Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz

Book 1: Quinceañera Club

by Belinda Acosta

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

All Ana Ruiz wanted was to have a traditional quinceañera for her daughter, Carmen. She wanted a nice way to mark this milestone year in her daughter's life. But Carmen was not interested in celebrating. Hurt and bitter over her father Esteban's departure, she blamed Ana for destroying their happy family, as did everyone else. A good man is hard to find, especially at your age Ana was told. Why not forgive his one indiscretion? Despite everything, Ana didn't want to tarnish Carmen's childlike devotion to her beloved father. But Ana knows that growing up sometimes means facing hard truths. In the end, Ana discovers that if she's going to teach Carmen anything about what it means to be a woman, it will take more than simply a fancy party to do it... "Belinda Acosta's Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz delivers all its title promises and more: it's a book about damas of all ages, from teenage girls to the struggling mothers of those teenage girls; it's packed with drama so you don't want to stop reading; it's a novel that deeply and honestly tells the story of Ana Ruiz, her own coming of age as a woman and as a mother. Belinda Acosta is up to all of the challenges of such a rich panorama of characters and events. She's sassy, she's smart, she makes it look easy! But it takes a lot of hard work and a pile of talent to write such an engaging, touching book. A wonderful quinceaera of a novel!" -- Julia Alvarez, author of Once Upon a Quinceaera: Coming of Age in the USA and Return to Sender "Lively and perceptive... Acosta empathically captures the innermost feelings of her characters." -- Booklist

Release date: July 25, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 330

Sample

Don’t let anyone tell you that being a woman is like—cómo se dice?—a piece of the cake. Mira, take a look around. All these
niñitas dressed up like Barbie dolls outside of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, their toes scrunched into pointy high heels,
hair pulled into tidy buns, bangs springing over their foreheads or hanging in gaunt strands alongside their girlish faces.
The smell of hairspray and designer perfume, starched shirts and polished shoes mingle in the air. The matching boys are tucked
into tuxedos looking like they want to be someplace else. They do! The Spurs game starts in thirty minutes. The limo driver,
allá, is looking at his watch for the same reason. And then there’s pobrecita Ana Ruiz. That poor woman! All she wanted was
to have a small quinceañera, a nice way to celebrate her niña Carmen con cariño. She wanted Carmen’s fifteenth birthday to
be special and lovely. Instead, there she is, the one in the lilac dress, her wavy hair going flat and her feet screaming
from running around in heels, taking care of one disaster after the next. Today, she looks older than her thirty-eight years,
weary from months of worry. The few streaks of gray she has, she got this month alone! Still, everything about Ana is soft—her
hands, her laugh, the color of her amber skin. She has a small patch of dark skin below her ear that some women get when they
have babies. But because Ana is what you would call pretty, you don’t even notice. She’s a good-looking woman; thin, but with
meat in all the right places, as the men might say. For the women who need to be the center of attention when they walk into
a room, Ana is the last one they worry about. They think, She’s like a sugar cube—easy to melt with the heat they make with the sway of their nalgas or the heave of their chichis. But oh no! Ana is the one
that surprises them. With those bésame mucho lips, the whispery hollows of her cheeks, the way her neck curves like poured
water, and finally, that look from her smoky black eyes—that alone will make some men walk into walls while the women, who
thought they were the main dish at the party, will cluck to themselves and think, Her? Quién es esa?

You can tell right away that Ana Ruiz is respectable. She’s no spring kitten, but she’s way too young to cover it up in housedresses.
But right now, Ana doesn’t care what she looks like. She’s wondering how this wonderful day turned to this. All she wanted
was a little tradition, a nice way to mark this time in Carmen’s life and maybe get back to the way things were before Esteban
left.


Carmen is officially becoming a woman today, in a time when becoming a woman happens in a flurry like a million cascarones
broken over your head. Just this week, she was figuring out the best way to brush her hair to make the tiara sit just so.
Pero, no one knows where the tiara is now and Carmen doesn’t even care. Today means nothing and everything to Carmen who,
right now, only really wants to know, When will this pinche day be over?

