“Don’t get pregnant,” Angel tells Lily dutifully. “It’ll ruin your life.”
Lily looks insulted. “God! I would never. God.” She scoots back on the couch, away from her cousin, as if screwing up might be contagious. “I’m going to college.”
“Well, Angel might go to college, too.” But Valerie’s voice is chipper and unconvincing.
Yolanda looks at her progeny worriedly and touches her spiky new hair. “So, the cooking olive oil? Just regular stuff from the kitchen?” She shakes her head. “No, thank you very much. I want real hospital-approved stuff on my shee-shee.”
Amadeo slaps his hands over his ears. “Mom!”
“Just call it a vagina, Mother.”
Yolanda waves Valerie away, laughing. “I hate that word. It’s dirty.”
“Dirty!” cries Valerie. She leans in, her deep, disturbing cleavage tipped forward. “How can it be dirty? It’s an anatomical term. Shee-shee. Ugh.”
“Well,” says Yolanda, “I think it’s cute.” She gets up and circles around to the kitchen, where she begins banging pots, spooning food into serving dishes, opening and closing the oven door. Crisp golden potatoes fragrant with rosemary, the salty ham. Amadeo’s mouth waters. He’s starving, he realizes. It’s been almost two weeks since he’s had a real meal, unless you count Angel’s bizarre food combos, and Amadeo doesn’t.
“Cute! It is a part of a human body, and it does a hell of a lot of work. Just because it’s on a woman we should devalue it, make it cute?”
“Mom,” says Lily. “Stop.”
“It is not cute,” says Angel, pushing herself up. She starts to set the table. “It’s gross. But anyways, what I was saying. This guest speaker didn’t feel any pain because she self-hypnotized herself and breathed right through it. Did it all in a horse trough right in her living room.” She arranges silverware on folded paper napkins.
Panic rises in Amadeo’s chest. “Don’t do that, Angel. You gotta be in a hospital.”
“Obviously I’m going to be in a hospital.” For the first time this evening Angel looks him full in the face. “You think I’m going to give birth here? With you as my breathing coach? No thanks, Captain Hook. I want professionals.” She pats her stomach. “Only the best for you, baby.” Now her tone is without malice. She resumes placing the dishes around the table, bored, apparently, by her own anger.
Valerie tips her head. “Good for you, Angelica, sticking with your program. It’ll make going back to school so much easier.”
“I didn’t even know I liked school,” says Angel. “But now there’s a real actual point, you know? Brianna teaches us useful stuff. Maybe all those years I wanted to be learning about baby development and how to make a good life for myself and not the history of the Constitution or whatever stuff they make us learn.”
“You can’t be a good citizen without understanding the Constitution,” Lily informs them.
“All those years,” Amadeo repeats to Valerie and his mom with a laugh. He jerks his thumb at Angel. “She talks like she’s an old lady. You’ve done one year of real high school, Angel.”
“A year and a half. Plus middle school counts.” Angel stops beside the table, holding the platter of ham. It’s pink and rich, curls of burned flesh at the edges. “I learned tons of stuff in middle school I didn’t care about. Brianna says we have to discover our passions. Like you, Lily: I watched your news clip online. You were amazing, standing up like that.”
“Brianna, Brianna, Brianna,” says Amadeo. “You in love with this lady?”
Angel thumps the ham on the table. “She’s a role model. Which, in case you can’t tell, I could use.”