Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  But I didn’t. I was the one who walked away and left her out there alone, beyond the glass. Trapped.

  And I was deaf to her screams.

  Stop! I tell myself.

  There is nothing on the website about any past exhibits at all. Maybe because nobody ever looks these things up.

  Or maybe because one day they lost a bear.

  In the morning, I hear Shelly come in. I hear her boots scraping the floor as she walks down the hall. She opens my bedroom door and I pretend to be asleep. She closes it.

  I pass by Paulo’s trailer and listen to the music coming from the open windows. I walk because of the sun. Because of how it burns my mind. I walk because telling yourself to be numb is not enough. Because the more I want to be numb, the more time passes, the more slashes I make, the harder it becomes.

  A woman sings. Her voice is like jagged metal, sharp and cutting around the edges. She whispers warnings, or maybe threats. Maybe longing. I sit on the ground under one of the windows and listen.

  I put my head on my knees, shielding my face from the hot sun, and close my eyes, trying to understand the words.

  The woman keeps speaking. Softer, barely a paper whisper. She knows all the secrets in the world. But then it stops abruptly, the woman’s voice coming to a sudden, angry silence.

  I open my eyes and look up to see Paulo’s grandmother looming above me, leaning her head out the open window, her hair falling like a canopy around her.

  I hurry to my feet.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She nods. “Paulo is not here,” she says. “You like the music?”

  I nod.

  “You know what it means?” she asks.

  She waits for an answer, but I don’t say anything. “You know,” she tells me. “You know.”

  I stare at her.

  I know her from my dreams. I remember her coming down through the ceiling and out from under my bed. I think she was there when the bear was pounding the earth, coming for us. She stares at me, her face stern.

  “Dolor,” she says. The word is a soft puff that escapes her lips like smoke. She closes her eyes. “Dolor,” she whispers again, clutching her heart. Her face takes on a look of devotion and pain. “Dolor.”

  Something startles in my heart. I feel it being squeezed. I watch her hand, dark and wrinkled with slightly deformed fingers, squeeze at her chest, her rings catching and reflecting the sun. Each time, I feel my own heart being squeezed, the blood pumping faster and forcefully.

  “Dolor,” she says. “Dolor.”

  I stumble backward, clutching my chest, trying to calm my heart back into submission.

  I want to tell her to stop. But I can’t. Each squeeze leaves me breathless. I turn and walk away, fast, faster, until I’m running.

  I run away from her squeezing of my stone heart. Pumping life into it. Making it feel real again.

  Up ahead, I think I see a girl and a guy about my age walking. They shove each other playfully and I wonder if they’re desert ghosts because I haven’t seen anyone else outside since I got here. The boy says something and the girl smacks his arm and shoves him harder. He laughs and I remember how my mother’s laughter conjured the bear and I want to warn them. But they dissipate into the orange dust before I can reach them or open my mouth.

  I feel a phantom squeeze my chest, the clench of an invisible fist. My head pounds and I know I’ve been walking for too long, but I stomp my feet harder against the ground, making them and my legs ache. I look at the black armband tied tight around my arm and make a fist with my hand, which hardly feels like my own anymore. I concentrate on how the sun is burning my skin. I look up at it, purposely blinding myself, making myself dizzy.

  I’m tired. I should go home and find out about Meursault, because there’s something he’s trying to tell me. I almost feel like I know what it is, but I keep walking because it’s all I can do and I forget Meursault and part of my brain pictures me lying on the ground. My head feels numb and I stare at the orange earth and I wonder why my arm feels like deadweight and then remember.

  I got the idea to wear an armband from the book, but I don’t know why I did it.

  I wanted to forget about her, but I couldn’t stop myself from remembering. Maybe remembering was the only way to forget.

  She would take me to the beach. In the middle of the day, at the hottest hour. I didn’t like it much. I sat next to her and built sand castles while she rubbed oil on herself and lay on a towel.

  She’d bring beer and drink it and pass out.

