A/N: So, since "Mijo" turned out to be pretty popular (by my standards...), I decided to write some more Esperanza. Have at it.
Dedicated to Innoverse-"CAN I LOVE YOU FOREVER?" because she's awesome and because I freakin' can.
Esperanza had been working on the red car for about an hour when the love of her life entered the garage.
She didn't quite know what to make of the man with the disfigured face and the abundant facial hair, but somehow she knew that he would be important at some point.
"A '78 Cadillac," he said, stroking the hood of the car. "You sure know how to pick 'em." He chuckled, as if sharing an inside joke with himself. Esperanza peered at the man.
He was strange.
But it wouldn't matter, in time.
"Get out, girl!" the lady with the dishtowel screams. "Get out of my kitchen! Get out of my house!"
The little girl is nine years old, not quite old enough to understand exactly what her Tía Maria means. She cowers under the woman's fiery gaze, and flinches as she waves the wet dishtowel around, threatening wordlessly to slap her with it.
"Go on, scram! Run back to the sewers where your padre found your mother, the #!*% !" Esperanza does not know what this word means—she only knows that her mama was one, and that she is one, too.
Esperanza runs for the door to the patio, seeking refuge from her Tía's abuse, but the spilled dishwater on the floor causes her to slip, sliding headfirst into the window. Her head makes a sickening crack.
"Get up, girl, and go!" Esperanza struggles to regain her footing as Maria twists the wet towel into a whip and smacks the child, hard.
"I am going, Tía! I am going now!"
Esperanza stumbles into the backyard and makes to unlatch the gate that leads back to her father's house. He did not know about Maria's drinking, but the evidence would arrive on his doorstep in a matter of minutes. He would not let Maria babysit his little girl anymore.
She fumbled with the latch. "Hey, there!" She hears from across the street. Mrs. Colemore is out gathering the morning's mail. "Are you alright, dear? You look a bit shaken…"
Esperanza nods quickly, not wanting Maria to notice that she was leaving. But as soon as Mrs. Colemore resumes her mail-gathering, the girl of nine years old who did not know the meaning of " #!*% " but understood the meaning of hate murmured just loud enough for the ladybug on the fence to hear, "If only."
"The name's Jim. I know a thing or two about this kind of automobile—I'm pretty good with machines."
She was, too.
"Too bad I'm not better with people, or I could have an arrangement like this," he continued, referring to the little business she had going.
He held out a hand for her to shake. She took it in a firm, confident grasp for a second or two, then let go.
"So, what brings you to these parts?" she asked, waving a hand at the part of the ghetto she called her home that was just visible from out the garage's window.
"I'm looking for someone." He said quietly, almost sadly.
"That's funny," she replied, setting down her oily rag on the workbench. "I'm waiting for someone."
"Who are you waiting for?"
"Who are you looking for?"
They both paused, gazing at each other like two antisocial people only could. Then she looked down, and he looked down, and they both replied in unison.
"I don't know."
They are throwing spit wads at Esperanza, but it is nothing compared to the rocks they will hurl at her during recess.
She tries to do her math, but it is difficult when her tormentors will not cease their harm.
"What are you doing? Math? Too bad you can't, 'cuz Mexicans are so stupid!" One of them hisses. She has tried to tell the teacher about the bullies, but Ms. Jones is a racist, on top of being a really bad math teacher.
Before long, the sneers and jibes all blend together in some overwhelming cauldron of hate, and all she can hear are the echoes of words in her mind.
"Go back to your country, Wetback!"
"Fix me a burrito, stupid girl!"
"Where's your sombrero, #!*% child?"
"You're so dumb that you don't even know the difference between real people and whites—oh, wait—there's no difference!"
At the end of the hour she is about ready to either scream or kill somebody, and she isn't known for either.
She takes the long way home after school, going along the road that circles around the big lake. She sits on the bank, tossing bits of her sandwich bread to the ducks, who have grown accustomed to her lonely presence.
Papa sends her on an errand to the market as soon as she gets home, and she goes right back out to get eggs and cereal.
The town is crowded at this hour, with vendors selling half-rotten fruit and the homeless begging in the gutter. The voices blend together, like during math class, only this time it creates a soothing background noise to the drone of her mundane errand-running thoughts.
"Apricots! Get your fresh-grown apricots here!"
"Looking for lettuce? Well, I got lettuce!"
"Spare a quarter, ma'am? Ma'am?"
Then one of the voices grows louder and catches Esperanza's attention. The man is obviously trying to sell someone, because no one can possibly be that enthusiastic and actually mean what he says.
"Turn your life around today! Be anyone! Do anything! Go anywhere! It's that simple!"
Esperanza murmurs for the second time in a year, "If only."
"I'm sorry I don't have any ice," said Esperanza hastily. My fridge isn't running, and neither is my freezer." She handed a can of soda to the man—Jim—and he said with a smile, "Well, I'm sure you could take care of that."
She smiles, but doesn't tell him that she's too poor to be able to afford kitchen appliances that actually work, and most of them are too far gone to ever be repaired.
"Time to get up, Mija, you have to go to school," Papas says gently. He knows that she doesn't like school, but he wants his only daughter to be well-educated so she can have a better—brighter—future.
"It's a very special day today, Espa," he reminds her. The groggy eleven-year-old rolls onto her side and squints open her eyes.
"Feliz cumpleaños, Espa," he murmurs with a smile. "A very, very special day."
She climbs out of bed, her father leaving her to go and fix breakfast. French toast—her favorite.
"So, what do you want to do today?" her father calls from the kitchen as Esperanza pulls on a nice green dress usually reserved for Sunday Mass. "We can do anything!"
Again comes her soft, barely audible whisper—"If only."
About fifteen minutes ago, this strange, ugly man had walked into her shop looking for someone he'd probably never find. She knew better than to trust him—the crime rate in her neighborhood was alarmingly high—but there was something about him that put her at ease. The sheepish smile, the way his hands never stopped moving around the table, his keen interest in her work. He was sincere, something her previous men were not. He was just… there were no words to accurately describe him. He was like some sort of humbled god, and she didn't feel stupid for thinking that.
They enjoyed their drinks for about ten minutes, and in those ten minutes Esperanza realized something that some people take ten years to realize.
Whoever this man really was…
She loved him.
And for once, she didn't have to say, "If only."
He was gone by morning, leaving behind only a note and his love.