Now Hernán was the one laughing. He said Yésica was super chill and sure, he could dance, it was no big deal.
We started to move. To warm up. Hernán was dressed in black. Like me. We were the only ones there in black threads. On top of that, he wore a studded jacket with a picture of a skull, and the sides of his head were shaved down to his scalp. Though we stepped all over each other at first, we kept going.
Las manos arriba went the song, and everybody raised their hands and pumped them to the beat, like we were shooting the sky. I raised my hands too.
We danced a bunch. I didn’t feel tired, just more and more fired up. After a while, Hernán said he had to go, that he was looking for cash to buy some kush, but he’d treat me to a beer first.
He went for the beer then came back. We drank to the side of the dance floor as we watched people move. I felt like a tourist; I’m not sure whether he did too.
“I’m sorry,” he said at some point, his eyes glued to his cup. “I was scared.”
Then he kissed me on the cheek and held me for a long time. He turned around and left. As I watched him make his way to the exit, I thought of that night, of the guy in the car and the gunshots. That was the last time we were together.
Just as he was about to fade into the crowd, Hernán turned around, raised his arm for one last wave, and vanished.
I hung about on my own for a while, till I was ready to go. My head was heavy with the crackling lyrics of cumbia but none of their joy. I felt out of it and my legs tingled.
I headed toward the exit. There was a long, tunnel-like hallway. I sauntered past it like I wasn’t sure if I should leave. By the time I walked out of El Rescate, it was so late I couldn’t tell if it was drizzling or if it was just the dew that falls before dawn. I was expecting to see the palm tree path that led to Route 8—two rows of slender palms squeezed between flagstones and revving trucks—but was instead blinded by floodlights and forced to shuffle forward with my eyes on the ground.
I walked like this for a few feet then gazed up, eyes squinting against the light. People darted around nervously, and farther ahead, a crowd formed around something as though around an accident. It was a drag, but there was no avoiding it. I sped forward, elbowing past so I could get ahead fast. I spotted some cuffs trying to hold people back and, farther off, someone lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. I inched closer for a look. First, I recognized the black studded jacket. Then the skull. And Hernán’s face.
Somebody grabbed my wrist.
“What the fuck are you doing with this scum?”
It was Ezequiel. The look of disgust on his face when he saw me is still burned into my brain. I’d never heard him call us “scum” before.
Spewing with rage, Ezequiel grabbed my hand and pulled me across the barrier his partners were setting up. I don’t know where he was planning to take me, but I tugged at his hand and stood my ground so he would know I wasn’t going anywhere. I went back to Hernán. Pain buckled my knees, and I knelt beside his body.
“You know him?” Ezequiel asked.
I didn’t answer but didn’t let go of his hand either. I didn’t even let it go when I reached out to stroke the earth and Hernán’s body as though they were one. I let my hand fall beside the black jacket and stared at the skull patch to avoid looking at Hernán. Then I tore out some dry earth and broke it the way you tear a friend out of your life when they die.
I wanted to speak, whether to the earth or Hernán’s body I wasn’t sure. Instead I gripped Ezequiel’s hand harder and got up.
I couldn’t hear a thing. The other cuffs kept trying to fend off the rubberneckers, but it was hard going. They didn’t want to leave. And I wanted to talk so much it burned my throat. The silence grated at my soul, and yet I wouldn’t be able to eat earth if I was busy talking. I was cold all over except for my hand, warm inside Ezequiel’s. I stuffed my other hand in my pocket and gripped the earth like it was a piece of gold.
I noticed people looking at me. Had someone said, “Eartheater?”
I couldn’t hear but I could see. A haze of eyes that gaped like holes. Behind running mascara and sleepless faces was a mix of pity and rage. And something new: fear.
Ezequiel got me out of there. He led me to his car, opened the passenger door, sat me down, and locked the door. I felt as though I could still feel their eyes on me.
“Wait here.”
What were they afraid of?
Me?
