Chapter 16: Penny's Lament/Bar Fight
While traveling on the way, Penny, the boys, and Dante had to sidestep a few obstacles such as a few puddles, hissing cats, and growling dogs. It was a good thing that Dante was with them to ward them off or else they would have been scratched or bitten by the stray animals. Some adult couples were spotted and they were either deeply kissing or dancing together. The group also caught sight of two women whom the shoemaker and his nephew recognized as Ernestina's friends, Becca and Helga.
The two women were waltzing with two men with red hair, who were the same ones that had bullied Andres and Natalia the other day. Their eyes were shining light pink and they looked like they had drunk too much wine.
"That was weird," Héctor acknowledged, as they passed by them. The shoemaker also sidestepped another couple that was engrossed in their conversation of cutesy names and baby talk.
"Yeah, they're so goofy!" the boy gagged, making a face. He turned to his old friend, eager to change the subject. "So, Penny, what happened to you?" His other long-lost friend was leading him, his uncle, and his dog toward Imelda's mansion.
"Lots of things," Penny sighed, looking at the ground as she walked. "My mommy lost her job as a veterinarian. My daddy lost his snack store. My Suga Mama lost our old house. And I lost my identity!"
"Your identity?" Miguel inquired. "What are you talking about?"
"Can you please verify for us?" Héctor asked, also curious.
"I'll try," Penny said, raising her head. The girl turned around and pointed to her chest with her two hands.
"Look at me and tell me who I am,
"Why I am, what I am."
Her eyes were cast downwards to the streets.
"Call me a fool and it's true I am,
"I don't know who I am."
She looked down at her filthy and worn-out dress. Thankfully, the black color hid the mud stains but the fabric was beginning to tear.
"It's such a shame,
"I'm such a sham.
"No one knows who I am."
She looked up to the sky and began to reminisce.
"Once there were sweet possibilities,
"I could see, just for me."
Long ago, Penny and her family used to live in the West Side. When she was about four years old, she moved from Chicago to New Santa Cecilia because she and her family were trying to get away from her maternal grandparents who did not like her father or Sugar Mama. At first, things were going well. Penny met and befriended Miguel Rivera and Mirabel Madrigal.
"Now all my dreams are just memories,
"Fated never to be."
One day, somebody important came to her house and told her parents that they couldn't work or live in the West Side anymore. They have to reside in the East Side along with the other blacks, Italians, and other ethnic groups.
"Time's not a friend, hurrying by.
"I wonder who I am?"
"I still don't understand," Miguel shrugged.
"Am I the face of the future?" Penny sang in anguish.
"Am I the face of the past?
"Am I the one who must finish last?"
They continued to walk through the dark alleys of the East Side. There were so many stacked up houses that Hector and Miguel had lost count.
"Look at me and tell me who I am," Penny continued to vocalize.
"Why I am, what I am.
"Will I survive?
"Who will give a dang,
"If no one knows who I am?"
"Nobody knows," Penny shook her head.
"Not even you," she sang, as she pointed at the boys.
"No one knows who I am!"
When Penny finished singing, she sniffled as a tear ran down her cheek, followed by another one.
"I know who you are!" Miguel said as he pulled out his handkerchief. Enrique had taught him to always carry a handkerchief with him so that when someone is sad, he can always offer it to them. He handed it to his old friend, who graciously took it and dabbed her eyes. "You're Penny Proud! You're my friend and Mirabel's friend! You're a girl who likes to dance and listen to jazz!"
"It's true!" Héctor nodded.
"I'm not Mirabel's friend anymore," the girl said sullenly. "I've done something terrible to her and she never forgave me."
"What did you do that made her so mad that she wouldn't forgive you?" Miguel asked skeptically. Based on his memories of Mirabel, she was never the type to hold grudges toward anyone. He found the girl to be always forgiving toward everybody that hurt her.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"But-"
"I said, I don't want to talk about it!"
"Okay," Miguel quickly shut his mouth. The last thing he wanted to do was make his forgotten friend mad.
"How are your parents and Suga Mama doing?" Héctor asked, changing the subject right away. He had enough problems to deal with for the evening and the last thing he wanted was for his nephew to get into a squabble with a girl.
"Not good," the girl sighed sadly. "Ever since we came here, Mom and Dad were always fighting! They fight in the morning, they fight in the afternoon, they fight in the evening! It gets so bad that Suga Mama has to sleep between them in one bed so they won't fight! I always have to take Bebe and Ceci out of the house because the fights always make them cry."
"Where are they now?"
"They're at home," Penny answered. "I was just hanging out with my friends, the Gross Sisters when we spotted you two."
