at sunset/flocks will swirl/in pink and lavender/a divested music of wings/a coiling dance amiss over head an overcast chaos aflight, a dusk chorus lamenting/dark bodies collide/ frantic ellipses flicker the sky, thin curtain between metaphysics and mythology crumpled/a road of witness takes in the snarl and holy mess of molecular precision: teeth of feathers, their movements harmonic as a head of hair/oblique assembly, a body as one as air, shadowing wings a foreshadowing/& now pinions are known to hatch migrating winds
a fading whistle of reign/ a scheme, discordant scenes unwound and foiled/an instant of burst ire close enough to the border to stop shrapnel from softening heartbeats in the heat of its procreation, it’s winter for the faction/watch them retreat their meticulous design of taxidermal violence/watch them retire their shaded partitions of plumage
nest embers won’t smoke tonight’s air/ won’t whiten nest ash of foreign caw and sweat, there will be no -cides tonight, no sides tonight/no frantic law of flight
this congregating spring of strangers/won’t need paper to nest in the solace of numbers/primacy will be foreign to the foreign a crow’s nest of fraying flag and scraps of white/remnants of a vacant shrine, a diversity of beaks pitching resounding picks, pecks a mur
mur
mur
mur
an overcast chaos aflight, a dusk chorus rejoicing, dark bodies make rounds, a caucus unbound/gathers life mid-flight
a caw echoes off/the last of their rule, their ruses! for the last time, the sky bruises
Xavier Anthony Vazquez is a writer & educator based in New York City. He graduated from St. John’s University studying government & international relations. In addition to those areas of thought, some themes that continue to inform his work are the nature of quantum consciousness, the relation of haunting & hallowed spaces, as well as the surreal & sublime. His work can be found in Raptor Editing’s The Great Good News of Your Own Voice among other spaces.
we expect at
sunset/that flocks will swirl/in the pink and lavender/of dusk, its unisons and
calm/a diverse murmur of wings/a coiling dance, high over head
Xavier writes me
about something amiss/a chaos in flight, dark bodies colliding, a clapcloud
pandemonium/a wretched sky pining after a mythology/of metaphysical prominence,
props for the preened/how the vanishing point of long highway road forces us to
look up, to take in the snarl and holy mess of molecular percussion/teeth of
feathers interrupting/flight paths charted out against maps and before/pinions
were known to catch migrating wings/the bristle of vanes
in the
machinery’s grind and coil/we thought it was the noonday sun blinding us/as it
fell once again at the end of the world/a red pinwheel hibiscus spinning down
jouncing/a short burst fire close enough to the border to hear ice crackle in
the heat of concentrations/enter the fiction that all birds in a flock are
Birds/enter the meticulous design of epidermal violence/the hierarchy of
feathers/the tyranny of skin
enter the crow
that will kill a crow if it does not arrive already citizen to the flock/if it
bursts in with a foreign caw and sweat/congregating spring of paperless
strangers/in the solace of numbers/portrayed as a corvid conspiracy
a crow in a
crow’s nest of country flag and white/an improvised blind/pitching out sounds/picking
pecking
we want the
flock/to round and round/murmur of wings readying toward night
but we find a
chaos, dark bodies colliding in pandemonium/a ruckus of rounds feeding death
mid-flight
a caw in echo
bouncing off the force of blue, a vaunt of dominion in a wretched sky
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a queer, Colombian/Latinx, poet, artist, scholar, & activist. Her poetry collection The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) was selected by Ada Limón for the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. A 2019 CantoMundo Fellow, and 2018 VONA alum, her poems have been published in Poetry, Academy of American Poets, Raspa, Feminist Studies, & Huizache, among other places.
The park will remain open during the lapse of appropriations using recreation fee revenue and donations Hazardous or dangerous conditions may exist please plan accordingly Historic Site parks will remain accessible with basic services to the public (Restroom Out of Order)
In
1625 the Dutch occupied San Juan for three months but couldn’t take the
Castillo San Felipe del Morro. When they retreated they razed the city to the
ground. A Spanish victory.
*
What
fort builders called a “field-of-fire” or a “killing field.” After decommission
the field hosted over two hundred trees. Visitors would walk down an avenue of
sea pine and coconut palm. In the ‘90s the trees were removed to “protect the
historical scene” of the fort. Removing the trees meant: wind. Removing the
trees meant: erosion.
*
After
the Dutch, the English, after the English, the Americans. America you were
never medieval but how medieval you have been. Your smiling machine. Your
gilded teeth. Your cruise ships and their cargoes. America you’re caught in a
stray cat’s jaws. The frogs laugh all night.
*
This
is where the soldiers fed on island food. This is where the non-native hogs
were split and roasted. Where the fat in rinds crackled. Where the fruits were
sucked. A plaque shows a man darker than me carrying a bowl of what? The royal
palm of borikén carried no coconuts. They must have dreamed it up. They must
have imagined the flesh and the milk. In the mud, the fragrant mud, the
fragrant mud pink as flesh.
*
Don’t
cry, brittle bone. Nothing here dies. This is truth, which some would call
magic. Is this why the Europeans came and kept coming? Why they dropped their
mortars and anchors? Their churches? Is it why the cemetery sits on the lap of
the sea?
*
A
channel cut in the rock of the fort sloshes sewage down around and under,
visiting every embankment, delivering to all shit, bidding all shit, spreading
in the close air the human flavor and grace. Shit of European, African, Indio,
Mestizo, slurried and sloughed together. I felt my bowels pack while walking
the walls, felt my intestines swell like a tourist. Felt it as it bade me shit
to the mouth of the bay.
*
The
tourist lavatories were built into storerooms with great wide triangular
openings to the air. They overflowed already and there are no appropriations to
clean them. The wind takes and scatters the stench to all and everywhere like
salt.
*
O
conquistadores, O walking, shuffling, conquering membranes of shit, disease,
and new growth. As the Dutch shat on the Spanish, as the cannons shat on the
English, as the soldiers bayonet the shit out of each other.
*
El
Morro (headland, snout, nose, gall) is not el moro (moor, foreigner, conqueror,
dark one). Moorish kingdoms in Spain until 1491. Then, 1492. But look how they
are conquered. What Moten calls resistance
of the object. Look at your skin, look at your noses, your gall. El Morro,
headland of failure, la Mora, bruja, reina of morning, smirks and touches her
neck.
*
On the
walls the wind tries to murder us and we know this is dangerous this is a
measure of its love. To not accept this is to pour death in your molds, into
the cannisters of your veins, to hold it in like shit.
*
Flies
dance on the head of a cannon. Dance out a new year. The magi will bring gold,
gunpowder, and linseed oil. They pay homage and cackle mirthlessly. They dance that
the rocks will pass out and through the bowels of the sea.
David M. de León is a Puerto Rican writer, academic, and theater artist from New Jersey. Creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in places like The Acentos Review, At Length, Pleiades, Fence, DIAGRAM, Bat City Review, 2River View, and Strange Horizons. He is a Phd candidate at Yale university, where his research is on contemporary book-length works by Black poets. David is also a playwright and a screenwriter. http://davidmdeleon.com
Isabel gripped the doorknob tightly, stepped out the back door and onto the back step. The tall old salt cedar trees cast wide shadows that didn’t quite reach her, until the sun fell behind Coyote Mountain.
Yoli reached
out to hold Isabel’s hand, distracted for a moment by two neighbors from across
the circle.
“Hello there!”
“Como sientes?”
Yoli waved and
whispered, “They are loud when they – you know.”
“Do I look like
I care about their sex life?” Isabel scowled. “I almost died. The doctor said I
lost a lot of blood in there.” But she didn’t look at Yoli, hid how grateful
she felt for this loss. She didn’t need two more children. Five at home was
enough. She squinted into the sun, tried to conjure the faces of her two oldest
sons, the baby she’d left behind and the one who’d been stolen from her. She
hoped Jaime had learned a lot from Miss Julie, gone to college like her son
had. David would be in high school now, probably had a new mother, more
siblings. Probably didn’t know she existed.
Isabel dropped
a yellow cushion onto the concrete and sat near her new plants. She stared at
them, knew they would listen to her woes. “Even though the twins were dead, I
still had to give birth as if they were alive.” Isabel felt a tug in her
abdomen, an ache between her legs, and relief in her voice. “Mi Viejo, he
couldn’t stop crying.”
