Are You My Father?

“What happened to your mother?” I ask.  But Adrianna just laughs.

“Bad PMS?” I ask.

“Eat something,” Mickey says.  But he couldn’t be talking to me.  And before I get a chance to ask him anything, he gets up from the table and I see him over by the food.  Adrianna pushes beans and rice around on her plate. 

Julio comes and sits beside Adrianna.  “Did you bring me some food that isn’t burned?”  She asks.  And then when she’s stuffing forkfuls of steaming pig and rice and beans into her mouth as if she has not eaten in days, he whispers in my ear.

Say nothing about the train.

“Maybe this could work out,” I say.  “The three of us heading out of town?”

“Who’s leaving?”  Julio’s dad asks.  He looks down at my plate.  “How come you’re not eating?”  I shrug my shoulders and Julio doesn’t say anything to help me out.  When Mickey returns he tells me I should try the pig.  This time I get that he is talking to me.  “Yours is fine,” he says. 

I glare at Julio as if Mickey hasn’t said a word about the food.  

I haven’t been eating for a few weeks.  I squeezed into one of Aunt Ally’s sundresses.  “This one’s loose,” Ally said.  She swallowed the words, “on me,” when she put the dress in my hands, but I heard her.  And I can’t seem to let it go, the stuff she said about the dress and what I want to say to Julio about the train now. 

“I know what you told me,” I say.  “And I’ve decided, I’m going on this trip with you.”