Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  She sits on my bed. I’m glad I don’t have to sleep in it anymore. I turn around and walk out of the room. I walk through the kitchen, keeping my head down, cross the living room.

  Don’t think of anything. Play dead!

  I look at the dirty lines between the tiles. How’d they get so dirty? Dave and Buster will think we were pigs.

  Those weren’t their names. Dave and who? Who did she say? Things are slipping from my mind so easily, and maybe I should be alarmed, but that slips, too, and I forget to care.

  I open the front door, squint against the blinding sun. I sit at the entrance and wait.

  David and Goliath?

  Helen comes out behind me.

  “Nothing else?” she asks.

  I look down the street for the Avon lady’s car. She’s not an Avon lady, I know. But she smells like lipstick and thick perfume. In a different way than Mom did.

  I reach into my backpack, take out a lipstick I grabbed off the dresser on my way out so Helen couldn’t use it.

  I write my name on the concrete in front of me. I like how it glides. I like how it looks, how it glistens and melts in the sun. That’s what lipstick should be used for.

  I study the gravel and dirt left on the end of the tube.

  “What are you doing?” Helen says with more surprise than I thought she could ever muster. I shrug and she laughs. Stares at my name. “Okay, well, you going to eat something before you go?” She stands next to me, her hands in her pockets.

  I shake my head.

  “Come on. It’s still a few hours before she gets here.”

  “I’ll wait out here.”

  “In this heat? Don’t be crazy.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Well then, I guess this is goodbye,” she says. “I hope all goes well for you.”

  “Thanks. You too,” I tell her.

  She walks toward the house, her shoulders slouching, her hands in her pockets. I don’t think she expected any more than that.

  A car eventually appears at the curb. The Avon lady gets out, waves at me. I pick up my bags and climb in her car.

  When we arrive at the airport, she parks and leads me inside, I check my luggage. She flashes her child-savior badge and gets a special pass to take me all the way to the gate. She buys me a few things to keep me entertained on the flight—magazines she picks out herself because I just stare at the glossy faces on the covers—and throws in candy and chips for good measure. She wonders if I want anything else.

  I shake my head. The airport is cold and I try to understand how I got here, even though I know how. One moment I was staring at the lipstick on the ground and now I’m staring at the lips of a woman on a magazine cover.

  We’re at the gate and the lady waits with me, gives me an email address and phone number I’ll never use. When they call for boarding, she stands up and looks at me earnestly and tells me to contact her if I need anything. Then she gives me a hug and tells me she’ll be thinking about me. I’m glad I have all the stuff in my hands so I don’t have to hug her back.

  She doesn’t leave yet, not even when I get in line holding what she bought for me. I look back after I hand the bored-looking man at the terminal my ticket and she’s still there. I see myself yelling at her, telling her she shouldn’t think about me or the me who came before or the me who will come after. She shouldn’t think about any of us and should forget me because I will forget her. But even that would be too much.

  She waves. I turn and walk down the tube that leads me to another tube that will shoot me over to New Mexico.

  —

  When I settle into my seat, the woman next to me yawns so big and loud I can smell her sour breath. I wonder if she knows how bad it smells. She does it again. Then again.

  “Your breath,” I tell her finally.

  She smiles. “What?”

  “Your breath,” I whisper. “It’s a little sour.”

  She recoils like I just tried to bite her nose off and gives me a dirty look.

  I offer her one of the chocolates the Avon lady bought me.

  The woman stares at the chocolate like it’s poison and turns away from me. Moments later, I see her cupping her hand to her mouth as she stares out the window, and she doesn’t yawn again.

  Soon after, the flight attendant takes her place front and center, with her fake seat belt and yellow vest, and I pay attention.

  I pay extra-close attention because I know crazy things happen. And this is my first flight.

  I check for exits and I feel sorry for the woman beside me because she doesn’t know I would probably trample her to get to the exit in front of our seats.

  Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d stay on the plane while everyone else clamors and screams and yells.

  Maybe I’d sit in my seat and close my eyes. Maybe I’d reach for the book in my backpack.

  Maybe I’d even smile as the plane plummeted to the ground.

  Dani.

  Falls.

  Somewhere I get off this plane, somewhere I get on another plane. This time I don’t bother to pay attention to the emergency instructions. But the plane stays in the air and safely lands elsewhere. And I’m struck by how miraculous flying really is. How ten-ton metal birds can fly without flapping their wings, how they can defy gravity.

  The pilot welcomes us to El Paso, Texas. This is where my aunt will pick me up since it’s the closest airport to where she lives.

  It’s the smallest of airports. Not that I’ve been to any others. We never traveled, though she always said we would. We’re going to see the world! The world is so big, Dani, and we’re not going to stay hidden in the corners of it like roaches. We’re not roaches. We’re not vermin.

  But somehow, by the end of her slurring and rambling, I was a roach. I was vermin. I was many horrible, terrible things because I didn’t believe her. Even though you have a passport, don’t you? You could jump on an airplane right now and go anywhere, couldn’t you? Because of me, Dani!

  We never even made it to another state.

  I focus on the signs around me to erase her face and mute her words. I go down one small set of escalators and see the baggage claim. I follow the woman with bad breath to an empty carousel. I look around, suddenly wondering how in the world I’ll know my aunt.

  I see a lot of other people hugging other people. Strangers hugging strangers.

  Some back part of my brain whispers, I bet none of their mothers have gotten mauled by a bear.

  Something beeps and I focus on the shiny metal of the carousel that is now beginning to move. Slowly, pieces of luggage emerge through the rubber fringes of a small opening.

  I want to get on the conveyer belt. I want to go through the fringed rubber opening and be in another world. Or maybe someone could just throw me back on the plane so I could fly through the air again, on an airplane flying backward. I want it to taxi into Orlando, gate B45, and spit me out. I want to walk backward through the tunnel that connects the plane to the gate, get my ticket handed back to me by the bored-looking guy. I want the Avon lady to take back her hug, her scrap of paper, and we get back in her car, and she drives me back to a house that was and wasn’t mine.

  Then I want clocks to spin.

  I want nights to rise.

  And days to fall.

  I want to go back,

  back,

  back.

  I want to be unborn.

  But then my red duffel bag catches my eye and I grab it as it passes and pull it off the conveyor belt. Next, the suitcase.

  I drag one and roll the other to the outskirts of the crowd and search for someone I don’t know.

  A woman comes in through the automatic doors holding a piece of cardboard in her hands and I’m sure it’s her.

  Jeans and a T-shirt.

  Short blondish-brown hair, frizzy and wavy.

  I watch her go to the large board announcing arrivals and departures. Then she goes to the airline counter. The employee there points to t
he luggage carousel.

  I see the way the woman holds the small cardboard sign in front of her.

  Dani Falls.

  She searches the sea of faces. She searches over their heads.

  And then she sees me.

  She walks slowly toward me, her eyes on me the whole time.

  “Dani,” she says when she’s close enough for me to hear. It’s not a question. She knows it’s me. “I’m Shelly,” she adds.

  Shelly.

  I nod. She looks like Mom, so I’m unable to say anything. I stand there, mute. We stare at each other. Then she leans slightly toward me and I think she’s going to hug me, but she grabs my suitcase instead.

  “Come on,” she says, walking toward the automatic doors again. I follow, dragging my duffel bag behind me.

  The mountains are in the distance. El Paso is alive with people, all going on. I watch them as we drive.

  Shelly and I don’t talk much.

  At some point she tells me that it’s about an hour to her house. She drives fast, with the windows down, her truck creaking violently with any bump we hit.

  We leave the city behind until there is only dust and road and mountains. The sun makes everything orange, like the world has been Photoshopped a bright sepia.

