Down to the Bone Read Free

Birthday in the Barrio, about rebel eight-year-old Chavi and her best friend Rosario. My mom read the author’s blog where she stated that in her next novel, the girls are twenty-year-old lesbian girlfriends. She tore the book into pieces, threw it in the trash and said, ‘Authors like these plant seeds in girls’ minds about choosing different lifestyles when they’re all grown up. Girls can do anything they set their minds to. You could be president, but no one will hire you for the job if you turn into a woman uninterested in men. I don’t want you transforming into one of those .’”
    “ Qué loca. ” Tazer totally gets it.
    “Well . . . she’s a great mom except for some things. Right now, she wants to tear up my life and throw it away in the garbage.”
    I hate talking about my mother that way. I should present Tazer with a complete history of all the great moments my mom and I have shared, like the day we entered a daughter and mother singing contest and won, or how we usually walk hand-in-hand, singing together, in harmony, whenever we’re out and about.
    A sympathetic ear to relieve what I’m feeling might be a good thing, though. But maybe not. I don’t want Tazer to think my mom is disposable just because of one character flaw. I really shouldn’t tell her what Mami just did to me.
    A bunch of wild green parrots startle us as they circle the palm trees above us. I stand to catch a clearer view. “How beautiful. I have four in the backyard of my house.” I want to change the subject from me, to anything at all.
    Neruda growls and barks up at them. Tazer lifts her, belly up, and pets her chubby stomach. “We’ve got a family of owls in my backyard.”
    It would be rude if I didn’t at least ask her some thing about herself. She’ll just think I’m one of those narcissistic, egocentric, plástica Cubanita chicks who don’t give a royal rooster’s butt about anything but themselves.
    I lift my dorky, navy blue school skirt and stretch down my tank top. “Where do you live?”
    She sets Neruda down on my towel. “With my dad, in Gables by the Sea.” Gables by the Sea is one of the wealthiest places in Miami. “My uncle, who’s been here twenty-five years, got my father into becoming a realtor. They struck it rich during the real estate boom. I miss my family in Cuba. I lived in an apartment building with my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. There were nineteen of us. Now I have everything, but I don’t have them.”
    “That’s sad.” She nods. I tell her I live in Little Havana. “But we’re moving soon to a ritzy neighborhood in Coconut Grove. My mom just got married. She wants to move up in the world.” I tell her this so she gets it that I can relate. “I’ll miss my old neighborhood, too.”
    Suddenly, I miss Pedri, my home, my friends, and everyone who now sees me as a lying, untrustworthy jerk. My chest fills up with pain.
    Tazer talks about her fun life at Coral Gables High, and having headed the LGBTQI Center there when she’s interrupted by a girl far away waving her hands and yelling, “Taze!”
    “I’ll be right back. That’s my friend Zoe.” She takes off.
    As I watch her dash away, I flash back to our principal, Mrs. Superior-Sicko, a cockroach of a woman, with bloodshot, steely eyes, paper-thin lips and tangled eyebrows. She stood with feet planted close together as she read the texts to my mom. I wanted to tear my cell out of her hands but she’d have destroyed me.
    I can’t shake the memories of Fart Face walking her ogre self into the principal’s office, dragging me behind her.
    She calls my mom at work and in Spanish, says, “Mrs. Amores, we have a problem with your daughter. She’s in the office. We need you here immediately.”
    That call is my death. My legs feel like they’re made of clay. To any mother, reading vivid, detailed texts of her daughter being with another girl will horrify her. I’d rather fry in the chair than for this to