Pig Park Read online

  It was something like my last meal or —since I was the Cinderella of crumbs—having a fairy godmother grant me one last wish.

  I hurried to the park.

  I tugged on the belt loops of my dad’s old jeans as I jogged. They hung low around my waist and the torn dingy hems dragged on the ground.

  “Lovely outfit, Masi,” Josefina said. She pointed at my T-shirt. The white jersey was spotted with grease like someone had flung spoonfuls of butter at me.

  “Likewise. You make a fine chorizo,” I threw back. Josefina had, with all the skill of a sausage maker, squeezed herself into a pair of gym shorts she’d probably outgrown back in eighth grade.

  Josefina’s thick eyebrows locked into a menace. I mimicked her face. Her scowl deepened. “Not funny,” she said, right before her face melted into laughter.

  I shrugged. “These are my work clothes. I got no one to impress.”

  Marcos stepped forward from behind a nearby tree. He reached upward and pulled his hair back behind his ears. “What am I, fried cheese?” he asked.

  I put my hands on my hips. “How long have you been here?” I demanded.

  Marcos walked to my side in one stride. Josefina turned her shoulder and ignored him as was mandatory of younger sisters. Marcos grinned so that his high cheeks dimpled. “Long enough to hear everything, chorizos.” He jabbed his index finger into my arm like I was his little sister too.

  I lost my train of thought. If I had to be completely honest—like if someone was pelting me with dried masa balls—I sometimes suffered unsisterly feelings towards him. Maybe it was that he’d grown out his hair. Or maybe I was just a sucker for dimples. I fought the feelings off, of course.

  “Ow. Keep your hands to yourself.” I rubbed at my arm. I thought back at what Josefina and I had talked about. Relief washed over me. We hadn’t said anything particularly embarrassing. “We didn’t even say anything. You’re so weird,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Marcos said. He strolled back to the tree and pulled his music player out of the front pocket of his Old McDonald overalls. He pulled his headphones on, let his hair fall into his face again, leaned back against the trunk, and closed his eyes.

  I made a real effort to ignore him, just like Josefina had, and turned away. Casey and Stacey Sanchez trudged towards us from their mother’s flower shop across the street from the north side of the park, wearing cotton candy-colored sundresses—of all things. The boys from restaurant row also arrived in pairs. Frank and Freddy Fernandez wore rancho wear, Pedro Wong sported a tracksuit and little Iker Sustaita sported too-large fatigues—I suspected hand-me-downs from his grandfather. Colonel Franco trailed in at the end.

  He moved like a slow shadow at sunset.

  He paused next to Josefina and me. I nodded—a tight chin chop. He nodded back. He rubbed at his knee—I suspected an old war injury—just above the hem of his cargo shorts. “Do you want to sit, Colonel?” I asked. “We can move over by the park bench.”

  “No thank you, Masi. I don’t know about you kids, but I’m done sitting around.”

  He cleared his throat. We all gathered around him. His lips moved and the jet-black broom above his mouth brushed the air in front of his face. “Good morning, everyone. I’m here because I want to be here. I hope you want to be here too.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, Grampa, sir,” Iker said.

  “Think of this as summer camp,” Colonel Franco said. “What we’re doing is important. Everyone has something to contribute. Our first task is to collect bricks and bring them to the park.”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s take it from the American Lard Company, tear the place down brick by brick and use it for the pyramid,” Marcos said.

  “That would be stealing,” Colonel Franco said.

  The company’s four massive buildings sat forgotten at our neighborhood’s borders. I doubted anyone would even notice. “But, isn’t building on Pig Park stealing too?” I asked. If Colonel Franco was going to be a stickler for the law, I figured we didn’t own the park either.

  “The park was established by the American Lard Company for its employees. They turned it over to the neighborhood when they left. The Chamber of Commerce administers a land trust.”

  My mouth dropped open. Colonel Franco may as well have been talking military code. Everyone stared at him, not just me.

  “The park belongs to the people who still live here. Technically, we’re not doing anything illegal,” he explained.

