Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  What’s the matter with you? You were always asking me that. I was never right. I was never the way you wanted me to be. I didn’t know how you wanted me to be. Maybe you wanted me to be like you, but I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be. So you always thought something was wrong with me.

  I called for you once, before I knew better; I called and you didn’t come. So I called louder, and louder, until I was screaming. Until my head pounded.

  What’s the matter with you! you said, gripping my shoulders and shaking me.

  What’s the matter with you! you said as some guy stared at us from the doorway and laughed. Are you trying to kill me? Goddamn it, what the hell is the matter with you!

  And then you pushed me, so hard I can still feel your hands on my chest.

  Maybe it’s you, squeezing my heart?

  You sent me tripping,

  and falling

  backward onto some toys.

  You stay in here! you yelled. You stay the hell in here until you stop that shit!

  But I just wanted to see if you’d come. I just wondered what it would take to make you come running.

  “Dani, let me see.”

  “Stop!” I tell Shelly, pulling my chin out of her hands and pushing her away hard. She stumbles backward and I see the look on her face before she quickly recovers.

  “Dani…,” she says.

  “I’m…” sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I’m not like that! I’ve never done that. “It’s just…the heat,” I tell her as I look down at the floor. She stands there and I do too.

  My eyes fill with tears and I hate myself. Feel nothing! I tell myself. Feel nothing! But I feel something and I think it’s shame, knowing what she must be thinking of me.

  I mumble something about seeing her in the morning and go to my room.

  There are too many memories. Coming too fast.

  I close my eyes, but when I do, I see Mom and the way she used to look at me. And then I see Shelly and the way she just looked at me.

  And I hear the rumble of the bear, reminding me he hasn’t forgotten about me.

  I think he’ll say something when he sees me, but he doesn’t. Instead, Paulo watches me as I walk through the store. I know he sees me grab the orange soda, take gulps of it, and put it back in the cooler. I know he sees me, and still he doesn’t say anything.

  He watches me pick through the gum, taking only the pink ones and shoving pack after pack in my pockets.

  I look over at him. His eyes meet mine.

  He watches me flip through the Guns & Ammo magazine on the rack. He watches me read the nutritional information on a bag of chips. He watches me take the calendar off the wall and carry it with me when I leave.

  He doesn’t stop me. I wonder if I dreamed the other day.

  I look at the sky and blink at the sun, that hot and terrible ball of fire that burns and makes the burn of memories easier. And I walk.

  Bits and pieces of her float into my mind and I let them.

  I tell myself to put one foot in front of the other. I tell myself to keep going.

  She had men over all the time. She would choose them over me. It was always Go to your room! It was always Don’t come downstairs!

  At night, the sound of their laughter would come up to my window. They’d be in the pool. She looked like a ghost in that pool, laughing as one of them kissed her neck. As she climbed on top of them. Forgetting I was there. Always forgetting I was there.

  I remember the first paragraph of The Stranger.

  Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

  I think of how Meursault tells his story, just an account of an event. No feelings, no emotions.

  I don’t know what day her funeral was. But I should, right? Daughters should know the days their mothers died, the day they were buried. Maybe I should have saved the memorial program.

  The funeral parlor was dim. I think it was dim. People were black spots and dots on the side. But she was front and center. Just like always. And Patsy Cline was singing. Patsy was there.

  Mom’s color was off. Neither her usual brown tangerine nor the pale gray I had feared and almost expected. She was a strange, murky color.

  She wore a red top, red as her name. And a gold sequined skirt.

  I hated that top and that skirt. I don’t know who picked them out. But what did it matter? I couldn’t even remember how I got there.

  A few bikers showed up with their old ladies. That’s what they call the women who ride with their arms clasped around a man’s waist, holding on to him for dear life. I think my mom wanted to be an old lady, but I never understood why. All of them, the bikers, the old ladies, all of them always wore black.

  What were they constantly mourning?

  Last summer, we went to bike week. She made me go because the twentysomething son of one of her boyfriends’ was going. She and I rode on the back of their bikes all the way to Daytona Beach.

  I watched her as we rode, the roar of rumbling thunder in my ears. That time she wasn’t clutching her boyfriend. Maybe that was why I noticed. She had her hands on her thighs, like she didn’t need anyone. She didn’t wear a helmet because it was too practical. Or maybe she didn’t wear a helmet because she wasn’t afraid to die. Maybe she even wanted to.

  The thought had never occurred to me. What did she want? I would never know.

  I remember the way her hair whipped back like a yellow flag flapping behind her. She had her eyes closed and a strange smile on her lips. She lifted her face to the sky; the sun hugged every curve of it. Slowly, she raised her arms over her head and let the wind wash over her. If you didn’t know her, you’d think she was praising God. You’d think she was washing herself of sin.

  She glowed. And I was awed. This wasn’t my mother. Wasn’t the sin-loving, drinking, tired-looking woman I knew. This was someone else.

  This woman was the wind. She was capable of traveling at a hundred miles an hour, leaving everyone and everything behind. She could travel over hot waters, gaining strength, spinning into hurricanes. Blowing over the earth, roaring through foreign lands, whispering into meadows.

