The red-hot flush scuttling up her cheeks and neck squelched her usual fear. She was ¡La Bee! looking for a fight.
Her cell buzzed. Lily—a mind reader.
“You feel like going boyfriend hunting?” Bianca asked.
“I already have a boyfriend. Sam. Remember? Did you kick Gabe to the curb?”
“Tonight might be the night.”
“He’s with Katrina?”
“I think so.”
“What an asshole. Do you have a plan?”
“Bar crashing.”
“I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Should I bring my brother’s baseball bat?”
Bianca didn’t doubt Lily was serious. “I don’t feel like getting arrested tonight.”
“Fine,” Lily said. “But if that bitch tries anything, I can’t make any guarantees.”
Bianca laughed then hung up, slid on her high-heeled wedges (because she didn’t own a pair of cowboy boots, which she regretted since they’d befit such an occasion), and checked her reflection (crimson cheeks and tousled curly hair—Gabe could eat his heart out), before rushing to her white five-speed Cavalier and reversing fast down the driveway. She felt like a race-car driver, shifting gears quick and rough. This car was the one thing from Dad that Bianca had managed to keep her mother from selling or pawning or throwing away. This car he’d taught her to drive and let her borrow whenever she needed. She’d begged her mother. Dad would’ve wanted me to have it. And finally, Mama had relented. Sometimes Bee felt like she was driving a hearse. But mostly, she felt powerful.
Halfway down the block around the corner, she swerved into Lily’s driveway and honked twice. Her yellow-haired best-friend-forever appeared at the door wearing her usual band-logo T-shirt (Bianca never knew the bands), jeans, and a pair of pea-green Vans. Lily stuck out her tongue.
“¡Vámonos, muchacha!” Bianca called. “Get your brave ass in the car. I’m on a mission.”
“What’s with you tonight, crazy lady?”
“I’m on fire!”
Lily pulled a cigarette out of her purse and rolled her window up long enough to light it. “Yes. I gathered as much,” she answered, puffing easily. “I meant why. All last week you were a moping, crybaby mess. Why the sudden change?” Lily offered Bianca a drag, and she pulled the sweet stinking thing to her lips. Gabe hated when she smoked, refused to kiss her when she had sour-singed smoker’s breath. But tonight, who the hell cared?
“I’m tired of being second-class, Lil. That’s what. So I don’t have Gabe’s kid. That doesn’t mean I’m not worth something. She was a fluke, no? A condom break.”
“Who? Lana?”
“No, not her. I meant Katrina. I do love her little girl. That’s the problem. It’s all twisted. It’s all so goddamn twisted.”
“Turn that frown around, chica. Or turn it into a sneer. Come on, show me some teeth. How about some rabid dog eyes?” Lily snarled like a deranged animal.
Bianca laughed so hard she choked on the smoke.
Outside town, they sped through the countryside, past fields of broccoli and onions and the overwhelming pungency of the beef plant, the smell of death. Bianca plugged her nose. She hated driving to Westmorland. Since Katrina, she associated it with gut-dropping loss. Forget the Honey Festival. It was a tiny town more stifling than Brawley. And populated by boyfriend-stealers.
In the parking lot of the first bar she tried, they spotted Gabe’s pine-green truck and pulled in.
“Are you sure you want to go in?” Lily asked.
“Hell yeah,” Bianca said, but she wasn’t sure. The veins in her neck were itchy, like a too-tight necklace. The blood in her ears pounded.
It was a dive bar called Hops & Rods, with corrugated aluminum siding walls plastered with neon beer signs, electric guitars, and posters for local bands. Like the inside of a warehouse it had iron rafters, along with a small stage and a long, orange bar designed from two hot rod Chevy Bel Airs. No wonder Gabe liked this place. In high school, Bianca had pretended to care about the classic car magazines he’d shown her, teaching her to distinguish a Shelby from a Camaro. She’d cared as much about his car obsession as he’d cared about her poetry. Did Katrina like hot rods and muscle cars? Or only having sex in them with other girls’ boyfriends.
