by Paul Pen
Finally, Iris’s eyes came to rest on Rick.
Her hands acted on their own, covering her face, her eyes, as if someone else, or the most sensible part of herself, wanted to protect her from the horror. She breathed against the darkness of her moist palms, her breath warming her face. It suffocated her. She parted her fingers, opening them a crack through which she could peek at what she had in front of her.
The tangled sheet barely covered Rick’s body. It wound around his legs like a cloth reptile. Iris saw bruises on his chest, wounds on his abdomen, yellowish lumps by his knees. One of the bandages, the one that covered the arm he’d hurt while showering, was brown. On several parts of his anatomy she could make out cactus spines still buried in his flesh. Seeing the angle of his right ankle compared to the leg, she felt pain in her own. She let out a grunt.
“What’ve they done to you?”
She took a step toward the bed. The floor creaked beneath her. She found a whitish powder stuck to the sole of her shoe. She picked up the crushed blister pack. Dormepam. More boxes of the same tranquilizer were squashed under the collapsed shelf on the bedside table.
“What are they doing to you?”
Iris swooped on Rick. She kissed him on his mouth, his forehead, his cheeks. She discovered the dozens of wounds that the darkness had stopped her from seeing the previous night. She stroked the roughness of his stubble. A fevered trembling took hold of him. She held the glass of water to his lips. He didn’t react. She gave him a drink from her own mouth. She searched for his hand under the tangled sheet.
At first she didn’t know what the bumpy texture she found could be. She followed it with her fingers. It went around Rick’s wrist.
Rope.
But it couldn’t be rope.
Mom and Dad would never do anything like that.
She lifted the sheet.
Mom yelled outside. “Honey! Come on, I need that iodine!”
Iris barely understood what Mom was saying. Her eyes were fixed on the rope that bound Rick’s wrists.
“Iris!”
She knew a voice was yelling outside, but she didn’t care what it was saying. It was the voice of the person who’d tied up the hands of her wounded lover.
“They’re not taking care of you,” she whispered. “What are they doing to you, my darling? Are they trying to keep us apart?”
She asked the question very close to his face.
“Iris!” The yelling continued outside.
“But they will not defeat us.” Iris’s enraged declaration spattered Rick with saliva. “I’ll go for help. You’re going to be OK.”
“Iris!”
The voice sounded closer. She heard Dahlia crying. Through the window, Iris saw that Mom was walking back to the house, pulling the little girl along behind her. Her strides quickened.
Iris had to move.
She considered spreading the sheet out to cover Rick, to alleviate his shivering, but it would betray her visit.
“Forgive me.”
She left the sheet as it was. She checked the collapsed shelf, the bedside table, the floor. With her foot she pushed the trampled blister pack under the bed. She brushed the powder off her sole.
Mom’s footsteps sounded close.
Iris left the room and locked the door. She ran downstairs, skipping steps as she went. She passed the front door the moment Mom reached the porch, and collected the bottle of iodine from the bathroom. In one leap, she reached the kitchen. She slipped on the water that had overflowed from the sink. She gripped the counter to stop herself from falling. She’d left the faucet on. She turned it off.
Mom was inside the house.
“Iris!”
Iris had the key in her hand. The apron was in the middle of the puddle of water. She crouched down and returned it to the pocket. She looked around, searching for some excuse for her delay. Opening the bottle of iodine, she poured it on the table, as well as on her dress. She turned around just as Mom arrived in the kitchen doorway.
Iris saw Mom’s eyes inspecting the room. They didn’t stop on the puddle on the floor. Or on the dark stain on her daughter’s dress. They kept scanning until they located the apron. She crouched down to reach it, resting the toe of her foot in the water. She felt its contents. Her shoulders relaxed when she recognized the shape of the key. She tied the apron to her waist as if it wasn’t wet.
“What happened?” she asked. “What took you so long?”
Dahlia was whimpering beside her.
