by Paul Pen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 Paul Pen
Translation copyright © 2017 Simon Bruni
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as La casa entre los cactus by Plaza & Janés Editores S.A. in Spain in 2017. Translated from Spanish by Simon Bruni
First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542046053
ISBN-10: 154204605X
Cover design by David Drummond
For Roberto, my house among the cactuses.
CONTENTS
SOMEWHERE IN THE BAJA CALIFORNIA DESERT, MEXICO
NEVADA
TEXAS
COLORADO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
SOMEWHERE IN THE BAJA CALIFORNIA DESERT, MEXICO
Sometime in the Sixties
Rose opened her eyes certain that something bad had happened. She slid her hand over the mattress to alert her husband.
“Elmer,” she whispered.
He turned away.
“Wake up.” She pinched his back. “Someone’s in the house.”
Elmer replied with a snore.
Rose got out of bed. She tiptoed to the door, treading on the spots where the floor didn’t creak.
She pressed her ear against the wood.
She heard herself swallow.
Holding her breath, she wrapped her fingers around the handle. She turned it, paying attention to each click of the mechanism, then opened the door just enough for one eye to peek out. The moonlight that flooded the room spilled through the crack, between her legs, pouring a silvery band onto the hallway floor.
All her daughters’ bedroom doors were closed.
So was the bathroom door.
Relieved, she let out the air she’d been holding in.
Then Melissa’s door swung open, blown by the night breeze.
The hinges squeaked.
“Melissa!” Rose yelled, coming out of the room. She released the door with such force that the handle hit the wall. Her footsteps rumbled in the hallway. She turned on the light in Melissa’s bedroom. From shelves, rows of stones with eyes observed her.
The bed was empty.
“Melissa!”
She lifted the sheet, looked under the bed. She swiveled around with her hands on her head, dizzy in a room that seemed enormous.
“They’ve taken her,” she whispered.
She pressed her hands against her belly, twisting her nightgown as if her daughter had been snatched from her just after birth.
Elmer appeared in the doorway.
“They’ve taken her, Elm,” she told him. “They’ve taken Melissa.”
“Nobody’s been taken.”
“So where is she?”
The question ended in a sob. Elmer held her against his bare chest, protecting her in his arms, calming her with his body’s warmth. She rubbed her face against her husband’s chest hair, let herself be rocked by his strong heartbeat. “They’ve taken her from us.”
Elmer led her to the bedroom window. He invited her to look outside, guiding her chin with his fingers. A single bulb glowed at the top of a wooden post, projecting a field of light onto the desert’s reddish sand. It also cast its light on Elmer’s pickup, parked near a cactus taller than the vehicle.
“See?” he said. “There’s nothing out there, there’s nobody.”
Beyond the post, everything was dark. Only the moonlight made it possible to make out the silhouettes of the rocks and cacti that filled the landscape as far as the eye could see.
“Nobody’s going to come all this way.”
Rose looked at the empty bed. “So where’s my daughter?”
She felt her absence in her chest, in her belly.
“I’m here, Mom.” Melissa spoke from the doorway. In her hands she carried a rock with eyes. She directed a question at her father. “Again?”
Elmer nodded.
“I went out to speak to the cactuses, Mom.” She pointed to her dust-covered slippers as proof. “Although the only one who paid any attention to me was Needles. I don’t know what the matter is with Pins today.”
Rose hugged her. “I was so frightened,” she whispered in Melissa’s ear. “I love you all so much.”
She breathed in the smell of her daughter’s hair, filling the void in her chest. Over her shoulder, she asked Elmer if she’d woken the rest of the girls with all the racket.
“They didn’t even notice,” he answered.
Melissa closed her eyes and covered them with her hands to show her sisters she wasn’t going to cheat.
“Are you sure you can’t see anything?” they asked at the same time.
“How could I?”
Melissa heard both of them laugh. She pictured them waving their arms around in front of her, feigning that they were going to thump her, or pulling faces to make her react.
“Come on, stop that. Go hide.”
Four feet padded around her. The sand crunched under their shoes as they moved away. Melissa could hear that they’d synchronized their steps so that their feet landed at the same time—an attempt to minimize any sounds that might give away where they were going. When they reached the agreed-upon place, she heard them leap.
“Ready?” she asked.
“No, wait.”
Her sisters spoke in synchrony. Consonants and vowels coincided so closely that it could have been a single person speaking. They were experts in doing it. Melissa imagined them smoothing down their hair, checking every crease in their dresses, agreeing on the exact way they’d show a hand or foot when asked, whether their fingers would be together or apart. She took a deep breath. The desert smelled like hot stone. Just as she shifted her weight from one hip to the other, the girls finished preparing themselves.