Yoli took the last drag of her cigarette, eyebrows raised. “You sure you’re okay to be out here? I can do it by myself.” She reached down for the lantana. “If Caro was here, you wouldn’t even need me. You heard from her?”
Isabel shook
her head and swallowed the lump in her throat. It had been several months since
her second daughter, Carolina, had left home with the carnival worker. Every
morning Isabel’s husband, Armando, lit a candle and prayed for her safety.
Every night, the oldest, Julia, cried herself to sleep. Isabel listened for
Caro’s return, regretted letting her go so easily, and hoped she’d been wrong
about her daughter’s new life.
“Lucky flame,”
Isabel read from the plastic tag. She’d ordered the bright orange and yellow
flowers before she went to the hospital. Yoli’d been sprinkling them with water
every other evening while Isabel was in bed last week. If she didn’t plant them
today, they could die. And she didn’t trust Yoli to do it right. “We’re going
to give you a new home preciosas,” she whispered into the pungent leaves.
Yoli snorted at Isabel’s cariños. She’d never understood how to love her plants.
“Aquí?” she asked,
dangling the roots over the damp earth.
“Allá.” Isabel pointed a little more left with her big toe, its tip touched the cool soil.
Yoli dug more
holes for the salvia.
“These two
didn’t help at all. The other kids wanted to escape. All four girls and even Junior’s
giant head – no problema. But these two wanted to live inside me forever. Ay no!
At least they were small.” Jaime had been small too. Really small. Miss Julie
said Isabel was lucky he could breathe on his own when he was born. Isabel took
a cigarette from Yoli’s pack and puffed gently. “It has been too long since I
enjoyed this.”
Yoli took it
from her, inhaled deeply, and held in her smoke a little. “What’s next?”
“My summer
jewel.” Isabel loosened the long velvety stems from their plastic shell. “Put
these in the back row.” She imagined the bright red blooms scattered across the
dull off-white stucco building. “Cuidado,” Isabel said before taking another
short puff. “They’re fragile.”
“Are they even gonna
live through summer? It’s supposed to be hotter than ever.”
“It’s always
hotter than ever here.” Isabel closed her eyes and wished for a cool breeze, a
gust of wind that didn’t reek of chemicals or manure. “I had to name them, you
know. Mi Viejo tried to be strong, held my hand while the priest gave Joseph
and Magdalena their sacraments.”
“He said you
fainted.” Yoli took a drag from the cigarette, left it between her lips and reached
for the last salvia plant. “He said the nurse thought you were having another
baby.”
“Por tonta. She
probably never had a baby. How would she know?” Isabel lowered her voice. “They
took everything out. Said it wasn’t gonna work right anymore. Might as well.” She
grabbed her belly flesh with both hands. “Maybe this panza will finally go
away.” She reached up for another puff, but Yoli had finished the cigarette
with one long drag. “At least I can’t get pregnant anymore. Thank God.” Isabel cursed
herself when she saw Yoli’s lingering sadness.
When Isabel and
Armando had first moved from Central California to this Imperial Valley
neighborhood with the two older girls, Yoli was all celosa. “You’ll never be
alone,” she’d said. Her sadness sat in the heat.
When Isabel had
repeated what Yoli’d said, “I’ll never be alone,” it was with dread. This wasn’t the life she’d imagined when she
was younger. She wanted to travel but not to work fields in another dusty town.
She had dreamed about places she’d only seen on the globe at school, wanted to
learn new languages too.
“Closer to the
edge.” Isabel pointed again with her other foot so Yoli didn’t put the last
plants too close to the rest. The portulaca needed space to grow wide. Its
thick needle leaves would fill the corner of the bed, a barrier protecting the
more delicate blooms.
No one
protected Isabel like that. Her delicate was gone when she had her first son at
fourteen. Nine kids later, she could finally stop. Maybe be free. But it was
too late for dreams. She only knew Spanish and English and hadn’t made a world
wish in years.
“Should I water
them all now?” Yoli stood, dusted the grains of soil off her knees, and twisted
her back.
The foulness of
her sweat made Isabel’s eyes water. She coughed. “Gracias, Yoli. I can manage
the hose.” But first she lengthened her legs and put both feet flat on the
earth. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the setting sun.
“Palermo,” she said.
“Qué?”
“Barcelona.”
“What?”
“Casablanca.” Isabel
opened her eyes wide and Yoli’s crotch was too close to her face. She leaned
back and reached both hands up.
Yoli helped her
stand.
“That’s all I
can remember.” Isabel imagined her elementary classroom. Kids had screamed and
chased each other with sticky hands. Someone’s milk had gone sour. She had spun
the blue/brown metal ball, watched it with her head tilted sideways so the
words were straight. She had ignored the chaos around her and waited for the
globe to slow before she placed a fingertip on its bumpy surface, stopped the
spinning with her destination choice. “Of all the places I wanted to visit, I
can only remember those three names.” Names in Spanish. The others she couldn’t
really pronounce. But she’d touched the raised black letters and spelled them
to the smart kids nearby. A nice boy with green eyes and freckled nose had said
the names for her. Isabel had repeated what she’d heard and smiled with
gratitude. But that was all lost now.
“Who’d you be
visiting?” Yoli asked and sat on Isabel’s yellow cushion. “Your family?”
“My family was
swallowed by Texas. When I was a kid, I just wanted to go.” Isabel turned her
back to Yoli and moved the trickle of water slowly over her plants. Wet and
shiny and new. “Mira que bonitas,” she said to them. “In a few weeks, your
beautiful blooms will make all the neighbors jealous.”
“Nobody just
goes like that, Chavela.” Yoli got another cigarette.
“People do.”
“Not our
people.” Yoli took a few short puffs. “What about Paris?”
“No!” Isabel’s
voice is sharp, louder than she expected. So loud it hurt her gut and echoed
across the circle. “No,” she repeated more quietly. “Never Paris.”
“Because you
don’t know French?”
“Because
there’s a Paris in Texas. We drove through there once.” That memory singed the
innocence of her schoolgirl dreams. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her
hot, dusty past from returning. She and Julia had left Texas with a man who
promised California would be different. He was no different from her first
husband. She held her lower abdomen, still pained from its recent loss. “I
almost lost Carolina,” she whispered. The pop-pop of a passing car made her
gasp and open her eyes wide.
“We could learn
French,” Yoli said, oblivious to Isabel’s pain. “Maybe buy those tapes.”
“You could do
that.” Isabel let the cool water splash speckles of soil onto her ankles.
Yoli passed the
cigarette to Isabel. A crop duster flew over them, had dumped its toxins in a
nearby field. They traded the cigarette back and forth until it was done.
“If you don’t
need me anymore,” Yoli said, “I’m going home now. Maybe tomorrow we’ll travel.”
Yoli flip-flopped on the asphalt, shuffled slowly back across the circle.
Isabel wiggled her
toes in the edge of the mud, drizzled the cool water over them, and whispered
to her plants, “Palermo, Barcelona, Casablanca.”
Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera is an editor for Ricochet Editions and on the leadership team for Women Who Submit. She writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University and is working on her PhD at USC. www.tishareichle.com
Lorenzo kept staring at the tiny fleck of dried cheese on the tine
of his fork. He could picture the fork shoveling in one last bite of migas or stabbing an American-cheese
covered potato cube. Then it was thrown into a dishwasher where the oily cheese
held fast and dried to a solid. Since leaving San Antonio ten years ago he’d
stopped eating food like that, but every time he came back home it oozed back
into his veins.
This diner was old enough to morph from greasy spoon into local
classic. It was his father’s favorite restaurant and the site of many reunion lunches.
Oh, finally sixteen! Off to college
already? What’d you graduate with? Moving to the east coast, why?
Lorenzo cursed himself for showing up on time.
Then, there he was. Alejandro spotted Lorenzo in a booth near the
back and lifted his chin in recognition. A casual flick. ‘Sup. As if it hadn’t been a decade.
Lunch wasn’t Lorenzo’s idea. Best case scenario was a quick lunch
livened by his fiancé, Alina, joining them for a slice of pie. Worst case was
his father demonstrating that, after all these years, he was still the
self-aggrandizing, narcissist who had driven away three wives and counting.
Neither he nor Alina had big families, a fact that Lorenzo loved.
But Alina sought out distant cousins on Facebook and through ancestry sites.
