June of Last Year

She wasn't pregnant.

Thank God, she wasn't pregnant.

In the middle of her cousin Mireya's rehearsal barbeque, nature sent Tamara Contreras running into the bathroom and now the realization penetrated through the white-hot fear ... I'm not pregnant.

Sitting in her Tía Yolanda's bathroom with goosehead faucets, antacid green walls and pink towels with mermaids that looked like drag queens in shell bras, Tamara realized that she'd been freed.

Her cheeks and mouth jerked with the need to cry and laugh at the same time. Her breath came in shallow pants, her shoulders settled up past her ears and her stomach braided itself tight.

Free. She was free like she'd just been behind the wheel of a spinning car with screaming tires throwing up smoke, the unstoppable centripetal force gluing her to the seat until suddenly it jarred to a stop, inches from the center divide.

For five horrifying days Tamara sat in the spinning car, seeing all of her plans to hack off the apron strings flash before her eyes.

Goodbye 90th percentile score on the GRE. Goodbye Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California. Goodbye her own apartment in L.A.

And hello to little gold hand cuffs that would bind her to Ruben Lopez forever.

If her mother knew... her eyes flew to the door. Tamara knew from twenty-six years of life that mom had powers. Powers that saw through locked bathroom doors and carefully composed facial expressions. One hint of a clue that associated Tamara with pregna-

She covered her eyes with her hands, trying to shield herself from the weight of that word. If her mother linked the p-word and her daughter, Tamara would've wound up in Tía Josie's dress shop faster than a stick turning pink.

Now that all of her mother's friends' kids were married, mom had long stopped hinting that it was time for Tamara to marry the guy she no longer loved.

Instead, Susanna Melendez Contreras, forty-nine, declared war against her daughter's decision to remain emancipated from the union. She deployed troops on all fronts, sent out the spies and then hunkered down in the foxholes waiting for the perfect moment.

But Tamara was free. Fate had toyed with withholding the monthly bill and then went, eh, we'll let you off this time.

The bitch of it was that she couldn't even remember when she and Ruben had ever even hit the big one.

"Tamara! Tamara, what's wrong?" An iron fist rapped on the door. Mom.

Tamara shot to her feet and then remembered she locked the door.

"I'll be right out," she yelled, putting herself back together. Thanking God again that packing tampons hadn't been just wishful thinking.

"Ay Díos, you had me so worried." A two-inch thick door was apparently too much distance separating her from her firstborn child. "Let me in."

The last time Tamara checked, she was sure she'd been potty trained at two. "I said I'd be right out."

"Are you sick? Was it the beans? I knew it. I told Yolanda she put in too much anchovy and..."

"Sorry can't hear you!" Tamara twisted the tap on. God, cold water never felt so good. And the feel of those eye-singeing towels ... she'd never take towels for granted ever again.

You just got a renewed lease on life, she told her pale reflection in the gilt edged mirror. And as God as her witness, as God as her witness she'd never have unmemorable sex again!

"I'm fine," Tamara soothed when she stepped out of the bathroom.

"Ruben and I were so worried, m'ija. You just ran off making a scene." Her mom's eyes widened making her face into a perfect mask of maternal concern. "Everyone will think-"

Tamara tuned in the "mother filter" and then dropped out. Remembering her Yoga class, she breathed while her mom continued on with her lecture that Ruben had only been making a little fun of her when he said she never got to the point of her stories and...

Just Two. More. Days.

Just two more and Mireya's stupid wedding would be over with and she could finally – FINALLY – break up with him.

"Now m'ija, it was just a little joke," her mom advised gently. But the hand that took her arm was anything but gentle as she lead her down the hallway. "You know how our Ruben is."

Tamara caught that don't-get-angry look of hers when they walked into the living room where Ruben waited with his arms crossed and his eyes focused on the ceiling. He hardly looked worried.

"Is she okay?" he asked as if Tamara were deaf or two years old.

To the ba-ba bum-bum-bum rhythm of the ranchero music blasting from the backyard, Tamara retreated to her mental countdown: twenty-three hours, fifteen minutes and eight seconds...

Ruben pounced on every opportunity to embarrass her in front of her the family, her friends; it was like he was trying to mold her into something that would make their relationship just right instead of totally wrong.

"She's fine," Tamara snapped when her mother opened her mouth to broker a peace treaty. She looked into his long-lashed brown eyes she once thought were the most soulful, loving she'd ever gazed into and smiled so hard she could've broken a tooth.

"Ay yi yi." Her mom looked down at the floor, resigned to a life of having to explain her daughter. "La va a pesar."

"I know," Ruben sighed. "No le veo la punta."

Goddammit. Tamara clenched her fist. They always did that... spoke Spanish when they didn't want her to understand exactly what they were saying.

It was her Nana Rosa's fault.

Her chain-smoking, much-divorced Nana Rosa who insisted from her easy chair when Tamara's family visited on Sundays, holidays and birthdays that the family was New Mexican. No somos Mexicanos.

You don't want them to be like those Mexicans who don't realize they're in America, her abuelita would advise mom while her cigarette spat ash onto the urine yellow shag carpet. The woman probably had INS speed-dialed into her phone.

