Soledad: A Novel

by Angie Cruz

I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, it’s the same thing every week. Your mami drops you off, still doesn’t say a word to me, and you come in here all funny at first.

Every kid is the same, except for Soledad. Just my luck my daughter has to be different. Esa niña mía . . . You would never think she’s mine.

So did your mother say anything bad about me this week? You can tell me. Your mami don’t mean nothing she say anyway. Sisters are like that. I don’t know any two sisters that get along. And if they do, something funny about them.

I have a feeling that you, quiet little thing, are going to have too much to say when you finally start talking. But I’ll warn you: talking don’t do anybody any good, it’s all about doing.

Men are the worst. Men love to talk and never do much of anything.

When Manolo is drunk he says he loves me. Do you think he knows how to love? Look at this. You can touch it, it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. That’s how much Manolo lov...

Flaca, the fact is that people don’t know how to love. They’re always afraid that if they love someth...

I know the secret of never losing the things you love and because you’re my favorite person in the whole wide world I’m ...

What you do is that every time you see something you love and want it to last forever you stick one of these sticker-shaped stars on it and it will become part of the sky. So when you miss it you can just look up at night and see it all over again.

All you know how to say is yes, yes and more yes. We’re going to have to teach you to say no. Especially when you turn into the beauty you’re bound to become.

Here, let me put some glitter on your cheeks. Oh my goodness, Flaca looks like a star. Now you belong in the sky. Do you want me to throw you up there?

Here, put on my shirt. Aha, you like that idea of wearing grown-up clothes. I don’t know why. I guess when we’re little, all we want is to be grown up and when we’re grown up all we want is to go back.

Oh Flaca, you don’t have to ask me for something like that. You just go ahead and put a sticker on my head. You don’t need to ask permission to love me.

Caramel’s southern twang, the one she denies having, is full blown. I try to imitate it in the best cowboy accent I can muster. Yes ma’am, right after I round up the horses into the barn. Are you making fun of me? No. Yes. Maybe.

Your room is free tonight anyway, or you can always sleep in my bed. She smiles. I admire Caramel’s deep dimples, deep cleft. Keep dreaming, girl. You wish I’d sleep on your bed. No mi’ja, you wish.

Slowly she loosens her hold on me and moves her hand to the side of my breast. She lets her hand sit there for a while. I contemplate getting up and away from her to be on the safe side, but I decide to stay.

I want to put my hand on her breast, caress the side of her arm. I want to see how different it is to kiss a girl. And suddenly, without asking for permission, Caramel unbuttons the top buttons of my shirt, revealing my bra. Now I’m too curious to move.

Caramel pushes my sheer bra over with the tips of her fingers, traces my nipple softly until it is erect and then licks it, holding on to the other breast with her other hand. I don’t stop her. The ache of desire already in between my leg...

I like the softness of Caramel’s cheek on my skin. I contemplate also making a move, touching her breast, hers smaller and pointier than mine, but I can’t, I’m too nervous. What if we ruin our friendship over this? What if I don...

She thinks about the ways she has been forced to become stronger as her husband has gotten weaker.

Doña Sosa looked at her husband. At first she was afraid he might become violent or leave her for good but that day she realized he had nowhere else to go. He needed her.

The onions are all chopped. No more reason to cry, she says out loud to herself. How strange people get when they’re alone.

When I dream I’m floating on water, it feels so real I wake up struggling to keep my body up so I won’t drown. It’s only when I open my eyes and see my mother, looking at me as if I’m dead, that I remember that I’m dreaming again.

My mother, with her fists permanently nestled on her hips in disapproval of everything that she can’t fix, makes me want to retreat back into a world where I have control of what happens to me.

In my dreams I visit with a younger version of my mother, before she had children and a husband to look after. I ask her if she always wore her hair up tight in a bun, trying to look like the woman dressed up in a flamenco dress on all her Maja makeup products. Or did she ever let her hair free, let her overprocessed curls stick up...

