Robbie nodded. He was rocking Miranda back and forth in such a way I’d only seen small girls do with dolls. “I heard your mom’s back again. My grandma saw her buying pork chops at Rainbow Market.”
I kicked at the gravel, scuffing my Mary Janes. Dust flew between us. “The bitch is back.”
Robbie pretended to cover Miranda’s ears. “Dude,” he said, “don’t call your mom a bitch. What if Miranda called you a bitch?”
“Guess it’s a good thing babies can’t talk,” I said. “Especially ones made of sugar.”
Robbie was smiling and had lifted Miranda into the air. He briefly held her against the sky before bringing her back down. “Remember when your mom was our group leader for Day on the Prairie?”
“Yeah,” I said, lowering my voice.
“And we all got lost looking for that old barn she said was haunted? Then she let us eat three packs of Oreos? And you had to go to the bathroom in the bushes.” Robbie laughed, but I frowned and he quickly turned serious. “Why is she back this time?”
The school bell sounded. Class was starting in ten minutes. We reached for our backpacks and walked toward the front doors. I lifted Miranda from Robbie’s arms. “Who knows with that woman? Maybe she wants to see the dig site. Or maybe she likes taking vacations to her old life.”
* * *
—
Within a week, my mother blended into our home as well as Miranda did. Which is to say, not very well at all. When it was just my father, he worked late and usually only had time to heat up a frozen pizza or fix a box of macaroni. Our small purple house was often messy, though we each had a chore list that was conquered by Sunday. With my mother back, the home took on a new order, a different rhythm. She cooked unhealthy but comforting foods, the house constantly emitting a pungent odor of bacon grease and red chili powder. Other times she cleaned. She’d twirl around with a broom, swaying her hips to the music on the radio—an oldies station or some honky-tonk crap. Most evenings, after my father came home from work, he’d unlace his boots in the foyer and then move his arm along my mother’s slight waist. Together they’d rock back and forth to the music. It was nauseating.
Each day after school, I’d come home to discover that my mother had made my bed and placed my stuffed animals in a dog pile above my pillows. I’d immediately throw them to the floor. With a detergent that reeked of artificial springtime and cottony clouds, she also did my laundry, taking the time to match my socks, a luxury I hadn’t experienced in years. One afternoon, as I sat on the couch, my feet covered in those matching socks and kicked up on the armrest, my mother walked by and swiped them down like she was swatting a fly. “What’re you doing inside? It’s a beautiful day.” Her arms were planted firmly at her sides. She wore a brightly colored tunic and black leggings, making her appear like a 1960s glamour model. She was young still, only in her mid-thirties.
“It’s hotter than a pig’s armpit out there.” I craned my neck, looking past her at the television. An Herbal Essence shampoo commercial was on and long-haired women were moaning under waterfalls.
“You have such a foul mouth,” my mother said. “And pigs don’t have armpits, genius.” She began lifting sofa pillows as though searching for something. “Hey, where’s that sugar bag you carry around? Your little baby for school.”
“She’s with her father. He has her until the weekend.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “Well, get up off this sofa. We’re going for a drive.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been alone with my mother in a car. “What? Where to?”
She smiled, the seams of her mouth running with red lipstick. “You’ll see.”
We parked on a steep hill overlooking the dig site. Below us archaeologists in white hats and khaki shorts swarmed the gutted earth like invasive ants. The plot was as long and wide as a shallow public swimming pool and was divvied up into human-size squares. The sky was cloudless and blue, except for the sun’s golden orb. At the horizon, there was a crashing display of earth and air. My mother stood before me and held her arms out, flapping them as if they were useless wings. Wind blew her hair, twirling the strands around her face, hiding her eyes behind sections of black. For the first time since she’d come home, I remembered how beautiful I once found her to be. As a little girl, I’d play dress-up in her satin nightdresses and lacy bras, admiring their slight weight and wondering if I’d ever own clothes like that.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Isn’t it pretty?”