“I don’t know what happened with the sink, it overflowed. And to top it off this opened on me.” Iris showed her the iodine bottle. “Who knows how I’ll get this stain out now.”
She rubbed a cloth against the mark on her dress, fighting against the stain the way she wanted to fight her mother.
“It’s no big deal,” Mom said. “We’ll put it in the washing machine later.”
Iris scrubbed with such energy that the material burned her knuckles. Mom grabbed her wrist.
“Stop.”
She picked up the iodine bottle and shook it near her ear to check whether any of the solution was left in it.
“Clean that up before it soaks into the wood.” She gestured at the orangey puddle on the table. “I’m going to the bathroom with Dahlia.”
“Not iodine!” the little girl yelled on the way. “It stings!”
Iris tried to control her breathing while she wiped the table with the cloth. The liquid had reached Melissa’s science book. Mom had left it there in the morning. She picked it up by a corner and shook it, spattering her dress. She dried the cover and opened it to deal with the wet pages. On the first page appeared a name, along with a number.
Socorro’s telephone number.
Iris looked through the kitchen window.
Her eyes fell on the Dodge parked outside.
Screams came from the bathroom. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow . . .”
“Keep still now, I have to dab it with the cotton ball.”
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”
Mom reappeared in the kitchen.
“I’ll trade you taking care of your sister for cleaning up this mess.” She held out her arms, offering Iris the cotton balls and the bottle of antiseptic. “At least I know the mop isn’t going to kick and scream.”
Iris glanced sidelong at the truck and dropped the cloth on top of the iodine spill.
“All yours.”
Before leaving the room, Iris put the science book on its shelf. She dodged Mom on her way to the bathroom. She didn’t want to so much as touch her.
“Some mood you’re all in today,” her mother murmured in the kitchen. “And I was so relaxed, taking a nap.”
Iris disinfected Dahlia’s graze, dabbing hard with the cotton. The little girl began to complain, but soon realized that her sister was in no mood for a tantrum. Daisy and Melissa came into the house when Iris was throwing the cotton balls in the trash.
“Are you OK?” Daisy asked.
Dahlia nodded doubtfully, exaggerating her condition.
“Are you going to be able to keep playing?”
“Sure she is,” Iris replied, “it’s nothing, let’s go outside.”
As they left the bathroom, Mom spoke to them from the kitchen.
“That’s it, you just relax, your mother’s here to do everything.” She was wringing out the mop with her hands. “Honey, don’t look like that, it was a joke.”
Iris tried to force a smile, but it came out as a weird tic that barely lifted the corner of her mouth.
“You’re not going to change your dress?”
“When I get back”—she pushed her sisters toward the porch—“I’m going to get it dirtier at any rate.”
Outside, Melissa settled into the porch swing with her sketchbook. Daisy and Dahlia sat on the steps. Iris looked at the Dodge, biting the inside of her cheek. She encouraged the twins to play on the land, gesturing at the area near the truck. They whispered to each other.
“We’ve bee
n in the sun too long,” they said at the same time. “We feel like staying in the shade.”
“Are you really going to pass up a visit to the House of Crazy Mirrors?”
The twins looked at each other. The dents in the vehicle’s bodywork caused distorted reflections that always made them laugh. After whispering something in each other’s ear, they shot off in that direction. Melissa snorted. The whole family used that trick any time they wanted some peace and quiet on the porch.
“It’s not that.” Iris turned around. “I’m going with them. So I can make sure Dahlia’s careful with her hand.”
Melissa raised her eyebrows.
“All for me, then.” She stretched her legs out on the swing.
Iris went after the twins.
Daisy and Dahlia were looking at themselves in the truck doors, in the grille, in the bumper. They were blowing up their cheeks or curving their arms to one side of their body to accentuate the distortion. They laughed at each reflection, seeing themselves very tall, very fat, or very thin.
