Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

So I go.

  As I walk, I watch the dust rise, fall, coat my shoes with each step. I wonder how it doesn’t all just blow away, how the surface of the earth stays intact with wind and people and cars and animals disturbing it every second of every day. But then, I suppose it’s always falling back down.

  My sneakers go from gray-white to orange to brown. I don’t know where I’m going, but I look back every few steps to make sure the house is still in view. Stay close, my brain says, but my feet don’t obey, because with each step there’s a strange sense of power. Walking makes that monstrosity of a house in this vast empty space diminish somehow. It becomes smaller and smaller, until it disappears altogether. And I wonder what other things I can make disappear.

  I smile. Like magicians who can make mountains move and volcanoes vanish, I can make a house disappear. I laugh. Dani the Great.

  I keep walking. I recite the alphabet, then count until the numbers get boring; then phrases pop into my head.

  And miles to go before I sleep!

  Ninety-nine bottles of beer!

  Need an attorney? Call Biddle and Biddle at 1-800-something-something-something…

  I look up and see a gas station appear in the distance.

  I can make gas stations appear. I walk toward it, stomping my feet harder into the earth just to make the dirt swirl high, higher, higher, because I like the way each dust cloud hypnotizes me, the way my legs get coated with a layer of orange that keeps building on with each kick. I like the way it makes me think of dust, only dust. Dust is all that matters!

  There’s a door in front of me. I open it and walk into an even thicker blanket of heat.

  A guy is sitting behind the counter, and he glances over at me as I come inside. A newspaper is spread out in front of him and a television is on. The face of a woman with sleek black hair fills the screen. I know her face, this scene. I’ve seen it before, but I can’t make sense of it.

  The guy catches my eye. He looks sleepy. He looks like a dream. The woman on the screen starts dancing to some kind of old music and I look at her, but she’s looking at the man she’s dancing with, another familiar face. I wonder where I know them from. The guy watches me before turning his attention back to the television. I turn down the first aisle.

  The aisle is full of car supplies. Motor oil and tree-shaped air fresheners. Windshield wipers and wiper fluid. Somehow this leads to toothpaste and dental floss. Deodorant. Then maps. Everything is in packages that are crumpled at the corners and discolored, as if they’ve been here forever. Forever.

  My mind takes out the or.

  Fever.

  You give me fever. Fever! I see her face. I hear her voice, the way she would sing that stupid song in the kitchen and dance. Out of nowhere. I focus on the items on the shelves.

  I walk slowly past them, to the end of the aisle, and then turn down the next aisle as the music coming from the television seems to get both louder and softer.

  I take inventory of all the common and odd objects. I see the Mad guy smile at me with his goofy grin, black-and-white crosswords make my eyes feel out of focus, and women’s lusty eyes peek out at me from the covers of pornographic magazines in sealed packages.

  Fever!

  I close my eyes for a minute, but that makes me so dizzy, I open them again.

  The guy at the counter glances up as I make my way to the third aisle. This one starts with soups: canned soups and soups in envelopes and ramen noodles, but the letters of the alphabet soup make me dizzy again and the pictures of noodles and chicken and vegetables make me feel sick.

  I move on to the candy. Chocolate bars and gum and candy so sour it might make your head explode like the cartoon guy on the package. Or you can walk in the sun; that’ll make your head explode, too, I tell him. At the end of the shelves stands a tin bucket filled with tiny square packets of beautiful gum.

  Ten cents!

  Neon pink, red and green, purple and yellow and white. I sink my hand into the bucket and imagine diving into a pool full of these little packets, being engulfed by the pretty colored squares. I can hear the clicking of shells as I sink, the smell of candy dye and gum and mint.

  It’s beautiful.

  I pull my hand out, feeling but not dislodging the packets stuck between my fingers. I look at the shelves, like I’m trying to decide. And as I watch the guy stare at the TV screen, I carefully put my hand in my pocket, tucking several pieces of gum there.

  I walk on, toward the drinks. Beer. Water. Soda in every color.

