Say that you won’t do it.
I don’t know, I don’t know why.
I’ve got chest pains. They’re really bad. I think I have to go to the doctor. It’s not normal to have chest pains like this.
Tell me you won’t go. Tell me, tell me.
I will, I’ll take a pill.
It’s like I feel the panic, but I can’t feel it. That’s what Valium does. You know you’re scared, but you don’t feel it. But you do feel it, or you know it. You know it, but you don’t feel it.
The doctor says I shouldn’t take too many of these, because it’s bad for your brain health. Like, when you get older.
(Self-Esteem)
I bought this for you, Rex. It’s red silk. Do you like it?
I was thinking of you all day. I thought about your big hands. The way you touch me.
Do you want to touch me?
Maybe I won’t let you.
Maybe it’ll be look but no touching.
Whoo! Come on cowboy, show it to me, show it to me.
Show it to me, Daddy. Show me.
Right there, you know where it is.
Or do you want me to do that? Do you like that?
Say it, say it. Say it.
Rip me apart, just rip me apart. Just kill me.
I love it. I love it.
I want it. Just eat me up. Use me all up.
You can do anything you want to me.
(Self-Actualization)
Aims, let’s have another one. It’s on me. All right, it’s on you.
God, this is great. Just what I needed.
I mean, the wine’s good. But what I’m talking about is, just us. Hanging out. Just chilling.
Just fucking chilling for a change, you know?
Oh, he’s fine. We’re fine. It’s marriage.
You know what I think? Sometimes, I think, you can just slip out of your past like a goddam snake. Like out of its skin. Do you think that’s possible?
Like, on a night like tonight, hanging out with you. It’s such a pretty night. We’re just two girls. Not a care in the world.
I mean, all that worrying and whatever, who gives a damn. Let’s just chuck it. In the trash. Like, you can just be brand new sometimes. I think you can decide that you’re just not going to be in that pain anymore.
Yeah, my mom. No, I know you know, Aims. I know you do. That’s kind of why I texted. Just needed to see my old Aims.
Yeah, it’s that old anxiety. It just came back. I haven’t thought about it for, like, two years, and then last week, it was like, bam.
And I got worried that maybe I’ll never get over all of that. Something I don’t even remember that well. Like, I don’t remember the camp. I do remember Chicago, though. I didn’t want to leave that family. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. How I didn’t want to go back to my mom, you know, because she was just so scared all the time, and the other family was normal. Also, they gave me presents—a doll, a little ring. A dress. So I wanted to stay with them and not her.
The guilt. It’s just, it eats you.
And I love her. Of course I love her. I love her more than anything. But you just feel disconnected sometimes, from yourself.
I don’t know, they take you away, and then you’re just not the same. And sometimes you worry you’re not going to be the same forever.
But it’s still possible to just be you. To be a person separated from that crap. To be something else than a person that’s had something done to you. On a night, hanging out, chilling, I can feel that.
They can go to hell, right? Go. To. Hell. Go to hell.
Let’s do something crazy. Amy! Come on, Amy! Let’s get a bottle and just go driving.
Let’s party. Let’s have fun. We’ll get into trouble. Like the old days.
Let’s just fucking crush it. Night’s young. We could do anything at all.
We have to live for now. Right, Aims? Right on.
Right on, Aims. Let’s get a top-up. I want a top-up.
Yeah, this is good. Being here with you makes me feel like I can breathe for a second, like we’re okay, and everything’s fine.*
A manifesto tied to the alleged El Paso, Texas, shooter included ranting about Hispanic immigrants “replacing” European-American culture and pre-emptively defended President Donald Trump from media criticism. Patrick Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas, was arrested Saturday . . . after he allegedly gunned down dozens of people, killing at least 20. The manifesto was posted to the website 8chan about an hour-and-a-half before the El Paso Walmart shooting began. . . . “My ideology has not changed for several years,” the purported Crusius text reads. “My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president.”