Ana is standing near the door of the church. No one would be surprised if she snapped in two from all this drama! But no,
like always, there she is: like a blade of grass in a hurricane. You can smash her down but she will never break. She’s the
one they call a strong woman, though she never understood why. She would say she only did what she had to do and that if patience
and hard work are what it takes to be a strong woman, then okay, call her what you want. But right now, she feels spent. She
feels like she might lose it. Her son, Diego, didn’t come home last night, and Carmen has been barfing since midnight. The
band that showed up is not the nice mariachi Ana thought was coming but three boys, one with tattoos on his arms and silver
rings poked aquí y allá on his face and ears. And did I tell you about the cake? The cake is late. There was talk that there
might not even be a cake, and well, you can’t have a quinceañera without a cake, can you? Well, the cake finally comes, right
after Ana made some calls and that girl they call Bianca tore her dress (accidentally on purpose, if you ask me). One of the
boys in the court showed up with a black eye. And just when it seemed like the ground should open up and swallow this whole
mess, then, then there comes la señora with the cake. Four stories tall, all pink and sparkly. Bien pretty, but late. And because she’s late
she shows up in shorts and chanclas. No “discúlpeme.” No “perdóname.” Instead, she laughs como la loca, saying she’s on Mexican
time. “Mexican time”? Ay, por favor! La señora toda sin vergüenza in those chanclas and that thing stuck in her ear like she
works in the secret service.


One of the boys in the band goes to help la señora with the cake, and then so does the boy in the tuxedo with the black eye.
They’re all talking, no one is listening, and everyone wants to be in charge. So of course you know what’s going to happen,
right? La señora with the chanclas and the boy with the black eye he can hardly see out of, they look like they’re going to
crash. I see the whole thing before everyone else. I see the whole picture. I can tell you why Ana is wrung out. I can tell
you why Carmen is sick. I can tell you why Ana and Carmen have been fighting. I can tell you where Diego is. I can tell you
why the cake is late and why that boy has a black eye. And I can tell you if, and when, that cake is going to fall.


Pero, let me go back to the beginning. The very beginning, because híjole! I love a good quinceañera story. And I got to tell
you this one.


Ana was finishing her coffee when she saw the full-page ad in the morning paper:


Everything you need for the ultimate teen birthday party!

“Take a look at this, mi’ja.” Ana slid the paper toward Carmen, who was stuffing her backpack for school. Carmen glanced at
the paper, then up at her mother, then back to her backpack. It didn’t matter if Ana asked Carmen for the time or if she wanted
a new car; the look was always the same: a sour mix of annoyance with y qué? It was a look Ana had come to expect but would
not ever get used to. It was a look Carmen had since her beloved ’apá moved out of their house a month earlier. They called
it a separation, something temporary to work things out. Carmen didn’t care what they called it. She didn’t like it. She didn’t
like it at all, and it was all on Ana where she put the blame. To say Carmen was angry was to put it softly. That girl was
as furious as a blister, as mean as a sunburn, as popping mad as water sprinkled on hot oil. Carmen Ruiz was as angry as a
fourteen-year-old daddy’s girl can be without her hair catching fire. And even though the girl with the sweet round face and
her mother’s eyes could be so, so—órale, let’s just say it, cabrona!—Ana wanted her daughter back. She wanted things to go
back to the way things were between them, and she had a plan.


“Let’s go to this,” Ana said.

“Why?”

“To check it out. I’ve been thinking—it would be nice to have a quinceañera for you.”

“Why would you think that?” Carmen snapped. But Ana goes on like she didn’t hear the sting in her daughter’s voice.

“It’s a nice tradition. I’ve been hearing a lot of girls are having them these days.”

“Did you have one?” Carmen asked.

“Well, no,” Ana said, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t have one.”

Carmen was wishing her mother would have said, “Yes,” so she could have said, Well, then what makes you think I’d be interested in that old-fashioned thing? or what she was really dying to say, What makes you think I want to be like you?

“It says the expo is this Sunday,” Ana said. “Maybe we could have a nice breakfast somewhere and then go. You know, just you
and me.” Carmen kept digging in her backpack. She wasn’t looking for anything; she just didn’t want her mother to have all
her attention.


It’s been a month already, Ana thought. Longer if you counted all the hushed talk behind their bedroom door, and the long nights when pobrecita Ana
would cry into her pillow after Esteban left in the middle of the night. Maybe it wasn’t the best way, but they waited till
the latest possible time to announce the separation to their kids. So, when Carmen and Diego finally learned what had happened,
they felt as if the house they grew up in had fallen on top of them. With Esteban gone, Ana was left to poke through the remains
and put things right again. Diego, the oldest, was sad and brave. He did his best to help around the house and look after
his mother and sister, but Carmen—ay, Carmen!—that one wasn’t making it easy. She was so sure that the reason her father left
was all her mother’s fault. Carmen clung to her anger and held it so tight it left a mark on everything she said or did.


