Carlos

“Hey, honey,” my mother said as she came into the living room. It was a week or so after we moved here. I had seen Sophie in the front yard now and then, but she didn’t come across the street like I did the first day. Sometimes she was outside when I was walking home from the bus stop or looking through my binoculars at the sparrow family next door, and we’d wave to each other.

 


“Helooo! Earth to mind-wandering Carlos!” My mom had been talking.

I looked up from where I was doing my homework. “Sorry. What?”

My mother took off her high-heeled shoes she wore when she worked as a receptionist and sat down, pulling one of her feet up to her lap and rubbing it. “I was taking out the trash and saw Susan from across the street, and she said that she and Sophie would like to take us to a favorite Mexican restaurant nearby. She thinks we’ll like it. “

I yawned and looked at the words Biology Homework on the top of my worksheet about cell organelles. I started to draw an oval around the title with my pencil. “Okay.”

My mother moved her foot rubbing around to her toes. She massaged the spaces between them.

I drew a cloud shape around the oval at the top of my paper. I drew a squiggly line around the cloud shape. I made a stiff rectangle around that. I was plotting how to add polka dots when something out the front window caught my eye. I looked up and saw a flash of red and black sitting on the tree across the street, in front of Sophia’s house. I squinted at it. Northern Cardinal. Male. Then it pushed itself off the branch, spread its wings, and darted away.

My mother had been watching me watching the cardinal. She smiled and patted my back. “I’m glad you like birds, Carlos. I have hopes that it will take you farther than it took me.” She spotted my artwork around Biology Homework. “And erase that, please.”

She left me in the living room, wondering.

Sophie

I had been told to mow the lawn, so I prepared in my usual manner. I put on safety glasses. I put on sound-cancelling earmuffs. Then, over the whole contraption, I squished my red sun hat on top of my head.

I gripped the starter to the lawnmower and pulled hard, then let it snap back on its dirty white string. The spark followed through, and the lawn mower burped some blue smoke before rumbling cheerfully to life. I began to push it.

My mom and I were taking Carlos and his family out to eat today. It would be nice. I was immersed in happy thoughts of tacos when I heard a noise from across the street. I looked up and stopped the lawn mower, then put my hands on the ear muffs so I could hear. Of course, as soon as I took the ear muffs off, the glasses and hat slid off my head and onto the grass, and of course I just happened to drop the ear muffs as well, and of course they fell in a heap among the grass cuttings. It was Carlos across the street, and he was waving. I waved back. “You have grass in your hair,” he yelled across the street.

I put my hand to my hair, felt the grass, and yelled back, “Thanks!”

He waved again. “See you tonight.”

When I finished with the lawn, I showered, put on my jeans and the shirt with the unicorn on it, and found my mother. We calculated that Carlos and his parents would fit in our van without them having to drive another car. We went across the street, gathered them, and drove off. At the restaurant we ordered, waited, and then the food came. I had noticed nothing unusual. In front of me was cheese enchiladas, my mother ordered chicken tacos, Carlos had fajitas, his dad had fish tacos, and his mother had chalupas topped with—

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the meat on her crispy tortilla.

“Cow’s tongue,” she said happily.

“What?”

“Do you want some?” She asked.

I pushed my plate over. It wasn’t bad, tasting like beef in an odd off-texture kind of way. But it was pretty good.

She took a piece on her fork, chewed it, and swallowed. She looked down. Her eyes were shiny, and she sniffed almost inaudibly. Carlos and his father looked over at her curiously. My mother did nothing, or didn’t notice. Maria smiled weakly at her family. “Spicy,” she said, by way of an explanation.

Her family nodded and resumed eating silently. But I had eaten the tongue. And it wasn’t spicy.

There was something to Maria Rodriguez that I didn’t know.