We were washing our hands in the bathroom. Mom was making dinner and Papi was on the couch watching television. We were washing our hands at the same time over the sink, but I finished before her and felt I’d done it wrong, so I washed them again. And still I finished before her. I said, “Why you taking so long?”
“Because, I’m doing it right.”
“Smart-ass,” I said, and splashed her face.
We’d decided, between all of us, that pendeja wasn’t a maldición but smart-ass was, so she yelled, “Luz called me a smart-ass!”
But before she could finish the sentence I grabbed her hair and pulled it, trying to make her shut up.
She called Mom but Papi came and pulled us apart. He grabbed me by my hand and took me to his bedroom and closed the door and took off his belt. He opened his hand and looked at me and said, “¿Lista?” And I nodded.
He pulled his arm back and lifted his eyebrows and slapped the belt against his hand as hard as he could, and I let out a yelp to make it seem as though he were hitting me.
EL NOPAL
I didn’t feel like remembering today so I laid out the cards close to each other so that they were touching like tiles, like El Nopal. Now they make up a collage and the water cards are on the bottom and the sun is on top.
I asked Papi once what the sun riddle meant and he said it was the roof of the poor. La cobija de los pobres. To the right of it I put El Catrin and to the left La Dama. El Corazón is at the center, and below it, El Tambor. Between them they make music. El Árbol is next to them, then La Rosa with La Chalupa and La Garza two cards over. Below is El Mundo y El Diablito. Next to them there’s the harp. If there were two I’d put one by the star and the other under the rest, where it’s at, so that in a way all of them could be close to the sound of music. On the opposite side are the parrot and bird, los primos. They fly in and out of the other cards. The Flag, the Soldier, the Indian, the Drunk. La Sirena is on the left. I laid them out and she ended up there, not far from the edge. I looked at the frog for a long time because I didn’t know where to put her. Her dopey eyes look like she’s about to jump. Like if she can see a fly we can’t see, and what do they eat, anyway? Those stupid eyes, the way she sits there. Wouldn’t it be funny if she jumped? Where would she go?
I went through the deck three times and I can’t find El Gallo. Maybe he jumped? Maybe he sang himself to death and no one heard him and so he went out the door and down the hall and out the building, cawing like he does to wake people up. But no one heard him, and we missed it. Maybe I left him at the house when I came here, which means by now he’s been swept up in the trash or hiding under a piece of furniture. If he were here I’d put him by the sun. Maybe he’s in some dark place trying to get someone’s attention, singing like he does, “Kikirikiki! Kikirikiki!”
Estrella had her own card, but there isn’t one called La Luz, so I chose El Sol as my own. But in the way that The Star needs The Moon, Luz needs El Gallo and so maybe without him I don’t have a voice. So what happens when something is missing? It’s like the thing that’s missing might be the one thing I need in order to win. And why do I always need the one thing that isn’t here?
Why don’t You bring her back so she can show them that she hit him too? That it’s not his fault. Like that they will let him go.
And how loud do I have to sing before You wake up?
¿Dónde está El Gallo?
EL VENADO
It was only a matter of time before we woke up and found her missing. I don’t know what we expected, but we were expecting something. And when it happened I went straight to the kitchen cabinet to see if there was any peanut butter left.
Mom was usually the first to wake up in the mornings, to make a pot of coffee and put the dishes away. The morning she was gone we figured she was getting milk at the grocery store. But it was different. Everything was the same as the night before. The dishes were in the sink and the table hadn’t been wiped. Liters of Coke were still on the counter, all warm. It was like she waited for us to fall asleep and then got her suitcase and went wherever she was going.
Papi didn’t come out of his room until later, and I wondered what their bedroom looked like. Maybe he realized she was gone because something was missing. Or maybe everything was the same. None of us spoke about it, not until the following day.
It was almost a year ago when she left. I was ten and Estrella was twelve.
