19. August 24th
Angie
“Where are you pulling that cheese from?” Rafael asks as he opens the back door to his moms’ house with a reusable grocery bag slung over his shoulder and carrying a ten-inch glazed fruit tart, which I plan on eating half of.
I glance at my hand then back to him. “My pocket.”
“Why do you have cheese in your pockets?”
“They were free samples. They want you to take them,” I say with a furrowed brow and follow him into the kitchen from the back deck.
His dimples dig in. “They want you to take one.”
“There’s no sign. Are you cheese-shaming me? The woman who is creating human lives—your offspring, the fruit of your loins—and you’re shaming her?”
“?Qué pasa?” Ana admonishes her son instead of greeting him, lightly smacking him on the shoulder. She’s wearing a casual, dark brown tank dress that’s fitted nicely over her mid-size body and her long dark hair is pulled up in a styled ponytail. It’s a hot day, so once again stepping inside to glorious air conditioning is a relief.
“When someone pulls cheese from their pocket,” he says, switching to Spanish and setting the bag on the counter, “and they left home over an hour ago, I think I have the right to ask questions.”
“She’s right,” Ana says, taking me in her arms before her own son and hugging me tight. “She can eat whatever she wants. My grandchildren require a happy mother. How are you, darling? You look perfect.”
“Hungry all the time,” I sigh, breaking the embrace.
We told our families about the twins shortly after finding out, and it was like telling them we were pregnant all over again. They went berserk, but again, his father had a similar unenthused reaction, but kept a jovial tone through the conversation at least.
“Well, you’re in luck,” Christina says, walking into the room in her summer home uniform of tan cargo shorts and a gray cotton T-shirt. “We made beans and rice, and the enchiladas will be ready in ten minutes.”
My stomach churns at the thought of meat immediately. Okay, just breathe, I tell myself. You still have salad, rice and beans, fruit tart, and a few pieces of pocket cheese jangling around.
“What kind did you make?” Rafael asks, taking the salad contents out and finding the big wooden bowl in the cupboard.
“We made two: cheese with green sauce, and potatoes with mole. We weren’t sure which one you’d prefer,” Christina shrugs. “If none of that sounds good we can whip up something else,” she adds with a genuine smile.
Confusion dawns on me. “Where’s the meat?”
Ana puts the tart in the fridge and then turns her head to me with a pinch between her sculpted eyebrows. “Rafael said meat makes you sick, so we didn’t make any.”
If I was running right now, I’d stop in my tracks. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say. I don’t think I’ve ever attended a meal at this house where meat was not served—it’s integral to their family’s food scene.
“Of course we did,” Ana shrugs like I’m silly. “I also made this extra spicy,” she smiles, pushing a dish of dark reddish-brown salsa across the island counter to me. “My son here said nothing is spicy enough for you right now, which is hard to believe, so I’d like to see it for myself.”
A giggle bursts out of me and I stare mouth agape at my best friend. “What?” First, I can’t believe he would even think to tell his moms to make a meatless meal. I expected carne asada, tacos al pastor, anything but cheese and potato enchiladas. He did this for me?
Thankfully, Ana cuts in before I start crying at the simple and sweet gesture. “I tried it myself,” she says pointing to the dish, her smile disappearing. “I can’t handle it.” Incredibly tempted and already salivating at the thought of something finally being spicy again, I quickly take a tortilla chip and scoop a large portion of salsa.
“Whoa,” Raf mumbles. Apparently, he expected me to daintily dip the chip to test it first. I didn’t come here to fuck around.
Just looking at the salsa I can tell it’s mostly made of peppers and seeds. What kind? I don’t give a shit as long as it lights up my mouth. My first registered taste is salt and the corn of the tortilla. Next is the tomato, and then…
No.
No.
I can’t taste the heat—the spice—the whole reason I eat salsa in the first place! Everyone has halted what they’re doing to watch me closely. Maybe it’s a delayed heat? I finish chewing and swallow then suck in a little gasp of air, hoping the heat will be triggered by air flow.
Nothing.
I take another chip, a bigger scoop, and a faster bite.
Nothing.
“What kind of peppers did you use?” I ask a wide-eyed Ana.
“Chipotle, jalape?o, but mostly ghost peppers.”
“I have to try this,” Raf says, reaching next to me and taking his own delicate bite and immediately coughing, tears springing from his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Ang. I need milk,” he wheezes, launching for the refrigerator and chugging the two percent.
He’s so theatrical sometimes.
Raf sets up some dinner music, a low instrumental playlist of pop songs throughout the decades. When we finally sit, the anger at my nonexistent spice palate flits away when the first bite of seasoned potatoes and mole hit my tongue and memories flood back. Ana’s mole is powerful like that. The first time I had it I was eleven or so. I remember being confused as to why cocoa and nuts would be in a sauce and it wouldn’t be sweet. It took me a few dinners to get used to it, but once I did, I begged her to make it all the time. By the time I was thirteen, I was making it myself and serving it to my family. I’m not sure if Ana knows that the Johanssen family mostly ate what she taught me. What Christina taught me about grilling too.
What these women taught me wasn’t always about food though. They showed me how to be a child while taking care of a family. They provided me space to be free and stupid and creative. They watched my siblings when Dad was working on the weekends, invited us all over for fiestas, movie nights, and board games. They’d come over with bags of corn husk tamales, enough to feed everyone for a week—at least until my brothers were all teenagers, then it fed them for a day.
When my siblings got older, we’d all go over and help prepare food together—forming an assembly line to make homemade corn tortillas and trays of enchiladas to be frozen. I don’t even want to think about how many thousands of dollars these two women spent on feeding and hosting us.
They didn’t have to. They could have let us struggle to find attention. Could have let us eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches most nights. Could have ignored the signs of children desperate for more love—more than a single, grieving father working hard to make ends meet could give.