They were getting married in Washington, DC, but she’d wanted to invite
Alejandro to the wedding. Lorenzo balked. “It’s been ten years. I don’t have
anything to say to him.” He insisted he wasn’t mad at his father. She smiled
and said, “Then try.”
They’d reach a compromise: lunch and then Alina would join for
desert and they’d invite him together if the conversation went well.
Alejandro stopped to shake hands with slick guys in suits and gold
watches—a fan club. Being a minor San Antonio literary celebrity meant you were
always recognized in diners.
“Sorry, traffic.” Alejandro rolled his eyes. “They’ve been digging
up all these streets, you know? Makes it hard to get around.”
Alejandro placed a book and a manila file folder on the vinyl tablecloth.
Lorenzo pushed himself up on one leg for an awkward, not-quite-standing
handshake. The orange carpet and laminate wood paneling of the diner hadn’t
changed, but his father seemed older, more tired than last time.
“Friends of yours?” He nodded towards the other booth.
“Ah, just some old farts.” Alejandro waved them off. “They know the
books.”
The waitress came back over. She had long, straight black hair and
a Tejana’s round face. This look was
so common in San Antonio, but Lorenzo never saw people like this in Washington,
DC.
“You eat?” Alejandro pointed at Lorenzo.
“I’m still good with coffee for now, but you should get something.”
“Really? You used to be crazy about these biscuits.”
“I’ll get something later.”
His father raised his eyebrows at the waitress like he was
ordering for a ten-year-old. “Just a coffee, I guess.”
Lorenzo pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and placed it in
front of himself. He had forgotten to show the cheese fossil to the the
waitress.
“You really, really used to devour these biscuits,” Alejandro
repeated.
“Yeah? I don’t remember.”
“We used to come on the weekends because they know me here.”
Alejandro made it sound like an old family tradition. “Anyway, how long you in
town?” Alejandro asked.
I’m getting married—Lorenzo almost blurted it out, but they were still starting the
conversation, warming up.
“I head back next week.”
“I haven’t heard from you in a while, Renz.”
“I told you I was in town.”
“You emailed me yesterday.” His father smiled. “So, you seeing
someone?”
“Sorry, I’ve been really busy. Things just sort of slip away.”
“Still in D.C., right?”
“Yeah, I like it there.”
“Too cold for me,” Alejandro said.
“All you need is a good jacket.”
He nodded as if Lorenzo had spoken a great truth. Alejandro pulled
a soft-pack of cigarettes from his shirt’s breast pocket and set it next to his
coffee cup. He tapped the pack of cigarettes with one finger.
The waitress returned with coffee. Alejandro made a point of reading
her name tag and slowly speaking her name out loud—Mónica.
“Mónica, you remember me, right? I was here this morning. For
breakfast?”
She grinned pleasantly enough but didn’t respond.
“Did you maybe find a lighter in that booth over there? The booth with
those, well, very dark-pigmented people?”
Alejandro pointed across the diner to a black couple. Lorenzo’s
mouth dropped open and the waitress quickly raised her eyebrows.
“Uh, no,” she managed to say. “No, I don’t think so.”
“My lighter must have slipped out of my pocket this morning. Could
you go ask if they found it? Maybe put it in their pocket? It’s green, plastic.”
“I didn’t find a lighter.”
“Could you ask, though? Green, plastic. You were my waitress,
remember? I left a tip.”
Lorenzo spoke up. “She’ll keep her eye out for it, I bet.”
“Well,” Alejandro said. “It couldn’t be anywhere else, and Mónica appears
to have the time.”
Lorenzo worried the white, cracked handle of his mug, trying to
avoid the waitress’s glare. Dark
pigmented people made them sound diseased. Maybe his father was trying to
be funny. His books had all fought against historical racism and the white
myths of Texas. She’d walk away, and Alejandro would say he was testing her, proving
that people are complicit in everyday racism.
Mónica shifted her weight, slowly spun around on one foot and
approached the couple. They glanced up from their food, squeezed their eyebrows
together and shook their heads. Mónica turned and walked into the kitchen without
a glance at their table.
Alejandro smirked like they had been flirting.
“Well, I bet they have it. It just couldn’t be anywhere else. She’s
pretty though, nice brown eyes. You should take her out. I’m sure you could, a
waitress?”
“Why’d you say that?” Lorenzo asked.
“You should ask for her number.”
“About that couple, why’d you say that?”
Alejandro picked up his pack of cigarettes and then put them back
down.
“What do you mean, Renz?” He sounded as if Lorenzo’s question was
the offensive part.
“You called them ‘dark.’”
“Yeah, well.” He lowered his voice and shrugged his shoulders.
“Aren’t they?”
“You can’t say that, Dad.”
The word slipped out, he wouldn’t say it again, but it was too
late. Dad. It stood on the table,
bright, shining and familial, impossible to ignore. Alejandro smiled,
pleased.
Lorenzo was flustered. “You’re dark-skinned. I’m dark-skinned.”
“Oh, who knows what words to use.” Alejandro sipped his coffee and
glanced over at his fan club booth. “It was a good lighter. You don’t smoke, do
you?”
“Sorry,” Lorenzo said.
“It’s a nasty habit,” Alejandro agreed.
Lorenzo sipped his coffee, which tasted like burnt popcorn. As a
teenager, Lorenzo had become angry. He blamed his father for the divorce, he
resented him for staying away, and he hated him for not helping with child
support. Still, for years, Lorenzo would pick up the phone when his father
called and make plans to meet him here. His father wrote books, told great
stories, and seemed to know everyone. It had impressed Lorenzo long ago.
Mónica came back out of the kitchen but avoided their table. Couldn’t blame her. What would Alina think of him?
His father took a sip of water then smiled. It was the kind of
smile Lorenzo used to think was meant for him but was actually meant for
whatever story he was about to tell.
“I have exciting news for you, Renz. I’ve done a lot more research
into the family since I’ve seen you.” Alejandro pulled the manila file folder and
book in front of him. “So, get ready for this. One of your great-great
grandmothers, Angelita Villa, remember that name?”
Lorenzo shook his head. He wasn’t ready to move past the racist
comment, but his father had already forgotten the moment.
“Well,” his father continued, “she married a man who died shortly
after their only son was born. Their child was my grandfather, your
great-grandfather who you never met, but who I’ve told you about.”
“Right.” Lorenzo looked to the door for Alina.
“Now, I just found out that Angelita Villa re-married, in 1900, to
a man named Santiago Jimenez. The wedding was downtown, here, at San Fernando
Cathedral. I did some research into Santiago. His father was named Francisco
Jimenez, and Francisco’s father was Damacio Jimenez.”
Alejandro’s eyebrows shot up and carved deep folds into his
forehead. This brought out the wrinkles around his eyes. It was supposed to be
a smile, but his skin looked loose and creviced like an old leather jacket.
Lorenzo rubbed his own cheek, hoping not to feel the same meaty flesh.
“Okay.”
“You don’t remember the name Damacio Jimenez?” Alejandro asked.
“No.”
“Damacio was one of the Tejanos who died defending the Alamo. You
get it?” His father leaned forward and ticked out his fingers one by one. “Your
great-great-great-great-grandfather died at the Alamo.”
Alejandro opened the book he’d brought and thrust it forward. An
old diner receipt had been used to mark the page, and it fluttered onto Lorenzo’s
lap. The page showed an etching of a tall, young man with almond eyes, black,
curly hair and an unruffled, blue military tunic. The man was stoically, nearly
impassively, pointing a sword in front of him, legs braced, as the Mexican army
swarmed over the walls. Corpses lay at his feet. The Mexican soldiers were
crude, swarthy stereotypes, but Damacio was light-skinned and regal. Behind him
was the familiar curved-m of the Alamo.
“You’re
related,” Alejandro said.
Lorenzo placed the book on the table and then lifted his cup. “Not
by blood.”
“Well, yes, Damacio’s son married into the family.” Alejandro’s finger
tapped the picture. “But he fought at the
Alamo.”
“You hate the Alamo,” Lorenzo said.
“In middle school we watched a documentary you were in,” Lorenzo said. “You said the white settlers were lunatics, terrorists.”
The documentary had shown Alejandro stalking in front of the
Alamo. “People treat these rebels like they were saints,” Alejandro had said.
“But they were racist, illiterates. Their delusional, modern-day defenders
worship a history they don’t understand. The myths aren’t real.”
