Lives of the Saints

by Yvette DeChavez

Two weeks before my twelfth birthday, Dad came home smelling like another woman’s perfume. I was on the phone with my best friend Cecilia when he stepped inside, and the stench of sweet vanilla and something sharp, like rubbing alcohol, burned my nose.

“I gotta go,” I said into the receiver.

Without waiting for a response from Cecilia, I put the phone back in its cradle. Almost immediately, my head started to hurt, partly because of the perfume itself and partly because Mom would also eventually smell it. I said a quick hello to Dad and ran to the living room where I’d be out of the way.

“Enough,” Mom shouted when she smelled him. I could hear the clap of her bare feet across the tile as she stomped away. “Get out of here, Rogelio. Get the fuck out of my life.”

I turned on the television and raised the volume to drown out their voices, not that it really helped. It was the same old fight: other women, no money, it’s over, it’s been over. And then, a few minutes later, I heard the front door slam and peeked through the blinds to see Mom carrying black trash bags full of Dad’s stuff. One at a time, she dumped them into the back of his beat-up Ford truck. This wasn’t the first time she’d sent him away, but she’d never actually packed his bags.

As I watched the two of them talking outside, sweat dripped down my armpits and along my sides. September was usually pretty warm in Angelitos, but that year was worse than ever. On the news, the weather guy kept using the phrase “unprecedented temperatures” while warning people to stay inside. Outside, everything was dying. Even the cacti in our front yard were on their last leg. Mom tried to save the prickly pears by watering them every day when she got home from her new job as a secretary, but that just made it worse. The paddles turned from green to yellowish brown. I’d taken to digging my fingers into their squishy wounds, doing my best to avoid the spinas. I liked the gooiness of the plants’ rotten insides, like snot. It was comforting, even though they smelled like feet.

I saw Dad climb into the driver’s seat of the truck and ran outside. He rolled down the window, and I could still smell the perfume.

“Be good, Ximena.” He held my face in his hand. Everyone said Mom and I looked alike, with the same dark curly hair and pecan-colored eyes, but Dad and I had matching long eyelashes. His had a couple tears caught in them as he shifted into reverse. I waved goodbye once more and stood at the curb to watch him drive away. The fumes from the truck hovered in the air like a swarm of summer mosquitoes.

When Mom came back inside, she went straight to the bathroom and shut the door, but I could still hear the muffled sounds of her crying. My head finally started to feel a little better, though I felt a strange kind of sad come over me, like I could sleep for two days. I’d listened to my parents fight basically my whole life, and all the yelling made it hard for me to do anything. A few days earlier, while they were in the middle of another argument about bills, I finally yelled back at them. I threw the Sweet Valley High book I was reading to the floor and said “Shut up, both of you” in my loudest voice. I thought I’d get sent to my room, but instead, they just stopped talking for the rest of the night. For a second, I wondered if that was what made Mom kick Dad out.

I wanted to call Cecilia back, but we only had one phone, and it was in the living room where Mom could hear me. Cecilia and I told each other most things. I knew about the time she peed her pants at her old school, and when, last year, her Dad pinched her arm because she was making fun of her little sister’s lisp. I told her about how much it annoyed me to hear my grandma chewing food, and how I wondered if the nuns and priests at school ever had sex. When my parents fought, I’d tell Cecilia about that, too, even though Mom always reminded me that no one else needed to know our business. But I had to tell someone, and that’s what best friends were for.

. . .

For the next hour, I laid in bed staring at the fan above me. The wires connecting it to the ceiling were visible, and it hung crooked, as if it might snap off at any Moment. I watched the blades spin in wobbly circles, and its wandering rhythm lulled me to sleep.

I’d just closed my eyes when Mom knocked. Lately, she’d been letting me close the door to my room and asking permission to enter. It started right around the time we’d redecorated it, swapping out the babyish pink and white hand-me-down furniture from my cousin Nicole for a new set we found at the Goodwill. She’d called it a lucky find. I liked that the darker wood matched my hair.

“Come in,” I said.

She entered, and her face was puffy from crying.

“Listen,” she said. The bed creaked as she took a seat next to me and remained still. In the silence, I could hear the steady yap of our neighbor’s chihuahua. Finally, Mom continued. “Your Dad and I, we’re getting a divorce.”

