Boundless, p.4
Boundless, page 4
“Séño, me ayudas, porfa?”
She catches herself using slang when she talks to fellow Hispanics, all to telegraph that she is one of them. This isn’t your basic AP Spanish—there are no proper nouns or conjunctions here. She shaves off the ends of words to show Mendoza that this is the Spanish of her gente. Nuestra gente.
But Mendoza only looks at her funny. Maybe he doesn’t speak Spanish, after all?
“No hay problema, güey,” Javier says. He is suddenly at Amalia’s side once again, talking to Mendoza, too, only difference being that Mendoza actually seems to understand him.
“Los Judios aqui hablan español?” he asks, confused but intrigued.
“No, just us,” Javier says. He abruptly does a one-eighty and wades back into the party, and Amalia is surprised to find that she has done the same. She looks down at her hand and realizes why. Javier is holding it.
“I have a proposition for you,” he says, staring straight ahead.
“You’re holding my hand.”
“You’re too strung up on being perfect. What if I can help you let go of all of that?”
They wade through the party, and while before Amalia was worried about drawing attention by arguing with Javier in public, he’s found a loophole around that. They can talk openly, without having to whisper if they talk in Spanish. So he does.
“Help me cheat,” he says. “It’ll free you.”
He keeps saying things that don’t make sense. Even his words are dichotomies. But Amalia sees him now for what he is. Her yetzer hara personified. The devil on her shoulder. She poured her heart out to him and now he dares to confront her with a totally outrageous not-solution to her problems. She drops Jota’s—Javi’s—Javier’s—hand.
“You said it yourself,” he says. “You aren’t comfortable living in two worlds, and all I’m saying is that that’s because you’re living according to other people’s expectations of you.”
“No I’m not.”
“You kind of are. You want to be the perfect Latina and the perfect Jew, but perfect according to who? You already are perfect. Just by being you.”
His hand is no longer holding hers but it still feels like it. Or, it feels like he’s holding more than that. At the same time, the cynical part of Amalia’s brain couldn’t help but think, Is this pendejo for real?
“Seriously,” he continues. “I don’t care what everybody’s expectations of me are. And look how good I turned out.”
“Conceited.”
That infuriating smile of his again, the definition of rolling with every punch. “Maybe. But I’m cool with that.”
“Of course you are.”
“Do one bad thing that no one is expecting from you,” he says. “It won’t even be that bad. We can give all our winnings to the synagogue.”
“What?”
“We can both publicly donate everything we make back to the shul. You’d be doing a mitzvah, the shul won’t lose all its money, Casino Night will be a rousing success, you’d give us—the Jewish Latinos—a good name, and the big, beautiful cherry on top—you can let your hair down and live a little.
“You won’t believe how good it feels on the other side of everything that’s holding you back.”
* * *
It is a simple conceit. Communicate in Spanish, tell each other what cards they have, bet accordingly. They stand at the poker table, three other players marking the space between them. As luck would have it, they are all people Javier and Amalia have interacted with tonight. One of the sisterhood ladies, Mr. Katz, and Hit Me Kid.
Javier looks at his cards, and when he locks eyes with Amalia, he has a sparkle in them. “Dos jotas,” he says.
Amalia imagines winning, giving the money right back to the synagogue instead of letting Hit Me Kid take it and spend it on video games or stickers or whatever younger kids are into. She lets her mind wander, imagines herself and Javier as Bonnie and Clyde, but instead of bank robberies, it’s games of Hispanic Jewish Bingo. Run amok. Un laberinto. Meshugas.
“Apuesta mas,” Javier says.
“Uhh, what’s he saying?” Hit Me asks the table. “Shouldn’t we not be talk—?”
“Shhhh,” Mr. Katz tells him. “Do you know how special it is to know another language?”
“Spanish is so beautiful,” the sisterhood lady says.
“Like music to the ears,” Mr. Katz says.
“That’s what I always say,” the old lady agrees.