“I was a kid,” Lorenzo continued. “It embarrassed the hell out of
me, but my teacher said you were telling the real truth, doing something that
would be remembered. He said that in front of the whole class.”
In that one moment, sitting in history class, Lorenzo had felt
love, or at least respect, for his father. For a few years, that memory served
as forgiveness for his father’s absence. Rewriting history took time, effort,
and no one, not even Lorenzo, could expect Alejandro to also have time to be a
father.
Alejandro kept his hand on the open book. Lorenzo could tell he
didn’t understand—that story sounded like one more fan letter.
The waitress returned. “Ready to eat?”
“No, we’re leaving, can we pay now?”Alejandrothrust five
dollars into her hand and waved her away.
“We’re leaving?” Lorenzo asked. Alina was supposed to be there in five
minutes. She’d be on time.
Alejandro opened the folder, pulled out thick paper and placed
them on top of the book with an almost-religious care. It was a handwritten
family tree.
“This is for you. It includes Damacio. His name is on the Alamo monument.
We can see it, right now, then go into the cathedral where Angelita was
married.”
The family tree in front of Lorenzo showed a clean and orderly
line from himself back through the years to Damacio. One name bracketed between
two other names, bracketed between two more. A thin line leaving out everyone
who didn’t fit this narrative. Alejandro’shandwriting was lurid, near-calligraphy. The first sheet held Lorenzo’s
name and a blank line for his future wife.
Perhaps because of that particular, unseen connection between
lovers, he raised his eyes to the window just as Alina pulled into the parking
lot.
Part of the reason Alina wanted to meet his father so badly was
that she didn’t have old family stories. Lorenzo appreciated her freedom, her
lightness. She couldn’t meet his father. She’d be charmed by Alejandro’s knack
for making the most everyday occurrence sound momentous because it happened
long ago. Lorenzo imagined Alina’s name next to his own and in front of
Alejandro’s on the family tree. Her name would be so Russian and angular next
to their ancient, palatial Spanish names. She’d be buried by waves of ancestors
swarming towards them; their children would be buried—bound to a past long gone
and listening to Alejandro’s useless tales.
“You’ve spent your life saying the Alamo defenders weren’t
heroes,” Lorenzo said.
“Sure, I still believe all that. But this is impressive.”
Alejandro placed the family tree back into the folder and handed it to Lorenzo.
He picked up the book and looked at Damacio, his eyes sparking. “It’s history. I
don’t excuse it, but these people were doing what they thought they needed to
do.”
The waitress brought their change and cleared their cups, leaving
the table bare.
“What do you say, Renz?”
Lorenzo placed the folder on the table in front of him. He
wouldn’t go anywhere with him and he wouldn’t introduce Alejandro to his
fiancé. Maybe, Lorenzo supposed, he was supposed to have witnessed or
intervened in his father’s slow slide into racism and the shedding off of his
ideals—the only thing Alejandro ever had. Maybe sons were supposed to go through
this. But his father had set this pattern twenty years earlier, and now Lorenzo
could see his father with too much clarity.
“Go ahead,” Lorenzo said. “I’ll meet you at the Alamo. I have a
conference call. A work thing. It’ll just take an hour.”
“You sure? I can wait here while you’re on the call.”
Alina walked into the restaurant, and Lorenzo slid over in the
booth so she couldn’t see him behind his father.
“No, no, go ahead. I’ll see you in front of the Alamo. An hour
tops. Thanks for the family tree. I do think it’s interesting.”
Lorenzo’s voice was flat and toneless—it sounded heavy in his
ears. Alina would have been hurt by his indifference, but Alejandro didn’t
recognize it.
“Okay,” Alejandro said. “Maybe after we can go by the Sons and Daughters
of the Alamo headquarters. I’m trying to get them to add us to the official
list of descendants.”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
Alejandro slid out of the booth and stood next to the table. “I’ll
see you soon. I still want to hear more about what’s going on with you.”
He lingered, Lorenzo remained seated and shook his hand. When Alejandro
passed Alina, he turned back and glanced at her appreciatively. Her blonde hair
was cut short and boyish, above her ears. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, and
her blue eyes were spaced far apart. She didn’t look like the waitress, or
anyone else in San Antonio. Alina didn’t seem to notice Alejandro—he was just
another paunchy, balding guy with dark skin.
She leaned down and kissed Lorenzo on the mouth, slow and deep. While
she sat down across from him, Lorenzo put the genealogy folder on the booth
next to him.
Alina noticed his movement. “What’s all that?”
“Nothing. Papers someone left. I’ll leave it just in case they
come back.”
“Where’s your father?” she asked.
“How was traffic?”
“Fine, I guess.” She looked around, excited. “So?”
“I told you this was a bad idea.”
She looked pained. “What happened?”
“It’s okay. Really. He was here, but he had to go. Something about
leaving town for a book he’s writing.” Lorenzo waved Mónica back over. “I’m
starving, you want some food?”
She reached over and placed her hand on his wrist.
“You’re not telling me something,” she said. “Did you have a
fight?”
With his other hand, Lorenzo stuffed the folder between the
cushion and the back of the booth for some other son of San Antonio to find. He
lifted both hands into the air, slipping her off, and spread them in front of
him. An old credit-card receipt with his father’s name on it remained,
unnoticed on Lorenzo’s lap.
“What do you want to do today?” he asked. “We are completely
free.”
Photo by Casey Schlickeisen
Richard Z. Santos is a writer and teacher in Austin. His debut novel, Trust Me, was published by Arté Publico Press in March 2020. He is a Board Member of The National Book Critics Circle and served as one of the 2019 Nonfiction Judges for The Kirkus Prize. Recent work can be found in Texas Monthly, Kirkus Reviews, CrimeReads, and many more. In a previous career he worked for some of the nation’s top political campaigns, consulting firms, and labor unions. Follow him on Twitter @richardzsantos or visit his website at www.richardzsantos.com.
Between a scorpion’s stinger of glass and a severed lizard’s tail of topaz, sunset unearths a bridge of bone and a bullet’s shell. My father sets camp alongside a mound of clay. He points to the spine and says: restos de un hombre que nunca trabajó entre tierra que nunca sembró. Dicen que era gay. Mosaic on a desert altar of repose. My father sits closest to the fire as I eat stones behind him, weighing the ghost in my throat. From the fire, an obsidian sculpture chews and spits my silhouette, like a sentence asserting each syllable. Ghost in my throat, or recurring refrain of susurrate grief, thank you for not having a shadow to interrogate, even as sunrise rifts through el campo aridó. Light, bringer of work, may you unearth the song my bones will pronounce amongst the stone.
Miguel Soto serves as the Book Review Editor and Website Consultant for Jet Fuel Review, an international literary journal housed in Lewis University. In the summer of 2019, he was the recipient of the Wolny Writing Residency. His writings can be found in Kissing Dynamite Poetry, 30 N, The Ekphrastic Review, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. You can find more from him at www.miguelasoto.com
Manuel Reyes is a winner every day. He sits in front of the communal TV to watch the seven o’clock news—a static mess of black and white; anchors with their polished smiles delivering even more bad news. Beneath their crisp ironed suits, the lottery numbers for that week’s drawing. He stares at the ticket crumpled between his paint stained fingers. His wife’s suggestion, all those years ago, had been baby oil to remove the colors from in between his hairy knuckles. But he liked to peel away at the splattered mess, nerves pulsing through his chest, as the winning lottery numbers scrolled lazily across the screen. He plays the same numbers every week. 8 and 30 for his ex-wife’s birthday. 9 5 1 for Riverside—the only aspect of his life left unscathed after the divorce. And the Mega Million number enclosed in a white circle (with the power to change his life), always the number seven—his daughter’s favorite number, he hoped, unsure if she even still had favorites. The last number she mentioned was 40, $40,000, which she explained with a sigh, her new job was paying her. “I have a degree for fucks sake,” she said. Manuel sighed with her, blew air into the receiver of his pre-paid metro phone. “You deserve much more, mijita,” he said, even though it was more money than he would ever see again in his lifetime.
Every day, Manuel imagines all that he will buy with whatever amount he wins. 80 million this week, advertised in red fluorescent numbers, hanging from the window of every liquor store and Vons from the shelter to Hole Avenue. 50 million after taxes. Or maybe 30 million—Manuel was never good at calculations. His ex-wife had set up all work and finances for him. Found houses that needed color, deciphered what was fair to pay, and paid whichever partners he needed for the job their cut. She was always carrying the burden for them both.