  But none of it is as beautiful as that gum. And I’m anxious to leave, to feel the crunch of it in my mouth, the sweetness of it flow onto my tongue.

  I make myself walk slowly. I make myself look bored. And then I walk to the front, past the guy at the register. My head throbs and my eyes won’t focus, but I continue outside, to the bright sun, the orange dust, the only things that make sense.

  The air is still hot, but cooler than inside the store, and I can smell it, heat and dust and dust and burning. Each breath I take brings it into my lungs.

  I feel in my pocket for the tightly wrapped gum. I take a piece out and admire its bright, bright pink before opening it and popping a single square into my mouth. It tastes just like I knew it would, like Pepto-Bismol.

  She’d give me Pepto-Bismol when I had a stomachache. I hated it. It made me gag, but she’d make me take it even as I choked on the thick liquid. One time I spit it out all over the floor and the neon pink splashed on our feet and across the white tile like some kind of art piece. I remember how pretty it looked right before she whacked me so hard on the side of my head, I thought my head had fallen off. Hard enough that a hot, electric sensation zapped through my neck. She was a blur then, her hand over her mouth, horrified. I cried and the way she stared at me, frozen like that, I thought maybe I was headless. Or maybe pink rivers were flowing from my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying as she refilled the spoon, her hands shaking. “Just take it, please, please!” I couldn’t stand the pain in my stomach. I didn’t want to be swiped on the side of my head again. I didn’t want her hands to keep shaking the way they were shaking, but I wouldn’t open my mouth.

  I knew it would make her angry. But I didn’t care.

  She yelled and told me how I made her do it, so I shut my lips tighter. But then she held me somehow so my nose was plugged and then she shoved that spoon into my mouth and made it clatter against my teeth so that I thought they might break. I gagged, but could do nothing but swallow the pink slime, and that made me get angrier and cry harder, while she cursed and walked away and slammed the door to her room.

  I went to my own room, my feet sticky with pink. And I crawled into bed and closed my eyes and wished the world would disappear. Only when I was too tired to cry anymore, when I was somewhere dark and beautiful, did I feel the warm wetness of a towel wiping my feet. And then the warmth of her hands as she kneeled at my bed and held my hands. But I was so far into the dark and beautiful, I couldn’t open my eyes. I felt her tears on my hands. Her lips on my forehead. Her words slipping into my ears, into my dreams. She was sorry. And she was praying.

  And I loved her so much in that moment. Even though there was a part of me where the hate was growing.

  I pop the second and third and fourth squares of gum in my mouth. Each time I crunch through one, I see an explosion of pink behind my eyelids, and the thick liquid gushes into my mouth. I gag. I can feel sweat all over me, and how the dirt sticks to my skin when I fall and stare up at the impossibly bright sky.

  It’s so white, so hot, that I can’t hear anything except what’s inside my head. It feels like I’m in an airplane, and suddenly I wonder if I am. If the world is going in reverse. And I wonder if this is what it feels like to be unborn.

  My ears plug up and maybe my blood is boiling. Maybe this is the sound of a rolling boil I hear. I imagine gurgling red bubbles in my head,

  There are black dots everywhere I loo
k. The harder I look, the larger the black dots become, until they blot out the sun. Until they swallow me up and I can’t remember where I am or how old I am or what is now.

  There’s a deep grumble and I remember the bear.

  Leave me alone. But he’s grabbing my arm, and soon he’ll be biting my pinkies.

  I should scream; I should run.

  Are you okay? Are you okay?

  My eyes snap open and the sun blinds me again. The world is an asteroid.

  A shock of something cold brushes against my arm and then I’m being pulled backward. I should be scared, but it feels good. It feels good to be limp, to be dragged, to not care. Maybe he’ll bury me.

  But moments later, I’m sitting against something solid. And there’s water wetting my lips.

  I look over. Someone is holding a water bottle to my lips, but the harder I try to focus, the less I can see. I catch a glimpse of his mouth moving, lips glistening in the sun. I look up, to his eyes, try to take his face in all at once instead of bit by bit.