Ana noticed the time and gulped down the last of her coffee. She pulled on her navy linen blazer and inspected herself in
the mirror as she tied a rose-colored scarf around her neck, which looked good against her amber skin. It was going to be
a busy day at work, and she liked this outfit because it was comfortable but professional, and if she were to take the time
to notice, Ana would have to agree that she looked bien pretty, too.


“Dieguito! Vámonos, mi’jo!” she called.

“He’s gone,” Carmen said. Ana felt panicked.

“What do you mean, ‘he’s gone’?”

“He’s gone. You know, to school? That place you send us to during the day?”

“I didn’t hear him leave.”

“Yeah, well, se fue,” Carmen said. “Bianca is coming for me, so you can go.” (Hear how she talks to her mother? Híjole!)

Ana hated it when Diego wasn’t around. Her son had a way of sweetening Carmen’s bitterness. It wasn’t what he said or did;
it was something about his quiet way. He wasn’t angry like Carmen. Ana was thankful for that, only she wasn’t sure what he was feeling these days. Because of this, Ana said he took after his father, but really Diego took after Ana—serene on
the outside but twisted with worry on the inside. Oh, Diego was suffering like Carmen, all right; he just didn’t make a show
of it. Diego was the cool water to calm the pot that was always on the edge of boiling over when Carmen and Ana were together.
Mornings in the Ruiz house used to be so nice. They were always hectic, the way they are when everyone is scrambling to get
out the door to school and work. But Ana loved it. It used to be a calming start to her day, being with her babies—her corazones—before
sending them out into the world. Ay, Ana would take a bullet for those kids, even that ungrateful girl who decided that Ana
was to blame for everything gone wrong in her world.


“Okay, mi’ja.” Ana stood up and gave Carmen un abrazo, but Carmen did not hug her back. Ana swallowed the lump in her throat
and tried to ignore the stab in her heart. She wanted to take her daughter by the shoulders and wail, “Do you think this is
fun for me!” But no. Instead, she calmly pulled the car keys from her purse and left for work. By the time she reached her
car, the tears had swollen in her eyes and had spilled down her cheeks. When she got into her car she looked into her rearview
mirror and patted dry her mascara with a smashed tissue from the bottom of her purse.


To call Bianca de la Torre Ana’s niece was not enough. That girl was a cotton-candy tornado. Just as Ana was pulling out of
her driveway, Bianca screeched up in her bubblegum-pink VW Bug (the girl was all about the pink). Although she was what most
would call a girly-girl, Bianca could handle a car like los NASCAR drivers. She barely missed the bumper of Ana’s car, a clunker
they called La ’Onda, because the silver H in the grill had been knocked out, so it smiled at the other cars like a jack-the-lantern. Bianca brought her Bug to rest
partly on the curb, the street, on the drive, and over the trash can left on the curb from the night before. Ana angrily pushed
open her car door and pounded down the driveway toward her niece. Bianca was sixteen, two years older than Carmen. She was
lean and curvy like most of the girls in the family, but unlike the rest of them, she was blond with sea-green eyes, something
that used to bother her when she was a little girl. As a teenager, she came to accept her “güera” label. So, when some tonto
said, “Hey, how come you don’t look Mexican?” Bianca replied, “We come in all flavors, menso!” turning on her heel to leave
the baboso, her ponytail snapping like a whip.


Bianca smiled as she popped up through her car’s sunroof, her honey-blond locks pulled tightly from her long face into a high
ponytail. Ana groaned when she saw her trash can wedged under Bianca’s Bug.


“Hola, Tía!” Bianca called out over the blare of her car stereo. She pushed her white-framed sunglasses to the top of her
head. Ana thought Bianca’s eyeliner was a little too thick, ending in dramatic wisps at the edges.


“Bianca!”

“Mande?”

“Look at my trash can!”

“Cómo?”

“Bianca! Turn down the da—”

As soon as Ana got to the part that would make the neighbors gasp, Bianca had turned off the music and popped up through the
sunroof again.


“Ay, Tía!” Bianca said playfully, shaking her head side to side, her chongo bobbing like a spring. Ana went to pull her trash
can out from under Bianca’s bumper.


“It’s okay, Tía. I’m sure it didn’t hurt my car.” Ana threw Bianca a look that could have frozen the sun. “Can’t you just
buy another one?”


Bianca wasn’t trying to be smart. She honestly thought that that was the way to solve this and any other problem.

