The Bean Crop

By Lisa K. Buchanan
This story originally appeared in Descant
copyright 2006by Lisa K. Buchanan
lisakb@pobox.com

      Mrs. McClellan warned us that they were arriving at school by bus, with their knives and gangs and primitive music. She said the inner city people were jealous of us with our good roads and shade trees.
      "Shade trees," somebody groaned from the back of the classroom."BFD."
      "You think bussing's no big f-ing deal?" Mrs. McClellan rebutted, gripping the podium with both hands. "Why, it's the end of freedom as we know it here at Grande Vista High."
      She sucked in her cheeks, making her face even more skeletal. No more library passes during World History, she said. We girls would go to the bathroom in pairs. She did not announce it, but I was sure that she would no longer excuse Kimberly Kincaid (alias Kimba) and me to wash her sedan in the parking lot during the study period. Security would tighten up. Local police would be standing by, but, ultimately, we students would have to protect ourselves.

      "Well, what's happening with the Wetbacks?" my father asked at supper.
      Wetbacks. Spics. It was 1974. Could he be any more out of it?
      "Beaners," I corrected. Admittedly, it was with some disappointment that even a month after the busses started arriving -- four or five every morning -- I had no gang shootings or knife fights to report. My mother posited that the school authorities kept such incidents quiet. My father pointed his thumb to his chest, and said that our ancestors came from Holland with nothing more than the clothes on their back and a willingness to work. Didn't expect a handout from anybody.
      "Then how did they pay the Indians for their land, arriving with nothing?" asked my brother, Wes, all eyelashes.
      "Our ancestors settled on U.S. soil," our father replied. He had long ago left the army, but his crew cut still gave him perky ears and a ferret face.
      "Therefore," said my brother, stroking his non-existent beard in mock-deliberation, "we hail from a line of criminal transports and indentured slaves." Soon to graduate and flee for college, Wes was more defiant than usual. My parents, in a pact to ignore their eldest and most pointdextrous offspring, ate faster.
      "Mrs. McClellan says that the Mexicans will eventually outnumber the white people in California," I offered, ever in need of making parental points.
      "Beans," my father said. "A whole new crop taking root here every year."
      "Mrs. McClellan doesn't need to teach," my mother declared. "Does it purely from her love for public education." My mother had a boundless respect for people of means, driving circuitous routes through the wide, hilly streets of the newest tract, dragging us through Open Houses with sloping lawns and grandiose swimming pools. My mother told inquiring realtors we currently lived in "Spyglass Hills," even though our house was on a flat, busy street, a half- block outside the official welcome sign. Apparently, she "pulled strings" to get Wes and me enrolled at Grande Vista High instead of our assigned school.

      "Lorna McClellan is an ignorant racist. An imbecile," my brother declared, his reddish hairline gathering sweat. "Do you suppose she's aware that Henry David Thoreau went to prison in protest of the Mexican War? Or that Abraham Lincoln denounced our invasion in 1848? Do you think she knows the tiniest fact about the Mexican students who live in this town and sit in her classrooms year after year?"
      On less flammable occasions, my parents agreed that Wes should become a lawyer. This time, however, my father put down his fork and would have given Wes the belt had my brother not defended himself four years earlier with a quick punch to the paternal gut. Instead, my father barked that we were going to an excellent school. My mother clinked the ice in her tea and asked no one in particular why "Wesley" wasn't teaching the class himself if he was so smart. My mother. Ever try watching a game show with her? She talks through the entire thing, blurts out the answers and always, always, gets them wrong.

