Read Online Rules to Rock By by Josh Farrar - Free Book Online Page B

right?” Abuela asked.
    I got it together. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” I said, trying to keep my voice from sounding shaky. “I was just drinking something, and it went down the wrong pipe.”
    “Oh, I am sorry, angel. But you doing okay? Tell me. Why your brother throw a thimble at your papa?”
    “A cymbal, Abuela—you know, like part of a drum set?”
    “He what? Why he throw that? Why he hurt your papa?”
    “Well, maybe because he’s tired of being ignored.”
    “Your father ignore Chabito? Your mother?”
    “Well, yeah. We’re not exactly getting tons of attention right now.”
    “You want me talk to him? Talk to you father?”
    “Well, maybe, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.”
    “What you mean? You mama and papa always be good for you, Annabella. Maybe lots of things happening for they music now, so they don’t see. Maybe—Annabelle, what is wrong, baby? You crying?”
    I totally was not crying when she asked. I was just sniffling for a half second. But the second she said the word “crying,” I completely broke down, snorting and sniffing and choking on my own tears.
    “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. You cry with Abuela now, is okay. You feel better. You will.”
    Abuela had always been big on getting tears out of your system. She said you needed to cry to put out the fires in your life, and that when you stopped you could take a look at what had burned down, and what hadn’t. So I just cried for a minute or two. Abuela was probably the only person in the world who I’d let see me like that. I knew it wouldn’t change the way she looked at me, so it didn’t matter. I just cried it out.
    “You feel a little better, angelita ?” Abuela asked.
    “Yeah, a little,” I said. “But I’m not really even that sad. I’m just … mad.”
    “At you fathers?” This was the word Abuela always said for parents , but I always smiled when I heard it, as if X and I were being raised by Charlie Sheen and his brother on Two and a Half Men .
    “Yeah, mostly at them. But even at you a little, Abuela. This family doesn’t work without you. Don’t you get that?”
    Now it was her turn to pretend not to cry. But I heard her breathe in sharply, and when she exhaled she sounded shaky.
    “I’m sorry, baby,” she managed to say. “I knew it would no be easy, but I no like to hear you like this.”
    I could tell I had gotten to her. “Are you still sure you’d never come up here and live with us?”
    “Oh, baby, you know how much it hurt me not to have my babies with me in Brooklyn no more. But maybe you understand me more when you old. I move around so much in my life, Annabella, and lot of times, no so happy thing for me to move. Like when I come to this country, not easy. When I marry you gran papi and live with him , not so easy. I have all my friends here, all my old lady friends and my family.”
    “What do you mean? We’re your family.”
    “Yes, yes, baby, for certain you are my family, my family most important. But I have my cousins and my sisters here, and they understand what it mean to be old lady like me, and how to help old lady like me. They can take care of your Abuela maybe better than you fathers take care. I never been to this Providence, this new city, and would be very hard for me to change now, to live there now.”
    “But I miss you!”
    “I miss you, too, Annabella, you know I do. I come visit so soon, I promise you, okay?”
    “Wait, hold on,” I said. “Did you just say a second ago that you didn’t come up here because you know Mom and Dad can’t take care of you? Or won’t take care of you?”
    “Annabella, I know you think me so strong, but I not so healthy all time anymore. Is hard to get older. Consuela, she take care me, and your uncle Roberto. Your mommy and daddy, they too busy.”
    I suddenly realized what Abuela had obviously understood for a long time now: my parents weren’t so hot at parenting . They had been okay while Abuela was young enough and