“That’s not the point, Bianca!”

After two hard tugs, Ana freed the trash can. She thought about hauling it back to the house, but now she was really late
for work. She pushed the trash can to the curb where it fell with a thud and turned back to her niece.


When Bianca saw Ana’s eyes, she knew her aunt was not in the mood for tonterías.

“I’m sorry, Tía. If there’s something wrong with the trash can, I’ll buy you a new one, okay?”

Ana knew it wouldn’t be her but Bianca’s father who would buy the new trash can. The last thing Ana wanted was to give her
older brother, Marcos, a chance to lecture her on how Esteban moving out was a bad idea, on how a good man is hard to find
(“especially the way you are”), and on how she could save herself a world of struggle by forgiving her husband and letting
bygones be bygones already.


“It’s fine, mi’ja. Just move your car. I’m late for work.”

Ana pulled out of the driveway and drove her car alongside her niece’s so the driver-side windows were next to each other.
Bianca pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes. She hated to see how tired and sad her tía looked at the beginning of the
day.


“Have a good day at school—and be careful!” Ana said.

When Ana pulled away, Bianca zipped her Bug back and forth and charged into the driveway, honking the horn in time with the
music she’d turned back on full blast. Carmen would have heard the whole thing except she was reading the ad for the quinceañera
fair.


Everything you need for the ultimate teen birthday party!

The curly letters were as bright and bouncy as Bianca. Carmen tore the ad from the paper, stuffed it into her backpack, and
ran out to meet her cousin.


What’s that?” Bianca asked, as she backed out of the driveway. Carmen looked at her jeans, checked the top button on her fitted
white blouse, felt for the chandelier earrings she’d decided to wear, and ran her hand through her hair, pulling a long wisp
of espresso-brown hair behind her ear. She’d just gotten what she called a “posh bob”—short in the back with a long wedge
of bangs that swung to the front. The cut was qué cute with her round face, but she was still self-conscious about how it
looked; she hadn’t got the hang of how to use the hot iron to get her wavy hair to behave like she wanted.


“Do I have a moco or something?” Carmen asked, pulling down the visor to inspect herself in the mirror beneath. Two pink lights
blinked on when the visor was opened.


“No.” Bianca waved a white-tipped nail toward Carmen’s feet. “That.”

“My backpack? What about it?”

“It’s not made by me, for one thing. Pick one.” Bianca motioned toward the backseat, and when Carmen turned to look, she saw
it was covered in layers of bags, round ones and square ones, some with big geometric patterns in sharp colors, others in
Mexican oilcloth, bursting with tropical flowers set against bloodshot reds and neon blues. The only black to be found was
in the trim around the seams and zippers.


“Dang, Bianca! What’s all this?”

“I made them, like I told you I was going to. Take one.”

“For real? Dang, girl, don’t you ever sleep—oooh!” Carmen grabbed a bag patterned with pumpkin and raspberry checks, a large
white calavera with a garland of bright roses around its forehead. Bianca smiled. This was the bag she’d made especial for
Carmen.


“You’re my model. Once everyone sees them, the orders will come in. So don’t leave it in your locker.”

“This calavera looks painted.”

“It’s silk-screened.”

Bianca bit her bottom lip all nervous as Carmen carefully inspected the bag.

“So?”

“Dang, B. This is sweet!”


Bianca was relieved. Carmen happily moved the stuff from her old backpack to her new bag, stopping when she pulled out the
ad for the quinceañera fair.


“You won’t believe what my mom asked me this morning. She wants me to go to this quinceañera fair.”

“Shut. Up!”

“Can you believe it?”

“Where? When is it?”

Carmen rolled her eyes. Of course Bianca would be excited about a quinceañera fair. She was sorry she brought it up.

“Sunday,” Carmen said. “Hey, does this thing have a place for your cell?”

“Pos, yeah. What time Sunday?”

Carmen shrugged, putting all her attention on the little zippers and pockets on her bag. Bianca peeked over her sunglasses
at Carmen.


“You’re going, right?”

“Oh, hell no!”

(Ay, por fa’! You would think Bianca had told Carmen to shave off her eyebrows or something.)

Bianca screeched to a stop.

“You should go.”

To be all dramatic, Carmen crumpled the ad in her fist.

“You should totally go!” Bianca said. A car behind them honked, and Bianca surged forward as Carmen looked at the ad again.

“She just wants us to go so she can act like everything is normal.”

