We Are Five Cousins & We Are 13

“Harbour Glow” by Leah Dockrill

We Are Five Cousins

We gather in El Centro on Christmas Eve. We wear dresses made of velvet and lace. Tia sewed them from the same pattern, each a different color. Viejitas at church ooh and aah when we pose by the Virgen de Guadalupe. No one cares that the dress is too tight across Elisa’s chest, too short on Maribel so she slouches, cuts off the circulation on Delia’s arms, and hangs all loose on Larissa. Only Joanna’s fits perfect. We’d rather wear something else.

We fidget on kneelers and hold our breaths when incense wafts by. We falsetto each holy song, squeeze tight on “peace be with you” handshakes. We interrupt “Our Father who art in heaven” with “Red Rover Red Rover” under our breath and swing our arms until Tias glare hard. We lift our hands so high at the end, we almost touch “the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.” We cough in unison when the prayer ends.

We walk to communion, step touch, step touch, like brides without bouquets. Hands folded with the middle fingers down, our thumbs touching our nose tips up like pigs. We stick out our tongue for “The Body of Christ” and say “Amen” extra loud. We fill with our mouths full of holy wine, gulp hard so it stings our noses. We stare out stained glass, long to be anywhere but in this pew.

When mass is over, we run across Brighton Avenue to the merry-go-round. We each grab a bar, run faster and faster, round and round, then jump on and hold tight. We stretch back, tilt our faces up to the sun, so trensas and curls hang down to the dirt. The spinning slows and Joanna is the first to hop off. She drops to one knee, ignores the scrape of pain, and runs toward the swings. We follow, pump our legs higher and higher. All five glide side by side. Until Joanna lets go, flies farther than anyone in the history of swing jump outs. We clap and cheer. Even brothers are impressed. Delia jumps too, lands on hands and shins, spits out a mouthful of grass. We drag our feet to slow down.

We ignore Tias regañas about torn tights, scuffed shoes, dirty dresses, and wild hair, race down the block to Nana’s for tamales and regalos. She grabs our cheeks with her masa covered hands, squeals cariños and kisses our foreheads. Her spit dries there. We wipe hard to remove bright pink lips when she’s not looking. Nana wants girls who wear aprons and make cookies. We want to shoot hoops in her driveway with Tio’s deflated ball.

On the way home from Nana’s, we detour around by Circle K for slushies and walk home the long way down Dogwood Road. On the corner of Orange, three guys sit on crates around a folding table in their garage. We stop walking. One shuffles blue-backed cards. One takes a long drink from his fat green bottle. The third one stands to put on a new record.

We dance when “Oye Coma Va” comes on. We love Tito Puente.

They see us. “Hola chamaquitas. You got some movidas.”

“Shut up, Chuy,” Joanna yells to him. To us she says, “His sister’s in my class. She calls him a bum.”

Chuy’s friends laugh. He takes another swig and deals the cards, even to the empty space.

“Who’s gonna play?” He taps the hand still face down on the table. Delia is the first to move.

Maribel follows, whispers, “Do you know how?”

“I beat my brothers every time.” Delia slaps our remaining dollar on the table.

“Five card stud,” Chuy says, offers us a beer.

We are five cousins who take home five dollars from guys who underestimated girls. We don’t go straight home. We climb the tallest tree at the end of our block, look south across the desert to the Mexicali mountains. We wonder where could we win more money? How much would it take to buy five houses all our own?

Later that night, we lie in the front room on the pile of blankets Tias threw down. We fall asleep and dream about our grown-up fortunes.

We are 13

We are tired of church chisme in the kitchen and escándalos revealed in the garage when someone needs a perm or color touch up. We can’t sit and watch Tias grow old together, so we jump on our banana seats and pedal to the top of Manning Way, let legs loose and fly down, whee-ing at the top of our lungs. We speed down the hill to the empty lot, jump dirt piles on our bikes, whoop and yay at our tricks and turns.

Until Tias see us, swear a car almost hit us, insist biking in the middle of the street is too dangerous for little girls. They give us soft things and quiet time in our room.

