by Wiltz, Jenni
This time, when her rear tires were even with the Civic’s, she shifted into reverse again. Gently, she thought, remembering her dad’s lessons on parallel parking. What was it he’d said? Be nice to the steering wheel.
It was all he’d ever asked of anyone.
And somewhere nearby, the Espinosas launched fists and feet into his body, breaking bones and blood vessels and other things inside him. She closed her eyes, her nose instantly full of the smell of iron and blood. She wondered what happened to the clothes they’d worn that night. Everything from shirts to pants to socks had been smeared with blood. They went into the hamper and never reappeared.
Just like us, she thought. The darkness had swallowed them, too, and they still hadn’t found a way out. Maybe there wasn’t one.
Patches of sweat blossomed in the folds beneath her arms and behind her knees. She turned the wheel and took her foot off the brake. When the car slid into the spot without hitting the curb, she straightened it out and sighed with relief. It was only the fourth time she’d parallel parked.
She turned off the car and looped the long strap of her cross-body purse over her head. When she got out, the little boy in the fenced yard laughed and pointed at her. “Go inside,” she said, but he and his sister ignored her. Emma pressed her purse to her hip to feel the outline of the gun.
“I warned you,” she said.
• • •
The house at 16305 El Camino Rojo was small and off-white, with a tile roof and metal bars over the windows. The exterior was smooth, not stucco, with rounded corners instead of piercingly straight ones. Adobe, she thought. Like the Alamo.
Emma took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. The air felt warmer and thicker here, without the salty tang of the offshore breeze that blew through her neighborhood. She couldn’t remember if it had been cloudy or sunny the day her dad saw this same patch of sky, when he’d come to ask how many people lived in the house. All he’d needed was a number, and they couldn’t give it to him. Instead, they opened up his skin to let out his blood.
She wondered what she’d see if she looked down at the gutter and the grate over the drain. Dried blood, broken glass, missing buttons, the plastic sleeve of his census badge? She forced her eyes to focus on the dark, scuffed door of the little house across the sidewalk. Her right hand lifted the flap of her purse and curled around the handle of the gun. She left it there, letting her fingers slide up and down the handle, warming it to the touch.
Two steps carried her onto the driveway.
Another four brought her onto the porch.
Under the overhang, a daddy-long-legs spider defied gravity, its legs pointed toward the roof. A doormat full of cracked green tines with a plastic daisy in the corner decomposed one sunrise at a time.
She clamped her fingers around the handle of the gun and slid it from her bag. With her left hand, she banged on the door.
There wasn’t a peephole or doorknocker, just a dull metal knob that sagged beneath its own weight. Someone grasped it from the other side. Emma tried to swallow, but her throat was closed. Her lower lip shook with the weight of the fear she couldn’t force down.
The door opened and an old woman looked up at her from the other side. Small and bent, she had black eyebrows and white hair. One wrinkled hand held a crocheted shawl around her shoulders. “No te conozco.”
Emma raised the gun. “Is Alejandro here?”
The old woman breathed in sharply. “No, no, no.”
Emma pushed past her and turned sideways, keeping the gun pointed at the old woman’s chest. “Where are they? I want to see Alejandro and Hector.”
“No hablo Inglés. Por favor, no me tire.”
“Where did they go? Are they at the store, at someone’s house, down the street, where?”
The woman whispered something that sounded familiar. Emma bit her lip and forced her brain to think in French. Sometimes, when she spoke French and Rachel spoke Spanish, they could understand each other. “Again,” she said.
The old woman repeated the word.
Église. The word sounded like église. She tried to remember the words on the sign in front of the Catholic church on Calle Real. There was a statue of Jesus out front, his arms and hands outstretched in a shape she knew well. Graph the function of this parabola, she thought. Find the limit so you’ll know who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell.
“Are they at church?” she asked. “Á l’église?”
“Sí.” The old woman nodded slowly. “Iglesia.”
“Close the door.”
The woman understood. She pushed it closed without locking it. “Señorita, no hagas esto.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.” Emma glanced around the room. A red brick fireplace dominated the far wall. On the mantel sat three bottles of tequila and two prayer candles. Light flooded through the front windows, illuminating the diamond-bright sparkles in the popcorn ceiling.
Something in a pan on the stove snapped and hissed. For the first time, Emma noticed the smell emanating from the tiny kitchen. It was warm and thick, like pastry, or something that went into pastry. She pointed the gun toward the stove. “Do you need to go check on that?”
“Ay,” the woman moaned.
Emma moved toward the living room, where she could point the gun at the old woman in the kitchen or whoever walked in the front door. She fought the urge to lean against the waist-high counter separating the living room from the kitchen. The gun was already heavy in her grasp, but she didn’t want to get sloppy. The first third of her plan had succeeded.
She was in the house and no one had been hurt.
The old woman flung her shawl onto the counter and hustled into the kitchen. She used a pair of tongs to lift a tortilla out of the pan. It shredded in her grasp, the bottom half sticking to the pan. She muttered under her breath and used the tongs to scrape at the stuck tortilla. Emma saw her hand slip once, bringing the flat of her hand in contact with the hot pan. She didn’t flinch.