Bianca remembered the look on Ana’s face. She knew everything was far from normal in the Ruiz house. Her tía Ana’s house was
where she’d gone to birthday parties and Easter egg hunts, where she had helped set up a family altar for Día de los Muertos
and then dressed up as a princess for Halloween. It was the place she had gone to slumber parties as a little girl and woke
to the warm, sweet aroma of her tía’s famous buñuelos the next morning. Ana had always warned Bianca and Carmen about making
a mess, but the girls always managed to get cinnamon and sugar all over their faces and hands, and one time in their hair.
But Ana always seemed to forget the next time around. Bianca remembered the long, matching pink T-shirts the two of them wore
as nightgowns (Carmen wasn’t anti-pink back then), the two of them giggling like changuitos till they fell asleep. The next
morning, they were the first ones up (after Ana), ready for the first, sweet crunch of a warm buñuelo. Bianca remembered how
it flaked onto their plates, sugar sparkling on their cheeks as they licked their fingers and drank ice-cold glasses of milk.
Bianca decided Ana was the closest thing she had to a real mother. She would never say that out loud because it would cause
drama between Bianca and her father, between Bianca and Ana, and probably between Bianca and Carmen (even though Carmen was
anti-Ana lately). Bianca didn’t like to think about the woman who used to be her mother. She pushed her sunglasses firmly
over her eyes. She wanted to be excited about her new bolsas and how popular they would be. She wanted to think about having
a quinceañera, even if it wasn’t her own.


“Quinceañeras are nice, or they should be,” Bianca said, remembering her quinceañera that wasn’t, as Bianca said to Carmen
and to Carmen only, “the year my mother lost it.”


“Come on, Carma. It will be fun! We could dress up and have a party with cool music …”

“You would have fun dressing up and having a party. I would have to bring the music since you don’t know what’s good unless I
tell you,” Carmen teased.


“Shut up—”

On the stereo, Piñata Protest took off into their punk version of “La Cucaracha.” She turned it up to drown out Bianca, like
that was going to stop her.


“Come on, Carmen! I bet Mari and Amelia would be on your court. And what’s her name, Alicia was a quince last month. She’d
be on your court. For the rest, you can get the Valley girls …” The Valley girls were a string of cousins from Laredo to Harlingen,
and every South Texas town that had a Dairy Queen in between.


“They’ll do it. They always want a reason to come up here.”

“The Valley girls hate us!” Carmen reminded her cousin.

“Only the twins from Laredo, and they hate you—you think that’s going to stop them from being damas?” The ideas were flooding in, and Bianca gasped.


“Oh! You know what you should do? Get Sonia on the court—” Bianca screeched to another stop. “Ay! Diego! Was I supposed to
give him a ride, too?”


“No, he walked over to get a ride with Rafa so he could see Sonia.”

“When’s he going to make a move or something? See? That’s why you should have a quinceañera. So you can get Dieguito with
Sonia already.”


Bianca pulled into the school parking lot, her pink Bug prowling like Pac-Man, up and down the rows. Bianca was leaning forward,
concentrating on finding a parking space—or so Carmen thought, until Bianca blurted, “Tomás could be your escort!”


“Tomás? You mean Louis?”

“Louis? Who’s Louis?”

“Tomás, Louis—it doesn’t matter. I’m so over high school boys, B.”

“What about your mom, then?”

“She can’t be my escort.”

“Very funny. I mean if your mom is bringing it up, she must want you to have a quinceañera.”

“Bianca.” Carmen ejected the CD from the stereo, all serious-like. She wanted to make sure her cousin heard every word she
had to say. “I don’t want a quinceañera. It’s not right with things the way they are.”


“Well, just go to the fair with your mom, then. I think she would like it.”

“I don’t care what she likes!” Carmen yelled, as Bianca pulled into a spot under a pecan tree. “Did she think about what me
or Diego would like when she kicked my dad out? She wants to act like everything is normal, and it’s not.” Her eyes frosted
with anger.


“Your mom isn’t like that.”

“You don’t know what my mom is like! When your mom …” Carmen could not finish. She didn’t know what to say—or if she should
say anything—about Bianca’s mother. Things were already crazy-upside-down at home. She didn’t need to make it that way with
Bianca. “You just don’t know.”


“I know you have a mom who’s trying,” Bianca said flatly.

The CD stuck out from the player like a bratty kid’s tongue and Carmen yanked it out.

“Isn’t this mine?”

Carmen felt bad yelling at Bianca, but lately it was getting harder and harder for Bianca to hear her, or for Carm. . .