  It’s the guy from the gas station. He’s saying something I don’t understand. I feel a cold wetness against the back of my neck, so cold it burns my skin and sends jolts through my body.

  “Are you okay?” The words finally take meaning through the layers of thick heat. “Here, drink some more,” he says, putting the bottle of water in my hand. The coldness sends a fresh set of shocks through my body, but I hold the bottle and drink from it.

  “You fainted,” he says.

  I stare at the gas pumps, red and gray and chipped with white, and they look pretty somehow. I try to tell him that, but my mouth is still thick with the taste of pink and chalk.

  I drink more water. Little droplets fall from my chin.

  “Better?” he asks. My head feels heavy and hurts, but I can see clearly. The gas pumps seem to be getting crisper, clearer, so I nod. Just nodding makes the world spin, and the pain in my head takes sharp turns.

  “Hold on, wait here,” he says.

  I close my eyes, but that makes everything worse, so I open them and somehow he’s back without ever leaving. I think he’s Flash Gordon, and I start to mumble that to him, but he shushes me and helps me walk to a truck that has suddenly appeared in the middle of the desert.

  We walk toward it.

  For days we walk.

  I try to tell him he’s the slowest Flash Gordon ever, but I just laugh instead and wonder where the gas pumps went.

  Then he is shoving books and DVDs off the seat and to the floor and we are inside the truck. I am sitting on torn brown leather, so hot it burns my legs, and I am holding the bottled water to my forehead and I am taking deep breaths. He gets in and we drive away and I only sort of care or wonder where we’re going.

  I watch the side mirror, the gas station getting smaller and smaller, the pumps reappearing in miniature, and all of it becoming a portrait as a film of orange dust floats up in front of it.

  I close my eyes, lean my head on the window, then lift it again when it bangs against the glass as we drive.

  We come to a trailer.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him, surprised that my voice works. The words are thick and slow, but they come out. And I don’t want to get out of the truck. I stare at my legs and shoes, layered with dirt. I stare at a book under my feet. Something about films.

  “My grandmother’s home. She’ll make you feel better.”

  He calls for someone and I think my ears don’t work, but then I realize he’s speaking another language, Spanish.

  ¡En español!

  The voice of my Spanish I teacher floats into my mind, the sharp clap of her hands. ¿Cómo estás, Dani? as I walked into her classroom.

  Mal, Señora Lopez. Muy mal.

  A woman appears at the door, her voice calm as she replies to the guy and holds the door open. We climb the few wooden steps leading to the entrance and I look at her as we pass. Her hair is long and mostly gray, peppered with strands of black. A brown shawl covers her shoulders, and jewelry hangs from her neck and wrists.

  The inside is dim. The guy sits me on the couch, presses the water into my hands. Words I don’t understand are exchanged between the two of them, pretty words that sound like they’re rolling down from the mountains, echoing around us.

  “¿Qué pasó?”

  “Se desmayo. Le di agua pero sigue igual.”

  “Mucho sol.”

  The woman leans down and looks at me with watery gray eyes, the whites splotched with dark spots and tiny red veins. “El sol es el diablo,” she whispers. She looks familiar somehow. I think I met her in a dream once.

  Her trinkets jingle against each other like wind chimes.

  She turns and goes to the kitchen. The guy pulls up a chair and sits across from me.

  “Who are you?” I ask him finally. My mouth feels solid again, not like softened wax the way it did earlier, and I think about that for a moment. Was I melting in the desert? Becoming a puddle?

  “I’m Paulo. You fainted in front of the gas station my grandmother owns.” He nods toward the old woman, who is now filling a kettle with water. “I work there.”

  He searches my face for some kind of recognition and I remember flashes of him watching me as I went up and down the aisles, as the woman danced on the TV screen.

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I remember.”

  “What’s your name?” He leans closer and I catch a glimpse of his eyes. A brighter gray than his grandmother’s. Behind him, something dark, a shadow that becomes a figure, moves into view.