      Hilary Cechinni's parents kept her home from school that first week in fear of roving gang members. The Yoder brothers were enrolled in a military academy. I suppose my folks were comparatively mild for merely insisting that Kimba and I walk to and from school together as we had done every day for two years anyway -- which is pretty much how parents spend their time, carping at you to brush your teeth just as you're squeezing the paste from the tube.
      Soon, it was surprisingly easy to forget about the inner-city Mexicans. They kept to themselves, mostly on a patch of underwatered grass behind the cafeteria near the dumpster. They clustered there during lunch, dancing sometimes until the school took their radios away. In the hallways they did not look at you, and you could not eavesdrop on their conversations which were in Spanish. They did not raise their hands in class or get sent to detention, but passed notes quietly to each other in the back rows. The smoky--chokey, east bathroom was Chola territory.
      Halfway into our sophomore year, Kimba got a boyfriend, Greg, who worked in a motorcycle shop and took his lunch at three o'clock so he could take her for rides in the canyon, leaving me alone for the walk home from school. I suppose Jaime Garcia had been standing there all along in the church parking lot next to the campus, stealing looks at me while he waited for his freshman sister. Charlena was usually late, but sometimes I saw her. My mother would have never let me out of the house in jeans as tight as the ones Jaime's sister wore, much less with that thick, catlike eye liner and pastel shadow. The frosty lipstick alone would have got me sent back for a wash. One afternoon Jaime shot me a bold smile. The sidewalk was lower than the parking lot and from where I stood, he looked eleven feet tall, leaning against his cruiseboat of a car, arms folded with easy confidence, a tumble of black hair grazing his shoulders. Jaime didn't go to our school; he had to be 22 at least.
      Startled, I looked away and kept walking. A conversation with a Mexican would be just the kind of thing Hilary Cechinni and her network of spies could use to smear a girl. From a distance, Hilary had all the right ingredients -- an athletic body and straight, blond hair. Up close, however, you could see her pimple-damaged cheeks and the pointed, inward-slanting teeth that made her smile a bit sharky. Guys invited her to parties and found their match at Chinese Checkers and tequila. Among girls, she was feared and admired; able to rip a reputation in four seconds flat. Once, she had seen a classmate buying lice shampoo at the drugstore. Crabs, it was published in Hilary's gossip gazette, though the girl had been sent to buy the stuff for her fourth-grade brother with an itchy head. Hilary had no gripe against the girl; the opportunity was simply too good to let slide.

      That night at the dinner table, Wes had a fight with my father and left me alone with two angry parents, eviscerating their baked potatoes in silence. Between prim bites of lamb, my mother fixed her gaze on the fish tank in the corner of the kitchen. My father stared at the table's centerpiece -- a basket of fake daisies -- to which his objections had been ignored. It was the tension I couldn't stand, that shiny, taut balloon bobbing in the breeze, eager for a pinprick.
      "A Bean Boy eyed me at school today," I said.
      At first, my parents blinked their eyes and said nothing. Then, my father threw his napkin onto the table and vowed to speak to the principal. My mother countered that it would cause talk. Fortunately for me, Wes returned to the table and distracted my parents with a continuation of his own fight. My brother came in handy sometimes, even if he was a sideburns geek who belonged to the Alps Club, drank apple juice from beer steins and hung around after school with Mr. Wissendrang, a teacher, for godsake.

      Weeks passed. Mrs. McClellan reissued library passes and allowed girls to go to the bathroom unescorted. I spent most of World History class dreaming of the babe-a-licious surfers at The Wall, our hangout in a corner of the campus. In particular, I had it bad for Mike Marchek, a flat-bellied god with blond hair and roof racks on his VW; he and I had gone around for a couple of months and then lost track of each other -- which is to say that he became suddenly aloof and stopped standing next to me at The Wall or seeking me out at parties. No warning, no explanation. Determined to win him back, I prostrated myself beneath the weekend sun to perfect my tan. When nobody else was home I had Hank, our cat, lick puddles of heavy cream from the hollow of my stomach, love training. In high-heeled boots, I went to every garage party where Marchek was likely to appear. On the night I was sure he would make his move, however, he left the party with Tammy Parlew, a rabbity looking junior who had a driver's license and lived in an apartment with her mother near the mall. Monday, Tammy came to school with a hickey the size of Texas. On further investigation, I learned that she wore a padded bra, drew purple curlicues on her cigarettes and had done it with a fireman she met at the mini-mart gas station.

