Mami Loves Jeopardy

Model Ricans Episode 10: Mercury Retrograde began March 14 and ends April 7, so Desiree Sanchez is spinning backwards in Dr. Nutmeg's time machine to forgotten memories.

In last week’s episode of Model Ricans, we learned the dynamics between Desiree Sanchez and her Dad. Now we get to see how she interacts with Mami Dearest. Ha. If you grew up in the 80s, you know this reference. If you didn’t grow up in the 80s, Google it!

Episode 10: Mami Loves Jeopardy

Dinner is ready so I can't call Marga. Plus, Jeopardy is about to start, “after these messages.” The yellow phone is on the wall, screaming at me, but I'm not allowed to call anyone during dinner, that's the rule, so I remain silent while spooning white rice and red beans onto my plate. There are pork chops in the oven. I put applesauce on top.

Dad scrapes the plate as he forks rice into his mouth and watches the TV in front of the table.

Mom yells for Lil Bro to come eat. "He's been playing those video games all day," she says to me. "Go tell him to wash his hands and get over here."

I drop my fork, run down the hallway to his room, swing into the door and yell, "Dinnah's ready, herrry up," and he yells back, "I'm about to beat the game!"

"Mom says if you don't come now, you're not allowed to play the games anymore."

"I just died!" He slams the Nintendo controller and shoves the TV into the wall. There is a hole starting to form behind it. I pretend I don't see the hole or all the cables tangled up behind the TV.

Running, not walking, back to the dining room, I sit next to The Parents while they yell out questions at Jeopardy. Dad tries his hand at history. "Who is Harriet Tubman?"

"No, honey, you're going too far back," says Mom. "Who is Rosa Parks?" Mom is right. History is her thing. She belts one out after another: "Who is Napoleon? Who are the Beatles?"

"Not the Beatles!" Dad knows music and movies. "The Beach Boys!"

Mom bumps her own forehead. "Dios mio, I don't know how I mixed those two up."

Dad talks with his mouth full. "Doesn't matter, neither band was any good."

The subject switches to math. Uh-oh. The countdown begins: 5, 4, 3, 2...Dad is about to ask me his favorite question: "Desiree, what's the Pythagorean Theorem?"

Ayyyyyyyyyy. It's so annoying. I can't ask him about time travel, but he can ask me about geometry? As I try to remember what it is, he doesn't even wait for my answer and slaps me with another one: "Desiree, how many zeros are in a trillion?"

Not that question again. I mumble into my plate, "I don't know."

"C'mon, just think about it," he says. "How many in a billion?"

"We weren't talking about zeroes in math last year," I mutter.

"You should know the answer to that by now," says Dad. "I was studying exponentials in the second grade," then he zones out on the commercials between Jeopardy, so he doesn't hear me when I try to impress him. "I found out I got an A on my final math project. It was a board game I invented called Binary Trivia. Everyone loved it."

Dad isn't listening. He is officially gone. Granted, I am mumbling, but he isn't even looking at me after smacking me around with math questions.

But Mom perks up. "That's great!" Mom always pays attention when I talk about getting good grades. It seems to be the only thing she cares about. She doesn't notice how depressed I am. Probably because I'm always depressed.

"Que plah-ta!" That's what she says to me when my body is draped on the sofa after dinner, while she is scraping the pegao (hard rice) off the bottom of the pot. "Get over here and dry the dishes," she says, and then I roll myself over, drag my feet to the kitchen, pick up a towel and say, "I don't have any friends."

She continues scraping the pot. "What about Marga?"

"She's never allowed to do anything outside of school. Ever since her Tia moved in, she always says no. I feel so unwanted."

"Don't worry about it. You'll make a lot more friends next year. Prima felt the same way when she got here, why don't you give her a call sometime? It's been a while since you two talked, right?"

Mom doesn't know Prima and I have nothing in common anymore, not since she called me Super Gringa. But I don't want to tell Mom about that whole mess so before she covers the hard rice in a tupperware bowl I grab a pinch with my fingers and crunch it in my mouth. Mom smacks my hand. "Mira, don't eat all the pegao, that's for your father's lunch tomorrow."

"Mom, it's been two years since we moved here and I still don’t have any friends," I whine and chomp. "They all go against me."

Stopping in the middle of our yellow kitchen before opening the refrigerator, she turns and glares at me. "What do you mean they all go against you?"

"Since Marga can't go anywhere, I call Susan from my English class but she says she's sleeping over at Misty's house. Jennifer, Stacey and Sarah are all out of town and besides they were mean to me the last day of school. And now it seems like Marga is mad at me, so I must be doing something horribly wrong."

Mom sighs and tells me to wash the dishes and stop complaining. "You're always crying about something," she says, closing the refrigerator door and leaving me alone in the kitchen. As I begrudgingly wash the dishes, I think about Marga also telling me that I cry all the time and that I only think about myself. I need to change my personality. Why can't I be the mature, outgoing girl I used to be in New York? I had friends in New York. While drying a dish, the TV screen transforms into a documentary of people who know me saying different things to the camera:

"Everyone in New York loved Desiree -- she was the sweetest, nicest girl in class," says the DJ from Hot 103.5 FM.

"Desiree always had the best sex questions for my show," says Dr. Ruth in her funny accent.

"Girls always wanted to be Desiree's friend, but I was her BFF," says Diana Rodriguez.

"Boys always showed up at our door bearing chocolates, flowers, and cute teddy bears for Desiree, it was really annoying," says Big Sister.

"Everything is always about Desiree, Desiree, Desiree, and she only thinks of herself," says Marga.

When I snap out of my fake documentary on-screen and notice how The Parents are laughing and talking to each other in the living room like I'm not even here in the kitchen, I understand at a deeper level how invisible I truly am. I am a weird little time-traveling Rican, and no one wants to be my friend or my parent.

Just as I am about to finish the dishes, the phone rings. Mom answers it. She smiles, "Hey, Marga! Good to hear from you!" She hands the phone over to me and raises her eyebrows like, “See? I told you so.”

I dry my hands and take the phone. "Hey, Marga, I was just gonna call you!"

"What's up, sexy?"

I almost drop the phone into the sink.

It's not Marga.

It’s Sky Bowman.

Tune in next week for the final Mercury Retrograde journey with Desiree Sanchez!