  There is a sole car in front of us driving through the desert, headed to nowhere also. I search, waiting for a town to pop up, even as I realize there will only be more dirt, more mountains, more road. The sun is going down. I stare out the window and try to remember how I got here.

  The truck jerks suddenly to the left, pulling me out of my foggy thoughts.

  Shelly—that’s her name, I’m sure—curses as we swerve. There’s a thump. She looks in the rearview mirror, regains control of the truck, and shakes her head. Mutters something about jackrabbits as I turn and look out the back window.

  I can see it spinning on its back. It’s horrible.

  So horrible.

  The way he’s spinning on his back, his little legs and long feet in the air, it looks like he’s break-dancing.

  Truly horrible.

  But I want to laugh. Because in my head, he’s a trickster. He’s a dance star. I’m thinking of him doing the snake, the robot, and then shooting his rabbit fingers at me while looking at me through black sunglasses.

  I let out a weird sound and Shelly glances my way before looking in the rearview mirror again.

  I stare out the window and pinch my arms because it takes all I have not to laugh. Some part of my brain tells me I’m messed up.

  I worry as we go deeper and deeper into nothingness. Every few miles, I see a house off to the side, so far away from the main road it’s hardly noticeable. I fight the dread that it’s to one of these houses we are headed. The bear will find me easier out here, out in the open, with nowhere to run.

  I put my hand on the door handle and picture myself pulling it, and it’s enough, enough just to picture it.

  I stay calm.

  Soon we come to what looks like a deserted town, the kind I thought existed only in movies. We stop at a four-way stop, then turn right and enter a slightly populated area that I’m not sure could be called a town. Mobile homes seem to be organized in some kind of pattern, but they still look scattered. And vulnerable, like they are huddled together surrounded by nothing but emptiness, like the world forgot about them.

  We keep driving and I see a sign for a restaurant that’s really a shed with nobody parked in front. We pass a fenced-off area that claims to be the community pool but is abandoned. There’s a place that sells secondhand clothes and Popsicles. There’s also a Pancho Villa museum with a gift shop that proclaims WE’RE OPEN! but looks very closed. A little farther along, I see a sign for available rooms, but no hotel or motel follows.

  And I suddenly know that people don’t visit here. People don’t vacation here. This is where people are left alone. This is where people, maybe, even come to die. Or never leave and die. Or are dropped off when their mothers die.

  I fight my whole body. I fight to keep my heart steady, my arms from opening the door, my legs from running.

  I don’t think I could run anyway. I feel like I’m made of rubber. I stare out at the dirt road, the beat-up homes with laundry hanging out to dry. And I wonder which one of these is Shelly’s.

  Isn’t this better? I hear Mom say. Her laughter rings in my ears.

  A few minutes after we pass the mobile homes, we are driving up a rocky drive to a large house that stands next to what looks like a barn. A high chain-link fence topped off with barbed wire surrounds both house and barn.

  Jesus, I think.

  But I’m relieved. At least it’s not a mobile home. I can’t imagine being trapped in one of those with Shelly for an extended period of time.

  Shelly gets out of the truck, unlocks the gates, pushes them open, and gets back in the truck. Slams the door so hard I wince. A light swirl of dust has followed her in and it settles around us.

  She roughly shifts into drive again and I realize she does everything roughly. I sneak a look at her, but she’s staring ahead.

  I wonder if she’s violent. I wonder if her words cut and pierce and sting. I wonder if her hand is heavy.

  We’re jostled over the uneven ground. The crackling of rocks under the tires reminds me of crushing bones.

  “Well, this is it,” Shelly says, putting the truck into park. She swings herself out the door and I slowly get out, staring at the house. It looks out of place compared to the collection of run-down trailers surrounding us.

  “Did you just move here?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, hands on her hips. “We’ve always lived here.” I wonder if she is married, but I don’t ask.

