by Paul Pen
“Good.”
Iris put Pride and Prejudice down on the bottom step. She went and stood in front of Mom with her arms outstretched.
“Give them to me.” She offered to take the sheets. “I’ll carry them.”
“Please, Iris”—Mom turned her torso to separate them from her—“they’re dirty sheets.”
“I don’t care. They’re his.”
Her mother objected to her comment with a snort.
“How is he?” Iris asked. “Is he improving? Do you need me to help you with anything? Do you want me to wash him before the ambulance arrives?”
Mom shook her head as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’m taking care of it.” She moved her daughter out of the way with her arm. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. Play with your sisters.”
“I’m going to wait here. The ambulance won’t be long,” said Iris. “Dad reached the gas station a while ago, and he’ll have called right away. It’ll be here any minute.”
Iris looked out at the road as if medical assistance was about to arrive, as if her eyes could already see the emergency vehicle approaching the house through the cloud of dust that its wheels would raise, taking the bends at full speed to urgently attend to Rick. She smiled at Melissa.
“He’ll be OK.”
She threw her hair over her right shoulder, tugging on it with her hands as she began pacing a figure eight in front of the house. She traced it twice, going over her own footprints. When she began the third lap, Melissa stopped counting.
Following the twins, Melissa went in search of Mom. After going around one side of the house, they found her at the washing machine. She poured a quantity of detergent on the sheets that to Melissa seemed excessive. Then she closed the lid so hard that the whole contraption shook. She leaned against it, hiding her head in her hands.
“Mommy?” said Dahlia. “What’s wrong?”
Mom gave a start, straightening up.
“With me?” She sniffed and forced a smile while she removed the hair from her face. “Nothing. Why?”
Rose pinned a corner of a wet sheet to the clothesline. She stretched out the material before adding the second clothespin. Then she clipped two more on at intermediate points to make it more secure. The wind that swept past the rear of the house dried the laundry faster but could easily blow it from the line. Standing between the two hanging sheets, hidden in a refuge of damp fabric, Rose raised her arms to try to enjoy the freshness that enveloped her, to relax with the clean smell.
“A tunnel!”
“A tunnel!”
Before she’d lowered her arms, the twins raided her refuge, running through the corridor of sheets from one end to the other. They went around her on either side.
“Quit running or you’ll kick up the dust and it’ll all stick to the sheets.”
Daisy and Dahlia stopped. They went through the tunnel in the opposite direction, this time on tiptoes. They touched the wet sheets with their palms as if they were the walls of a secret passage. One of Daisy’s hands was printed in dust on the bottom sheet.
“Come on, out,” Rose grumbled. “Running or no running, you’re banned from entering.”
She blocked the twins’ path, making them walk back. The little girls sniffed the air, their noses held up to the sky.
“They smell so good,” Daisy said.
“We want to live in there!” Dahlia breathed in with such relish that her arms stretched backward. “They smell of flowers, they smell like dahlias.”
“They smell like daisies.” Daisy filled her chest. “They smell like my flowers.”
“Dahlias!”
“Daisies!”
“Dahlias!”
While the twins yelled, Rose saw Melissa sitting on the ground, in front of Edelweiss’s grave, a hand on the earth.
“Actually,” said Rose, interrupting the argument, “actually they smell like jasmine . . . and melissa.” She waited for a reaction from her middle daughter. She raised her voice. “And melissa!”
Melissa didn’t hear her, or wasn’t paying attention. Rose saw the flower arrangement that she and Elmer had left on the grave a few days before, now withered. The desert did not favor life.
“I said the sheets smell like melissa!”
Daisy and Dahlia whispered to each other beside her before running to their sister. They sat down around the grave, playing with the stones that they themselves had covered in colored beads. Rose went after them, she scored a basket with a clothespin in the wicker container on top of the washing machine.
“Mom says the sheets smell like you,” said Daisy.
