Olga jumped from her seat when the special release bell rang, holding hands with her junior-high boyfriend as they walked the ten or so blocks towards the church’s school building. But as they turned the corner, flanked by a pack of their classmates, Olga’s blood grew cold. She could hear a commotion, if one man yelling could be called that. She pretended to forget something, told everyone to go ahead, reversed her course just long enough to seem believable, and then hid behind a tree until she saw them all ascend the stairs and walk into the building. The ranting continued. Louder still.
“But what I want to know is, who the fuck told you that my daughter was available for brainwashing? Tell me! Who?”
It was her father. High. Crack this time, clearly. On smack he was like a baby, would just curl up in anyone’s arms, looking for proof he was still loved. On crack, he was brave. And angry. And loud. She saw him, at the top of the stairs to the entrance of the school, all up in the face of the nun, Sister Kate, her face stoic under her habit. In the corner, slumped on the top step, was her brother, that fucking Benedict Arnold. That fucking people pleaser. Her father was barely a functioning being at this point, just nerves and synapses either stimulated or dulled senseless. He was, she surmised even at her young age, embarrassing but harmless. Her brother, on the other hand, was of sound mind and body and had brought him here with the sole purpose of ruining her dream.
“？？？Lombriz!!!” she called out to him using the word worm that her parents had always used for sellouts of their own culture. “？Lombriz!” She pointed, her voice louder than her father’s, loud enough to stop her father’s rant.
“？？Mija!!” He turned to her. “？Dime! Who put you up to this?”
But she swatted him away, hissing at her brother, “Take him away, you fucking piece of shit.”
“Olga,” Prieto replied, matter-of-factly, “he’s still our father, don’t his wishes count for anything?”
She ignored him and turned her attention to Sister Kate.
“Sister,” she pleaded, “my father isn’t in his right mind. I have wanted be a true Catholic—”
But Sister Kate cut her off. She was an old Irish woman. She had seen this all before. If not crack, alcohol. The vice really didn’t matter. Her eyes oozed with compassion. She put her hands on Olga’s face.
“Beautiful child. God’s timeline is long, and Jesus lives for always, so your time for the Sacraments will come. But for now, I cannot prepare you for them. Your grandmother told me that your parents were dead. You’re only thirteen. If your father doesn’t consent, I must abide by the law.”
Tears streamed down Olga’s face.
“But Sister, I will work so hard. So very hard.”
The sister blessed her before she went inside.
That night, Olga put Nair in her brother’s shampoo bottle. They never spoke of his betrayal again. Abuelita went to confession for her lie, though she did not feel true remorse; she and Olga kept returning to their pew.
When Olga’s father did actually die, three years later, with el SIDA, no funeral parlors in the neighborhood wanted to take him. There was a place for bodies with AIDS, everyone said, a potter’s field uptown. But Abuelita had an idea, and after digging in her papers to find the proper evidence, spoke about it to Olga. Only sixteen, but armed with her father’s baptism, confirmation, and—most shockingly to Olga—a certificate of marriage to her mother from the church, Olga went to visit Sister Kate, pleading that even Catholics with AIDS had the right to decent funerals. Sister Kate made a few calls, and they had to travel into Greenwich Village, but he had a proper wake and religious service at a funeral parlor there. “Lombriz,” Olga said to her brother, “thank us later.” He never did.
Olga had never had many friends, in part because she loved to spend time with Abuelita, their minds so much alike. Her mother was so black-and-white—rigid with her principles. Her father, a dreamer, lost in impossible ideals. But to Olga, her grandmother was a hustler who actually got things done. She understood the dance, which they did together, often. Both literally, as Abuelita, glamorous and towering in her heels, loved to dance with young Olga, and also figuratively. With her parents absent for such critical years of her life, Abuelita was never afraid to bend the truth, make someone dead or another person missing, in order to procure special tutoring, or a scholarship, or whatever her grandchildren needed. The truth, Abuelita would say, is so much harder to believe than our lie, no? And it’s not like we have bad intentions, ?sí? Yes! Olga would agree. She loved it all. The high heels, the prayer, the laissez-faire relationship with rules and regulations. Whether born that way or formed into shape from necessity, the two women mirrored each other.