Chico’s words come in from somewhere far away. He is calling my name, I think, but I still can’t move. I’m crying. And even though I know what happened, I keep hearing my voice like it’s coming from someplace else, like it’s not even my own, asking Chico, What happened? What happened? Over and over.
Chico keeps saying, We have to get someone! We have to get someone! as he grabs my shirt and pulls me up to standing.
Time doesn’t make sense. We are stuck in that moment forever, even as it feels like we are in a movie on fast-forward.
We stumble out into the street. And it looks so strange and empty. The world is blurred streaks of orange-brown and blue and white that make my eyes pulse.
I’m dreaming, I think. Even as I catch a glimpse of my hands and shoes covered in blood. Even as I hear Chico’s strange whimpering next to me and his incomprehensible jumble of words.
I think he is asking me where we should go. I see his face and I try to make out his words, but I can hardly make sense of anything.
All I know is we have to run—hard and fast and without looking back. Away as quickly as possible. Away so you’re not a witness. So you’re not a part of any of it. So no one can ask you questions. So no one knows you were there.
We run.
It’s the way you learn to live around here.
Pequeña
“Doña Agostina!” A man’s voice calls anxiously from the street, someone looking for the old woman.
“¡Aquí!” I hear Tía Consuelo answer. “Se encuentra aquí. Espere,” she says, telling the man he can find Doña Agostina here and to wait. But he doesn’t wait, and I hear Tía Consuelo’s and Mami’s voices coming closer, calling to the man, when he suddenly appears at the bedroom door. Doña Agostina’s hands are still grinding my stomach. The man stares at us, Tía Consuelo and Mami behind him, demanding to know what he is doing when—
“Doña Agostina,” the man says, out of breath. His face is sweaty, his hair disheveled. “I have terrible news.”
“¿Qué pasó?” she asks. Her hands stop moving. They’re just barely lying on my belly as she waits for him to tell her what happened.
“Your husband . . .” the man says, but he falters. He tries again. “Doña Agostina, I have terrible news . . .”
The old woman reaches back for a chair at the side of the bed. Her hands are trembling, but she grabs it and lowers herself to sit. I can hear her breath becoming shallow as she braces herself for what’s coming.
Maybe in other places, terrible news is unexpected. But here, it is not. Here we wait for it always. And it always comes.
That is why I grab Doña Agostina’s hands—the ones that have just delivered the unwanted child, that have tried to knead away the hollow, unfillable space inside me. I hold on to those hands and I meet Doña Agostina’s tired old eyes, now alert and wide with fear and knowing, and I don’t look away.
“They’ve killed him,” the man says. “At the store. I’m sorry . . . Don Felicio está muerto.”
She lets out a long, quivering wail. I hold on tight to her shaking hands. Mami and Tía Consuelo rush to her.
The baby begins to cry.
Pulga
I scramble to get the plastic garbage bag with our bloodied clothes and shoes hidden under my bed just as the front door bangs open.
Shit. We forgot to put the wooden bar up.
“Pulga! Chico!” Mamá’s voice is frantic. She cries, “¿Dónde están? Dios, where are you?” She is practically screaming, desperation clawing and strangling her voice.
“¡Aquí!” I yell as Chico and I hurry to the living room. “We’re in here!”
Mamá’s eyes are wide and wild, her face so flushed. As soon as we’re within reach, she pulls us into a fierce hug, her nails digging into the side of my arm as her grip tightens. “Ay, Diosito, gracias, gracias,” she says. Mamá’s heart is beating furiously, so hard and fast it feels like it could burst through to my own chest. Her body radiates heat and trembles so much, I don’t think she notices how we shake, too. When she pulls away, her face is streaked with sweat, tears, and eye makeup. “I didn’t know where you were . . . Why are you here? Why did you leave Tía’s house? Ay, Dios . . . muchachos . . . how long have you been here?” Her questions come out in a rushed breath.
“We didn’t want to hear Pequeña crying like that so we came home until after the baby came . . . Sorry we didn’t tell you first. We just didn’t want to bother—”
Relief floods Mamá’s body, so completely, she seems to lose all strength. She sits down on the couch and stays there a moment, stunned, before covering her face and crying quietly.
“Mamá?” I say. Chico sits down next to her, reaches for her hand. More tears rush down her face.
“No llore, doña,” he says, wiping Mamá’s tears gently and telling her not to cry.
She shakes her head. “I didn’t know where you two were,” she whispers. When she looks up again, she stares at me, takes a deep breath. “Something terrible has happened . . .”
At first, I think she must know about Don Felicio. But before I can speak, a new fear grips my heart. “Is it Pequeña?” I say. What if Pequeña, or her baby, or both, died during childbirth?
“Is she okay? Did something—” Chico starts.
Mamá holds up her hand. “She’s fine, Pequeña’s fine,” she says. “It’s Don Felicio. He’s . . . dead. Killed at his store.”