  It’s the bear, standing on his hind legs. He fills up the room and blocks the light from the window, making the whole place darker. I see the way he looks at me and sways to music I can’t hear. I close my eyes, try to stop the swaying feeling, try to keep the sudden gurgle in my stomach from erupting.

  “Hold on,” Paulo says. He moves quickly, comes back with a small kitchen bucket as water shoots from my mouth and through my nose. I cough and choke on it. Pink water.

  The kettle whistles.

  “Jesus,” Paulo says, handing me a paper towel. I take it and wipe my mouth, my nose.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. “Really.” I sit there with the bucket in my hands until he takes it away.

  “You fainted,” he says. “You’re dehydrated. How long were you walking?”

  I shrug. The day feels endless, but the flashes of me walking out there seem only like seconds now.

  Paulo sits back down as his grandmother comes over with a cup in her hand.

  “Niña,” she says as she hands me the cup. “Toma.” Her movements are slow and deliberate. She looks like she’s never tripped in her life. I hold the cup in my hand.

  “Go ahead,” Paulo says. “It’s just tea, but it’ll help.”

  They watch me. I close my eyes, bring the cup to my nose, and let the minty steam rise to my face. I take a deep breath. Mint and lemon and honey and earth and warmth fill my nose.

  “Drink it,” Paulo’s grandmother says. “Slow.” Her face is etched with cracks. Her hair and clothes flow down around her. Her fingers are adorned with glittering rocks. She reminds me of a mountain.

  I take a sip and look around the mobile home searching for the bear, but he’s gone.

  “Todo,” she says, pointing to the tea. “But slow.” She walks across the room and sits at a table near a small window, humming to herself.

  There are little jars of paint and brushes on the table. Next to the table, propped against the wall, are wooden crosses. Some of the crosses are brightly painted and dotted with glittering beads. Others seem to be waiting their turn. Paulo’s grandmother lifts a plain cross and begins painting it. She looks over at me as she works.

  I feel like she knows the bear and that makes me uneasy.

  “Paulo will take you home,” she says, turning her attention back to her work.

  “Thank you,” I say to her, lifting the teacup.

  She nods slowly and keeps painting.

 
The sun is going down when Paulo and I step outside the trailer. The smell of the tea is still in my nose, but now it mixes with the hot, dry air of the desert.

  Somehow we arrive at Shelly’s. It’s only when we’re in front of the house that I remember Paulo asking where I lived. I wonder what I answered.

  I stare at him, see his lips move, and know he’s just asked me a question. His words make their way to my brain. “When did you get here?”

  Shelly’s voice rings in my ears. Three weeks.

  I suddenly remember the plane.

  I remember the sun and the steps to a house far away that was and wasn’t mine.

  I stare at Shelly’s place. Was it still three weeks ago, or has more time passed? “I don’t know,” I say, because I’m not sure. A feeling of panic washes over me. I have arrived at a time warp, where time moves slower, where days feel like light-years and then get lost.

  I swallow the panic, reach for the door handle, and pull.

  Get out.

  Walk.

  The rocks roll under my shoes. Perpetual pebbles to trip over.

  “Hey,” Paulo calls. “Hey!”

  I turn and he’s still there.

  “What’s your name?”

  Only one name flashes through my mind. It shoots out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Ruby,” I call back.

  He tilts his head to the side. “Ruby,” he says. “All right, Ruby. I’ll see you around, then.” I watch him drive away.

  I don’t know why I wonder if he will whisper it later, in the darkness. If he will remember me sprawled out in the desert and think, Ruby.

  Ruby.

  Ruby.

  I wonder if I can whisper it later in a dark bathroom, say her name into the mirror, and wait for her to appear.

  I walk slowly up to the front door. Shelly’s truck is here. I take a deep breath and open the door.

  When I walk in, she looks up from the book she’s reading and stares at me as I cross to the kitchen.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. The words pound in my head. “Dani? What the hell happened to you?” She’s up from the couch and coming over to me quickly and I try to get past her but she grabs my chin to study my face. “Let me see what’s the matter with you.”