King of Her Desire

27

Sochi bounced up and down and said, "Me!"

Just like the weebles used to when they were really little and I was playing "keep away" with something they wanted.

So I held the lemon half 'way up out of her reach and said, "Wait! I'm not done!"

But she leapt up and snatched it away from me and said, "Don't put!" In very plain English.

And Hortensia, the moon faced, white-haired Yaqui woman at this little mom and pop store on the rez just burst out laughing and said, "She knows that much English."

"I gotta put the Fun Dip on it," I said. In Spanish.

And Hortensia told her, in Spanish, that the kids put the saladito and the sweet stuff on top. It was one of the most popular things at our snack bars at school, too, the sour lemons with the salty thing in the middle and the KoolAid looking stuff sprinkled on top. Barrio and ghetto schools, I mean. I don't know what the kids at the other schools like.

So Sochi smirked and let me put a little tiny bit of the cherry powder on top. But then she tasted it and said, "O-kay," and let me put more on it.

And Hortensia said, "Your Tostitos are over there, too."

"I don't know if she even wants that now," I told her.

But Sochi went rushing to the other side of the counter and grabbed the little carry box with the other thing I'd brought her there to try. They were just bags of tortilla chips with all kinds of junk thrown on top of them, but the combinations kids came up with were so crazy I had to get a bunch of them so she could see what the deal was.

They were all a mix of sweet, sour, salty and hot. How they got there was kind of crazy sometimes—I drew the line at pickled pork rind. But that was the basic idea, the contrasts.

She understood that, coming from Mexico. She just hadn't had it our way before. So I sat us at one of the old 50s looking, Formica topped tables and fed her a plastic spoonful from each bag.

Sometimes she grinned. Sometimes she groaned. One, she grabbed and wouldn't give back to me. More toddler behavior.

But I loved it. I can't tell you how much. She was this totally different girl now. Flashed those eyes at me and said, "Nooo. For me," in English.

"What's that one she likes?" Hortensia asked me, looking up from whatever combination she was making for a couple of little snot nosed local kids who'd just come in.

They looked too young to be out on their own and were covered with sand from whatever games they'd been playing out there. But they'd probably just come running across the street.

Her store was just this little shack right in the middle of a residential area where almost everyone was related to one another. You could send your kids out alone there and not have to worry much. In the daytime, anyway. Nights were kind of rough there. A lot of drinking...fighting—shit happened at night.

"I think it's the one with all the fruit," I told Hortensia.

"I'll make you one," she said.

"Nah, we've got enough stuff here. So, where did Graciela wind up? U of A?"

Sochi paused when I said "Graciela." And then tried to play it off, but I'd seen it.

Graciela was Hortensia's daughter. She wound up being Salutatorian at this expensive Catholic School that she got a scholarship to go to.