On the counter, a black cell phone sat like a paperweight on a stack of bills. Emma put her hand over the phone and slipped it into her purse while the old woman’s back was turned. “When will they be back?” she asked. “From iglesia?”
The old woman shrugged.
“Quand est-ce que votre famille retournent de l’église? Vous comprenez le français?”
“No entiendo.”
Emma felt bubbles pop and hiss in her bloodstream. “I work my ass off to learn a second language for college, and you can’t even learn the language of the country you live in. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you speak English?”
The old woman met her eyes and flexed the muscles in her jaw. “No.”
Emma stormed into the kitchen and slammed the muzzle of the gun into the microwave’s digital display. “Clock. It’s called a clock. I want to hear you say it.”
The old woman closed her mouth.
“Say it!”
“Clock,” the woman mumbled.
Emma pointed the gun at the first number in the digital readout. “Ten.” Then she moved the muzzle to the minutes. “Twenty-five. It’s 10:25 a.m. When will Alejandro and Hector be back?”
The old woman lifted her shoulders.
“What time?” She pressed the “timer” button and entered 11:00 on the keypad. “Is this when they’ll be back?”
“No sabe, señorita.”
Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears. A drop of sweat traced its way down the base of her skull. Emma stepped to her left, away from the hot stove. She looked at the burnt tortilla, its spotted carcass dropped like an animal hide on the counter. “You do know. You knew when to start the tortillas.”
The old woman heard it first. The muscles in her jaw relaxed and her gaze shifted to the front door. Emma held her breath as a car door slammed outside. She waved the old woman furthe
r into the kitchen. “Be quiet. Silencez-vous.”
With her left hand, she fumbled in the purse for her dad’s phone. It shook in her hand as she pulled it out and swiped to unlock it. Her sweaty thumb clouded the screen as she tapped to turn on the recorder. A rectangular battery icon flashed red.
One bar.
“Fuck,” she whispered, shoving the phone in her pocket.
Someone’s shoe scuffed against the step outside, and a bone-deep moan rose from the dark cavern of her throat. Her heartbeat felt like it would flood her chest with blood, more than the weak chambers of her heart could hold.
I’m scared, she thought. Daddy, help me.
The old woman’s lips moved in silence and Emma wondered who she was praying to. She wiped her palms against her jeans and used her left arm to brace her right, tightening her grip on the gun.
A pair of masculine voices grew louder, joking in a mixture of English and Spanish. Someone’s hand grasped the doorknob and turned. When the door opened, a short boy wearing boots, jeans, and a tucked-in T-shirt stepped over the threshold. “What the fuck,” he said, stumbling backward when he saw her.
“Are you Alejandro Espinosa?”
“Don’t shoot!” He raised his arms and turned his head to look over his shoulder. Emma saw a mole on his left cheek.
I know him, she thought. How do I know him?
The second person on the porch pushed Alejandro aside. Taller and paler, he had a yellow cast to his skin that made him look like he belonged in a hospital. His black hair flopped over his eyebrows, just like Dan’s, falling to his cheekbones in gel-crisp curls. Beneath his brows, dark eyes sat deep in his skull, absorbing everything and reflecting nothing. “Put your fucking hands down,” he said, slapping at the other boy’s arms.
“You’re Hector.”
“Cierra la puerta,” the old woman cried. “Cierra la puerta!”
Alejandro obeyed.
The old woman sighed behind her. The rush of breath stirred Emma’s hair, sending a flood of goosebumps down her spine. “You’re Hector,” she said again.
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. His eyes searched her face, stripping it of soul and love and meaning. “Do I know you, gabacha?”
“I came here to ask you a question.”
“You break in my fucking house, you wave a fucking gun at me, and you think I’m gonna answer a fucking question?”
“I didn’t break in your fucking house. I knocked politely and your grandma let me in.”
“She knows better,” Hector said softly. “Don’t you, mi abuelita?”
The old woman clutched the spoon to her chest.
“I’ve seen you before,” Alejandro said, stepping away from his brother. “You go to my school, don’t you?”
“That’s what the cop said.” Emma looked him in the eye. “But I don’t know you.”
“What cop?”
Hector pushed his brother into the door. “The one Letizia heard asking too many questions at your school, bruto.”
Emma tried to match Alejandro’s slim frame to one of the brown shadows in her memory. He leaned his head against the door and she saw once more the black oval on his cheek. A lizard belt, she thought. A girl whose bare skin he almost touched.
A drop of sweat slid into the center of her bra. “I saw you,” she said. “In the courtyard, at lunch. You wore pointy boots and danced with a girl.”
Alejandro nodded. “You eat with the smart girls by the front gate. You never look happy.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
His eyes flickered over the gun, clutched in both her hands. “Why did you come here?”
“I want to know why you did it.”
“Did what?”
“Beat my father half to death.”
“I didn’t do that.” Alejandro’s cheeks paled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Emma watched his eyes widen in alarm. Mr. Parker had told them about interrogating insurgents in Iraq. If they nod every time they say yes and shake their head every time they say no, they’re lying to you. But Alejandro’s head didn’t move.