Iris climbed into the vehicle, on the passenger’s side. She sat there side-on, her legs hanging out. If Mom looked from the kitchen, she’d think she really was watching the twins. She laughed louder to blend in with the scene, while checking with a quick glance to see if the key was in the ignition. It wasn’t. She sent the twins to the rear of the Dodge, telling them that the license plate made a great mirror. She took the opportunity to fold down the sun visor.
The key fell onto the seat.
Daisy and Dahlia laughed when they saw the crazy shapes that their sister’s body took on when she joined the game. But Iris didn’t stop looking up at Rick’s window, mentally pleading with him to hang on, to wait. Between her legs she felt the heat of the key she’d hidden in her underwear.
Rose returned to Rick’s room when the orange sun was just perching on the horizon. At that time of the evening, the stones scattered around the room projected elongated shadows on the floor. From the broken window, Rose saw Melissa talking to her cacti. She was waving her arms in a heated way, which was rare in her conversations with them. She spotted the twins lying on their backs on the ground near the truck. They were opening their arms and legs, making angels in sand turned purple by the dusk. She knew Iris was on the porch, reading. The swing’s rhythmic squeak reached the bedroom.
Rick was snoring with his head twisted on the pillow, the sheet entangled with his legs. His dislocated foot had swollen until it hid the ankle. Rose looked away. The aftermath of their struggle was still fresh in the room, and on her body. Her right shoulder still hurt, and cleaning the kitchen had only made it worse. The strange sensation that her spine was out of place hadn’t subsided. She counted three bruises on her legs.
Rose gathered up Melissa’s stones and piled them in a corner, making sure the faces were the right way up. Two of them had lost their eyes yet smiled even in their blindness. She also tried to straighten the shelf, but the side still screwed to the wall restricted her movements. She tidied the bedside table by rebuilding the crushed medicine boxes, standing the lamp up. She threw the remains of the lightbulb in the wastebasket and picked up the pitcher. On the floor she found some crushed pills she swept with her foot.
There was a trampled blister pack under the bed—she must have kicked it under while they struggled. When she returned it to its box and saw all the sedatives together, an idea cast a shadow over Rose’s thoughts. Her eyes fell on the pitcher, then the glass. They strayed to Rick’s face and back to the pills.
She disentangled the sheet from between the boy’s legs. When she walked around the bed to cover him, she caught a glimpse of a golden sparkle on his face. A shining filament seemed to be floating above his mouth, bobbing on his breath. Rose took a closer look. Hooked on his stubble was a hair. A blonde hair. It ran down part of his cheek to the chin before continuing down the neck and finally tangling with the hair on his chest. Rose pulled it off. She pinched an end in each hand, establishing its length. It was as long as Iris’s.
“What?”
The word escaped her lips like a pant. A weight heavier than all of Melissa’s stones crushed her chest, making it hard to breathe. The breeze that came in through the window made the hair flutter. She looked at the broken glass. She walked to the window frame and leaned out. Her eyes followed the roof to Iris’s bedroom. She imagined her daughter’s feet treading those tiles in the night.
“She couldn’t have.”
Her heart was beating hard in her constricted chest. She left the room, locking the door. She went into Iris’s bedroom and searched the book-lined shelves, the wardrobe, the dressing table. She rummaged among the powder compact, the hairbrush, the perfume. She spun around, scanning the room, with no clear idea of what she expected to find.
She looked under the bed.
As she crouched, her own hair fell in front of her eyes, and the sun’s rays landed on it as they had on Iris’s. Could it be that the hair she found on Rick’s face hadn’t belonged to Iris? It was Rose herself who’d fought with him. And it was also she who’d lain on top of him. One of her hairs could easily have gotten caught in his stubble. One of the strands that was as long as her daughter’s.
Rose breathed out, kneeling beside the bed.
“You’re being paranoid,” she told herself.
She let go of the sample of hair she still held in her fingers. She used the mattress to lift herself up, which caused it to shift on the box spring. The corner of some unknown material poked out from underneath.
Rose pulled on it.