“Ready!” they both called at the same time.
Melissa opened her eyes. Her pupils adjusted without effort to the twilight. Dozens of cacti, all of them taller than she, rose from the land around her. The rocks were the deep orange that was normal for that time of the evening. Some kind of reptile hid under one of the stones when she moved. Her sisters’ simultaneous giggles came from behind two giant cacti. Both had enormous central trunks from which branches that looked like bent arms emerged on either side.
“I’m going to start,” she warned her sisters.
“Three commands and one step forward, more than that and you’ll be ignored,” they sang in unison.
“First command: I want to see the palms of your right hands.”
A hand appeared from behind the central trunk of each cactus, some ten feet from her. She observed them closely. At that distance she couldn’t make out the lines on the palms, which were always a good clue. She narrowed her eyes, trying to discern the shape of each little finger. She’d set out to guess correctly on the first command, but it was almost impossible from so far away.
“I’m taking one step forward.”
“More than that and you’ll be ignored,” they chanted, chuckling.
Melissa moved toward the cacti as the girls’ hands disappeared behind the trunks.
&n
bsp; “Second command?” they asked at the same time.
“Left arms.”
They both showed them. A yard closer than before, Melissa could make out the creases in her sisters’ wrists. She could also see the identical mole on the pale skin of each of the forearms. She tried to make out the difference between the thickness of each thumb.
“Third command?” the girls asked in unison.
“Wait, I’m still looking.”
Seeing the elbows would’ve helped, but getting them to turn their arms would count as another command, and she wanted to look at another feature that might give her a better chance of guessing right.
“Third order,” she announced. “I want to see your left feet.”
Two shoes sprouted from the bases of both cacti like creeping flowers. They were white, fastened with straps over the insteps. Melissa regretted her strategy—the girls had pulled their pink socks up as far as they would go. One of them had been stung by a scorpion on that ankle, and the scar would’ve been the clue she needed.
“I see you’ve cottoned on to that one.”
The girls laughed, thinking they’d won. Then Melissa noticed that one of the socks was less tight against its wearer’s leg. Melissa had stretched the elastic herself two afternoons ago, when she’d thrown herself to the ground to grab the little girl as they played among the rocks. It was enough information to solve the enigma.
“Daisy on the left and Dahlia on the right.”
The girls remained silent. She imagined them exchanging incredulous looks from cactus to cactus, shrugging their shoulders, perhaps mouthing some words.
“No way,” they said at the same time from their hiding places.
“Did I guess right?” Melissa already knew the answer. “Go on, come out.”
They emerged from behind the cacti.
“I was right!”
“There’s no way you could know. We’re the same.”
The girls examined each other from top to bottom, compared the arms and hands that they’d shown, inspected their shoes. Dahlia looked at her twin sister’s baggier sock but didn’t identify it as the telltale clue. She whispered something in Daisy’s ear.
“You cheated,” they said at the same time.
“I don’t cheat. I’m just smarter than you two.”
“Yeah, sure,” they added.
It still surprised Melissa how easily the two girls spoke at the same time, using the same words. Sometimes they whispered to each other before coming out with an identical sentence, but sometimes they did it naturally, without preparing. She laughed when she saw them pull up their socks to the same height, adjust the bands on their shoes to the same hole, realign the straps on their white dresses so they showed the same amount of shoulder. Daisy had even picked up a handful of the reddish sand that covered the ground and made a mark on her sister’s dress, copying the one on her own, just above the large-petaled flower they had embroidered on both.
“Let’s play again,” they requested in unison.
“No, it’s late. I can barely see.”
Melissa gestured at the horizon. The sun had disappeared. A coyote howled somewhere in the desert. A column of dust rose from the ground in the distance. It faded into the sky above the tallest cacti as it approached them.
“Daddy!” yelled the twins.
They held hands and headed home with synchronized strides. Melissa followed behind them. A large stone caught her attention before she reached the track. It was the size of the melon they’d had for dessert a few days ago. She picked it up, feeling its contours, and stroked a right-angled bulge. She held the stone at eye level to inspect it from the front.
“What’s that?” the twins asked, looking back.
She showed them the rock and its unusual bulge.
“Another one?” they said.
“This one looks like it has a nose.”
The twins walked on indifferently, but Melissa was pleased with her discovery. It wasn’t easy to find a rock with such an obvious face. She held the stone in her hands, resting it against her belly. They walked on until Dad’s pickup truck passed in front of them without stopping. Melissa closed her mouth and eyes before the dust storm reached her. The twins shrieked with excitement and spat sand through their laughter.
Dad stopped the vehicle in front of the house. It was the only home in sight. At twilight, when the exterior took on the same purple tone as the landscape, it seemed to camouflage itself and disappear among the cacti.