      The first time Jaime Garcia offered me a ride home, I declined, afraid to be caught stepping out of a car that dripped oil on our driveway. Then I warmed to the idea, mostly because I needed to ditch the pizza delivery guy who kept coming around in his noisy green truck and asking my name. Jaime's car was wide, roomy and low to the ground. As it chugged slowly past the golf course and the fountain, I kept close to the door and did not wear the seat belt. Sniffing quietly, I failed to find the funny smell my father said Mexicans had. Up close, Jaime didn't look so godly. His broad cheekbones and a pointy, dimpled chin reminded me of an acorn; his lips were the color of grape-juice stains, framing small, straight teeth. Still, his eyes, dark and liquidy, made him sort of exotic-looking. During our five-minute ride, I looked out the window like a tourist, while he glanced between me and the road, grinning. At the corner near home, I thanked him for the lift. In his heavy accent, he told me I was pretty. "See you tomorrow," he added. Now, Marchek had said I was "pretty all-right lookin," but he would never have let a girl know he was planning to see her the next day. Unable to stop giggling, I took a roundabout path home. I had ridden in a car with a Mexican and nothing bad happened, confirmation, yet again, that my parents were wasted about anything real. Jaime drove me home the next day and the next. A week later he asked me out on a date.
      By that point, Kimba was insufferable about Greg Turner. He was 21 years old, the smartest guy in the world, an outrageous kisser. He had an apartment and a car. His stereo system was unbelievable. The guy was majoring in geology and took Kimba to the beach, not for sun or surfing, but for the rock formations. Her parents adored Greg so long as Kimba was never found on the back of his motorcycle; they had him to dinner and even let him sleep weekends on the family couch. Now, according to Kimba, surfers and garage parties were for high schoolers. I agreed, since I, too, had progressed to men. Besides, Marchek was busy making weekly depictions of the fifty United States on Tammy's neck. "Hey, West Virginia!" I scribbled on her locker one day, then, "Bumfuck, Arkansas" another time.
      "Marchek's a dawg," Kimba said. We were on our way to school and I was applying mascara at the stoplight. "Let Tammy Tummy bury her ass in the sand at 5am to watch him catch waves. Wearing her cheap little midriffs. So high school."
      Tuesday was Jaime's night off from the restaurant where he was a dishwasher, though, normally, he went to an accounting class at the community college. Tuesday was also the night of my twice-a-month meeting for Job's Daughters -- a Masonic youth group and excellent alibi opportunity -- to which Hilary's mom always drove. On the night of my date, I waited at the curb as usual, in my white Jobie robe with the white Jobie cord around my waist, white Jobie shoes on my feet. Mrs. Trombetta drove by and I gave her a neighborly wave. She lived alone and was known to be peculiar about her roses. When Mrs. Cechinni's station wagon finally pulled up, I said I was sick from the peas at dinner and had only realized it a minute ago, too late to call. Hilary, with her sly smile, knew I was up to something. When they were gone, I slipped around to our backyard where I had stashed a bag of real clothes, including my tight, new jeans. My knee bends turned out to be a disaster, however, ripping the crotch. I crept along the gully and across some other yards to the corner. Jaime was waiting, not an hour late like Marchek had been.
      I took my usual place by the door, but when Jaime patted the seat next to his thigh, I scootched closer.
      "Ahhh, bonita," he cooed at me.
      I had forgotten to remove the Jobie garland pinned to my hair.
      Reaching for the radio directly in front of me, he twined his arm in mine by expert maneuver and turned on a Hispanic station. "Know this music?" he asked.
      "Yeah, of course." My inability to find the beat by tapping my hand on the seat did not prevent me from adopting a posture of certainty.
      We were quiet until, mercifully, Jaime turned off the radio and asked me where I wanted to go.
      "Anywhere is fine," I said, leery of familiar places where I might be seen.
      He mentioned a movie I hadn't heard of. I agreed, mainly because the theater was more than ten minutes away. Even there, however, I saw some seniors from my school in the ticket line -- nobody I knew by name, but at Grande Vista, there was always someone who knew someone.
      Panicked, I pointed to the drive-in theater down the street. "Let's go there."
      "The drive-in?" He seemed shocked. "You sure? We could go eat something. I could show you where I work."
      The drive-in, I insisted.
      Talking was a struggle because I was hopelessly unable to comprehend his thickly-accented English. He said something about being tired, which, I figured out later, meant that he had borrowed his mother's car because his own had a flat. I surveyed the other parked cars --steamy windows, feet on dashboards, front seats abandoned. According to my watch, it was 7:20. Jaime's accounting teacher would be drawing numbers on the blackboard, my Jobie sisters were singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and my parents were eating lemon sherbet from the carton. I wanted to go home. It was close in the car and I grew sleepy. Inexplicably, I put my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes. A mistake. He began kissing my hair.
      "A cigarette," I said, pulling up suddenly.
      It worked at first, but before I could extinguish the stub, his mouth was on my neck. I felt nothing, lips on skin rather than a kiss. I had begun to pull away when it occurred to me that I might like a small prize to show around school; Marchek got peeved recently when a friend of his bent down to tie my shoe at The Wall. I pulled back my stretchy collar and guided Jaime's mouth to my neck. As his sucking intensified almost to pain, I imagined myself strolling by Marchek with a well-earned tattoo. When Jaime went for my mouth, however, I shied away. A game, he thought, trying again. Then, after a prolonged struggle to reclaim my hand from his zipper, I said that my head hurt and I wanted to go home. He massaged my temples for a few seconds and then tried to push his finger through the hole in my new jeans. When I insisted we leave, he was glum, but did not groan or plead -- a relief after what I knew about Chap Lip, the surfer who once got a hand job out of Kimba by claiming he would suffer "permanent testicular damage" if she denied him.
      As Jaime was dropping me off at the corner, he called me back to give me something he had retrieved from the back seat. When I turned around, however, the sharp corner of the candy box jabbed me under the eye. Jaime apologized, but it hurt. Creeping home through the bushes, I pitched the candy into the gully. Only 8:15, another hour to go. I had just changed back into my Jobie robe when my dad arrived with his flashlight and bucket to salt the garden snails. I tried to run but he caught me by the arm and pushed me against the side of the house.
      "And just what do you think you're up to, little lady?"
      I burst into tears. He dragged me around front and into the kitchen, spitting in my face with his atrocious breath as he lectured me on sneaking. I knew if I reached up to wipe the spit off, he would get even madder. My Jobie robe was wrinkled and smudged, my head garland was smashed because I had been sitting on it. I told my parents the Jobie meeting ended early but within seconds, my mother was on the phone with Mrs. Cechinni who said I had begged off sick. My parents called Dr. Northnagle at home and asked for an immediate examination. He found the "bruises and bite marks" on my shoulder, and also some scratches on my belly, which, I was not about to admit, were caused by the cat in an experiment with raw liver. Then, not only had something poked me near the eye, but I had a sore bump on the back of my head and finger-print bruises on my arm. The latter two, I did not tell my father's golf-buddy, were caused by my father shoving me against the side of the house. Dr. Northnagle told my parents there had been a struggle of some sort and they should not try to make me talk just yet.
      Still, unable to bear the silence on the way home, I blurted a story about a stranger trying to force me into his car. I had escaped, but was too humiliated to tell Mrs. Cechinni -- or anyone else.
      "Were you smoking out there on the curb?" my mother asked.
      "What did the guy look like?" my father pressed. "What color was the car?"
      "Did you scream?" she asked. "The best defense against an assailant is a blood-curdling--"
      "Did the car have any distinctive dents? A missing hubcap? A broken light?"
      I shook my head throughout the interrogation. At home, however, in the glaring light of the bathroom, when my father said that it had to have been a Wetback, I didn't have it in me to contradict him.
      My brother was still at the college library where he spent most nights until closing. From my room, I heard my parents arguing. Dad was hot to involve the police; Mom objected to having a squad car in front of our house, or worse, being seen at the station by an acquaintance who had stopped in to pay a parking ticket or file a noise complaint. At some point, I fell asleep. The next day my mother called the school and said I would be out sick for the rest of the week. Then, after her fervent pleas for discretion, she spent the entire day on the phone, warning one neighbor after another about "a sexual predator in our midst." She said our family was traumatized, but I could tell that she derived an exquisite pleasure from making the calls. "We're keeping her under close watch," my mother said. Actually, I was grounded -- no phone, no friends -- for an unspecified duration.