It was almost a relief to hear, the rumbling ground I’d lived on forever now finally standing still for a Moment.

She grabbed a tissue from her pants pocket and twisted it in her hands. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me? You can, you know.”

As soon as she asked that, the rumble began again. Where would Dad live? Would we be even broker now that he wasn’t around? Would we have to move? But instead of asking anything of my own, I shook my head. “Maybe later,” I said. The questions swirling in my mind became like the crooked fan spinning me into a fog. I just wanted to sleep.

“The thing is, sweetheart,” she cleared her throat. “I need you to keep this to yourself for now.” Little particles from the tissue she held floated onto my bed like ash. “I need some time to sort things out.”

It was the same thing she always said, that our town was small and our neighborhood smaller. Keep it quiet. Gossip spread like fire on piñon trees here. Still, whenever I kept secrets to myself, I felt a gnawing pain in my stomach, like the secret itself was poison inside me waiting to come out.

“Of course I won’t say anything,” I told her. But behind my back, I locked my fingers in a cross.

As Mom continued to talk about what would happen in the next few weeks, I imagined how I would describe it all to Cecilia.

. . .

When Cecilia Rodriguez showed up to St. Ignatius Elementary and Middle School two years earlier, I knew we were going to be friends. And it wasn’t just because she was immediately popular since her Dad was our church’s new deacon. She walked in with a bright yellow Tweety Bird lunchbox, the same one I’d asked for when I saw it at K-mart, though Dad said it was too expensive. Our teacher Mrs. Covarrubias assigned Cecilia to my table. She sat down and smiled at me, and I could see two silver teeth shining in her mouth like new coins. I’d just gotten a silver tooth of my own, so I was excited.

“I like your teeth,” I told her. And that was all it took. Mrs. Covarrubias made us choose partners for our big project on the life of a saint, and Cecilia and I chose each other. My Dad took us to the tiny Angelitos Public Library and we worked together on the project for a few hours. There weren’t a ton of books on saints available, thanks to the other kids in class who’d already checked them all out. In the end, we put together a report about St. Lucy, patron saint of the blind, because it was the only book we could find. I drew a picture of St. Lucy for the cover, including the silver platter she always carried with two loose eyeballs on it. When we had to present our work to the class, Cecilia did most of the talking. I was grateful for that. We were a good team, everyone said. And we’d stuck together as one for the last two years.

. . .

The sick feeling in my stomach stuck around all weekend. The first chance I got at school on Monday, I told Cecilia about my parents. It was after lunch, during recess, which was shortened from twenty minutes to ten because of the heat. Our school didn’t have a gym, so recess and PE were both spent outside on the fenced-in gravel basketball court. That meant there were always lots of scraped knees and bloody elbows that the school nurse Sister Lupita covered in an orange antiseptic we called monkey’s blood. Now that we were almost in middle school, though, Cecilia and I spent recess talking on the bleachers and left the running around to the little kids.

“My parents are getting a divorce,” I blurted out as soon as I was sure no one else could hear. We were in the middle of folding fortune tellers from notebook paper. Cecilia’s eyes widened and the amber flecks in them sparkled like fireworks.

“Oh no,” she said. “Are you sad?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Kinda? Maybe it’ll be quieter now.”

Dad had called every night since leaving, his voice higher than usual. He said his new place would be “not too far but just far enough.” As soon as he figured things out, I could start spending the night. He didn’t ask about Mom at all.

I handed Cecilia a perfectly folded fortune teller. She pulled out a black Crayola marker from her pocket, hunched over on the bleachers, and got to work writing all the possible futures inside the flaps.

“Sometimes I wish my parents would get a divorce,” she said. “Like if my Dad lived down the street instead of in our house, I would like that. You know, the other day, he told me my stomach was getting fat from all the cookies I eat?” She sat up and held her belly with both hands, but there was barely anything between her fingers.

I clenched my teeth to avoid saying anything bad about her Dad. Deacon Rodriguez was also the St. Ignatius boys’ basketball coach, and he looked like he lifted weights every day. Whenever I stayed at their house, I wasn’t allowed to put sugar on my cereal, even though at home Mom and Dad let me.

“He could live at the church,” I said. “Only thing they have there are those nasty communion wafers and wine.” My mouth went dry just thinking about them.