Hernán had gotten away the first time. And now he was dead. He hadn’t come back; I was the one who’d gone to meet him, without trying.
I waited for Ezequiel to get away from the car and shoved the clod in my mouth.
I knew it would hurt.
I screwed my eyes shut.
The darkness lasted only a moment.
Then I began to see.
I went to bed hungover. That had to be it. In my dream, Ana had dark rings under her eyes. I’d never seen her like that. She sounded unhinged.
“Panda Junkyard. Off-limits,” she said, as though casting a spell.
Wanting to shut her up, I said I knew. She’d already told me.
But Ana didn’t buy it. She looked at me with sad eyes and said:
“But you’re gonna go. You’re gonna go!”
She was out of her mind, unrecognizable.
“It wasn’t just one person. One guy dragged me. Another tied me up. Loads more tore off my clothes.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I covered my ears and muttered it’s just a dream, a dream, the pain boring into my head.
She went on. I couldn’t keep track of the men she was naming.
I took my hands off my ears and Ana fell quiet.
She waited a beat and, once she saw I was listening again, pressed me:
“Panda Junkyard. Off-limits.”
I woke up. I didn’t want to dream of Ana ever again.
Her arms and legs were constantly moving. As were her lips, which spoke with the power to draw in every eye. Her flesh hugged her body, a tiny artifact with the pull of things shiny and new. She looked about thirteen to me, though I still hadn’t decided if she was a girl or a boy. I needed her to speak louder; I hadn’t slept enough and felt a bit lost. From where I stood, I couldn’t make out her voice. What reached me was the laughter. “Miseria,” they called her, and I thought she might blow a fuse. Instead, she just shat herself laughing, like it was nothing. Whenever someone said “Miseria,” she owned it, like it was just another name.
When I woke up after midday, Walter was hanging around the same boys we’d hit El Rescate with the night before. And every one of them had brought a girl home from the dive. Someone—was it Walter?—had come with Miseria.
She’s got to be a girl, I thought, my eyes—and everybody else’s—glued on her.
Nearly everyone sat on the floor. A couple of kids were on the sofa in the suite. And Miseria stood dead center, yammering on and on.
My brother was in the kitchen serving Fernets. Every now and then he would bring us one. As he reached out a glass, someone’s hand would take it and slowly bring it to their mouth, as though between each sip they became lost in some memory of Hernán.
Miseria was probably the only person who hadn’t known Hernán. Too young, I thought. She was scrawny. Her hair barely covered her ears and was always coming loose, sweeping down by her smile.
Walter handed me a Fernet, and I sat on the floor. Though I drank slow, it hit me right away. I hadn’t eaten. It was like the floor of our house was turning little by little into a bodiless wake. There were glasses passed from hand to hand, pockets of laughter, silence.
What were we gonna do?
I couldn’t think of anything. I wanted to call Ezequiel. I wanted everybody to leave. If Ezequiel had come by and found us all drinking, he wouldn’t have understood.
I folded my legs and hugged my knees on the floor. I was so wound up and lost in thought when Miseria started talking to me that I had trouble speaking up. Sh
e was slipping down next to me, asking if I minded.
That’s when I realized everybody but me was with someone.
“All right,” I said and she sat down.
She said she’d left her leggings in the club coat check. I said nothing. I was thinking about the fact that I hadn’t said goodbye to Hernán, and that it was too late now. A girl started crying and someone hugged her and handed her a drink.
“That’s why I’m wearing your brother’s pants,” said Miseria, letting out a loud laugh. “I look so lame.”
She reminded me of myself.
“If you left your leggings in the coat check, what were you wearing when you left El Rescate?”
Miseria pinched two fingers, meaning something small.
“Just that, a yellow miniskirt, like the song,” she said.
I smiled.
Miseria nodded and then told me she’d known Hernán since she was knee-high. When her old lady was out of work, she used to take her to a soup kitchen in the barrio. That’s where the boys started calling her “Miseria.”
“Let me read your hand,” the ballsy brat said.