Bianca searched through the crowd and spotted them: Katrina, at a high shop-style table in the middle of the bar with Gabe. Undeniable evidence. Gabe ran his hands through his spiky hair the way he did when he was irritated. Katrina shook her head. Katrina, with her bobbed, mousy brown hair, pug nose, and thick stumped eyebrows, as if she shaved them in the middle instead of plucking or having them waxed so the space was too big between her small brown eyes. Like a Muppet character. Short, petite, and plain. Her face had a pinched look, like she was squinting in the sun. She wore a pair of khaki shorts and a navy-blue tank top, and although she was thinner than Bianca, she was nowhere near as pretty. What had she been majoring in at Cal State San Bernardino before she dropped out, and what had Gabe seen in her?
“What do you want to do?” Lily asked.
“Order a drink,” Bianca said, shaking, her voice gone flat as old seltzer. Gabe’s aunt had told her she drank a beer after work to take the edge off. Of course, that was before the three or four beers that came later, so it was a big joke in his family that only one beer was necessary to take the edge off. But Bianca needed that—the edge off.
Her stomach churned but she chugged her beer anyway. They didn’t see her.
A random rock and roll song played on the jukebox. The place was packed. Her chest felt explosive, her palms slick. The beer roiled inside her stomach, curdling her throat. She felt like crossing herself and praying to Sandra Cisneros. Come on, La Bee! Hold your head up high! Sandra might have told Bianca in her high-pitched voice, her hoop skirt flowing around her red-studded cowboy boots, turquoise looped around her neck.
Silently, Bianca mouthed Sandra’s words as she crossed the bar, a prayer: “I’m ‘sharp-tongued, / sharp-thinking, / fast-speaking, / foot-loose, / loose-tongued, / let-loose, / woman-on-the-loose / loose woman. / Beware, honey . . .’ ” She’d admit it: “I’m Bitch. Beast. Macha. / ¡Wachale! / Ping! Ping! Ping! / I break things.”
She looked back at Lily, planted at the bar, gesturing her onward and motioning in a way that meant Rabid dog eyes! Go! Bianca nodded then inhaled, wallpapering her face with a broad, plastic smile, a pink flamingo across her mouth like I’m fine. You can’t hurt me. All those mornings I made you breakfast, blaring your favorite CD while I cooked—Hotel California and scrambled eggs, the warm smell of flour tortillas rising through the air—not real.
Instead, the mask on the outside said, “Hey guys. Why wasn’t I invited to this party?”
Gabe jerked his head up, his shoulders rigid. “Shit, Bee.” His voice was halting and shaky. “You scared me.” Bianca almost laughed at how pathetic it was, watching him stand and reach for her. He tried pulling her into a hug, but she swatted his arms away.
Katrina knotted her hands in front of her on the table, staring at her fingers and refusing to look up. Coward.
Gabe asked what Bianca was doing there. She asked him the same.
“Why, what time is it?” He grabbed his cell phone from his pocket. “Shit. I’m sorry. We got caught up talking about the baby.”
“Mmm.” She scrunched her face and pressed her lips together, mocking belief.
“Hey, can we go talk about this somewhere else?” he asked, reaching out for her again.
“No. We can’t.” She scooted from his arms and sat in his empty chair across from Katrina.
“What are you doing?” Gabe stammered. “Come on. Don’t get her involved in this. I screwed up. I should’ve called you.” He looked boyish in his work uniform, a short-sleeved button-down and brown shorts. His company-logo’d baseball cap laid on the table. He was a pubescent boy cau
ght in the closet. Almost laughable. But she could tell he wasn’t drunk.
She took a swig of his beer, slammed the bottle down on the table. “Don’t get her involved? You’re kidding, right?” A caustic laugh spurt out from within Bianca, the bitter taste of bile rising in her throat. Ping! “Katrina? We need to talk outside. Woman to woman.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. She felt like a sham. Like a hole at the bottom of the ocean.
Katrina flashed her an icy glare, then rolled her eyes and said, “Sure.”
As Bianca stood, she offered Gabe a cloying twisted smile. “Lily’s at the bar. Would you be a doll and go keep her company?” Bianca was ridiculous, but she couldn’t care.
He grabbed her arm, jerking her tightly to him. His beer breath in her face, hot against her neck. “What are you doing, Bee? Seriously. This isn’t funny. Please don’t screw anything up for me and the baby. I’ve been working this out with Katrina. Please don’t fuck with her.”
“I’m the one you shouldn’t fuck with.” She broke herself from his grasp, pulled away and stared into his face. His deep-brown eyes muddied with worry, his eyebrows furrowed. He was telling the truth. “I want to talk to her,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.