Manuel settled on 40 million. 39 million would go to his daughter, Amelia. So much cash, she could quit her job, throw away her long pencil skirt, pull her thick curly hair out of that tight bun, become whatever it was she really wanted to be. 1 Million For himself. Manuel Reyes— millionaire. First, he would buy a modest trailer at the park beneath the 91. He didn’t need anything extravagant. Anything was better than the itchy cots of the SDA shelter on La Sierra, or the shelter downtown, where he had to sleep with his stuff under his back, and even then, he would wake up with pieces of himself missing.
Next, he would buy A 1997 Honda CRV like the one he had when Amelia was little. The one he would drive to Dodger Stadium, park, and eat cinnamon rolls out of the trunk before a game. Amelia with frosting all over her blue and white vest. And finally—second-hand furniture. A rightful place to put all of his things—a nightstand to keep his medication that he now had to haul around the sun stained streets in a plastic bag, waiting for 3PM when the shelter doors opened.
Manuel didn’t win last night’s drawing, and blames the liquor store for his misfortune. The man in the crisp suit mentioned, as Manuel crumpled the ticket in his hand, that there had been a shooting shortly after Manuel left. A father, critical condition, Manuel’s age, and while he should have been thinking, that could have been me, instead, he shouted “lousy”, drowned out by the noise in the shelter, and threw the ticket to the ground. So he tries a new liquor store, for good measure, in the morning. The sun is overbearing, the heat is lazy and settled around every isle of the liquor store. The clerk doesn’t understand how he pronounces Super Lotto. Manuel makes the money signal, his fingers dry and crisp. The clerk understands. Manuel has five dollars left in his wallet, so he looks at the endless rows of rolled up scratchers.
“Power Shot Multiplier. Win up to $100,000!”
Half of Amelia’s salary, he thinks, tapping his fingers on the glass. “Siete,” he says to the clerk, who repeats “seven” aloud in perfect English.
Outside, a woman walks by with a clear bag of pastel pan dulce, a baby on her hip, and a pocket full of coins, surely in route to Lavanderia Magnolia. Paletero men stroll lazily in search of a few kids cutting class, hungry for cartooned paletas in the heat of the morning. Manuel uses his fingernails to scratch the surface of the Power Shot scratcher. First, he sees $15 x2 and he is a lucky man. Thirty dollars could buy him pupusas and platanos fritos at Reinas. $50 x14 and he’s staying in a hotel tonight. Forget platanos, he wants a burger with double meat, medium rare, because now he has options. $500 x2, and the street starts to spin. Cars are zipping by without a sound, and the heat is making him dizzy. The woman with the pan dulce is a blur of pink and brown, the son on her hip is a shadow. $1,000 x18 and he’s calling Amelia. Punching numbers into his flip phone. His hands are shaking as he tells her $20,000, at least $20,000. “I can’t bring it with me to the shelter,” he says, and she understands. Unlike her speeches via early morning phone calls. Her relentless offers of her apartment, offering her pullout mattress couch to him. “That’s your problem, you have too much pride,” he hears Amelia or his ex-wife saying. He doesn’t have to explain that he cannot bring the ticket home, wherever that may be tonight. “Meet me at work,” she says, and Manuel tucks the ticket deep into his pocket.
The walk to Amelia’s job makes Manuel’s skin melt and his bones ache and pop. When he gets halfway there, he has to sit down on a bus bench and watch as busses drive by and push hot exhaust into his face. When he arrives in the parking lot of the tinted office building he sits on the curb, scratching the bar code for Amelia. From the revolving door, she is beautiful, and even more so up-close, just like her mother.
Before she sits down, he tells her his plans for the money. For her to keep half for herself and to give half to her mom. “Ten grand a piece or whatever after taxes. Mira,” he says, pointing to the x18 and x14. She slings her bony arm around his damp shoulder and asks why he’s so hot. “No air condition on the bus,” he says, shaking the ticket towards Amelia. She holds the ticket in between her manicured fingers and pulls a quarter out of her pocket, scratching the winning numbers section. In the right hand column, there are no moneybags or rolls of dollar bills, no Powershot written in bold, glittered letters—just numbers.
“You forgot to scratch this, Pa. You didn’t win. You forgot to scratch this section to see if you got one of these. See,” she says pointing to the moneybags on the side of the scratcher. Her voice is all pity and no excitement. Heat spreads through Manuel’s stomach and rises until his entire body is ablaze. The same embarrassment he imagines he would feel, body slung across Amelia’s pullout couch, is a fire under his skin.
There is no liquor store downtown. No red lotto numbers gleaming, carrying the broken hymns of men in Riverside with everything to lose. Down a few blocks and to the right is a fancy corner store, though. With a bright yellow neon sign that reads “wine, cheese, and deli sandwiches” hanging from the front window. There, Amelia pulls out a crisp twenty and asks for two of the same ticket. “Eight,” she says, in perfect English, pointing under the glass. Manuel chimes in, hands in pockets. “Y un Super Lotto tambien, por favor.”
“Super Lotto too, please,” Amelia says, handing over the cash.
They find a nearly empty park, save for a pigtailed girl swinging alone. Her Nanny is sitting, hunched, on the bench nearby, with eyes glued to her phone. Manuel barely recognizes the park at first, because it is immaculate—fresh, bright red bark soft beneath their feet, swings and monkey bars that glitter in the sun. The Super Lotto ticket looks out of place on the newly painted cherry wood bench, 8 3 0 9 5 1 -7 staring up at Manuel. The park, and Amelia, so much different than they were before. Manuel remembers days he used to spend there, pushing Amelia in the same rusted swings with her mom sitting on the same bench, yelling, “too high, too high, she’s almost to the sky!” Their laughter, together, a chorus when life was simple. He thinks of telling Amelia about the numbers. He could start there. And in between every squeak of the swing, he could say every apology that ever crossed his mind. First, “I’m sorry you had to miss work for this.” Then, “I’m sorry you have to worry about me.” Or maybe, “I am sorry I can’t be an example,” which he thinks sounds completely different translated in his head.
“Power Shot Multiplier. Win up to $100,000!”
Amelia scratches the ticket in her lap, brushing the black dust from her perfectly ironed slacks. The girl on the swing is laughing, swinging her legs to and from the sky to go higher. “Nothing,” Amelia says, turning the ticket over. She puts her head on Manuel’s shoulder, looking down at the ticket he’s already begun to scratch. The sun feels dull and calm on Manuel’s face, and there’s even a small breeze. He wants to stay in the park forever. But, instead, he keeps scratching, iridescent dust collecting under his paint stained fingers. Amelia, for once, stays longer than usual. And Manuel continues, and knows he will keep playing, over and over again until he is a winner.
Olivia Peña (@oliviapenya) is a Black-Salvadoran writer and storyteller from San Francisco. She earned her MFA from the University of San Francisco. Her writing has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop and her work has appeared in The Acentos Review.
Danny dies at the end. I average out to reading about one Steinbeck novel per year. The year I attempted suicide, I picked my way through his first success after waking on my way home, making use of my life after its two-day pause. Back home, I picked up the kaleidoscope of pills scattered on my bathroom floor, stoic while sweeping and tearing up the note scribbled in gold gel pen. The ghost of the tally marks marking the number I swallowed lingered on my arm.
The year after I attempted suicide, I struggled through my textbook for Chicano lit, taking in all the out-of-print pages had to offer. I found Steinbeck’s Danny under scrutiny – a Mexican turned insane by lack of meaning. I found meaning after we died. I lived to find him dead. Bipolar and bilingual as I am, I’m glad I didn’t die a cliche, like Danny.
Sarah G. Huerta is a Chicana poet from Dallas. They will begin their MFA at Texas State University in the fall. They currently live in Texas with their cat, Lorca.
She was watching an old rerun of Three’s Company when the
power went out. The television snapped off with a slight fizz, and John
Ritter’s smiling face greened in the electric afterglow before fading to black.
The ceiling fan above the living room slowed and stopped. The air conditioner
cut off and its rattle echoed through the ductwork like an old, stuttering car
going around a bend. She pushed buttons on the remote, jiggled cords, flipped
switches, raised and lowered the little plastic lever on the thermostat in the
fantasy that she could bring the AC back, that she held any dominion over the
circumstances in her parents’ house.