Of course, I still ended up being a parentified child, despite Christina and Ana’s efforts—I don’t think I could have avoided it entirely, but it could have been so much worse.
College was the first time I was able to break out of that role thrust upon me. Our college was two hours away—just far enough from home that I could live on campus but be home every weekend if needed or for an emergency. Isaiah certainly stepped up to take care of the rest of our siblings, but he’d still call me every other day for advice.
The transition to college wasn’t a difficult one for me. While I saw students fail out left and right that first year, I always wondered how they managed to do that. It wasn’t until I was older, and it dawned on me that many of the students didn’t know how to live on their own, manage their time, personal life, and classes. It came so naturally to me because I had been doing this for myself and my family for years.
Responsibility for myself and others has been ingrained into me—it’s something I rarely shed except around people like Cora, Rafael and his family. College gave me the opportunity to find myself outside of my siblings—to live and experience life as a young woman.
When Raf and I tried to find ourselves in high school, to find where we fit in, I was still largely responsible for my brothers and sister. When we went to college though, I tried to take those countless interests and hone-in on what really inspired me. By the time I graduated with my master’s degree, I was a different woman entirely to the innocent freshman I once was. I had grown in confidence and understanding of myself, and what I knew for certain was that I was curious.
That’s what it all boiled down to.
Curiosity.
Our random playlists. Our diverse friend groups. Our questionable wardrobes.
Becoming a children’s counselor made complete sense because I had been playing this role with my siblings. So it was all too fitting to learn while taking those courses what I was made into, and then learn that the only way to heal was to have emotional awareness of it.
When the instrumental music changes to Dancing Queen, Christina gasps a little as she slices up the fruit tart. “That reminds me. There’s an ABBA cover band coming in a couple weeks, so if you want tickets let me know.”
“Yes, please,” I beam.
“I’ll tell Jay,” Rafael chuckles and pulls out his phone to text.
“He’ll go ballistic.”
Ana steps back into the dining room with a stack of dessert plates in one hand and a large book in the other before placing it in front of me and Raf. “I know it seems like I do this every time you two are here, but I found another photo album,” she grins.
We flip through the pages together and it’s mostly our junior year of high school. Rafael in a baseball team photo, Joaquín in softball. Raf and I in our black formal orchestra outfits, him standing next to his bass and me next to my violin.
“We were awful,” I muse.
“They would have kicked us out if they could have,” he smiles and then turns the page.
“Oh, look at little Dane!” It’s a picture of thirteen-year-old Joaquín in a one-piece electric blue swimsuit standing in the water at the beach with Dane on his shoulders.
“Dane is such a good boy,” Ana says. “Tell him to stop by more.”
“I will,” I nod, then look back to the photo album and Raf turns another thick page.
“Nooo,” he chuckles. “Not the underwater robotics team.”
“Gasp!” I hiss. “So this is where those photos ended up. Oh my god, who let us name our robot Nauti Nautilus?”
“There was no stopping you two when you made up your minds,” Christina says, taking a bite of her fruit tart.
“Oh jeez, junior prom,” I drawl, staring at myself in a yellow and faux-crystal strapless hand-me-down dress from my older cousin, standing next to my white-blonde date, and Rafael with his date Abby.
“I can’t believe you went with Will Parker,” Raf huffs disbelievingly.
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know. We had all these friend groups we were a part of, and he was never in any of those groups.”
“Well, I was getting desperate for a date and he was just sitting there in the computer lab next to me.” Truth be told, I was getting desperate because Rafael had a date and I didn’t. We could have gone together like we talked about, but then he blindsided me and asked Abigail Martin. “It’s not like anyone was going to ask me anyway,” I sigh.
“That’s not true.”
“You know, come to think of it, me asking Will to go to prom might have been the turning point of my confidence. I flat-out asked him if he wanted to go with me, and he said yes. I didn’t put any more thought into it beforehand.”
“Clearly,” he mumbles.
My eyebrows furrow. “What?”
“I’m just saying… You were pretty blind to when guys liked you.”
“No I wasn’t,” I retort.
“Ha, yeah, you were. For example, it was clear Will had a crush on you all through high school. He kept his distance because he was nervous.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re making that up. How would you know?”
“Because I always knew who had a crush on you. Will Parker, Troy McAlister, Jerome Warner, Corey Sabin-Clark,” he lists, counting on his fingers.
“What? No. None of those guys did. They used me for homework answers or never talked to me. Like Will.”
“Oh, Angie. You’re so stupid,” he grins affectionately. “We were teenage boys, that’s the best way we could tell girls we liked them. I couldn’t even look at guys then. You either keep it bottled up or study with them.”
“Well, we studied together, and you never had a crush on me.”
Christina pushes her chair away and stands up. “Think I’ll clear the table,” she says to herself.
“Me too,” Ana adds, following suit and exiting the dining room.
My eyes focus back on him. “And that doesn’t hold true. If it did, you would have never asked Abby Martin to be your date.”
“I didn’t have a crush on her,” he says simply.
“Then why did you ask her?”
He fidgets with his napkin. “Because I was afraid to ask you.”
Before I can let that statement sink in, I blurt, “That doesn’t make any sense. We planned on going as friends until you—” It’s then that his words hit their target and my mind starts processing. “You wanted to ask me to prom?”
“I was never going to until Mom said I should, then the idea of really asking you scared the living shit out of me.” He swallows. “I was so nervous you’d see right through me that I asked Abby the next day after math class.”
“You had a crush on me?” I ask, slowly coming to terms with this.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I don’t really know what happened to that crush, but I knew keeping you as my friend was always in the stars.”
So something happened to that crush, which probably means it’s gone, unlike mine.