We Speak in Storms

by Natalie Lund

  “He’s not eighteen. None of them are,” Joshua continued. “I know them from school.”

  The girl who’d come in with Tyler sucked her teeth, and the tips of Tyler’s ears reddened, but he didn’t turn around again. Clayton grabbed the girl’s hand and made for the door, abandoning Tyler. Joshua smiled. That was victory enough.

  “Let me see it again.” The cashier beckoned for Tyler’s wallet, but he pocketed it and jogged after his friends, leaving the cigarettes behind.

  A wave of fear flooded Joshua. There were enough of them to hurt him. But maybe it would be a relief to feel his skin again, to know it was there because it throbbed and ached and bruised.

  As expected, Clayton’s group was waiting for Joshua outside, leaning on the bike rack in the alley between the gas station and the library, where someone had spray-painted a penis on the Paddington Bear mural.

  Joshua approached, hands up like he was under arrest.

  Tyler ran his fingers through his hair and looked down his nose at Joshua. Clayton was behind him, arms crossed like a bodyguard. It was clear that they’d decided it was Tyler’s fight—probably some sort of test, so he’d officially be admitted into their ranks.

  “Hey, narc, why’d you do that?” Tyler asked.

  Joshua shrugged. “I could ask you the same question.”

  Tyler stared at him.

  “On the bus?” Joshua said. “Kicking the seat.”

  Clayton snickered and Tyler rolled his eyes. “You owe me a pack of cigarettes,” he said.

  “I’m still waiting for the Black Rose Dragon you owe me. Or have you forgotten about your days as a Yu-Gi-Oh! collector?” Joshua asked. One of the girls snickered, on his side this time, and Clayton almost looked pleased by this development.

  Tyler stood up straighter and ran one hand up his arm, like he was rolling up imaginary shirtsleeves. Joshua wanted to laugh at a script that was as familiar as his own freckles. He closed his eyes and opened his arms as if waiting for a hug, an invitation for Tyler to start the fight and get it over with.

  The pain was sharp and quick.

  A blaze in Joshua’s nose, under his eyes, even up to the center of his forehead. Streaks of white lit the backs of his eyelids. His feet wheeled backward and he found himself on his ass, gravel embedded in his palms. Clayton was laughing, almost a cackle, like some caricature of a villain.

  Unsteadily, Joshua stood and braced himself for more, but nothing came. The group started walking away, Clayton in the lead. Tyler stayed a moment longer and shook his head. “You’re really pathetic. You know that, right?”

  I know you are, but what am I? The refrains they’d once shouted when it was just the two of them teasing each other on his grandparents’ farm. “I’m rubber; you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,” Joshua said. But even he was unsure whether he was trying to rile Tyler up again or if he just wanted to remind him of the past they shared.

  “What are you, ten?” said Tyler.

  “No. If I were ten, we’d still be friends.”

  “That’s not my fault. It’s yours, homo.” Tyler turned and followed the group.

  Joshua felt something hot on his upper lip and swiped at it with his hand. Blood, but not much. Nothing was broken. Sticks and stones. He stood there, just watching, as the distance between him and Tyler expanded.

  “You okay?” a voice called.

  Joshua turned, startled. On the sidewalk near the firehouse, shielding his eyes from the sun, was his new neighbor: a vision of untamed hair, mountain-peak eyebrows, and hard muscles.

  The man crossed the street and pulled a handkerchief out of his jumpsuit pocket. Briefly, Joshua worried that the neighbor had noticed the note missing, but the pain—now like a mask across his whole face—was too distracting to dwell on it for long.

  Joshua accepted the handkerchief and blotted at his nose. He studied the guy’s hands, large and tan with no ring lines. His veins looked like blue worms, alive and wriggling over his tendons.

  The man tilted Joshua’s head back, and Joshua could feel calluses on the pads of his hands. They were warm but dry, like he used baby powder, and Joshua didn’t want the hands to stop touching him. He wanted to turn away, adjust his briefs, and make sure his baggy shirt hung loose over his fly.