      On my second day of house arrest, I heard my mother outside talking to Mrs. Trombetta. Yes, our neighbor had seen me at the curb Tuesday night.
      "Smoking?" my mother inquired.
      "Goodness, no!" Mrs. Trombetta shrieked. Her beauty-parlor hair was pinkish orange and I could picture her patting it with her fingertips while she spoke. She told my mother she felt just awful, thinking back. If only she "had stopped to chat -- something people do all too seldom these days -- I might have saved her from that, that cur." Mrs. Trombetta added that she had noticed an old car at the corner that night, a dented heap like the one her housecleaner drove. And yet, Lupe was not due until Thursday. Perhaps the Yoders or Dietrichs, who also used that housecleaner, actually had the courage to ask her to park her ugly car elsewhere.
      There was a pause in the conversation.
      "Either that," Mrs. Trombetta said, "or Lupe knows about my bridge game Tuesday evenings." An appointment book splayed on the table, an overheard phonecall, a reminder note on the fridge; any housekeeper, after two years of service, could predict an absence. Thieves were everywhere, our neighbor cautioned. Nobody was to be trusted anymore, just nobody.
      "Six forty-five at night is late for a housecleaner to be here," my mother agreed. Mrs. Trombetta promised to call as soon as she "had the truth out of Lupe."

