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graduate. Sitting there reading. Letty was reading, too, and even Juanito was being quiet for a change, but I couldn’t concentrate because Mami kept sighing and blowing her nose in a tissue. I asked her was she sick and she just sighed again and didn’t answer me. She’s usually the smiling one in our house, so I started thinking what could be wrong with her if she wasn’t sick and Papi wasn’t even there to make her cry.
    As soon as I thought of Papi, I remembered that he told me a couple of weeks earlier don’t forget Mami’s birthday. But I forgot and I figured he did, too, because it was almost seven o’clock and he wasn’t even home yet. I didn’t have any money to go out and get something, so I went in my room and looked around to see if there was any kind of good junk that I could give Mami for a present. But there wasn’t anything. So I took a piece of paper and drew a swirly border all around the edges and wrote OFFICIAL CERTIFICATE in big letters at the top. Then I filled it in like one of those gift certificates the
viejas
give you at Christmas so you can spend $20 at somestore, or $50 once in a while if the
vieja
is rich, except instead of money, I wrote it out real fancy that I promised to stay in school and graduate. I signed it with my official signature and printed my whole name underneath.
    Mami started crying for real when I gave her that certificate and I felt pretty good for about two minutes until we heard a big noise out in the backyard and we looked out the window and there was Papi standing beside this little crape myrtle tree with pink flowers all over it. Mami ran outside and started jumping up and down because she kept wanting one of those trees but you can’t hardly find them in Rosablanca. And there was a little white box hanging on the tree with a pink ribbon around it. Mami handed Papi my certificate and grabbed the box and opened it and there was some diamond earrings inside. While she was putting on the earrings, Papi read my certificate, but he didn’t say anything, just looked at me hard for a couple seconds and then folded the certificate up and gave it back to Mami.
    We had homemade
sopapillas
for dessert that night with lots of honey because Mami was happy about so many things. Not just the earrings and the crape myrtle tree and my certificate. I knew she was the happiest because she knew Papi really was working overtime the last couple months like he said and not doing something he shouldn’t be doing, which is what she had been thinking. She never said it, but I could tell by the way her mouth got real tight whenever she looked at the clock in the kitchen while she was fixing supper and the way she watched Papi eat when he wasn’t looking.
    If I would have waited a couple minutes longer that day, we would have heard Papi before I went and made that dumb certificate. Mami hung it on the refrigerator, so I have to see it every time I want some juice or an apple or something. I thought about hiding it or tearing it up, but it wouldn’t get me out of the deal because I already put it in writing and everybody in the family read it a hundred times. It’s probably a good thing I wrote it down, though, because otherwise I might have dropped out of school one of those days when I felt like breaking all the windows just to make something interesting happen instead of all those dumb assignments and tests.
    Being a good example is hard work but at least it makes me feel like I’m doing something and not just taking up space. I’d like to take up a real big space someday, so big that people would have to stand back when I walk into the room, but I would act like I didn’t even notice they were looking at me. That way, people wouldn’t feel embarrassed and they could take a good long look at me and maybe they would see something in me that is so good I can’t even see it myself.

CHAPTER 7
I GOT A GIRLFRIEND
    Y O , I FINALLY GOT A GIRLFRIEND. A REAL ONE, TOO, NOT THE kind you