Copyright © 2019 by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
ONE WORLD and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Stories from this collection have appeared in the following publications: “Any Further West” in the Boston Review; “Remedies” in the Bellevue Literary Review; “Sisters” in Heck Magazine; “All Her Names” in the American Scholar; “Sugar Babies” in Southwestern American Literature; “Sabrina & Corina” in the Idaho Review.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Dwarf Music for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” by Bob Dylan, copyright © 1966 and copyright renewed 1994 by Dwarf Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Fajardo-Anstine, Kali, author.
Title: Sabrina and Corina : stories / by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
Description: First edition. | New York : One World, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018023965 | ISBN 9780525511298 | ISBN 9780525511311 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3606.A396 A6 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov./2018023965
Ebook ISBN 9780525511311
oneworldlit.com
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook
Title page image: iStock.com/SeanXu
Cover illustration: Gustavo Rimada
Cover design: Sharanya Durvasula
v5.4
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Sugar Babies
Sabrina & Corina
Sisters
Remedies
Julian Plaza
Galapago
Cheesman Park
Tomi
Any Further West
All Her Names
Ghost Sickness
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
With your childhood flames on your midnight rug
And your Spanish manners and your mother’s drugs
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands
—BOB DYLAN
SUGAR BABIES
Though the southern Colorado soil was normally hard and cakey, it had snowed and then rained an unusual amount that spring. Some of the boys in my eighth-grade class decided it was the perfect ground for playing army. They borrowed shovels and picks from their fathers’ sheds, placing the tools on their bicycle handlebars and riding out to the western edge of our town, Saguarita, a place where the land with its silken fibers of swaying grass resembled a sleeping woman with her face pressed firmly to the pillow, a golden blonde by day, a raven-haired beauty by night.
The first boy to hit bone was Robbie Martinez. He did so with the blunt edge of a rusted shovel. Out of the recently drenched earth, he lifted a piece of brittle faded whiteness and tossed it downwind like nothing more than a scrap of paper. “Look,” he said, kneeling as if he was praying. “Everybody come look.”
The other boys gathered around. There in the ground lay broken pieces of bowls with black zigzagging designs. Next to those broken bowls were human teeth, scattered like dried kernels of yellow corn. Above them the sun had begun to fade behind the tallest peak of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The sky was pale and bleak, like the bloated belly of a lizard passing above.
“Don’t touch it,” Robbie said. “None of it. We need to tell somebody.”
And tell they did. The entire town. Everyone, it seemed, was a witness.
* * *
—
Days after their discovery, our final eighth-grade project was announced. We gathered in the gym for an assembly. The teachers brought together the boys from technical education class and the girls from home economics. We sat Indian style in ten rows beneath dangling ropes and resting basketball hoops. The room smelled like a tennis ball dipped in old socks and the cement walls were padded in purple vinyl—supposedly to minimize dodgeball injuries. I thought it looked like a loony bin.
Mrs. Sharply, a bug-eyed woman with a neck like a giraffe’s but a torso like a rhino’s, stood before us on a wooden box. “For the remaining two weeks of your junior high career,” she said, “you will care for another life.” She then reached behind her into a paper grocery bag, revealing a sack of C & H pure cane sugar. “Sugar babies. We will be raising our very own sugar babies.”
Older kids had gossiped about notorious school projects. We had heard stories of piglet dissections, the infamous “growing and changing” unit, rocket launches with carbon dioxide canisters, and a cow’s lung blackened and doused in cigarette smoke, but no one had warned us about this.
“Sugar babies are a lot of responsibility,” Mrs. Sharply said as she stepped down from her box and paced with the sugar sack. She explained we were to be graded on skills like feeding, bonding, budgeting, and more. She then passed around diaper directions.
“We do it all alone?” It was Solana Segura. She was behind me, her perpetual whimper causing every sentence to end like a little howl. “Like single moms and stuff?”
Somewhere, down the rows, a boy croaked, “But the DNA shows I am not the father.”
We chirped with laughter until Mrs. Sharply held up two fingers, signaling silence. “Of course not. You’ll be in committed partnerships. We’re drawing names.”
A teacher’s aide in Payless flats scurried like a magician’s assistant toward Mrs. Sharply. She carried two Folgers cans decorated in pink and blue glitter. Mrs. Sharply set down her sugar, taking the cans from the aide and giving each a good shake. From the pink can, the first name she pulled was Mimi Yazzie, who stood and slinked forward, burying her face into her arms as Mrs. Sharply called out her partner, Mike Ramos. This cycle of humiliation lasted for several more rounds before I was partnered with Roberto Martinez, the bone boy.
