The Go-Between Page 7

  A few weeks after I’d started hanging out with Rooney, two things happened. The first was that I started to learn how to cook. First I watched as she showed me the proper way to cut vegetables. Not so hard, I realized. Then I saw how to roast a chicken and how to make a proper Caesar salad. She explained that the Caesar salad was invented in Mexico, by the way. The other thing that happened was that I met a couple of girls who seemed like they wanted to be my friends.

  “Hey, I think you’re in my Tapestries class,” said a girl who introduced herself as Willow.

  I didn’t know for sure. Tapestries was an assembly class, held in the gym. There were more than fifty kids.

  “Do you work in the kitchen?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I explained. “But Chef Rooney is teaching me how to make a few things.”

  Willow didn’t seem to hear the “not working” part, because she said, “Well, maybe one day when you’re not working, you can have lunch with me and my friend Tiggy. She’s a little OTT, but she’s good people.”

  Rooney had been peeping the whole situation. “You should have lunch with them tomorrow. You’re here to be with the other kids, not to cook.”

  The kitchen was open plan, which meant you could see us cooking from any of the student tables. As I was talking to Rooney, Milly, the girl with the tattoos, walked by. She looked at my cooking jacket and gave me a dirty look. “All Mexicans to the kitchen? I didn’t hear the announcement.”

  I was so startled, I didn’t know what to say, which was just as well, because she didn’t stop for my response. It was just burn and roll.

  I turned to Rooney. “That’s what my dad said when I told him I was hanging out in the kitchen with you.”

  Rooney looked sympathetic. “It’s tough when you’re a minority to figure out what you love, as opposed to what you want to do for the mere fact of defying expectations. My dad refused to pay for me to go to culinary school. He said generations of black women had sweated and slaved to get out of the kitchen. We’d finally elected a black president, and he was accusing me of wanting to take us back to the days when women like me toiled over a hot stove.”

  She added, “But I fell in love with cooking, and maybe you will too. Our history is always with us, but I think food is one of the most powerful game changers there is. We all eat. Every day. That’s power. Every time you put a plate in front of someone, you are telling them a story. That’s why I love doing the blog. Lookit, first let me try to get this little culinary internship approved by the administration. If your parents give their permission—and by ‘permission’ I mean they call me, not send a text or a possibly forged note—you can come help me on Tuesdays and Thursdays before school starts. That’ll leave your lunch hours free to hang with other kids and not look like the help.”

  I told her it was a deal, and once my father called with his okay, it was.

  The next day I had lunch with Willow and Tiggy. Willow explained that she was biracial—black mom, white dad, and as she put it, “heavily African American identified.” She smiled and said, “It’s like Drake said, ‘Hardly home, but always repping.’ ”

  Tiggy introduced herself as “a garden-variety white girl. Park Avenue born. Palisades raised.”

  “So,” Willow said. “Can I ask you a question? Do a lot of Mexican girls have blond hair?”

  I shook my head. “Some do. But I’m a bottle blonde.”

  Tiggy peered at me over her Chanel cat’s-eye shades. “So what’s up with that? Are you running from the law? Witness protection?”

  No, I told her.

  “Did you ever work as a drug mule?”

  No.

  Then Willow said it, “Your accent is so cute.”

  This may sound crazy, but I didn’t think I had an accent. I speak English fluently. We all do in my family. I watch all of my favorite TV shows and movies in English. I sing along to all of my favorite songs on Google radio. When I traveled during the summer with my parents, everyone always commented on how good my English was. But alas, here it was. The thing that everyone at school kept saying was, “Oh. My. God. Your accent is so cute.” It was slightly disconcerting, like discovering you have a big mole on a part of your face that you’d never seen before.

  Tiggy sat staring at me, her chin propped on her hand. “I love the way you talk. It’s almost like watching a foreign movie. How long have you lived in the US? Because you sound like you’re fresh off the boat.”

  I said, in the calmest way I could, “Well, actually, we flew here.”

