“Emilia,” Ma whispered, lifting one of them from the small box.
“I know they’re a little flashy, but, I don’t know. I thought they’d look so pretty on you. Do you like them?” she asked.
Ma’s eyes filled with tears. “I love them,” she said, putting them on immediately. They glimmered as they caught the lights from the Christmas tree, and Emilia thought they looked beautiful. The sight made her think of the classroom, of making that room sparkle somehow.
She wished she could go there again. Right now.
Then the doorbell rang, and Emilia and Tomás looked at each other as Ma opened the door. There stood their father, holding three presents and a white bakery box wrapped with red-and-white twine. He’d shaved his beard and looked so much like he used to that it took all of them a moment to recover.
“Come in,” Ma said finally.
They all watched as he cleaned his feet on the welcome mat and came inside. Emilia looked at Tomás and saw how he stared at their father with so many mixed emotions on his face. She wondered if her face carried the same look. Their mother looked at the floor as he came in.
Their father just inside now, not knowing what to do next, clutched those boxes. Emilia knew what the bakery box must hold inside. The favorite treats he would occasionally surprise them with so long ago. An éclair for Emilia. Pignoli cookies for Ma. And crispy chocolate cookies for Tomás.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, standing there.
It was like having a stranger in their house, which, Emilia supposed, was exactly what this was.
But it wasn’t.
Sam DeJesus cleared his throat, took in the wrapping paper on the floor. “I guess I’m a little late,” he said. His words seemed to take on so many meanings, and they all shifted uncomfortably as each one realized it.
“I’ll put these here,” he said, putting the gifts under the tree. Emilia glanced at them. She took in her father’s handwriting on the labels. What had he been thinking as he wrote their names on those gifts?
“Would you like some coffee?” Ma asked him. He cleared his throat again, nodded.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Merry Christmas, Dad,” Emilia said when she realized that neither she nor Tomás had said a word to him.
His eyes filled with tears, and when he was finally able to speak again, he said, “Merry Christmas, Emilia. Merry Christmas, Tomás.”
Ma came back with the cup of coffee. Emilia noticed how his hands shook as he took it. She’d forgotten about his shaky hands, and she wondered how many other things she’d forgotten about her father, as he sat there clutching the cup.
As the hours wore on and they watched different parades and old holiday movies on television, some of the strangeness wore off. Ma cooked and their father sat in the living room, awkwardly. But he stayed. And when they ate, he joined them. It was mid-dinner when Emilia thought, He must not have another family. Because he’s here. With us.
She looked over at him. He met her gaze, and she offered him a smile.
“Are you hanging out with Ian today?” Ma asked her. This attempt at normalcy felt bizarre and out of place.
“He’s at his aunt’s,” Emilia said, just as Dad asked, “Who’s Ian?”
Emilia moved the food around on her plate. “My boyfriend,” she said quietly.
“Oh,” Dad said.
The silence that kept finding them surrounded them again. Ma tried to fill it up. Tomás said nothing. Their father looked lost.
The bakery box contained exactly what Emilia had suspected. Emilia forced a bite of the éclair. Ma said thank you. Tomás went upstairs.
“Well, I . . . better go,” Dad said finally. Nobody argued with him. But Emilia watched as he put his coat on and opened the front door. She saw how he quickly glanced at the unopened gifts under the tree.
“Bye, Dad,” she said.
He locked eyes with her for a moment. “Bye, Emilia.” Then he looked at the ground as he turned and headed out into the cold.
Tomás Was Jolted Awake
Tomás was jolted awake that night, and he immediately sat up and looked over at Emilia’s empty bed partially lit from the moonlight coming in through her window.
It was snowing.
Tomás stared at the flurries, and for a bizarre moment, perhaps because he had been dreaming of her when she was little, he half expected to see his sister out there, perched on the tree outside her window with the birds she was always feeding.
“Emilia?” he whispered as he got up and checked the bathroom. She wasn’t there. Tomás hurried downstairs.
“What are you doing?” he asked when he saw her standing in the kitchen, staring out the open back door, the snow coming down harder.
She didn’t answer.
“Emilia?”
It was cold, and any minute the draft would find its way under his mother’s bedroom door and she would come out and ask them what they were doing.
“Close the door,” he whispered to Emilia. The cold traveled up the leg of his pajama pants and sent a shiver running through his body. But Emilia didn’t respond and instead continued looking out into their backyard.
The way she leaned her head against the frame and crossed her arms in front of her body made him sad. She seemed so lonely. As if she were locking away some part of herself, just like she used to right after the attack. In some ways, Tomás felt like he really did lose Emilia that day. His sister had never been quite the same again. Once in a while bits and pieces of who she used to be would come out in an unguarded laugh or sudden rush of excitement or happiness. That’s when he saw his little sister, the one he used to call Mia because he couldn’t pronounce her name when they were little. That was who had always, always, been at his side, laughing. Until she wasn’t.