Lily signed a knife-slice across her neck then winked. What would she say to Gabe? Nothing pleasant.
Out in the muggy desert air, past a thatched-roofed palapa bar replete with surfboards and fishing nets strung from the wooden fence, Bianca followed Katrina onto the hard-packed dirt of the parking lot. Nearby, canal water whirred as it rushed over the embankment.
Bianca spoke first. “What’s going on with you two? I have a right to know. Are you sleeping with him?”
Katrina hesitated.
“What did I ever do to you, Katrina? I’ve helped take care of your little girl for months, and—”
Katrina cut her off. “Yeah, and I don’t appreciate her coming home talking about you, either. You think that feels good? To have your own daughter come home and talk about how much she likes her father’s whore.”
“The fuck? Whore? Are you kidding me? You’re unbelievable. I’ve loved that man since I was a little girl, you manipulative cunt.” There, she’d said it. She was trapped in a trashy daytime talk show. “He was my first everything. Before I even knew what everything was.” She was red-faced and short of breath.
“You knew enough though, didn’t you?” Katrina said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Katrina pursed her lips and crossed her arms.
“Please?” Bianca urged. “Imagine you were me. How would you feel? Tell me. Please.”
“Please nothing,” Katrina snapped, rolling her eyes and thrusting her chest out. “You have no idea what I’ve been through with him. Having his baby. Raising her alone. Everything I’ve gone through because of him.”
Bianca’s gut pitted, her teeth clenched. A rush of heat surged up her neck and face. “No, I don’t know. My baby died before it was ever a baby. I never took vitamins or ate saltines by the boxful. Gabe never rubbed my belly.” Her head spun. Her baby floated, pendent above their heads or bramble swishing through a ditch. “No, you heartless bitch. I don’t know what you went through.” She was screaming. She wanted to kick Katrina. To yank her by her dull, brown hair. “But you know what I went through? I went through losing all that for nothing. For goddamn nothing! Because you swooped in and screwed everything up anyway. And I hate you for that. We were supposed to get out of here. My baby was supposed to have meant something.”
“You’re a murderer, that’s what you are.” Katrina spit the words at Bianca, who keeled in, her legs giving out beneath her. Something cracked inside her. She felt it cracking. Wire casings like wings of dead moths. She couldn’t talk. The air had been knocked out of her like the time she was Superwoman on the swings and Dad had pushed her into the air but she’d flown too high and crashed hard on her chest and the words wouldn’t come and there was Dad, holding her. She couldn’t breathe.
She dropped to one knee and clutched her stomach. “Why would you say that?” Sobs rocked her body. She didn’t have a heart. It wasn’t beating. “Why the fuck would you say that?”
“Gabe told me what you did.”
“What we did. What we did. Together.”
Katrina looked down at her, eyes narrowed, forehead creased. “He wouldn’t let me do that to Lana. Said he couldn’t take losing another baby.”
Bianca choked a sob, heaving. “Ay, God. Please stop it. Katrina, please fucking stop talking.” She wanted to call for her dad, the bar crashing down on her.
Gabe came outside and saw Bianca on the ground. “What the hell? What’d you do to her, Katrina? Goddammit!” He pushed Katrina out of the way and knelt down beside Bianca. “What happened, Bee? Did she hit you?”
Bianca shook her head. She couldn’t look at him. She’d scraped her uterus for him. She’d given everything for him when she was still a girl and not old enough to take care of herself, let alone anyone else. She’d come back to him empty. And here was Katrina, doing what she couldn’t. Standing on her own. Raising a kid on her own. A single mama. Small and strange looking, but proud. And powerful. She had a baby, didn’t she? And that made her so goddamn powerful. She called the shots. She pulled the strings. Tears puddled onto Bianca’s halter top, streaking her cheeks black with mascara. She wiped her mocos away with her hand. She must’ve looked pathetic, crying in front of a woman who despised her.
She took a deep breath. “You told her about what happened at Clínicas?”
“Oh fuck,” he said. “Stupid Katrina.” He stood back up and faced his baby’s mom. “I told you not to bring that shit up. I knew I couldn’t trust your big mouth. What the fuck did you say to her?”
“The truth, you asshole. That she is what she is. A baby killer.”