The following morning Papi was in his room and Estrella and I were sitting on the steps that lead to the backyard. She kept asking me if I was okay, like all of a sudden she was my mother.
“You know she loves us, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “She’ll be back.”
“No, mama,” she said, and touched my shoulder.
I pulled away from her and said, “Who do you think you’re calling mama?”
She snapped and said she wasn’t going to try to help me if I was going to be that way. “Help me with what?” I asked, and pushed her. She pushed me back and then I punched her in the chest and she ran inside. I chased her to the bathroom but she couldn’t get the door open and so she lifted her arms in front of her. I kept punching her even though she cried.
“How’s that, mama?” I said. “You like that, mama? Huh, mama?”
We were next to Papi’s room and he opened the door and screamed, “¿Qué chingao?” We backed away and Estrella’s hair was all over the place. Her face was puffy and neither of us said anything. The sunlight was coming in from the window on the other side of Papi’s bedroom, and it only took a few seconds of us standing there, looking at each other, before I could tell we were thinking about her and wondering whether she was coming back.
Behind him, past his window, I saw something move. I heard Estrella sucking in her saliva, but when I felt something in the backyard, I turned. I couldn’t help it. Papi turned and saw it too. A deer was standing next to our only tree, staring at us with his brown marble eyes.
Then he ran off.
EL SOLDADO
When she disappeared, Papi didn’t eat for weeks. We’d find him holding photographs of her in one hand and a lighter in the other, flicking it on and off, thinking of whether or not to burn her face off. Sometimes he did because we found photos in the family album where there was a burned circle over a woman with a blue dress on. But I never heard him say he wanted to burn her face off. He just didn’t want to see her face.
The clothes Mom left behind were there to remind us, because who knew if she was coming back. Papi held the lighter but it wasn’t like he didn’t miss her, wasn’t like he wasn’t trying to figure out where she ran off to. Estrella and I thought about where she went, and whenever we’d mention it to him, he’d tell us to shut up.
That’s when Estrella started having ideas. She thought maybe they got into a fight and this time it was so bad that something happened. “But why would he burn her face off?” I said. “He wouldn’t do that unless she hurt him too.”
Why would he want to forget her? He burned her face, but then he held her photograph. Even though he didn’t want us talking about her, I saw him holding it, flicking the lighter on and off. And maybe it was because she said something or did something. She told him she was leaving and he hit her. But what about us? Why would she leave? She could’ve come to us in the middle of the night and whispered, “Get in the car! Come on.” Maybe I would’ve said no. Maybe Estrella would’ve said yes.
A few weeks after Mom was gone, it was a Sunday and Papi was still sleeping and we tried to make noise in the kitchen. Estrella washed the dishes while I opened and closed cabinets. When he came out of his bedroom he didn’t even notice we were standing there. We could’ve been monkeys and it wouldn’t have mattered. We asked him if he wanted some eggs.
I was putting the dishes away and put the bowls on the wrong shelf. Estrella said I wasn’t putting them where they belong. Mom would never put them there. Then he snapped, “¡Cállense!” and went back to his room.
Before Papi had a chance to throw everything away, Estrella and I took some of Mom’s stuff and hid it in our room under our beds. Most of it clothes. Only one suitcase was missing from the garage and we figured she had packed as much as she could. No photos, no knickknacks, not even all her shoes. Just whatever she could pack into one suitcase.
There was a T-shirt she used to wear to go to bed, baby blue cotton. Estrella brought it into our room, and I was shocked she hadn’t taken it. I thought it was something she’d want. It was too big for me, but I put it on and liked the way it felt against my skin. Estrella and I would take turns wearing it, but we were afraid the smell would disappear if we wore it for too long.
Estrella was at Angélica’s house when Papi caught me in my room wearing it. It wasn’t a school day. I remember sunlight coming in and Papi looking tanned against it, standing at the doorway with his boxers on. He had a mustache. He’d grown one after Mom had left, and on that day, it looked real pokey, like a scrub.
