I elbowed Arturo.
“What?” Arturo said.
I nodded toward the boy.
Arturo looked over. “It’s okay,” he said, but I could feel him pushing my back as we passed the boy, ushering Maribel and me into the gas station with a certain urgency.
Inside, we scanned the metal shelves for anything that we recognized. Arturo claimed at one point that he had found salsa, but when I picked up the jar and looked through the glass bottom, I laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“This isn’t salsa.”
“It says ‘salsa,’ ” he insisted, pointing to the word on the paper label.
“But look at it,” I said. “Does it look like salsa to you?”
“It’s American salsa.”
I held up the jar again, shook it a little.
“Maybe it’s good,” Arturo said.
“Do they think this is what we eat?” I asked.
He took the jar from me and put it in the basket. “Of course not. I told you. It’s American salsa.”
By the time we finished shopping, we had American salsa, eggs, a box of instant rice, a loaf of sliced bread, two cans of kidney beans, a carton of juice, and a package of hot dogs that Maribel claimed she wanted.
At the register, Arturo arranged everything on the counter and unfolded the money he’d been carrying in his pocket. Without saying a word, he handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill. The cashier slid it into the drawer of the register and reached his open hand out to us. Arturo lifted the blue plastic shopping basket off the floor and turned it over to show that it was empty. The cashier said something and flexed his outstretched hand, so Arturo gave him the basket, but the cashier only dropped the basket behind the counter.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Arturo.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I gave him the money, didn’t I? Is there something else we’re supposed to do?”
People had lined up behind us, and they were craning their necks now to see what was going on.
“Should we give him more?” I asked.
“More? I gave him twenty dollars already. We’re only getting a few things.”
Someone in line shouted impatiently. Arturo turned to look, but didn’t say anything. What must we look like to people here? I wondered. Speaking Spanish, wearing the same rumpled clothes we’d been in for days.
“Mami?” Maribel said.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re just trying to pay.”
“I’m hungry.”
“We’re getting you food.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“But we have food in México.”
The woman behind me in line, her sunglasses on top of her blond hair, tapped me on the shoulder and asked something. I nodded at her and smiled.
“Just give him more money,” I said to Arturo.
Someone in line shouted again.
“Mami?” Maribel said.
“I’m going to take her outside,” I told Arturo. “It’s too much commotion for her.”
A bell tinkled as Maribel and I walked out, and before the door even closed behind us, I saw the boy again, still slouched against the wall, holding his skateboard upright. He shifted just slightly at the sight of us, and I watched as his gaze turned to Maribel, looking her up and down, approvingly, coolly, with hooded eyes.
I was used to people looking at her. It had happened often in Pátzcuaro. Maribel had the kind of beauty that reduced people to simpletons. Once upon a time grown men would break into smiles as she walked past. The boys in her school would come to the house, shoving each other awkwardly when I opened the door, asking if she was home. Of course, that was before the accident. She looked the same now as she always had, but people knew—almost everyone in our town knew—that she had changed. They seemed to believe she was no longer worthy of their attention or maybe that it was wrong to look at her now, that there was something perverse about it, and they averted their gaze.
But this boy looked. He looked because he didn’t know. And the way he looked made me uncomfortable.
I pulled Maribel closer and edged us backwards.
The boy took a step toward us.
I moved back again, holding Maribel’s elbow. Where was Arturo? Wasn’t he done by now?
The boy picked up his skateboard, tucking it under his arm, and started toward us, when suddenly—?Gracias a Dios!—the gas station door opened. Arturo walked out, holding a plastic bag in one hand and shaking his head.
“Arturo!” I called.
“Twenty-two dollars!” he said when he saw me. “Can you believe that? Do you think they took advantage of us?”
But I didn’t care how much money we had spent. I lifted my chin enough so that Arturo caught my meaning and glanced behind him. The boy was still standing there, staring at the three of us now. Arturo turned back around slowly.
“Are you ready?” he asked Maribel and me a little too loudly, as if speaking at such a volume would scare the boy off.
I nodded, and Arturo walked over, shifting the bag as he clasped Maribel’s arm and put one hand on the small of my back.
“Just walk,” he whispered to me. “It’s fine.”
The three of us started toward the road, doubling back in the direction from which we had come, heading toward home.