  She looked over at me, but she couldn’t see my eyes through the dark helmet I wore. I was Darth Vader.

  The lines came back to her face, marionette lines around her frown. She lost all her strength. She clutched her boyfriend and turned her face away from me, pressed it against the hot leather of his jacket.

  That was my mother.

  I was her villain.

  Why had I looked at her in that coffin? Why hadn’t I told someone to screw the lid on and not take it off, like Meursault had? Smooth wood. So much better than covered-up sutures and the clothes she wore to pick up men.

  Why had I gone to the funeral? I can’t remember who was there other than the bikers. Maybe an elderly lady over to my right. Who would that have been? I think I remember a cotton-candy puff of white hair somewhere there.

  They were all strangers. That’s why I don’t remember them. That’s why I can’t recall their faces. They were neighbors who hated her. Who hated me. Who thought, probably, I would turn out just like her.

  It didn’t matter. It was her moment. There were lights shining down on her. When I stood in front of her and looked down, I focused on a single sequin until it was a blurry sun. I stared and stared until I sat down.

  I remember someone with a Bible. And I remember Patsy singing about falling to pieces, just before someone wondered if we’d accepted Jesus into our hearts.

  Someone else shoved cookies shaped like flowers into my hand, along with a cup of coffee.

  I ate and drank.

  And then I was in Helen’s house, where I threw up, but I don’t remember cleaning the mess up. The vomit was bitter. I must have retched in a corner, or a vase, or a closet. Somewhere dark. Only now do I remember and feel bad that my vomit migh
t still be there.

  Meursault walks behind his mother’s hearse with an old man he doesn’t know but who is his mother’s friend. Pérez. That’s the old man’s name. He is too old to walk the distance, but he does.

  It’s a gesture of love. A last great gesture.

  And in the end, he faints struggling to keep up.

  It’s the image of Pérez that makes me roam the desert, that ridiculous old man performing a great gesture of love for a woman who must have been awful since her son feels no grief for her. But I picture Pérez’s big wide eyes, the tiny red and black veins that erupt on the yellow where there should be whites. I picture the sweat on his face. I picture him dabbing a handkerchief to his forehead. I picture him panting.

  Delirious with heat and struggle and grief. For a horrible woman.

  It’s the old man who kills me. It’s the old man, walking until he passes out, who I understand. Walking until the world goes black.

  I wake up and I don’t know if it’s dusk or dawn. I wait and the room gets brighter. It’s another day.

  I pick up The Stranger. I try to start each morning this way, reading about Meursault. I had expected the novel to revolve around his mother and what a horrible woman she was that he couldn’t even grieve her.

  But it’s about Meursault and how he walks through the world unaffected.

  I like the idea of that. I like the idea of nothing mattering, not deeply. Especially not memories. Memories can be just events if we take the emotion away.

  It’s because of Meursault that I am able to look up a central Florida news website after dinner one night, while Shelly gets ready for work. It’s because of Meursault I can find the story about the bear. About Mom. And I finally figure out what day she died. It’s just a day. A day, in so many ways, like any other.

  I wonder if I can tell Shelly. We don’t talk about the shove I gave her. We don’t talk about how or why we avoid each other. We don’t talk about time or how the sun keeps rising and setting. But I wonder what she would say if I told her.

  The day Mom died was May 22.

  I mark it on the calendar I stole, forgot about, then remembered.

  I write it in black marker.

  Mom died today.

  And then I start slashing through all the days that came after.

  “It’s been forty-one days,” I tell Shelly when she comes into the kitchen and pours coffee into a thermos. She thinks I can’t even speak, so I wonder what she will say to this.

  She screws the lid on to the thermos. “I know,” she says softly. And I wonder if she really does.

  “There was a time long ago when she took me to the zoo,” I tell Shelly. Because they are just words. And it is just a fact.

  I turn around and she’s looking at me. She seems a little shaken, but she keeps her gaze steady, searching for something in me, asking me something without asking.

  Do you want to do this? Now?

  At the zoo, Mom didn’t wear a bra. I don’t know why I remember this detail. Probably because most of the day, I was distracted by my mother’s breasts making an appearance from the sides of her loose black tank top. I was distracted by the looks she got. Each time I wanted to pay attention to the animals, all I could do was look and see if either breast had escaped.

  What? she asked. It was always defensive or exasperated, the way she said What?

  Nothing, I said. She studied my face the way she always did, seeing something, confirming something about me. She didn’t believe me.

  Shelly has one hand on the counter, and something about it looks like she’s leaning on it for support.

  Do you want to do this? Now?

  No. No, I don’t. “Another double shift?” I ask, looking at her thermos.

  If I were Meursault, I would tell Shelly everything about our lives right now. Just ramble with no emotion. A part of her is waiting for me to do just that, I think.

  “Yeah,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “I should be home around six in the morning.”

  “Cool.”

  “But I can find someone to cover if you…if…” You want to do this. Do this now.