I shrugged and stood beside her. The wind carried her jasmine scent.
“Ever feel like the land is swallowing you whole, Sierra? That all of this beauty is wrapped around you so tight it’s like being in a rattlesnake’s mouth?”
“I see this all the time,” I said. “And I don’t feel like I’m being eaten alive by anything.”
My mother gave me a sideways glance. “You will someday. Maybe it’ll come later for you than it did for me. Children tend to do that. Marriage. Life. All these things.” Moving behind me, she hunched down and slipped her cold hands over my eyes. “Try it. Close your eyes and hold your arms against the wind. You’ll feel it.”
I allowed my arms to float up and coast. A kaleidoscope of images spun against my closed lids. I saw the day when I was ten years old, right before my mother left for the first time. She took me to the pueblo where her grandmother was born in New Mexico. Holding my hand, my mother walked us through a small adobe church. She touched the pews with the tips of her red nails as we moved closer to the altar. We stepped into a side room where we lit white candles with long, slim sticks. My mother sent prayers for all those she loved into the sky with smoke, but I sent only one. Please, I pleaded to the Virgin, don’t let my mother cry anymore. I was sick of finding her silently weeping, the sobs bobbing in her throat—at the stove, in the bathtub, kneeling in the dead garden beside our house.
When I opened my eyes, my mother was beside me, a strange blank expression on her face. “Did you feel it?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t feel anything.” Goose pimples rose on my neck and arms. “It’s just windy and cold.”
“All right, Sierra. Then let’s get home. I’ll start dinner.”
As she headed for her pickup, I looked over the hill’s edge and down into the dig site once more. The archaeologists were huddled in small groups. The rich odor of disrupted earth blew into me. Everything was terrifyingly silent. I thought about how quiet the world could sound and how when I stood there beside my mother, for a moment, I was afraid she had left me on the hillside, stranded forever.
* * *
—
“Xerophthalmia,” Mrs. Sharply said, “is one of many childhood diseases your babies could get.” It was the following Monday, the final week of sugar babies. Another assembly was being held in the gym. Two kids in front of me had swaddled their baby in a blanket, while others around us had glued on googly eyes and red yarn mouths. Robbie sat beside me with Miranda. She looked exceptionally fashionable. That morning I had wrapped a quilted pillowcase around her like a muumuu dress.
“Among other things,” Mrs. Sharply continued, “xerophthalmia is a vitamin A deficiency which makes it so a person can’t produce tears.”
I leaned over to Robbie. “I wish you had that disease. Then you’d stop whining about me drawing on Miranda.” I had recently drawn crucifixes and anchors across her back. Tattoos, I called them, but Robbie said she looked like a bathroom wall.
“She’s a baby,” he whispered with closed eyes. “Babies don’t need tattoos.”
“Sugar,” I said. “She is a bag of sugar.”
“Now think for a moment,” Mrs. Sharply said, waving both arms into the air. “Think of all the times you cry. Sometimes they are happy, and, sometimes, they are sad. But crying is natural. Take a moment to remember the last time you cried.”
/> The gymnasium went silent. Only the hiss of the fluorescent lights above us could be heard. Students hung their heads, as if possessed by their darkest, most sorrowful memories. I waited for the other students to finish reminiscing about their dear old dead grandparents and broken bones.
“Now, parents,” said Mrs. Sharply, “you can see that not being able to cry would be an awful condition. For homework, we will each need to research a childhood disease. Tomorrow we will draw diseases from a hat. Some babies will get a disease, but—just like in life—some will not. It’s the luck of the draw.”
* * *
—
Later that day, Robbie hurried after me as I walked home. His backpack seemed comically wider than he did. “You have to take Miranda,” he said. “I have soccer tonight.” From the giant backpack, he scooped Miranda out, slowly handing her over. She was somehow heavier than usual.
“What the heck have you been feeding her?” I asked.
