Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  It’s the water that makes that scene what it is. Andy going through shit first, and then, the cleansing of water. Water pouring from the sky, pouring over him, washing him clean, like God himself is part of the escape plan.

  I probably wouldn’t make it. I think of slushing through the feces and I know I wouldn’t. I’d probably stay in my cell. I’d probably die there or wait to be killed.

  The movie ends and Shelly says she’s going to her room. She turns off the lights, locks the doors. She says goodnight, but she stays in the doorway and looks at me.

  “Dani…,” she says, and her voice has something in it that makes my heart ache.

  “I’m okay,” I tell her before she can say anything more.

  But she stays, like she’s watching over me. Like she can’t let me out of her sight.

  “Really,” I tell her.

  “Okay,” she says. “Sleep tight.” I watch as she turns slowly and walks down the hall. I wait for the click of her door closing, but it doesn’t come.

  I restart the movie and blue-white light fills the room.

  I watch until Morgan Freeman’s voice sounds far away, but then I feel electricity in the air. I open my eyes and see the bear standing next to me, the blue-white light from the television flickering on his glistening black fur. He leans down and roars gently in my ear. Then he walks over to the door.

  What do you want? I ask him.

  He looks back at me, as if he’s been waiting for that question. He nods, and then motions with his paw for me to follow.

  I sit up. Maybe if I follow his directions he’ll leave.

  Or maybe he’ll kill me.

  I don’t know.

  I think of Andy in that tunnel. I think of Meursault on the beach. I think of water and sun.

  I think of Ruby Falls.

  The bear has opened the door. I hear the gravel under his paws. I hear the door to the barn open. I’m afraid Shelly will wake up, see him, and know that I’ve brought him here.

  I look toward Shelly’s room. If I screamed, would she come running?

  There is something out there. But I don’t want to know what it is. And I don’t think I can go.

  Besides, Meursault is still on the beach. And, God, if I were struck with heat and exhaustion and blinding sun, I’d want someone to come for me.

  So I get up.

  I turn off the television.

  And head to my room. I look down the hall at Shelly’s open bedroom door and I want to whisper her name, just to see if she’d hear me. Just to see if she’d come.

  Would you face the bear with me? I want to ask.

  But I don’t. I go in my room and close the door.

  “Hey, I’m taking you somewhere,” Paulo says one morning, smiling at me when I open the door.

  “Where?”

  “Across the border. To Mexico.”

  “Mexico? Why?” I ask.

  He gives me a funny smile. “You said you wanted to go. The other day? Remember?”

  I don’t. “Mexico?”

  He laughs. “Yeah, come on,” he says. “Or what, you wanna stay in here the rest of your life or something?”

  The world is so big, Dani, and we’re not going to stay hidden in corners of it like roaches. We’re not roaches. We’re not vermin.

  “You have a passport?”

  “Yeah…,” I say slowly.

  “Let’s go, then,” he says. “Just for a little while. We’ll stay close to the border.”

  He smiles again and the eagerness in his face makes me say, “Okay.”

  I grab my wallet and passport. When I get back, Paulo’s already in his truck, the tape deck playing some music I’ve never heard before.

  “What’s this?” I ask him.

  He shrugs. “Just an old band my dad liked,” he says. “His favorite.”

  I listen to the music and the words don’t make sense to me, but there’s a vulnerability to the singer’s voice that makes me sorry the ride to the border is so short. When Paulo pulls into the parking lot of a gift shop on the U.S. side, he explains it will be easier to walk across than to drive.

  “We don’t have to deal with them checking the truck when we come back.”

  I nod like I know what’s going on, and follow.

  We walk by U.S. agents, then Mexican agents, and they just watch us.

  “Don’t we have to tell them anything?” I ask.

  Paulo laughs. “Nobody gives a shit if you’re leaving the U.S. to go to Mexico,” he says. “Only if you’re trying to come in.”

  Paulo reaches for my hand, which feels strange but comforting. I look down and notice how much longer his fingers are than mine, his nails square and broad. Looking at his fingers makes me want to bring his hand up to my cheek. But I loosen my grip and he lets go.

  “So this is Mexico,” I say, stating the obvious the way you do when you don’t know what to say. It feels different somehow, being here, on this side of the border, but also the same. I remember now, telling Paulo I wanted to come here. But I don’t remember why.

  “This is it,” he says, “the evil of the world, the pain in the side of the USA.”

  I feel guilty and idiotic for some reason and I think Paulo notices, because he just shakes his head and says, “Forget it, come on.”

  We walk toward a pink building with a sign that reads THE PINK STORE.

  The first thing I see when we enter are skeleton dolls, laughing skeleton dolls playing guitars, dancing, red roses in their hair. Paulo stares at one.

  “They’re cool,” I tell him.

  He picks the figure up. “My mother…she used to wear a rose in her hair. Her name was Rosa.” He touches the red rose in the skeleton’s hair, puts the figure back on the shelf carefully, and looks at something else down the way.

