Better With You Here (9781609417819) Read online

  Alex

  Mom says we have to go eat dinner at some lady’s apartment. I don’t want to go. She says some kids from my school will be there and I might like them, but I know that I won’t. The only kids at school I like are the ones who don’t live at our apartments. I hope it’s not Devonique or Jose. But I don’t think Mom would make me have dinner with them.

  We have to go up the stairs. Mom never lets us ride the elevator. She says it’s too rickety. Lucia’s happy. She keeps jumping up and down and asking Mom who we’re going to meet. Mom says, “A little girl named Monique and a little girl named Tiffany. And maybe one or two other girls.” They sound boring. I wish we could stay in our apartment and Mom would let me play my games until bedtime. Or we could just watch TV. Or I could read my comics.

  Lucia brought her stupid Mr. Beary. The other kids are going to think she’s a baby.

  It takes a long time to go up all the stairs. When we get to the top, my mom tells me, “Help me, Alex. We’re looking for apartment number 312.”

  “I’ll help you!” Lucia says. But she can’t even read the numbers on the doors. They’re too high for her to see.

  “Here it is,” I say. It’s an old, scratched-up door, just like ours. But the numbers are gold, and our number 127 is white.

  Mom lifts up Lucia so she can ring the bell, and an old lady answers the door. She looks kind of like Mrs. Garcia at school, but fatter and with orange-er hair.

  “Hello, hello,” the lady says when we get inside. “Who is this?” My mom tells her our names, and the lady says, “Alex, Lucia. I’m so glad y’all came.” Maybe she’s one of our aunts or my mom’s cousin. She acts like she’s in our family. She tells me and Lucia, “You can call me Miss Buena, okay?” Then she tells my mom, “That’s what all the kids call me. It’s easier for them to say.” I wonder what her real name is. I bet I could say it, if they told me.

  Miss Buena’s apartment is full of stuff that old ladies always have: clocks and little statues of animals and flowers on everything. There’s an old man on the couch. Miss Buena tells us, “This is Mr. Oscar.” Like Oscar the Grouch. He has bushy eyebrows like Oscar the Grouch, too. We say hello to him, and Mr. Oscar shakes my hand.

  “Tiffany, come out here, m’ija,” says Miss Buena. “This is my granddaughter, Tiffany.” A little girl comes out of one of the bedrooms. She has ponytails tied up with a bunch of ribbons and beads. She’s wearing a dress like one of those dolls on the commercials. She looks at my sister and says, “Lucy.”

  “Is Tiffany in your class?” my mom asks Lucia. Lucia nods. Miss Buena says, “Why don’t y’all go play in Tiffany’s room until everybody gets here?” Mom has to push Lucia forward. I know what’s wrong. Now she’s embarrassed that she brought her teddy bear, because this other girl isn’t carrying one.

  Mom knows, too. She opens her purse, and Lucia stuffs Mr. Beary inside. Then Tiffany says, “Come on!” and Lucia runs off with her.

  They probably only have girl toys in Tiffany’s room. Maybe Mom and them will let me watch TV. Mr. Oscar’s watching TV real quiet, but it’s the news. But maybe they have another TV in one of the other rooms.

  The doorbell rings, and Miss Buena goes to answer it. A lady with blond hair comes in, with a little boy. The lady looks kind of like Ms. Hubacek, but taller and prettier. Her son looks like he’s in kinder or pre-K, but I’ve never seen him riding our bus.

  “This is Haley,” Miss Buena tells my mom. She tells me, “And this is Jared.” I’ve never heard of anybody named Jared, except that guy on the commercial who used to be fat before he ate a bunch of sandwiches. But this kid’s not fat. He’s little and has long hair, like a baby.

  My mom tells the lady her name, and then Miss Buena says Jared should go play with Tiffany and Lucia until the others get here. How many other people are coming? I guess it’s just going to be a bunch of little kids. I guess I’ll watch TV with Mr. Oscar, even if he only watches boring shows.

  My mom and the Haley lady are talking about their shoes, because my mom used to have some shoes like Haley’s but they were a different color. Then Haley has to take Jared into Tiffany’s room, because he’s too scared to go by himself. Then the doorbell rings again, and Miss Buena says, “That must be Sara and her kids.”