She didn’t ask. Just grabbed it. As she studied it, I thought of how I used to go to soup kitchens too when I was a kid.
We had to eat everything with a spoon ’cause there were no forks or knives. We had to make do. A doña used to pass them out while looking us square in the face, and we’d hang our heads so as not to see the grimace that turned up on her cheek like a worm. I was frightened of her and did my best not to look at her. If she caught us eating with our hands, she’d rap them with a wooden spoon. “Animals,” she’d say.
After Mamá died, Tía used to take Walter and me to that soup kitchen to have our bellies filled. And one day the doña had told me the same thing Miseria was laying on me now as she ogled my hand:
“Everything’s gonna work out in the long run. Though you’ll pay a huge price for it, you’ll find your way eventually.”
I kept smiling, not sure why, like I’d been bit by the culebra del amor Hernán and I had danced to the night before.
I stared at Walter as though trying to ask: “Where’d you find this one?” but my brother didn’t get it. He kept handing out Fernets like they were medicine.
I took another sip and, again, thought: What the hell are we gonna do?
If I opened my mouth, everybody would want to tear into Ale Skin.
I first saw him a thousand years ago, though I remember it like it was yesterday. I was little, six or seven, and kept throwing tantrums, dead set on getting this pair of boots. Nobody paid me any mind. Until the afternoon of my birthday, when my old lady handed me a bag with a ribbon on it. I hadn’t even opened it when she said:
“Don’t get them dirty.”
I was such a dumbass. I slipped them on straight away and went out on the street to show them off. Some little brat picked a fight with me and the other girls came out to back her. I couldn’t hack it so I went inside. I wanted to take my new boots out for a spin—no way was I taking them off—so I decided to shadow Walter. I went to his room and waited a long time, till he was ready to head out. Walter wanted to hit the arcade. The old man pulled a face like he’d stepped in shit and spat out “bad crowd,” but Walter didn’t care.
That afternoon we were both dead set: me on my new boots and Walter on the arcade. And off we went.
We walked fast, eyes straight ahead, not talking. Walter suggested we go along the tracks. It was faster. I hated jumping the wire fence, but the advantage of the tracks was you didn’t bump into anybody. I tried to jump over, like my brother, but couldn’t. I crawled underneath it instead, not seeing the oil hidden in the burnt grass. It got right on my boots.
I wiped them, closed my eyes, then wiped them harder. But the stain was there to stay, and spread to everything I touched. I hugged my legs and started crying. Walter tried to comfort me so that I’d get up and cut it out already, but I only stopped after opening my eyes and seeing them striding down the abandoned tracks.
It wasn’t their black clothes or skinheads, but the way they charged toward you that made you feel like they could grind you to dust. Ale Skin was the only one carrying a huge stick. My brother said “a baseball bat” and fear choked me. Instead of heading to the arcade, we stood there frozen stiff.
Once they had gotten near us, Ale Skin brandished the stick and said:
“I wanna play.”
The other three laughed. They chatted and cackled right in front of us, like we weren’t there. One of his buddies said “let’s play with the girl’s head” and Ale Skin swung the bat like he was gonna take my head off. Walter got in front of me, fast, and fixed his eyes on Skin. The other three laughed, and I nearly peed myself. Then, Skin dropped the bat, went up to my brother, and spat in his face. They laughed again. Walter didn’t budge. Just as my heart was about to burst with fear, they turned around and walked away. I don’t know why. Walter wiped his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and we were silent.
In my vision, Ale Skin wore all black, his head shaved. Just like last time. But instead of a bat, tucked in his clothes was a knife. Which he used to end Hernán’s life. Fast, barely goading him. Dude knew what he was doing, and I still didn’t know why.
Miseria took a couple of sips of Fernet and handed me the glass. My hands were already shaky. I hated that I had spilled the Fernet. I hated the stains. I hated the booze sloshing on the floor of my house and the tears being shed on them for our dead friend.
