Jessica Martinez
When my cousin, Maria, texted me to join her at Sambuca Night Club, I thought it was a joke. Actually, I thought it was a wrong number, but she replied and said she had gotten my number from her mother, who had gotten it from my mother. She had just moved back to Houston and wanted me to see Long Live La Reyna, a Selena Quintanilla tribute band that was performing at the club. When Maria and I were younger, the two of us used to watch the Selena biopic every chance we got, mimicking our not-yet-curved hips like Jennifer Lopez. We tried, poorly, to sing along to the Spanish lyrics we didn’t fully understand, and Maria would practice the final scene of the movie by dying on her couch, her left arm spread gently over the edge of the cushion as I sang “Dreaming of You.”
The last time I saw my cousin in person was at her high school graduation party, but that was six years ago. Maria was on her way to NYU, and I was about to try molly. There were a couple of times during those six years when one of us would suggest meeting up for coffee when Maria was home for break, but it never worked out. On the phone Maria spoke about her classes and how the cold weather in New York is unbearable most of the time, and I would pretend to know what she was talking about. These calls only lasted a few minutes before both of us ran out of things to say, and neither of us wanted to talk about what we were really thinking.
It was hard trying to find Maria in a club full of long, black-haired Hispanic women who looked like us. Growing up, everyone thought we were twins because we inherited our thick hair and brown eyes from our fathers’ side. After my eyes adjusted to the dim, purple and blue lighting, I found Maria on the dance floor. She was carrying a silver, sequin clutch and wore tight skinny jeans and a white crop top. If she had bangs, I could’ve sworn she was the real Selena, or some type of Selena ghost.
“Hola, prima,” Maria said when she saw me.
I wanted to ask where she picked up her fake accent, since neither of us spoke Spanish growing up. I tried to shake her hand at the same time she went in for a hug, my right arm caught between us as the band started to play “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.”
“Oh, remember dancing to this one?” Maria asked. “We used to try to do the washing machine.” She began to move around in a circle, waving her arms in the air. Her clutch looked like a disco ball as it shimmied with her.
It had been years since I danced, but if it meant less time talking to my cousin, then I was happy to shuffle around for a while. As I twirled, a man grabbed Maria by the waist. He struggled to keep the same pace as my cousin, whose dancing was quick, hypnotic.
“C’mon.” I reached out my arm and hoped she would grab it. “We can find another spot.”
The man began to move his hands toward the smallest part of her back.
“You look like an Aztec goddess,” he said.
My cousin laughed. “Puedo ser tu diosa,” she replied.
I didn’t want to see where this was going, so I headed toward the bar.
Maria followed. “I’m sorry,” she whined. “I’m just trying to have a little fun.”
We found two available bar stools and sat. “What are you drinking?” I asked.
Maria reached for the closest drink menu. “I don’t know, maybe a club soda. Kevin and I are going to Bora Bora in four months, and I don’t want to look like a bloated cow on the beach.”
“Kevin?”
“Yeah, my boyfriend.” Maria sounded offended, as if I was supposed to know about her love life, even though we were nearly estranged.
“Oh, Bora Bora sounds fun.” I wanted to ask her why she was letting some stranger feel her up when she already had a boyfriend.
The bartender was standing in front of us, ready to wait on my cousin before she even said anything. “What can I get you?”
“Fuck it,” Maria said to the bartender. “I’ll have a frozen margarita. My cousin and I are celebrating.”
I didn’t know what we were supposed to be celebrating, but I figured it was a miracle that the both of us had lasted this long without wanting to leave. I rewarded myself with a Jack and Coke.
Maria smiled at the bartender as he pushed her a frozen glass. “So,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulders, “did your mom tell you that I got my masters? I figured why not while I was there, you know?”
I didn’t want to tell her that my mother turned the conversation about Maria getting her masters into a lecture about what I was planning on doing with my life. And I didn’t want to tell Maria that after that conversation with my mother, I went to my room and reached for the x-acto knife I’ve been using for years. And I didn’t tell Maria that dragging the x-acto knife across my left thigh seemed to be the only thing I was good at ever since her dad put his hands on both my thighs, and then everywhere else, when I was eight.