BENJAMIN FEARNOW, “Don’t ‘Blame Trump’: Manifesto Tied to El Paso Shooting Rants about Democrats, Hispanics Invading Country,” Newsweek, August 4, 2019
Walmart
“HONEY, PLEASE STOP.”
“Mama. Mama.”
Saúl won’t stop screaming in the back seat of the car. Even though Peter said not to worry about it, I have to get peppers, ground beef, milk, buns, and salad if I’m going to get dinner on the table tonight. So I dressed Saúl in his Pikachu sweat suit and strapped him into his car seat. We’re heading to the store. I can’t see him while I’m driving, which you’d think I would appreciate when he’s shrieking like this, but it’s just making me more nervous.
“Honey.”
“Mama.”
Sometimes Saúl gets quiet when he’s in car. He likes the rumbling sound. But maybe he can tell that I’m messed up. I think that’s why he’s upset. Although he’s always upset, right? It’s normal. I’ve helped plenty with Olga, so I’ve learned how a two-year-old can fuss. He doesn’t know what happened anyway. And Mom said it was fine. That I wasn’t acting strange or hurting my child.
Going to the one on Alameda. Obviously not the one on Gateway. That’s still closed.
What do we need again?
I can’t remember.
Do I turn right or left?
Oh, it’s just right here. Okay.
Parking lot’s full. Lots of cars, lots of families. People are out shopping like it’s regular and fine. They’re not hiding in their houses. It’s important to understand when fears are real and when they’re not real, at least not real right now. And, yeah, security everywhere. Police and security. They’ll take care of any problem. Because the Gateway store didn’t have any guards on duty, I guess.
Peppers, meat, milk, buns, salad.
“Come on, babe.”
“Mama. Mama.”
“In you go. In the shopping cart.”
“No.”
“It’ll be fun!”
“No.”
“I love you. Love you so much.”
Making myself walk up to it. Past the police, into the cold, cold market. There are tons of women here. That’s good. Because women know. They can sense it. Psychically. Although Grandma didn’t know it, and she was part witch, I always thought. Like we had special powers in my family. But she didn’t have a premonition that day. She goes to Walmart, and then that guy shows up.
It’s weird being in here. Even if it’s not the one.
“Mama.”
“There are the tomato cans you like, baby.” He loves these pyramids of tomato cans. “Here’s a little tomato can. Play with that. Isn’t that pretty?”
Okay. Buns and meat and water and dinner and things that people eat.
I’m tired.
My most precious baby. My most precious beauty, my beautiful. I love love love love love love love love love love you, you are still my little girl.
“Hey, ma’am, may I help you?”
“What?”
“Do you need any help?”
Lady’s talking to me. Name tag. Works here. I used to go to the other one, so I don’t think I know her. Tall with a ponytail. Older than me. Looking at me with nice eyes. She can tell.
“Wher
e’s the meat?”
“At the back. There’s a meat counter. I can take you if you want.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay. We can find it.”
“That’s a beautiful boy you have here.”
“Yeah. He’s my little one.”
“He’s a little beauty. A little beauty. Are you a little beauty?”
“He’s shy.”
“Of course.”
“He’s a good boy,” I say.
“Let me show you the way,” she says.
“Okay.”
“Tomato,” Saúl says, while we pass a security guard who has a gun on his belt. Maybe I should get a gun. Or Peter should get a gun.
“Tomato, that’s good,” I say.
“Tomato,” the lady says.
“Tomato.”
“That’s actually a tomato can,” I say.
“Tomato,” Saúl says.
“Here you go,” the lady says. I look at her name tag. It says “Tonatzin.”
“Thank you,” I say. I look down at the refrigerated meat. It’s pink and red. It’s pieces of glistening steak and flesh. It’s ground up with white pieces of fat in it. It has blood on it.
“Thank you,” I say again.
