by Wiltz, Jenni
Emma tore off several sheets and floated them over the blood. The red and yellow mucous made fluffy cloud shapes as they soaked into the quilted paper.
“Stop looking at it and get it off the floor!” her mom yelled.
Emma looked down at the mass expunged from her father’s body. She didn’t know why she’d ever expected things to change.
She scooped the warm mess into a handful of paper towels as her mom bore down with a wet rag and sponge. Dark liquid shone in the thin gaps between each wooden slat. It’ll never go away, Emma thought. We’ll always know it’s there.
Her mom got down on her hands and knees, dropping the wet rag against the floor. “You could help, you know.”
Emma wadded the paper towels into a bloody ball and dropped them on the floor. “Now do you believe he needs a doctor?”
• • •
She left her plate on the table and went up to her room. Every inch of her tingled, like she was ready to run or scream or fight. But there was nowhere to run and no one to fight. She bunched her fist and slammed it into the foot of her mattress. It rattled the headboard against the far wall. She tried it with her other hand and got the same result. I have to scream, she thought. I can’t hold it in anymore. Her hand shot out and grabbed one of the stuffed animals on her bed, a big blue elephant, and she pressed her face into its side. The scream tore from her throat, hot as a nuclear blast.
What had she been thinking, asking her dad to give up his job because she didn’t make friends easily? She wasn’t going to be an artist, like Via, or a valedictorian, like Rachel. Even Gatsby had died for a cause. What did she have, in comparison?
Across the floor, her backpack sat by her desk. In it was the maroon notebook Dan had given her. It wasn’t green and it wasn’t a light, but if there was anything worth striving for, it was Dan . . . and the vision of her that he saw. He’d seen her upset, he’d seen her cry, he’d seen her exhausted on virtually no sleep, and he still wanted to kiss her. Her fingers found their way to her lips, wishing there was something stronger than memory to pull her back into the warmth of his kiss.
Maybe there is, she thought.
She crawled across the floor and pulled the notebook out of her backpack. With the pencil from her nightstand, she began writing down all the things that were wrong in her house, all of the Miss Havisham decorations that had never changed, not since the day she was born. On the first blank line of the first blank page, she wrote, “The couch in the living room is older than I am. It’s in every family photo I’ve ever seen. It has zebra stripes and fern fronds and bamboo stalks, in a psychedelic mix of black and orange and rust and grey. The grey was white in the picture where I’m holding my second birthday present.”
Forty minutes later, she’d filled three pages with complaints about their antiquated dishes, Tupperware, glassware, silverware, wall art, lamps, end tables, and other furniture. “Things,” she wrote, “carry some essence of their owners.”
She sat back and stretched her left hand, its outer edge now coated with a shimmery grey haze. There it was—the truest thing she’d ever written. Her fingertips slid down the page, feeling the fierce indentations in the paper. Anger made the words take shape, but only on paper. She’d never said any of them out loud. Maybe, she thought, that was the whole problem.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thursday, April 10
Her mom’s feelings made themselves known through the contents of her lunch bag: a plastic cheese-and-cracker tray with a rectangular spreader, an orange (her least favorite fruit), and iced tea (her least favorite lunchtime beverage). It was the first time she’d opened her bag and not found a sandwich. Instead, her mother had entrusted her nutrition to the Keebler elves.
“Wow.” Via ferried a tortilla chip sprinkled with hot sauce to her mouth and held her slim fingers in front of her lips while she spoke. “What did you do wrong?”
“Nothing.” She didn’t want to relive last night, in words or memory. She could still feel the heat rising from the pile of bloody vomit on the floor as it soaked through the paper towel in her hand.
A strand of red hair worked its way loose from Rachel’s braid and whipped itself against her lip. “You must have done something,” she said, peeling it off her shimmery gloss.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You get what you pay for,” Via said.
Emma glared at her. She was the only one trying to fix things, and what did she get for it? Bitchy friends, the silent treatment in the car this morning, and processed cheese food in her lunch, the direst warning her mother could give her. Everyone wanted her to seal her feelings inside her heart, where they’d die without oxygen or water, like The Cask of Amontillado. “I was only trying to help my dad.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Via said.
Emma shook her head. There was no point in talking to either of them. Their families were broken, unfixable, and they secretly wanted hers to be the same.
Her eyes floated over a group of Mexican kids in the courtyard, some dancing to the ranchero music. At the edge of the group, she saw a familiar profile with barrel-shaped bangs and gold hoop earrings. Elvira twirled and smiled, a red bandanna tied around her ponytail. One of the boys smiled and clapped, watching her hips sway from side to side. In chemistry today, she and Dan had smiled at each other and passed notes. He asked how things were at home, and she told him they were worse, but his notebook had inspired her to write about them. The smile it won her made her nerve endings fizz like a shaken soda can.
Rachel pulled a package of sour candy from her backpack. “If you’re looking for a way to help your family, how about making your own lunch once in a while?”
“Mom would just get mad if I did that.”
Via crumpled her tortilla chip bag. “No one’s made lunch for me since I was seven.”
“That’s not how it works in my family.”
“Then how does it work?”