Cecilia chewed on her bottom lip, a thing she did when she was thinking really hard.

My Dad had his problems, but at least he was nice. When I complained about not having cable like the rest of the kids at school, he put on one of his mechanic shirts, climbed the telephone pole in our backyard, and connected us to the cable line so I could finally watch all the Nickelodeon shows. I couldn’t imagine Deacon Rodriguez doing something like that. Every time I saw him, he shook my hand like I was a grown man instead of a kid. He practically crushed my bones with his grip. When Cecilia complained about him being mean to her and her sister and yelling at her Mom until she cried, I mostly just listened or told her that I’d always be her friend no matter what.

But what I really wanted to say was that being around her Dad made my skin itch, and that I hated how we had to call him Deacon Rodriguez all the time.

“Anyway, pick a color,” Cecilia said, her fingers locked into the flaps of the fortune teller.

“Please don’t tell anyone any of this,” I said, while pointing to my favorite color, purple.

Cecilia shrugged. “You always say that.” She spelled out purple, pinching and pulling the paper between her fingers with every letter. “Pick a number.”

“Seven,” I said. “A holy number.” It was a phrase the nuns at school used that made me laugh every time even though I didn’t really understand what it meant.

Cecilia rolled her eyes and unfolded the paper to reveal my fortune.

“You’re going to marry a handsome man.”

“Gross,” I said. “I’m never getting married.”

. . .

On my birthday, it rained all morning long. Dad had been gone for two weeks and, even though he’d already called to say happy birthday, everything felt off. It was like I was walking around with only one sock on. Luckily, Cecilia was coming over for a sleepover, and preparations were a decent distraction. Mom and I spent the morning shopping for party supplies at the grocery store.

“We’ve got twenty dollars to last us to payday,” she said. “Make it count.”

I put back the packages of Snickers and Skittles since we were already making cupcakes and went with a couple frozen pizzas instead. When we got home, we listened to old records on the ancient stereo Mom and Dad got as a wedding present. While I emptied the box of funfetti cupcake mix in a bowl, Mom shook her hips to “Da Doo Ron Ron” and squeezed drops of pink food coloring into some homemade frosting. The entire house smelled warm and sweet.

“Turn the volume up,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows at her. “You’re in a good mood.”

“There’s lots to celebrate,” Mom said. “It’s my baby’s last year before becoming a teenager. The temperature is cooling down. I’m liking my new job. We’re doing good.” She licked frosting off her fingers and washed her hands in the sink.

It was weird the way we didn’t talk about Dad not being around for my birthday, like if we didn’t mention him, neither one of us would think about him. It wasn’t working, at least for me. I wanted to cry remembering the year before, when I turned eleven and the three of us went to the carnival together. We rode the Ferris wheel and chased each other around in bumper cars, me and Mom in one and Dad in the other. I hit another car so hard that I ended up with a crick in my neck, but I still asked to ride again and again. When we got home, though, Mom and Dad ended up fighting about something.

. . .

Mrs. Rodriguez dropped off Cecilia around five. Unlike Cecilia, Mrs. Rodriguez was quiet, and whenever she did speak, instead of looking at you, she looked all around like someone could be listening in at any Moment. Even though they acted differently, she and Cecilia looked just alike. Same full lips, light brown hair, and long skinny legs. Their eyebrows were two pale feathers just above their eyes. Cecilia’s little sister Tina more closely resembled Deacon Rodriguez, short and a thick waist, like a kitchen chair with cut-off legs.

Cecilia and I stood at the door while Mom and Mrs. Rodriguez chatted for a second.

“Hector had a meeting at the church this afternoon,” Mrs. Rodriguez told my Mom. She was holding an umbrella even though it wasn’t raining anymore. Behind her, Tina waved from their Buick. “I really wish I could stay and chat, but I gotta run. Let’s plan for a phone call soon?” Her bob bounced around as she looked over her shoulders to see if anyone could hear, but besides us and Tina, there was no one else in sight. She leaned in towards Mom and narrowed her eyes. “Really, though. I mean it.” Her voice was nearly a whisper.

“Of course,” Mom said in her normal voice. “Whenever you’re free.”