  I wanted to add, “By private plane. But whatever.” I didn’t. The point was to stay low-key.

  Tiggy said, “Of course you flew. We didn’t mean to imply that you snuck across the border, crawling on your belly, under a barbed wire. Though, I will say that’s how my nanny, Cresencia, got here.”

  I was incredulous, and fascinated.

  “So tell us how you got into Polestar in the middle of the year?” Willow asked. “The waiting list is insane, and I can’t imagine there’s any financial aid left at this time of year.”

  I thought, “Oh, I get it. Financial aid. They think I’m poor.” That was interesting. I was anonymous, and now I got to ditch the whole MAP thing. Now I understood why Sergio had moved to Europe. It’s easier to try on a new identity when you cross a border.

  “Well, I guess I just got lucky,” I said modestly.

  Then Tiggy looked at me and said, “Is that T-shirt Proenza Schouler?”

  Willow touched my shoulder and said, “Tiggy’s parents own a boutique. She’s like a living, breathing fashion encyclopedia.”

  My mother had offered to take me back-to-school shopping at Barneys, and I had let her because while I do not go much for makeup, I love shopping. I thought the T-shirt was understated and cool. I guess I had miscalculated. I decided to play dumb.

  “Prowen who?” I said, looking confused. Maybe I was a better actress than I gave myself credit for.

  Tiggy gave me a sympathetic look, then spoke to me, loudly and slowly as if I did not speak fashion fluently. “Proenza Schouler,” she said. “It’s okay. Cresencia’s daughters wear all of my hand-me-downs too.”

  Willow glared at Tiggy. “Why are you assuming her mother is a domestic?”

  Tiggy rolled her eyes. “Because that’s what she said, right? That her mother was a maid and that she was on scholarship.”

  I had in fact said nothing of the kind. But my parents always told me that the first rule of improv was to agree. Just go with it. You never say no. You say, “Yes and…”

  Willow looked to me to confirm or deny, and what I said was, “Well, it’s complicated.”

  Both girls seemed appeased. Then Willow said, “I like the way you talk. You don’t sound like most of the Mexicans in LA.”

  Tiggy snorted. “And how many Mexicans do you know in LA, ése?”

  I was appalled and fascinated. It was like I’d snuck onto the set of a new TV game show, Just How Racist Can You Be in an Hour?

  Willow said, “I was born and raised in LA. I’ve been around Mexicans my whole life, Tiggy.”

  “Oh yeah? Gardeners and maids don’t count,” Tiggy said defiantly. “Unless you’ve sat down and had a meaningful discussion with either?”

  Willow linked arms with me. “Well, my new friend is a proud Mexican American, and I look forward to her teaching me everything about her culture.”

  Was I just Mexican, or was I Mexican American? Is that something that happened the minute you crossed the border?

  I smiled weakly. I felt like Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. I didn’t know what to think of these girls. I liked them. I hated them. I liked them.

  Tiggy said, “Our new friend. From now on, you sit with us at lunch when you’re not in the kitchen.”

  I looked around the cafeteria at all the kids who seemed to have known each other forever. Sure, Sergio would lump Willow and Tiggy into the same category as Patrizia. I could just hear him now, in his Oxford-tinged English saying,
“What a bloody waste of space.” But I liked the blank slate of not being Carolina del Valle’s daughter. I liked the slightly superior feeling I had of being smarter than these girls and nowhere as racist. Sure, in Mexico City, I was a bit of a princess. Maybe I walked like one, talked like one, and God knows I shopped like one. But I would’ve never said half the ignorant things these girls had said to me, in less than an hour. So there was that. I didn’t know where I belonged at Polestar, but you had to start somewhere.

  “Thanks for the invite,” I said, meaning it.

  There’s a science to lying. I know because my mother once played a criminal psychologist whose specialty was helping prosecutors put away hard-to-convict criminals.

  So here’s how to tell if someone’s lying, in case you ever really need to know:

  Word repetition. Liars tend to repeat rehearsed statements.