Emma looked at the plastic container holding her cheese and crackers. “Food is control.”
“Maybe it’s just food.” Rachel pulled one knee to her chest and rested her cheek on its surface. “It doesn’t help that you’re so angry now.”
“I was always angry. I just hid it better.”
“Jesus, why’d you stop?” Via slammed her chemistry binder shut. Tucked in its front pocket was a brochure for Amherst. It showed a group of students walking through a big iron gate, flanked by brick columns. Two of the four students had their arms raised above their heads in a cheer. The tuition for a single class would probably pay for a year’s worth of any medical treatment her dad needed.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to want anymore, Emma thought. She crumpled up her sack lunch. “I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.” Rachel inspected her cuticles. Torn and bleeding, they were the only physical evidence that she wasn’t perfect.
“I want to,” she said, slinging her back-breaking pack over her shoulder.
The cold wind couldn’t dampen the fire in her cheeks or the sweat in her armpits. Her own friends hated her. Her mom probably hated her, too. If she’d always been the real her, would they have hated her from the beginning?
Beyond the courtyard, she found a few splintery wooden benches still used by freshmen who found it amusing to carve their initials into school property. On one bench, a Filipino girl sat with her phone and a graphic novel. Emma heaved her backpack onto the second bench, littered with an abandoned soda bottle. She thwacked the bottle across its side with the flat of her hand. It tumbled off the table and clunked to the ground.
The Filipino girl looked up from her book. “Are you going to pick that up?”
Furious tears rose to the surface of her eyes. She couldn’t even blow off steam without making someone angry. She picked up the soda bottle and walked it over to the rusted trashcan lined with a glo
ssy black bag.
“They have recycling, you know,” the girl called.
• • •
“Alors, tout le monde, prenez votre cahiers et faites Exercise Trois.” Monsieur Jordan wrote a page number on the board, along with the workbook’s corresponding page numbers in the textbook. “Levez la main si vous avez une question.”
Emma opened her French workbook. The subjunctive was easy on paper. The whole French language was easy on paper. Ink made sense to her, no matter what shapes it made. Much like real life, she didn’t get in trouble until she tried to speak.
Behind her, Juan Sanchez whispered to Griselda Gutierrez. “Hey, what’s number two?”
“The fuck you ask me for? Just look in the book.”
“I don’t have my book.”
“Why not?”
“I left all my shit at my cousin’s last night. He and Sergio kicked us out when Hector got there.”
Emma lifted her head. Hector.
“So it’s really happening?” Griselda asked. “Like, tonight?”
“Simón.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone they can find. RIP, ese.”
“Damn.”
“Hey.”
“What?”
“I still need the answer to number two.”
Emma’s heart thumped. What sort of gang-member holocaust did the Espinosas have planned? She closed her eyes, grateful her dad was home and not going door-to-door on El Camino Rojo. She’d never stopped to think that what happened to him might have been a blessing in disguise, a way of getting him out of harm’s way before something harder than fists flew on the east side.
She tried to imagine what it felt like to die in a hailstorm of bullets. In the movies, people bounced like marionettes, jerking with each impact. An image of Rocio filled her mind, bullets slicing through her shelf of gold necklaces, tearing holes through the green calligraphy letters tattooed on her neck.
When she picked up her pen, she saw a big, blue puddle blotting out her response to question four. She’d held the tip of the pen to the page for too long without moving it. If Monsieur Jordan called on her, she’d have to hold the page up to the light or look at the indentations from the other side of the page to find it.
Maybe, she thought, all the answers I need are like that. Maybe they’d been there all along, hidden beneath a layer of sameness that made them look invisible. All someone had to do was turn the page. Suddenly, no matter how angry her mom was, she couldn’t wait to get home.
• • •
Emma dropped her backpack at the foot of the stairs. She had seven pages of her Lonesome Dove paper to write, but that could wait. She leaned into the family room to check on her dad. He reclined on the couch, staring vacantly at the TV. An old afghan her mom had crocheted covered his lap.
“Hi, Dad.” She stood in front of him so he wouldn’t have to turn his head. “Are you feeling better today?”
He blinked and raised his eyes. “How—” He coughed and cleared his throat. “How was school?”
She realized he was avoiding her question, which meant the answer was no. Any other time, she’d have pressed him for more information. But now, to try and help, she had to ignore it. At least this time, she wouldn’t have to lie to him. “It sucked.”
His brows drew together, narrowing the slit of his purpled eye. “Why?”
“Want to come take a walk with me? Just for a minute.”
“I don’t—” He looked toward the ceiling. “Your mother said—”
“You could get some fresh air.”
He paused.
“Mom won’t mind. We’ll just go onto the porch.” She sighed. “And I’ll tell you why my day sucked.”
“Deal,” he said, tossing back the afghan.
She took his arm and pulled him to a sitting position. “Still okay?”
“I think so.” He looped his arm around her shoulders and shuffled beside her in his slippers. Each of his fingers pressed into her bicep and she wondered if she’d get bruises. She circled his waist with her arm to try and take some of the weight. “I’m sorry you had a bad day.”
“I’m in high school. It’s inevitable.” She wanted to tell him that any number of bad days was worth it if it helped him get off the couch. “Here, I’ll get the door. You’ll be okay?”