      "What the fuck is going on?" Wes demanded later in my room, after informing me it was all over school that I had done it with a Mexican in a car.
Hilary Cechinni, it had to be. Gives you an endearing little wink and then trashes you from one end of campus to the next.
      Initially, I was not about to lay it all out for my brother, but because my mother shadowed my every move, I was forced to ask him to retrieve my telltale bag of clothes from the backyard -- and spill everything.
      My brother folded his arms. "A. You are an imbecile. B. You are a lucky imbecile because I agreed to conceal this bag. C. What are you going to do?"
      "Do? What's there to do?" I said. "Mom and Dad will have their flip-out session and then it will all blow over."
      "Right. And how about clicking your heels and turning around three times? They think their daughter was attacked by a stranger. He's nineteen, you said? Ever heard of statutory rape? I'm surprised they haven't called the police."
      "Police? No way."
      "Just admit what you did," he advised. "The date got out of hand, you came home upset, and before you could tell them about it--"
      "They'd send me to boarding school."
      "Then you'd actually beat me at something," my brother replied. "I've been trying to get out of here since ninth grade."
      "It'll blow over," I said. "Just wait."
      "Don't be ridiculous. You can't just let them go after that guy. Tell them you were curious; at this point, it's your only decent quality."

      Saturday, my father sat me down after dinner.
      "Asked my buddy down at the station to look into Mrs. Trombetta's maid," he began, his molars lightly scraping in the absence of food. "Nothing official of course."
I locked my face into non-expression.
      "Seems he confirmed that the car belongs to one Lupe Garcia. Know any individuals named Garcia?"
      "No."
      "Seems as though Mrs. Trombetta's maid let her son borrow her car last Tuesday night. A date with a girl, he told her. Now, you wouldn't know Lupe's son, by chance, would you?" He checked the paper in his palm. "A man by the name of Jaymee Garcia?"
I shook my head.
      "So, never in your life have you known a Mr. Jaymee Garcia. Is that correct?" After an interminable silence, he curled two snapshots onto the table, his winning blackjack cards. The first depicted a startled Jaime in the front yard of a shabby green house, surprised by the camera. In the second, Jaime leaned obliviously against his car in the parking lot next to the school, the white church shining in the background.
      "Well?" my father pressed.
      "Don't know the guy," I said, struggling to keep back the tears.
      "That's awfully funny because he seems to know you rather well. You goddamn hussy liar!" When he slammed his hand down on the table, the last of the dinner dishes hit the floor and shattered. "See, my buddy and I paid a little visit to the Garcia household bright and early this morning. Had a talk with Lupe and her son, as I said, nothing official. This Mr. Garcia-Wetback said he gave you some rides home from school. Now, tell me that isn't true. Tell me it's absolute crap!"
      "It's crap," I said, "absolute crap."
      "She talks like a truckdriver," my mother hissed. "After all we've provided, the fancy high school, the clarinet lessons, the trips to Washington, D.C.!" My mother was revving up for her we-have-been-entirely-too-permissive routine; my father stared at me with the pair of small blue bullets beneath his eyebrows.
      "I told you, Dad, a man pulled up to the curb to ask for directions, but when I leaned down, he opened the door and tried to pull me into the car. He had a knife."
      "A knife? You never mentioned a knife before."
      "So, you think I'd just slide in willingly? You think I'm that stupid?"
      "Now, here's something curious," he pressed. "Have you ever seen a Mexican on our street? I mean, wouldn't you think that was a little odd?"
      "The car looked familiar."
      "Trombetta's," my mother chimed, thinking herself astute.
He shushed her and held up the photos again. "So this wasn't the guy, eh?"
      "I don't think so."
      "It was or it wasn't."
      "It wasn't. I mean, I don't know. I couldn't see. It was dark."
      "Lupe Garcia has been dismissed by three families," added my mother, bizarrely triumphant.
      My father let out a long sigh. "Okay, then, we have two possibilities. Either you were attacked by a stranger and can't seem to understand that we need to get this beast off the street--." He looked at me expectantly.       "Or, you're covering up for this sack o' saliva because you've got something even worse to hide. Tell me nothing went on with Mr. Garcia besides a ride home from school!"
      "Nothing."
My mother pointed a self-righteous finger at me. "Only a moment ago, she said the rides home from school were--" She paused as if the word "crap" was beneath her.
      "Butt out, Evelyn, for cryin' out loud!"
      My mother donned her pathetic, injured look and resumed sweeping up the broken dishes.
      "So," my father continued, "this creep knew where you lived and one night he caught you alone and came after you, is how I see it."
      Trapped, I pulled my knees to my forehead and rolled myself into a ball.
      "You shall spend the next two years under strict supervision," my mother asserted from her kitchen-sink pulpit. She is just the biggest loser that ever lived.

