Rhaki and the Tias (YA)

CHAPTER 1

“You in on this?’ Nita pleads with me. “Just think, by this time tomorrow we could be in a rock star’s bedroom.“ She starts to giggle. Over the phone she sounds just like our former parakeet Alf the night my cousins fed him marijuana seeds. “Or,” she pauses. “His shower!”

       Even when I hold the phone three feet from my ear, I can still hear her giggling. “Julie? Julie? You there?” she shouts after she finally catches her breath.

       “Where else?” It’s eleven a.m. School’s been out for three days. I’m barefoot on the back porch in my p.j.’s, eating my favorite breakfast: half-sour pickles and cream cheese on a pumpernickel raisin bagel.

       “You’ve just got to promise one thing,” she says. “No one in school ever finds out about this. Understand? As far as the other kids are concerned we’ve spent our summer being…uh…being…”

       “Super heroes,” I say. “We spent the summer saving the galaxy.”

       “Exactly. So you’re in?”

       I think for all of two more seconds. “Yeah. I’m in.”

       “We’ll pick you up at quarter past six tomorrow. That’s a.m. amiga.”

       I groan. Nita knows I am not a morning person. I’m tempted to back out, but she’s my best friend, giggle or no giggle. We’ve stuck together through everything so far. We can do this. “See you then, amiga.”

       “You’re doing what?” My mom stares at me after I mumble my way through an explanation of my new summer job. “You’ve never done that in your life.”

       “I have too done it. I do it all the time. Well, sometimes. Every now and then.”

       “Since when?”

       Before I can say anything more, she takes me by my shoulders, spins me around and marches me to the door of my bedroom. “Now tell me again young lady, what you’ve been hired to do this summer.”

       “Cleaning.” I swallow. “House cleaning.”

       “You? The expert at creating chaos out of order?”

       She’s got a point. My room isn’t exactly an ad for Neatness Counts, Inc. Right now it’s more like the aftermath of two earthquakes and a tornado.

       “Maybe you should practice a little.” She gives me an encouraging push. “That way I can give your new boss a good reference.”

       I stub my toe on a keyboard buried beneath a sweatshirt and yesterday’s jeans. “Very funny mom. You know I don’t need a reference.” I’m beginning to feel a bit defensive here. There’s nothing wrong with a little creative anarchy, as far as I’m concerned. My mom, however, is a professional proofreader who spends her life correcting tiny errors in big reference books. She actually wears a tee shirt that says I Sweat the Small Stuff and doesn’t think it’s a joke. “Tia Louisa hired me and Nita,” I tell her. “She thinks we can do it.”

       “Tia Louisa?” My mom is suitably impressed. “You must have hidden talents. You’re going to be one of the famous Tias this summer.” She’s positively beaming now.

We’re not related to Nita’s aunt Louisa by blood, but everyone calls her Tia Louisa. And everyone knows the story of how Louisa Santiago came to this country thirty years ago at the age of sixteen and founded A-One Cleaning with seven dollars’ worth of soap and ammonia, a rusted out Volkswagen bus, and the ability, she swore, to work twenty-five hours a day. She had decided that if all she knew how to do was clean houses, she was going to make sure she did it better than anyone else in the city of Los Angeles. Within five years she had cleared enough money to bring her nine siblings to the U.S. The youngest was Nita’s father.

       Now Tia Louisa manages an elite corps of fifty highly trained full-time employees, all Spanish-speaking women like herself, plus a handful part-timers when things get busy. Her clients really do include a few celebrities, though she won’t tell Nita exactly who. A couple of years ago Glam/More Weekly, the local life-style rag included A-One on their list of “House Cleaners to the Fab and Famous.” “Those in the know,” the reporter burbled, “call Ms. Santiago and her ladies the Tias.” Suddenly, it was a status symbol if instead of referring to ‘the maid,’ or ‘cleaning service’ you could simply say ‘the Tias are taking care of things,’ like they were some kind of secret society.

       Not that I would ever qualify as a genuine Tia, of course. “Nita and I are just helpers,” I explain to my mom before she can get her hopes too high. “Tia Louisa calls us extras.” For me to become a real Tia just because I could push a mop would be like getting a slot on the Olympic gymnastics squad just for turning a forward somersault or acing AP calculus because I could add on my fingers and toes. In other words, completely impossible.

       “Many are called but few are chosen.” My mom nods wisely. She has lots of wise sayings. I think she proofed Bartlett’s online quotations.

       Still, I start to pick things up around my room. Not so much because I’m into cleaning, but because stumbling over the keyboard reminded me that I had earphones around here somewhere.

       My mom watches me toss clothes on the bed and straighten out the piles of books on the floor. “If at first you don’t succeed, keep at it.” She smiles. “I can see that Tia Louisa is a good influence already.”

       “I’ve got hidden talents, remember?”

After my mom leaves I uncover a sci-fi novel I’ve almost finished, an ancient chess board, a battered Comics Con official guide, three pens, and my trusty sketchbook. I drop everything else and fold the sketchbook open to a clean page. Within ten minutes I’m putting the finishing touches on the purple planet Zircona and trying to forget about what I’ll be doing at this time tomorrow. Another ten minutes and there’s the outline of a winged warrior girl speeding across the page.