Mrs. Rodriguez stood up straight. “Great,” she said. Then, she looked at me and Cecilia like she’d forgotten we were there in the first place. “You girls have fun.” She pulled Cecilia in for a kiss on the cheek.

Before the door closed, Cecilia and I were already halfway to my room.

That night we had a karaoke competition, singing Ace of Base songs into my hairbrush. There was no one else around to judge us, so we had to be as fair as possible in deciding who sang better. It was easy to tell who the winner was, though. When Cecilia sang, it was like she became a different person. She tossed her hair around, pumped her fist in the air, and closed her eyes like the words pained her. Compared to Cecilia, I sounded terrible, but she still told me I did a good job. After that, we ate pizza and the homemade cupcakes, and finally I got to open presents. Just when I thought I’d finished opening everything, Mom got up from the table.

“Wait, there’s one more gift,” she said. She went to her room and came back with a plastic shopping bag. “I didn’t have a chance to wrap this one.”

I reached in and pulled out a box that held a set of books: Women Saints for Young Catholic Women. Each thin paperback was numbered and had a different drawing on the cover: Teresa of Avila with a pen in her hand, Catherine of Sienna holding a book, St. Bernadette kneeling and hands clasped in prayer. On the inside, Mom had written my name on the upper left-hand corner of every book in her perfect cursive, Ximena Flores, the curls of the letters like little petals.

“These were real girls who went through hard things,” Mom said. “Grandma gave me a book about saints when I was your age, and I loved it. But these are so much better.” She held one and skimmed through the pages. “With all your reading, I thought you might like these.”

“Thank you, Mom,” I said. I was disappointed to see that the surprise gift wasn’t the pink Casio watch I’d asked for, but I should’ve known it would be some random religious thing I didn’t really want. She did the same thing last year with the St. Anthony necklace I now wore every day. When I couldn’t find something around the house, like my favorite pencil or my uniform shoes, I held the necklace between my fingers and prayed to St. Anthony to help me find it. Sometimes it even worked.

. . .

I was half asleep when I heard Cecilia whisper, “Ximena, you still awake?”

“Barely,” I said. Cecilia always smelled like Jergens lotion, and the sweet cherry and almond fragrance practically filled up my whole bedroom.

“I was just thinking,” she said.

“About what?”

“My Tía Bernice. She’s my Dad’s sister who lives in El Paso.” “What about her?” I asked.

There was a long silence. “A couple years ago, she got divorced and couldn’t get communion anymore,” she said. “The whole family stopped speaking to her.”

I could feel my face burning so red I almost believed Cecilia might see it glowing in the dark. I sat up, fully awake.

“So?” I asked.

“Well, my Dad says divorce is a sin.”

I stayed quiet. I’d been too worried about what kids at school would say about my parents getting divorced to even consider what God might think.

“I wouldn’t want my parents to get divorced,” she whispered. “I changed my mind.”

“So far it’s really not that bad,” I said, trying to hold tears back.

I waited for her to respond, but she didn’t say anything. A few minutes later, I could hear the in and out of her breaths as she slipped off to sleep.

After that, I couldn’t fall asleep no matter what I did. I turned on my side, my stomach, my back. Nothing. My head was spinning. When I shut my eyes, all I could see were the reds and yellows and oranges of the fires of hell waiting to swallow up my parents. And when my eyes were open, all I could think about was what Cecilia had said. The shame I felt replaying her words in my mind made me sweat under the covers. It wasn’t like I wanted my parents to break up either, not really. I wanted to be like the families on tv, where the Mom and Dad worked through problems, no big deal, and then got ice cream with their kids after. At school, no one ever talked about these things. I couldn’t think of anyone in my class who had divorced parents. There were people who’d never met their Dads, or had Dads in jail, or Dads who lived in Mexico, but not divorced. And in church, it was all about how the sacraments were serious commitments and how God intended for marriage to last a lifetime. Half the time it was Deacon Rodriguez saying those things, but until now, none of it really mattered to me. Now it felt like there was a sinner’s spotlight coming down straight from God, and it was shining directly on my family.

. . .

Deacon Rodriguez showed up earlier in the morning than expected to pick up Cecilia. We were in the middle of eating tacos with the fried potatoes Mom knew I liked when he knocked at the door. Mom and I jumped a little, and Cecilia immediately sat up straight.

