upstage the baby-fat cheeks and large ears. Back home, a girl like Alicia would’ve drawn knowing glances from the women who lingered in her mother’s gift shop. “Oh, she’ll be trouble someday,” they would say. “A real heartbreaker.” Carey knew because they’d spoken the same words about her, loud enough for her to hear. A compliment that held you in place: Pretty someday. Not now.
Lupe led the tour. The kitchen smelled faintly of rotted fruit, though it was clean, with fresh mop tracks still drying on the tile floor. The open windows had no screens. Flies buzzed around the sink drain and the metal garbage can. Gross, Carey thought, trying hard not to wrinkle her nose. She immediately felt guilty when Lupe opened her arms wide and said, Mi cocina es su cocina. Her kitchen and food, offered up to a woman she’d met a half-hour before.
“Tienes hambre ahorita?” Lupe asked. Carey was hungry. On the road Cesár had pulled over to a buffet restaurant where he had playfully sparred with the young male waiter who led the group to their tables. He knew someone at each stop; he likely had been paid to stop. But that was several hours before, and she’d only picked at the unidentifiable stews of thick red and green sauces, meats marbled with fat. What would Lupe offer? She didn’t want to risk offending her host mother. Carey shook her head and stifled a yawn. “No, gracias.”
“What do Americans think about Mexicans?” Hector wanted to know. It was the one thing he’d asked her all night.
“I don’t know,” she said in Spanish, which really meant she needed to think about it. She tilted her head, as if a script might be waiting on the ceiling. “That Mexicans are, what’s the right word, more relaxed? Because of the siesta?”
Alicia giggled. Lupe busied herself with the tea tray, and Bartolo pursed his lips as if to keep from speaking. Hector grunted and headed to the stairs, muttering about a program on TV. Carey flushed, knowing she’d said the wrong thing, and called after his retreating form, “Buenos noches.” The others ignored him.
Bartolo remained with the women in the living room, seated on the arm of a pink rosette chintz chair covered in plastic. Clearly their good furniture. But it was the kind of piece her mother laughed at when they drove by discount furniture storefronts. At Finer Things, Gwen Halpern sold a few end tables and lamps, not furniture; still, she’d point at the gaudy couches and particle-board kitchen tables and ask, Should I order that for next season?
Carey tried to smile at the expectant faces around her. She felt a pang for her father, who had checked her plane ticket three times and asked if she’d packed running shoes. Make this experience yours, he’d said. She even missed her mother’s appraising eye, constantly evaluating Carey: You could use some lipstick. At least Carey knew how to talk to them.
“Give her the present,” Lupe said to Bartolo. She and her son shared the same eyes, a deep brown, long fringe of lashes, symmetrically oval. They fit Lupe perfectly and had landed her modeling jobs when she was younger. On Bartolo, the eyes softened the rough appearance of his face. He presented her with an oblong white box, tied with a red ribbon like a valentine.
“Open it!” Alicia exclaimed, before Bartolo had even given her the gift.
“Un regalo para tí,” Bartolo said.
She thanked him and carefully pulled at one end of the bow and removed the lid. Inside, on a bed of white cotton, was a dime-sized St. Christopher medallion, thin as a communion wafer, on a delicate silver chain.
“This is lovely,” she said, and he smiled.
“It’s from the store,” Alicia said. “He works in his papa’s jewelry store.”
Bartolo’s smile left his face, returning to its neutral mask. Lupe murmured indistinguishable words and crossed herself. Carey understood Bartolo’s father was dead. She barely knew her host family and could feel their sorrow. Not quite as if the pain were her own.
How little she understood pain at that point. Bartolo and Lupe’s sadness floated from them into the air, nested in the corners near the ceiling, blended into the gold-fleck pattern of the wallpaper.
“Would you put it on me?” she asked Bartolo, holding out the necklace’s clasp and hook. She knew instinctively this was the right question, though she’d never received jewelry from anyone but her parents. The necklace was a gift from the whole family, even Hector, who watched TV upstairs, the sound filtering through the ceiling. But it was clear Bartolo picked, bought, and wrapped the medallion.
He silently took the ends of the necklace in each hand, and reached around her from the front. “Tu pelo,” he said, and she lifted up her hair. He fastened the necklace. His aftershave smelled like spiced pears. He held his breath, his face flushing a purplish red, and Carey tried not to stare at his scars. He stepped back, making room between them.
“It is for luck,” he said.
When she smiled and nodded, he said it once more: “For luck.”
Carey touched the necklace at her throat when she reached the auditorium entrance on the first day of class. La Universidad Intercambio was once a private high school that now accommodated college exchange students. The program attracted more than 100 students from across the United States. In the auditorium, a brief flash of middle school who-will-I-sit-with anxiety entered her mind, and she willed it to disappear. So it did.
She surreptitiously searched for Ben. The seats were filling quickly, so she slid into a plush red aisle chair near the back. She looked up “relaxed” in her Spanish-English dictionary. Clearly, she’d said something wrong when Hector asked what Americans thought of Mexicans. She hadn’t said relajado or tranquilo, two of the words listed, and her heart sank. She paged to the back for the Spanish word, flojo. Lazy, read the entry. Flojo also could mean weak, a poor worker. Hector had risen early to work at the bank, and Lupe left an hour later for her part-time job at a women’s clothing shop. Carey wanted to cry; instead she distracted herself with pulling a spiral notebook and black pen from her shoulder bag. She placed them on her lap. She’d spent fifteen minutes that morning arranging her hair in a haphazard-looking twist. She touched it to make sure it was still intentionally out-of-place.
She’d slept lightly the night before, not only because of her uneasiness regarding Hector and vocabulary. Alicia kept her up for an extra hour in their shared bedroom. For all her teenage posturing, Alicia remained a young girl. Her bed held more than a dozen stuffed animals.
“I have always wanted a sister,” Alicia had whispered across the darkened room to Carey.
“Me, too,” Carey said, though she was just being polite. She loved being an only child: the attention and parental fussing, and also the way she was left alone. Her parents protected and cocooned Carey, unintentionally isolating her, teaching her how to isolate herself. Her bedroom and private bath were upstairs, the master bedroom downstairs. She loved her space, and they loved knowing where she was. Which made the Mexico trip something of a surprise.
As she had campaigned, the trip took on qualities of a dare: perhaps she and her parents both wished to cancel the nonrefundable tickets. Even if the thought was fleeting, no one would admit to it. Instead, they over-planned. They fought over embassy advisories, concerns about drinking water, even the proper suitcase and clothing. But the arguments fizzled easily enough. The Halperns wanted to be open-minded, despite their many misgivings about sending their daughter to a third-world country. Carey was shoving herself out of the nest.
Growing up, she spent most of her time with her parents. The Halpern trio went to dinner and concerts, like peers. Once Carey reached college, they’d let her order wine at restaurants, even though she was not yet twenty-one. But sometimes she felt like a party-crasher. When they went out to dinner and she was too old for a babysitter, she made up games that only needed one player, or would fill the roles of both competitors in a game of checkers. Once, they had returned from a party to find twelve-year-old Carey playing a four-person Monopoly tournament by herself.
“I’ll be the boot,” Gwen had offered, slipping off her black kitten heels. Brian smiled, distracted, before going into his study. Even when he wasn’t working, he was working. Billing hours.