When had he stopped calling her Mia? After the attack? When she seemed so far away always?
“You remember the dog, Tomás?” Emilia suddenly said to him, still looking into their backyard through the open door.
“The dog?”
“The one that chased me.” She turned and looked at him, but he couldn’t make out her face in the darkness. “Don’t you remember, in first grade? I went outside to get the paper for Dad and that dog chased me.”
Tomás remembered. He remembered Emilia’s face, and the way fear took over and contorted it as she ran toward him, her eyes pleading, pleading for what? Her life?
She’d thought she was going to die. She was waiting for that dog to tear into her, for its teeth to pierce her skin.
“I remember,” he said.
She turned back to look out the door. “I’ve been thinking . . . maybe it was a warning,” she told him.
He didn’t know what to say.
“No,” he answered, because he didn’t know how else to respond. “It was just something that happened.”
“Do you know I used to think aliens were going to get me?” She laughed. “I didn’t know it was going to be some guy in the woods.”
Something about the way she spoke, the way she stared outside at the snow, coming down harder still, scared Tomás.
He didn’t want to think of how she’d looked that day when the dog almost ate her. That’s what he had thought, that the dog was actually going to eat her. And yet he’d stood there motionless in the kitchen, near the refrigerator, as she came running. It just happened so fast. He didn’t have time to think of what he should do. And the strange whines coming from her scared him. Not even screams, just strangled whines, and the look on her face, just before she reached the door, just before she swung it open and threw herself in. The screen door slammed behind her and that dog, foaming at the mouth, saliva dripping, baring its ugly teeth, rushed at her and slammed its snout against the screen.
But right before the door closed, in a split second, Tomás could see the dog’s jaws opening
wide. Wider and wider, and swallowing Emilia whole into the dark abyss of its mouth. That’s what Tomás saw and still, he hadn’t done anything about it.
I didn’t do anything, Tomás realized. He swallowed the bitter taste that rose into his mouth. Why didn’t I run to her? Why did I just stand there?
Their mother had come running, shouting at the dog until it retreated, but it didn’t run away. Not until Ma filled a pot with cold water and threw it on the dog did it cry and whimper and leave.
Don’t worry, Ma had told a trembling Emilia, who was crouched on the floor. Tomás could still see them here, on this very floor, together. Ma holding and soothing Emilia. I won’t let anything get you, she said.
The memory and the thoughts that rushed into Tomás’s head took his breath away.
What must she have looked like that other day?
It hit him in that moment in a way that it never had before, the gravity of what Emilia had gone through. He didn’t know why he never really let himself realize it before, but right now, in this darkness, his sister looking so . . . fragile, he understood.
And he felt sick.
He looked at Emilia, the back of her head, her long black hair as she stared out the door at the falling snow. He was afraid of her turning around. He was afraid he might see on her face the terror she felt that day.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“What is?”
“The snow. The cold. I guess it can be beautiful.”
“You think so?” he asked.
She must have been so scared.
She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, not with that scared look he imagined, just as Emilia. His sister. “I do. I really do,” she said before turning back to the door.
He looked out then, too, and he saw what she saw. It did seem an especially beautiful, odd snow; it glowed.
“I caught Ma watching the video of us today, that time she and Dad woke us in the middle of the night to play in the snow. Do you remember? They bundled us up and we ran outside. We were so little, Tomás. It was so . . . long ago.”
A lump rose in his throat and he thought any minute now he would start crying, for her, for all of them, for who they used to be and what they had become.
What if things had been different? Would we be different, too?
He felt a tingling in his nose, but he wouldn’t cry. Not now, not in front of Emilia, who had suffered so much more than him. Even though he felt as if he had just buried his family. Even though his knees felt weak.
“Oh god, Tomás! You know what would be so lovely?” she said suddenly, in a rush, flashing a smile full of genuine excitement.
“What?” he asked.
I’m so sorry, Mia.
“If cherry blossoms bloomed in winter! Can you imagine that? All those beautiful flowers, against so much white! Can you see us back there, running around in the snow, with all those cherry blossoms around us?” She gestured with her hands, in a way to mimic the falling of snow, and Tomás saw the silhouette of her thin fingers. “It would be so beautiful, to have a little bit of spring.”
He looked at her face. “Wait here,” he said, and ran to the entryway closet near the front door. He gathered their winter gear in a rush and returned to the kitchen moments later.
“Here, here. Put these on. Come on! There aren’t any flowers, but it can still be beautiful, Mia,” he whispered. “We can still be beautiful.”
Emilia turned quickly at his words and stared at him. “Life is beautiful, Tomás,” she said.
He threw a coat and a pair of boots in her direction, a spare pair of gloves and a hat. She hurried to put on her gear, quietly laughing in a way that forced Tomás to blink back tears. Neither of them zipped up their jackets, just like when they were kids, and they rushed out the door into that biting cold snow, and started running.