He walked into the house with a stiff face and poked his head around the place like he was inspecting for bugs. He offered his hand to Mom and then to me. I tried not to make a face when he did his vice-like grip.

“Can I offer you a taco?” Mom asked.

“No, thanks,” Deacon Rodriguez said. He sniffed the air. “Smells like grease in here.”

Mom let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Cecilia, honey, why don’t you get your things together?”

I helped Cecilia shove all her stuff into the overnight bag she brought with her. She glanced over at my saint books and picked up one.

“Can I borrow this?” she asked.

It was book number five, the one about St. Cecilia. On the cover, St. Cecilia sat in front of a piano with her head turned down like she was playing the saddest song ever composed.

I had a feeling Cecilia was going to ask for it, since she’d been eyeing it the night before. I hated lending books out. They always came back with the pages bent and cracks in the spine, if they came back at all. I’d complained to Cecilia before about how my cousin Nicole still had the copy of Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret I let her borrow forever ago.

“You promise you’ll give it back? Swear on your sister?” I asked.

“Duh,” she said. “Anyways you got all the other books to read for now.”

It was hard to say no to her. Plus, there were no saints with the name Ximena, but if there were, I knew I’d want to read about them, too.

I sighed. “Okay. But don’t bend the pages. Read it like this.” I took the book from her and gently opened it, running my fingers through the pages like they were made of tissue paper. “See, gently.”

“I know how to read a book, ding dong.”

When we walked back to the living room, Mom was cleaning up in silence while Deacon Rodriguez stood in the hallway with his arms folded. His mouth was a thin line across his face.

“All set?” he asked, and grabbed Cecilia’s bag. “We have to get to church.”

Cecilia looked at me and sighed. She’d been hoping she could get away with not going to church that weekend. Usually Mom and I went to noon mass, but since it was a special occasion, we hadn’t planned on going at all. Cecilia, on the other hand, sometimes went two or three times in one weekend.

I stood behind Mom in the entryway and waved goodbye to Cecilia. Just as Mom was about to shut the door, Deacon Rodriguez stopped it with his free hand.

“How do your parents feel about you getting divorced?” he asked.

Mom looked as though he had just walked in on her using the bathroom. I looked over at Cecilia, and she dropped her head.

“Excuse me?” Mom asked.

“They’re good Catholics. I see them in mass regularly, and they are devoted to the church. This must be very hard for them.” He spoke as though he was up on the altar giving a homily, each word slow and deliberate like God was holding score cards, waiting for the slightest error.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Mom said.

“Actually, as an ordained minister of the church, it is my business. I have a responsibility to look after the parishioners of St. Ignatius, which includes you and Rogelio.”

It always sounded weird when someone called my parents by their first names. It was like they became people with lives instead of regular old Mom and Dad.

“Well I appreciate your concern,” she said. But it didn’t sound like she meant it. “Enjoy mass.” It didn’t sound like she meant that either.

Deacon Rodriguez flashed a smile, and Mom shut the door on him.

She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. “You told Cecilia?” 

I felt my insides flip like I was upside down on a rollercoaster. Tears came to my eyes before I even had a chance to speak.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit. Now he’s gonna tell the whole damn world.”

“She said she wouldn’t tell anyone,” I said.

Mom’s face was bright red. “Kinda like how you said you wouldn’t tell anyone?”

That made the tears come even harder. I ran to my room and slammed the door shut. For the first time since Dad left, I didn’t try to keep myself from crying. I let the tears and the snot mix together in one nasty mess on my pillow.

I was in my room for a while before Mom opened the door, this time without knocking. She came over to me and pulled me in for a hug.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This isn’t about you.” While she held me, she rubbed my back in slow circles. “I always knew there was something I didn’t like about that guy.” I could feel her shaking her head. “Imagine, in this day and age, giving a shit about someone getting divorced.”

“But we’re Catholic,” I said. “Isn’t it a sin?”

She held me by my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “We’re not those kinds of Catholics. We don’t believe in things being as simple as that.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but it sounded profound to me. Mom had grown up going to St. Ignatius, too, and she even went to Catholic high school, the same one I’d go to when it was my turn. We had crosses on the walls and said the Bless Us, Oh Lord prayer before meals, but, if I really thought about it, we didn’t talk too much about sinning. It made me feel better to think that whatever kind of Catholics we were, it wasn’t the type to care so much about what was a sin and what wasn’t.