“Yeah, my mom told me. She said your mom called and told her.”
“I didn’t know they were speaking again.”
“They talk a bit. You know, like twice a month I guess.”
“How are your parents?”
I didn’t want to tell my cousin that my parents were nervous about me seeing her. “I wouldn’t have given out your number if I knew she wanted you to go out,” my mother had told me. My father insisted that he drive me to the club and pick me up when the concert was over. I promised him I would text as soon as I got into and out of my Uber, which made him feel somewhat better. My parents had turned into prison guards after what happened to me. The rest of my youth was spent tagging along wherever they went.
“My parents are good,” I said. “How’s your mom?”
Maria rolled her eyes. “My mother got a new dog, some pure-bred lap thing. She named it Gabbana and calls it her good daughter.” She bit the top of her cocktail straw. “That little bitch.”
I looked down at the fake marble bar top. I pointed at Maria’s metallic heels. “I like your shoes. Where’d you get them?”
“Oh, thanks, they’re Tom Ford, one of my graduation gifts from Kevin. I saw them one day when we were out shopping, and the next thing I know he’s buying them for me.”
I thought about how I would feel if someone had loved me enough to buy me an expensive pair of shoes. They would probably want something in return. I wondered what Maria was doing for Kevin.
“Just one?” I asked. “Those shoes are like three of my pay checks.” I instantly regretted saying anything about work.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were working.” Maria sounded excited. “What are you doing?”
“I work the front desk at an animal shelter.”
Maria’s mouth formed into a tight O. “You’re stronger than me. I couldn’t imagine being surrounded by all those sad, broken animals all day.”
Annoyed, I wanted to tell my cousin that I felt like a sad, broken animal sometimes, but then we would have to talk about things we didn’t want to talk about.
“It’s really not so bad,” I answered instead. “The company works hard getting people to adopt from us.”
The truth was I liked being surrounded by animals. I never really liked working with people, and animals never judged or pitied me. It was better than working in an office where people try to get to know you. My parents were relieved when I told them about the new job. They took me to a steakhouse and had the waiter bring out a chocolate cake with “congratulations” spelled out across the plate in icing.
Long Live La Reyna played “No Debes Jugar” as I ordered a second round. I waved Maria over from the dance floor. She had found a new tall white guy to dance with.
“You should really come dance with me.” She dabbed at her forehead. Her straightened hair had begun to curl from sweat.
“I don’t really feel like dancing,” I said.
Besides, it was sort of fun people-watching. I wondered what it would be like if I had friends who invited me to clubs, and what we would wear, and where we would go afterward. I knew once the band was finished I would be going home.
The bartender smiled at my cousin as he served us our drinks. He pushed his shaggy hair away from his eyes.
“I think you could use an Amor Prohibido.” He tried, poorly, to roll his R’s. “That means forbidden lo—”
“Yeah, I know what it means,” Maria interrupted. “I have two degrees in Latin American Studies.”
The bartender looked confused, but excited by the challenge that was my cousin.
“Oh, you’re a smart woman, aren’t you?” he said.
Maria threw her head back and laughed. “Yeah, I’m a real fucking genius.” She placed her arm around my shoulder. “Actually, my cousin is the genius. She’s an artist. Tell him about your paintings, Anna.”
After what happened to me, I began to sketch, which eventually turned into painting, which eventually turned into my parents pushing me to apply to art schools. It didn’t work out. My parents turned my way of expressing myself into their own story, just like Maria’s mother did with her education. They thought that if I continued to paint, maybe I would forget about the bad stuff. But they were wrong, you can never forget the feeling of losing a piece of yourself, no matter how hard you try.
“I don’t really paint anymore,” I said. That was mostly true.
The bartender, who was looking at Maria’s chest, left us two Amor Prohibidos before making his way to another group of Latinas.
“Well, at least you got us free shots.” Maria handed me the red elixir. “To Selena,” she said, clinking our glasses.
