Grace laughs. “Me too.”
“But now maybe I have something else to look forward to,” he says, smiling.
Grace chokes on her cookie.
“Are you okay?” Jesse says. He thumps her on the back with his pawlike hand. “Do you need some water? Here, have my lemonade.” Grace takes a sip from his paper cup of watery lemonade.
“I’m okay,” Grace says when the coughing subsides.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says, but it’s only half true. She may not be choking to death anymore, but she might die of embarrassment. “Tell me about your brother,” she says. Changing the subject is always a good idea.
“He started taking testosterone and now he has a thicker mustache than me,” Jesse says as he swallows another cookie. “The only thing I don’t understand is the name he chose: Hector. I mean, if you get to choose whatever name you want, why the heck would you choose a lame name like that?”
Grace thinks maybe she’s supposed to laugh, but Jesse’s face is serious, so she says, “Oh?” instead. She feels both a need to escape this conversation and also a desire for it to never end.
“I’m sure it’d be way different if it was the other way around,” Jesse says. “If I decided I wanted to be a chick? No way my parents would change churches to support me and call me by my new name. My dad would kick my ass if I wanted to be a girl. It took a little time, but now he’s totally cool with having another son. Like how girls can wear pants, but dudes wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress? Total double standard, you know? Not that I want to wear a dress or anything.”
“Okay,” Grace says.
Jesse laughs. “Is it weird I’m telling you all this?” he says.
Grace looks at his big, soft face, into his warm brown eyes. “It’s a little weird,” she admits. “But I’m glad you did.”
“It just sort of came out.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m kind of embarrassed.”
“Don’t be.”
“Do people tell you a lot of stuff? Because you’re the pastor’s daughter? Do they, like, think you can give good advice or something?”
Grace can’t help but laugh. No one in Adeline ever asked her advice about anything. She’s not like her mom, not someone whose thoughts have ever mattered. “No,” she says. “Not at all.”
“Huh. Well, they should. You’re really good to talk to. You have, like, this totally calm energy or something.”
“Thanks.”
A woman who must be Jesse’s mother calls him from across the room, where she stands second in line to meet Grace’s mom. “Looks like it’s almost our turn,” Jesse says. “It was nice meeting you. What was your name again?”
“Grace.”
“Grace. I’ll see you at school, I guess. Thanks for the advice.”
He turns around and his wide back blocks Grace’s view of her parents. How strange that he thanked her for her advice when all she did was listen.
*
Dad and Grace walk home while Mom stays behind to meet with some committee or other. One thing all churches, conservative or liberal, seem to have in common is they have a lot of committees.
“Wasn’t she great?” Dad says. He hasn’t stopped grinning.
“Yeah, Mom did really good.”
“I have to start transcribing her sermon. There was definitely some stuff in there that deserves to go in her book.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You okay on your own for a while? Mom’ll be home in a couple of hours and we’ll all have supper together. I think I’m actually going to cook tonight instead of getting takeout. Can you believe it?”
“Sure,” Grace says. “Yeah.”
She climbs the stairs to her room and lies down. Over the past week since they arrived in Prescott, Grace has unpacked enough to put sheets and a blanket on her bed, but she is still living out of her suitcase. Unopened boxes are still piled throughout the room.
Grace turns on her side, toward the wall without the window. A mirror lays flat on her dresser packed in a misshapen bundle of towels and packing tape. She sees no reason to unwrap it. The wall is warped, bulging near the corner. And there, near the bottom where the wall meets chipped trim that used to be white, are little scribbles, minuscule, like graffiti made by a mouse.
Grace rolls off the bed and kneels in the corner for a closer look.
Hear me, the scribbles say.
Help me.
She stays on her knees, in a position of prayer, reading the words over and over.
ROSINA.
There are so many shitty things about a shift at La Cocina, it’s hard to know where to begin. Maybe it’s the coming home smelling like grease and smoked chiles, how the odor seeps so deep into Rosina’s clothes, she can’t wash it out, how the pores of her skin absorb it, how she leaves work feeling as if she herself has been deep fried and covered in stringy white cheese, mole sauce congealing in her nostrils, her ears, between her toes.
Maybe the worst thing about working at La Cocina is the boss (Tío José) yelling at Rosina all night for breaking a plate, even though it was an accident, even though she offered to pay for it. Sometimes he just has to yell, and sometimes Rosina just has to take it. It’s not like she can go on strike or anything. It’s not like there’s a union for underage, under-the-table employees of a family business run like they’re still in some village in Mexico where kids don’t go to school past sixth grade. It’s not like Mami’s ever going to back Rosina up or take her daughter’s side over the family’s.
Maybe the worst thing is watching Mami slaving away in the kitchen, seeing her hunched over in the corner with back pain but saying nothing. Maybe it’s finding dead mice behind the forty-pound bags of cornmeal. Maybe it’s refilling the hot sauce, how it makes Rosina cry even though she’s trained herself to do it with her eyes closed. Maybe it’s how Tío José is the boss even though Mami does all the real work. Maybe it’s how he treats everyone like shit and gets away with it. Maybe it’s how it’s a scientific fact that people tip people of color less. Maybe it’s everything.
Rosina rides her bike home fast and imagines the work grime flying off her, absorbed into the dark sponge of night. She is especially filthy after the final bag of garbage ripped just as she lifted it into the Dumpster, spilling raw chicken juice all over her leg. Maybe she should just lick the putrid mess, get salmonella, die of food poisoning, and end this joke of a life right now.
Snap out of it, Rosina tells herself. Suicide jokes are so cliché.
What she wants to know is if everyone else lives their lives in a constant state of humiliated fury, or if this is a particularly Rosina condition.