  She opens the door, and this time it’s a lady with long black hair, and she has three kids. One’s a baby. I can see his diaper coming out of his pants. Then there’s a kindergarten girl. I’ve seen her on our bus. And then there’s another girl. A tall girl, with long, curly hair. I’ve seen her on the bus, too. She’s in third grade. She plays by the trees at recess.

  My mom and the other ladies have to say their names to each other again. Then they call Lucia and them out of the other room, and they say all the kids’ names. The baby is named Junior, just like my cousin, and his sister in kindergarten is Monique.

  The third-grade girl’s name is Angelica. Mom asks if we know each other from school. We both shake our heads. Miss Buena says, “You two can sit together, since you’re the oldest.”

  I look at my hands, and Angelica looks out the window. She’s wearing jeans instead of a dress. She doesn’t have any ribbons in her hair. Maybe that means she likes good stuff and not just girl stuff.

  Now it’s time to eat, and all the little kids have to sit on the floor around the coffee table. The grown-ups are sitting on the couches and chairs with their plates on their laps. Me and Angelica are big, so we get to sit on these little footstools and hold our plates on our laps, too. Because Miss Buena said she knows we won’t spill any food on the carpet. It’s kind of like Thanksgiving, except no one’s yelling.

  Mom keeps laughing. Sometimes she laughs at stuff the other ladies are saying, but also she’s just smiling for no reason at all. Back before the divorce, we used to go to parties at our neighbor’s house, and Mom would talk to the other ladies in the kitchen. But those ladies didn’t make her laugh like this.

  I’m listening to them, but I can’t understand what’s so funny. Haley, the blond lady, tells a story about finding a big roach in her shower and trying to hit it with her shoe. Angelica’s mom tells a story about finding a mouse in the swimming pool. Then my mom tells a story about some guy in the laundry room and how Angelica’s mom got mad at him. Everybody’s laughing at that, except for Mr. Oscar. He’s listening to them, but he’s watching TV at the same time.

  Angelica touches my arm. She says, “Do you want these?” It’s all the green pieces, left on her plate.

  I don’t want them. I didn’t eat my green pieces or the red ones. The yellow ones were okay, though. “Do you want these red ones?” I tell her.

  She says, “They’re spicy,” and she eats one off my plate.

  I don’t like spicy things, but I don’t want to be a baby, so I eat one, too. “It’s not that spicy,” I tell her. She eats another one, so I do, too.

  I didn’t want the beans and rice, but Mom said I had to take a little, to be polite. Now I wish I had some more, because it was good.

  “Alex, are you still hungry, m’ijo?” Miss Buena says. She stands up. “You and Angelica come with me and get some more.”

  We follow her to the kitchen, and she puts more beans and rice on our plates. Then she says, “Hold on.” She turns on the fire and opens a pack of tortillas. She puts the tortillas right on the fire, then flips them with her fingers.

  “Doesn’t that burn you?” I ask her.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t even feel it.” She opens the refrigerator and gets a tub of butter. She puts butter on the tortillas and rolls them up, then gives them to us. I take a bite. She says, “It’s good, huh?”

  I nod my head, and so does Angelica.

  “If you start coming to my house after school, I’ll make you quesadillas.”

  I don’t know what that is, but maybe it’s good. She said “house,” but I know she means this apartment. Maybe Mom can bring us here again, tomorrow after school.

  Mom had to carry Lucia down the st
airs, because she’s sleepy. She always gets sleepy before me. When we get back to our apartment, it’s dark outside. The windows are all black, and Mom shuts the miniblinds.

  After she puts Lucia in bed, Mom comes out and makes me show her my homework. I only had two worksheets, and I finished them right after school. After she checks them, Mom says, “Did you have fun tonight, at Miss Buena’s?”

  I say, “Yeah. It was pretty good.”

  She says, “I was thinking about letting her watch you and your sister sometime. Maybe on Thursday, when I have to go to the Parent-Teacher Conference. What do you think of that?”

  I say, “That’d be okay.”

