Chloe Doe by Suzanne Phillips

Author:Suzanne Phillips [PHILLIPS, SUZANNE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV039130
ISBN: 9780316040969
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2008-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

The mariachis begin the light strumming of their guitars and the triumphant blasts of their horns. They drift around the room, first impressing the nurses in their pant uniforms, and then the doctors who sit in folding chairs at the edge of our dance floor. They play and bow their slim bodies toward the women, smiling.

Mexicans have something we don’t. I’ve seen it in my chicas on the street, in the men who buy us, in the mariachi who play. It’s in their smile: life is for the living. ¡Viva los vivos!

For the hours of TV, for our choice of chocolate cake for dessert, for a check mark next to Cooperative on our charts, we dance. We dance because it’s expected. Because the men have come for the women to dance.

The mariachi, their eyes speak. They tell us unas muchachas bonitas. Pretty girls. Pretty girls with pretty breasts and thighs like sweet cream. And there’s expectation, like the shiny blade of a knife. These girls will dance, they will open themselves to our loving. Optimism is their only fault.

They watch me, flung out and arms stretched above my head, turning and turning. They watch the nurses and the doctors, sitting in their folding chairs, feet pumping to the music, their eyes watching the mariachi and watching me and watching the others. But mostly watching me. If I go on, spinning, if I lose my balance and fall, all of this will be for nothing. If I spread myself out, lay myself down, if I lose myself completely, this goes belly-up.

There’s only so far you can go in America without being gringo. There’s only so much work the mariachi will put into defeat. I would be their finest achievement, but I’m watched like a convict.

The mariachi turn their attention to the others. The girls move sluggishly to the tempo, uninvolved in the freewheeling journey I’m on. They lift their feet: sleepwalkers. Like a merry-go-round, they get nowhere. Even those who try to keep up, trip over a chord. And the rest, they wait for a loud noise. They wait for the mariachi to scatter like crows. The little Niña especially. She is jumpy around men. She won’t sit behind a closed door with her therapist. She won’t make eye contact with any of the male staff unless she’s forced to. It’s written as one of her goals: The little Niña will, when speaking to a male staff member, make eye contact on two out of three occasions. They don’t expect perfection. Which is a good thing. The little Niña would never measure up. Now, she twirls in a circle by herself, at the edge of the dance floor. She stares at her feet, lifting them one beat behind the music. She refuses to look at the mariachi, or at anyone else.

The mariachi notice her and leave her to herself. They weave themselves around the rest of us, playing their instruments. They brush against us. An elbow touches a breast. A hip brushes our nalgas.

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