  I don’t know if he wants me to ask about Rosa or not. But I don’t want to be reminded of mothers, so I pretend he didn’t say anything and focus instead on the store, the wooden tops and postcards in a basket. The postcards have images of old-fashioned-looking guns, of women dressed in colorful skirts. There’s jewelry, turquoise and pink necklaces that look like candy, and rings that look like they’ve been carved from ancient rocks and picked out of the sides of mountains, like the ones Doña Marcela wears. There are tiny bottles of liquor and paper fans. And, strung from the ceiling, banners made of paper cutouts in the same colors as those little squares of gum.

  “Come on,” Paulo says, leading me out of the front room. We enter another room, full of crosses on the wall. Then we go to the back room, full of beautiful plates and bowls, mugs, and vases.

  Paulo goes down one aisle and I go down the other, looking at all the bowls.

  I look up, see Paulo staring at me through the open shelf between the two aisles.

  He is disheveled, strands of hair flying in every direction. His shirt never lies right on him; it always looks like he’s buttoned it one button off, but he hasn’t. His eyes, which change depending on the light, are the darkest shade of gray right now.

  “What?” I ask him when he doesn’t look away.

  “Nothing,” he says, expecting the question, but keeping his gaze on me.

  “Stop staring at me,” I tell him.

  “Why?”

  “It’s uncomfortable.” I stare back at him, keep my eyes on him just the same way he keeps them on me. “Do you like it? Being uncomfortable?” I ask when I see him shift slightly.

  He shrugs. “I don’t mind.”

  “Sure you don’t.”

  He laughs and looks away. I concentrate on a sugar bowl decorated with drops of pink paint, but I can feel him watching me.

  “Know what happens if you don’t talk about it?” Paulo says suddenly, quietly, so quietly I’m not sure he’s said anything. I look at him again.

  “It eats you alive,” he says. “It starts here.” He puts his hand on his chest, on his heart. “And it starts feeding on this, little by little, eating away at your heart until it kills it.”

/>   I stare at him. His eyes catch the overhead light and shimmer, but his face is serious.

  “Then it stops pumping blood to your body; your limbs get cold and go numb. You die because you have no heart.”

  I feel a little light-headed, like I got up too quickly. I focus on the sugar bowl again and run a finger over the pink dots. Paulo goes on.

  “My grandmother says you can grow a new heart. Do you believe that?” he asks me, continuing down the aisle. I follow on the other side.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He shrugs. “It’s hard. But you can grow another one. Or I’d be dead.”

  He walks to the end of the aisle and I follow on my side until we meet at the end. He takes my hand, and something about his touch after what he’s said makes me feel a squeeze in my chest.

  We walk around until we are bored and have looked at everything and are back at the front of the store. He grabs a cardboard box from a display near the register and a soda from the cooler next to it. The box looks like tarot cards until I read the name. Lotería. Paulo pays, but just as we are about to leave, I see a postcard with a landscape of little houses upon little houses on the side of a mountain and big, yellow bubble letters that say MEXICO! Next to the postcard are miniature crosses like the ones on the wall. I pick one up and also the postcard and pay for both.

  When we leave, I turn to look at the skeleton with the rose in her hair. She smiles her skeletal smile at me and I wonder what happened to Paulo’s mother and father.

  We walk up and down a couple of streets. Share the glass bottle of orange soda. The colors of stores and houses and shacks and churches along the streets are strange. Some so bright and others so weathered, like they’ve been washed out and rotted by too much rain.

  We walk like we know where we’re going, but we don’t. Neither of us. I want to lean on Paulo and feel his cheek against mine. I want to whisper the truth to him.

  We’re orphans, I want to tell him. Our mothers and fathers are gone. The ones who were supposed to love us the most.

  But he’s looking at a church and the people filing out and he pulls me toward it.

  We go inside and the stained glass is so beautiful it makes me want to cry, and Jesus is up on the cross in pain, and we sit in the back and try to feel God. But I think of Paulo and I think of me and I wonder if God is real. I look at the cross, then at Paulo.

  “I remember riding around with my dad in his truck. Listening to those songs he liked to sing.”

  The quiet of the church, and the light shining behind the stained glass, makes me forget to be careful.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Paulo doesn’t answer, so I immediately feel like I shouldn’t have said anything. What business is it of mine? He’s never asked about my mom. Neither of us has talked about our parents at all.

  “Life,” he says. “Life happened.”

  He doesn’t say anything more and I don’t ask. But a moment later, he continues. “He was a good man. But one day somebody got him confused with someone who wasn’t good. That was it. That was his crime…happens all the time.”

  Paulo looks at the crucifix in front of us and goes on.

  “My mom was always telling him we should stay in the U.S. with my grandmother. But my dad was a proud man. Proud of his country. Proud of his family’s land and their horses and cows.” He laughs softly. “He wanted to stay in Mexico, live an honest life. He’d say, ‘What for? They don’t even think we’re human over there.’ I’d hear them talking about it, my mom telling him things were getting bad and that we should go. She was worried that something might happen to me.”

  I stay quiet and Paulo keeps talking.

  “So he says to her one day, ‘Okay…we’ll go.’ ” Paulo shakes his head. “I know that was hard for him.” He shrugs. “I think he just sensed something.”

  He looks over at me, trying to see if I understand.