“They smell like jasmine and you,” Dahlia added.
“It’s detergent with melissa,” Rose explained, “and it smells great.”
“It smells great!” yelled the twins. “We want to live in a house of wet sheets!”
Melissa gave her sisters one of the sad smiles she’d learned to force to show gratitude to others. Then she returned her attention to the cross. Rose wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she explained what was going on.
“Weren’t you feeling better?” she asked.
Melissa lifted her bottom lip. The twins walked around the grave, inspecting the state of the rocks, indicating the ones that needed fixing. Melissa hugged her knees. She swayed, biting the skin on her wrist. She looked at the cross and then at Rose. At the grave and then at Rose.
“Mom,” she said after several seconds.
“What, honey?” Rose knelt to listen to her.
Melissa hid her mouth behind her knees, and her swaying grew more intense. Her eyes returned to the grave, but her gaze seemed lost beyond it, underground.
“Mom . . .”
“What is it?” Rose stopped the swaying by resting a hand on the back of her daughter’s neck. “You can talk to me.”
Melissa looked at her. She took a deep breath. For an instant, she looked as if she was about to share a confession, but then she let her shoulders fall with a sigh.
“I don’t know, Mom,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
But Rose could guess what was wrong. What was wrong was that she missed the teacher she could talk to without finishing her sentences, who gave her advice on how to be happy, and who taught her exotic words in Spanish. She bit her tongue to stop herself from screaming at Melissa that if she missed Socorro that much, maybe she should go live with her.
“There’s lots missing from this one!” Daisy showed Dahlia a stone from which most of the beads, blue ones, had fallen off.
“And even more from this one!”
“We have to fix them.” they said.
Rose regretted her thoughts. She stroked Melissa’s hair by way of an apology.
“When you’re ready,” she said to her.
A bell rang in the kitchen.
“Lunch is ready, come on.” She pulled Melissa up by the elbow. “You two, leave those stones. You can come back later if you want.”
The twins put the rocks back, moving them to hide the husked areas. They ran to the back door that led into the kitchen. Rose put an arm over Melissa’s shoulders. Her daughter looked at the cross one last time before setting off with her.
Rose laid out plates for her four daughters and placed a dish, still hot from the oven, in the middle of the table. Through the window, she saw that Iris was still outside, pacing up and down. She was looking to the horizon.
“Iris!” she yelled, leaning out onto the porch. “Iris! Lunch!”
Her daughter turned around but didn’t answer. She resumed her circular march with her hands hooked around her neck. As they ate their lunch, Rose watched Iris’s movements from the kitchen. She saw her go on tiptoes a number of times, forming a visor with her hand, hoping to see the ambulance appear in the distance. She saw her cross her arms and uncross them. Sit down and stand up. Stand on tiptoes again. At the table, the twins were discussing flowers and colored beads. Melissa was whisperin
g things to her rock. When they finished eating, Rose used tinfoil to cover the plate Iris hadn’t touched and a fork to scrape the remains of her own meal and the girls’ into the trash.
They all went out onto the porch. Daisy and Dahlia occupied the porch swing, its mechanism squeaking to the rhythm of their laughter. Melissa announced that she was going to talk to Needles, Pins, and Thorns. She picked up Iris’s book from the bottom step and handed it to Rose, who used her apron to clean off the dust that had covered it.
“Iris!” she shouted, her hands cupped around her mouth. “Come on, Iris, you have to eat!”
This time her daughter heeded her summons. Iris walked back to the house, kicking up dirt with each stride. She stopped at the bottom of the steps. Her face, shoulders, and neckline were as covered in dust as her book.
“Why hasn’t the ambulance come?” A film of tears covered her narrowed eyes. “Why hasn’t Dad called?”
Rose handed her Pride and Prejudice, as if by doing so she could evade the question.
Iris snatched it from her. “Why has nobody come?”