I try to look like I don’t know. I think of Don Felicio on that floor and I choke out some kind of response. But Mamá has leaned her head back against the couch. Her gaze has gone to the ceiling and she is saying so softly, “Ay, Dios . . . ayúdanos.”
Mamá’s pleas to God for help sound foreboding in that still, silent room. She takes a deep breath. “I have to go be with Doña Agostina.” She stands up. “Stay here, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” I nod and she gives us both a weak hug and kiss before heading out again.
We watch from the patio as she slowly makes her way to the store, to Doña Agostina’s side.
“You think she suspects anything?” Chico asks next to me as I watch Mamá put an arm around the old woman.
“I don’t know.”
We sit on the patio, staring off into the distance at neighbors who’ve come out to be with and comfort Doña Agostina, and at those who only observe from their doorways even though the police have not arrived. Neither has the coroner. So all I can think about is Don Felicio’s body still there, splayed out on the floor. Being drenched in his own blood.
Chico scrapes his shoe against the patio floor. When I look over at him, his hair is matted down on his forehead and his face is anxious. He puts his head in his hands. “What the hell just happened?” he asks. “What happened?”
My body is still buzzing, my mind flashing with Don Felicio lying on the floor, us running, rushing to clean up. Washing off all that blood. Seeing Mamá’s face frantic and crying. Trying to seem normal in front of her.
The adrenaline starts ebbing away and I feel like rubber.
Chico starts crying softly. Then harder. I want to tell him to stop, to be tough. I want to remind him this is nothing new.
But I don’t trust myself to speak. I don’t trust my own tears to stay away. So I say nothing and keep looking in the direction of the store.
Soon the police show up, and people trickle away to their houses.
“Come on,” I tell Chico. The last thing we need is one of those uniformed men to spot us and come ask questions.
We go to my room and I watch from the window while Chico sits on the bed. Every passing moment I expect a knock at the door, a policeman saying someone saw us running from the scene, me covered in blood. But nobody saw us. Or if they did, no one said anything. Maybe they guessed the truth and were protecting us. Because everyone knows Rey’s car. And everyone knows what he is capable of. And everyone knows who the
police really work for anyway. So nobody comes. Nobody asks questions.
For now.
* * *
~~~
A little while later Mamá comes back and says she has to stay with Doña Agostina tonight because the woman is so grief-stricken. It means fewer questions for her to ask us. And time to get rid of our bloodied clothes.
“Will you be okay without me?” she says. “You can warm up the leftover beans in the refrigerator for dinner.”
“We’ll be okay,” I tell her. She rushes around the house, her shoes clicking, her keys jangling, talking to herself about what needs to be done and poor Doña Agostina, asking again if we’ll be okay without her and to be sure, be sure to put the wooden bar down as soon as she steps outside.
Then she leaves. I close the door behind her.
“Is it down?” she yells from the patio.
“Yes, Mamá,” I assure her, securing the bar. When her motor scooter zooms away again, the house falls still and silent.
Like it’s waiting for something. Or someone.
Chico drops onto the velvet couch and I sit down next to him. But my mind crowds with worry.
The clothes. We have to burn them. Wash the shoes because Mamá will notice if those are gone.
Nobody saw us.
Maybe somebody did.
Anybody could’ve seen us.
What if they did?
We sit there for I don’t know how long and I can’t turn off my mind; it keeps thinking and picturing the same things over and over, screaming in my head in all that silence, interrupted only by Chico’s whispers, asking what happened again and again.
* * *
~~~
Night begins to fall.
“Come on,” I tell him finally. We get the bag from under my bed and take out our shoes, wash them in the big, concrete sink Mamá washes clothes in. The water and lather turn pink. My stomach twists.
“Get the matches,” I tell him. And when he comes back with them in hand, we go out to the backyard and build a small fire. It flickers and glows an eerie orange as it consumes the plastic bag and feeds on the clothes inside. We watch it burn.
Then, with the smell of smoke still on us, we go inside. We hide in our room.
We do not speak. We try to stop picturing Don Felicio, the way his blood spurted from his body.
I try to keep that blood from spilling into my mind.
I try.
And I try.
But my thoughts are covered in red.
Pequeña
That night, the sound of toads croaking is louder than I’ve ever heard before. It sounds as if the streets are filled with toads. As if they’ve invaded our streets, our whole barrio. I wonder if I’ve brought them here.
I’ve slept all day. Or slipped to other worlds all day. I’m not sure which is which. But now it is night, and I can’t sleep. All I can do is lie here under thin sheets, feeling the blood gush from my body with each movement, each turn.
I don’t know what happened to Doña Agostina. One moment she was next to me, and then she was gone. I wonder if I slipped into other worlds when I was holding her hand. I wonder if I took her with me. I wonder if I left her somewhere, a place where Don Felicio is still alive.
The house is eerily quiet.
Mami is sleeping on the couch. She’s moved the baby bassinet out there, next to her, so you will sleep better, she says. You need rest, Pequeña. I think she’s worried because I won’t hold him. Because I don’t want to hear him, or give him a name.
I’m glad she took him to another room.