  We’d stay under that hot sun, next to the crumbling sand castles, until it went down and my skin felt rubbed raw. And then we’d drive home.

  I’d keep my eyes on the solid traffic line we crossed before she’d jerk the car back into the right lane.

  And she’d tell me how lucky I was to have a mom who loved me the way she loved me.

  Something drips from my nose, and for a moment I wonder if I’m crying. I touch my eyes, but they’re dry.

  I wipe my nose with my arm.

  It’s blood.

  The trickle comes faster until I can taste it on my lips, metallic from the iron in it. I think about having iron in me but not feeling strong. I lean forward, watch my blood drip onto the dirt.

  Blood and dirt. It somehow seems important; it somehow seems amazing. I watch as more blood flows faster from my nose and drips onto the dusty earth. I can’t believe I’m made of blood and metal and vessels and veins. And then I think my heart must have burst from being squeezed so hard. And now I’m bleeding out.

  I see the gas station ahead. Time moves strangely. First it drips, then it flows. I open the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” he says, and I think it’s funny because I’m not Jesus Christ.

  The world is black and suddenly he is there, holding napkins to my face, pressing them against my nose. I know him, but I can’t remember his name. I watch little red hot dogs burning as they turn and turn on metal rollers.

  He pulls the napkins away from my face. The red on white is beautiful. I want to make paper flowers with them. I reach for them, red paper flowers, for me. But he pulls them out of my reach, presses them to my nose again.

  “Why do you keep doing this? You don’t know this sun. It’s the devil.”

  “El diablo,” I say. He looks at me. I think I laugh.

  He’s wrong, though. The sun isn’t the devil. It’s glorious. It can make you forget, or at least remember in a way that doesn’t hurt. The sun is a drug.

  He leads me to the chair behind the counter. I sit and stare at the television as he goes to the cooler and pulls out water bottles. There are so many movies, so many DVDs stacked behind the counter. I try to read the titles even as the letters float and get blurry.

  I watch as he comes toward me with a bottle of water. I wish he’d grabbed an orange soda to share with me. We could drink the liquid sun together. Maybe that way we could conquer it. Or maybe it would poison us.

  We could be Romeo and Juliet. I know the thought is ridiculous as I think it, and I laugh again.

  Romeo looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  He hands me the bottle and I take a tasteless sip. No sun. Rivers. Clear, cool rivers.

  He tells me to drink more, but slowly. I do. Like the other day, he trickles some water on my neck. I close my eyes.

  I get lost in the colors that swirl behind my lids. I get lost in the mushy feel of my brain.

  I feel a cold, wet touch on my arm.

  “What’s this?” Paulo asks. Paulo. His name and face appear in my head and I open my eyes, reeling back from shining waters and highways.

  I look at the armband. “A black sock,” I tell him.

  “Well yeah, but why are you wearing it?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  “You don’t know?” he asks. He leans closer to me, pulls at the sock softly, and unties it as the gas station door opens. An old man wearing a cowboy hat comes in.

  “¿Qué pasa, Paulo?”
the man calls out.

  Paulo gets up, goes over to the register, and talks to the man. He reaches up for cigarettes and hands them to the man. I see their dark silhouettes against the light coming in through the smudged glass. A few more customers follow, trickling in one after the other. Paulo rings them up, speaks Spanish and English to them. He sounds the same but different in each language.

  I think about language. I close my eyes and curl my tongue in my mouth, feeling for different languages that might have resided there if I lived somewhere else. Then I think about living somewhere else. How did I end up here? I could have lived in Sweden or Spain. I could have lived in South Africa or China. I think of Mexico, less than two miles down the road.

  “¡Niña!” A woman’s harsh voice pulls me from my thoughts. I open my eyes and see Paulo’s grandmother standing in front of me, two jugs of water in either hand. “Are you okay?” she asks.

  I nod. “Sí, sí. I’m fine,” I say, feeling a little embarrassed. I look over at Paulo, who is bringing a box out of a back room. His grandmother stares at me for a moment longer.