  The idea that we owned the park translated to chaos. Marcos pantomimed marking his territory like a dog. The Fernandez brothers cackled in that way that I sometimes heard all the way down the street when they worked the line at their family’s tamale shop. The two paced the lawn like a couple of roosters in cowboy boots and staked out their own sections.

  Colonel Franco put his fingers to his mustache and whistled loud enough to blow a lung. He raised his left hand and counted down from five using his fingers. Everyone stopped. “Go grab anything you can find with wheels so we can start.”

  “We don’t have driver’s licenses,” Josefina said.

  “Grab anything that doesn’t require a driver’s license. Meet me in my back yard,” he barked.

  I elbowed Josefina. “Quit it. He’s already annoyed. He’ll send us all back home.”

  “I wish,” Josefina said. “He won’t send us away. He wants our help.”

  I didn’t want to take that chance. “Let’s just do what he says anyway. This isn’t so bad,” I said.

  “It isn’t so great.” Josefina rolled her eyes. “It’s just more work on top of our chores at home.”

  “At least we get to be out here together.”

  Her mouth formed a small o as if she hadn’t thought of it herself. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

  We borrowed a cart from the Nowak Grocery Store and pushed it to Colonel Franco’s backyard. Colonel Franco’s entire fence was lined with rows of brick like the back lot of one of those home improvement stores. I looked twice just to take it all in. “I wonder where all this stuff came from.”

  “I bet he was building a bomb shelter.” Josefina stepped closer.

  Iker walked up next to us with a wheelbarrow. “It’s old Army surplus. Grampa doesn’t like to see anyone throw anything away,” he said

  “Okay,” Colonel Franco called from the back stoop where he sat smoking a cigar, knee propped up on a well-worn phonebook. “Now, load the brick and run it over to the park.”

  “You heard the boss,” Pedro Wong said. He appointed himself second-in-command. He wasn’t even second-in-command at Wong’s Taco Shop, but having grown a paltry mustache over the last year, turning eighteen and being the oldest in our group gave him delusions of authority. He picked up a stack of bricks and started an assembly line of sorts. “Iker and the Sanchez sisters, you guys man the carts. Push the bricks to the park, and bring the carts back. The Fernandez brothers and I will come along and stay at the park to unload. The rest of you stay here and continue loading for the next pick up.”

  “I don’t want to get dirty,” Casey, the older and plumper Sanchez sister, said.

  “Don’t worry. I got this,” Iker said. He puffed up his posture to make himself seem bigger and grabbed the wheelbarrow once it was full. He pushed the wheelbarrow away. The Sanchez sisters followed— their two thick silhouettes sashayed close behind him.

  Marcos bent down and picked up some bricks. He handed first Josefina and then me a stack. We loaded them onto the grocery store cart. We repeated the process. I lifted heavy trays onto the racks at the bakery. Josefina and Marcos were used to lifting product crates and kitchen stock. Our new task should’ve been easy, but the sun was relentless. It shone brighter and hotter with each brick. Even an Olympic weightlifter couldn’t have muscled away the hot sticky air. I blotted the sweat off my brow with my shoulder. At least I wasn’t feeling self-conscious on top of it all. There was too much other discomfort for that, right? We
’d all seen each other sweat before anyway.

  “You’d think the sun was trying to burst out of the sky,” I said.

  Josefina huffed. “Ugh, this is terrible,” she said.

  “We all smell like Marcos’ gym socks.”

  “Like flowers.” Marcos grinned and handed me another stack of bricks. “Dumb sun.”

  “No. I don’t mind the sun. I mean, we need the sun, especially if we’re going to pass for Aztecs,” Josefina said. She held up a sun-ripened arm. Her face contorted into a smile. Marcos and I broke into laughter. Josefina had the complexion of a dinner roll. Even under all the layers of sun, sweat and dirt, she was several shades lighter than Marcos and me.

  I smiled at Marcos and Josefina. The sun softened us up like butter on a frying pan. There was more laughter and less complaining as the day wore on.

