I watch her, walking back and forth in front of the vanity, heels tapping as she fastens on her earring. Senora, three years older than me, is a world away, a world of cars and make up and boys. No, not boys. Boy. Only one. Michael. She talks about him constantly; she says they are in love. I met him, when he came over for dinner. He�d ruffled my hair and called me �Kid.�
�We�re going to the movies,� Senora says, �We�re going to see that new one, the romantic one with that one actress, you know? The one who married the baseball player.� I don�t respond. Sitting where I am among Senora�s scattered clothes on her bed, I feel small and scared with something huge inside of me. Something screaming and tearing to get out. I pull my feet up under myself and sit on them like a mother hen.
�You should get a boyfriend, you know.� Senora pouts at herself in the mirror, practicing.
�I�m too young,� I say, not looking at her.
�You�re thirteen. That�s plenty old. Lots of girls have boyfriends when they�re thirteen.� She says this as if she�s an expert, as if she had a boyfriend at thirteen, but we both know Michael is her first, and she�s only been dating him since last year. She told me she�d sat behind him in Algebra. That was why she failed that class. Staring at Michael. She said she loved him the first time she saw him. I wonder if the other one met him that way. I wonder if she had stared at him in some other class.
�He just got a new car. Michael did.� Senora looks back at me in the middle of putting on her eye shadow, to see if I�m still paying attention. �Just got it yesterday. He wouldn�t give any of his buddies a ride in it. He said I�d be the first to get to ride in it.� I know that�s a lie. The other one had already ridden in it. I�d seen then at the stoplight on the way home. Maybe she was the first. Maybe she wasn�t. I pull at the frayed threads of an old shirt lying on her bed, silent.
�He�s so wonderful. Such a gentleman. You know what I think?� Senora turns from the vanity then, she looks at me straight in the eye. Her eyes are so blue, like the sky without clouds, and I can see in them the child she is, reaching for tatters of love seeping through her clenched fingers. �You know what I think?� she says it again. �I think we�re going to get married. I really do.� I stare back at her. I don�t know what to say. Finally I say, �Could be,� then I get up and walk into the kitchen. I can�t watch her anymore.
In the kitchen I make fish sticks for dinner, and when Senora walks in, primped for her date, I offer her some. She says no, they�ll spoil her appetite. She sits at the kitchen table tells me all about the restaurant she and Michael are going to after the movie as I eat my fish sticks. It�s fancy, she says, they do that thing where they set some food on fire at your table. I chew and say nothing. After a while she falls silent. She looks at the clock. Michael�s late, she says. By only five minuets. Any time now. She falls silent again.
I keep eating. Minuets pass. After a while Senora walks into the living room. She turns on the TV, flips a few channels, and turns it off. More minuets pass. She sits in the window, looking out at the street. I chew and watch her, anticipating the sound of a car in the driveway, Michael on the porch. But I know that she will sit there all night. Her hair will slowly go limp under the weight of her hairspray. I�ll come down at midnight to see her still there, makeup smudged and running. But she won�t cry. She�ll never cry. And I know that Michael is out there on the road somewhere with the other one, driving in his new car, or parked somewhere, taking from her what he took from my sister. But I say nothing, chewing, sitting there, and watching Senora as she slowly breaks into pieces.
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