As if it didn’t exist.
Dad got out of the truck and slammed the door shut. The girls rushed up to him. They hugged him around the waist, each of them mounting a leg.
“Did you bring anything for us from town?” they yelled.
“Whoa now, let me walk.”
The twins ignored him. Dad walked with heavy strides to one side of the truck. He picked up some bags from the cargo area.
“I’m serious, if you don’t let go, I’ll leave everything here and by tomorrow the coyotes will have taken everything.”
Dad looked at the stone in Melissa’s hands for a few seconds. Then he asked her to help him with the girls. She left the rock with a nose on the ground and tickled the twins until they let go of their father. She offered to carry some of the bags.
“Don’t worry,” he replied, carrying several at once. “I just need you to keep those two out of the way. And get that one there”—he gestured with his chin at the pickup’s cab—“to quit reading.”
Dad shot off toward the house. He walked quickly to shorten the journey, his forearms swelling under the weight of the paper bags he carried on either side of his body, his veins thick like blue worms. He climbed the three steps to the porch without looking at them.
Daisy and Dahlia stood on tiptoes and peered into the vehicle, grabbing hold of the open window frame on the driver’s side. “Hi, Iris, what’re you reading?”
Melissa recovered her rock and rounded the truck, past the back where large metal letters spelled out FORD, until she reached the passenger’s window, which was open. Iris was reading a thick book, open on the loose-fitting skirt that covered her legs to below the knees. Most of the pages were on her left thigh, so she was about to finish. The slight movement of her head from the end of one line to another made her blonde ponytail swing gently.
“What’re you reading?” said Dahlia.
“What’re you reading?” said Daisy.
When they hadn’t agreed on their words beforehand and one of the twins said something ahead of the other, the second twin would repeat it. Iris aimed a raised finger at them without taking her eyes from the text, telling them to be quiet. The girls looked at each other and did up imaginary zippers on their lips. She passed the final page, where the writing reached only halfway down. As she finished the book, she gasped in surprise. In fright. Then she looked up and blinked to return to the world, as if coming out of a dream. Her mouth was open.
“What happened?” asked Daisy.
“What happened?” asked Dahlia.
Iris didn’t respond. It was as if she’d run out of words even though she’d just read thousands of them.
“What’s the matter?” Melissa pressed her.
Given the time her sister was taking to answer, she guessed some impassioned declaration was about to be made. Iris didn’t read books, she lived them, and everything she knew about the world, which wasn’t much, she had learned through them.
“The matter is that this world we live in is a very twisted place,” she finally answered, indignant at whatever had happened in those pages. “And that I don’t know why I try to read books written nowadays when what I really like are the classics from last century. The ones about love, about nice things . . . not this.” She closed the book and held it up as if it were irrefutable proof of what she was claiming.
Melissa read the title on the cover.
“What does ‘twisted’ mean?” the twins asked in unison.
“Twisted is something str
ange, disturbing, and ugly,” Iris explained. “Like what happens in this book. Like you two speaking at the same time.”
“We’re not twisted.”
Each word was perfectly in time, and they celebrated the coincidence by letting go of the truck to jump up and down with their arms in the air. They hugged as if they’d won the game of hiding behind the cacti.
Dad arrived back at the truck to collect more bags.
Melissa opened the door for her sister. They walked back to the house together with the twins ahead of them, laying the same foot at the same time on each step up to the porch.
“What’s that?” Iris asked about the stone.
“Look, it’s like it has a nose.” Melissa ran her finger over it. “And it has a very manly forehead.”
“Manly? Now that does interest me.” Iris stopped to examine the rock more closely. “You’re right, it is a bit masculine,” she conceded with a smile. “But it’s no use to me.”
“Did you see any boys in town?”
“Boys? In that town? If only. All I saw was three old men. All short, with moustaches. And they only speak Spanish.”
“Nothing interesting?”
“Nothing. I don’t know why we fight over who goes.”
“Because it’ll always be better than spending the day here doing the same thing.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“If you want, I’ll go every month from now on.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Iris punched Melissa on the shoulder.
They reached the steps, and from the top of them the twins spoke.
“And why can’t we go to the town?”
“Because you’re too little,” Dad replied as he came out the front door on his third trip to the pickup.
Before the screen door could close, a hand stopped it.
“So . . . I have a bunch of daughters, and not one of them is capable of helping me set the table?”
The twins whispered to each other.
“It’s just that the world’s a very twisted place, Mommy.”
The girls burst into laughter and dodged past Mom’s legs on their way into the house. She was drying her hands on an apron embroidered with a picture of a stone sun. She gave Iris and Melissa a questioning look.