It was Ale Skin, I thought. The words seared my throat but I didn’t want to speak them: words can also stain you. I drank from the glass, now steady in my hand. My brother was the only one standing at the gathering, and I raised it to him. He raised his back.
Miseria glanced at me, smiling. She probably thought the Fernet had got to my head, that I was out of it. Then she pointed right between her ribs and said she had a stomachache.
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
First she shrugged her shoulders, like it didn’t matter, then she shook her head and laughed. She stopped abruptly and touched her belly. She asked for the glass and took another sip of Fernet. Miseria was hungry and she was drinking Fernet. I wished I could say I’d fix something up for her, but there was no food in the house.
We were gonna have to go get something to eat, I thought, but herding that many people wouldn’t be easy. I was having trouble getting going myself.
I struggled to my feet with my eyes fixed on Walter, busy chatting with two girls and a boy. I headed his way, thinking I’d suggest we get pizza, or some bread and cold cuts, but when I reached him my mind went blank and all I managed to come out with was:
“The earth said it was Ale Skin who killed Hernán.”
Death-like silence, then everything exploded. The kids shot to their feet, furious, and started talking and screaming all at once.
No one listened.
“Motherfucking Ale Skin,” said one.
“Motherfuckers. You know what we’re gonna do?” said another.
“We’ve got to avenge Hernán,” said a girl I didn’t know.
They all talked at the same time, said the same thing over and over, and got more and more worked up. My brother was the only one not talking. He paced this way and that.
I thought: I should’ve called Ezequiel. Or, better yet: never gone to El Rescate or bumped into Hernán. I wanted them to go away. To leave me alone in my house. My head throbbed.
I scanned the room for Miseria, but she was gone.
I found her in the kitchen.
Leaning against the kitchen counter. Eating fries from a cardboard cone damp with grease. You could smell them from the doorway. She shoved them at me:
“Want some? Found them in the fridge.”
I said I wasn’t hungry and she carried on eating, lapping the oil off her fingers like she didn’t give a shit I was there. She looked down, rooted around the bottom for the last fries, still chewing.
That’s when Wa
lter came in, clocked us, said nothing, and left. He looked out of it.
Miseria saw him leave, then looked at me, swallowed, and said:
“Bitch, why didn’t you tell me?”
Not a soul left in the house.
Even heavy with booze, sadness, and exhaustion, the kids walked fast.
Not me. My mind was on the last few dreams I’d had of Ana, on Walter at Tito el Panda’s, on the edge of the blade pointed at him. I knew it was the same one that had pierced Hernán’s skin, and that we’d see it again. I thought of ringing Ezequiel. Or sending a text, at least. No. I’d have to waste hours explaining.
I glanced at the girls. A couple of them, glued to the boys, took massive steps to match their stride. No more roads or street noise. The reedbed rose into sight, and farther ahead, the piece of land I’d always been scared of, with trees and plants that looked like they hid people away.
We left familiar turf and entered another. One I didn’t like at all; I knew that if I tried the earth there, it would show me stuff I didn’t want to see. And throw it in my face. Like the air rushing us, which carried a different smell.
The others hurried faster and faster. And I followed. Miseria looked almost amused. She had no trouble keeping pace. She laughed, not even out of breath. Did Hernán matter to her? She made me a little mad. My brother and me, did we matter to her at all?
For better or worse, Miseria was with us.
She asked me how long we had left.
Not much, I said, and she stopped laughing.
“You ever been to this side?” I asked.
She opened her eyes wide and said:
“Hell no. What for? My old lady’d kill me.”
The huge sign over the main warehouse was visible now. Though one side was eaten away by rust, you could still read: PANDA JUNKYARD.
We left it behind us. Ahead of me, a girl tripped and fell. The grass was tall, the ground invisible beneath it. Two boys helped her up as she gripped her ankle. She hobbled a little then started walking again. The rest of the group hadn’t stopped. Neither had Miseria. Those of us lagging behind legged it to catch up with everyone. Now that we were closing in on the place, no one wanted to be alone, away from everyone else, when Ale Skin blew in.
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