  Chapter 5

  I squinted at the two large flowers in full bloom moving towards us in the distance. There wasn’t a single rumple on the Sanchez sisters’ sundresses. It was quitting time, and the sisters had obviously done little work. Casey’s surprisingly lithe hand flew in the air and waved a box of paletas. Josefina ignored her and dragged the cart toward the grocery store.

  Marcos sprinted across the street towards Casey and Stacey. They cooed and giggled at him. He chatted them up and returned holding a popsicle. “You want some, Masi?” He licked it and pushed it toward me.

  “You already put your tongue all over it.” I pushed his hand away. He devoured the rest of the popsicle and stuck the stick in the back pocket of his overalls. “That’s gross,” I added for good measure.

  “Roll us home.” Josefina nudged the cart in Marcos’ direction.

  “No, you’ll break it,” he said. I gave him a dirty look. Josefina gave him something even dirtier than my look. It involved a finger. Marcos shoved past Josefina. “Come on, Masi. Let’s race,” he said.

  “No.” I shook my head, but thought better of it. Marcos had asked, and I had nothing better to do than to go home and stew in my own worry.

  Take that other letter in my parents’ letter drawer that I didn’t want to think about. The school district had sent out a notice at the beginning of summer informing my parents that they were closing down American Academy. We would be bused to the next nearest school in the fall. Most kids might think there was nothing better than having their school close down. On test days, I wished it would.

  But I didn’t want a new school or new friends. I already had a best friend.

  Josefina and I had chosen each other to begin with. On the first day of kindergarten, I’d stuck to my mom’s side like a grease stain. “Look, don’t you want to make friends?” my mom had asked. Josefina noticed me crying beside my mom and came up to me. She grabbed my hand, and we walked into school together. We’d been as good as sisters ever since. As for Marcos, some days he was really nice. Some days he was unbearable. Josefina said that’s exactly what having a brother was like. I’d never told either of them about my sometimes crush. So he treated me no different than his sister. I tried not to think about how much I would miss the Nowaks if we didn’t save Pig Park.

  “Wait,” I said to Marcos.

  “Races don’t wait, Masi. That’s like asking the wind to wait.” Marcos tugged on my hair and sprinted past me toward the American Lard Company’s immense fenced-in parking lot, which sat barren as a desert on the north side of Pig Park.

  “Whatever,” I yelled. I took hold of the cart’s plastic handlebar, tightened my grip and barreled after him.

  My shirt clung to my skin as I ran. The gap between us grew wider and wider. He looked back and mouthed the words “toooooo sloooow.” It was as if to say that there was no point in chasing him—and, of course, that was true on more than one level. Marcos became a dot, then nothing. He was halfway to the equator. I gave up and stopped. That’s the way it always went with Marcos. I flipped the cart on its side and boosted myself up to grab hold of the windowsill of one of the company’s buildings. I peered into the darkness. I yelled my name through a broken pane, “Maaaasi!” Nothing came back, not even an echo.

  “I don’t know how you can still move,” Josefina said over my shoulder.

  I turned the cart right side up and pushed south. “I don’t know either.” I pulled at my sleeves and looked at my arms, but there was nothing to see. Not even a sunburn like Josefina’s.

  “What does that doctor guy even know? He lives a million miles away from Pig Park,” Josefina said. She meant Dr. Vidales Casal, the man who had come up with the idea to build a pyramid in the first place. “I mean, I looked him up. His website says he’s president of the Autonomous University of New Mexico, on top of being a professor and a bunch of other stuff.”

  “What about the president of Mexico?”

  “You’re not paying attention.”

  “Let’s stop for a second,” I said. I stretched out on a nearby patch of grass. I kicked off my shoes and wiggled my stubby brown toes through the cool blades. I pulled a tube of chapstick from my pocket and slathered on the melted strawberry-flavored balm.

  Josefina plopped down on the curb. She rubbed her scalp with one hand and her neck with the other. “My hair hurts. I’m done. I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

  It was a punch to the gut, as if I’d stumbled into a pile of bricks. My chapstick fell in the grass and rolled into the gutter. I let it vanish into the sewer, and just stared at Josefina.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

  “It’s hard not to.”