The world was so silent, wonderfully silent, and it felt like only they filled it up. Emilia’s soft laughter, the crunch of their boots, the sound of their own breathing, Tomás’s voice as he urged on Emilia, telling her to run as he formed a snowball and threw it at her, the loose snow exploding in a soft spray of white, like a gentle, powdery firework.
She laughed and they ran. She stopped and he continued showering her with snow until she fell and made a snow angel. And Tomás quietly tucked this night into his memory, every moment, every detail, so he could recall it one day when he was scared or sad.
* * *
* * *
Nina watched Emilia and Tomás from the kitchen window.
It was two o’clock in the morning.
As she watched them run, she wished there was a way to wrap them back into her womb, protect them forever.
But Emilia wasn’t even supposed to be born.
The thought she tried so hard to keep away drifted into her mind like a cold draft.
You were selfish, she told herself.
It was because of Nina’s insistence that Emilia was even brought into this world. It was because she wanted more than one child, Sam. I always imagined at least two. We have our little boy; maybe we’ll have a little girl!
She’d wanted a sibling for Tomás. She’d wanted to feel a life inside her body again.
But her body refused. Her body told her she was only meant for one child.
Be happy, her body told her. But she insisted. No!
And they wiped out their bank account on tests and in vitro fertilization, and finally a surrogate.
Only later did Nina think about it. Maybe Emilia hadn’t wanted to be born. Maybe, like those calcified babies she’d read about, the ones who embedded themselves in their mother’s body forever until they became little mummified stones, Emilia had sensed how cold and cruel the world could be and didn’t want to be born into it. But her mother, her unstoppable mother, insisted, insisted she be born.
So Emilia came from the body of another woman, and every now and then, Nina caught a glimpse of something in her daughter’s face that made her think Emilia was not for this world. That made her worry even before the attack, that she had asked for too much, that she had taken something that wasn’t hers, and that the universe would take Emilia back. Nina worried; even before anything bad happened, she worried.
That was why her body shook the day they couldn’t find Emilia, why the life drained from her. Because she knew.
Didn’t you always know?
Nina pushed her thoughts away and watched her children.
When they started heading back to the house, she toyed with the idea of making them hot chocolate. But she couldn’t even bring herself to turn on the light. She was afraid the switch, the fluorescent white, or the beep of the microwave, would completely break the spell that was already wearing thin. And so she quickly made her way back to her bedroom, left the door slightly ajar as they crept back in, muffling their laughter and trying to be quiet.
She heard their boots plop onto the floor and she knew there would be puddles to clean in the morning. She listened to the stairs creak under the weight of their bodies as they tiptoed back upstairs to their rooms, the opening and closing of their drawers and the creaks of the floorboards above her own room as they settled back into their beds.
And then silence.
She opened the door and looked down the hall, into the kitchen, feeling like she’d just seen and heard them for the last time. Like they were ghosts.
Nina stepped into the kitchen, resisted going upstairs to look at them safe in their beds. She looked at the melted snow from their boots that had gathered in a puddle on the kitchen floor, just as she knew it would. She left it there and looked at the snow falling harder, covering the ground outside.
She kept telling herself to go back to bed, but she couldn’t. She stayed looking at the backyard, picturing Emilia and Tomás running around out there still. In that thick silence, she heard the
echoes of their laughter and laughed softly with them, even as the snow kept falling and hid all evidence of their play from just moments ago.
And then, so suddenly, Nina saw a blanket of now fresh, undisturbed snow.
And she began to cry.
* * *
* * *
Upstairs in his room, Tomás breathed normally again after the running and cold. Emilia had told him, in the kindest way she could, that he didn’t need to sleep on her bedroom floor.
“I’m sure I won’t have bad dreams tonight,” she told him, a smile on her face and her cheeks still flushed from running around outside. She looked happy. “And I can be okay, Tomás,” she said.
“I know you can,” he said. Still, he waited a moment longer in case she changed her mind. But finally, he simply said good night because he didn’t want to ruin the moment. The idea of her having another nightmare made him anxious. He should be right there, to wake her from whatever horrible images crowded her head at night. But he didn’t want her to think he didn’t believe her.
He wanted to believe her.
So he went to his room, listened for any possible noise coming from Emilia’s, before he finally closed his eyes and drifted into an uneasy sleep that intertwined tonight with that overwhelming worry he’d been carrying lately.
In Tomás’s mind, he saw the two of them in all that brilliant snow. He saw them lying down, making snow angels, and he saw, suddenly, cherry blossoms fall on them in all that velvety white. And he was laughing. He looked at Emilia and saw her laughing, too, opening her mouth. The blossoms fell from the sky like snow and landed in her mouth, turning it pink, then red.
She reached out to the sky and Tomás saw her fingers again. He worried because they seemed so breakable and fragile and delicate. And he wondered how breakable his sister was.
The Fall of Innocence Page 16