  “I had this built about ten years ago. Used to live in that thing,” she says, nodding toward a rusty, broken-down motor home in the barn. “All of us did.”

  She doesn’t offer any more information and starts walking up the wooden steps that lead to the front door.

  “Get your stuff,” she says. “I’ll show you where to put it.” She unlocks the door and goes inside.

  I follow her directions.

  The house is bare. It’s furnished but still looks empty. Like all the houses I’ve lived in.

  I suddenly remember the house Mom rented before we found Dave and Buster’s.

  It was pink. The pinkest damn shade of pink I’d ever seen.

  Isn’t it great? she said as we pulled into the driveway.

  I shrugged. It was pretty horrible, actually.

  Four bedrooms, she said, smiling and looking at the house like it was one of the wonders of the world.

  Four bedrooms. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted with all that space, but it was what she bragged about most whenever we moved to a new place. Nothing less than four bedrooms, like I cared. It was stupid since there were just the two of us. Sometimes three, since Mom’s boyfriends always ended up mostly moving in. Even so, we didn’t need anything bigger than an apartment. A duplex. A small, two-bedroom house at most.

  It would have been easier. Cheaper, too, though Mom never worried about money. And neither did I until I was old enough to realize she couldn’t pay rent with the waitressing jobs she’d get here and there and there. But she always paid it. I knew she got money from men somehow. More than that I didn’t know. And I didn’t want to know.

  Why? I mumbled. Without meaning to. I remember the early evening was cast in my favorite kind of rose-colored light. It had been raining and the earth smelled wet and beautiful, too. I wanted to enjoy the moment, but the first shot had been fired.

  Why what?

  Why…do we have to move? Why four bedrooms? I mean, we don’t really need four bedrooms….

  She shook her head. You’re such an ungrateful little shit, you know that?

  I looked down at the sidewalk, slipped off my flip-flops and felt the wet concrete under my feet. I thought about whether I was a little shit. She always did that, asked me a question I couldn’t answer. One
that left me silent, taking her crap. I listened to the way she drew a deep breath.

  Because, she said, loud, sharp, her voice cutting through the air. Look at me, damn it! she yelled. And I did. We move because there is always better. Always. And I deserve it. I could’ve said she didn’t deserve anything. But I didn’t because I didn’t want her to smack me on the side of the head. Not in that perfect light. Not out there on the street with people peeking out their windows, taking us in, already making judgments about Mom’s cutoff shorts that showed half her ass and the tank top that was too low. Too tight. Too skimpy.

  And four bedrooms because that’s what I want. Because I want space, to not feel like the goddamn walls are closing in on me. Is that all right with you? Or would you rather live in some little shithole where you can’t even breathe?

  What she meant was some little shithole where I was within arm’s distance of her everywhere she turned. Where I was the constant that she couldn’t escape. Where she couldn’t send me to the other side of the house so she could be left alone to do whatever she did with whatever guy it was that week. What she needed, what she wanted was room, space, distance so she didn’t feel like I was closing in on her. Where I wasn’t sucking the air out of her nose, her mouth, her lungs. Where I wasn’t killing her.

  Forget it, I said.

  She laughed the way you laugh at someone you hate. You’re incredible, you know that?

  No? Yes? What the hell was I supposed to say?

  I don’t think you really mean that, I said. The words were out and they sounded as sarcastic as they had in my head and it felt good and I was proud of myself. She stared at me.

  Fuck you, Dani. You had to ruin this, didn’t you? You always have to ruin everything.

  I didn’t want it to hurt, but it did. I had to ruin everything? Me?

  Fuck you, I thought. Fuck you right back, Mom. But I wondered if she was right. If I ruined everything. If I ruined her.

  She grabbed some stuff from the car and went inside the house. And I stayed put, feeling the ground under my feet, looking at how the rose-colored evening had turned brown and ugly, and imagining what my life would be like one day without her in it.