  “No,” I tell her quickly. “I’m just…I was just thinking how I’ve been here for—”

  “Dani…”

  “Really, go. I’m…I just remembered is all.” And I wanted to see if I could say it out loud. I wanted to see if I could still speak. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I tell her, turning back to the computer screen.

  Please go, please go.

  “In the morning, then,” she says. The slow scrape of the keys and the thermos across the counter fills the air.

  I nod and busy myself at the computer. I type in the name of the zoo again.

  “I’ll lock the gate,” she calls out before closing the front door.

  I nod, even though I know she’s already gone.

  I stare at the computer screen, at the zoo website, the smiling faces of families having fun with animals. Families like that don’t exist. Not really. Not here, or at the zoo.

  This isn’t enough, Dani? she asked. She shook her head and wiped a hand, greasy and salty from popcorn, on her tight black jeans. It’s not enough I take the day off to bring you here, to smell animal shit all day? You’re still like this? She shook her head again and I could see her anger growing. Nothing is enough for you. I can never do enough.

  I wouldn’t feel sorry for her. I was tired of her poor-me routine. Besides, I already knew what a liar she could be. She hadn’t taken the day off. She’d been fired. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I knew. But I didn’t.

  I’m sorry, I said, even though I didn’t mean it. I could lie too. I’ll become a better liar than her, I thought. And I softened my face and smiled as genuinely as I could. She stopped. It almost felt like a game. Could I trick her? She took a deep breath and nodded.

  Fine, she said, but she shook her head like she was just too tired to fight with me.

  I was too much, I guess. I was too much for her. She was always tired of me, always shoving me away. I was always bothering her. I took up seconds. I took up minutes and hours and years. I was greedy.

  I was a constant that was like a life sentence.

  Without thinking, I slipped my hand into hers and felt her cringe. What I want to ask her was why she had me. Why, if she hated me so much, did she bother to have me?

  “Stop being so needy,” she said.

  I let go.

  We’d been to the giraffes and fed crackers into their ugly mouths. Then we passed the monkeys climbing trees and ropes. And we saw the bear.

  He stood behind a large sheet of glass and stared at her as if he’d been waiting for her. Other visitors came up, tapped on the glass, trying to get his attention.

  But it was Mom he noticed.

  And she stared at him, like she was trying to place where she knew him from.

  That floor-to-ceiling sheet of glass, whose whole job was to reveal everything and hide nothing, was all that stood between him and us. No steel bars, no cage, just glass. The bear stared at us.

  “He scares me,” I told her.

  This time she reached for my hand. And she held it so hard and so tight, I thought she was angry at me again. I thought she would tell me how ridiculous I was. How many other kids loved the zoo and all I could do was complain about being afraid of the animals.

  But she didn’t say any of those things. Instead she said, “Me too.” She started dragging me away. But the bear followed. He followed until the glass ended. And when I looked back, he stood at the edge watching us go, pawing at the air, at the nothingness between us.

  Here’s what I didn’t tell you, Mom. As you stared at him, I wondered, what if he broke through the glass? What if he reached out with one giant paw, grabbed me, and pulled me in? What if he throttled me until my teeth knocked into each other and shattered? What if he clawed at me, mauled me? I pictured that because I wondered what you would do.

  I would cry out for you. Even though
I wouldn’t want to, I knew I would. I would scream for you.

  And then I imagined myself on the ground, dead. The bear satisfied. I imagined you weeping over me. A thousand times I’d pictured this. When we’d drive home from the store and I pictured an accident with one fatality, an airplane falling from the sky, crashing and burning into just my room somehow, a hidden disease ravaging my body. I pictured all these things, and each time, I imagined you weeping over me. You weeping over me. I wasn’t supposed to weep over you. Because you weren’t supposed to ever leave.

  But then you let go of my hand again and I remembered, you could hardly stand to hold it. So I couldn’t quite picture you weeping anymore.

  But I couldn’t quite picture you just walking away either. Leaving me alone with the bear.

  So I wonder, Mom, what did I mean to you?

  When I saw that bear pawing at the air, staring after her, I felt something. Maybe I knew even then that someday he would come for her.

  And he’d get her.

  And I’d be out here in the desert by myself, feeling even lonelier, even more left-behind, than I ever had before.

  I click on the website. I search for the bear we saw that day. But the zoo no longer has a bear exhibit and I don’t find any mention of him anywhere on the site. He didn’t have a name. He wasn’t a favorite. He wasn’t transferred to another zoo. He didn’t die. He didn’t have a family. It’s as if he never existed. Except he did.

  I think he must have escaped.

  I think he must have cut a large circle in that glass and put it back. He must have smoothed it over with his magic paw, binding the glass together again so nobody would ever know how he left.

  The zookeepers must have walked into that empty glass area the next day and scratched their heads. He would have been long gone by then. He would have been traveling down secret pathways, hiding, biding, settling into the woods behind the house we would someday rent.

  He would have been watching.

  And waiting.

  He saw me through the sliding glass door that day. I’m sure he did. Watching, seeing if I would come out.