She poured the last of a pitcher of blue Flavor Aid into a plastic
cup and drank it in the dim kitchen. It wasn’t yet eleven in the morning. Her
parents’ shared Buick wouldn’t screech its way onto the cul-de-sac for seven
hours. Already her forehead sheened and the skin below her small breasts was
humid under the drape of an oversized shirt. South Texas summer seeped around
the aluminum frame windows, stole through the places where the walls were
coming apart from the ceilings, surfaced through the carpeted floor, leeched
down through the asphalt roof tiles, and filled the still space of the house
unacknowledged but threatening, like pretending not to see a man holding a gun.
Seven hours. The words darkened long shadows over her like a prison sentence. She dropped the cup in the sink and opened the refrigerator again, sifted through the cans and packets in the pantry. Once and only once she had discovered a half-eaten bag of gummi bears thrown in with the spices, and she liked to imagine it had been left there by a traveler from another time, a little gift just for her, a magic hand reaching through the void to show her that magic was real, and that she was not alone. She believed that if she peered hard enough into the space between the cans of tomato sauce and the plastic tub that held the french fry oil, she could discover worlds, things unseen, delights beyond reckoning. But today she saw only the stippled surface of the pantry wall, an archipelago emerging out of choppy waters, and nothing more.
The coffee can where her parents kept their spare change sat on
top of the refrigerator. When she emptied it onto the kitchen table she was
disappointed to discover it had already been gleaned of its quarters and dimes.
One dollar and twenty-seven cents. A Dr. Pepper and a Blow Pop. Maybe two. She
squinted through the window at a thermometer hanging off the worn wooden fence:
ninety-seven degrees. And Circle K was at least a mile up the road.
She slipped on one of the training bras her mother had forced on
her the previous summer, before she started sixth grade. It wasn’t that she was
embarrassed by the bras or by her lack of breasts, but it was the way her
mother looked at her whenever she mentioned things like bras and tampons and
birth control pills—with a raised eyebrow and a gravid smile like she was
getting initiated into some great society. Even at eleven she was smart enough
to know that any community built on shared genitalia was going to be thinly
allied at best.
The sun was blinding white outside, like the phosphorus her
science teacher had burned once in a demonstration of reactivity. She felt that
her skin might spontaneously ignite, too. Her brown hair clung to the back of
her neck and she brought it up and down off her damp skin in a meek attempt at
fanning herself. Her bike had had a flat tire for months and no one knew where
the needle for the pump had rolled away to. She rode the bike down the driveway
anyway but only made it past her neighbor’s mailbox when she jumped down and
gave up. By the time she got the bike back in the garage she saw red splotches
in front of her eyes and her forearms tingled with burn. She looked back at the
front door, but she already knew the shape the day would take in there.
She put the zippered wallet with one dollar and twenty-seven cents
in her back pocket and turned left to leave the cul-de-sac. She felt like
a character in a choose-your-story novel. If you go to the store turn to page
42. If you stay at home turn to page 9. She imagined herself splitting from
herself, one version turning left while the other went back in the house and
drifted listless as a hot ghost from room to room. She’d always used scraps of
paper to keep track of her place in those books so she could read through each
storyline, know every possibility contained at the end of each forking path. It
was thrilling to imagine how many outcomes could be contained within a life,
but also unnerving, the difference between commanding a space fleet and dying
in the stomach of an alien hinging on no more than the turn of a page.
She wished she’d brought a hat. Sunglasses. A paper fan. Her
family had only lived in Corpus Christi a year, in this neighborhood of dead
end streets beaded like grapes off arterial stems. A hot wind drove down the
street and blew her hair straight back and she closed her eyes to pretend for a
second she was at the beach, that it was ocean waves she could hear instead of
the distant whoosh of traffic on the highway. The cul-de-sacs were like islands
she thought, each one ending abruptly on a vast and fallow cotton field, little
teardrops of civilization marooned inside neat brown flows of dirt spilling to
the horizon. And the neighborhood of cul-de-sacs was itself an island, floating
far down from the main road. Driving to the mall the Buick always sailed past
miles of identical fields containing identical dollops of neighborhoods, a
pattern that seemed to repeat no matter the magnification, zoomed in or
out.
She had a brief fright wondering if somewhere not far away there
was an identical neighborhood where an identically sweaty middle schooler
walked to an identical Circle K to buy an identically foolish lunch. She’d meet
the other girl along the road. The other girl would ask her where she was
headed. They’d walk together. The other girl would be cagy with details—her
name, address, parents’ occupations—but she’d be so deft at changing the
subject, so flattering and interesting, that by the time they’d arrive at the
store and select their drinks they’d be best friends. Then they’d walk back the
same way they’d come. At the turnoff to the correct cul-de-sac, the fifth on
the right, the other girl would stop and say something like, Well I’ve got to
go home now. See you later. And the two girls would discover they were both
heading for the same house. They would fight—My house! No, mine!—and the other
girl would push her to the ground and run inside and emerge with her parents
who would stare at her unknowing, asking Sweetheart, where do you live? And
then the story would be over, the other girl having succeeded in unseating the
original and stealing her home, her parents, her life. But where would the
original girl go?
She loved stories that had a delicious strangeness, like lying in
bed and seeing an eerie blue light outside your window, but knowing you could
call your parents at any moment to come see what it was. But most stories
always ended before she knew for a fact what would happen next. She could
guess, but she felt it was so much better to know. If she ever wrote a
story she decided she would tell the reader exactly what happened:
After losing her home and her parents the original girl would
wander the cul-de-sacs for the rest of the night, making absolutely sure she
hadn’t gone to the wrong house. She’d doze a few hours on a pile of cardboard
out back of H-E-B and in the morning take a bus downtown to the bayfront. She’d
beg change from tourists and at nightfall would sneak onto a shrimp boat. She’d
live like this for years, vessel to vessel, shrimping and fishing, catching
tarpon and black drum, but one night a storm would overtake her boat, and her
last thought before she sank beneath the waves would be a question: Would the
other girl die at the same instant, the two of them symbiotically linked, two
ends of one string?
One, two, three, four—red vinyl yard signs dotted the road, BUSH
COUNTRY ‘94 declared in tall white letters like church steeples. This was a
neighborhood that loved signs and sigils, banners proclaiming Spring, another
SuperBowl win for the Cowboys, a daughter on the JV cheerleading squad, love of
Jesus Christ the Redeemer, mini billboards advertising the dearest identities
uniting the people inside all the identical brick houses. Corpus Christi, body
of Christ. Something about living in or on Christ’s body made people wish to
declare themselves. It still surprised her how the names on the big vinyl signs
had changed since they’d left Zapata and moved east. Lopez was now Wheatley,
Salinas was Kocurek, Ortega was Diffenbach. And the girl found that she had
changed in the move, too. With blue eyes and freckles she’d been called a white
girl in Zapata. But with a father born on the southern bank of the Río Grande,
and a last name originating in Andalusia six hundred years prior, the girl was
informed by her new classmates that she was Mexican. Something they had too
much of already, said a boy with small eyes and a cruel little mouth like a
plastic elf. She’d rolled her eyes and told the boy to shut up but she worried
ever since that whether she was white or Mexican would always be up for public
debate, subject to the shifting breeze of popular opinion. But as she didn’t
know the answer herself, she felt she couldn’t really complain.
Dogs periodically gambolled down driveways to bark or sniff her
ankles, but she saw no one else. The air was thick with humidity. Like
breathing through a wet washcloth, she heard her mother say once. Cicadas
trilled overhead, interspersed with mourning dove coos that sounded to the girl
like mothers calling their children back home. Sweat ran into her eyes and
rained down her cheeks like tears. Imagined water pooled in street corner
mirages and she could taste the bubblesweet joy of a Dr. Pepper on her tongue.
But every time she looked up the Circle K sign was still so far away, like the
wind was blowing her back towards home, like the space between her neighborhood
and the main road was expanding, like she and the sign were two rafts on a deep
sea circling, circling, never getting nearer.