“¿Y eso?” he asked. He scared me, because I didn’t see him standing there. Mom’s T-shirt would blow up around my hips if I spun around, and so I was spinning and humming a song. His arm was against the wall and his armpit was black.
“Answer me,” he said.
I figured he wanted me to take it off and burn it or something. His feet came closer, so close I could smell him. He smelled like an unmade bed. “Dámelo,” he said, and his voice hit the top of my head. But I didn’t move, and I wasn’t going to give it to him.
“Dame,” he said, then hit me like if I didn’t hear him. I lifted my arms. After he pulled it off, I felt naked underneath. I saw him smelling it. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked. But he didn’t say anything.
I stood there in the middle of the room staring at the carpet with my fingers hooked in front of me.
“Oye,” he said, and I looked up. “What?” I said.
“No dices ‘what,’ ” he said.
“¿Mande?” I said.
“¿Mande, what?”
“¿Mande, Papi?”
I was wearing nothing but panties and I was already ten. But all I could think of was how much I wanted him to understand what I was feeling. I lifted my head and stood there as strong as I could because I wanted him to know that even though he missed the way she smelled, the way she was, the way she looked, he was taking her from me. I stared at him in the eyes and the light in the room was all gold and I didn’t have a shirt on and my hair was all pelos parados. I tried my hardest to show him how I felt with my eyes. And maybe. Maybe You passed through me. Maybe You spoke in a way my voice couldn’t, because then, it was like he saw something in the way I was looking at him, and he threw it back to me, in a gentle kind of way and it landed over my face.
EL SOL
It was ripe outside and we were lying out on the grass. Estrella was wearing the white bikini Papi bought her at Target, and I was wearing Hanes with small yellow fish. Papi was wearing boxers, the ones with blue stripes, rolled down two times.
“You’re going to burn if you do that,” I said, but Estrella looked at her skin like if she were made of something expensive. She’d brought a container of Crisco outside and was smoothing it over her legs. Her nails had been painted red the night before and she was wearing black sunglasses. “The bees are going to get us. We’re going to have to go inside.”
“Mija, let her be,” Papi said, as he sprayed us with the garden hose in his hand. The water was cold but it felt good in the heat, and I stuck out my tongue.
Estrella picked up her towel, lay down farther away from us, and started mumbling, “Ugh, Ugh . . . UGH!” Like if it were some language me and Papi were supposed to understand. “Be that way then,” I said. “I hope you burn.”
She looked at the sun with her sunglasses on and propped herself up on her elbows. Papi lay down, wiggling his toes as if ants were on him, and I lay down next to him. After five minutes I turned on my stomach and could hear a bee flying close to my shoulder. I saw Estrella lift the string of her bikini to see if she’d gotten any color.
“Take it off,” Papi said. And I thought the same. If she didn’t want any tan lines, she should just take it off.
“I’m not taking it off!” she said.
“¿Y por qué no? You want a tan so bad. Just take it off,” he said. He’d been drinking since breakfast. “No one’s going to look at you.”
I turned around and saw him taking off his boxers. He took them off, like normal, and tossed them behind him, laughing. I’d never seen him naked before. “That’s why we have fences,” he said, then plopped down on his stomach with his pompis in the air.
“Yeah,” I said. “No one’s going to see you. No one cares, don’t be stupid.” She was so disgusted she got up and went inside.
Papi turned and looked at me and made a face like, Oh well. He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and said, “Ándale, ¡otra!” Like when I’d dance for him by the garage. Or when he’d play music on the boom box. Or when he’d want another beer.
“¡Otra!”
I closed my eyes and fell asleep, and because there wasn’t Crisco in the air, there wasn’t a single bee that came near us.
LA MACETA
“¡Cállate, chingada madre!”
