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Chasing the Jaguar
By Michele Greene HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Michele Greene
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060763531
Chapter One
Martika tossed fitfully in her sleep, the same dream playing out again:
She's lost, on a crowded, unfamiliar street . . . so many people, jostling and bumping her . . . passive, inscrutable Indian faces. Dense trees hover at the edges of the dirt streets, their canopy reaching, arching, as if trying to reclaim what was once wild. Somewhere in the green jungle a big cat lets out a screeching cry, and Martika knows it is for her. Something is following her, something is waiting for her, something powerful, foreboding. . . . What is it? Where is it?
The loud honking of the MTA bus on the street below her window jarred her awake. Martika broke out in a faint sheen of sweat. Outside the morning traffic was already getting out of control; frustrated drivers honked and lined up for the freeway on-ramp. Martika got out of bed and tried to shake off the dream.
Just a run-of-the-mill anxiety dream, probably related to finals, she told herself, making her way down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. In the past few weeks, her dreams had become strange and unsettling. Too many mornings she awoke feeling exhausted, as if she had been traveling a great distance. Powerful images of places she had never beenlingered in her mind all day.
She turned on the water in the shower, stuck her hand in, and waited. Good, the Mendez family next door hadn't yet used all the hot water in the building. From the kitchen, the smell of chorizo con huevos filled the apartment, and she could hear her mother, Aurelia, listening to her favorite morning radio show, El Cucuy de la Manana.
"Dime, mi amor, crees que tu esposo anda con otra?" The annoying host was asking a caller about her marriage.
In a timid voice the woman answered, "Pues creo que si porque no regreso anoche hasta las tres de la manana."
Great, thought Martika, that's all Mom needs to be listening to, complaints about a cheating husband.
That was too often the topic in her family these days, since her father had moved out. As if on cue, she heard Aurelia bang a pot loudly and then shout, "Martika, hurry up! You're going to miss the bus!"
Martika slid out of her cotton pajamas and stepped into the shower. As she squeezed the shampoo into her hair, the water turned cold. Damn the Mendez family and their six kids.
"We're going to pick up your dress today after school, okay?" Aurelia declared, heaping more chorizo onto Martika's plate. Martika nodded and put the last piece of tortilla into her mouth. She had changed the radio to a rock en espanol station, and Mana's hit "Mariposa Traicionera" filled the small kitchen. Her mother had a checklist for Martika's quinceanera in front of her.
"Then we pick up the party favors at Maria's and then we confirm the cake."
"Mom, we confirmed the cake last week."
"You can't be too careful. I had a cousin, Lupita, who ended up with a sympathy cake for her quinceanera. The bakery got confused and thought it was for a velorio. Poor thing, it actually had black frosting!"
Martika tried to swallow a laugh with her orange juice until she saw the sly smile on her mother's face as she continued, "It was dreadful. I laughed so hard I thought I would pass out, but Lupita didn't think it was funny. Your party is in two days; we're not having anything go wrong! And be sure to tell your father to double-check with that mariachi he hired, so they show up on time." She went back to the kitchen to scour the skillet.
Turning fifteen was an important milestone in Mexican culture, marking a girl's entry into womanhood. Martika's parents took it very seriously. The guests, the party, the music--everything had to be just right. To top it off, the elaborate white dress made it seem like a wedding. It was planned for the coming Sunday since both her parents worked on Saturday and her school was having an administrative holiday on Monday. And they could attend the Sunday mass first, as was customary before the party. For now, her parents were making her crazy over the details of the quinceanera; just the night before, her father had called four times.
As far as Martika was concerned, the party caused more tension than anything else, especially with her parents separated and the family up in arms about it. The fact that her father, Camiso, had a new girlfriend only complicated matters. She didn't want to disappoint her parents or seem unappreciative, but the whole thing seemed silly, the idea of all those people watching her, everyone celebrating that she was finally a woman.
From her perspective, there was not much difference between being fourteen and fifteen, except that now she was having weird dreams and waking up exhausted every day. She rubbed her eyes and pushed the plate away just as her mother returned with warm tortillas from the stove.
"That's okay, Mom. I don't need any more."
"You only had two tortillas! I don't want to hear any of this no-carb nonsense, this dieting. I read about it at Mrs. Weg's house."
"I'm just not hungry anymore. I had two servings of chorizo!"
"Well, you could gain a few pounds. It's not good to be too skinny, like those white girls who starve themselves. I read about that when the car was being fixed last week."
Her mother read everything and subsequently worried about everything. If it wasn't the disease of the week, it was pollutants in the environment or gang violence or genetically engineered fruit. Martika often wondered if maybe anxiety was what kept Aurelia going through the day, what with cleaning houses across the city and then taking care of their own apartment with all the cooking and shopping and such.
"How'd you sleep last night?" her mother asked off-handedly.
Continues...
Excerpted from Chasing the Jaguar by Michele Greene Copyright © 2006 by Michele Greene. Excerpted by permission.
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