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Tweak says, "why is the rum gone?"

Rosario Ortiz (

reluciente) wrote in

nevermore_logs,
@ 2021-05-25 11:54:00

WHO Rosario Ortiz
WHEN Monday evening, 24 May
WHERE Bushwick, Brooklyn
WHAT It’s a very small apartment
WARNINGS None

Moving back home had been the sensible move. Her scholarship didn’t cover accommodation, only tuition, and trying to find a rental in this city on a meagre part-time income? Rosario had done the math, and she would have been looking at housemate dramas and a long commute anyway. At least at home, the drama was familiar and – more importantly – her portion of the rent helped ensure the bills were (mostly) paid on time and Ma could worry a little less about counting her pennies and snipping her coupons. In theory, it was win-win-win all around.

In practice, it was a small apartment that wasn’t made to fit three adults and two teens, and when all five of them were home, the place felt cramped in more ways than one. What made it at once better and worse was that Rosario was the only one of the five of them with a bedroom to herself.

Through high school, she’d shared with Camino, and Chicky had shared with Ma. During premed, when she’d moved into the dorms, Chicky had taken her old bed, squashing Camino’s dreams of finally having a space to herself. When she’d broached the idea of moving back with Ma, her mother had insisted she didn’t mind sharing again, and Rosario had thought they’d been on the same page until the day when she’d dragged her suitcase through the door and headlong into the middle of an argument.

“Well, ‘Mino, when you start paying rent, you can get your own room, too, but until then—”

So, it turned out Ma hadn’t been planning on sharing with Rosario. She’d started moving her stuff into Abuela’s room that morning and Camino, who did righteous fury like nobody’s business, had exploded. Rosario was always the golden child, she’d raged, with the ache of a younger sibling who’d spent her entire school career being unfavourably measured against high-achieving older sister. People acted like her shit didn’t stink! She got everything and now she thought she could take this, too! If she could afford to pay rent, then why didn’t she take her ass somewhere else!

And so the bedroom became just one more mile in the opening gulf between her and her family.

It sucked all the more because Rosario quickly came to realise that Ma had been right. Med school was nothing like undergrad. The workload was heavier, the hours were longer, and her late-night study sessions were never going to jive with Ma’s early-rising work schedule. When she was studying, she needed a door between her and the rest of the apartment, for their everyone else’s sanity as much as for hers.

It especially sucked because when she closed that door she still felt greedily, guiltily grateful for a space that was all her own.

A year later, Camino had shown no signs of forgiving her.

Housemate dramas were inevitable, though… right?

Tonight wasn’t too bad, anyway. Ma was in the shower, washing off the clinging smell of grease that came of a nine-hour shift in the deli. Camino was in and out of the room she shared with Chicky. She was getting ready to go out somewhere, or at least Rosario assumed she was, based on the fact that she was wearing a full face of make-up and she’d changed her outfit at least three times now.

Abuela was in the living room tending to her altar, a low table with a large brass crucifix at its centre, framed saint icons to either side. Technically, Chicky was the one doing the tending, while Abuela sat with her feet up giving directions. Chicky, who changed her mind on her career ambitions at least twice a month, had lately decided she wanted to work in a botánica and Abuela had been all too eager to encourage her spiritual development with lessons in the care and feeding of lwa. Rosario was pretty sure it was all a ploy to offload the altar duties onto somebody else, but Chicky didn’t seem to have noticed that yet. The altar was practically groaning under fresh offerings of flowers and candles. She’d even gone out of her way to pick blooms in each of the lwas’ favourite colours.

Rosario was on dinner duty. She hadn’t inherited her dad’s chef’s instinct – she didn’t even have Chicky’s knack for adventurous combinations – but one thing she could do was follow a recipe to the letter. Her meals were never anything to rave about (and, despite her exactitude, they never looked quite like the picture), but they were competent.

(Competent but unimpressive, sort of like her last Foundations of Clinical paper. Ughhh.)

The five of them each in their own corners of the apartment, like satellites circling the same star, close enough to feel the gravitational pull of the others without being yanked in on a collision course. Rosario liked it when it was like this.

It lasted right up until the sound of a muffled shriek from the next room.

“Euurrghh! What the fuck Charo!”

Chicky and Abuela turned and Rosario’s gaze snapped up from the frying pan in time to see Camino emerge. She hadn’t been in her own room after all. Rosario’s face flushed hot and angry. “What the hell are you doing in my room?!”

“What the hell are you doing watching snuff films?” Camino threw back at her, eyes dramatically wide, voice pitched for an audience. She already had one; Chicky and Abuela were both watching from the lounge. She’d always been a natural actor. Camino was a natural at a lot of things that Rosario wasn’t, like styling and sussing out a room and getting people to like her.

“It’s a surgery video,” Rosario said tightly, feeling her cheeks burn. “For school.” Yeah, she was trying the desensitisation tack again. She was not going to tell her sisters she was too scared of a few dead bodies to pass an anatomy practical.

Camino took that with an exaggerated raise of the eyebrows that was all derision. “Oh, for school, right, I forgot, it’s always school with Charo. Is that why you wanna be a doctor? You get extra credit for that Dexter shit, or you just get off on it?”

“I dunno, Cam, does beauty school give you extra credit for being a bitch?” It was a catty, middle school insult. It didn’t even make sense. But in the moment of saying it and seeing it hit home in the stiffening of Camino’s expression, Rosario felt an ugly spike of satisfaction.

Abuela’s voice was the crack of a whip between them. “Charo! Language! ‘Mino, leave your sister alone.”

Camino huffed. “I’m sorry, I’m just scarred by the splatter porn or Charo’s screen—”

“You wouldn’t have seen it if you stayed out of my room,” Rosario growled.

“You’re lucky it was just me who saw it!” She was in full flight now, building to that righteous outrage. “What if it was Chicky who’d walked in?”

Chicky, watching them both from over the back of the couch, raised a hopeful hand. “Can I—”

“No.” A vehement chorus – Rosario, Camino, Abuela… and Ma, framed in the doorway of her shared bedroom, wet curls dripping into the collar of her bathroom. Rosario winced pre-emptively as their mother caught her eye with a dry grimace that was as much a rebuke as it was sympathy. But all Ma said was, “Camino, nena, can you run down the hall and give this back to Jocelyn?” She had a paperback in her hand, which she held out to ‘Mino with a clear air of expectation.

There was stubbornness in the line of Camino’s jaw, but after a few defiant seconds she snatched the book away. “Fine. After I go bleach my brain.” She spun on her heel and stomped a few steps toward her own bedroom, before stopping to hurl over her shoulder, “And it’s Ma’s room!” SLAM.

Rosario’s shoulders had ended up somewhere around her ears.

Abuela was the first to break the silence, clearing her throat lightly. “You know, I was still reading that book.”

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