Show and Prove Read Online Free

pocket for some change to put on the table. “And bring me back four loosies.”
    Damn, she set me up. No way I’m going to the store with those cupones. “Send Gloria.”
    Acheface comes into the kitchen on cue, wearing a bata and rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Gloria what? I didn’t do nothing!”
    “You’re already dressed, Willie. If you wanna eat something, you have to go to the supermarket and get it.”
    “Isn’t that your job?”
    My mother squints at me in that angry way she has. “You don’t think I work enough?”
    I almost laugh. Is she serious? “I work. You lounge around here watching telenovelas, reading
People,
and bochinchando on the telephone or the stoop.”
    “Is that what you think?” I wait for Ma to mention the fire. I wish she would, I swear! Instead she asks, “You think that because I don’t leave the house, I don’t work? How many nights a week do you make dinner, Willie? And I don’t mean heating up a can of ravioli on the stove for yourself.”
    “You know I don’t cook.”
    “Right. I’m the one in this house who cooks, and when I cook, I cook for everyone, right? I don’t just make dinner for myself and leave you two to fend for yourselves.”
    “True,” says Gloria.
    “This is a conversation between A and B,” I tell her, pointing between my mother and me. “C your way out of it.”
    Ma shuffles the sections of the Sunday paper until she finds the classifieds. She shoves them toward me. “Willie, look through those classifieds and tell me how much a cook gets paid per week.”
    Finally! I drop into a seat and scan the want ads. One thing I’ll give my mother, she’s a def cook. I find an opening for one and say, “This one pays a hundred twenty dollars per week.”
    Ma tells Gloria, “Do me a favor and write that down.
Cook—one hundred twenty dollars.
” Then she turns back to me and says, “As much as I’m on your case to wash your plate instead of just leaving it in the sink, who ultimately does the dishes and cleans the kitchen?” When I refuse to answer, she says, “Gloria, look that up in the classified ads. Let’s see how much I would get paid by someone else to do that.”
    My sister finds an ad for a dishwasher. “Sixty dollars per week.”
    “Write that down.” Ma turns back to me. “And even though you take your jeans to the cleaners, I take everything else you wear to the Laundromat. See if you find any openings for a laundry worker.”
    “A hundred dollars per week,” Glo says excitedly. “Not as much as a cook, but way better than a dishwasher.” She adds that figure to the column of numbers she has scribbled in the margin of the paper.
    Ma says, “And I don’t just clean the kitchen. I clean the entire apartment—including your room, Willie—so let’s see what they’re paying maids these days.”
    “Ninety-one dollars,” Gloria says.
    “And I’m the one who manages the money, pays the bills, and all that. I have to read and answer all your notices from school, not to mention take your telephone messages like a secretary.”
    “OK, here’s an ad for a bookkeeper that pays almost two hundred dollars a week,” says Gloria, all eager beaver. “Oh, and this one for an administrative assistant pays two hundred twenty-five.”
    “So add all that up.”
    “Seven hundred and ninety-six dollars.”
    I glare at them, my arms folded across my chest. “Not like you do any of those things for forty hours a week.” If this game isn’t about finding my mother a job, I don’t want to play anymore.
    “You want to make sure these numbers are accurate? Run this household for one week. Because I don’t want you to think I’m cheating,” Ma says, all sarcastic. “And if that’s too much for you, we’ll make it simple. For one week just do your own housekeeping. You put in the time and shell out the money to shop for your own food, cook your own meals, wash your own clothes—” He interrupts.
    “Forget it,” I say. “I