      Monday morning my father drove me to school. When I wandered out to The Wall at lunch, the first people I saw were Hilary and Tammy Tummy, the champ of hickey-statehood. The two of them looked at me with smug, close-lipped smiles. Marchek looked past me, as if searching for someone in the crowd. Later, someone had written Spic n' Slut on my locker. The next day, it was Burrito Babe, then Goin' for a Bean Dip. Then, for a complete slaughter of my dignity, my mother picked me up in front of the school every day at three o'clock. It was an awful week, but when Friday arrived, I figured I had suffered the worst of it.

      I spent my 16th birthday at home. Nobody mentioned "the incident" all weekend, but just as I was ready to walk out the door Monday morning, my father announced that he would be driving me to school again.
      "How's your French class?" he asked, turning out of the driveway. His voice was calm and I began to think he had finally softened, maybe even felt badly after the way he had badgered me. He looked tidy in his white shirt and blue tie, garments that seemed to preclude harshness. Perhaps, we were back to normal at last.
      "Hold on a minute," he said, pulling up to the curb across the street from the school. He handed me a document from his briefcase. "Just sign at the bottom."
I looked down at the thing in my lap.
      "It's a report of the incident, based on Dr. Northnagle's examination." My father's voice was calm and consoling. "Don't read it if you think it will upset you."
      I thumbed through the thirty or so pages of "herewith" and "therewith," lines numbered down the sides. The document was signed by my father's "nothing-official" friend, so I knew it could be big trouble for Jaime.
      Gently, Dad patted my hand. "Look, HoneyBee, your mother and I do our best to protect you, but it will be much easier if you cooperate in your own defense."
      I hadn't heard my family nickname in years. I thought of the time I was seven and fell off my bike in the driveway. I could have limped into the house, but my father carried me up the steps, sat me on the kitchen counter and made me laugh while he dabbed my bloody knee with disinfectant.
      "But I told you, Dad, I couldn't see."
      "So, we're back to the dark stranger, are we?" My father looked straight ahead, both hands on the wheel. "Go to school."

      Jaime's sister belonged to a small group of Mexicans and wannabes (white girls dressed like Cholas) who hung out in the quad and did not associate with students from East Los Angeles. I had finished my lunch alone on the soccer field when Charlena made a noiseless approach and knelt down in front me on the grass.
      "Please tell those men to leave our family alone," she said, in English more polished than Jaime's. "They took pictures of my brother at his work. Our mother lost her job with the agency." Charlena wore her usual countertop display of makeup, but her backpack was held together with safety pins and I had seen her same shirt on the $2.99 rack in front of the discount store. One of her front teeth bore a silver cap.
      "Our mother is crying everyday," she continued, "because if she can't find work we have to move out of our house." It struck me just then that neither Jaime nor his sister had mentioned a father. I stood up and Charlena did the same.
      "Okay, but I don't see what this has to do with me," I bristled.
      "My brother says he did nothing wrong and you're the only one who can prove it. He told me not to get involved, but--"
      "Your brother took liberties," I replied. "The guy went for it, left a hickey on my shoulder, grabbed my crotch."
      Charlena hesitated. "But you wanted the drive-in. I mean, nobody goes there for the movie."
      I shifted my weight from one hip to the other. She was right, of course. And I could tell from the way she looked around while fingering the cross that hung from her neck, she was worried about being seen with me. Was her locker being beautified as well? "Please," she said, "Jaime didn't mean anything bad. He thought you were pretty and nice and if you would just tell them--"
      "I'll think about it," I interjected, agreeing to meet her again the next day, though I had no intention of keeping the appointment.
      In chemistry class, I found another forged fuck-me note from "Jaime the Hymen-Breaker" tucked into my book. That night, Kimba phoned, but my mother forbid me to talk, so delighted was she to use haughty words like "indisposed" and "prohibited" to my callers. I went to my room early. A girl has paranoid neighbors and two freaks for parents. She goes to a drive-in with a boy and suddenly, the rest of the world is doing the vulture dance around her. Perhaps I had to do something about this mess after all. The thought was daunting at first, but I stayed up past midnight, crafting my statement that held Jaime Garcia entirely blameless of any violence against me. I didn't say anything when Wes came home and settled into bed, but I gleaned an unexpected comfort from the faint sound of him turning pages in the next room. When he shut off his light, I did the same, then fell asleep thinking about my next day's appointment on the soccer field. Charlena's eyes would soften with relief. Her silver-capped smile would stretch slowly across her face while she read my declaration. My parents would have their mutual typhoon, and Hillary Cechinni would be happier than a two-headed snake on a hamster farm. Eventually, I could wake up one morning without a two-ton slab of cement on my chest.