. . .

At school that week, things were weird between me and Cecilia. When Dad picked me up on Wednesday for a few hours to show me his new apartment, I didn’t even bother telling Cecilia about it the next day.

“How’d it go with your Dad?” she asked. We were outside waiting for our parents to pick us up after school.

The image of Dad’s place flashed in my mind. The outside looked dirty, like sidewalks after it snowed when no one bothered to clear them. Inside wasn’t much better. The living room had nothing but a couch and a small tv on top of a nightstand. Dad’s work toolbox with all the stuff he used to fix cars was in front of the couch like a table. It smelled as though a hundred families had lived there before him, like dirty hair and food I never wanted to taste. “Busted,” is how I imagined describing the scenery to Cecilia. I could see her shaking her head, her nose shriveled up in disgust. Except I no longer felt like I could trust her. The last thing I wanted was for her to tell everyone about Dad’s new crappy apartment.

So instead I just smiled.

“It was fine,” I said and we waited in silence until Mom pulled up.

Before falling asleep later, I read my saint books in bed. I’d already skimmed most of them, but still hadn’t found a saint who’d gotten a divorce, even though Mom said there were definitely some who did. Mostly, all I found in the pages were stories of young girls who were willing to do just about anything for their faith. St. Agatha wanted to stay a virgin for God, and when she refused to marry someone, they cut off her breasts. Same thing with St. Agnes–she didn’t want to marry anyone, so boom, beheaded, just like St. Lucy, except Agnes got to keep her eyes.

I was confused. I could be like these girls, good Catholics who never got married, and still die a terrible death. Or I could get married, hate my husband, and live a terrible life. I thought the books would make me feel closer to God, but instead, they scared me.

. . .

The next night, right before Dad was about to pick me up for my first full weekend with him, I came out of the shower to hear Mom on the phone in the living room. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, but I could tell the conversation was serious. She was hunched over in the rocking chair, holding the phone to her face with both hands. Still in my towel, I crouched down a few feet away in the kitchen and strained to hear.

“I already told my lawyer you’d be coming in,” Mom said. “He’s cheaper than any of the other divorce lawyers I talked to. And he just moved here, so he doesn’t know anyone in town.” Silence, and then Mom continued, “Sure, people will talk, but they’re always talking about something or other. It’ll be old news in a couple of weeks.”

If I listened hard enough, I could hear the crackle of a voice on the other end of the line but I couldn’t make out who it was or what they were saying. After a few seconds of crackling, Mom spoke again.

“Hey, that was the hardest part for me, too. But everything I’ve read says that this is what’s best for our daughters down the line. What’s worse, seeing their parents fight every day, or seeing their Mom stand up for herself?” She started to choke up. “One day, Tina and Cecilia are going to look back and see how strong you were.”

Mrs. Rodriguez. She was talking to Cecilia’s Mom. Before I could stop myself, I gasped. Mom snapped her head around and saw me. Her eyes were round as globes.

She covered the receiver with her hand. “I thought you were in the shower,” she said over the static of Mrs. Rodriguez’s voice. “I just got out.”

She uncovered the phone and spoke quickly, cutting off Mrs. Rodriguez. “Uh huh, yes. Exactly. Hey, Esther, I’m sorry to be so abrupt, but can I call you back? Okay, well then I’ll see you this weekend.” As soon as she hung up, Mom marched over to me in the kitchen and put her hands on her hips. “So what all did you hear?”

“Something about a lawyer and a divorce.”

Mom cocked her head to the side and watched me like she wasn’t sure what to do with me.

“Are Cecilia’s parents getting a divorce?” I asked.

“Listen, this is grown up stuff. It’s none of your business.”

“Well it’s too late now. I heard it,” I said. “Will they kick Deacon

Rodriguez out of the church?”

“I don’t think it works that way,” she said. “I doubt it. Anyway, that’s not your problem.”

Before I had a chance to say anything else about it, I heard Dad honking outside.

“Better hurry up and get dressed,” Mom said and waved me off.

. . .