  “Probably going to swell. Maybe bruise some,” he said.

  Joshua could smell him as he leaned in. The scent wasn’t what he’d expected: wood or animal hide or something musty. It was light, lemony even, which inexplicably made Joshua harden more. This was the kind of guy you wrote love notes to.

  “What was that about?” his neighbor asked, interrupting Joshua’s thoughts.

  Joshua blinked before realizing he meant the fight. “History,” he said.

  His neighbor nodded, and Joshua sensed that he respected the answer.

  “Do you need to call someone to come get you?”

  “No. I have my bike.”

  “You sure? You’ll be okay?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay. See you around. And remember what I said: don’t let ’em get you down.” He lifted his chin in goodbye again, and Joshua tried to mirror the gesture with the same grace and ease.

  He thought of his Pontiac drawing, the broken glass like confetti on the page. And he realized: this Wolverine didn’t belong in the seat, but rather crouched on top, as though about to slice open the roof to rescue whoever, or whatever, was inside.

  SOME OF US FAWNED

  Some of us fawned over Luke as preteens—even though he didn’t show a lick of interest in us. We’d spy on him, standing on our tiptoes in the lilac bushes, and giggle into our palms because he’d often be shirtless, flexing in front of the mirror. When he sucked in, we could see his heart beating, the skin pulsing between his ribs. We wanted to touch the triangular indentations around his collarbone, the tendons that vined up his neck, the ledge of skin his triceps made.

  If we stayed long enough, he migrated from bedroom to backyard, and we’d lean against the siding of his house, still hidden by the lilac bushes. He kept three large rocks beside the oak tree, in the brambles, and he’d stand there, lifting them from his hips to his shoulders, then behind his back, then over his head until he glistened.

  We don’t remember Luke’s mom much; she died when most of us were little. Luke’s pops, though, we knew. In the post office or diner or garage, he was always the loudest, calling actors on TV fairies if they had manicured nails and hair trimmed neatly above their ears. He’d say they should be shot, like horses with broken legs. He wasn’t saying these things to us. We knew—even then—the message was for Luke, the boy who lifted rocks because his outside was the only thing he could control.

  A door slammed somewhere in the house. Callie stopped towel-drying her hair and poked her head into the hallway. The door to her parents’ room and the guest room her father had started sleeping in were shut. All the other doors were open, except the one that led to the staircase used back when the house was an inn and home to the maid who worked there. Callie hung up her towel and started down the hall. She expected to feel the suction of air, a familiar draft, but there was nothing. She opened the maids’ door, flipped on the light, and started down the two sets of stairs. The first landing led to the kitchen, and the second to the cellar—where Callie guessed the Petersons had once stored soap, clean linens, and canned goods. It now held tubs of Christmas decorations and her childhood treasures—board games, books, stuffed animals, clothes—wrapped in black plastic garbage bags so they wouldn’t mildew. You could access the cellar from the outside through a set of padlocked storm doors, but they’d been repainted so many times that Callie wasn’t sure they opened anymore.

  When she was little, she’d tested herself, turning off the overhead light and standing in the middle of the room as long as she could with just the light from the staircase
. It was even worse than standing in absolute darkness. Everything was in shadows, the hulking garbage-bagged silhouettes just visible. She’d count out loud, feeling braver and braver with each number, until something sent her running for the stairs: a footstep above her head, the shift of a reflection on a plastic bag, a branch hitting the storm door. She’d arrive, breathless, in the kitchen above or the hallway on the top floor—wherever her mother might be.

  Now she pulled the cord to turn on the overhead light and picked her way around the sacks. A rubber bin of photo albums was in the middle of the floor, the self-published book by the historical society on top—a low-budget text with grainy photos and too-large typeface. Mercer, Illinois: 1850 to the Future. Callie traced her mother’s name, listed among other members on the inside cover. There was no Ellie Vidal.