"The Gross Sisters?" Miguel parrotted. "What a weird and scary name! How could you be friends with those brutes?"
"Hey!" Penny barked. "They're much better company to me than my old so-called friends from the West Side!"
"Hey," the boy replied, gently. "I'm your friend and I'm from the West Side."
"Really?" The girl looked surprised. "You're still my friend, even when I ditched you and Mirabel to hang out with LaCienega, Dijonay, and Bonnie?"
Miguel nodded. "I thought you and your family moved back to Chicago. Had I known that you and your family were here all along-"
Penny held her hand out to stop her friend from talking.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "We left without saying goodbye, anyway." They continued to walk for a couple more minutes. Above them, the sun had gone to sleep and now all people could see was the moon.
Gloria and Natalia were both glancing up at the same moon in the black velvet sky. They had been walking through the East Side and although they had come across some lovestruck people, they still weren't able to find the children.
"We haven't found the monkey or the children yet," Gloria grumbled. "If only I can predict where they are."
"Let's just focus on the monkey first and then we can find the children," Natalia listed. "That way, we can get the potion to the gangster before sunset."
"Sunset? Our deadline is not sunset," Gloria shook her head. "It's sunrise."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, we still have a lot of time."
"Oh, that's a relief, then!" Natalia beamed, carelessly.
"Yeah, but let's go with your plan anyway," Gloria said. "Because I like to go to bed early and get my beauty sleep."
The two girls came across a park and behold, they had found what they were looking for. Rosa was waltzing with some Italian boy. Camillo was kissing an Italian girl with red hair. Abel, Dolores, Mariano, Luisa J., and Isabella were fighting over each other!
"What's gotten into them?" Natalia pondered.
"Yo ne se," Gloria shrugged. "I'll snap them out of it." She ran to the center of the park by the tree and yelled. "Kids, stop!"
The kids half-heard her but they were still too lovesick in their worlds to listen.
"Who's that?" Camillo asked, in a lovey-dovey voice. He was now giving a giggling Guilia a twirl.
"Ooo, that's just Gloria," Dolores responded in the same tone as her brother.
"KIDS!" Gloria shouted, cupping her hands that were placed on both sides of her mouth. "Don't make me take my shoe off!"
Right on cue, the Madrigals, the Riveras, and Mariano stopped what they were doing immediately and faced Abel and Rosa's maiden aunt with ramrod straight backs like soldiers falling into formation.
"What are all of you doing?" she chastised them. "You're supposed to be looking for the monkey!"
"What monkey?" Isabella asked, in a dopey voice.
"The one with the perfume bottle!" Gloria exclaimed. She knew it was a love potion but had remembered to call it a perfume for Alma's sake. "Don't you remember?"
"Oh, yeah!" Rosa said, her pink eyes lightening up. "We forgot."
"Hey, what's wrong with your eyes?" Gloria asked, getting a closer look. "They're pink."
"No, they're brown!"
"Worry about the eyes later!" Natalia said, growing impatient. "Where is the monkey? I need your guys' help!"
Right on cue, something fell out of the tree and it was Jack!
"Oh, there he is!" Abel said, a bit too cheerfully.
The monkey was still gripping the bottle. Faced with two women and a group of children, the monkey smiled sheepishly with a wave and ran off.
"GET HIM!" Gloria shouted as if she were giving a battle cry. Although everybody followed her lead, she and Natalia were the only ones who were running quickly and smoothly. Those already under the spell of the love potion were only skipping or dancing merrily forward.
They followed the monkey until it led them to an underground speakeasy.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Gloria said. "Let's get the monkey before he leaves!"
But when they reached the front door, they saw that the monkey couldn't get in due to a closed door. The animal deflated and looked down at the ground.
"Who is it?" a guard asked as he opened the small opening. He was new and wasn't properly trained.
"Please kind sir," Alberto said, as he tenderly picked up the sad animal. "The monkey is our friend and was only trying to get in."
"No, no, no, no, no!" Gloria quickly cried, waving her hands to stop.
"He's your pet?" the guard asked.
"SÌ," Guliua and Alberto replied.
"No!" Both Gloria and Natalia shouted. But their pleas fell on deaf ears.
"Silence ladies, I wasn't talking to you!" the guard barked at them. He opened the door and as soon as he did, the monkey lurched forward, bounced on the guard's head, and slid onto a long table, knocking drinks over each man.
Furious about the mess, the men tightened their fists and began to head towards the monkey one by one. No matter how many of them tried to smash the animal, Jack was too quick for them.