He grabbed the hall bookcase to steady himself as Emma stepped forward to get the door. “Watch out for the doormat,” she said, anchoring it with her foot. A gust of wind shook the wreath on the front door. She breathed it in, fresh with the scent of earth warmed in the sun, so different from the stale air floating like a miasma inside the house. “Doesn’t that feel good?”
For the first time since that night, she saw something flicker in his eyes. His lips relaxed, parting enough for her to see his teeth. “It does. Thank you, Em.”
We’re turning the page, she thought. If she could keep him outside for a minute today, and two minutes tomorrow, and three minutes the next day, maybe he’d realize he was strong enough to stand even when she wasn’t there.
She slipped her hand into his and he squeezed it. Together, they stepped over the threshold, onto her mom’s heart-shaped coir doormat.
Just past the driveway, she heard a car engine gurgle like a garbage disposal. Slowly, the car came into view. It was black with raised chrome stripes and a long hood, like something from the car auctions her dad liked to watch on Sundays. “Look,” she said.
But he was already looking. His eyes opened wide and his hand went slack in her grasp.
“Dad.” She squeezed his hand, but he didn’t respond.
She turned her head to follow his gaze. Two Mexican men sat in the front seat of the car, staring at them. One said something to the other and they nodded. The one in the passenger seat turned and pointed at them, his thumb and forefinger cocked like a gun.
Her dad jumped, turning his back to them and pressing her into the wall. Emma’s head hit the stucco, teeth clamping on tongue with the unexpected force of the movement. He panted, great gasps of air that might have been sobs. Clutched to his chest, she breathed the smell of stale sweat and vomit that clung to his bathrobe. “They’re coming. Get back in the house.”
He pushed her across the threshold then stumbled across himself. One heavy hand reached for the door handle. He flung it shut, clutching his ribs with the other hand. The door slammed, rattling every window in the house. “They found us,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.
“Shh,” she said, hugging him back. “Nothing happened.”
Beneath her ribs, her heart knocked hard enough to register on the Richter scale. It didn’t make sense. The Espinosas could have found them at any time—why now? The sweat on her back turned cold in an instant as she remembered what Juan said in French class: RIP, ese.
From the corner of her eye, she saw her mom on the landing upstairs. “What the hell were you thinking?” her mom hissed, golden eyes flashing. “Are you trying to make things as hard as possible?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I only meant to help.”
From down the hall, Mattie’s door opened and she peeked around the corner, rubbing sleepy eyes. “Who’s slamming all the doors?”
Her dad rocked back and forth on slippered feet, face pressed into Emma’s shoulder. “They found us,” he whispered. “They found us.”
• • •
In the upstairs bathroom, two of the eight bulbs in the lighting strip above the mirror were burnt out. Both sinks had raised rust pustules, multi-tonal and irregular in shape, exactly the way her mom’s magazines described skin cancer. Emma opened the medicine cabinet and took out her toothbrush.
Until the age of nine, she’d swallowed all her toothpaste, until a girl at a slumber party told her that was wrong. All the other girls, in barrettes and wide-legged pajamas with ruffle
s at the hem, already knew how to spit. They’d laughed at her as she flung a mouthful of foam into the sink, desperately trying to sever the tensile string of drool that swung from her lower lip.
As she brushed her teeth, a second pair of footsteps came up the stairs. Mattie turned into the bathroom and for a moment, they stood side by side, staring at their reflections. “Do you remember that piece of toothpaste on the ceiling in the old house?” her sister said.
“Yes.” Years ago, they’d decided to see how long they could get away with not brushing their teeth. To remain undetected, they still had to make small amounts of toothpaste disappear. One night, Emma disposed of her toothpaste by applying it to the brush and flinging the hunk of paste toward the ceiling. The grey-blue toothpaste blended surprisingly well with the old popcorn ceiling. “I bet it’s still there.”
Mattie’s lips smiled, but her eyes were shadowed by a glaze of tears. “How come we don’t do stupid stuff like that anymore?”
“We’re too old.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Do you remember when we made witch soup?”
“That was gross.” Mattie pushed her hair off her face with a headband and reached for her face wash. “And awesome.”
Instead of dumping rainwater out of a yellow sand bucket in the backyard, they’d added mud, sand, chicken feathers blown in from the neighbor’s yard, and a couple of lawn mushrooms. With the nervous excitement of evildoers, they used their sand toys to scoop up dried cat poop (the neighbors all had cats) and dumped the hard links into the brew. It was followed by a dried moth and spiderwebs from the corner of Emma’s bedroom window, twirled around a stick.
Emma imagined she and Mattie were witches, like Orddu, Orwen, and Orgoch in The Black Cauldron. She was almost sure there was no such thing as magic, but just in case, she squeezed two slats in her blinds apart each night and glanced into the backyard. As she’d suspected, no greenish haze indicated the rise of any Cauldron-Born.
This went on until their dad decided to trim the bottlebrush. He found the bucket, dumped it, washed it, and set it on the rim of the sandbox for them to play with again. “I hate the things that happen when you grow up,” she said.