CHAPTER ONE

Cousin Juno, Short Plaid Skirts

& Lipstick In The Girls’ Room …

Sometimes I think I never should have left Back Streets—there are too many memories I can’t forget and would never want to. The smell of tamales and beans in Pepe’s Café… the bell in St. Mary’s church… and Old Gomez who smokes a cigar while his fingers fly over thick guitar strings. Little ones play kickball in litter-lined streets, paying no mind to honking taxis and the mustachioed stallions in their old jalopies. When I was six, the pretty girls had long black hair that grew right to their asses. Their hips rolled, one plump cheek and then the next, as they strolled the broken sidewalks, flirting.

When I was thirteen I became one of them, piling my black hair on top of my head, painting my face with too much make-up and having more fun out of school than in—and who wouldn’t? We smoked in back alleys, giggling like we were drunk. Then, at fifteen when Sonia, Jess and I began to drink, we’d stumble out from behind old dumpsters, looking like we were twenty-five and acting like kids. The truant officer would haul us back to school, just so we could sneak out again—sometimes twice in one day. They hauled us home and I’d get a licking from Papa’s strap—that is,ifhe was around. He rarely was. Mama would cry over me as though I was lost to sin forever. I smiled at her a lot, and said the nicest things to make her think I was reformed. Next day, my party began again.

I can still recall the day, the three of us skipped out of Social Studies before it began. How could they expect us to concentrate on Rome and Greece when the sweltering heat of Back Streets turned our classrooms into ovens? Mouths parched, we grabbed a quick beer from Carlos out of the back of his bar and hit the streets. Peering over the fence at the Fidelity Bank construction site my eyes settled on tan sweaty arms and a muscled chest. For fifteen minutes, I studied every move that hot boy made—every flex and bend. Every quiver tha