      At the mid-morning break, I recited my statement -- by then I knew its four sentences by heart -- to Kimba, my sole surviving friend. My classes dragged more than usual. At lunch, waiting for Charlena, I was too excited to eat my sandwich. I had checked my back pocket twice already to make sure the letter was there, and was tearing a blade of grass into ribbons, when at last I saw a lone figure moving across the field. However, it was not Charlena, but Marchek sauntering toward a distant wooden bench, his sun-bleached hair gleaming. I knew from experience that he didn't stay interested in one girl for long; I knew from Kimba that he and Tammy Tummy were in a fight. When at last he reached the bench, he looked up as though he had only just seen me, beckoning me with a toss of his chin. I made my way over to him, taking care not to appear eager. Still, no sign of Charlena.
      "Hey, girl." Marchek's voice was soft and deep, smooth as the well-waxed surface of his board. He smiled, made a place for me on the bench and offered me his soda. After a clumsy silence, I began to chatter -- annoying teachers, Chap Lip's speeding ticket, a senior in the hospital after snorting rug cleaner. Eventually, I asked Marchek if he had heard about me and Jaime.
      "You went on a date or something?" He threw his head back and closed his eyes for a long swig of soda. Personal messes made Marchek nervous.
      "He gave me a ride home from school--" I began.
"That's right, in his car. The guy tried to force you. That's what I heard."
I hesitated, then nodded my agreement, despite the letter seering my hip through my jeans pocket.
      Interpreting my discomfort as a victim's shame, Marchek pushed a strand of hair from my face and slung an arm around my shoulder. "Look, you don't have to talk about it," he said. "Don't need to prove anything to me. Really, it's okay."

      I smiled and pressed my cheek into Marchek's warm shoulder. Being liked by the right guy is like wearing an invisible shield. Hilary Cechinni's missiles would no longer penetrate, epithets would magically slide off the surface of a locker and best of all, I would be transformed from "the girl who did it with a Mexican" to "the girl who goes around with Marchek." In comparison, my earlier, bolder plan seemed extreme. While Charlena paced the field in the distance, I pulled my hair down over my face and reveled in Marchek's murky offering of sympathy and seduction. Intrigued as he might have been with my alleged sluttiness, he was never going to ask me about Jaime, anymore than he had asked Tammy about her fireman. Resting in Marchek's arms, unjudged, I convinced myself that he had saved me from an embarrassing melodrama. The four sentences would be destroyed. Marchek would leave the next party with me.

      Ten months later, Jaime Garcia is never mentioned. He no longer works at the restaurant and has signed an oath not to come within five miles of Grande Vista High or of me. My brother clocked the distance between Jaime's house and ours at 5.9 miles, but Mrs. McClellan still begged me to testify to the school board as to why Mexicans should not be bussed into the suburbs from the inner city.
      Dawg Marchek moved away, Greg Turner lives at Kimba's house and my brother has barely spoken to me since he left for college. Wes must be nauseatingly smart by now, but at least he didn't rat on me, proof that somewhere beneath his layers of dweebidity, he has an actual heartbeat. Hispanic students are still bussed from East Los Angeles to Grande Vista, the most hysterical adults are still trying to get it stopped and the students still think it is no BFD. After all, everyone knows it was the football jocks who sprayed graffiti on The Wall. But as I said in my civics class, I think it's possible for the races to get along together, provided we all keep in mind just who, exactly, was here first.