by Paul Pen
Together, the three of them went out onto the porch, which smelled like hot wood. Rose saw Melissa in the distance, near her cacti. The metal of a folding ladder gleamed in the sun.
“Is she collecting flowers?” Iris asked.
“No,” said Socorro. “I think she’s doing something else.”
Rose was annoyed by her smile, by the fact that she understood the actions of her daughter better than she did.
“Melissa!” The teacher waved an arm in the air. “Are you coming to say goodbye?”
Rose tried to copy the gesture, but the cut on her arm prevented it.
Melissa looked at them from where she stood. “Coming!”
She gathered something up in her arms before setting off toward the porch. The ladder’s metallic shine was left floating behind her. Rose realized what she was carrying when she reached the porch steps. She held her cacti’s clothes.
“That’s great, honey.” She took a step forward. “I’m so glad you’re letting go of them.”
But Melissa didn’t stop, she walked on to Socorro.
The teacher nodded when she saw the clothes. “You’ve just taken an important step.” She pinched her cheek. “I’m very proud of you.”
“I’m going to start being glad for what I’ve got instead of being unhappy about what I don’t have,” Melissa said.
Socorro smiled as if she recognized the words.
“That’s a great philosophy to live by.”
“I learned it from a very wise woman.”
The special bond that existed between the two of them sparked Rose’s jealousy.
“I have a wonderful family, and a beautiful house in a spectacular place.” Melissa said the words with the maturity she seemed to have all at once acquired. “It’s all I need to be happy.”
Rose blew Melissa a kiss in gratitude for her words. Her jealousy vanished. Her daughter narrowed her eyelids, questioning her with eyes that seemed to have acquired more depth. Then she hugged the teacher.
“Have a great summer.” Melissa increased the pressure with a moan, expressing just how much she was going to miss her. “I’m going to say goodbye to my rocks as well.”
“Say goodbye from me,” Socorro requested.
“And from me,” Rose added quickly.
Melissa went into the house with such firm steps that she might have been carrying one of the heaviest rocks from the landscape.
“Where have all the little girls gone, huh?” Socorro put an arm around Iris to include her in the remark. “Your house is filling up with mujeres. Next term I won’t have anything to teach you.”
With that, the teacher said her goodbyes. Her truck moved off up the track while Rose and Iris waved from the handrail.
“I left our truck at the gas station.”
“Don’t worry,” Rose said. “Don’t worry about anything.”
She took her daughter by the hand, inviting her to sit on the steps. Iris rested her head on Rose’s shoulder. Together they watched the cloud of dust Socorro left behind disappear among the cacti.
“Just so you know, he wasn’t tied up.” Rose stroked her daughter’s face, using her unscathed arm. “We immobilized him to stop him from doing any more harm to himself. We were taking care of him.”
“I know, Mom.”
“But if you saw that he was tied up, you must’ve been in the room.” She noticed that Iris stopped breathing. “I was right yesterday when I came down with that hair from the bedroom. The hair was yours.”
Iris took a while to respond.
“Yes, Mom,” she admitted with a sigh. “Please forgive me.” She hugged her with an abandon that Rose hadn’t seen since her daughter was a little girl. “I really thought I loved him.”
Iris let it all out, sobbing in her arms. As a mother does, Rose consoled her, stroking her hair, in love with its feel, with its shine. As Edelweiss’s had, Iris’s hair took on various tones throughout the day, reflecting the endless array of shades with which the sun colored the desert.
Melissa perceived the smells the clothes gave off as she climbed the stairs to her room. Needles’s and Pins’s T-shirts smelled like dust, like sun, like cactus sap. Thorns’s hadn’t been exposed to the elements long enough to absorb the scents of the desert.
Upstairs, through the half-open door, she saw Dad moving inside her parents’ bedroom. He was crouching, rolling up a large form in a white sheet spread out on the floor. Seeing the blood stains, Melissa looked away. When Dad noticed her presence, he straightened. He held his fingertips together at his stomach. He lowered his head, not knowing what to say, shying away from her eyes. He ended up pushing the door shut with a finger.
Melissa went into her room.
The magazines on her desk were stacked tidily, along with the other scraps of paper. There was no medicine on the bedside table, no glass with white sediment. The wastebasket was empty. The collapsed shelf was leaning against the wall. The bare mattress showed the rhomboid motifs of its stitching, its labels. Melissa sat on the edge of the bed and set the cacti’s clothes aside.
She looked at her rocks, piled up in a corner.
“I promise I’ll find your eyes so we can say goodbye properly,” she said to Natalie and Marlon.
There was a rap on the open door.
“Can I come in?” Mom asked.
Melissa nodded. Once inside, Mom closed the door behind her and turned the key. She sat down on the mattress, next to her. For a few seconds, they looked at each other without saying anything. Then Mom took her hand. She held it against the warmth of her lap.
“You didn’t see the boy attacking me in the bedroom,” she whispered.
Melissa shook her head. “Rick couldn’t do anything to you. I was with him earlier on, here, in my bed, when he . . .” She preferred not to say the word.
Mom’s eyes glistened. “Honey, you shouldn’t . . . you shouldn’t have had to see anything.”