  Pitch. When someone’s nervous, their vocal cords tighten and their pitch tends to go up. So you can hear their voice get a little higher at the end of the sentence. Like when your boyfriend says, “I’m just going out with the guys,” but “the guys” sounds all high and squeaky, when your boyfriend’s voice is never like that.

  False starts. Liars tend to self-correct, so they’ll start to spill the beans, and then they stop and begin again. For example, “I was on my…I mean, we were at the library until ten p.m., when it closed.”

  This is the thing. None of this would have helped Willow and Tiggy catch me, because I am what clinical psychologists refer to as a relaxed liar. I was enjoying myself. I was comfortable with my material and my audience. I didn’t give any tics because the lies flowed easily and I felt good about them. Slightly psychopathic, I know.

  I always knew that I would make a good liar. When your mother is an actress, you learn quickly how to pretend. As far back as I can remember, my mom’s moods were a ball that she threw out and that I learned to catch and throw back. If she was happy, I was happy. If she was OMG, so excited, then I was giddy too. If she was sad or depressed, I was appropriately and sympathetically somber. It was never something we discussed, just something I did. But like most things, the more you do it, the better you get at it. By the time I got to Polestar Academy in LA, I was a pro.

  I never intended to lie to Willow and Tiggy. Never planned on being a pretend chola girl from the barrio. It was just that when they threw it out there, I did what my instincts were honed to do. I caught their perception and tossed it back to them. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, we started to play catch.

  Did you know that some studies say that the average person tells three lies every ten minutes? Most are little lies to protect feelings, like, “Wow, your haircut looks great” or to cover up your screwups, like, “I can’t believe I left that algebra worksheet on the kitchen table. I spent two hours on that thing!” But we all lie all day long. In fact, my mother, in her wisdom as a TV doctor, said that people who never lie, who feel the relentless compunction to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, are suffering from a kind of mental illness—one that can run the gamut from narcissistically mean and thoughtless to cold-blooded and pathologically insane. She always told me and Sergio, “When it comes down to telling a truth that would hurt my feelings or a lie that will help me be strong enough to get through the day, mientame, lie to me.”

  So when I started lying at my new school, it felt like a kindness, going along with my new friends’ expectations. But it was also entertaining. Pulling one over on them made me feel like some cultural undercover crusader. The loco things they said made me want to laugh out loud.

  Cooking with Rooney twice a week was the proverbial icing on the cake. Mexico has great food. Not just tacos and burritos but really amazing modern food. But before I started at Polestar, I’d never made anything. My mom doesn’t cook. Albita made my father his favorite traditional meals, and the rest of the food was made by her personal chef Diana. In our house, meals appeared on the table three times a day, and I’d never given much thought about where they came from.

  Working with Rooney was a revelation. She made a lot of Mexican dishes because, she said, “it’s only natural in California to work that flavor profile.” But she made things her own way: pumpkin spread on a vegetable torta, plantain empanadas, and salmon panuchos. I grew to love the quiet work of making a meal, and there was also this immediate gratification: you worked for an hour or even sometimes thirty minutes, and there was a beautiful meal—done and ready for eating. I’d always liked science, but I hadn’t realized how much of cooking was scientific, how you used accelerants like heat on the grill and citrus in the seviche to transform the flavors and textures of the raw ingredients.

  I hadn’t read much poetry in English, but every time I stepped into Rooney’s kitchen, my mind flashed to a poem by Elizabeth Alexander:

  Science, science, science!

  Everything is beautiful.

  Elegant facts await me.

  Small things in this world are mine.

  Tiggy, Willow, and I were having lunch at our usual spot when Willow said, “So here’s the thing. I’m barely passing Spanish.”

  Tiggy looked at me and explained, “By ‘barely passing,’ she means she’s got a C, or as they put it here, SAI—Suggested Area of Improvement.”

  Willow looked upset. “You know that Cs aren’t good enough in my house.”

  Tiggy replied, “I know, mine neither. But you could try to show a little sensitivity to Camilla. She’s new to this country. Polestar is as competitive as hell, and English is not her first language. Chances are, she’s going to end up with a few Cs on her report card this quarter.”

