The Pool Party by Gary Soto Page B

eyes like gamblers.
    Rudy’s father was a gardener in spring and summer and a house painter in fall and winter. Now that they were deep into July, his knees were stained green, and his hands resembled roots dug up from the earth. Heworked for widows and retired people, and a few rich families whose driveways were long and smooth as glass.
    Today, it was a rich person’s house in North Fresno. Rudy, his father, and grandfather, all dressed in khaki, were climbing into their Oldsmobile. The mowers, rakes, and broom stuck out from the trunk.
    Just as they were ready to leave, Rudy’s mother came out of the house with a Polaroid camera dangling from her wrist.
    “Espérate,”
she yelled, and waved.
    “Look, Mom’s gonna take a picture,” Rudy said. A big,
queso
smile cut across his face.
    Grandfather smoothed his work shirt and played with his collar. He combed his hair with his stubby fingers.
    “Let me take a picture,” she said. She looked into the viewer. “Rudy, you’re smiling too big.”
    Rudy relaxed his smile.
    The three of them stood, arm in arm, with Rudy in the middle. They smiled likepumpkins when Rudy’s mother, one eye squinted, sang,
“Queso.”
The camera shuddered and clicked, and a picture the size of a slice of cheese rolled noisily out of the camera.
    Rudy’s mother tore off the picture. She was known for her shaky hand. Sometimes their heads were cut off, and other times they were completely out of the frame and only their lean shadows on the ground would be seen. Still, she would proudly prop them up on the television or tape them to the refrigerator, a family of blurred faces.
    Rudy’s father tapped his work boot as they waited for their faces to develop out of the fog of Polaroid land.
    Today, only the tops of their heads were cut off.
    “Baby,” Rudy’s father said, “you almost got it right.”
    “Yeah, Mom, you did a good job,” Rudy said in encouragement.
    They piled into the car and drove across town, their equipment rattling in thetrunk. The small houses gave way to large houses, all set way back from the street.
    “You see,
mi’jo,
” Rudy’s grandfather said. “This is how to live.”
    “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind having a little
casita
like one of these,” Father said. A toothpick dangled from the corner of his mouth.
    They admired the houses and the calm lushness of shrubs and bushes deep with shadows. The sprinklers were hissing on the lawns and pampered dogs with tags jingling a tinny music on their collars paced up and down the walk.
    Father stopped at a large house, and all of them got out and stretched.
    “Híjole, es muy grande!”
Grandfather whistled.
    “Like Club Med,” Rudy’s father remarked as he untied the trunk and took out a bundle of rakes and shovels. “Come on, let’s go.”
    A woman appeared on the front steps. “Yoo-hoo,” she called, waving a delicate fingerthat sparkled with a blue diamond. “Mr. Herrera, perfect timing. My children are at ballet.”
    “Hello, Mrs. Gentry,” Father greeted her. “Want us to cut the front first?”
    “That’s a perfect idea.” Mrs. Gentry scanned her yard and inhaled the morning air. “Isn’t it just lovely?”
    “What?” Rudy asked, looking around. “What’s lovely?”
    “The morning,” she said. She smiled and walked away with her nose lifted and sniffing the air.
    The three of them looked at each other, and shrugged their shoulders.
    “Qué loca,”
Grandfather said as he returned to the car for his hat and work gloves.
    They started the mowers, the engines coughing blue smoke. While his grandfather and father cut and edged the lawns, Rudy gathered the clippings. He raked most of them into a burlap sack, and then swept up the blades of grass from the walk. With shears he snipped the grass around the sprinkler heads. He felt like a barber and giggled when he remembered how a friend had cut his hair and left him as bald as the belly of a green-spotted frog.

    While they were working on their