  Callie flipped through the book, landing on a sketch of a young Lincoln standing in front of a house—her house. The maple tree was missing, but the porch with the spindles and the scalloped wooden siding beneath the windows was unmistakable. So Mrs. Vidal’s story was true. What else was?

  The book included photos of Mercer and its people from each major era, describing how events such as the Civil War and the Great Depression had impacted the town. She stopped at three pages devoted to the victims of the drive-in tornado. She scanned the list of names, pausing at Celeste Vidal. Vidal? In the photo, Celeste’s hair was voluminous around the crown of her head and flipped up at the ends. Her cheeks were round, and her head was tilted so she looked to the right of the camera. Was there a resemblance to the sharp-eyed, permed woman Callie had met?

  A photo on the third page of the spread was taken the morning after the tornado. There was a wide path through the center of the picture just like the one Callie had seen in the bean field. The wooden drive-in screen had been halved, splintered posts at the bottom the only evidence it had ever been wider. A few twisted car frames speckled the horizon. Along the sides of the frame were streams of cars, probably those that had been abandoned in the jam. The outer cars were shoved against the inner ones. Four seemed to float on top of the stream, probably dropped there by the tornado. Callie recognized one of the cars in the foreground. White with round headlights, fins, and whitewalls. A Pontiac with a Route 66 bumper sticker, identical to the one she’d seen the night of the tornado.

  Brenna woke to her cell phone ringing; it was her grandmother. The notebook was still on Brenna’s chest, and she checked it, hoping that her dreams had imprinted themselves there.

  The pages were still empty.

  “Hola, abuelita,” she said.

  “Are you coming this weekend, Daniela?” her grandmother asked in Spanish. She preferred Brenna’s middle name, since her first name was un nombre gringo given to her by her father.

  “No sé. Tengo mucha tarea,” Brenna spoke slowly, willing her tongue not to trip as she lied about having a lot of homework. When she spoke Spanish to her grandmother, she knew she sounded like Mrs. Berk.

  “But it has been weeks since we last saw you. Family is the most important.”

  “I know. It’s just very busy right now with school.” Going to her grandmother’s was a headache. When they lived in Houston, their mom would try to save enough money to send Brenna and Manny to visit for Día de los Reyes. Now they were expected for every holiday, and it meant endless noise—TV, video games, the sputtering vent fan in the kitchen, her cousins’ constant chatter, and, worst of all, her grandmother’s criticisms. Usually her mom got the worst of it—for her boyfriends, her dead-end job, how she was raising her children, how she’d followed a man to Texas years ago. Tía Camila, on the other hand, was the perfect daughter. She’d been married to one man and had five perfect children, and abuela never let Brenna or her mom forget it.

  As though her grandmother had read Brenna’s mind, she said, “Your cousin Mariana gets straight As and she still has time for family.”

  “Well, she also lives with you, abuela.”

  Her grandmother ignored this fact. “She’s making the cake for Camila’s birthday next week. You’ll at least come to her birthday, right?”

  “Of course.” Though Brenna’s grandmother didn’t even seem to like Brenna all that much, she seemed to have it in her head that Brenna could still be fixed—somehow—and become the Chicana she was supposed to be, if only she’d visit more often. Brenna genuinely wanted to be more connected to her heritage and liked by her grandmother, but she also wanted to be accepted for who she was now.

  “Talk to your cousin Mariana. Maybe she can give you some advice on schoolwork.”

  “No, abuela, I have to go.”

  But her grandmother covered the phone and said something inaudible.

  “¿Aló?” Mariana’s voice was nasal and flat. She was a year younger than Brenna, but she’d skipped a grade and never let anyone forget it. Brenna was glad they went to different schools, so she wouldn’t have to be in classes with her and hear even more about her failures from her grandmother. Mariana had always been the tattle of the family.

  “Hi, Mari,” Brenna said in English. “I was actually just about to go.”

  “Grandma said you had some questions about school,” Mariana responded in Spanish. Brenna was sure it was because her grandmother was still standing there.

  “No, I don’t have any questions. Grandma just wants me to visit more.”