She passed a brick house with sour green trim and tried to peer
into the windows, but all the blinds were sealed tight against the day. The
girl who lived there wore real gold hoops and let her welita braid her
brilliant black hair in the mornings before school. She’d sat with the braided
girl on the school bus and the two had shared Pop Tarts and divulged which
eighth graders they thought were cute. They went to the skating rink and sucked
blue jawbreakers that stained their lips and teeth. They passed notes in the
hallway and waited for each other at their lockers before lunch. Then the
braided girl went to visit cousins in the Valley over spring break and came
back in overalls, purple lipstick, and one wisp of hair curled and shellacked
to her cheek like a jetty. I don’t do that baby shit no more, the braided girl
said loudly one afternoon at lunch. Why don’t you ask some fifth graders to go
roller skating with you? The braided girl hadn’t said, White bitch, perhaps
hadn’t even thought it, but the girl heard it now bellying in the soupy air, a
sustained bass note that drowned out the cicadas. She imagined the braided girl
sitting on the floor of her bedroom watching cable and eating cookies and
painting her toenails with glittering polish and the thought made her pick up a
rock and hurl it toward the front door. She took off running down the street
before anyone could answer.
The sun was lower. It hung directly behind the Circle K sign so
that she could no longer see the logo, only the suggestion of white and red
against a blinding orange halo. If the original girl drowned, she thought, then
the other girl would certainly die too. Their lives depended on one another, as
though they were each made of two disparate halves that couldn’t survive
without the other. Maybe the girls wouldn’t fight over the house. Maybe they
would find a way to share the same life, taking turns, one sleeping in the bed
while the other hid out in the backyard. A mysterious twin would really be the
greatest thing that could happen to a person, she thought. Someone who shared
your whole life, your every thought, who knew you down to your DNA. If she saw
her twin standing down at the end of the street she’d run to meet her, she’d
shower her with attention, bring her back to her house and give her first dibs
in the closet every morning. Two ends of one string only meant the string might
be tied to something.
The sun was still dropping, the day swelling into a hot, windless
night. The sky was a lustrous swirl of orange and purple, red and blue. Street
lights buzzed awake. Her mouth was gummy with thirst and there was a burning,
gnawing feeling seeping up her stomach into her breastbone. Still she was no
closer to the store. The sign shone in the darkening sky like the North Star.
She thought about going back, that her parents must already be home, that they
must have gone down to the power company and paid the bill and that the air
conditioner was at that moment slowly filling the house with frigid offering.
But she didn’t turn around. She kept walking with limp hair plastered to her
forehead and neck. The night unrolled shapeless before her in a million directions.
She could see someone in the shadows coming toward her, heard
their sneaker feet crushing dead cottonwood leaves. No cars came and went out
of the driveways, but inside the houses televisions clicked on, wan blue light
spilling from behind every blinded window. A skittering breeze turned into a
great gust that shook the proud vinyl signs, flattening their words to the
ground. But they straightened a second later as the gust continued east and
away, and the cul-de-sacs were quiet again save the white words screaming from
the signs and a trace of canned laughter echoing out of the blue screens like
tropical birds high in their island trees. She thought it was beautiful to
imagine living in the body of Christ. And didn’t that mean deliverance was always
there, wanting her to grab it?
The person was paused on a corner, waiting. She couldn’t see their
face. They were only an interruption to the darkness, black upon darker black. If
you keep walking, turn to page 77. If you turn around, go to page 8. She pushed
her hair off her forehead, licked her dry lips, and jogged down the street,
eager to catch them.
Before becoming a writer Elizabeth Gonzalez James was a waitress, a pollster, an Avon lady, and an opera singer. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, Ploughshares Blog, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Her debut novel, Mona at Sea, was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is forthcoming, Summer 2021. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Oakland, California.
My cousin came
from Puerto Rico and killed our dog.
That summer of 1972, our dog Barbie had been acting bizarre. My sister had named the dog after her doll. She had curly white hair (the dog, not my sister) with those brown-red streaks under her eyes that some dogs get. I was seven, and Barbie was my best friend.
She used to wake me every morning by licking my face. She sat by me whenever I watched TV and listened whenever I wanted to talk about comic books.
But Barbie hadn’t been waking me anymore. She no longer ran to me when I called. She wouldn’t eat. She growled for no reason.
Every night Barbie ran from room to room in our Brooklyn apartment. I would wake in the middle of the night, and I could hear her in the darkness. Her long nails clicked on the floor as she went back and forth, from the bedrooms to the kitchen and back.
My sister Evie tried picking her up, to hold her to calm her down, but Barbie whimpered and wiggled until Evie had to let her go. Then she ran off again, back and forth, never stopping. We were scared. Our brother Rafael didn’t care because he didn’t like the dog because he didn’t like her name. So it was just my sister and I who had a conference to decide what to do.
We knew the dog needed a doctor, but we knew doctors cost money. So we went to ask Mami.
Evie said, “Something’s wrong with Barbie. She needs a doctor.”
Mami was making breakfast for us at the stove, fried eggs, platanos, fried Spam. She was smoking a cigarette. She said, “Ask your father.”
But it was never easy to ask anything from Papi. He didn’t live with us, and he only came by in the afternoons to do the numbers, so he was busy. But once in a while he would play with us, and that summer he and I were building an Aurora monster model set together.
Although he did more of the building. He said I would make a mess and that he didn’t want me to sniff too much glue. He laughed when he said that. I didn’t know why.
We were making the glow-in-the-dark Phantom of the Opera where Lon Chaney rips off his mask and grins. I wiggled each model piece off the plastic grid and handed them to Papi when he asked for them.
Papi had just finished gluing the mask into the Phantom’s hand when Barbie ran into the room and then ran back out.
Fearing my father’s reaction, I said, “I think Barbie needs a veterinarian.” Which I said slowly, to make sure the word came out right.
Papi laughed to himself again. I didn’t know why.
* * *
That same summer our
cousin Abdon, from Mami’s side, came to stay with us. He was from back in Ponce,
and he had a wife and baby girl back there. He came to the city to find work.
Abdon was thin as Jesus and had hair on his chin like a goat. He mostly spoke fast Spanish that was hard for us to understand because we mostly spoke English in the house.
But I liked that he could crush beer cans in one hand and that he taught me how to play Geography. He and I would sit in the living room with a world atlas that Mami had bought from a neighbor for ten dollars. Abdon opened to a page and said, “Portugal.” Then he slid the atlas to me. He smoked a cigarette and drank beer while I searched.
“Portugal!” I said, pointing.
“Awright. You good,” said Abdon, and he looked at me with his eyes that were green as boogers. Then he said, “Ecuador.”
I liked learning and was always good in school because Mami said being good in school, learning math, learning history, learning to speak English correct, was the only was to succeed in this country, the only way to get rich.
So I liked Abdon and I thought he liked my sister, my brother, and me. But one morning I heard him and Mami talking in the kitchen. He said, “Estos no tienen respeto.”
“Si,” my mother said. To my mother, you were no good if you didn’t have respect — for priests no matter how much they smelled, for the landlord who banged on the pipes, even for old people who wanted to eat you like that old man who walked down our street and screamed that he would eat us. It didn’t matter. You had to have respect!
“Edgar, he’s the freshest one,” Abdon said.
“Si,” I heard Mami say. “Mr. Ants in His Pants.”
They called me that because I had broken Mami’s plaster panther and her plaster horse and her plaster shepherd. I was always breaking something. My hair was always a mess, Mami said, and she always had to tuck my shirt back in. Every time I went down the stairs, it was at a run.
We had a small black and white TV. When I wasn’t reading, I watched it, Sesame Street and Electric Company at the start of the day, then game show after game show, then cartoons, the 4:30 Movie, and Eyewitness News, then reruns and sitcoms and cop shows until it was time to go to sleep.
One night Abdon told us we should be in bed. “Awright, kids, to sleep now,” he said in his thick accent, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
It was only 9. Mami allowed us to stay up to 11.
“Sleep,” Abdon said, towering over us. But we ignored him and kept our eyes on the TV.
That was when the belt came out.
We were no strangers to the distinct sound of a buckle, although my mother preferred using chancletas.
Abdon pulled me up first by my little left arm so that he could get at the back at my legs. Smack! It was sharp and hard and it hurt like a hit from God.
“Ai!” I yelled.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
“That . . . what . . . you . . . get,” he said, a smack between each word.
My brother was faster than I was and caught only one in the back of his legs.
I wriggled free from Abdon and ran crying, “Mami, mami,” and “It’s not fair,” all the way to my bunk bed.
In the bunk below, my brother cried and then stopped, but when he heard me cry, he started again.