“You left the door unlocked. I just wanted to switch my rock, but Rick spoke to me.”
“He spoke to you?” Her mother’s neck tensed.
Melissa nodded.
“And what did he say?” She barely traced the words with her lips.
Melissa’s eyelids tingled. The moisture of her incipient tears stung the inside of her nose.
“I stayed while it happened, Mom.”
“Why’re you looking at me like that?”
“I talked to him about Edelweiss.”
“Edelweiss?” She swallowed.
“Yes, Mom.”
“And why would you talk to him about Edelweiss?”
“I told him that Edelweiss was holding his hand,” Melissa whispered. “So that he felt a loved one was there with him when he went.”
Mom’s chin began to tremble. She bit her lips, fighting to contain tears that appeared in her eyes despite her efforts.
“Our Edelweiss?” She frowned, trying to feign confusion, but they both knew there was no point in continuing the charade.
“His sister, Mom. I wanted him to know that his sister was waiting for him on the other side.”
Mom screwed up her face, suppressing the sobs into which she finally exploded, collapsing into Melissa’s arms. She cried on her shoulder with the abandon of a little girl.
“Honey, I’m sorry . . .”
“I hate knowing the truth,” Melissa whispered.
Mom waited until she had the spasms under control before sitting up. She dried her eyes with her hands. She held Melissa by the cheeks.
“Honey”—she spoke close to her face—“the only truth is this family.”
“I know everything, Mom.”
Her mother’s eyes explored her features as if she hoped to find some explanation in them.
“How?” she finally said.
Melissa lowered her head. She looked at the floor where she’d sat cross-legged, with a lantern, in front of the folder, casting light on the truth for the first time. She remembered her conversation with Rick the morni
ng after. In her lower eyelids, she felt the weight of the sleepless nights reading the documents. In her hands, she felt the heat of the fire with which she’d reduced the past that couldn’t exist to ashes, just as Dad had done.
“My rocks told me,” said Melissa. “They were here the whole time.”
She gestured with her chin at the corner where they were stacked. Mom opened her mouth to say something, to respond that what she said couldn’t be true, but she closed it without a word. She accepted the explanation with a nod, the way Melissa was accepting what they had done.
“I’m sorry, honey.” Mom collapsed again into her arms, crying against her chest. “Please, forgive us.”
As if she were the mother, Melissa stroked Mom’s hair until she was calm. As she did so, she looked at the wall of drawings. The portraits of a perfect past glowed gold in the special light with which the sun illuminated them each morning.
“Come on!” the twins yelled. “It’s the last day of cactus bloom! We have to hurry!”
“Bloom?” asked Mom. “Who taught you that word?”
“The teacher!”
They ran downstairs, counting out loud the number of necklaces they planned to make. Melissa heard the scene from the bathroom, brushing her teeth in front of the mirror. Mom spoke to her reflection.
“And come on, you, don’t make Dad wait.” She picked up some colored beads from the floor. “Aren’t you supposed to love going to town?”
Melissa nodded with the toothbrush in her mouth.
“Well, you’d never know it.” Mom threw the beads in the trash can next to the sink. “Come on, hurry now, Dad’s finished his breakfast.”
In her bedroom, Melissa pulled out the bag she always took to town from under the bed. She usually took it empty, to fill with shopping, but not this time. From the chest of drawers where she kept the tempera, she took out a sketchbook. She tore out the picture she’d drawn of Rick in the bed. From the wall of drawings, she chose another of Edelweiss. She put them in the bag with the other things. As she went down the stairs, she tightened the buckle to the last hole.
“Ready?” Dad asked when he saw her walk into the kitchen.
“Ready.”
“Then let me finish getting these floriculturists dressed”—on one knee, he was putting straw hats on the twins’ heads—“and then we’ll get going.”
“It’s true, we’re flowery culchists,” they repeated.
They showed Melissa the empty wicker baskets that hung from their arms.
“We’re going to make necklaces for everyone,” said Daisy.
“We’re going to make necklaces for everyone,” Dahlia repeated.
Melissa showed her appreciation for their plan with a smile.
“And now some gloves, so you don’t prick yourselves.” Dad put such big ones on them that they fell from the girls’ hands when they lowered their arms. “Rose! You finish up here, before I go crazy.”
He picked up the two pairs of gloves from the floor and left them on the table, where Iris was building wobbly towers with books she was taking down from the shelves. On tiptoes, she reached with her hand to the back of the highest section. Mom came into the kitchen through the back door, bringing four tomatoes from the vegetable garden.
“It’s not here.” Iris clicked her tongue. “I don’t understand.”
“Have you looked in the living room?” asked Mom.
“I moved everything.” She gestured at a pile of cushions near the door. “It’s not there.”
Melissa shifted her bag behind her back. “What’re you looking for?”
“My book. Pride and Prejudice. It’s as if it disappeared from the face of the earth. And I haven’t even had the chance to finish it.”
“A whole month and you haven’t finished it?” said Melissa. “That is strange.”
Iris’s face darkened.
“I haven’t been in the right frame of mind for reading . . .” She blinked the darkness away. “Seriously now, you two,” she said to the twins. “My book. Did you take it out to play with in the desert and lose it? I’d rather you just told me the truth.”