All weekend long, I thought about Cecilia’s parents getting a divorce. Instead of feeling sick about it, like I usually did with secrets, there was a buzz in my body. It was as if I was walking through a haunted house, feeling scared and full of energy at the same time. I sat in Dad’s living room with my ankles up on the toolbox turned table and imagined Cecilia and I both complaining about our dads’ apartments. I’d moan about not having cable again, and she’d whine that Deacon Rodriguez made her eat broccoli all weekend. As I gathered my list of complaints and imagined her responses, I realized the truth: a part of me was happy her parents were getting divorced. Out of guilt, I called Cecilia to smooth things over between us. The phone rang twice before her Dad answered.

“Hi, Deacon Rodriguez. May I speak to Cecilia?”

“She’s busy.” His voice was low and serious, like I’d caught him in the middle of a funeral.

Right as I started to say “Can you tell her Ximena called?” I heard a click and the bleak drone of the dial tone in my ear.

While I waited for Dad to pick up dinner for us, I read the book about St. Maria Goretti. Turned out that when she was right around my age, someone attacked her and then stabbed her a bunch of times. And somehow, on her deathbed, she managed to forgive him. Something about the story stayed with me for the rest of the night. I decided right then and there to stop being angry at Cecilia for hurting me. I vowed to be like St. Maria Goretti: I’d forgive.

. . .

When Dad dropped me off at home Sunday night, Mom was in the kitchen putting dishes away. She slammed the cabinets harder than seemed necessary, moved to the next cabinet, and slammed that one, too.

I sat down at the dining table and watched her through the half wall into the kitchen.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. She spit the word out fast, and I could tell she was lying. “Did you have a good time?”

I shrugged. “It was okay. We went to the movies and saw Dumb and Dumber.”

“What the hell?” she said. “That’s not a movie a kid should be watching.”

“It wasn’t that bad. I’m almost a teenager, remember?”

Mom shook her head. “And his apartment? What was it like?”

I hesitated to tell her the whole truth, in case she decided it wasn’t nice enough for me to go back there again. As much as the place made me squirm, at least I got to see Dad.

“It was…” I tried to find a nice word to describe it. “Cozy.”

The whole time I was talking, Mom seemed annoyed. She started washing the dishes by hand, scrubbing the same plate over and over. The sound of the sponge scraping against it sent shivers down my spine.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked.

Mom turned off the faucet and tossed her yellow kitchen gloves to the side. She closed her eyes and rubbed the sides of her head.

“It’s just an adjustment, you being gone. Everything is an adjustment right now.”

“It’s an adjustment for me, too,” I mumbled.

“What’d you say?”

I looked her in the eyes and held my breath for a second before speaking. “It’s not easy for me either.” I swallowed tears.

She shook her head. “Shit. I know, honey.” She sighed and picked up a towel to dry the dishes. “Tell me what else you did. What’d you eat?”

I knew she’d hate hearing that I mostly ate from a package of powdered donuts, so I left that part out. “We got takeout from the Mexican place down the street from him.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “Well that’s good.”

It didn’t seem like she was paying attention to what I was saying, so I didn’t bother to add anything else. She was almost finished putting the dishes away before she finally spoke again.

“Hey, you didn’t by any chance talk to Cecilia while you were at your Dad’s, did you?”

“No, why?” I asked.

“Well, you know Esther–I mean Mrs. Rodriguez–and I had plans to meet this weekend, but I never heard from her.”

I thought about Deacon Rodriguez’s gruff voice on the other end of the phone when I called and tried to remember if I heard anyone else in the background.

Mom cleared her throat. “Maybe she had something come up at the church.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what happens when you’re the Deacon’s wife,” I said.

Mom laughed under her breath and slammed another cabinet.

. . .

The next day at school, I was ready to follow through with my plan of smoothing things over with Cecilia, but she didn’t speak to me the entire morning. There wasn’t much opportunity, so I figured it was a fluke, even if I couldn’t stop my leg from shaking with anticipation under my desk. Our teacher Sister Patricia was upset because we’d all done poorly on the last math exam. She acted like she was insulted, and waved her arms all over the place while explaining the value of fractions in our lives. We spent what seemed like forever going over and over the answers. When Cecilia ignored all my attempts to get her attention, I tried to stay calm by telling myself she’d probably done really poorly on the test. Math was never her strongest subject. But during lunch, it was the same. I saved her a seat, like normal, and when she came out from the lunch line, I called her name.