Tencha would get mad sometimes and change colors, sometimes yellow, sometimes green. But when she was in a good mood she’d put on her one-piece and swim with me in the pool. She’d say, “Somos sirenas.” All cute. Then wiggle her hips and call me sirenita.
I’d stay underwater in her pool for as long as I could and she’d think I was drowning. I could stay there for so long that if she saw me she’d think I was dying. I’d come out and see her at the edge of the pool getting close to me, all red, all over, moving like a gorilla. Like when they look confused. Yelling, “¿Qué haces? ¡Estás loca!”
“No,” I’d tell her. But she couldn’t hear me because her voice was louder than mine. I’d keep saying it as she dragged me toward the table under the portico. She’d dig her thumbs into my cheeks and pull down like if she wanted to see what was behind my eyes. “¡Me asustaste!” she’d say. Then I felt bad because her breath would shorten. Like if she couldn’t breathe. She’d rub her heart and say things like, “And what do I tell your Papi if something happened? What do I tell the police? How can you be so stupid?” She’d say so many things I wouldn’t have time to say anything back. And when she calmed herself down she’d give me a spoonful of sugar, pull me to her chest, and hold me so hard I could hardly breathe.
I walked into her house one day and saw Estrella telling Tencha that Papi was hitting her. Tencha was holding her arm like if she was about to tear it off, telling her she shouldn’t say maldiciones. Papi was a good, good man and he’d never do anything to hurt her. How in the hell could those words come out of her mouth? Tencha let go of Estrella’s arm when she saw me and called out my name like if she had forgotten who I was, but then remembered.
Estrella wasn’t supposed to say anything. “What did you say?” I said. And she got all attitude like she does. Because she’s older. Tencha looked at her and started screaming, saying she was a malcriada, to say maldiciones, to disrespect her father like that. Estrella looked at me and shook her head No, No, No. Because she knew I was lying and she was telling the truth. But I pointed to her like if she were some dirty rag a dog would lick. “He doesn’t hit you unless you deserve it!” I said.
Tencha grabbed a flowerpot and slammed it down on the floor. She screamed, “¡Cállense ya, chingada madre!”
We looked at her and the dirt on the floor. And because she’d said madre, not on purpose, I thought of Mom. Estrella thought of her too because her eyes welled up like if the words themselves had hit her across the face, and that’s when I knew why she was saying things about Papi. Tencha told her to go home and to lock herself in her room and pray until she knew what she’d said was wrong. Papi wouldn’t hit us unless he had to. There was a right way and a wrong way. Papi did thi
ngs the right way. And when it was time to protect us, he would. “You think he’s not allowed to hit you?” she said. “Huh? You don’t know what it’s like to be beaten! You better be grateful you don’t have your Buelo Fermín looking after you.” Then she called Estrella ¡Una chiflada! Una desgraciada!
Estrella ran out of the house and Tencha mumbled something under her breath. “Que Dios la bendiga.” Then she looked at me in surprise like if she’d forgotten I was standing there. I ran to the pool and held my breath and jumped inside.
EL CORAZÓN
When Tencha told me about it later she cried like if she were lost. She was at a friend’s house when she got the phone call and didn’t know what was going on until she drove down our street and saw the neighbors standing in our yard. The red lights, the white and blue. The crowd of neighbors. The police officers and yellow tape pulled around the trees.
She wanted to know what had happened, the way she was looking at me sitting in a room at the police station, upset that I wouldn’t say anything. But I couldn’t get any sound out. The officers told her what happened, but she wanted to hear it from me. I could tell she wanted to hit me like if I were a broken machine, but she didn’t. She kept squeezing her nose and wiping her eyes. She held me and then let go, held me again, like if she were confused of what to do. She couldn’t decide whether to stay with me or go to the hospital to see Estrella.
Eventually, she left because it was time for visitors to leave, and that thing started, when it’s hard for her to breathe. “I’ll come in the morning,” she said. But it’s like she’s too big for her own breath and she chokes on the things she tries to say.
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