The little girls shook their heads.
“Well, I don’t get it.”
“I bet the man stole it,” said Daisy.
“I bet the man stole it,” Dahlia said.
A tomato fell onto the floor, spattering Melissa’s ankles. Mom bent down to pick it up. She still seemed on edge whenever anyone mentioned Rick.
“Why do you say that?” asked Iris.
The twins whispered in each other’s ears.
“Because he also stole a picture from us, after all,” they said at the same time. “One of our nicest ones.”
“He did?”
They nodded with conviction.
“He knew how much they’re worth,” said Daisy.
“He must’ve gotten rich selling it,” Dahlia said.
“Are you sure it didn’t fall off the wall and get stuck behind the bed?” Mom cleaned remnants of tomato from between her fingers.
“The man stole it,” they said again. “He’s bought a house with the money he made selling it.”
“I’m sure he did.” Iris ruffled their hair. “Just in case, I’m going to keep looking for my book.”
“And you two.” Mom pointed at Melissa and Dad. “If you don’t go, you’ll be late.”
“When can we go to town?” the twins asked.
Dad pinched their noses.
“When you’re big girls.”
“We’re already big girls.”
“You stay here with me,” said Mom, “so you can help me make dinner for when they get home.”
“Dinner? That’s boring. We want to make necklaces.”
“Making a picnic’s boring?”
The twins looked at each other, and the straw brims of their hats brushed together.
“Picnic!”
They jumped up and down, the baskets swinging in their arms.
“But if we’re going to do that”—Mom pushed them toward the front door—“your father and your sister Melissa have to go now if they’re to get back before nightfall.”
The first stop they made in the town was the supermarket.
Melissa stayed with Dad while he read some of the product labels, written in Spanish. He also spoke Spanish to the man selling fruit, and to the woman who gave him two packs of one hundred corn tortillas. Following Dad’s instructions, the butcher selected a large piece of meat and got ready to slice it into steaks.
“Should I go get something?” asked Melissa.
Dad handed her the list that Mom had written.
“The last three.” He pointed at them on the paper. “Get the medium-sized sugar.”
She took the list and disappeared down the aisles. When she knew that Dad couldn’t see her, she pressed her bag against her hip.
She began to run.
She felt her shoulders burn in the sun as soon as she left the supermarket. She let a truck go by before crossing the street, coughing when she breathed in the black smoke from its exhaust pipe. She ran to the right, to the first corner, and turned.
She was sweating as she walked into the post office. She emptied her bag on the counter. The clerk asked her something, but Melissa couldn’t understand what he said. Nor did she have time to waste.
“Por favor,” she said. She pointed at the addresses she’d written on three parcels. “Aquí.”
Before leaving, she dropped a handful of coins on the counter.
Back in the supermarket, she fetched the boxes of cereal, the sacks of rice, and the sugar. She returned to where Dad was with the butcher wrapping a third package.
“Honey, catch your breath,” he said. “No need to rush around like that, our friend here’s taking it slow.”
The butcher smiled, not understanding what Dad had said.
Melissa fanned herself with her hands. She swallowed thick saliva. The bag on her hip felt light.
Mom spread the checker
ed picnic blanket over the ground. To keep the wind from blowing it away, she weighed down the corners with stones.
“How was town?” asked Iris.
Melissa shrugged while she deposited the picnic basket on the blanket. In the center, Iris placed the pitcher of agua de Jamaica that she’d just made in the kitchen. Green slices of lime floated on the ice, and drops of condensation pearled the glass.
“And the twins?” she asked while she laid out six glasses.
“They’re coming,” Mom said. “They’re so excited.”
Melissa looked toward the porch. At that time of the evening the front of the house took on the same purple tone as the rest of the landscape. The cacti’s elongated shadows painted dark lines on the family’s home, which seemed to camouflage itself among the rocks and disappear, as if it didn’t exist.
Mom took a deep breath and stretched her arms up to the sky.
“What a beautiful evening. It smells so good.”
“It can’t be the flowers.” Iris gestured at the cacti’s branches, where there was no trace of the white flowers that had decorated them for the last few weeks. “Did they pick all of them?”
Mom smiled.
“I don’t believe you.” Iris stifled a laugh.
“Come on, sit down.”
Mom took their hands, inviting them to take a seat on the blanket.
“What pretty daughters I have . . .” she said to them.
Then she threw her hair back and sighed.
“Have you seen the colors of the stones?” She looked at the landscape with half-closed eyes, as if the beauty she saw around her was so intense that it blinded her.
The screen door banged against the wall as it opened—Dad had fixed it a few days after the events with Rick. Daisy and Dahlia appeared on the porch. To Melissa, they looked like two white clouds floating over the land, approaching them.
“What are they wearing?”
Mom’s only response was to show her left hand, the fingertips covered in needle marks.
Iris knelt forward to see better. “It can’t be.”
“What is it?”
Mom smiled. “You can’t imagine how much work it was.”
The twins reached the picnic area. Melissa let out a sigh of wonder, and Iris held her hands to her mouth.