  It was interesting, how they each took turns standing up for me. They weren’t mean girls exactly. More like misguided.

  “Anyway,” Willow continued, “my dad said he’ll pay you twenty-five dollars an hour to tutor me in Spanish, two days a week.”

  Tiggy looked surprised and whispered, loud enough for me to hear, “That’s probably more than her mother makes per hour.”

  That, of course, was not true. It occurred to me that this would be a good time to tell the truth. “Hey, guys, I was conducting a social experiment for psych class. My mom isn’t a maid; she just plays one on TV.” But I didn’t want to go back to being the daughter of a television star. Even if it was a star most people in the US had never heard of, being a celebrity kid was like wearing a too-tight sports bra that you could never take off. Sure, it offered up a certain level of support, but it was also as stifling as hell.

  I took a deep breath. My mother’s first appearance on Shot Callers wouldn’t come until May sweeps. Her own show wouldn’t debut until July. It was January. I had at least three or four months of keeping my secret. Maybe more, depending on how successful her show was and how much press they threw behind it.

  Tiggy looked at me pityingly and then said to Willow, “See, you’ve insulted her.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not insulted. Who couldn’t use some extra cash, right?”

  Willow beamed. “Great. Can we start tomorrow after school?”

  “Sounds good,” I said. Then for extra emphasis, I added, “Will your dad pay me in cash after each tutoring session?”

  Willow said, “Of course!” Then, as if I wasn’t sitting right next to her, she whispered to Tiggy, “I told you. She needs the money.”

  I smiled broadly and stood up. “We all need money, right? How does the expression go? No shame in my game.”

  Willow looked relieved. “You’re absolutely right. No shame in your game.”

  Tiggy nodded. “No shame at all.”

  As I walked away, I could hear Willow—who had absolutely no volume control—say, “I love her. I’m so happy that Polestar has doubled down on both racial and economic diversity.”

  To which Tiggy replied, “True dat, ése.”

  The next morning before I left for school, I FaceTimed Sergio. Seven a.m. for me was four p.m. for him. It was the perfect time to chat, just when my
bro was feeling that midafternoon slump and craving caffeine. He made himself a cup of espresso while I talked.

  “So, Camilla, how is Operation Poor Girl going?”

  “Excellent. Yesterday one of the girls offered me a job tutoring her in Spanish.”

  “That doesn’t sound bad,” he said, opening two packets of Sugar in the Raw.

  “It’s not,” I explained. “Guess how much they’re paying me?”

  “Ten dollars an hour?”

  I beamed. “Twenty-five! Boom! My anthropological experiment continues, and I get to make some nice cheddar.”

  He looked concerned. “What are you going to do when those girls find out the truth about you?”

  I didn’t want to hear it. “They’re the ones who jumped to all kinds of conclusions about me being poor and a scholarship student.”

  My tall, dark, and handsome brother sat back at his fancy desk and said, “When they find out the truth, your friends will be hurt.”

  I hadn’t used those words in my mind, but I had to admit that in just a few short weeks, Tiggy and Willow had started to feel like friends. Sure, they were a little racist. But maybe we all are.

  Changing the subject, I said, “The studio has hired a dialogue coach for our mother.”

  He laughed. “The purpose being?”

  I smirked. “They want her to be able to control her accent so she can play her own American-born twin.”

  Then in his most flawless Scarface accent, Sergio said, “The accent always tells the truth, even when the rest of you is lying. Good luck with that, chief.”

  He smiled and then waved goodbye. “Hasta luego, Camilla.”

  I smiled back. “Hasta luego, Sergio.”

  It was lunchtime, aka Mexican Cultural Hour. It was my fault. I was the one who was lying through my teeth to my only two friends about who I was and what my family was like. So I had to take some of the blame when, holding up a pair of chopsticks as she dug into her sushi lunch, Tiggy asked me, “Hey, Camilla, did you ever date a drug dealer?”