“I thought you weren’t going to drink too much?” I asked before downing mine. It wasn’t terrible, but I felt like we both needed something stronger to calm our nerves.
Maria placed both her hands on her thighs. “Do you think these jeans make me look fat?”
I had realized at a young age that Maria was always going to be the prettier cousin. When she was eight and I was six, we used to dress up in her mother’s heels and drape ourselves in her gaudy, oversized jewelry and parade around Maria’s bedroom. I would catch her staring a little too long at her reflection in the floor-length mirror and wondered what she was thinking.
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Every guy here has been checking you out since we sat down.” I wouldn’t know what to do if the men hoping to prey on my cousin were checking me out.
Maria seemed satisfied with my reply. She reached into her clutch and pulled out a tube of red lip gloss, applying it in one swift motion.
“Cute? Or do I look like a porn star?”
I smiled. “It looks great on you.”
She raised her eyebrows as she put her gloss away. “So, are you seeing anyone?”
I didn’t want to dive into this part of my life with her. “There’s been a couple relationships, but I haven’t met the right person.”
Maria laughed. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about the right person.” She waved at her lover-boy bartender who returned with two more shots. The band played “Que Creias” as we drank them.
The bartender looked at Maria. I noticed a quick flash of nervousness before he said, “So, crazy question, but do you have a boyfriend?”
Maria winked as she sang with the wannabe Selena. “Pues ya vez, no es tan sencillo.”
The bartender tilted his head. “I’ll take that as a no.”
He pulled out a pen from his apron pocket and wrote his number on my cousin’s cocktail napkin. Maria folded the napkin and placed it in her clutch once the bartender left.
She sighed. “Have you ever been in love?”
I thought about her question. Her father had told me that people who loved each other touched each other. He told me that it was normal, but no one could know how much he loved me.
I shook my head. “I don’t really think so. Don’t you love Kevin?”
Maria sipped her margarita. “We’ve been dating for like three years. I think he’s going to propose in Bora Bora.” She sounded unsure, as if marrying him was an afterthought.
“Well, don’t you want him to propose?” I figured most women like my cousin wanted a nice college man with a nice job. I couldn’t picture Maria as anyone’s wife, but I could see her on the arms of a man who bought her whatever she wanted.
“I mean, he’s a great guy,” Maria started. “We met when I was interning at his law office. He was so excited to move back here with me.”
“Does he like Texas?” I thought about Maria and her boyfriend in New York, holding each other tight in the winter and walking hand in hand through the park in the spring. I wanted that, too, but then I didn’t.
“He seems happy here.” Maria tried to sound energetic. “All he does is work, though. He wants to be a district attorney in the next five years.”
“That sounds exciting.” I had just realized that she didn’t bother to tell me about her career goals the way she talked about Kevin’s.
Maria pointed to the bartender as he made his way toward us. The ice in my Jack and Coke had started to melt.
“You need to catch up,” the bartender told me.
Maria touched his arm as he placed another frozen margarita in front of her. “Do you think you can keep up with me?”
He licked his lips as he looked my cousin over. “I know I could,” he said, before going back to work.
Maria took a gulp of her margarita. “Kevin and I haven’t had sex in over a year.”
My eyes widened. “I mean, I think that’s normal in a lot of long term relationships, right?”
I tried not to sound surprised. I thought about the times I had tried to be intimate. Sometimes I never thought about Maria’s father, but there were more times when he was all I could think about.
“I just don’t get it,” Maria said. “I work out nearly two hours a day. My tits are real. I don’t understand. It’s like he gets home from work and I try to surprise him in our bedroom wearing lingerie, but he just gives me a kiss on the cheek and says ‘Sorry, baby, I’m too exhausted.’ And sometimes when we do try to have sex it only lasts for like a minute before he gets soft.”
For a second, I wanted to laugh. I wondered if this was what having a best friend was like. Once, Maria and I were like best friends. We used to put on talent shows in her living room and pretend our Barbie dolls were throwing the coolest yacht parties. A couple of months after that last sleepover, Maria started getting busted at school for doing inappropriate things with boys. Whatever she was doing was bad enough to get her suspended for a few days.
