Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  When we pull up to our trailer, I see Mama just where we left her. I notice she is barefoot, standing in the sharp pebbles and dirt. I see Daddy’s car parked where it always is, by the side of the house, for anyone and everyone to see. It feels like a beacon, as inconspicuous as a damn disco ball. I notice the way Joe slows down, scans everything, takes it all in slowly, his eyes lingering on Daddy’s car and then on Mama.

  “Looks like he’s back,” he says as he puts the car in park. Anna looks over at him but doesn’t budge. Joe’s car is a two-door, so I can’t get out until she does, and so we both sit there, looking at Daddy’s beat-up Monte Carlo.

  “Want me to go in with you?” Joe asks Anna.

  “Jesus Christ!” I say, shaking my head. “Are you insane?”

  He looks back at me. “What is your problem?”

  “I don’t have time for this,” I say, gathering my backpack and pulling on the seat to stir Anna.

  “No, I mean it. What do you have against me? I’m trying to help.”

  “We don’t need your help,” I tell him. “We don’t need anyone’s help, and you should get out of here before he comes out and shoots you.”

  I can tell the thought makes Joe nervous, but he grabs Anna’s hand and turns his gaze on her and says, “I’ll go in there with you.”

  Anna shakes her head, but makes no move. Instead she looks down and I think she’s going to cry.

  “You don’t have to go home,” Joe says. “I’ve told you. I’ll help you.”

  This time, I hit the back of the seat hard.

  “Let’s go, Anna,” I tell her. “Mama’s waiting for us.”

  I want Anna to remember Mama. To remind her that we can’t leave her.

  She stares at Mama and I see something in her expression that makes my stomach turn. I wonder if she won’t suddenly beg Joe to Drive, just drive!

  “Anna! I’m not gonna sit in this car all day,” I tell her. It’s hot, and driving with the windows down has left me sticky with dirt and sweat.

  Anna pushes the door open. But Joe doesn’t let go of her hand and she turns toward him, searching his eyes, taking refuge there. For a horrible moment I think she’ll blurt out the truth. He’s dead. She killed him! Instead she stays loyal and silent. And Joe eventually lets go and leans in to kiss her unbetraying mouth.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he whispers.

  She nods and gets out.

  I push the seat forward and do the same.

  “You’re welcome,” Joe mumbles. “Hey, is your mom all right?” I look at him and I want to tell him I didn’t ask him for a ride, that nobody asked for his help and I don’t owe him any thanks. But it’s not worth it. So I slam the door shut and stand next to Anna.

  “Can you just go?” I tell him. The sun pricks at my skin and reminds me where we are, who we are, what has happened. Joe’s stupid questions irritate and piss me off. “Get the hell out of here already!” My skin burns and my mind is blazing, so when he doesn’t go, I kick his car.

  He gives me a long look. The kind that makes my words and behavior echo.

  “You’re a cold bitch, you know that, Shelly?” he says, and he revs the engine, throws the car into drive, and speeds away.

  “Why’d you do that?” Anna asks.

  “Do what?”

  “Make him leave. Why do you have to be like that? He could’ve—”

  “He could’ve what?” I cut her off. “He’s too fucking nosy! And he thinks he’s so much better than us, like he can save us or something. Because he’s got money and he doesn’t live here”—I gesture around us—“fucking here, in the middle of nowhere. And are you stupid enough to think anyone can save us? That a guy can save you?”

  I can see how my words wound her, but I don’t care. I’m glad. Maybe it’ll get through to her that she can’t depend on anyone. That she’s better off without a guy in her life. All she had to do was turn her face and look at Mama to see that. Or look at us. “Is that what you think, Anna? That Joe will fix everything?”

  “He…he loves me….”

  “Loves you? Loves you!” I shake my head. “You’re so stupid! He wants to get in your pants, is all, Anna. That’s all he wants. Why else would he hang out with you?” My words are like the tip of a knife, nicking her face, neck, and arms. She looks at me like I’m horrible. But I can’t stop myself.