  I do. I want to tell him I sensed the bear. That I’d always sensed it. That he’d been coming for us forever. I open my mouth. I try to tell him. I try to tell him something, anything, about my mom. But I can’t.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I swallow, tell myself to answer. “Fine,” I manage. But really, I can’t get the images out of my head. Of bears and water and a man who was good and the women who were once our mothers but are now gone.

  “I’m fine,” I say again. He doesn’t believe me.

  “We should go,” he says.

  Outside, Paulo looks at the dirt road ahead and then turns around, as if he’s searching for something. I want to tell him You’re searching for your father. For your mother. You’ll always be searching for them. Because we are little pieces of them…because once their wombs were our home. But I say nothing and Paulo leads the way to the border.

  He holds my hand and we go to the official-looking building and we show our passports and we cross the border, and we get back in his truck, and we drive.

  But it feels like no matter what direction we go, or how long we drive, or what borders we cross, we’re never really going home.

  It’s been seventy-two days since Mom died.

  At night, I make another slash on the calendar and then take out the postcard I’ve kept in my book. MEXICO!

  I get up in the dark house and head to the kitchen, where Shelly leaves the computer. I wonder what I would tell her if she woke up and saw the glow of the screen on my face. Would I say I’m looking up the address of the cemetery? Would I say I’m sending my mother a postcard?

  I find the address, write it down. Back in my room I stare at the blank space for a message.

  I put the postcard away in the pages of The Stranger. Then get up and take it out again.

  I can’t think of anything I’d say to her, and then words crowd my mind.

  Dani was here.

  Were you ever here?

  Why’d you keep all this a secret?

  Who were you?

  Did I know you?

  Did you love me?

  I look down at my writing, writing that doesn’t even seem like my own. And then I hear him, outside my window. Roaring softly.

  “What more do you want?” I whisper to him. He roars again and I reach over to turn off the light, but before I do, I write one more thing.

  Are you sending the bear?

  “Let’s go register you at the high school,” Shelly says to me in the morning.

  I look over at her.

  “I’ve got copies of your records, birth certificate, all that stuff.” She holds up a large envelope. “The child services lady sent everything to me. School starts in two weeks.”

  Two weeks?

  School? The whole idea of it seems strange. Of people in classrooms being taught theories and equations that could never save them from bears, or airplanes falling from the sky, or the bad luck of looking like a not-good man.

  I’m about to nod, but I look at the envelope. Me, in that envelope, just a bunch of dates and grades and places I’ve been. Just facts. I think about Meursault.

  If Shelly told him he had to register for school, he would simply get on that yellow bus and let it take him wherever it wanted. Because what did it matter? What did anything matter? It would deliver him to a strange school where others would instantly sense he was different but he wouldn’t care. And he would go down the halls saying nothing. He would sit in the back of each class, observe everyone and everything, and then get up and go to the next class.

  But I don’t want to deal with teachers and assignments, with eating lunch at a certain hour, with fighting my way through crowded halls. Don’t think about it, I tell myself. Be like Meursault.

  “Did you hear me?” Shelly asks.

  I think of myself at the steps of a new school with crowds of people swallowing me up. I think of the strange looks you get when you’re new.

  But I also see myself at the steps of a crumbling school. I think of myself in empty classrooms, long after I should have graduat
ed. I think of the bear there with me. Still with me.

  “I can’t…,” I tell her. “I really can’t. Please…”

  She puts the envelope down. “Dani…”

  “Please…,” I beg her. And I don’t know why it feels like so much depends on this. “It’s not that I hate school, I promise. I was a good student.”

  “I’m supposed to make you go. This is the role I have, right? I mean, that’s what I’m supposed to do.” She looks at me like I have the answers.

  I shake my head. “No…”

  She takes a deep, controlled breath.

  “I’ll check into online stuff,” I tell her. “People do that all the time now. Or I’ll get my GED.”

  We stay that way forever, like a painting hanging in a museum. Untitled. At first glance you would wonder why the hell anyone would paint something so boring. But maybe someone would see the look in Shelly’s eyes.

  Would see the bear lurking in the hallway.

  Would see a hand squeezing my heart.

  Shelly shakes her head. “You have to go,” she says.

  I look at her. I know her mind is made up. I give up the fight.

  The bus picks me up in front of a playground that seems out of place here. Shelly drives me to the bus stop even though I insist I can walk.

  When I get out of the truck and sit on the low brick wall surrounding the playground, I expect her to drive away. But she sits in the car and watches me.

  The two kids I saw walking in the desert are there, too. The boy looks at me. He’s small and thin.

  “You’re Paulo’s girl, right?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen you with him,” he tells me. “You’re his girl.”

  “That don’t make her his girl,” the girl says. She has long, dark brown hair, and when the sun catches strands of sparkling red, it’s the color of cherry cola. “Don’t mind him,” she tells me. “He’s always looking for a girlfriend, trying to figure out who’s available, who’s taken. Plus you’re new. That got him interested right away.”

  “Shut up,” he tells her.

  She laughs and turns back to me. “I’m Jessie. What grade you in?”

  “Senior,” I tell her.