The English is background noise, as are the other people there. For Amalia, there are just her cluttered thoughts, her racing heart, and the cards in her hand. She looks down at them, then back at Javier.
“Lo apuestas todo?” he asks. All in?
She wonders if she can cheat and still be a righteous, good person. Can she have it both ways?
All she has to do is change.
* * *
“Wait up!”
It’s Javier, come to find her in the shul parking lot. She’s a few paces from her car, keys in hand, but she turns at the sound of his voice. She expected him to come find her. He is, as always, smiling.
“Thank you,” he says. “I had fun tonight.”
After everything, Amalia is still not sure what Javier’s idea of fun is, but she accepts this as the compliment it’s meant to be. “I’m glad.”
“You surprised me there,” Javier goes on, “at the poker table.”
“That’s me. Unpredictable Amalia.”
“Why didn’t you cheat?” He is not mad as he asks this, does not lament all the money he put down that was eventually swept up by the little old sisterhood lady. He’s more curious than anything.
So, why didn’t she help him cheat? “Because a twisted tree will never grow straight.”
The smile stays on his face, even as it morphs into something more bemused.
“Cheating is stealing,” Amalia explains. “And that’s a big no-no. Ten Commandments big.”
“But it was going to go to charity.”
“Didn’t you ever learn that Halacha, that you can’t do a bad deed, even if it’s for the greater good?”
“I did learn that,” Javier says.
“Well, there you go. I was never going to cheat. That’s just not who I am.”
Javier cocks his head, his jaw catching the glare of a streetlamp. This seems like the part of the conversation where their strange paths come uncrossed. But before they can go their separate ways, there is something Amalia needs to say to him.
“I may not have cheated, but I still took your advice.”
“How so?” Javier asks.
“I could have saved Casino Night, but I let it fail. The shul probably lost a lot of money. It will be a fiasco that I will not be able to live down anytime soon.”
“You let yourself not be perfect,” Javier says appreciatively. “How does it feel?”
Amalia takes a deep breath and lets it go. She smiles. “Good.”
* * *
THE PERILS OF BEIGE
By Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson
The van hit a bump, the jolt pushing me into the seat belt. The bounce cleared some of the cobwebs of tiredness from my brain. From my spot at the very back, I could see Helen and Luke, two blond-headed kids, in the next set of seats. Their hair glowed from the dim light of the streetlights as we drove on the dark concrete roads. Helen and Luke were the teachers’ kids and were not impressed by the city, having seen them in multitudes I’m sure, since they were from the Lower 48 somewhere. They both bowed their heads over their phones. I stared out the window, clearing a bit of fog on the glass with my hand. The city for me was foreign, so different from the dusty village where I lived. Downtown Anchorage was filled with intimidating storefronts filled with expensive-looking items and tall shimmering glass buildings. Concrete was everywhere, making the world seem flat and monochromatic in the warm glow of the streetlights. It was only the third time I had even been here. The other times I had only been to the Alaska Native hospital to take care of my grandmother. We had never even left the hospital grounds, as they had small housing dorms for village patients. All I had gotten from those trips were sore feet and legs, as the concrete was painful for bodies used to a more forgiving terrain.
Beyond Helen and Luke sat Edith and Frances, first cousins who looked like twins. Or Eddy and Franky, as they liked to be called. Long dark hair, straight as nails down their backs. Same slim shoulders. Even with the more masculine nicknames, they were too pretty to be mistaken for boys. Unless you looked closely, it was hard to tell them apart. Eddy had canines that stuck out, making her look like a wolf. Franky had a rounder face and deep dimples that showed even when she wasn’t smiling. They liked it when people thought they were sisters. Indigenous girls. Exactly what you would picture if you imagined a modern Inuit girl from the Arctic. Just enough glam and just enough fur clothing and Native Power T-shirts. They giggled with each other over Franky’s phone.