  Anna’s eyes are blue, the exact same shade as mine. But in her face they look bluer somehow and express more than mine ever could. Right now they reveal the exact degree of hate she feels for me. But the truth is, Anna is beautiful. She can make angry men love her. She can make boys forget who they’re supposed to be in love with. But she’s too soft and easily broken and I have to tell her these things so she can be tougher.

  If I had the time to explain, I’d tell her I’m sorry I have to be this way. But I don’t. Because there’s Mama to worry about.

  “Go inside, Anna. I don’t have time for this.”

  I walk over to Mama, half expecting her to have burned to a fine crisp, standing outside for so long. The mug is on the ground, beside her feet. I reach for her hand, wondering if she’ll turn to dust and blow away. But no, she stays, her hand small and thin but solid in mine.

  “Come on,” I tell her. “It’s time to go in.”

  “I killed him,” she tells me. “I killed him.”

  “Mama…”

  “I didn’t mean to…but I did…I couldn’t stop.” She looks at me. “What have I done?” she whispers. Her hand shakes as she looks back at the trailer.

  The way she talks scares me.

  I look at her, her face darkened by the sun and dirt and wind. She looks older than she did this morning. Her hair is tangled around her face. I reach to smooth it, to touch her and make sure she’s real, and it’s then that I see a white truck appear beyond her, on the horizon, heading in our direction.

  “Let’s go inside,” I tell her. But she stays where she is.

  The truck comes closer and slows down. I see Doña Marcela’s daughter, Rosa, with the guy who started picking her up at our bus stop last year. Within a month, she stopped coming to the bus stop altogether.

  Rosa is looking at us. I can just barely make out her face in the darkness of the truck’s interior, but she is peeking out at us, just like she did when we ran to Doña Marcela’s house in the middle of the night and she cracked open her bedroom door.

  The guy is handsome, but his mouth twists in a way that makes me think he might spit on us as they drive by.

  We all look at each other, but nobody waves, nobody calls out a hello. I’m not even sure Mama notices them, and then they’re gone.

  “Well?” Anna calls from behind us. I forgot she was there. I forgot she existed. The heat and the sun make you forget, make you unsure of what is real and what is a mirage. Maybe that’s why Mama has been standing here all day.

  “Go inside,” I tell Anna.

  She shakes her head. “I can’t.” She walks away, in the direction of the bus stop.

  I want to go after her, but I stay with Mama. We don’t move. The white truck drives back again, this time without Rosa, heading toward the border.

  Only when she starts to sway on her feet, dehydrated, her eyes half-closed, telling me it was all a dream, am I able to get Mama inside.

  It was a dream, she mumbles. A terrible, terrible dream.

  I give Mama water. I see her coming back.

  I look at him on the floor. A body.

  It will start to smell soon. I know we have to do something about it.

  But what I do is sit with Mama while she smokes. And what I do is remember everything he ever did to Mama. I remember every bruise on her body, every welt on her face, every black-and-blue eye swollen shut. I remember every choking sound I ever heard in the middle of the night, until the gagging sounds fill my head and leave room for nothing else.

  But somehow his nice smiles and his sometimes-happy eyes flash through my head. Was that real? Maybe. A
nd the feel of my hand in his when I was little, and his arms carrying me. Quickly, I send that Daddy away.

  And I’m left with the one who was always around. The one who I finally pissed off enough to hit me and tell me he was not going to be judged by his daughter, the one who picked me up and threw me against the table. Who hit me harder with every blow I landed back on him. Who finally had enough of my shit and threw me to the floor and put his hands around my neck until all I saw were black dots.

  I hate you. I hate you. I hate you, I tell that guy.

  I hold on to that hate. I let it fill every inch of my body. I let it run wild in my veins so I can figure out how to do what we have to do.

  And when I open my eyes and see dark setting in, I just hope I have enough hate to convince Mama.

  I sit on the floor and look at her lighting another cigarette, waiting for her to say something. She smokes half of it before she speaks.

  “It’s wrong….What I did was wrong. I didn’t mean to, but…,” she says. “You all have to know that.”