“I’m right here if you need me,” Tonatzin says, squeezing me on the shoulder and then walking away.
“Help you?” There’s a young Latino guy behind the counter. He’s, what, twenty years old. Little fluffy mustache.
“Um, let’s see,” I say.
When I was really young, she took care of me, because my mom was always working. Peter makes enough so that I can take the next year off, but my mom couldn’t, and so my grandma was like my mom for a while. Forever.
“So many choices,” I say, while Saúl talks about dogs or frogs. I try not to look at the blood.
“We have a special on liver,” the kid says.
We would lay in bed, and I’d look at her hands. Because they had wrinkles and veins in them, which I thought were beautiful and exotic. I would say, “Why do you have all of these bumps?” And she’d say, “Because I’m an old lady. The old lady who loves you.” She’d say it in English or Spanish. I’d run my fingers over the papery skin on the tops of her hands, tracing the brown spots and speckles.
“Hamburger,” I say. “Two pounds please.”
“Two pounds coming up,” the kid says.
I see her hands when I last kissed her. Eight days ago, when I identified her. Her fingers were white and curled, like she was still trying to hold onto me.
What happened to her is something that I can’t see in my head without losing my mind.
The kid behind the counter is weighing the red, shining meat on the weigher thing. He looks over at me. His eyes shift.
“This says two and half, but I’ll just write two,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. I look down at Saúl, who’s still talking and playing with his tomato can. It’s a tomato paste can. It has a drawing of a tomato on the label.
I take the cold package from the kid’s hands. It’s wrapped in white paper. The meat inside is soft. I can dent it with my fingers, but a little meat juice comes out. I put it in the shopping cart and wipe my hands off on my slacks.
“Where’s the milk?” I say.
“Over there, aisle sixteen,” the kid says. He points.
I steer the cart and walk over there. Past more women. Everybody has normal faces. No one’s crying. We look at each other, though. In aisle sixteen there’s a short Latina with red hair staring at the refrigerated yogurts and sighing.
After the service, Marisol was holding Olga and sighing like that. She said, “I don’t understand.”
And Mom said, “There’s nothing to understand. It’s just evil.”
“That’s not good enough,” Marisol had said.
“Please calm down,” I’d said. “You’re just making everything worse.”
The lady with the red hair says, “Oooooohhkay.” With her right hand, she opens the refrigerator door and takes out two lemon Yoplaits and puts them into a black plastic basket that she’s holding with her left hand. She seemed fine when I first looked at her, but now I see that her eyebags are puffing out, like when you get stressed and age ten years in a minute.
She closes the refrigerator door and stands there, still glaring at the yogurts through the glass.
I look at the milk.
Saúl’s saying, “Mama.” He’s not screaming it.
“Yes, yes.”
“Mama, I want NOW, let’s NOW,” he says. He starts laughing.
The lady looks down at him and then at me. She blinks when she sees my face.
“This is no world for a child,” she says. She reaches out her hand and pats Saúl’s cheek, gently, with two fingers.
“Is whole fat better for toddlers, or is it nonfat?” I say. “I can’t remember.”
“Whole fat,” the lady says.
“Whole fat,” I say.
“Some people say they shouldn’t drink milk at all because of the allergies,” she says. “But I always drank milk and my kids all drank milk, and we were fine.”
“Right,” I say. “Like peanuts.”
“Peanuts can kill,” the lady says.
At that second, I’m not in the Walmart anymore. I’m at home, and I’m seven years old. Grandma was doing one of her spiritual things. She’d sprinkle me with holy water and tell me to close my eyes and imagine a large pink ball of energy around me. The large pink ball was like a defensive shield, she said, like in Star Trek: Voyager, except it was made by the angels. If I meditated very hard, I could make the pink ball grow huge, so that there was a massive space of safety around me that no one could enter.
“You are surrounded by light,” Grandma had said, sitting in front of me on her knees. “That’s God’s love, Teresa.”
