We Are Okay(18)

JUNE




ANA WAS OUTSIDE when we opened the gate to Mabel’s front garden. She was dressed in her painting smock, her hair pinned messily in gold barrettes, staring at her latest collage with a paintbrush and a piece of yarn in her hand.

“Girls!” she said. “I need you.”

I’d caught glimpses of her works in progress for the three and a half years I’d been friends with Mabel. Each time I’d felt a rush, and now there was a new reverence to the moment. Ana’s collages had been shown by famous galleries in San Francisco and New York and Mexico City for years, but in the last few months she’d sold work to three different museums. Her photograph had begun appearing in magazines. Javier would open them to the articles on Ana and then leave them in prominent places throughout the house. Ana threw up her hands each time she saw one before snatching it up and stuffing it away. “I’ll get a big head,” she told us. “Hide that away from me.”

“It’s more simple than usual,” Mabel said now, and at first that seemed true.

It was a night sky, smooth layers of black on black, with stars shining so bright they almost glittered. I stepped closer. The stars did glitter.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

Ana pointed to a bowl of shining rocks.

“It’s fool’s gold,” she said. “I turned it into a powder.”

There was so much going on under the top layer. It was quiet, maybe, but it wasn’t simple.

“I can’t decide what to add. It needs something, but I don’t know what. I’ve tried these feathers. I’ve tried rope. I want something nautical. I think.”

I understood how she’d feel stuck. What she had was so beautiful. How could she add something to it without taking something away?

“Anyway,” she said, setting down her paintbrushes. “How are my girls this evening? Been shopping, I see.”

We’d spent an hour in Forever 21 trying on dresses for Ben’s party and now we had matching bags, each containing a dress identical but for the color. Mabel’s was red and mine was black.

“Have you eaten? Javier made pozole.”

“The party already started so we have to be quick . . . ,” Mabel said.

“Take it up to your room.”

“I can’t wait to see what you decide to do.”

Ana turned back to her canvas and sighed.

“Me, too, Marin. Me, too.”

We started with our makeup, applying eye shadow between bites of soup and tostadas. Mabel emptied her jewelry box onto her bed, and we combed through it for accessories. I chose gold bangles and sparkly green earrings. Mabel chose a braided leather bracelet. She thought about switching her gold studs for another pair, but decided to keep them in. We crunched tostadas, finished all the soup in our bowls. We pulled off our shirts and slipped on the dresses, stepped out of our jeans and looked at each other.

“Just different enough,” I said.

“As usual.”

Since we’d met, we had a thing for our names’ symmetry. An M followed by a vowel, then a consonant, then a vowel, then a consonant. We thought it was important. We thought it must have meant something. Like a similar feeling must have passed through our mothers as they named us. Like destiny was at work already. We may have been in different countries, but it was only a matter of time before we would collide into each other.

We were getting ready for the party, but the time was getting later and we weren’t hurrying. The real event was us, in her room. We kept reassessing our makeup even though we barely wore any. We showed each other our empty soup bowls and went back into the kitchen for more.

We were on our way back up to Mabel’s room when I heard Ana and Javier talking in their living room.

“Such good soup!” I called to Javier, and Ana called back, “Let us see our beautiful girls!”

They were sprawled on a sofa together, Javier with a book, Ana sifting through a box of scraps and small objects, her mind still on her collage, trying to solve the mystery of what should come next.

“Oh!” Ana said when she saw us, dismay on her face.

“No, no-no-no-no,” Javier said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mabel asked.

“It means you aren’t leaving the house in that dress,” Javier said.

“You guys,” Mabel said. “Seriously?”

Javier said something stern in Spanish, and Mabel’s face flushed with indignation.

“Mom,” she said.

Ana looked back and forth between Mabel and me. Her gaze landed on Mabel and she said, “It looks like lingerie. I’m sorry, mi amor, but you can’t go out like this.”

“Mom,” Mabel said. “Now we don’t have any time!”

“You have plenty of clothes,” Javier said.

“What about that yellow dress?” Ana asked.

Mabel sighed and stormed up the stairs, and I found myself still standing before them, wearing the same dress as their daughter and waiting for them to tell me something. I felt the heat rise in my face, too, but from embarrassment, not indignation. I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted them to tell me no.

Javier was already back to his book, but Ana was looking at me. I could tell she was deciding something. I still don’t know what she would have said if I had waited a little bit longer. If she would have said anything. But the possibility that she might not tell me to change was crushing. Gramps never looked at my clothes.