Robbie petted her belly. “That was weird, Mrs. Sharply asking about crying.”
“She’s a real wacko,” I said, hoisting Miranda on my hip. The sky was endlessly blue with paper wisps of clouds. I caught myself tilting Miranda up to see. “So, when was it, Robbie? The last time you cried?”
“That’s sort of personal, Sierra.”
“Roberto Martinez, I’m your child’s mother. I deserve to know these things.”
“All right.” Robbie took a deep breath. “After I found the bones, that night I woke up and thought I saw a skeleton woman at the foot of my bed. I didn’t know who she was, but later my grandma told me it was Doña Sebastiana, the lady version of the grim reaper. Death.”
“You cried from a bad dream?”
“No, Sierra. It was more than that.” Robbie scratched his head and his scalp sounded sandy. “What about you? When’s the last time you cried?”
I peered down the block at my little purple house. My mother’s pickup wasn’t in the driveway and I figured she had gone to Rainbow Market for more pork chops, but for a moment something in my chest ached, a gnawing worry that she was gone again, this time for good. I broke into a sprint and ran toward home. “I don’t cry,” I called over my shoulder. “Only little girls and babies do that.”
* * *
—
“I have some new tattoo ideas,” I said to Miranda, who sat on the kitchen table, stiffly leaning to the left in a column of sunlight. I was sifting through the junk drawer looking for markers. I had opened every window and for the first time in days the house didn’t smell like pork. It reeked with the richness of the mountains and desert, rain and sage and cedar pulled together as one. When I realized the drawer only had rubber bands and dead batteries, I said, “Don’t worry, you little sack of cavities. I have some markers in my room.”
I crawled beneath my bed, over the uncrushed carpet, surrounded by gobs of lint and balled hair. I was looking for a shoe box filled with art supplies, but I ended up fishing out my PRIVATE PROPERTY box instead, the place where I kept movie ticket stubs, old diaries, and birthday cards from my mother. She made the cards herself and I imagined her in some sunny apartment in downtown Denver. Houseplants and cacti lined the windows while filtered city light fell upon her at the sofa licking stamps and writing out her old address.
Sitting on my floor, my legs spread and the birthday cards dumped around me like confetti, I ran my fingers over their sharp edges and smooth ribbons. I came upon one from my eleventh birthday, the first card my mother sent after she left. I held the purple and gold paper in my palm, then opened the card as if it were the warm, beating heart of an animal. My mother had placed three marigolds inside and they nearly crumbled in my hands.
To my baby, Sierra. Today is your birthday, and when you were born, I knew everything would change, that every day would be your day, that nothing would be the same.
I climbed onto my bed, where I nestled into Miranda. “See this,” I said. “This is from my mom.” I looked at her sad face, and, for a split second, I imagined Miranda as a real infant, a baby who breathed and cried. I rolled her to my lips and dryly kissed her forehead. “I don’t know if I’m very nice to you,” I whispered.
I then caught a glimpse of my mother standing in the doorway. She was leaning into the wall, limp and fragile. Her reddish-brown eyes were without makeup and her hair was stacked in a sloppy pile on top of her head. “You’re good with her.”
“She isn’t real,” I said.
My mother stepped toward me, moving gracefully in her skin. She sat on the foot of my bed with very straight posture and stiff arms. She seemed nervous—the way cats stiffen their backs before danger strikes. “It’s sort of strange they make you kids do this. You’re only thirteen, but I can understand how they think it prepares you, I suppose. Not that having a sack of sugar for two weeks would prepare anyone for a new life.”
I pulled Miranda closer and wiggled my thumb over her quilted midsection.
“I’m not sure if anyone is prepared for raising a child. It doesn’t seem to be something we can practice before it actually happens.”
I shrugged and rolled Miranda onto my belly. “Where did you go today?”
My mother stared straight ahead, her eyes glassy. “For a drive through the canyon. Would you believe it? I saw two hawks. They were playing in the wind.”