After school, Robbie and I sat outside on the swings. He was a scrawny kid with frequently chapped lips and a light dusting of freckles across his low nose. He played soccer and always wore a beat-up blue windbreaker and knockoff Adidas sneakers, with four stripes instead of three. The sugar baby was planted snug in his lap, balanced ever so gently between his two stick-arms. His dark eyes were so big and wide they resembled two brown pigeon eggs and he spoke with a quavering, squeaky voice. “They said we have to name it. Do you want to pick it out, Sierra?”
“No, you name it.” I swung up. “And you take it home tonight.” I swung down. “I’ll watch it tomorrow, but only if I have to.”
“That’s cool,” he said. “What about Miranda? That’s my grandma’s name.”
“Whatever,” I sighed, leaning back on the swing. “Name it after your grandmother. Name it after your entire family. I don’t care.” I pumped until the rusted chain pulled taut. Then I jumped, landing in the mushy gravel with both feet. I took off for home.
* * *
—
“Ain’t that something,” my father said as he and I ate breakfast the next morning. On our small black-and-white TV above the microwave, aerial shots of the dig site were being shown on the news. The land
appeared as an enormous shadow box with scraps of ancient people instead of thimbles and porcelain knickknacks.
“Can we go see it?” I asked, spooning my last bit of cornflakes into my mouth.
“I suspect they don’t want us to do that,” he said, keeping his eyes to the TV. There were deep lines around his eyelids, his hair was purely silver, and his hands were spotted from years of working as a roofer beneath the Colorado sun. People had begun to mistake him for my grandfather.
“Why not? We should be allowed to.” I walked to the sink and tossed my dirty dish inside. “It’s where we’re from. It’s our people.”
My father scratched his chin. There was a thin turquoise ring on his finger where there had once been a gold wedding band. “Don’t leave a dish in the sink,” he said. “How many times I got to tell you that, Sierra?”
I turned back and soaped up my bowl. “I mean it. I want to go.”
“Things like this have always happened around here. It’s nothing special.”
I told him it was new to me as I scrubbed my dish with a green and yellow sponge, the milky water gargling loudly down the drain’s black rubber lips. As I rinsed the bowl once more, I peered through the window above the sink. The morning was clear and in the distance the mountains were crystal blue like an enormous wave. As if sailing across those waters, a small white pickup truck with a front-end bra pulled down our street and rumbled over the gravel in our driveway. Long dark hair clouded the truck’s windshield and very red and very long fingernails were coiled around the steering wheel. A silver rosary dangled above the dash.
“Papa,” I called over my shoulder, drying my hands on my jeans.
My father rose and stood tall behind me, smelling of leather and dirt. “Looks like she’s back again.” He grunted some, swishing spit around inside his mouth before shooting a stream of yolky bile into the sink. “Go outside, Sierra. Say hello to your mother.”
My mother first left three years earlier. It happened one morning after she cooked breakfast. I watched as she gathered her keys and coat and walked into our wintry yard without any shoes. She left footprints as slight as bird tracks in the snow. When I asked my father later why she had left, he simply said, “Sometimes a person’s unhappiness can make them forget they are a part of something bigger, something like a family, a people, even a tribe.”
My mother occasionally would come home for a day or two to gather forgotten necklaces or purses, though over time my father moved her things from the bedroom to a box in the crawl space. Her visits were infrequent enough that I learned to live without her. It wasn’t easy at first. Sometimes I’d hear a funny story at school or church and my first thought would be, You have to tell Mama. But over time that urge to be with her, to tell her things, to be a part of her, it went away. Just like she always did.
* * *
—
On my mother’s first night back, she couldn’t find an apron so she made dinner in one of my father’s old T-shirts. With the kitchen TV up loud on Entertainment Tonight, she cooked pork chops sizzled in their own fat and smothered in green chili. Whenever I’d glance up from my math homework on the coffee table, I’d catch glimpses of her in the kitchen rummaging through junk drawers and cabinets. I wondered what she was searching for and thought to offer my help, but I realized I didn’t care if my mother found anything in our home again.
When she finally called my father and me to the big table, I pulled my sugar sack—Miranda Martinez-Cordova—from my backpack. “Dinnertime,” I whispered, admiring the face I had given her with a Sharpie. Her eyes were big and wide with short lines for lashes. Her mouth was a blissfully flat smirk.
“Your favorite,” my mother said, handing a plate to my father. He casually spun it above his head and eased into his seat at the table. The two of them were acting as if nothing had happened, as if my mother had always been there cooking in the kitchen. I felt like my father was a liar, someone who could pretend everything was fine when, really, how could he be anything but sad?
“Do you want something to drink, Sierra?” asked my mother.
“No,” I said, covering Miranda’s mouth. “I don’t want anything.”
“Nonsense,” said my mother. “You’re becoming a woman. Women need vitamins and nutrients. You’ll have some milk.”