“I think I have to sit down,” I say.
The lady slides her eyes over to me. “Okay.”
Saúl is singing in his seat. I sit down on the linoleum, pressing my back to the cold glass wall of the refrigerator case.
“Are you okay?” the red-haired lady asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
After a couple of minutes, the lady with the ponytail, Tonatzin, walks up to us.
“Hi, hon,” she says in a tense voice, wrinkling her forehead.
“Give me a second,” I say.
“She just sat down,” the red-haired lady says.
“Are you light-headed?” Tonatzin asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“We were talking about milk allergies and peanut allergies,” the red-haired lady says. “Maybe I said something wrong. I am having a lot of anxiety. I was going to go by Cielo Vista that day, the day there’s the shooting. And I went to the Albertson’s instead. Because I had to get my shoes fixed, with the shoe man. If I hadn’t needed to get my shoes fixed, I would have gone to the Cielo Vista one.”
“You got lucky,” Tonatzin says.
“No kidding,” the red-haired lady says.
“That guy’s going to fry,” Tonatzin says.
“I know a hundred people who’ll push the button,” the red-haired lady says.
“You want a glass of water?” Tonatzin says to me.
“I don’t want anything,” I say.
“Is there a problem?”
I look up. A white man in a blue security-guard uniform is walking up to us. I’m shaking like I did before I gave birth. I close my eyes. I try to imagine a huge pink bubble around my body and around Saúl’s body. But there’s no God and no pink bubble and no angels and no witches and no nothing but Saúl and the Walmart and these two women.
“I should have gone to another store,” I say.
“Everything’s fine, Gerald,” Tonatzin says. “Go away.”
“You okay?” Gerald says.
“Just need a second,” I say.
“Is she sick?” Gerald says.
“Give us a minute,” Tonatzin says.
“Get out of
here with your damn gun,” the red-haired lady says.
“All right,” Gerald says. He walks away.
The two women stand above me, guarding me. Saúl starts screaming, and I don’t do anything. Tonatzin takes him out of the seat and tries to hug him. But he thrashes and screams harder.
“Mama.”
I stand up. I’m dead, in my heart. I take Saúl and bounce him and show him the tomato can. He stops screaming, and I put him back in his seat.
“What are you here to get, hon?” Tonatzin asks me.
“Dinner,” I say.
“Dinner,” the red-haired lady and Tonatzin both say. They look into my cart, at the hamburger.
“She was talking about whole-fat milk,” the red-haired lady says.
Tonatzin opens up the refrigerator door and takes out two gallons of whole-fat milk and puts them in my cart.
“I got to get some salad,” I say.
All three of us walk down the aisle, and Tonatzin guides us to the produce. I put a wad of lettuce into a bag. I get some carrots.
“Just meat?” the red-haired lady says. “What are you going to do with the ground beef?”
“Oh, buns,” I say.
“Get a tomato,” the red-haired lady says.
Tonatzin gets two tomatoes and puts them in a bag and then puts the bag in my cart.
“Let’s get the buns,” the red-haired lady says.
They walk Saúl and me to another aisle in the middle of the store. We look up at five rows of bread and buns and rolls in shiny plastic sacks.
The red-haired lady reaches up and gets a bag of hamburger buns and puts it in my cart.
“Soda?” Tonatzin says. “Cake? Cleaning supplies? Bottled water? Electronics?”
“No,” I say.
The red-haired lady and Tonatzin walk me up to the express checkout.
“Just because of some shoes,” the red-haired lady’s saying.
“You never know,” Tonatzin says.
There’s a girl doing the register. She’s about sixteen years old. Her long, glossy black hair is tied up into a ponytail like Tonatzin’s. She’s wearing thick black glasses. Her nametag reads “Luz.”
The red-haired lady and Tonatzin put my stuff onto the conveyor belt. Luz rings it all up. I look down. I don’t have my bag on me.
“I don’t have my bag,” I say.
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