  Mom hugs me and tells me to go brush my teeth before bed.

  When we go back to Miss Buena’s, I’ll bring some of my comics. Then, if Angelica’s there again, I can show them to her.

  Natasha

  It’s such a relief to have the kids with someone trustworthy, and in my own apartment complex. If I’d left them with my mother, I’d be a nervous wreck right now, worried about rushing through the conference to get back to her house before she could traumatize them in some way.

  I’m not totally at ease, though.

  I turn to Sara in the passenger seat and say, “Do you think Geronima will be okay with my kids and yours? That’s six, counting Tiffany.”

  She turns from the window. “Huh? Oh, yeah. She’ll be fine. She likes to have tons of kids over there so they can play with each other and she can cook a bunch of stuff.” She sounds sure of that, but she looks nervous.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  “Nothing. I just…I never went to this parent-teacher thing.”

  “You haven’t?” I take the turn to the kids’ school. “You mean because you didn’t have anyone to watch your kids before Geronima?”

  She says, “Well, yeah, that. But also…I don’t know. I always felt weird about it, you know? I mean, I didn’t even finish school myself. What am I gonna say to a bunch of teachers?”

  I glance in her direction and see that she’s really eaten up about this. And now I wonder if I was being pushy earlier, asking if she wanted to ride to the school with me. She wasn’t even planning on going, I now realize, and only agreed to it for my sake.

  “You know, Sara,” I say, “I’ve been to a ton of these things, and it’s really not a big deal. You go in and listen to what the teacher has to say about your kids, and then you can leave. You don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to.”

  She says “Oh, yeah?” but sounds unconvinced.

  I say, “A lot of times I go and there are parents who don’t even speak English.”

  She looks out the window at the school as I pull in to its parking lot and find us a space. It’s not as crowded as I expected. Not half as crowded as it would’ve been at the kids’ old school. I guess Sara’s not the only parent around here who avoids events like this.

  Before we get out of the car, Sara turns to me and says, “Just give me a hint, real quick. What should I ask?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I don’t want to look like some asshole who doesn’t care about her kids. What are you gonna ask Alex and Lucia’s teachers?”

  She’s serious. She’s really at a loss and sees this as something she could fail. Poor Sara. I say, “First I’ll listen to what they have to tell me. They’ll have something prepared to say about each student. Then, for Alex, I might ask his teacher if she thinks he needs extra help with spelling, because I’ve been reviewing his homework every night and he always needs to redo his vocabulary lists.”

  Sara nods, and I wonder if she ever reviews Angelica’s homework.

  I add, “Since Lucia and Monique are in kinder, there’s not a lot to say about their schoolwork. I’ll probably ask if Lucia gets along well with the other kids.”

  Sara nods again. She’s frozen in her seat. We’ve been sitting in the parking lot for a while now. I reach out and pat her on the shoulder. “Hey, it’s going to be fine. Just remember, these teachers are here for our kids, and they’re going to be glad we showed up. If anything, they’re the ones who should be nervous, having to talk to so many people in one night. Right?”

  She smiles weakly and says, “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s do this.”

  Mike is standing at Ms. Hubacek’s desk. What is he doing here? I can’t believe this.

  Ms. Hubacek sees me in the window and waves me inside. When I open her door, I see that Missy’s there, too, standing behind Mike with her son in a stroller. I feel sick and wish I hadn’t come in.

  “Is it okay if we do this all together?” Ms. Hubacek is saying. “Or we could have separate sessions. But since you’re both here…”

  “It’s fine,” I say, more stiffly than I mean to.

  Ms. Hubacek leads us to a table set up in front of her desk. I take the seat nearest hers, and there’s a delay while Mike drags over an extra chair for Missy.

  I can’t even look at them, so I focus on the folder in Ms. Hubacek’s hand with Alex’s name on its label. Meanwhile Mike takes the seat across from me, on Ms. Hubacek’s other side.

  What is he doing here? Mike’s never attended parent-teacher conference night in his life. And why did he bring his girlfriend along? Does he think that spending a few nights a week with him gives her some kind of co-parent rights? I look along the table and see that she’s messing with her baby, who’s asleep in his stroller. She won’t look up. I guess she’s as uncomfortable around me as I am around her.

