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Back on the first
Saturday in May, he was
registered to take the SAT.
His high school history
teacher, Marcus Thompson,
had paid for it—and he’d
left ten dollars for Victor to
buy the number two pencils
and some coffee for that
morning.
“Make sure you eat,”
Marcus said, awkwardly.
Victor said, “We got
plenty of food.”
He remembered being
really hungry when he was
three. She didn’t come home.
He sat on the balcony.
Maybe Jessamine Gardens.
He couldn’t remember
anything except his stomach
was eating his backbone. He
could feel something
creeping up there. Vertebrae.
He couldn’t breathe and so
he sat outside, and his uncle
Reynaldo found him
because they were looking
for his mother.
in school. But he knew she loved him, too, because she always bought him ramen and orange juice.
Kindergarten? When he
coughed really hard and
finally she came home and
put him in the shower with
her and they sat in there all
night, the moisture beading
up on her hair like pearls
and then collapsing into
nothing. The water going
inside his lungs and
somehow cleaning out the
burn.
But now she had it
down. He was seventeen. So
she left ramen, orange juice
(and she bought Tropicana,
not that Sunny Delight shit),
and pistachios in the
kitchen. The staples. And
most nights, she brought
home the scheduled items
from El Ojo de Agua. He
said to her, “Shrimp burrito
from the Eye?”
The Eye of Water. Jesus
Espinoza, this guy in AP
History, said that was from
a town in Michoacan, where
his father was born. Some
shrine.
The shrimp burrito had
beans, rice, cabbage,
tomatoes, sauce, and fried
shrimp. $3.99. It was the
size of a small log. A dusty
white log. And Victor ate
one every Tuesday.
Wednesday was fish tacos.
Thursday was tamales.
Friday was Chess, and
Saturday she was gone until
dawn. Sunday she slept. He
ate whatever his grandfather
brought from Sarrat —
gumbo or beans and rice or
ham. Always oranges.
She had her part as
down as she could, and
Victor had his part down
cold. Perfect 4.0. Registered
for the May 6, 2000 SAT.
Last one of the year.
Everybody else would be
juniors, but he could finish
college apps late and Marcus
would help him.
It must have pissed those
other moms, when their kids
mentioned him. This black
dude with weird hair and
he’s really light so he’s like,
not even really black, and
his mom is, like, a crack
ho—that’s just what
everybody says, okay, she
is—and he gets like, 97 or
98 on everything. Like,
never lower. For reals.
He had the secondhighest
grade in the class in
AP European History, the
second-highest in AP US
History, and the thirdhighest
in AP Art History.
Susan Straight talks about real places in the city of Riverside
that served as inspiration for her novel. Read the interview at
* * *
Brown-haired girl
Logan had green eyes like
olives, one of those girls
who wore her hair in a
ponytail and it was thick
and long so you could see
the reason they called it
that. She asked him all
casual as often as she
could without seeming
insecure, “So what’d you
get on the test?”
“What I always get.”
Victor loved saying that.
He didn’t even have to
give her the percentage. It
was always 97 or 98. Mrs.
Mumbles had to take off
two or three points for
everyone—even if she had
to make up some shit
about one word being
awkward or you forgot a
comma or a space in
MLA format.
But he loved Mrs.
Mumbles. Mumford.
Mrs. Mumbles didn’t
buy into all the hype, and
the old families and
fundraisers and the right
mom or wrong mom at
Back to School Night. She
never looked any of them
in the face. She stared at
some spot in the room
and mumbled about
funeral art of India and
Impressionists and
Cubism. She didn’t give a
shit that Victor’s mother,
who came to Open House
because he’d told her it
was the last time she
could ever do that, sat in
the back like the most
beautiful zombie statue in
the history of the world.
She was luminous. In
winter, the nights shitty
MAGAZINE.UCR.EDU
and cold, her skin got
dulled like the gold-leaf
frame of a painting if soot
and years laid a patina of
darkness or haze. Then
she would sleep for two
days, and when the sun
came out, they’d go out to
the orange groves. Eat
gumbo and oranges, see
the grandparents, and
she’d take a long shower
and put almond oil in her
hair.
She’d be gilt again.
And the other moms at
Open House hated the
way she gazed bemusedly
at their fleece vests and
mom jeans for two
seconds before dismissing
them and staring at the
paintings on the
classroom walls.
The SAT plan was to
get number-three scores.
Logan had taken it twice,
Amitav three times. Logan
got a 1500, perfect score,
and Amitav 1490, in
October. Victor didn’t
have the money in
October, and in
November she got
pneumonia after a cold
windstorm when she
stood in the alley too long.
His aunt Famine helped
him one weekend with
vocabulary words. He
chanted to himself all day
and most of the night.
Luciferous.
Loquacious. Lucid.
Lucent.
Susan Straight is a
distinguished professor of
creative writing at UCR.
“Between Heaven and
Here” is her eighth novel.
UCR Spring 2013 | 21