Hawks were common in Saguarita. We had an entire unit in sixth grade about them. They danced before mating, could dive 150 miles per hour, stayed with one partner all their lives. I was surprised that my mother paid them any attention. “What kinds of birds do you see in the city?” I asked.
“Crows,” said my mother. “Just a bunch of crows.” She paused, tracing Miranda’s eyelashes with her long red nails. “How long do you have her?”
“A few more days,” I said, rubbing Miranda’s back slowly. “I can’t wait to get rid of this thing. She’s so annoying.”
“Imagine someday when it’s a real baby. It will be much harder.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “Miranda isn’t real. If she was, I’d be a lot nicer to her, like Robbie is. He’s better at taking care of her.”
My mother folded her hands neatly in her lap. She kneaded her fingers back and forth and a trickle of sadness moved between us like a static shock. “Can you believe that when you were born I was only three years older than you are now?” She forced a laugh, dropped her gaze to the carpet. “I had to stop going to school.”
“Did you miss it?” I asked.
My mother sighed and considered my question for a long time. “I didn’t know I could miss school. I thought I was just sad, but I take classes now. At a community college. You could go there someday.”
My mother went quiet. She pulled the rubber band from her head, allowing her hair to unravel around her shoulders and neck. She looked gloriously dark and light at the same time. There was a shining glint in her brown eyes. She looked younger. She looked happy. “I bet you’ll be an artist someday, Sierra.” My mother pointed to the tattoos across Miranda’s back. “That’s what I wanted to be.” She smiled and we both laughed.
“Here,” she said. “Let me braid your hair. I can do a tight one that will last for a few days.”
I pulled away at first but soon moved back toward my mother. I was ashamed of myself that I still wanted her close to me, even after everything she had done. I eventually rested my head in her chilly hands and tried to forget how bad my mother had hurt me. Her fingers wove through my hair like she was sewing a quilt. I nearly fell asleep in her arms as I held Miranda in my own. Lying there with my mother in the afternoon light of my bedroom, I imagined her far into the future, driving day and night, her little white truck sliding from mountain peak to valley, through snow and heat waves, windstorms and lightning. Her headlights beam bright and warm, shining into town, the place where I’ll live when I’m finally a grown-up and my mother’s
black hair is silver and her face is well lined. In the distance, I see her arriving, joyously waving to me, her last stop.
* * *
—
When I woke up the next morning, my father was alone at the kitchen table eating oatmeal and reading the newspaper. Part of me wanted to ask where my mother was, but I knew she was already heading north over the pass, back to that sunny apartment of hers in Denver. Even her chair was gone from the table. My father scooted a bowl of cereal toward me. He then smacked the paper with his hand. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Those Indians on the ridge, they got some formal petition going. They’re closing up the dig site.” His eyes met mine over the top of the paper. “Sorry I didn’t take you to see it, Sierra. There will be another one someday.”
“I did see it,” I said. “Mama took me.”
My father swallowed hard and shook out the paper. It sounded like rain. “Want some orange juice with your breakfast? I got the kind without pulp that you like.”
“No, Papa,” I said, “I’m not feeling too good. Would it be okay if I stayed home from school?”
He raised his white eyebrows. They reflected the low sunlight pouring into the kitchen through the sheer curtains above the sink. “If you feel that bad, then of course you can.”
I spent most of the day in bed with Miranda cupped in my arms. We listened to the radio perched on my windowsill. The country songs my mother liked filled the small bedroom and every now and then I’d lean over with Miranda close to my chest and feel like crying. Then, at three o’clock, there was a quick knock on the door.
Robbie stood on my stoop covered in a mist of sweat around his temples and beneath his mouth.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked. “And why are you out of breath? Did you skip or something?”
He wagged his head back and forth. “It’s awful, Sierra. Just awful.”
Sabrina & Corina Page 2