Apparently I do have power.
I count the money again. I can’t help it.
With money, a girl can do things. Go places. Buy stuff.
Maybe I’ll go shopping. Maybe I’ll go to a store and try on outfits like other people do when they’re looking for what to wear. Maybe I’ll find something I like that isn’t the choice of someone I’ve healed. Something that isn’t a thank-you, an offering, for services rendered, miracles completed. Maybe I’ll buy it just because I like it.
“José?”
“Sí, Marlenita?”
“Will you pull over at that gas station?”
“Por supuesto.”
He stops and I hop out. Before I go inside, I gesture for him to roll down the window. “Do you want anything?”
José seems surprised. He’s not used to me asking such things. I’m not used to being able to offer. “Limonada,” he says. “Con gas. You know which ones I mean?”
I nod. I do know. I’ve seen Fatima drinking them in the kitchen.
Suddenly, an image of Fatima and José hanging out after work, drinking fizzy lemonades by the seawall, pops into my head. I wonder if they spend time together when they are off the clock.
“Gracias.”
“Sure thing, José,” I say, and go into the little store.
First, I head to the fridges and find the familiar soda can I always see in Fatima’s hand on her break. The cool air rushes out when I open the door. I don’t take anything for myself. I’m not here for a drink.
I want magazines. Fashion magazines.
I’ve never looked at one.
I’ve never been allowed. It’s just not what healers do, I guess.
There is a shelf at the front of the store full of them and I go to it now, cold soda sweating in my hand. I pick up Vogue. I know it’s famous and I’ve actually heard of it, so I figure it’s a good place to start. I tuck it under my arm and keep looking. Glamour. Elle. Harper’s Bazaar. Marie Claire. There are so many and they are so shiny and beautiful. I skip over the wedding ones, feeling allergic to anything white and sparkly and weddingy. When I go to the register I have a pile of seven magazines to go with José’s fizzy lemonade. They are heavy and the stack makes a loud thud when it hits the counter. Before the man rings up the total, I add two chocolate bars. One for me, one for José. Twixes. I’ve seen José eating them. The man keeps totaling and then asks for way more money than I expect. I guess magazines are expensive. I fish two twenties from the envelope. He hands me back a five, two ones, and change, which I put away while he’s placing everything into a plastic bag. I grab the lemonade before he can put that away, too, say thank you, and head outside.
José’s window is still open.
“Your drink, señor,” I say, handing the can through the window.
He chuckles and takes it.
“Marlenita,” he laughs, shaking his head.
“What?”
“Nothing, cariño.” He eyes the bag, which is sagging with the weight of the magazines. “What else did you buy?”
“Girly things,” I say, and shrug.
I’m about to get into the back seat when I stop and bend forward again, looking through the passenger-side window. “Can I sit up front? Or is that weird?”
José’s eyebrows arch again. “Of course you can. It’s not weird.”
I open the door and settle in. I’ve never sat up front. I guess because Mama always set the precedent of sitting in the back. This seems silly now that I think of it.
José puts the car in gear and pulls onto the road. I glance over at him, but his eyes are facing forward. I reach into the bag and pull out Vogue, with its glossy cover and a woman in a frilly, strapless black gown with her head thrown back laughing. She’s frolicking among some trees, their leaves golden and red and a fiery orange of fall.
If I put on a dress like this, would it make me that happy, too?
I flip through it, mesmerized by so many beautiful things.
“You looking for style advice, eh?” José asks as I’m reaching into the bag to pull out another glossy tome.
I nod, a little embarrassed by how many magazines I bought. It makes me look either desperate or like I have no impulse control. Maybe both. But maybe it doesn’t matter? It feels like I’ve been let out of jail. Maybe, on my first day of freedom, I’m allowed to go a little crazy. Maybe on my second day, too.
The pictures on the pages are so exquisite. The women, the clothes. They are elegant and funky and sexy and so many other things I’m not used to. The wedding gowns for my audiences are lovely, sure, but they make me into the portrait of innocence, the virginal bride. Of course, I am a virgin, but still. These clothes make me wonder whether, if I put them on, I’d become a different person, like putting on a new skin.
I page through the magazines like a hungry monster. I gobble them up.
I want everything at once. Clothes, friends, boyfriends, road trips, shopping trips, parties, lazy days at the beach, cookouts, school, homework, epic makeout sessions, and movie nights. It’s like I’ve been starving for years, but just realized I’m ravenous. The world has always been there, but it feels like I am only now seeing it. My heart pounds.
I need to calm down.
“Oh!” I dig around at the bottom of the bag until my hands close around the candy bars. I nearly forgot I bought them. “Here.” I drop one of the Twixes into the cup holder. “That’s for you.”
“My favorite!”
“I know.”
José’s palm rests on top of the wheel as he steers us alongside the ocean. He’s quiet for a bit and doesn’t reach for the chocolate, but then I hear him take a breath. “Did something happen between you and your mama? Well, I know something happened, but are you okay, mi niñita? This seems like a lot of sudden change.”
I look down at the pile of magazines in my lap, slipping and sliding around with the movement of the car. “I’m okay,” I tell him. “Maybe for the first time in a while.”
“That’s good to hear,” he says, but I can sense hesitation. “Your mama,” he starts, but then stops.
I almost don’t want him to continue.
Is it weird that I don’t wonder where my mother is? Or when I’ll see her again? Or what will happen when I do? Like, what in the world will we talk about or say to each other if it’s not about the audience coming up this coming Saturday or, I don’t know, a television special about me? Will we suddenly talk about boys and clothes and get manicures and hang out in the lawn chairs in the back of the house and sun ourselves? Will she ever forgive me for stopping being her perfect child-daughter-healer?
Instead of asking José what he was going to say about my mother, I change the subject to something that has just occurred to me in my newly freed state. I watch as José turns the wheel, just slightly, but enough to round the bend in the road. “José, would you teach me how to drive one of these days?”
José belly laughs so hard it’s nearly a minute before he answers, and so long that Angie’s boxy glass center has come into view. “I’d love to, cariño. I thought you’d never ask.”
TWENTY-ONE