LITMIR.BIZ

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(again), which means my dad finally came back home (and looked like hell). Whenever he comes home after being gone for weeks, with a beard and smelling like he’s never heard of a shower, she tries to make our lives seem as normal (whatever that is) as possible. And since Sebastian is here, she’s trying as hard as ever. However, all of her attempts make us seem more dysfunctional than before. She came into my room (un-freaking-announced!) and saw me in my underwear! I got super mad and told her to please get out. She was all like, “Ay, I’ve seen you naked, I’m your mom.” But she waited on the other side of my door anyway. When she came in, she had this pink sparkly thing hanging on her arm. I cringed, guessing at what it was. It was a dress. A freakin dress! Ugh! Why does she do that?!?! She knows I hate dresses! How am I going to look in a dress? Ridiculous! Like an overstuffed carne asada burrito, that’s how! Beans spilling out the top, tortilla squished together at the bottom. Horrible. Just horrible.

      Dresses and I don’t get along. The way I see it, a dress is restricting. It’s a trap.

      Let’s say, for example, you are with your friend Cindy at the local elementary school a few blocks from your house and suddenly these really cute boys and one not so cute boy pass by on their bikes. This is just hypothetical, but your friend Cindy thinks it would be funny to flash the boys. Because, you know, she has big boobs, double D’s, not like you because not even four of your boobs would equal one of hers and she can do tricks too, she can make them move up and down without even touching them. They have a life of their own, her boobs do.

      So, she does it. She really does it! (Even though you thought she was just shitting you!) Shirt goes up and “Hello, boys!” You laugh but since you are laughing so hard you’re about to piss your pants, you realize too late that the boys are pedaling back and have decided to do a little flashing of their own. They are coming at you quick with their hands on their zippers! And in an instant, you’re in OH-SHIT mode. So now you have to run because maybe you have seen a penis in a picture, or you imagine what it looks like, or they showed a movie once in class about the Holocaust and you were like, “Wow. That’s what it looks like. It’s uglier than I imagined.” But to be confronted with the real thing was not in your plans for a sunny Saturday afternoon.

      How does this relate to a dress? Well, hypothetically, you decided to wear a dress and suddenly you have to run home before José whips It out, and the shortest route home is to jump Mrs. Sanchez’ fence and then jump the other fence to your backyard, and you realize much too late that you are wearing a flouncy brown dress, and you say fuck it and jump the fence anyway, but much to your chagrin only you and half a dress would make the journey. You sneak into your room bare-assed and sweaty—and laugh until your side hurts.

      Or if that is not enough reason for hating dresses, what about that time…

      …when I was in eighth grade and was walking home and heard a group of boys whistling and laughing. The blonde one shouted, “I can see your underwear!” But I didn’t get it. See, I was wearing clothes, so he was probably just being an asshole, and I kept walking, but then I felt a breeze on my butt, a breeze that was just a little too cold. He was right. Blonde Boy could see my underwear and so could all of Sixth Street. I realized that when I put my backpack on at school (about twenty minutes before), my dress had gotten caught and up it went, and everyone could see my old beige underwear, those big old granny underwear that I used to wear because my mom didn’t let me buy thongs even though I was almost in ninth grade (or at least bikini underwear like the other girls in my class), and I thought, Trágame tierra! I wanted to be a worm or a mole or a gopher or any type of insect or vermin that lives underground where no one could see me or my calzones de abuelita.

      But my mom doesn’t understand this. She never does. I don’t get it. I guess it’s because we have a lightswitch relationship. Sometimes she’s wonderful. Sometimes not so much. When she says, “No comas tanto. You’re getting fatter than a pregnant woman,” she’s not so wonderful. But when she says, “She loves to read. She has a 3.75. Mira, le dieron otro certificado,” like she knew it all along (that I’m smart and not as bad as she thought), she’s the best. On and off. Like light itself—bright and dark. Mother and daughter. That’s us. I wish it were different. I wish she would be more understanding, but that’s not who she is, I guess.

      The pink sparkly dress draped on her arm is for my senior picture. So I will look pretty. Now I’m going to have to wear it, otherwise it would hurt her feelings. Oh well. Asi es la vida. That’s my life at least.

       August 25

      Senior year starts tomorrow! I am sooo not going to be able to sleep. Even Sebastian (who is having one of the saddest summers ever) is looking forward to it. We couldn’t stop talking about school but finally just went to bed.

       August 26

      It was a crazy first day! Luckily I can drive to school now, and that is awesome—even if I have to bring Beto with me. We agreed that we would switch off on radio stations. Otherwise I would have to listen to him bitch about only listening to “main stream” rock. The one bad thing is that Cindy, Sebastian, and I don’t have any classes together. I had to change my schedule around to fit my poetry class. Sebastian is in Calculus while I am in Algebra II…again. I only failed because it was boring the way Mrs. Black taught it, and (because the math gods hate me) I have her again this year. I’m so gonna tear my hair out. Four years in a row with the same math teacher? That has to be illegal. On the plus side, Joshua Moore, the super hot White boy I’ve had a crush on since freshman year, is in my class! Ahhhhhh! I need to relax. Gabi, get a grip!

       September 1

      Why is Georgina such a fucking idiot? Why? During first period (which is the poetry class that I signed up for because it seemed like fun but turns out is going to be another English class, and while I love English, two English classes means double the writing and double the reading and double the everything else. I so hope I can survive.), Martin Espada asked me if it was true that Cindy was pregnant.

      I was like, “What? Who told you that?”

      Martin rolled his eyes, “Who do you think?”

      Georgina. He didn’t have to say her name. Everyone knew Georgina had the biggest mouth in the world since the first grade when Tomasa Jones peed her pants on the slide during recess and Georgina told everyone (even the custodians).

      He nodded and asked again, “So is it true?”

      I don’t know what possessed me to be rude to one of the nicest boys I have every met (he was probably just trying to let me know that Georgina was talking shit about my best friend), but I said, “So is it true you have a hairy ass?”

      Martin’s face got all red as he stuttered, “What? I was just—whatever,” and turned around.

      I wish I hadn’t been so mean to Martin. He’s really nice. And kind of cute. And it turns out he already writes poetry. Good poetry. None of that “the rat is on the mat” shit. But stuff that has meaning. By lunch time, I had heard it from eight different people, and there were eight different stories. In one of them, both Cindy and I had had sex with German—vomit. In another, Cindy didn’t know who the father was. The best one was that Cindy had gotten pregnant from some old guy who is now in prison and blamed poor innocent German. Georgina’s wild, clown-faced imagination had not failed us. She also said that we’d been in the pharmacy lots of times, getting tests and condoms. Stupid Georgina—if condoms had been purchased, Cindy wouldn’t have been in this mess. But no one questioned her stories with logic, and people stayed away from us like we had herpes or something contagious like that. I heard the word SLUTS! thrown at us a few times, but no one owned up to it.

      I was pissed. I almost wondered if I should stay away from Cindy. What if my mom was right? What if Cindy was a bad girl, and she would somehow smear her badness on

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