  “I’m all right,” I say to her again. She doesn’t look convinced, but she nods and says something I don’t understand to Paulo before they both walk outside. I watch Paulo load the box and the jugs of water into the truck. I see a few of his grandmother’s wooden crosses through the passenger-side window.

  Paulo comes back into the store.

  “Your grandmother must think I’m crazy,” I mumble as we watch her drive away.

  “My grandmother doesn’t judge people on their journey,” he says. “She knows what it is to have to overcome.”

  I’m about to ask him what he means, but then I see the truck turn off the main road suddenly, heading into the nothingness of the desert.

  “Where’s she going?” I ask, hypnotized by the blooming trail of dust the truck leaves behind.

  “The desert. She leaves water and cans of food for those crossing the border. To help them survive,” Paulo says. “And for those who don’t, she marks the places where they crossed into the other world.”

  I watch the dust as his grandmother heads farther out. I want to go with her. I want to go deep in the desert. I want to cross into other lands.

  I don’t realize I’ve told Paulo I want to go to Mexico until I hear him say You’re crazy, no way I’m taking you across the border like this….

  His words continue but he sounds far away and I feel so dizzy. I close my eyes and lean my head back for a moment. Each word he says is a pulsing white star behind my eyelids.

  People come into the store, I think. I’m only half aware of the sound of their voices as the pulsing white stars behind my lids return with the words floating through my head. I try to make sense of my thoughts.

  Someone once told me we’re made of stars. I wonder how the stars that made me came together and ended up in my mother’s womb. I think about the stars that make up the bear in the sky. I see him dancing. I imagine me being born.

  A shooting star in a blacker-than-black sky.

  The radio on the other side of the counter suddenly makes a staticky sound and comes to life, and the delicate tinkling notes of a piano fill the gas station. I open my eyes, I think, but the room is empty. I look back, between the radio and the television, but it’s not the movie. It’s definitely the radio.

  And it’s definitely Patsy Cline.

  I stare at the radio, because it must be wrong. Nobody plays Patsy Cline anymore. It wasn’t on a moment ago; nothing was on a moment ago. But it’s playing now.

  I look up and through the large front window. I see the bear emerging, far away, from the hot desert. His black fur glistens under the sun. He runs, his paws pounding the earth. Sending orange mushroom clouds up to the sky with each step.

  I’m mesmerized.

  I shake. There are earthquakes. A dust storm rumbling through. The world is brown and orange.

  He will crumble the earth. The mountains will fall and bury me.

  I wait.

  I lose sight of him in the darkening day, but moments later the door opens and he stalks through it.

  I look at the red blooming flowers now in my hand. He smelled my blood. I offer him the paper flowers, but he shakes his head and sways to Patsy’s smooth, steady voice.

  —

  “Look what’s on, a movie about Patsy Cline. Watch it with me, baby,” Mom said. She patted her bed.

  Her words were only a little slurred. And she looked at me with sad eyes, so I did.

  I climbed into bed next to her, like I was ten years old again even though I was already fourteen. And I watched what was left of the movie.

  She scooted closer to me, wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and tucked me closer to her. I hated that because it was fake. It was strange for her to hold me like that. But I wouldn’t have resented it so much if she’d hugged me when I wanted her to, if instead of pushing me away like she usually did, she’d done this. Why do you have to be such a terrible daughter? I asked myself while looking at her blotchy, unhappy face, at her hand clutching my arm like she couldn’t bear to let me go. Because everything, everything, was always on your terms.

  And then Patsy was getting beaten up.

  And Mom’s breathing got faster; her chest rose and fell and her heart thumped loud against my ear. I looked at her and saw tears in her eyes, but she shook her head and smiled at me. A don’t you worry kind of look. But she held me so tight, I could feel the bruises forming on my arm.

  She asked me to get her some tissues. By the time I came back, she was curled up into herself, sobbing so hard she could hardly breathe.