Every once in a while, they would flick away their hair from their faces like you would see girls do in the movies. It was stupidly feminine, and they probably practiced for days so that it would look natural. I envied them for that. I avoided looking at my own reflection in the dark glass of the van, knowing I would see the unruly halo that was my own hair. It was too curly to properly flick away from my face. In the corner of my eyes, I saw my dark-skinned reflection staring away from me, hardly much difference in color than the night sky.
I wondered if I zoomed in to my DNA, like they do in the films they showed during biology class, if there would be a normal helix strand. Or would it be cut in half from top to bottom? I could picture in my mind a vibrant-colored helix of 3D string with ladder spokes suddenly ending in midair as it turned slowly to give the audience a full view of its missing half. No. Not quite missing... It would be ghostly and dark.
Geez, Jen. Even when you are being dramatic and sad, you are still a nerd, I said to myself.
* * *
Mr. Gertery’s voice droned on in tired annoyance. We stood around the front desk of the hotel, ignoring the desk clerk with the tired eyes. “Your room phones are disabled for phone calls. Any food delivery you order, you will have to pay at the door. After 9:00 p.m., you are not allowed to leave your rooms, and we will do a room check. You know the rules, guys—no visitors unless they are cleared with us, no leaving the hotel at all unless you are with us. Wake-up call at 7:00 a.m....” He paused so we all could groan like the well-trained zombies we were. “Breakfast is at 7:30 till 8:30 a.m., registration downstairs at 8:45. Then we break for half an hour, and then meet at the lobby and hit the malls for clothes for the competition.”
Mrs. Gertery’s head perked up, and she waved at us for some reason, probably trying to look enthusiastic about having to do clothes-shopping for a bunch of annoyed sub-adults. Our sturdy jeans, T-shirts, and dirt-stained shoes, though normal in rural Alaska, would stick out like a lump of ice in the sea of formal wear that was encouraged for the Debate and Speech competition. Our isolated village had no clothing stores, so it was decided early on that it would be easiest to buy clothes when we got here.
“Jennifer, you are rooming with Helen,” Mr. Gertery said while handing us each a key card. Helen smiled a tired smile in my direction that I tried to match. “Eddy and Franky, you’re together. Luke, you get a room to yourself.” Lucky Luke, I thought as I made my way to stand next to my roommate. She waved her card in the direction of the elevators as everyone else walked down the hall to where the vending machines were. We dragged our luggage over to the doors to stand in front of their shiny surfaces with our hands clasped in front of us like some weird sort of meditation or prayer. Helen was a senior, so we hadn’t really interacted with each other even though our school was small. Hopefully she doesn’t snore.
I did know that Helen was the reason we had a Debate and Speech team at all this year. She was really good at debate apparently, and her parents wanted her to have the competition hours for her college applications. Those hours would look good on my application, too, and maybe in a couple years I could make it out of the village and get into a good school somewhere far away. She was a teacher’s kid and had moved into the village only a couple months ago, so no one had really taken the time to get to know her from what I could tell. She seemed to mostly keep to herself. Why put in the effort? Jen thought. Teachers were mostly pretty flaky about teaching in rural Alaska. You never knew if they were going to make it through the first year, let alone if they were going to be there for your whole school career. Once, we had a teacher get off the plane, turn around, and get back on after taking a one-minute look at our humble village.
The elevator dinged, and like dutiful priests we jumped on, retreating to our separate corners, placing our luggage between us like another barrier. We pretended to look at our phones and avoided having to make small talk.
Luckily, our room was pretty close to the elevator, so we didn’t have to walk very far. Helen swiped the card across the panel, and the lock echoed in the quiet hallway. The room was a pretty good size with two large queen beds, a small desk with a chair, a loveseat, a large wall-mounted TV, and a door that led to a bathroom with a sink, a wall mirror, and even a tub. The decor was outdated in shades of earthy orange and mottled brown, but it looked and smelled clean. It felt bare. My home back in the village was full from top to bottom with things—things on shelves, things hanging on the walls, things we might need, things we got from family and friends, pictures, souvenirs, drawings, art, every award I ever got at school, trinkets and decorations of every kind. These sparse walls and blank spaces felt so empty.
