All Signs Point to Yes by Cam Montgomery

Author:Cam Montgomery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2022-03-11T19:31:42+00:00

* * *

Tracey and I make it to my house just as Mami is getting home from work. She hops out of her old sedan—we haven’t been able to afford a new one since Papi left five years ago—and her scrubs are bright and colorful set against her dark brown skin. Today, she’s got her hair pulled back tight and into a bun. “Te extrañé, mijo,” she says, kissing me on top of my head. “Hello, Tracey!”

“Hola, Señorita Torres,” Tracey says, waving.

“Señorita?” She pulls Tracey close and hugs her. “See, Efren? You could learn a thing or two about respect from that one.”

“She calls you old when you aren’t around,” I say.

“I definitely know she doesn’t,” Mami says, heading into our tiny home, “because she’s a Taurus and loyal.”

“That’s right!” Tracey calls after her.

I’ve been betrayed. Thrown under the bus by my own Mami. Which is fair, since I just tried to toss Tracey under first.

Our home is on the far edge of Riverside, just snuggled up with the wildlife preserve and Norco. We don’t go to Norco...well, for a lot of reasons. To give you an idea what that place is like, the city decided to do something completely unnecessary way back before I was born: all of the dividing lines painted on their streets are red, white, and blue. Also, you can get a speeding ticket in half a second for going one mile per hour over the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit because they care more about horses than anything else there.

Anyway, we’ve got a big backyard here in our neighborhood, even though the house is small, which is great for nights when Mami and I lay a blanket out on the grass to stare at the stars. Tracey is the only person I know on this side of town because pretty much everyone over here is...well, I’ll spell it out: not Black like her, not brown like us. Papi moved us into the “nice” neighborhood, but then he left us, and Mami can’t move us on a nurse’s wages.

So here we are. Tracey’s mom is all she’s got, too, so the four of us...we’re a team. Two Tauruses. A Scorpio. A Cancer.

It’s chaos. But it’s our chaos.

Tracey is deep in conversation with Mami about what she’s singing in the spring recital, and soon, the two of them are trying to sustain fifth harmonies. Mami shoulda been a singer, but after Papi left... Look. He’s gone. I try not to think about him all that often, but clearly I’m not very good at it. It’s just that I can’t ignore that he changed our lives. Mami couldn’t pursue music, we got stuck here in this tiny-ass home in a city that doesn’t really care for us...but I guess we do what we can.

“How was your business today, papito?”

I sigh. “Does it count as a business if you only have one customer, who didn’t pay?”

“Aw, I’m sorry,” she says, setting a kettle to boil on the stove. “Still competing with that app?”

I plop down at the table.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.