"Hey, wait a minute!" the guard shouted. His attempts to catch the monkey were quickly ended as soon as he got knocked out by one of the angry men's punches. He collapsed to the floor.
"Uh oh, that's not good," Mariano stated obviously.
"Catch him!" Gloria ordered the older boys.
Mariano, Abel, and Camillo ran in. Each boy had to punch or kick any man who tried to block them from getting the monkey.
"I'm going to help too!" Alberto declared proudly. He pulled out his wooden toy sword from his sheath and pointed it to the sky.
"Me too!" Luca said, repeating his heroic pose, with his wooden sword.
Judging by the romantic sighs of Shanti and Rosa, it was clear that the younger boys were trying to show off.
"You two are too little!" Natalia said as she pulled them by the ends of their shirts. "And you're not strong enough!"
"Then, I'll go in with them!" Luisa J. volunteered. She picked up two Italian boys and placed them on top of her shoulders. Her countenance showed determination. "Let's do this!"
"Right behind you, hermanita!" Isabella said, conjuring up some vines.
With loud battle cries, Isabella, Luisa J., and the boys dashed right into the secret bar.
The strong Madrigal girl formed a fist and punched one guy in the face for trying to punch Abel.
"Aah, a woman!" her victim cried.
Then when two men inched toward Luisa J. with bare hands, the muscular girl jumped into the air and kicked both in the faces.
Alberto swung his sword and hit one man in the head.
Luca used his sword to bonk another man on the head.
Isabella distracted another group of men by lifting the hem of her dress to her ankle. By swinging her leg, she left a trail of poison ivy. That string of many poisonous plants was enough to make that small group of men go from lustful to terror.
"Aah!" they screamed as they flung the poison ivy plants off their heads and faces. Each man scratched himself nonstop.
"Oh, this fight is too much for my ears to handle!" Dolores whined, who was still standing by the front entrance. At the sound of a glass breaking, she fainted. Thankfully, Gloria, Rosa, Shanti, and Natalia caught her before she hit the ground.
Meanwhile, Jack the monkey was hopping all over the place. The potion slipped from his fingertips and landed next to an identical pink bottle, on the right of the table. Jack looked from one bottle to another and so did Abel.
"Which one is it?" the teenage boy asked.
The monkey shrugged and made a sound that he didn't know.
"Just grab both of them and let's get out of here!" Luisa J. shouted.
Swiftly, Abel grabbed two bottles and the monkey off the table.
Through the maze of the fighting, Luisa J, Isabella, and all the boys made it out of the speakeasy, without any scratches.
"Well, we got two bottles and the monkey!" Abel said, proudly, as he held two bottles. The monkey sat around his shoulders like a little boy would.
"But which one is it?" Dolores observed. "They look the same."
Camillo showed a sour look. "Too bad our aunt didn't put her name on it."
"I think it's this one," Natalia said, as she picked one that was in Abel's left hand.
"Are you sure?" Gloria asked, nervously.
"Yes, because this bottle is warm, the other one isn't."
"If you say so," the Rivera woman shrugged. "You go and find Héctor while I take the kids home."
Natalia nodded and left the scene with the bottle.
"Do we have to go home?" Rosa asked, sadly. "I was having so much fun with Alberto."
Camillo didn't know why but he felt something tugging at his heart. He was in love with Giulia, so why did hearing Rosa talking so sweetly about that poor boy bother him?
"I'm afraid so," Gloria responded. "Your parents must be awfully worried!" She opened the cork of the other pink bottle. "Oh, all this walking around is making me thirsty!" The woman raised the bottle to her lips and took a sip…
"Oh Héctor," Natalia thought as she pulled out a map. The Irish lady could not find anyone who would give her directions to the mansion. Hopefully, a map that she got from a stand will be useful. "I hope you're having better luck than I am!"
Finally, the street girl, the shoemaker, the boy, and the dog have arrived at their destination. They reached the end of the street in which they were facing Imelda's mansion. "Well, this is it!" Penny announced.
"So big and gothic!" Héctor observed. "It looks like a haunted mansion!"
"And how!" his nephew gulped.
"Well, now that you have made it, this is where I'll leave you," Penny said.
Héctor and Miguel both thanked their old friend.
Dante even gave the girl one last lick before she turned around.
"Penny?" Héctor said. "When I get back home, I will find a way to get your parents' jobs back so you can get out of here."
The girl's eyes looked hopeful. "Really? You'd do that?"
"Absolutely," the shoemaker nodded.
The dark-skinned girl beamed for the first time in a long time. "Wait till I tell Mom and Dad that! Well, godspeed!" She waved them goodbye and walked toward home.