Shrugging the feeling off, I walked over to the bed farthest from the door. “Mind if I take this bed?” I asked. As an answer, she flopped down on the other bed, taking off her heavy coat and boots. I did the same, taking the time to throw my ski pants, boots, and sheepskin parka into the small closet next to the door. Shedding all of the weight of my village winter gear made me feel lighter. I closed the closet door, and the scent of fur and earth disappeared from the room.
* * *
I emerged from the JCPenney’s dressing room, tugging at the clothes I had put on. The long-sleeved dress shirt in a lackluster beige tucked into my pants wasn’t too horrible to look at, but it felt foreign to me. The polyester scratched at my skin and clung to me a little too tight, making it so that I could feel the shirt every time I moved. It felt like I was wearing an octopus that kept panicking every time I shifted. The black straight-legged pants were no better and made my skin clammy. Mrs. Gertery frowned behind me, as she noticed the visible panty lines showing through the annoying fabric. I waited to see if she would say something. There was no way I was going to wear a G-string or go bare. She dove into the pile of clothing she’d picked out for me to try on and came up with a dark gray thigh-length cardigan. I put it on and was happy to at least feel a little bit less exposed. I guess I would have to get used to being sweaty and warm.
Eddy and Franky sat nearby on a bench, rolling their eyes and giggling at their phones again. They, of course, found clothes quickly enough with their slim and more socially acceptable–sized bodies. It took more time to find clothes that fit my wider frame. They had both picked clothes in muted shades of pink and green that looked good with their complexion. Mrs. Gertery had tried to get me to wear brighter colors that I must admit did look good next to my darker skin, clothes in shades of bright yellow and tropical blue. But they made me feel like I stood out too much. I had always stood out too much as is, dark skin and textured hair, so no bright clothes for me.
I stared at my short form in the mirror and tried to smooth down my hair a bit again, the movement practiced. I liked how the pants made me look taller, but I wondered if I would even have a chance to wear these clothes again after this. My mom had given me some of my college funds to buy these clothes, and I hoped it wasn’t a waste. Staring at the clothes made my stomach swirl with beige-colored anxiety.
* * *
The next day, my name showed up in the 8:00 a.m. slot. Seeing my name in stark black ink on white paper made my heart crash against my rib cage like ocean waves on the beach during a fall storm. No getting out of this now, Jen. Just get past the first round and it will be cake. But even my inner voice sounded wimpy next to the pounding waves. The rest of my team left soon after finding out the competition lineup to review and prepare for their competitions with Coach and his wife, so I would be doing my speech alone.
It was Eddy and Franky’s first competition, too. They teamed up for a try at Debate and were also doing individual speeches. Eddy had a pretty good dramatic interpretation performance, and Franky was giving it a go with a persuasive piece. Helen and Luke were focused only on Debate. This was a state competition, so most of the teams were from on-the-road systems and the bigger schools. Only a couple of the teams were from smaller villages. All of the out-of-town teams stayed in the same hotel, and a nearby school was used for the actual competitions.
Five rooms of competitions would be going on at the same time, each round lasting about two hours. Teams and individuals would be eliminated after each round. One room for Debate with two people per team, one room for Informational speeches, Dramatic Interpretation speeches, Persuasive speeches, and the like. This was my first time competing, and I had chosen to do an Informative speech. Everyone else thought they were boring and dry, but I liked them because the focus was mostly on the information and not the speaker.
The halls of the school were only half lit on the weekends to save on energy costs, even during competition, making them dim and eerie. The air in the halls was cool and smelled like heavy-duty cleaner and industrial floor wax. I found the classroom where I was competing, and taking a deep breath, I swung open the heavy door and entered the room. Without looking around, I immediately walked all the way to the back and took a seat.
