Trouble

“Hey, Sol!” Marisol giggled as she ran into the living room. She was still in her pajamas, an old shirt of mamá's that hung off her little body, almost reaching her knees like a nightdress, even though it was almost five in the afternoon. “When is Liam coming over again?”

Stifling my sigh, I pulled her up onto my lap, bouncing my knee up and down a couple times. “No sé, querida. Why?”

“Because I like him!” she grinned, and I noticed that one of her front canines were gone. “Es muy amable.”

I smiled politely before pointing at her mouth. “Hey, what happened to your tooth?”

Immediately, she clamped her mouth shut, folding her lips under her teeth, and mumbled, “Nothing.”

“No, don’t do that.” I took her chin in my hand and tilted her head back. “Open up.”

Groaning, she did so, exposing an empty, slightly raggedy place where her tooth had been.

“What happened?” I questioned as I let go of her face.

“My tooth was wiggly, and I told Esperanza, and Esperanza told me to pull it out. So I said no, and then we started arguing. And then she ripped it out.”

“For…” I started, but stopped when I remembered I was talking to mi hermanita. “Is Esperanza still in our room?”

Marisol nodded wordlessly. “She didn’t mean to pull it out, though,” she tried to defend.

“Mierda,” I muttered under my breath as I walked into my bedroom as calmly as possible, pulling the door shut softly behind me.

Esperanza was sitting on her bed, flipping through a magazine she’d probably taken from one of her friends. As she chewed the wad of gum in her mouth, she forced it to make a series of popping noises, probably because she knew I’d just entered the room, and she wanted to bother me.

“Did you rip out your sister’s tooth?” I demanded, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

“Nope,” she responded simply, popping her lips on the ‘p’. “The little shit probably lied to you.”

“Don’t talk about your sister like that,” I snapped. “Why did you rip out her tooth?”

“I told you, I didn’t.”

“If you didn’t, then why did Mari tell me you did?”

“Because she’s a little shit!” Esperanza let out a dramatic sigh, blowing a strand of curly, newly dyed hair out of her face. She’d taken to a kind of dirty blonde hair, which I thought would have clashed with her Mexicana skin, but it didn’t at all. “Can I read my magazine now?”

I liked to value myself as having an even temper, but when it came to Esperanza, she had an ability to get under my skin with her irritable attitude and condescending demeanor that no one else could dream of having. So I marched over to her and tore the thing out of her hand, leaving her with one corner in her hand.

“¡Que mierda!” Esperanza screeched. “¡Eres una puta! ¡Vete ahora!”

“Cállate,” I hissed at her, gesturing toward the door. “I bet a million dollars the girls are listening. You’ve already corrupted them enough.”

“Por favor,” she scoffed. “It’s nothing they don’t hear at school.”

“Mari is six.” I took a deep breath and massaged my temples. “Look, don’t rip your sister’s teeth out. You could have seriously damaged her.” I leaned closer to her, narrowing my eyes, making myself look as scary as I sometimes had to be on the street. “And I don’t know what the fuck crawled up your ass, but you need to cut it the fuck out. I don’t want to put up with your endless whining and complaining about everything. I’m trying to take care of those girls, and I don’t need you on my ass all the time. ¿Me entiendes?”

Instead of an answer, I got an icy glare. She knew I was dead serious, and she didn’t want to know what measures I’d go to in order to make her obey me. Sometimes, I guessed Esperanza knew a little more than I intended her to.

But then again, I had to accept at some point that I couldn’t shelter my sisters forever. I should have figured that Esperanza heard things at school. I knew for a fact that some of the kids she hung around with were in the gang.

I just had to hope and pray that, no matter how dumb she was, she would never be idiotic enough to do the same.

“I’m making dinner,” I stated finally, taking deep breaths in through my nose to try to calm myself down a bit. “Should I tone down the spice for you?”

“No,” she responded snippily. “I’m leaving. I don’t want to eat any of your fucking nasty food.”

“Suit yourself.” With that, I turned on my heel and left.

There had been a time when Esperanza and I had been inseparable. When we were kids, our small age gap meant that, before we moved into the bigger school with a higher percentage of Mexican-Americans, we were each other’s best and only friends.

But then she hit thirteen, got her period, and turned into a mega-bitch. And although I’d had three years to get used to her by then, it never really got any easier. I just seemed to have less and less patience.

I went into the kitchen and turned on the stove, trying as hard as I could to make myself seem pleasant, since I didn’t want to scare the other girls. They didn’t deserve any of my wrath, and I knew that, while it hadn’t much fazed Esperanza, it would scare the wits out of the littler ones.

“Soledad!” Marisol called as she walked into the kitchen, her curls bouncing up a storm. “One of my teachers said that, instead of doing homework, we could do something with our parents for a half-hour.”

I looked down at the girl, my eyebrows drawing together. “Lo siento, querida, pero mamá no está aquí.”

She looked down at her sneakered feet, standing pigeon-toed with her hands behind her back. Her teeth, or the ones she still had, latched onto her bottom lip, and she mumbled, “But I was hoping I could help you cook.”

I felt a pang in my stomach as I straightened again. It killed me that, basically, I was the only mother that Marisol had ever known. When Claudia was a kid, her father stuck around for a couple years, and she at least knew what it was like to have a mother available some of the time.

But with Marisol, her father ditched the second mamá said she was pregnant. She’d never known a mother who didn’t work all hours of the day, a mother who was around so rarely that Marisol only caught glimpses of her here and there.

For all intents and purposes, I was Marisol’s mother. I may not have given birth to the girl, but I was definitely the closest thing she had.

I swallowed down the emotion welling up in my throat. “You know what? I think I count well enough. Do you need me to sign anything?”

Marisol nodded. “But I want to make sure I help you for a half-hour first. Sol, this is going to be so much fun!”

I smiled down at her. “So why don’t you help me by getting the cheese and ground beef out of the fridge?”

She hurried to do so. “Do you want any vegetables, too?” she questioned as she struggled to balance the two things in her hands.

I reached to help her, putting the food on the counter and shaking my head. “No, the meat has to cook first. The vegetables will get soggy if they cook as long as the meat.”

Marisol’s mouth made an ‘o’ shape as she made a sound of recognition. “Oh, alright. That makes sense.”

I started to fry up the meat in the pan, directing Marisol to stand back, just in case the oil spattered.

“But what can I do?” Marisol pouted. “I’m supposed to help for thirty minutes.”

“When I finish with the meat and vegetables, you can make up everybody’s plates by piling everything in the tortillas. Can you get them, please?”

She nodded and did as she was told.

I let out a long sigh as I watched after the girl, unsure whether to be excited or depressed that she looked up to me like a mother. God knew what disasters that could cause.

Dios, the past few days had been heavy.