Amadeo can get past his prudish discomfort at the thought of his daughter in a bikini. The real problem is that the stretch marks are ugly: deep tender-looking tracks streaking her belly, as if the skin might split.
He thinks of a story his grandmother told him long ago, about how, as a child in this village, she used to walk around barefoot all the time, and when they put her in shoes for school she got a blister. She thought nothing of it until her own mother saw the red streaks running up her legs. The whole story was a cautionary tale about why Amadeo should pray. “We didn’t have no antibiotics back then. Back then all we could do was soak in salt water and pray to God. God protected me, mi hijito, but not everyone. There was lots of kids in those days who died of blood poisoning.” He tamps down the thoughts, as if they might endanger the infant he holds.
He bounces Connor and starts to formulate his prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven, please clean up Angel’s stretch marks. At least the ones that show from a bikini. It’s a stupid prayer; there’s no way God wouldn’t find it frivolous. Amadeo surges with anger at this God who can’t understand a sixteen-year-old girl’s anguish about her body.
“They all say they don’t regret it. I do regret him. I don’t want a baby.”
She looks at Connor in Amadeo’s arms, and her face fills with startling malevolence. “I hate you, Connor Padilla,” she hisses, leaning in close to the little face. “Connor Justin Padilla, I hate you.”
“Stop it. Stop it right now.” He grabs a mostly dry towel off the rack and drapes it over the whimpering baby.
Angel slides to the ground, the damp bath mat rumpled under her haunches. For a time there is only the sound of her sniffles.
Amadeo retrieves the toilet paper roll and tears off a bunch. “Here.”
Angel accepts it, but doesn’t wipe her nose. She then turns her tear-streaked face toward him. Her expression is shining, miserable. “Dad, what am I going to do?”
He looks around the bathroom, but there’s no help to be found. He’s nineteen again and it’s summer, and he’s with Marissa in her parents’ backyard. They stretch out by the kiddie pool, beers warming in their hands and in the sun, while Angel plays. Amadeo has a plastic dinosaur in his hand, a purple stegosaurus, and he’s making it dance on the surface of the water, while Angel, with her damp black curls, slick red smile, and swollen diaper, slaps the water with fat hands and laughs her throaty laugh. They’re talking about Marissa’s older sister’s new trailer—two bedrooms, full bath, cream carpet—and Marissa says she wouldn’t mind a trailer, they could get a trailer, used at first, and beside them Angel splashes, a blade of grass stuck to her chest. Amadeo says, “You won’t catch me living in no trailer. Besides, they just lose value,” and Marissa says, stubbing out her cigarette emphatically in the grass, “It’s not that I wouldn’t rather a house, but when? And we gotta be saving if we ever want to have a place of our own—are you even saving anything?” This is when the fight starts, escalates. Amadeo accuses Marissa of getting pregnant just so he’d have to take care of her, and he calls her a whore. （She isn’t, he knows that, hasn’t done any more than he has.） Then they’re both on their feet, beers tipped into the grass, and he slaps her across the upper arm, which is exposed in her sleeveless shirt. Marissa staggers back, reaches behind her into the air to steady herself, finds no hold, falls.
Amadeo looks at his hitting hand, horrified. But if he were honest, he might admit that even as he moved to hit her, he knew he could stop himself and knew he was going to do it regardless. The real surprise is the shock on her face, proof that he can act on the world.
Marissa stands. The skin on her arm turns white, then red, where his palm made contact.
“You asshole. Don’t you ever hit me again,” she screams at him, throwing plastic buckets and toys. Some strike him, some miss and fall to the grass. She keeps yelling, “Don’t you ever hit me again!”