My mother opened a cupboard, the small one beside the stove where the glasses had once been, but my father corrected her with a flick of his knife. “Left of the sink.”
My mother tilted her head and steadied her mouth into a tight smile. After pouring the milk, she placed the glass in front of me and quickly glanced at Miranda. Robbie had dressed her in one of his little sister’s old striped pink onesies. “Does your doll want a plate?”
“She’s not a doll. And she’s way too young for solids.”
My mother laughed and took her seat, closing her eyes while my father led us in prayer. Miranda and I kept our eyes open. My mother had taken off the old T-shirt and wore a blue dress with white-embroidered flowers that had many loose threads. Her lips were thinner and her black hair was shorter than I remembered. She used to only wear silver, but she had on a gold necklace, the thin braided chain glowing against her bronze skin.
After we said amen, my parents made the sign of the cross and my mother opened her reddish-brown eyes. Her eye makeup appeared as a buildup of silt. “You know,” she said, turning to me, “I thought we were out of salt. I was going to have you run next door to ask Mrs. Kelly if we could borrow some.”
“She’s dead.” I hunched down and rested my chin on Miranda’s head.
“What?”
“She’s not alive anymore.”
My father gently said, “Old Mrs. Kelly passed away last winter, Josie.”
My mother mouthed an “Oh” and looked at her plate. She briskly apologized and we continued dinner in silence. Above us the ceiling fan spun in rapid circles, slicing the air, sending waves of coolness over each of us. My mother and father kept glancing at one another—smiling, chewing, smiling, sipping, and smiling some more. After some time, I got sick of their cheeriness and gulped the last of my milk. Then, as loud as possible, I slammed my empty glass on the table.
“So, Josie,” I said, “what brings you down from Denver? Or do you normally drive around cooking pork chops for people?”
“Sierra,” my father barked. “Don’t you call your mother by her first name.” He shook his head and I avoided his strict gaze.
My mother smiled sweetly. “Tell me about all those Indian graves the boys from your school found out west.”
My stomach suddenly lurched with the sounds of digestive failure. “I don’t know anything about it,” I said, stroking Miranda.
“Sure you do,” my father interjected. “That Roberto Martinez, the boy who found the bones, he’s your partner for that sugar thing. Your school project.”
“To think,” my mother said. “This whole time those bones were right in Saguarita beneath our feet.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “They weren’t beneath your feet.”
She giggled a bit. “I was here for a long while, Sierra. I think I know a thing or two about Saguarita.”
Though I wanted to tell her she didn’t know about anything, I turned my face to my lap and went quiet. After dinner, I sat in my room, where I pressed my ear against the cool white door. Muffled and low, I could hear my father in the living room ask my mother about her drive—road conditions, springtime flurries, if the mountain goats hobbled along the pass. He didn’t ask why she was back or if she missed us—questions that hurt me to think about. I moved away from the door and tossed Miranda into the corner.
* * *
—
“She cried all night. I didn’t get any sleep,” I told Robbie the next morning as I shoved Miranda into his arms. We met outside thirty minutes before school in our usual spot b
y the swings. It was chilly and the air smelled like pancake breakfast and frost.
“How could she cry?” he asked. “She’s only sugar.”
The sun was coming up. The light leaked over the land in velvety streaks of pinks and golds. My mother once told me this meant the angels were baking cookies. “Isn’t that what babies do? Cry and crap themselves and cry some more?”
“Hey,” Robbie said, his chapped mouth bunched to the side. “Where’s her outfit?”
“Lost it.”
Robbie sighed and bent down to his backpack. He pulled a diaper from the front mesh pocket. “Give her here. We’ll lose points if she’s wearing the same diaper from last night.” He lay Miranda on the loose gravel and frowned at the new sad, sleepy face I had given her that morning. Her eyelashes were tarantula-like and her mouth was downturned. Robbie fumbled with the diaper, applying and reapplying the adhesive sides.
“So,” I said, standing above him, “what was it like?”
“What was what like, Sierra?”
“Finding those dead people. Was it scary?”
Robbie got the diaper to stick. He patted Miranda’s black marker face and stood up with a bounce. “Not scary,” he said. “But it was weird, you know? We’ve lived here our whole lives and no one knew about all this old stuff in the ground.”
“I guess,” I said, thinking of the piñon trees where my father had hung a bluish hammock in our yard. Their roots, he said, had undoubtedly grazed the dead bodies of our ancestors, both Spanish and Indian. I used to play in the shade of those piñons, cracking their nuts with two rocks held firmly in my hands. After pulling away the hard shells, I’d toss the spongy insides into my mouth. I didn’t swallow them, though. I was afraid of letting any amount of death, from the soil or elsewhere, work its way into me. “Everything is old here. I mean everything.”
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