Receiving no response, Iris huffed. She held her hand to her forehead. Her chest rose and fell in time with her accelerated breathing. When she turned around to face the horizon again, Rose noticed how pointed her shoulder blades were. Iris let herself drop onto the second step. And there she remained, slumped against the handrail.
As the sun fell, the letters grew illegible on the page. It didn’t matter—Iris couldn’t read anyway. Sitting on the porch steps for hours with the book open on her knees, she hadn’t even managed to finish one chapter, paying more attention to the horizon than to the novel. The plume of black smoke in the distance had gradually faded until it disappeared. The brilliant blue of the sky had turned purple.
“Hang in there,” she said with her chin lifted toward Melissa’s window, sending her words up to Rick. “They’ll be here soon.”
From the kitchen came the sounds of the knife against the cutting board, a pot being filled from the faucet. Mom had started making dinner. Iris wondered what was causing the annoying tapping against wood she heard. She discovered it was the heel of her own restless foot.
“Hang in there,” she said again.
A cloud of dust was floating over the road, far off. Iris straightened her back. She followed its course to make sure it wasn’t just another whirl of dirt like the ones that had fooled her throughout the day. The dust cloud remained constant, moving in a straight line. Iris closed her book. She stood up. She blinked without taking her eyes off the track.
“See?” she whispered. “They’re coming for you. You’re going to be all right.”
Iris heard the handle of a knife being put down on the counter. The faucet being turned off. She heard Mom’s footsteps coming from the kitchen.
“What is it?”
“They’re coming, Mom.” She pointed at the mass of dust moving ever nearer. “Do we have to bring him down?”
“Iris . . .”
She ran to the entrance to the road without listening to what Mom had to say. The smile on her face relaxed her jaw muscles, which had grown stiff with tension. She was suddenly aware of the hunger she felt. Her stomach grumbled when she remembered how she’d turned down the meal that Mom had offered her so many times in the afternoon—she’d even left the plate on the porch step, until Daisy and Dahlia’s constant running had covered the tinfoil in sand.
She went on tiptoes, feeling a sharp pain in her calf muscles. The dust cloud now reached the tall cactus, the place where it would have to turn onto the track that led to the house. Iris wet her lips. She stretched her neck. When the source of the moving dirt cloud was visible, she sighed.
It was Dad’s pickup.
She rested her heels back on the ground with her mouth open and her stomach contracting, crushing any hint of appetite once more. The truck passed by her, covering her in dust before she could react. She wanted to scream at her father, but she choked on grit. She coughed. She ran after the vehicle, waving her arms. The dust cloud made her invisible.
“Dad!”
The pickup stopped a few yards from the porch, where the twins had just appeared. They ran at Dad from the front, while Iris ran at him from behind. They reached him first, hugging his waist. Iris caught up with them, almost breathless, but she used the little breath she had left to yell.
“Why haven’t you called?” Each gulp of air scraped her throat. “What about the ambulance?”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Why hasn’t anyone come?” Iris felt the saliva sputtering from the corners of her mouth. “It’s almost nighttime. Why haven’t you called? Why didn’t—?”
“I called,” Dad cut in, raising his voice. “I called.”
Iris threw her head back, frowning.
“Don’t make that face, of course I called.”
“And?”
“I called this morning. They asked me a lot of questions. Where’s he hurting, what’s wrong with him, whether he can breathe. They didn’t consider his condition an emergency.”
Iris tried to say something, but she choked on her words. Dad glanced to one side before going on.
“He’s not bad enough for them to send us an ambulance. We’re a long way away, honey. It’s over four hours here and back from the hospital. They can’t use the vehicle and ignore other emergencies, real emergencies. The kid doesn’t need urgent attention.”
“What?” Iris breathed through her teeth, her hands on her waist.
Dad tried to take her by the shoulder, but she stepped back.
“He can recover here with the right care.”
“In a girl’s bed?”