“Maybe he’s just not the type of person that needs sex in a relationship?” I suggested.
Maria placed both elbows on the bar top and rested her head in her hands. “I’m sleeping with one of his coworkers,” she confessed.
My eyes went wide again. “You’re having an affair?” I was surprised that she told me, but not surprised that she was doing it.
“Technically, I don’t think it’s called an affair if the people involved aren’t married,” Maria said.
“You know what I mean.” I couldn’t understand my cousin and all her drama. She was never the one being molested under her blanket. I didn’t know why she was this way.
“Why don’t you just break up with Kevin? There’s no need to go behind his back.”
“I really try to be okay without needing to be physical.” Maria sounded desperate. “But he just laughs at me when I try touching or kissing him. I mean he’s almost forty, but I’ve been with guys older than him who couldn’t keep their hands off me. He says, ‘You’re always like that,’ and he’s right. But how else do you know if someone loves you if they don’t even want to touch you?” A small tear began to roll down Maria’s cheek, but she brushed it away thinking I didn’t notice.
“Then I met one of his coworkers at a happy hour event, and we hit it off right away. John is so hot and passionate. I don’t know if I like him because we’re doing it behind Kevin’s back, or what? Sometimes I feel like I could love John, but all we ever do is fuck. I think about him all the time. I need to feel his hands on me. I know he doesn’t like me that way. He doesn’t even want me to come to his place; all we do is meet at these shitty hotels.”
“Maybe if you just talked to Kevin about it?” I was running out of advice. I wanted to tell my cousin that she and John were probably so passionate because they were sneaking around, and he probably didn’t love her, but what did I know?
Maria groaned. “All Kevin and I do is talk about it. Then he feels bad and apologizes and says he’ll do better, but he just ends up buying me stuff or taking me to all these fabulous places to make up for it.” She sighed. “Am I a bad person?”
I took a sip of my Jack and Coke. “I think everyone is sort of a bad person.”
“I don’t want to be a bad person. I don’t want to be like my dad, Anna.”
I had never seen my cousin scared before. Even when my dad asked her if she saw anything.
“You’re nothing like your father,” I assured her. “That’s the truth.”
Maria closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I think it’s time for another drink.”
Long Live La Reyna played “Si Una Vez” as the bartender delivered another round. The knock-off Selena looked angry as she sang, “Y tú no reconoces ni lo que es amar.”
“Did you know,” Maria began, “that it was a Martinez who invented the frozen margarita machine?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
Maria squeezed her lime before dropping it in her drink. “Mariano Martinez used an ice cream machine model to make it.”
“That’s pretty clever.”
“Yeah, he’s probably like our great-great-great-grandfather or something. We have some royalty in our blood.” Maria laughed.
“I don’t think every Martinez is related like that,” I told her.
Maria slouched over her drink. “Well, he was probably an asshole, anyway.”
I watched as my cousin licked the sea salt off her glass; a couple of men sitting across the bar gawked at her.
“Do you hate me?” she asked.
Honestly, I did hate Maria after it happened, and a couple years after that. I hated everyone, including myself. Even though I knew it was not my fault, I still hated the eight-year-old me.
“No,” I finally said. “I don’t hate you.”
“I should’ve told the truth. I’m so sorry, Anna. I regret never saying anything. I regret it every day.”
I looked at my cousin, angry that she brought this up. It was dumb to think that we could have a good time without combing through our past.
The truth was Maria saw everything that night. We had just finished a bowl of chocolate ice cream and Maria had left to brush her teeth. I was alone in her room when Maria’s father walked in. When it was over, he told me that we had to keep it just between us, then he kissed me on my cheek and said he loved me. I could see the tops of Maria’s pink, fuzzy slippers. She was crouched behind her bedroom door.
“I should’ve said something,” Maria sniffled. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was scared, okay?”
“No,” I snapped. “I was scared. You’re just using what happened as an excuse to be a shitty girlfriend.”
