ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pete Pazmino is a graduate of the MA in Writing Program (fiction) at Johns Hopkins University. His work has previously been published in Monkeybicycle, JMWW, Menda City Review, A Cappella Zoo, You Must Be This Tall to Ride, and elsewhere, and he has fictiHe was a finalist in the Iowa Review’s 2006 fiction competition, the Black Warrior Review’s 2007 fiction competition, and he received editor nominations for the storySouth Million Writers Award in both 2009 and 2010. He blogs, occasionally, at www.petepaz

mija

By Pete Pazmino


I’m lying on the backseat very still, waiting for the next gust of wind to breathe over my sweaty skin. My right foot presses up against the car's door handle while my left taps the floor in time to the flute music that plays on the car’s scratchy speakers. I must curve my back because there’s a tear in the middle of the seat. The edges of the vinyl are prickly and sharp. Daddy keeps a thick blanket over it most of the time, but he used it to lie on when he changed the oil this morning. Now it’s dirty and Mama didn’t have time to wash it before work.

Daddy and I were supposed to stay home. After Mama left, though, he said that he had to go to work even though it’s supposed to be his day off. He called Peggy, who lives down the street and babysits me sometimes, but Peggy wasn’t home. Then he called Aunt Helena, but she wasn’t home either. So then he stood in the kitchen doorway and made a funny face at me while I played with my dolls, and he said he would have to bring me with him. And I was happy, because I don’t like Peggy. She makes funny faces at the food in our refrigerator and never stops talking on the phone to her boyfriend. And Aunt Helena is mean.

The traffic is very bad even though it’s a Saturday. Every time Daddy presses the brakes, the car jerks forward and I have to lift my hanging leg and brace against the seatback with my toes. I hear him say words to himself, words like carajo or manache, words I have heard many times but still don’t know what they mean. But I like saying them at school sometimes. I like the way they feel on my tongue.

The car is loud. It rattles and shakes and when we move forward the engine growls low, like our neighbor Albert’s dog. Sometimes there are two fast explosions—pop! pop!—from behind us. Car farts, Anita calls them, and when we’re together in the car and she whispers this to me we drop down behind the seat and giggle behind our hands until we can’t breathe. But Anita isn’t here because she’s four years older than me and a big girl now at her first sleepaway camp. Mama didn’t want her to go to sleepaway camp because they are expensive and you have to stay in the woods for a week and wear bug spray. But then Father Michael came to visit and told how the church had money to pay for Anita to go. He told Mama that it would be good for Anita to escape being home for a few weeks in the summer. And Mama never argues with Father Michael. I just wish that I was old enough to escape, too.

“You okay, mija?” Daddy looks at me in the rearview mirror with his big brown eyes. I sit up and smile, poke my tongue at him through the one-week-old gap in the front of my mouth. 

“Silly. Sit up and get air.”

I slide closer to the open window, but there’s no breeze. 

“Next week I fix the air condition.”

“Okay, Daddy.” Daddy’s been saying that he will fix the air condition for as long as I can remember. He smiles at me in the mirror and I can see his gold tooth, which I love. I asked him once how expensive his gold tooth was and he laughed and told me dos millones de dólares. When I told Anita that night she called me a dummy and asked why we would live in a house so small if all Daddy had to do was sell his tooth. But I think that maybe Daddy is saving his tooth for a special time.

The traffic starts to move. I feel a small breeze through the window, fresh against my hot skin. I fall back as the car accelerates and hear a fast pop pop behind us. I slide down behind the seat so Daddy doesn’t see me giggle.



Published July 2010