The curtains on the window billow ever so slightly. Mami left the window open just a little bit, because I complained about the sour, tangy smell. No, I told her. Close it. She did as I asked, but while I was sleeping, she must have opened it again.
I can’t stand it opened.
Slowly, I sit up. Each move is painful and makes me want to cry out.
No, I tell myself. This won’t break you. You can handle this. I take a deep breath as I lower my legs over the side of the bed, as I push myself up and feel the flood of warmth between my legs. It makes me feel sick, but I force myself to get up anyway.
I take small, careful steps to the window. I push aside the curtains and a hand reaches in and grabs mine.
Pequeña.
Someone whispers my name.
Somewhere else, someone else might jump backward. Or scream. Because you don’t expect the night to reach in through your window and grab you. You don’t expect to hear it call your name. But I’m not somewhere else; I’m not someone else. So I stay exactly as I am.
“I’m sorry,” he says, laughing quietly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I want to tell him I’m not scared, but I am. More than if Death itself had come to take me to my grave.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
“You seem sick,” he says.
“I . . . I had the baby,” I tell him. But it’s seeing him here, like this, that makes me nauseated.
He looks in, takes a closer look at my stomach. “I don’t believe you. You look the same,” he says, but then he studies my face. I refuse to blink. “Wait, for real?”
I nod.
He smiles. “A boy, right? Tell me it’s a boy . . .”
“It’s a boy,” I say.
“I knew it! A boy. I have a boy.”
I don’t want any claim to this baby, but the way he says that bothers me, too. He doesn’t deserve to have anything.
“I mean, I knew it could’ve been a girl, but I also knew it would be a boy. You gave me what I wanted, Pequeña.” He caresses my fingers gently and I fight the urge to pull away. “Where is he?”
“With my mother, in the other room, so I can rest.”
He nods. “Well, I have to see him. And you finally have to tell your mother about us, our plans.”
I stay quiet, but he laughs again. “Don’t look so scared. I told you, I’m going to take care of us. You know that, right? When are you going to tell her?”
“Soon,” I say.
He stares at me for a long time and then that strange look comes across his face. “Soon,” he repeats. “Yeah, soon.” When he looks at me like that, I can’t move. There is something off in his look, something that reveals the inside of him is broken, something that lets you know he is soulless and makes you scared to turn away. “Or you know what? Maybe . . . maybe we tell her right now.”
I make myself reach for his hand. I caress it as chills run through my body. I feel clammy and weak. “Let me get better, look better. Then we’ll tell her. I want it to be . . . perfect.”
The coldness in his eyes warms. Then he stares at my body, and I’m so relieved I am bloated and sick looking. “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea . . .” he says. “I was going to let it be a surprise, but I’m getting you a ring. It’s the most expensive ring I could find, and soon you’re going to be wearing it. I bet you never thought you’d be wearing the fanciest ring in this whole barrio.”
I swallow the sour taste in my mouth. “No, I never imagined any of this for me.”
He smiles like I’ve paid him the biggest compliment. “You are very lucky. That I chose you. Pequeña.” He stares at my lips, licks his own.
I want to tell him that he disgusts me. Everything about him—the way he looks at me, the way he says my name, his touch, his face, of which every detail has impressed itself in my mind. His patchy facial hair, the overlap of his teeth, the glistening of his saliva, the dead look he carries, and the smell of him—a scent that escapes from his pores, from the dark hole of his mouth. It’s the scent of the rotted heart he carries inside.
“Come here,” he says, pulling my arm through the open window, forcing me closer to him. Fresh blood gushes. And then he is kissin
g me, grabbing my face as he forces his tongue between my lips.
“Just remember I chose you,” he whispers. “I could have had anyone, Pequeña, but I want you. I need you. And you need me.” He kisses my hand. “Take care of our baby,” he says, smiling his terrible smile.
I watch as he disappears into the night.
I picture the night reaching out like a terrible claw, crushing him in its grasp. Or the earth opening under him, swallowing him, and closing up again forever. Or a stray bullet finding its way into his rotted heart or head as he walks the streets, smiling his terrible smile, the delusion of us in his mind.
The taste of him is still on my tongue, his touch, everything is all over me. Bitter vomit fills my mouth and it escapes me before I can reach for the towel near the bed. I wipe my mouth instead and toss the towel on top of the throw-up.
I know I should go to the bathroom, that I need to change my pad. I know I should clean the vomit. I know I should probably call out for my mother as sweat covers my body and I tremble.
But I just lie back in bed, grateful that the bitter taste of my own sick has washed out any taste of him.
And I try not to cry, as blood and milk and life drain from me.
Let it all drain, I think. And let me die tonight.
Pulga
Chico and I stay in our room for what feels like forever. But it will never be long enough to wipe away what we’ve seen.
“Is that how my mamita looked the day she was killed?” Chico whispers into the darkness of our mostly bare room. The stand-up fan oscillates between my bed and his thin mattress on the tiled floor.
We Are Not from Here Page 4