She shifted the barrel of the gun toward Hector. “Then it was you. You beat my father and left him for dead and I want to know why.” She imagined the wet thump of Hector’s fist breaking her dad’s nose. One glance at his hands, held loosely at his sides, revealed a collection of tattoos she couldn’t decipher. I should have told you, Dad. I should have told you it was a war zone. I’m so sorry.
Hector smiled. “You ask too many questions. Does that mean you’re a cop, too?”
“He wasn’t a cop! He was a census worker. They count how many people live here so the government can give you money for schools and things. My dad was trying to help you. He never did anything to hurt you.”
A haze of fear and nausea clouded her vision. It would overwhelm her if she let it, traveling in waves from her gut to her forehead, pricking her skin with sweat. She heard her own breath, coming in short, ragged gasps. Her fingers were wet where they held the gun.
“Hector,” Alejandro said. “Did you do it?”
“He did.” Emma felt hot tears spill from the corners of her eyes. “He did it, I know he did. He broke my dad’s nose and cracked his ribs and ground his face into a pile of crushed glass.”
Alejandro’s gaze drifted down to his brother’s black boots. “Hector.”
Something in her ears began to roar. At first she thought it was an earthquake or a car crash, but it wasn’t. She tried to take a breath but there was no air. Then she knew. She was under the waves again, in Santa Cruz, kicking for the surface and the sun.
Hector tossed his head, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “Why did you come here, gabacha?”
“You don’t even know what kind of person he is,” she sobbed. “You can’t just hurt people when you don’t know how good they are.”
“I hurt everyone who comes into my territory asking questions.”
Emma tried to swallow. but her throat was closed. She sputtered and choked, her finger sliding down the trigger.
“You should go,” Alejandro said.
The old woman in the kitchen shuffled her feet. “Vete ya.”
The sound of rushing water blocked out the old woman’s mutter. It roared in her ears like a roller coaster. “I can’t. I can’t go back until I make things better.”
Alejandro held out his hands. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Joan didn’t want to be burned alive. The people in the Alamo didn’t want to die.” This house was poisoned. These people were poisoned. Hector Espinosa’s eyes were poisoned. They were oil and she was water. It had to end, and it could only end when her dad was safe. He was the reason she’d come, the reason she had to try and undo all the damage she’d done. “Say you did it,” she cried, sliding her finger up the trigger.
Hector snaked his right hand around his back.
“No!” Alejandro cried.
Hector whipped out a gun, small and plastic-looking like hers, and aimed it at her heart. “You made a mistake, gabacha. Maybe I did, too. But I know how to fix my mistakes. I know how to bury them.”
“Hector,” Alejandro said. “Shut the fuck up.”
“I won’t let you near my family,” she sobbed.
“Gabacha,” Hector said, clicking off the safety. “You won’t be here.”
Emma thought of her mom, skimping on milk to make pudding for her after a hard day. Of Mattie, telling Mom she wouldn’t go to college if that made it easier for Emma. She imagined her dad, white-haired and bathrobe-clad, shuffling between rooms without front-facing windows for the next thirty years. He wouldn’t wait up by the door to make sure Mattie came home from a date on time. He wouldn’t go to her track meets. He wouldn’t go see her when she played the lead in Romeo and Juliet. They�
��d pretend it was some sort of normal, a problem swept under a rug the size and shape of all their years together.
No, she thought. She would tell them she loved them the only way she knew how.
“Neither will you,” she said, and pulled the trigger.
Alejandro jerked the muzzle of his brother’s gun as Hector fired back. A spray of red blossomed on Hector’s blue flannel shirt. He fell backward against his brother, both knocked to the floor by the impact. The old woman screamed in the kitchen.
“Hector!” Alejandro cried, laying his brother down. “Hector!”
Emma sobbed. I did it, she thought. Dad, I did it.
Alejandro looked up at her with sun-bright anger in his eyes. As he looked at her, though, his face began to change. The anger faded like a sudden twilight, all its brightness descending into grey. “Go,” he said. “This is over.”
Something smelled like burnt cardboard. The old woman had forgotten something else in the oven. Emma let her right arm fall. She lifted the flap of her purse to slip the gun inside. When she pulled her hand away from the bag, her sleeve was wet. She gasped and looked back at Alejandro.
“Go,” he said.
She stumbled toward the door, smearing the knob with red as she threw it open. That’s not my hand, she thought. My hand is not that color.
Outside, the sun had risen hot and high in the sky. She held up her right hand to shade her eyes. Her mom’s car had air-conditioning. She’d be fine once she got in the car.
But as she looked around at the strange pastel houses, she couldn’t remember where she was. I don’t know this street, she thought, looking at the fences with broken pickets or rusted chain link.
She stumbled down to the sidewalk and brushed against a peeling picket fence. The pickets turned red and she felt something sting in her midsection. She grabbed at the pickets and used them to pull herself down the sidewalk.
Five pickets later, her shirt caught on a broken slat. She tried to move, but the picket held her fast. She swung her left arm for momentum and her wristwatch caught the sun. It was after 11:00 a.m. Her mom would be starting lunch and Emma would probably be late.