In my dreams, me and my mother have long conversations. I ask her if she desired my father, or did he just take her when he pleased? Did she ever say no to him? And if she did, did he hit her, like Manolo hit me?...

In my dreams my mother takes my hand and tells me that every closet door is a passageway to another world, and when I open the closet door I step into sand and can almost taste the sea.

We are walking in circles, Soledad says. Life is one big circle, Soledad. Believe me, everything comes back around again.

Gorda, Raful deserves a scandal. Gorda still cares about him. She doesn’t want to destroy his life. No matter why he left.

Flaca gives in. She likes the word beautiful. Besides, five minutes is nothing really and this way Pito can leave her alone.

His breath on her neck makes her ache between her legs. When his hand goes under her skirt she lets him. She knows she doesn’t like Pito so much but she does want to know how it feels. She lets his fingers touch her for a second and then she pushes him off.

Don’t you like it? His hands slip in and out of her, like his tongue in her ear, in her mouth. And she says yes, whispering it low but loud enough for him to hear.

As I’m coming out of my building I see Flaca walking out of the alley entrance. Soon after, this scrawny guy slides out from the same entrance with a grin that screams success. The kind of success that only guys get to savor. Why do women have to put all the sweet pleasures of rubbing up against someone else in their back pocket and hope they never get caught feeling all sexed up?

I heard you’re after her? What? Richie is looking at me in disbelief but I’m even more surprised he’s all over Flaca’s shit when she’s just a kid.

It’s not like I’m all that. It’s more like Flaca is a minor and I ain’t going there. But you know that she likes you. More reason to stay away from her.

Could it be that Richie might be the kind of guy who disproves my mother’s theory about men? She told me, Men listen with their eyes and not their ears.

My grandmother always tries to make me feel better when I start complaining about the way I look. She says, but mi’ja you have every woman’s dream. Una melena that will find you a good husband. Tú veras.

Sometimes I have nightmares about it, where I somehow land in Dominican Republic and I have no papers to get out of the country, no extra clothes to wear and I need to go to the bathroom but the toilets don’t flush. Maybe you should take a trip there so the nightmares will stop.

Before I go to D.R. I’d go to Europe. To do what? To see the world. Europe is not the world. Dominican Republic isn’t either.

I feel my rayon dress plaster to my skin. Richie carries me effortlessly. His T-shirt is soaked, his hair is flat on his forehead and his eyelashes are glistening. For a moment all I can see is big drops of water, his dark eyes and blue sky behind his head.

Before my grandmother came to the United States, my mother would send me to her for visits. My grandmother scolded me when I ducked my head in the sea, allowing the waves to swallow me. Soledad, don’t swallow too much water. You won’t eat for a week.

Everywhere you go you have the ocean. All you have to do is think of the sky as the ocean upside down and the clouds like sea foam.

One day I will get you, Gorda. And you won’t even see me coming, he threatened her. You will die before that ever happens.

But you must leave. I did something terrible, Soledad. Something so terrible. And now I’m paying for it. What can be so terrible, Gorda? Please tell me. Maybe I can help you.

Gorda stops and holds her breath and, for the first time ever, she says it out loud. Soledad, I think I killed your father.

For many nights I prayed for his death, every night to Santa Altagracia. I imagined him falling and crashing. Falling and crashing. I dreamed he would spill blood, more blood than your mother has in her body. Eve...

Do you think I’m crazy? Ay Gorda, how could you even ask? Of course you’re crazy. Aren’t we all?

Don’t even dare put my father’s death in your hands, Gorda. You didn’t kill him. You have to believe me.

Gorda can’t tell Soledad how she has surrendered her body to Manolo night after night. How she looked forward to his visits, all this time thinking it was Raful.

You didn’t kill him, Gorda. How do you know, Soledad? How else would he have fallen out of a window like that.