But that wasn't the point. Being uni-lingual was damn inconvenient when her parents, her aunts and uncles, their friends, and their friends' friends spoke Spanish. But her mother and her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend? Now that was a damn shame.

She resolved not to get mad. What was two more days compared to the ten years of being his girlfriend? She now had the rest of her life.

"Babe, don't be that way," Ruben pleaded impatiently when her gaze drifted longingly to the sliding glass doors.

"I have to find Isa," Tamara said, feeling as calm as Mother Theresa.

"Wait!" Her mom all but dived and wound her arms around Tamara's legs. If she had, she still would've managed not to spill her margarita. "Have you seen Carlos?"

Tamara nearly growled at the mention of her best friend's husband – associating him with that word was stretching it.

Now that she'd been given a second chance, Tamara replaced Carlos in the spinning car. Preferably with the air bag disengaged and a faulty seat belt.

The fantasy was probably a sin. "No. Why?" Still, it made her calm, as if fate had a plan that righted all wrongs.

"No one's seen him." Her mom's Tiffany chain bracelets slid down her arm when she smoothed a zealously manicured and moisturized hand over her carefully styled hair. "Has Isa told you anything?"

Tamara shook her head.

Isa really hadn't talked to her since... Tamara tried to think of exactly when they last had a real talk.

Her mom's eyes narrowed as if she didn't believe her. And then the strangest expression crossed her face.

"You know I really wished you hadn't cut your hair like that," she said. "It's so ... Tijuanera."

First, her mother drops a minor bomb that her best friend's husband was missing from his sister's wedding. Then she had to bring up her hair.

Wonder what she'd say when Tamara told her that at this time next year, she'd be finishing her first year of grad school and living in her own apartment?

Her mom pursed her lips, staring at Tamara as she most likely weighed the possibility that her real daughter had been misplaced at the hospital after delivery.

"I just wished you waited until after the wedding," she said, waiting for Tamara to take the bait.

"I like it like thi-"

"Ruben, be honest." Susan held her hand out, leveraging it at Tamara's head as if it were an abomination before all that was holy. "What do you think of this?"

If he hadn't been such a condescending ass, Tamara would've felt sorry for him being ensnared in the most dangerous of situations: a fight between a mother and her daughter.

"Mom stop."

"What are you going to do when school starts again? You can't teach fourth graders with hair like that. It won't grow out in time." Susan cocked her head to the side. "Well, maybe if we have it dyed. Hmmmm. I'll call Patty on Monday. Just one more thing on my list of things to do"

"No you won't."

Her mother arched a perfectly waxed brow. "¿Con permiso?"

When was she ever going to just let her be? Hadn't Tamara already done everything she'd wanted: homecoming queen, the steady boyfriend, and—God help her—the teaching position she sucked at?

"Now stop it you two," Ruben drawled. "It'll grow out."

Tamara clamped her teeth together when she felt his hand sneak over her lower back. Touch my ass and I'll bite you.

"But don't you agree, Ruben? Don't you think we need to do something about this?"

"It's different," he ventured diplomatically.

"You're no help," Susan said, convinced she'd won. "Ay, I need to go." She downed the last of her margarita and handed her glass to Tamara. "Yolanda and Josie are probably killing each other in the kitchen."

Tamara raised her eyebrows and fluttered her eyes when she read her mom's parting we'll-talk-later look.

Ruben stepped closer so someone could thread her way towards the ever-grinding blender at the bar. "Are you over it or do I have to wait till tomorrow when I can talk to you again?"

Two more days, Tamara reminded herself. "I'm fine."

Ruben didn't buy it. "I wasn't picking on you. I was just trying to point out-"

"Stop it, okay? I had to go to use the lady's room and I don't think I should have to explain myself." Good. She at least sounded calm. "Now I have things to do-"

"Like what? Try to keep everyone from looking down your dress?"

She felt herself go hot all over and not in the way a woman wanted a man to make her feel.

"Oh... is there something else you want to criticize?" she challenged.

"It's..." He paused with that viejita look on his face. "It's obvious that you're cold." He looked pointedly at her chest then back up into her eyes, ready for her to explain herself.

She moved to cross her arms over her offending nipples, but stopped. Wonder Woman wouldn't. She planted fists on hips, slightly thrusting her chest forward.

"I'm just trying to help," he gently insisted. "You're going to start teaching full time next year, and we agreed that you'd start wearing more mature clothes."

She agreed to a lot of things to shut him and her mother up. As badly as she wanted to, now wasn't the time to grind her new heels in his ears.

It would probably ruin the leather.

But Ruben liked to pick and pick at her until she exploded so he could turn around and call her childish.

"I brought a sweater to wear when it gets cold," Tamara conceded, hating herself for backing down.

"Maybe you should put it on now," he said with that patient tone he liked to use when he felt she had finally seen his point of view.

She held her breath when he reached for her. Instead he tugged a piece of her hair. "Does that sweater have a hood?" he asked, thinking he was funny.

Desperate, Tamara retreated to her countdown, twenty-three hours, thirteen minutes. "I promised Isa I'd help her."

"Wait a second." He stepped closer. "Don't rush off in a tizz. Can't you stop being so sensitive?"

That did it. Smiling her big-party smile, Tamara finally took his advice and just got straight to the point.

"Fuck you, Ruben Lopez."

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