  I just watched her. I stood there and watched. And I hated her because she drank too much and got so emotional and even love was on her terms. We couldn’t even watch a movie together.

  “You should drink less,” I whispered. And I tossed the tissues on the bed and went to my room.

  —

  I open my eyes. The bear is gone. The sun is going down and I don’t know if I’ve been sleeping, but I feel like I have. Paulo is turning off the television, grabbing some books, and telling me he’ll take me home.

  “Your name isn’t Ruby,” he tells me as the truck jostles us over rocks and holes in the earth.

  I shrug.

  “My grandmother. She knows everything about everyone.” He looks at me sideways. “So what is it?”

  I see myself taking a swig of the orange soda, stuffing pink gum into my pockets. Why hadn’t he stopped me?

  “Why’d you ignore me the other day?” I ask.

  He smiles. Shakes his head and laughs. “You hardly talk at all. When you do, you give me a fake name. You come to the store delirious or bleeding or stealing, and the first thing you ask me is why I ignored you the other day?”

  I don’t answer. He looks over again, but I stare at the road ahead.

  “I don’t know,” he says, like all of that was no big deal. “I figured there was a reason for the fake name. Then when you showed up, I thought I’d let you talk if you wanted to. But you didn’t, so…” He shrugs. “You were gone before I could decide what it meant.”

  I keep my eyes straight ahead, but I remember his face that day he and his grandmother gave me tea. So I know when he smiles, it is kind. And his eyes are soft. And he reminds me of the kindness people used to show me before I decided it only made everything else, everything my mother was, sharper. Before I made myself into someone people didn’t want to be kind to anymore.

  I’m tired, and I try not to look over at him, but I do.

  “My name is Dani,” I tell him.

  He smiles. “Are you sure?” I nod but look back out the window because I don’t want to say too much.

  He fills up the silence with general questions. Where am I from? What’s Florida like? Did I live near the beach? He’s never been to the beach.

  And I answer him. Each answer feels strange and familiar. Like I’m talking about someone else. Like I’m somewhere else, in
a past where I used to make friends.

  When we get to Shelly’s house, Paulo looks at me.

  “So you going to show up again tomorrow? Steal pink gum? Or are you going to stop walking miles and miles in this heat?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him.

  He gives me a funny look and I open the door and get out of the truck.

  “Hey, listen,” he says. I look at him and he taps the wheel. “I’m going into town tomorrow. Maybe you want to go. I mean, there’s not much to do around here and, I dunno. Maybe you want a break? From the desert?”

  I look at the desert around me. I want to ignore him, but I think about tomorrow. About the slashes on the calendar. Tomorrow will be yet another slash.

  “Ten?” he says. “I’ll come by in the morning. Around ten.”

  I wonder what it’s even like, hanging out with someone who doesn’t hate you. And I think, Can I trust you? It makes me laugh, the stupid thought. But Paulo thinks it means yes and I don’t have anything left in me to tell him no.

  “Cool.” He smiles again. I turn to go inside and he suddenly asks, “Hey, why pink gum?”

  I shrug. “They’re pretty,” I tell him. It’s not a lie. They are pretty.

  But they’re also like the sun.

  They explode in my head.

  He shows up at ten, like he said he would, and we drive to town. The world outside the open passenger window passes quickly, sky so blue, immovable mountains, blurry brown and orange dirt. The earth’s hot breath blows over us. I didn’t know wind could blow so hot. It makes me think something is coming.

  “I feel like I’m in a dream here,” I say.

  “In this place? You don’t dream big, do you?”

  “It just feels that way. I think if I leave, I’ll never find it again.” I feel strange, telling him that, and I wonder why I did.

  He looks over at me. “Is that good or bad?”

  “Both, I guess.” I don’t say any more. I lean my head against the window frame and we drive the rest of the way in silence.

  It’s beautiful, riding like this. The hot wind blowing over me. The way I become hypnotized by the passing earth.