A Blossom of Bright Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

not “pretty,” but something more shameful, something she didn’t have words for. Sometimes when she bent down at her locker, boys grabbed her rear end. She didn’t want a body that made boys do that. She wished Mami were still alive to talk to about these things. Papi was great to talk to about practical stuff. He was proud of her success in school and encouraged her dreams of becoming a doctor. But he was too traditional and Mexican to talk to about more personal matters. It would embarrass them both.
    Her father wrapped up the last two cookies and shoved them under the backseat for later. Then he slid behind the wheel while Luna got into the front passenger seat. When he lifted his right leg, she saw the rectangular outline of that horrible black box beneath his sock. He’d had to wear it for four months now. Twenty-four hours a day. They all tried to pretend it wasn’t there. He kept a sock over it most of the time except for the two hours every day he had to charge it.
    In the car, her father handed Luna the slip of paper with the address scribbled across it. The address was in Broad Plains, about twenty-five minutes south of Lake Holly. He tilted his rearview mirror and eyed Mateo and Dulce, arguing in the backseat over whose arm was taking up more room.
    â€œWe’re visiting an important man this afternoon,” he told them. “He’s putting time aside to try to help us, so you need to be on your best behavior.”
    Luna didn’t think Papi knew any important men, but she didn’t say this. Instead she asked, “How do you know him?”
    â€œSeñora Figueroa knows him. He’s also from southern Mexico, from a village in Chiapas not far from where Mami and I grew up. Señora Figueroa told me if anyone can help us, he can.”
    Papi touched a big fat envelope tucked down beside his seat. It was old and worn, stuffed thick with paperwork her father had kept over the years to prove that he’d always held a job in this country and paid his taxes. He didn’t have a Social Security number, but he had a TIN—a tax identification number—that he faithfully filed under every year. Her mother had been convinced that if the family did everything right, in time she, Papi, and Luna would become American citizens—just like Mateo and Dulce, who were born here. Then Luna could study to become a doctor and help the family buy a little place of their own, with enough room for a garden.
    It was all Norma Serrano had ever wanted. She used to come home from her housecleaning jobs with old copies of magazines her employers gave her: Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens. She’d spread pictures of houses with front porches and white picket fences across the kitchen table and fill her children’s heads with visions of what it would be like to live in a place where there was no landlord who’d let himself into your apartment while you were out and rifle through your belongings to check on what kind of person you were or pound on your door at odd hours to make sure extra tenants weren’t staying with you.
    She kept a potted garden on their kitchen windowsill where she grew basil, cilantro, and mint. In third grade, Luna’s class planted begonias for Mother’s Day. Luna gave her mother a pink one that they still had on their kitchen windowsill in a terra-cotta pot Luna had painted. The herbs, however, were gone—destroyed when the family had to leave their old apartment after a neighbor’s place caught fire. Most of her mother’s magazines were destroyed in that blaze too. Only one stack of Better Homes and Gardens was left. They sat in a dusty pile under Luna’s bed. She couldn’t bear to look at them, and she couldn’t throw them away.
    â€œLuna—” Papi held her gaze in the windshield as they headed south. The trees had thinned out, and a couple of tall office buildings took their