called me that, but somehow it seemed right.
“Mina.” Her strong accent made the name musical. “You poor thing. You are hungry, no?”
“Actually. . .” I felt my cheeks redden. “What I need is...” I tried to think of a good word, a polite word. I shifted from one foot to the other.
“Oh!” Lupita nodded in understanding. “Of course. You follow me.”
That’s when I knew this girl was sent from heaven.
Lupita took my hand and pulled me out the back door, sayingsomething quick to the mother, who responded in a monosyllable. Lupita stopped me in the shade of the small covered stoop. “My house,” Lupita whispered, pointing to a boxlike construction of metal, cardboard, and wood. “My brother, Alonso, is at home now. We don’t tell Alonso about you.”
On the other side of the lot sat a long-handled pump, piles of kindling, and a potbellied stove belching smoke. Lupita left me on the porch and peered around each corner of the house. She came back and led me to a small shed beside a stand of stunted juniper. “You go in there, understand?”
I understood all right. Some of the poorer places in Odessa still had outhouses. When needs must... I emerged, still holding my breath, and Lupita was waiting to bring me quickly back to the house, where the old woman sat on her cot, eyeing me like a cockroach invading her kitchen.
Lupita caught my eye and whispered, “You must not let Sanchia’s bad temper bother you. She is really a sweet lady.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help the surprise in my voice.
Lupita’s lovely mouth twitched as she glanced back at the woman. “No. Not really. But she does, how you say, get better as you know her?” She covered her mouth to stop her laugh.
Sanchia turned away, her face pinched like she’d eaten something rotten.
“You really are very beautiful.” Lupita smiled at me and took a plate from the shelf above the stove. “Roman and Angel are in love with you already.” Her dimple flashed. “Of course, they are always in love—it is the way with boys that age, yes?” She said it as if she were much older than the boys who lived with Oscar.
I took a look down at my blue linen day dress. It had been pressed and crisp when Max picked me up yesterday, but now itlooked like a flour sack. And my stockings—they were filthy. Not so beautiful, but she was kind to say it.
“Your hair, it is so—how you say?—in fashion?” She opened the cast iron stove that looked like something out of the last century and pulled out a blackened pan. “I so much wish I could cut mine.”
Her thick hair would wave perfectly if bobbed, and a short cut would frame her beautiful eyes and perfect features. “It’s not hard. I can do it for you.” I’d cut my own when I was younger than her.
“No, no.” She let out a short laugh. “Mymamáwould never forgive me.” She scooped some brown mush onto the plate. “It would be...” She shrugged. “I don’t know the word. She would call me a bad daughter.”
I knew about bad daughters.
She added a few circles of what looked like flattened bread to the plate, put it on the table, and pushed me down in the chair. “Many girls, here even in thecolonia, they cut their hair. Their fathers beat them, but they don’t care.”
“Beat them?” Papa had been not so thrilled when I’d shown up for dinner one night with my bob, but he’d never hit me.