  “I know, Mama,” I whisper.

  “I’m as bad as him now. Worse.” She looks at me and then quickly away. “I’m gonna have to pay with the rest of my life.”

  She takes another drag and I see how the cigarette shakes between her lips. Her eyes fill up and she blinks away tears and takes a deep breath.

  “I don’t know what’ll happen to you girls. Foster homes, I suppose. I don’t know. I didn’t…I didn’t think it through. I should’ve just—”

  “No, Mama,” I tell her before she can finish. She thinks she should’ve just kept taking the punches, taking the slaps, let Daddy expel every bit of his anger on her, on her body. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I would have, though,” she says. Her voice is strained and I see the way she tries to keep her emotions in check. A lifetime of trying to keep herself in check. “I could have. But I couldn’t let you…” Her eyes fall on me and the tears come out anyway. “I couldn’t let you take it. I told him, the day he touched you girls I’d kill him. I told him.”

  She covers her face and her crying is quiet, but it shakes her whole body and it kills me. It kills me the way she huddles and cries and tries to keep it all in. I think she’ll never stop shaking. I think she’ll never run out of tears.

  Finally, her shaking slows to a quiver. She takes a deep breath, reaches a shaky hand for her cigarettes. She lights another one and inhales likes she’s drawing strength from it and then she lets the smoke out in a long, slow trail.

  “You’ll drive me to the police station in the morning,” she says suddenly.

  She looks at the body. “Or tonight.”

  I answer her. At first, I’m not sure I’ve said what I said. But then I can feel the words in the air, silent, invisible words swirling around, waiting to be acknowledged.

  I repeat them. I make them solid.

  “Let’s bury him,” I say, looking at her. “Tonight. Let’s bury him. We don’t have to tell anyone.” The plan I’d been coming up with while I filled myself with hate and thoughts of how unfair it was he could still hurt us, hurt us forever, send Mama to prison and Anna and me to who knows where, comes out in alarming detail. “Nobody will question it. We’ll say he left. Just like last time, when we thought he was gone. When we thought he wouldn’t be back and you started working at the gas station. We were fine, until he came back. We’ll be that way again. Only he won’t come back. Not this time.”

  Mama’s eyes are getting wider with every word that comes out. I should stop. I should stop talking so she doesn’t look like the soldiers Daddy talked about, the ones carrying their own arms. So she doesn’t look like she’s not sure yet if she survived. If she’s still breathing. But my words keep tumbling out.

  “We can do this,” I tell her. “We can.”

  I get up and sit next to her. I touch her split lip, her bruised arms. I touch her hair and think of how he slammed her head on the table while she tried to protect me. I think of how she told us to Get outside, get outside! And we did. And she took the rest of those blows. For me.

  “It’s not fair,” I tell her. “It’s not fair what will happen if…” I feel tears slide down my cheeks and neck, under the collar of my shirt. “You can’t leave us,” I whisper, feeling like I’ve already lost her. Like the little we do have, each other, has already been taken away. “It’s not fair,” I say again.

  I’m crying harder even though I try not to. I don’t want to cry. I’m filled with rage and anger. I’m strong, too fucking strong for him to bring me down.

  But I need Mama. She rescued me and I need to rescue her. So I wipe away my tears and assure her.

  “We won’t say anything,” I repeat. “We’ll tell anyone who asks that he ran off, went to California. Or Arizona. Or Mexico. That’s what we’ll say.” I look at Mama, but she looks at me so sadly, I know she’ll say it’s impossible. I know she’ll tell me we can’t.

  “No,” she says as she pulls me closer, tighter, my arms aching with each squeeze and that word puncturing my heart, which I hadn’t known was filling with hope.

  “Mama, please…,” I cry. “Please.”

  “Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t say California. Or Mexico. Or any of those places.” She speaks slowly so I hear every word. I keep my head on her chest for a moment, listening to her racing heart, feeling it. “We’ll keep it simple.”

  I look up at her and I understand. I wipe my eyes, my nose, even though I’m crying harder. Even though I’m choking on relief.

