"The Flamenco Academy" by Sarah Bird

sound-men who had the same stunned,
hungover look. It was like the day room at a mental ward with
everyone smoking—cigarettes, joints—and the room littered with
hamburger wrappers and Big Gulp cups. Someone was watching Reservoir Dogs on cable. As always, it amazed me to see Didi
turn on her high-wattage charm for these losers, angling for
backstage passes and access to someone higher on the rock ‘n’ roll
food chain. The guys beamed big as troops at a USO show as Didi
stepped into the room.
    “Where’s Julie?” was her first question. She
never had any problems getting what she wanted. I handed the
princess to the rock plebeians who would deliver her to their
aristocrats and then I left.
    I remember everything about the next
morning. Sunday morning when Mom went to worship services at the
HeartLand compound was my only time to be alone with Daddy and I
looked forward to it all week. Even though she never said it, my
mom was punishing me for being friends with Didi by banning me from
the sickroom. She shooed me out, saying that it upset Daddy for me
to see how bad off he was. It didn’t. She was the only who was
upset. If I objected, though, she’d get even more twitchy and
weird. She’d make her tiny hands into tiny fists that she’d shake
beside her pink head until it turned red while she shrieked, “I
can’t take it! I can’t take it!” louder and louder. I knew she was
wrong, but what difference did that make? I’d tell her I was sorry
and to, please, calm down. Then she would blubber and tell me I had
to stop being so difficult, that she couldn’t take any more. She
told me that I was lucky, I had inherited Daddy’s strong nerves and
I had no idea what she was enduring. I had to be strong the way
Daddy always had been or else.
    Or else what? I wanted to ask because I
didn’t want to imagine how things could get worse than they
were.
    When Daddy and I were alone on Sunday, he
tried to tell me not to let my mother bother me, but it was getting
harder and harder for him to talk. I’d heard her on the phone the
week before saying, “No! No hospice. We don’t need hospice here and
we don’t need talk like that.” I knew what hospice meant and it
scared me. I was scared all the time except for when I was with
Didi. Not that we ever talked much about our fathers. But, at odd
times, like when we were in the middle of a burnfest on what
goobers the Pueblo Heights Whore-nuts were, she’d stop, catch my
eye, and ask, “You doing okay?” I never did much more than nod, but
I didn’t have to. That question was everything I needed. It said
that she understood that about 99 percent of the time I was putting
up a front and if I didn’t, I’d start crying and never stop. That
my life was horrible and we both knew it was going to get a lot
worse.
    That morning Daddy had seemed good. There
wasn’t much he liked to eat anymore, but I’d discovered the perfect
mixture of Cream of Wheat and butter and melted ice cream and had
helped him eat five spoonfuls before he fell back, exhausted. Then,
huffing out one word on each breath, he asked, “How. Is. Old.
Sometimes. Y?”
    It had been a while since he’d teased me
about my imaginary boyfriend with the last name full of vowels and
I laughed too loud and too much when he did. Still, it made him
happy and I joked back, “Oh, Sometimes Y and I are through. I’m
dating a Hawaiian boy now. Ahahkahluauluau.”
    He wheezed out a laugh that was the
equivalent of hysterics for him. The effort wore him out and he
slid back into sleep. He was snoozing when the church van pulled up
in front and dropped my mom off. I slipped out the back before she
came in and walked to work.
    At Puppy Taco, I clocked in for me and Didi
and did the prep work, shredding the pale iceberg lettuce, slicing
pulpy tomatoes, crying over the onions I had to chop up for the
burgers. In addition to all the regular stuff, on Sundays it was
Alejandro’s tradition to add a few New Mexican