She found herself holding a dusty ball of white cloth.
Her jaw dropped when she stretched out the T-shirt.
Outside, in the distance, the usual plume of dust announced Elmer’s arrival. The sun had just hidden behind the horizon.
Elmer waved his hand through the window to greet Melissa, who seemed to be arguing with her cactuses. The twins appeared off to one side of the truck and ran through the cloud of dust after him. When he stopped the vehicle outside the house, he saw Rose on the porch, her arms crossed. She was yelling at Iris, who was reading on the swing. Elmer ran to them.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” He leapt up the steps to reach his wife. “Calm down.”
He went to touch the bruise he saw on Rose’s neck, but she stopped him, apparently not wanting to talk about it in front of Iris.
“Daddy!”
“Daddy!”
The twins reached the porch. Elmer held out an open hand to make them stop and keep quiet.
“Have you been in?” Rose growled the question at Iris.
Iris took her feet down from the seat and hugged her book as if it were a shield.
“Been in?” Elmer asked. “Where?”
His daughter couldn’t hold his gaze—she kept her eyes to the floor.
Rose took a step toward the porch swing and pointed at Iris with a tensed finger. “Have you been in to see the boy?”
The sweat that covered Elmer’s back went cold.
Iris hooked her hair behind her ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom. I haven’t been in anywhere.”
“You’ve been in the boy’s room. Melissa’s bedroom. Through the broken window, over the roof.”
“No, Mom. What window?”
“In her room.” Rose gestured at Melissa, who was arriving at the porch.
“Her window’s broken?” Iris didn’t blink. “I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t been in any room.”
“You went in there. You’ve spoken to him.”
Elmer took his wife by the shoulders. “Relax.” He raised his eyebrows to get her to mind what he said. “She says she hasn’t been in.”
“What’ve you seen?”
“I haven’t been in there.”
“What have you seen?” Rose’s voice had turned into a sob.
Elmer shook her to make her stop. Some pain in her shoulder made her groan.
“She’s seen something . . .”
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“She says she hasn’t gone in there. Let’s stay calm and hear her out.”
“I haven’t been in, Dad. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
Rose snorted and fixed her eyes on Iris. “I found a hair—this long—on the boy’s face.”
“A hair?” Iris screwed up her nose. “And why would it be mine? It could be Melissa’s. Or yours. Even the twins’.”
Elmer noticed that Melissa was listening to the conversation with her eyes on the ground, watching the argument from behind a curtain of her own hair. She was pressing one of her rocks against her belly.
“Please, Iris, show me that you’re honest, at least.”
“I haven’t been in that bedroom, Mom.”
Rose shrugged with a deep sigh. She pulled something out from behind her back, where it had been hanging from the apron strings.
“And this?” She unfolded Rick’s dirty T-shirt. “I found it under your mattress. Where did you get it from if you haven’t been in the bedroom? Are you still going to deny it?”
Iris got up from the porch swing.
“I took this T-shirt the first day he arrived. He left it in the kitchen when he got changed.” She snatched the garment from her mother. When Elmer tried to separate them, she spoke to him. “You ruined his other one when you ran over him.”
Elmer caught the accusatory finger Iris pointed at him. Rose pinched him in the side, gestured at the twins with her eyebrows. He let go.
“Why’re you doing this to me?” asked Iris. “It wasn’t me.”
“It was your hair. I know my daughters.”
“I haven’t been in there!”
“It was your hair!”
Rose raised her voice. So did Iris. Elmer joined in the argument and the twins began hitting the porch handrail to add to the racket.
“It was me!”
Melissa’s cry made everyone fall silent. Elmer couldn’t remember ever hearing her speak like that. Rose held her hand to her mouth.
“Melissa . . .” she whispered through her fingers.
“I climbed up there.” She pointed at the porch structure. “I do it some nights when I go out to talk to the cactuses. I went in to switch my stones around. I have to sleep with a different one every day.”