“Hey, Ceci. I saved you a place.”

Nothing. Even though it was cold inside the cafeteria, a wave of heat rolled over me. I tried calling her again, this time louder, but still nothing. She didn’t even make eye contact with me. Instead, she walked right past me with her tray and took a seat next to the twins, Mirna and Valeria, even though Cecilia had always called them weird.

After that, I couldn’t eat my food. It was a real bummer, too, because it was chalupa day, and those were my favorite. The thirty minute lunch felt like two hours, and I watched the beads of condensation drip down my milk carton one by one. Even though I tried to forget about Cecilia, I couldn’t help myself and looked over at her, Mirna, and Valeria. They were all looking right back at me, six eyeballs blinking like camera shutters.

I spent recess alone on the bleachers. It was finally cool enough so that we were back to our normal twenty minutes, but each one was excruciating. It felt more like waiting in line for confession than recess. Right before it was time for Sister Patricia to blow the whistle for us to head back inside, Cecilia marched up to me.

“Here’s your book back,” she said, and held out the book about St. Cecilia. Before I could thank her, she turned around to leave.

“Hold up,” I said.

She pivoted on her heel, half facing me, half ready to bolt.

“Why’d you ignore me in the cafeteria? I shouted your name.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I was practically next to you.”

Cecilia gave a quick shrug as if to say it was no big deal.

“Are you mad at me or something?” I asked.

“No,” she said. She pushed away strands of hair from her eyes. “It’s not that.”

“Well then what is it?”

She chewed on her bottom lip. Her eyes darted around the basketball court, like she was looking for someone to rescue her. “I can’t hang out with you anymore.”

“Says who?” I asked.

“Says my parents,” she said. “And I can’t come over to your house anymore.”

I felt like I had to use the bathroom. Sweat formed above my upper lip, and I quickly wiped it away.

“That’s stupid,” I said. “You’re my best friend.”

“There’s rules, you know. And my Dad says we follow them and you don’t.” There was something about the way she folded her arms in that Moment that reminded me of Deacon Rodriguez.

The wind started to pick up and a chill went through me. All around us, the younger kids were running and screaming. One skipped between me and Cecilia and almost knocked both of us down. I wanted to cover my ears with my hands and drown out the noise that was scrambling my thoughts. I needed everyone to shut up, just for a second, so I could make sense of what Cecilia was saying. I kept hearing Mom’s voice telling me about the plans she’d had with Mrs. Rodriguez, about how she hadn’t shown up. I heard Deacon Rodriguez barking at me on the phone. And Cecilia’s words that night at the sleepover, “Divorce is a sin.” I shook my head, hoping all of it would disappear from my brain and float up into the air like a balloon, never to be seen again.

Just then, Sister Patricia blew the whistle.

“Anyways, thanks for letting me borrow your book,” Cecilia said. “I kept the pages nice, like you asked.” She turned and ran towards Sister Patricia.

I shouted after her, “We’re not those kind of Catholics.” It was all I could think to say.

As I walked across the basketball court to get in line with everyone else, I tried to picture Mom and Mrs. Rodriguez hanging out together, but I couldn’t think of where they might go. I really only ever saw Mrs. Rodriguez at St. Ignatius. I imagined all four of us—me, Mom, Cecilia, and Mrs. Rodriguez— sitting in a pew together, making paper fortune tellers. “Pick a number,” Mom would say, and Mrs. Rodriguez would definitely pick seven, because it was a holy number, and she was a deacon’s wife. My Mom would open the flap and read Mrs. Rodriguez her fortune, “You will get a divorce.” The four of us would laugh, and maybe the laughter would turn to tears. I’d tell Cecilia it wasn’t that bad, even though it kind of was. And the whole time God and all the saints would be watching.

At the entrance to the school, there was a big plastic trash can for us to throw away any last minute trash. When I walked past it, I dumped the St. Cecilia book in it and made my way back to class.

Yvette DeChavez is a Texas-based writer and educator. She earned a PhD in literature from the University of Texas at Austin and is an alum of the Tin House Summer Workshop and Sewanee Writers’ Conference. This is her first fiction publication. You can find her on Instagram: @yvettedechavez.