Tias think we still play with Strawberry Shortcake dolls like we did when we were five. Or sew Barbie clothes like we did when we were seven. Or read Little House on the Prairie in our plush bean bags like we loved to do at nine. Or whisper scary stories under the blankets like we did at eleven. But now we are 13.

So when Tio starts snoring and Tia puts in earplugs, we sneak out the kitchen door, careful to keep the knob twisted as we pull it shut and put Vaseline on the metal gate latch so its scrape won’t wake the neighbor’s dog. We don’t dare breathe until we walk our bikes to the end of the block.

Elisa points at the moon. “Let’s ride down to the beach.”

We hesitate. We’ve never gone alone, never biked out the neighborhood without big brothers or alongside Tio’s truck.

“Will we be safe?”

Elisa is the oldest. She’ll be fourteen in September. We follow her down Elm Avenue to 27th Street and carefully round the corner to Imperial Beach Blvd. In daylight, cars speed by, rush to and from work. But tonight, only two at the gas pumps, a few stopped at the light. We pedal our hardest over the freeway bridge, hear grown up warnings about what goes on in this part of town, sinvergüenzas and travesuras that can only happen after dark. We pedal slowly past taquerias and bars, listen to the rancheras and shouted conversations wafting out. We pass more gas stations, the market where Tias buy fresh mariscos. We speed past a school and the library where we’d all earned free personal pan pizzas from the Book It challenge.

We stop at the ball field and stare at the chalk lines glowing in the moonlight. We remember foul balls caught and traded for free sodas at the snack shack. Where Delia broke her nose and still rubs the bump that won’t go away.

Clouds shift across the night sky.

“What happen to the moon?”

“We should turn around”

“Don’t be scared,” Elisa says. “We’ll be fine.”

We round Seacoast Drive and race to the pier. We drop our bikes in the sand and run into cold, salty water with all our clothes on. The moon is bright again, spotlights our sandy stage. We leap over seaweed scraps, screech and splash and chase each other through foamy lines.

A voice interrupts our play. “Hello there.” A skinny old man sniffs and wipes his eyes.

Tias say this viejo wanders along the shoreline at night, crying and looking for his children. They drowned when he wasn’t watching, and every night he waits for them to come back. Tias warn he will take us if we stay out this late.

Elisa stands between us and the sad man. “Leave us alone.” She backs up as he moves closer. We stand up tall and make mean faces.

He tries to smile, extends a hand. “I won’t hurt you.”

We run away and sneak around the pier poles toward our bikes. We hop on, pedal our fastest a different route home, and don’t stop until we are too far to hear crashing waves. We speed down Raedel Drive until we see the forbidden South Bay Drive-In. We slow ourselves as we pass the steamed windows. We want to be one of those kissing couples. But we are still señoritas, Tias say, too young for such things.

We sneak in the gate and park our bikes. We push and pull and scramble up to the steep garage roof, sit at its peak, careful not to slide down. We take out our trenzas and shake sand out our curls. From this distance, we see Jennifer Beals spin and leap, groove to music we can’t hear. We whisper what we think movie stars say, invent stories all our own.

about the author

Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera is a Macondista, an editor for Ricochet Editions, and on the leadership team for Women Who Submit. She writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and is working on her PhD at USC. You can read her other stories at http://tishareichle.com/

about the artist

Leah Dockrill holds degrees in education, library science, and law. In addition she has built a thirty-year art practice which includes painting and collage. Her work has been exhibited in both Canada and the U.S. and she has earned many awards. In recent years images of Leah’s art have been published in over two dozen art and literature journals and reviews. Some of these are Split Rock Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Mud Season Review,Cosumnes River Journal, Glassworks Magazine, Sunspot Lit, High Shelf Press, Chaleur Magazine, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, The Esthetic Apostle, and ArtAscent: Art & Literature Journal (Gold Artist Award, August 2018, Bronze Artist Award, April 2019 and Distinguished Artist Award, January 2020.) Leah is represented by Tag Art Gallery, St. Catharines , Ontario and nowords Gallery, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. She is an elected member of the Society of Canadian Artists and the Colour and Form Society (Canada). She and her husband and two Siberian cats live in Toronto, Canada. More of Leah’s work can be viewed at www.leahdockrill.net