He raised his hand to slap her then pulled back, clenching his fist. “Get the hell out of here, Katrina. You goddamn bitch. I don’t care if you threaten me again with Lana. Go ahead and try taking me to court. I’ll get a lawyer and take her away from you. But don’t you ever call my girlfriend that again. Do you understand? She was a fucking kid when I knocked her up. A fucking kid! And I told you that when you were threatening abortion, you two-faced bitch. When you were threatening to kill yourself. God, I can’t fucking stand you.”
Bianca sucked in air. Her head throbbed. She didn’t know what to think.
“Whatever, Gabe. You’re the two-faced one here,” Katrina said.
“No, don’t play like that. You tell her the truth, Katrina. I’m not joking. You’ve hurt her enough tonight. Tell her why I was here with you.”
Katrina heaved a sigh. She stared at the ground. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t care anymore.” Her voice sounded hollow, like the tin of empty beer cans. “He was defending you tonight, Bianca. Telling me I need to stop fighting him when it comes to you taking care of the baby. That you’re his girlfriend and I need to accept that.” Her voice was neither kind nor spiteful. It was matter-of-fact, resigned. “And I’m not sleeping with him.” She tucked her hair behind her ear then said, “Gabe, you can pick up the baby tomorrow if you want.”
Gabe nodded. “Fine. Now leave us alone.” He scooped Bianca from the ground, holding her to his chest. She was stiff and lifeless in his arms as he carried her to his truck, setting her on the hood. “You know I’m so sorry,” he whispered, burying his head in her chest. “Not about tonight. About everything.” His face against her cold skin felt warm and damp. “Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy. Jealous. You know that.”
Bianca wanted to believe him. Sandra Cisneros come give me strength. But she was too tired to fight.
Five
Letter to Jubilee
Who understands why I needed you?
Why I need you still?
I’ll tell you a story my mother told me:<
br />
One summer, Mama’s eight-year-old brother disappeared. A baseball-capped man on a bike snatched him up and threw him in the back of a pickup before dumping him in an alley in Buena Park, warning him to wait cause he’d be back. Mama’s brother knew to run. He ran to a gas station and called home to his mother who’d locked the other children inside while police helicopters circled the neighborhood.
Mama’s mother beat her after that summer. She used to grab her dark hair, pinch her chin, and slap and slap anywhere on the body her flat hand landed as if mom were a dusty rug, a roach on the bathroom wall.
Because she was the eldest daughter, Mama bore the brunt of Abuela Celia’s fear.
Mama used to cry sometimes walking me down the street to my best friend’s house, tears finally breaching her long silence. She’d never let me get lost. She’d never let go. A mother doesn’t let go, she’d say.
It wasn’t a lie.
Six
Cursed Light
With Jubilee
Cursed objects. Contenido maldito. Joshua had been researching dolls, okay, obsessing over dolls, these past almost-two months he’d been hanging out with Bianca.
He’d become a fixture at Matty and Handro’s house since that first dinner together, hanging out with Bianca after class whenever Jayden was in daycare. Sometimes he’d bring Jayden over, though he suspected Matty didn’t appreciate having a chattering kid in the house. Bianca swore her big brother adored them. But Joshua felt the undercurrent troubling whichever room or open space Bianca carried Jubilee into, and he marveled, silently, at how she flitted about in the light she created, this bright, lightning creature who ignited everything around her till it all buzzed and hummed with chaos, crackling wires, all the while she clung tightly to her calm: that doll in her arms.
Lately, he’d wondered if Jubilee was a blessing or a curse. He’d framed it in that binary (Bianca loved the word binary; she dropped it into at least half their discussions, always stressing that they should break the binaries, and she’d gotten him hooked on using it too) after happening across an island of dolls near Mexico City in his research, La Isla de las Muñecas, an island on Teshuilo Lake in the Xochimilco canals where some claim that over fifty years ago the island’s guardian had found a child, drowned and clutching her doll, washed up on his shore, and with them, a curse. When mysterious happenings began, troubling things, he strung the girl’s doll in a tree to ward off the ill spirits, but over the years he collected and hung doll upon doll, since the spirits were unsatisfied and craved more. The island became infested with ruddy, decaying dolls dangling from branches, wired to fences, some decapitated, all mud-splattered, hundreds of them—tangled limbs and naked bodies and bulbous heads, grinning and grimacing alike, many reaching out among the palms and ferns and tall grasses as warning.
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