  “You just have to try a little,” Mariana said—this time in English. Try at what? Brenna wondered. School? Spanish? At being a better granddaughter? Being Mexican?

  Brenna had been trying and failing. “Okay, Mari. I’ll try.” She hung up without a goodbye.

  * * *

  * * *

  After a long shower, Brenna texted Amy about joining her at the concert and then wandered into her mother’s bedroom. A few work uniforms were piled on a worn velvet chair in the corner, a cross hung on the wall above the bed, a mirror on the closet door, and baptism pictures of Brenna and Manny—side by side in chipped Goodwill frames—next to the window. Her mother had tucked fronds from Palm Sunday behind each one, and they’d dried gold. The sight of that stiff frond rising from the portrait of Brenna as a chubby brown baby was depressing. Her mother probably prayed for her to be someone else—someone less angry, better at school, more responsible and polite to her grandmother—someone who Brenna couldn’t find any easier than she could find Colin’s version of her.

  There was an old TV on the dresser, and Brenna flipped on the news, hoping she’d catch something about the tornado while she changed. She opened the closet and pulled out a black cocktail dress she’d seen her mother wear on dates. The sweetheart neckline was so tight, it shoved her mother’s cleavage up and over the fabric. Brenna put it on and looked at herself. The dress was too short on her. Still, it hid what Brenna thought of as her lumpiness—the fact that she was bony in the shoulders and hips, but chubby on her sides and under her arms. Without a ratty flannel and jeans, she at least looked like someone in a different life stage. She put on her red boots and a studded belt, and dug through her mother’s bathroom drawers for lipstick. There was a red like the color she’d seen Dot wear, but it made Brenna’s teeth look yellow and even more crooked. She wiped it off and settled on thick liquid eyeliner.

  “. . . another car found after Wednesday’s tornado,” she heard the news anchor saying. Brenna stepped out of her mom’s bathroom so she could see the screen. There was an image of the pale blue VW being towed from the cornfield.

  Again, no driver had come forward. The VW’s owners, the reporter said, were in California and had reported the vehicle stolen. The news moved on, but Brenna sank onto the corner of her mom’s bed, staring at the TV. Two cars magically transported to Illinois and involved in this tornado with no drivers found? How could that be so? Brenna had to find out more.

  * * *

  * * *

  Manny had Golden Girl, so Brenna walked downtown.
The band’s vocals were loud, audible from blocks away, reverberating between the brick buildings but too garbled to understand. Brenna wondered if her mother could hear them at work as she cracked open rolls of quarters, rang up packs of cigarettes, sold lotto tickets, and imagined her daughter home doing laundry. Shit. Brenna had forgotten to start the towels after her shower, and here she was breaking her mother’s trust for the umpteenth time. But up ahead, there was a woman who’d seen under her skin, who offered a reprieve from sitting at home and thinking about Colin and Same Life Stage Girl.

  At the bar, the bouncer frowned and drew Xs on Brenna’s hands when she said she was under twenty-one, but he didn’t check her ID to see that she wasn’t eighteen, either. The courtyard contained no more than twenty people—not that Mercer had that many high school or college grads to begin with. Most left to work in the Cities after high school and only came back once they were ready to have babies. It hit Brenna that she might see Colin here, that maybe he was back in town for the weekend, visiting his parents. She scanned the tiny clusters of concertgoers but didn’t see anyone she recognized.

  The lead singer was playing the guitar and wearing tuxedo pants and a bomber jacket, her hair sculpted into waves. Beside her stood a bass player in camo heels and a fro, and in the back sat a drummer in green sequins.

  A couple people—probably close friends of the band—jumped along with the music, beer bottles in hand. A few sat around the fountain in the center, barefoot and sifting pennies with their toes. With Colin, she’d always known where to go, where to stand, like she was an actor hitting her marks. Now Brenna pretended to check her phone until Dot danced past, her ponytail springing over her shoulder.

  “Hey!”

  “Brenna Ortiz! You came! Aren’t they great?”

  “Yeah!”