  She nods and shushes me, smooths back my hair, pulls me into her again. “We’ll just say he left. And we don’t know where the hell he went.”

  I nod. And I thank God. I thank God even as I worry about my soul.

  The last time he left was at the beginning of the school year. But he came back just like I knew he would. I spotted his car before Anna did. I spotted it because I looked for it every day. Because I didn’t want to be taken by surprise. It was after school and we’d walked home from the bus stop.

  I remember wondering if we’d find Mama dead when we walked into the trailer.

  But Mama and Daddy were both at the small table, drinking coffee. Daddy clean-shaven and fresh, looking back at us with eyes so blue.

  “There they are,” he said as we walked in. He stared at us like he couldn’t believe we were real. “Jesus, when’d these girls get so beautiful?” he said to Mama.

  Mama smiled. “They’ve always been,” she said.

  He got up and pulled us both to him, in one great hug.

  His hair was short and his clothes smelled like cigarettes and laundry detergent.

  “Daddy?” Anna whispered as he pulled away and looked at us again.

  “Don’t look so surprised, for Christ’s sake. Of course it’s me,” he said. “In the flesh, baby. All polished up and feeling brand-new. And I am.”

  He looked at Mama and she smiled again. And she sat there and looked at us like she believed him.

  She looked like she wanted to believe him. Like she’d give anything in the world for it to be true.

  He pulled out a bracelet for Anna, one that looked like the sparkly one Mama had on her wrist, and then pulled one out for me. And Anna asked him where he’d gotten them and he talked about somewhere he’d been in California and about how he’d found Jesus and now he knew how to be right because Jesus was with him. And I looked at the crucifix that hung over our trailer door, where Jesus had always been, and wondered how Daddy didn’t see him there. But Anna went from being terrified to downright joyous. I kept my eyes on Mama to see if she believed any of this. And Daddy kept his eyes on me.

  “You’re awfully quiet, Shelly,” he said. I remember how he said it and how he smiled, but I wasn’t as stupid as Anna. “Aren’t you happy I’m back?”

  No. “I’m just…surprised, is all,” I told him.

  “Surprised?” He nodded and I knew he wanted to stare me down, but Mama was watching and Anna was talking, so
he stared for just a second, just long enough for me to see he wasn’t stupid either, and then he smiled bigger, tighter. “Course you are, baby,” he said in just that way, that way that let me know he was still who he had always been.

  I looked at Mama and saw beneath her smile that said Yes, he’s brand-new to the fear just beneath it. She was who she’d always been too.

  When we went to the buffet an hour away to celebrate Daddy’s homecoming, to celebrate him, Anna looked like she was five. She looked like she’d forgiven him everything because he smiled at her and they shared cotton candy. There wasn’t a trace on her face of the questions that were burning inside me, like Where the hell has he been?

  And has he stopped drinking?

  And where is the woman he left with, the one who stared at us from the passenger seat and look bored even as Mama yelled after him that he couldn’t take all the money, not all the money! What am I supposed to do?

  And does he really think a fucking bracelet is going to make us forget? Just forget everything?

  Does he really think we believe he’s any different?

  And why? Why the hell did he come back?

  Anna didn’t ask any of those questions, and Mama didn’t either. I only thought them, but I swear, as he sat there eating, I swear he could read every single one of them as they flashed through my mind.

  And he hated me for them.

  The first sign he was really back was when he made Mama quit her job. He never liked her to work. Said he alone could provide enough for his family. Then the empty beer bottles showed up, in a line behind the trailer. I saw them even though Mama and Anna pretended they didn’t. I noticed that the fresh, clean smell he’d come back with, the smell he wanted us to believe was salvation and meeting Jesus, was gone. And once again the warm, sour scent of beer emanated from every pore of his body. I knew exactly who Daddy was. And who he wasn’t. He couldn’t fool me.

  So when the bottles clanked against each other, fell, and rolled with the wind, I made it a point for him to see me looking after them. I wanted him to know.