  “I don’t want to come back. My mom pawned all her jewelry—even the stuff my grandma left her when she died— to help pay for this scheme. She used to stare at that stuff and cry herself to sleep. She’s probably never getting it back. I don’t even care anymore. Look at what happened with Otto,” she said. Otto was a boy she’d fallen in love with the year before. His father had found a job downstate just before the summer, and they’d moved away. “It makes me want to leave too. It makes me not care about a lot of things.”

  I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t know anything about that kind of love. I wanted to—I wished I could meet a boy who saw me as more than his little sister— but that obviously hadn’t happened.

  But I did know something about a different kind of love. Josefina’s words made me feel like I didn’t matter. I was a speck of pollen drifting past her. I wanted Josefina to care and to want to fight to stay together. I wanted our friendship to mean something. I didn’t say anything. We sat there in silence.

  “Hot, hot, HOT!” Josefina blurted. She fanned herself with her hand. “It’s time to go.”

  I stood up. I wasn’t ready to let Josefina quit. She just needed to give it time. “Think about it,” I said. Josefina shrugged. I pushed the cart to the grocery store for her, then stomped off in the opposite direction towards the bakery.

  A boy I didn’t recognize rounded the corner from one of the American Lard Company’s vacant buildings. His eyes drank in everything around him.

  He was older, but not a grown-up. He wasn’t dressed to work like the rest of us. He wore pressed khakis, a plain but tidy blue polo shirt, and carried a backpack. His skin was the color of toast.

  Maybe he was lost. Although the company’s buildings blocked Pig Park from the expressway and any major roads, the train stopped right here. People still rode those trains from their crummy downtown jobs stapling papers and cleaning buildings to get to the neighborhoods west of us, then back downtown the next day. I’d seen those train cars bursting at the seams like Josefina in her gym shorts. It was possible to get off by mistake.

  Or maybe he was one of the people who were supposed to come on account of the pyramid. Never mind that we hadn’t even built it yet.

  I looked at the train stop, then the boy, then back again. I closed my eyes and opened them. The boy vanished. Maybe the boy had been wishful thinking or a mirage. It was hot enough for it.

  I made my way into the bakery. I was downright
delirious.

  “This is nuts,” my mom said to my dad. I tuned them out and climbed the back stairs to my room, two at a time, as fast as I could.

  I ignored the shuffle of footsteps behind me.

  I sat on the edge of my bed and shook off each shoe without bothering with the shoelaces. Gravity pulled my socks off along with my shoes.

  My mom paused in front of my bedroom doorway and took a few steps toward me. “Can I come in?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. I lay back into my bed.

  My mom crossed the length of the room and sat on my desk chair. “I see Colonel Franco’s been working you kids hard.”

  “I don’t mind. I like helping.”

  “I know you do. I have something so you don’t wake up sore tomorrow,” she said. She left the room and returned with a small white can. She pried it open and showed me the kiwi-colored balm. She dipped her fingers into the goop and dabbed the stuff along the outside of my arms in a circular car waxing motion. My skin tingled.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” she said.

  “I don’t mind. It’s okay so far.”

  My mom sighed—deep and profound. It dawned on me that maybe she wasn’t just talking about the bakery or the pyramid. What was she talking about then? And what was it with everyone? My dad had it right, belting out a song when things got tough. The man was more animated than one of those classic Disney movies these days.

  “It’s okay,” I repeated to my mom. But I wasn’t sure it was okay. I lay my head on her shoulder for a minute. I put my hand over my mouth and yawned. “I need to change. I have to finish my chores so I can go to bed and get up early again tomorrow.”

  “Leave the chores tonight if you’re too tired. I’ll take care of them.”

  “Don’t do that. I just need a minute.” I pulled my pillow over my head until I heard the door close. My body would be fine. I didn’t know about the rest of me. I was hallucinating. Josefina was ready to jump ship. Now something was up with my mom.