Maria shook her head. “That’s not true. I’m sorry, Anna. I didn’t want my dad to get in trouble. I loved him.” Her eyelashes clumped together like a dead spider.
“Whatever,” I sighed, looking for the exit.
“It’s not just that,” Maria said. “I was mad at you. When I saw my dad sitting next to you, I felt sort of jealous.” She took a drink from her margarita before she continued.
“He never, ever bothered to get close to me. He never hugged me. He never wanted anything to do with me. No matter how hard I tried to be pretty or smart, he never said he loved me.”
The morning after, when my parents picked me up from Maria’s, I told them what had happened before we even left the driveway. My father ran to the front door and I stayed in the car with my mother. Maria stood next to her father, and I watched her shake her head. I could see her mouthing the word “no.”
I knew my parents tried to believe me, but it was hard to explain every detail of what happened. Even eight-year-old me knew that I shouldn’t have had to explain myself. My parents never took their eyes off me after that. I had to make sure my skirts weren’t too short. My mother gave me the sex talk at an age when I didn’t know the names of my own body parts, and once my breasts came in, I had to wear my bra everywhere I went; I even wore one to sleep. My parents watched my every move, until I didn’t want to talk about anything.
“I thought that he would love me if I didn’t tell what I saw,” Maria said.
Her parents split up a couple years later when her mother caught her father between the legs of an eighteen-year-old barista. After the divorce, her mother turned all her attention to Maria. She pushed her in school and pushed her into cheerleading and every other extracurricular she could think of. The two of us didn’t see each other after that, except for family events, and I only learned about her life through my mother.
I stirred the melting ice in my glass. “It was a long time ago, anyway.”
“I think being a fuck-up is in my DNA,” Maria said as she finished her margarita. I had lost count of how many she’d had.
Long Live La Reyna began to play “I Could Fall in Love” as the bartenders announced last call. Maria and I ordered water. I listened to the fake Selena as she poured her heart out over the microphone.
“I can only wonder how touching you would make me feel,” Maria mumbled. “But if I take that chance right now, tomorrow will you want me still?”
I watched as couples and potential hook-ups danced close to each other. I wondered what Maria felt when she was that close to Kevin or John. How it would feel to be so close to someone that I could hear their heartbeat and they could hear mine?
“Can you believe I’m older than Selena now?” Maria asked.
“That’s weird to think about,” I said, realizing that I was the same age as Selena when she died.
“At least she’ll always be beautiful and loved,” Maria said.
I wanted to tell my cousin that she was beautiful, and I did love her, at least I did when we were young. I wanted to tell her I missed her. I missed dancing in her living room, and laughing with her, and growing up with her, even if we stopped growing at ten and eight. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for who her father was, and despite him saying he loved me as he put his hands on me, he really didn’t. I wanted to tell her that she and I were not what happened to us, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me.
“It’s late,” I said. “Are you ready to go?”
“I guess.” Maria tried to stand up from her bar stool, but she almost lost her balance and sat back down.
“Do you want to split an Uber with me?”
“Kevin let me borrow his Jag.” Maria laughed.
“I really don’t think you should be driving.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve been worse. Just need to sit for a second.”
We stayed until the band was finished, and then we watched them pack up and collect their tip jar from the front of the stage.
“Did you like them?” Maria asked. She ran her fingers through her hair before applying another layer of gloss.
“They were good.” I requested my ride; my driver was four minutes away. “I think I’m going to call it a night. Are you sure you don’t want to ride with me?”
“I’m fine, really,” Maria nodded. “I can drive.”
I paid my tab and headed toward the front entrance of the club, thinking Maria was behind me. When I turned around to look for her, she was still at the bar. The bartender who had been flirting with her all night was whispering something into her ear. Maria nodded when he finished speaking. I saw her smile as she placed her index finger over his closed lips.
Jessica Martinez is the co-founder of a women’s online literary journal, CEO. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Digital Papercut, Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, Strata, Inquietudes Literary Journal, and Algebra Of Owls. She began an MFA in the fiction program at Texas State University this fall. She is from Pearland, Texas.