Later, my mother came in to say goodnight and kissed me on the forehead and said, “You see. Abdon is a man. You have to listen and respect him.” Then she told me to say my prayers.
*
* *
The next weekmy brother and my sister Evie and me were
in the bedroom my brother and I shared. We were on the floor, with all our monster
models on the floor in front of us.
Barbie used to sit and watch us play, but she was walking around the apartment now, never stopping.
Fever said that his favorite model was Godzilla because he put it together all by himself.
“The hand keeps falling off, but I like it when the spikes in the back glow in the dark,” he said. But he felt bad that he lost the little glow-in-the-dark fire piece that was supposed to come out of Godzilla’s mouth.
He pointed to the Wolfman model and said, “Who can tell me who this is?”
“Me,” I said. “The Wolfman’s real name is Larry Talbot and he became a werewolf because he was bitten by a werewolf and he changes into a monster and he can only be killed with a silver bullet and they shoot him in the end.”
“Very good,” said Fever. Then he pointed to the Mummy and said, “And this monster?”
“The Mummy,” said Evie, “is from Egypt.” She could put her model together herself, but she liked to have Papi do it. “He drinks tea made from the leaves and then he comes alive. Then it goes out and likes to choke people until they die.”
Fever pointed to the Creature of the Black Lagoon and said, “What is the name of this creature?”
We busted out laughing, Rafael shaking his head, Evie saying she was going to pee herself, me barely being able to breathe. I fell back on the floor and that was when I saw our cousin Abdon turning away from the doorway. He had been watching us. He probably thought we were crazy.
*
* *
I was on the
living room floor, drawing on old notebook paper. My father and my cousin Abdon
were drinking Rheingold and watching the Mets on TV. Barbie was going back and
forth, from the kitchen to the living room, her nails scratching on the floor.
“In Puerto Rico, is hard to get good work,” said Abdon, crushing a beer can in his hand. “In New York, is harder.”
“No, it’s not,” Papi said. “Depends where you look.”
Then Papi told Abdon about all the jobs he had had since he came to New York: dishwasher, waiter, bartender, factory worker, carpenter, plumber, janitor, encyclopedia salesman, delivery man, garage mechanic, short order cook, electrician, gravedigger, house painter, numbers runner, roofer, construction worker, driver, and even a dentist —for himself, he said, pointing out the space in the side of his own mouth where he had taken out a tooth with pliers.
But Abdon said that was just my father, that no one would give him, Abdon, a job.
After another beer, Papi told Abdon he could help him do a roof in Bushwick. Abdon asked him what would he have to do. Papi said it was just a lot of lifting and walking.
The next day, Papi picked up Abdon early in the morning. My sister Evie and I were wide awake and excited to see Papi at a different time a day.
“Go back to sleep,” Papi said.
Abdon came out of the bathroom, looking sleepy.
“You ready?” Papi said to him.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Abdon.
After they left, Evie and I somehow ended up fighting over a Yoo-hoo. She gave me a charleyhorse, and I cried to Mami, who yelled at her.
In the afternoon, I was eating crackers when Papi and Abdon came back.
Right away Abdon went to lie down on the couch, where he slept at nights.
In the kitchen, Papi started getting his numbers papers together. Mami asked him how did everything go.
“You can’t ask a lemon tree to give you oranges,” Papi said.
“Que paso?” she said.
“He lifted more beers than anything,” Papi said.
*
* *
I was alone in the
bedroom playing with my action figures. I had an Aquaman whose head wouldn’t go
back on because the rubber band inside his body broke. It was a hot day and no
breeze was coming through the open windows. I was tired, cranky, hungry. All of
a sudden Abdon came in and started yelling at me. I couldn’t understand what he
was saying. I told him to leave me alone.
“Que!” he said.
I heard the clinking metal sound.
That is when I said he should do a four-letter word to himself.
He got me with the belt once across the back before I was gone. I was small and slippery. This was my only advantage in all the fights I had with my brother. I got past Abdon, through the short hallway between the bedroom and living room, and ran into the bathroom before Abdon could get me.
It was a tiny bathroom, with a claw-foot tub, a toilet with the tank above it, and no sink. On the door was a little latch that went into a little ring. I held onto the door knob and pulled it to me with all my strength.
Abdon banged on the door and it shook. There was a glass in the front of the door that had been painted over a hundred times. I was worried he would smash through it, but I knew, I hoped, I prayed he wouldn’t do that. Would he?
“Abres la puerta,” he said.
“No, fuck off!”
“Open the door.”
“Fuck off!”
My brother and sister had been in the living room when I ran past. I knew they were watching. I also knew my mother was in the kitchen.
Thinking now about what happened next, I feel bad. But knowing what happened later, it’s hard to regret it. I was a small boy against a drunk, raging man. I used the only power I had.
“Open the door!” he said.
“Opeen da doh!” I said, imitating his thick accent.
I heard Fever and Evie start giggling. I heard Mami out there. From the way she laughed, I could tell she had a cigarette in her mouth.
A hamper sat in the corner on the edge of the tub. Above it was a little square tunnel that went up into darkness. When I asked my mother how could Santa Claus visit us when we didn’t have a fireplace, she said he came down that tunnel.
I started imitating Abdon more, talking about going to “Chay Stadium” and saying “Otro cerveza. Otro cerveza.”
Abdon banged the door again, but with less force.
“Malcria’o,” he said. “I gonna get you.”
I stayed in there for another hour, doing impressions of Abdon and Jerry Lewis and Abbott and Costello and Bugs Bunny.
When I came out, I looked — Abdon was not around. Fever and Evie looked tired from laughing. Mami asked me if I wanted something to eat.
*
* *
I had just
finished fighting with my brother for no reason. He had given me a
charleyhorse, and I cried to Mami, who yelled at him.
So I was watching TV alone, on the floor, in the dark. Suddenly I turned — and there was Barbie. She was curled up behind me, still and quiet as a sleeping puppy, with a wet, wet nose. Like she had never been sick at all, like she was all better.
I was scared to move because then she would move and maybe she would change back. I stayed still for as long as I could.
After a while I had to pee. I got up as slowly as I could, and Barbie stayed where she was, calm and still.
But when I got back she was gone from her spot. She had started running back and forth through the apartment, faster and faster.
All through the night, despite the summer heat, I stayed under the covers.
The next day, when Papi came in the afternoon, he drank beer and listened to the Mets on the radio.
It was Evie’s turn to talk to him. She said, “Papi. Can you please bring Barbie to the doctor, please?”
Abdon was there, too, and he and Papi started speaking in fast Spanish. Finally, Papi said he would bring the dog to the doctor the next day, but that night Abdon would put the dog in the bathroom so it wouldn’t scare us.
Evie and I were happy. Our dog was going to be okay!
That night Abdon put Barbie in the bathroom like Papi said he would. Then he came to our room, where Fever and I had bunk beds. He stayed in the doorway, and I could not see his face because it was in the dark. He told us, “Pray for God to make the dog better.”
I began saying the Lord’s Prayer. If my brother ever prayed for anything, it was a new baseball glove.
When I got up the next morning Barbie was not around. Maybe Papi wasn’t back from the doctor yet. Abdon was not around.
My mother was in the kitchen, washing clothes in the sink, listening to the radio station that played the old music she loved.
“Where’s Barbie?” I said.
“She die,” said Mami, without turning from the sink. “Pobre perrito.”
“What? Oh no,” I said.
Mami pointed with her mouth to the back window. There, right outside the window on the roof of the apartment below, was something in a clear plastic garbage bag. Barbie’s teeth stuck out from her black lips. Her head was twisted almost all the way around.
My mother told me, “Abdon say she hit her head on the tub and die.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t cry. I knew I should be, but I didn’t and I didn’t know why. I said, “What . . . what are we going to do with her? Can we bury her?” I was thinking about funerals and how much they cost and if they had them for pets and could we afford it.
“Abdon will take her to the river,” Mami said. “C’mon, eat some breakfast.”
A month later, just before school started, Abdon’s wife and baby came from Puerto Rico and they moved to an apartment in Brownsville.
That fall my sister asked Papi and Mami for another dog, and one day Papi brought Evie another poodle mix. She named it Barbie.
Richie Narvaez is author of the award-winning collection Roachkiller and Other Stories and the gentrification thriller Hipster Death Rattle. His latest novel is the historical YA mystery Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco.
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