  Mike says, “Okay, let’s start,” as if he’s the one running the show. He’s smiling at Ms. Hubacek like he would at any other young woman, practically flexing his muscles at her. She’s the youngest person in the room, not counting Missy’s baby, and she smiles right back at Mike. This is already intolerable. God, why did he come here?

  I notice that his face has gotten a little fatter. Probably from too many cupcakes.

  Ms. Hubacek is reading from a list that describes Alex as good, good, average, above average, and on and on through every possible aspect of his academics and conduct. But Mike is radiating palpable waves of annoyingness in my direction and drowning out her words. Everything he does makes me want to kick him. The way he’s nodding his head knowingly, saying, “Uh-huh, right,” as if he knows the slightest thing about what Alex does in school. This is the man who sends Alex back to me every other Monday with his homework untouched, and he’s sitting here now acting as if he’s the one who helps the kids with their math and reads to them every night.

  “So do you guys have any questions?” Ms. Hubacek asks.

  Mike opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Yes. Do you think Alex should start staying after school for extra help with language arts? I noticed that he’s been having some trouble with his spelling.”

  Ms. Hubacek considers this, then says, “Well, if you think it’s an issue—”

  But Mike cuts her off and says, “No, it’s fine. I’ll work with Alex on his spelling this weekend. It’ll be good.”

  You’ve got to be kidding me. I look directly at him for the first time this evening and say, “Oh, really? You’ll help him with that?” He should be able to hear the sarcasm in my voice. I’ve known Mike for longer than anyone else in this room, and I know that he can’t spell for crap.

  He gives Ms. Hubacek a big grin. “Sure. I’ll work with him for a few hours, and we’ll get it all straightened out.”

  Oh, my God. I have never wanted to throw something at someone as badly as I do right now. How good would it feel to hit Mike with an eraser—to watch that smug grin fall off his face?

  Okay. I have to focus now. I’m here for Alex, not to get into it with Mike. “Ms. Hubacek, I wanted to make sure there hasn’t been any negative fallout since Alex’s accident the other day. The other kids haven’t been making fun of him, have they?”

  She shakes her head. “No, not that I’ve seen. Everyone seems to have forgotten about it.”

  “Okay. T
hat’s good. I know we talked the other day about you allowing Alex to use the restroom more often, but I want to let you know that I’ve given him permission to go whenever he needs to, with or without asking.”

  She nods and is about to reply, but Mike interrupts. “That’s not going to be a problem. I’ve talked to Alex about it, and he won’t be having any more accidents.”

  I say, “Oh, he won’t? And how can you be sure about that?”

  Mike is still smiling at Ms. Hubacek, not facing me, as if we’re two students competing for her attention. He says, “Easy. I told him he needs to hold it. Or go in the morning, before school. He said okay, and he’s not going to pee on himself anymore.”

  This is too much for me. It’s time for me to point out how full of crap he is. “Really, Mike? You told him not to pee on himself anymore, and now he won’t? You think he didn’t try to hold it the other day? Are you the first person who ever thought of him holding it?”

  “Apparently I am the first one who thought of it,” he says. “And apparently you never talked to him about going before school or before lunch.”

  I knew he was going to do that—try to blame me. I say, “Why should I talk to him about when he should go to the bathroom? Why wouldn’t he be able to go whenever he needs to?” My voice is louder than I wanted it to be, but I don’t really care. I see Missy put her hand on Mike’s arm, but I can’t tell if it’s to calm him down or to protect him from his big, bad ex-wife.

  Mike pats Missy’s hand, then turns to appeal to Alex’s teacher again. “No one’s saying he can’t go, but Ms. Huba-sek here”—he can’t even pronounce her name right—“can’t have the kids getting up and taking off whenever they feel like it. She has a schedule to stay on. Right?”

  I knew he was going to do that—try to get Ms. Hubacek on his side. That’s what he always does: joins sides with whomever he can, against me. It’s like he knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on by himself, so he has to win people over in order to create support for his arguments.