Big Chicas Don't Cry(72)

But just like a kid, I followed her to her car and pleaded with her once again.

“Please, Selena. I need you to stay with me.” I was bawling so bad that she pulled me into her car so no one in the family would hear me.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked. “I know you’re sad, but this is not you. What’s going on?”

She was right. This wasn’t me. But I couldn’t control the tidal wave of emotions rolling through my body. And it wasn’t just today. I’d cried like a baby last night because Rachel drank the last can of Pepsi. Not only was I crying at the drop of a hat, I was exhausted. At first, I blamed the stress of the final preparations for the fiesta combined with coming back to school. I was a mess, and I needed to know why.

And so I confessed what I’d suspected for the last few weeks.

“I think I’m pregnant.”



“Geez, how long does it take to pee on a stick?” Selena yelled from the other side of the bathroom door.

“I already peed!” I yelled back. I closed the toilet lid and sat down. “You can come in now.”

Selena opened the door to the bathroom slowly and walked inside. She glanced at the pregnancy test stick I had placed on top of a sheet of toilet paper on the black marble sink counter. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and put her hand over mine as it rested on my knee.

We’d left my grandparents’ house and made a quick stop at the drugstore. My parents had said they’d be home in about an hour. We needed to do this on our own.

We sat there without talking until the alarm on my cell phone beeped to announce that three minutes had elapsed. It startled us both, and for a few seconds we just stared at the pregnancy stick on the counter. I moved to stand up, and Selena continued to hold my hand.

“Whatever happens, sis, we’ll get through it together,” she said.

I nodded and walked over to the stick. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. I opened my eyes and looked down. Two dark-pink plus signs glared back at me.

I looked over at my sister, who was still sitting on the edge of the bathtub. When she saw my expression, she jumped up and came over to the sink. She picked up the stick and examined it.

“So, two plus signs means . . . ,” she was going to ask.

“It means I’m going to have a baby,” I answered before she could finish.





Chapter Forty-Two


ERICA


Breathe. Breathe. In and then out. In and then out.

I stood in my grandparents’ backyard trying not to lose my shit on the day of my welita’s funeral.

The Mass and the burial were over, and everyone had come back to my grandparents’ house for a luncheon. But after a while, I’d needed a break from all the people and noise and had wandered into Welita’s room.

In the days before the funeral, my grandmother had worked feverishly to clean out the room, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family. My mother told me it was her way of grieving. That leaving the room the way my welita had left it was just too much to bear. So she had begun packing up clothes and storing mementos until the room was almost empty. Today, as people came and went, she told them to go through the boxes and take whatever they wanted as a keepsake.

I didn’t think I was ready to do it, but when I saw the familiar shoebox, I opened it. There were little trinkets inside like the snow globe from Canada that Gracie had brought back for her last year and assorted Mother’s Day and birthday cards.

The walls of the room seemed to close in on me as I spotted the Jersey Boys CD on top of her dresser.

And then I remembered I would never be able to take her to see the show like I’d promised. So I ran out of that room, out of the house, and into the backyard, where I could breathe. Just breathe.

I was just starting to feel normal again when Mari opened the gate and walked toward me. I’d seen her at the church and cemetery, but neither of us had made an attempt to speak to each other until that moment.

“Erica, are you okay? Your mom asked me to come check on you.” She looked uncomfortable; I could tell by the way she almost reached her hand out to touch my shoulder, only to pull it back.

“I’m fine, Mari. Tell my mom I’ll come inside soon. You can go now.”

She nodded her head but didn’t move. Instead, she surveyed the backyard.

“Hey, what happened to the lemon tree?”

She stared at the back wall where our favorite lemon tree once stood. It was huge—well, at least when we were little, it had seemed huge to us. It was the most bountiful of all my grandmother’s trees. She had an apricot one, a tangerine one, and a fig one. But the lemon tree was the grandest with its thick trunk and branches that seemed to reach the heavens. Underneath it, we held our picnics and played Barbies. During the summer, we’d gather all the lemons that had fallen to the ground and use them to make lemonade for our lemonade stand.

“The people who moved into the house on the other side of the wall kept complaining about the branches and lemons falling into their yard. Then the roots started cracking the wall, so Abuelo and my dad cut it down a few years ago.”

She shrugged, still looking at the wall. “That’s too bad. It was a good tree.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s what happens when you grow up. Nothing lasts forever, right?” There was a bitterness to my words, but I didn’t care. Not anymore.