“We’re taking care of him.” Mom appeared next to Dad. “If the hospital themselves don’t consider it an emergency, well, they know more than we do. And more than you do.”
Iris looked up at the sky and let out all the air she had left. She covered her face with her hands and shook her head.
“I hope the vultures eat him,” said Dahlia.
“Yeah, that way he won’t steal our pictures,” Daisy added.
Tears moistened Iris’s palms. She took them away, revealing her face. The twins held hands when they saw it.
“What have we said?”
“Iris, do us a favor,” Mom said. “We’re the grownups, and we’re taking care of the situation.”
“Your mother’s caring for a man who fired a gun at her, don’t forget.”
Iris screamed with her teeth clamped together, her fists clenched over her belly. Continuing to look at her parents, and even at the twins after what they had said, made her chest hurt. She paced, sobbing, retracing the footprints she’d made when she still thought someone would come to tend to Rick. Her parents yelled her name from some indeterminate place, their voices changing position. Dad appeared in front of her, his arms outstretched. She managed to dodge him. She ran without direction until she saw Melissa in front of her cacti, in the distance. She fled toward her, away from the others. She sat on the ground beside her.
“I love him,” she sobbed with her head on her sister’s shoulder. “I love him.”
Melissa hugged her. She made a hushing sound in her ear. She wiped Iris’s tears with her fingers, the dust scraping her cheeks.
When Iris looked at her sister, she was surprised. “And why’re you crying?”
Melissa shook her head, making nothing of it.
The moon was red that night, like a wound on the sky. Elmer observed it from the broken window in Melissa’s room. The weak glow of that lesion did little to illuminate the landscape, turning the forest of cacti into a mystery of dark and spines. On the land near the house, boulders stood out in the blackness, the dying light of some star reflecting on their surfaces. Beyond them, an animal’s skull was bright among the remains of four burned-out trucks.
A black smudge fluttered in front of Elmer’s eyes. An insect perched on the intact windowpane, its wings unfolding against the glass. It was
a dark moth, as big as the palm of a hand. When one of these appeared at the gas station, his workmates yelled and swatted at it to scare it away. They called it the Mariposa de la Muerte, the Butterfly of Death, and swore that it was a harbinger of death. Elmer didn’t believe in local superstitions, but he banged on the windowpane to make it leave. The moth remained motionless on the other side of the glass, big as a bat. He had to stick his hand outside to frighten it off.
“It’s beautiful . . .” Rick whispered behind him.
Elmer turned around. The kid spoke with the side of his face resting on the pillow, looking out through the window. He barely moved his lips, and he was fighting to keep his eyelids open.
“The moon . . .”—a string of saliva spilled from the corner of his mouth—“so red. So lovely . . . Is it nighttime already?”
“I’m going to have to make you go to sleep again.”
“No . . . please. I had a nightmare . . . I was tied up and . . .” He abandoned the sentence with a groan.
The blister pack crackled between Elmer’s fingers, which trembled at the idea of continuing to sedate the kid. He took out a pill. He positioned his thumb over the next one along, wondering whether to administer such a strong dose again. He made the plastic click, but left the pill in the packaging. He placed just one Dormepam in Rick’s mouth, separating the kid’s teeth with his fingers. He let it drop into Rick’s throat before pouring half a glass of water on top of it. A cough spattered his face. He had to tip the kid’s head back so that the liquid and the medication were pulled in.
Rick opened his eyes, just a crack. “All I want is to tell my mom . . . so she knows Elizabeth was happy here . . .” he murmured. “The moon . . . it’s so red . . .”
Elmer left the room. Iris was waiting in her doorway. When he looked at her, she slammed the door shut and turned the lock angrily. Elmer checked the twins’ bedroom. They were both asleep on the edges of their beds, as close as possible to each other. They were breathing in unison. Elmer closed the door without making a sound and locked it from the outside. Downstairs, in the living room, a light was still on.