Authors: Mario Alberto Zambrano
Loteria (10 page)
Y
ou know that feeling when you fall on your back and the wind is knocked out of you? Or when you’re underwater and you can’t hold your breath so you swim to the top? Or when you wake up sweating from a dream and can’t figure out what’s real and what’s make-believe? That feeling in your stomach when you’re caught doing something you’re not supposed to? Or when you discover something for the very first time? That feeling when you got on a roller coaster and you were only eight years old but you felt like a grown-up because finally you got on? Or when you’re in a car and it’s going so fast it feels like it’s going to flip at any moment? That feeling five minutes before you open your Christmas presents? That feeling like if snakes are inside your stomach and they’re trying to get out? Or that feeling after you’ve hurt someone? When you go over it again and again in your head, what you did and how it happened, how you hit her so hard the bruises proved how bad you were? Even if she didn’t bleed you knew she was hurting. Or that feeling when you’re on the road and your stomach drops because you drove over a bump? When you’re looking at the clouds and out of nowhere it feels like something creeps up on you like a spider? That feeling when you walk up to a convenience store and see someone holding up the register with a gun? You back away and run to the nearest corner, or behind a fence, or a tree, or a mailbox, and wait to see what happens. That feeling when you’re holding a gun and it crosses your mind that you can kill someone? This thing in your hand can take someone? It comes and goes like a passing car in the middle of the night and you don’t even know where it came from. That feeling when you’re underwater and you start to wonder what it would be like if you stayed there and held your breath? You could stay there and deal with the panic and the not knowing whether or not you’ll shoot up like an arrow or stay where you are like a stone. That feeling when your body is not even yours anymore? You tell it to stop shaking, but it doesn’t. It keeps trembling like if you’re in some cold place and you don’t even have any clothes to cover yourself with. But it’s not the cold. It’s something else, something different. And you don’t even know where it’s coming from.
M
y fingernails would get black when we cleaned the house. Papi would do everything that had to do with the yard, and sometimes, in between scrubbing the tub and vacuuming the rooms, I’d go outside and pull the weeds.
Estrella would be in charge of folding underwear on the living room floor, and sometimes I’d help her. She’d sit Indian-style next to a pile of white and pink and blue, and the Bounce Mom would throw in the dryer would make me think it was what clouds smelled like.
Papi’s boxers were the easiest. Panties and bras weren’t. I sat with my legs open and sometimes Estrella would sit on her heels. I tried sitting that way but it was uncomfortable. We didn’t have the same hips. I had Papi’s hips and she had Mom’s. When I tried to lengthen my neck and sit up taller, because I felt short and round, it didn’t look the same, not like when Estrella sat up.
We were washing our hands in the bathroom. Mom was making dinner and Papi was on the couch watching television. We were washing our hands at the same time over the sink, but I finished before her and felt I’d done it wrong, so I washed them again. And still I finished before her. I said, “Why you taking so long?”
“Because, I’m doing it right.”
“Smart-ass,” I said, and splashed her face.
We’d decided, between all of us, that
pendeja
wasn’t a
maldición
but smart-ass was, so she yelled, “Luz called me a smart-ass!”
But before she could finish the sentence I grabbed her hair and pulled it, trying to make her shut up.
She called Mom but Papi came and pulled us apart. He grabbed me by my hand and took me to his bedroom and closed the door and took off his belt. He opened his hand and looked at me and said,
“¿Lista?”
And I nodded.
He pulled his arm back and lifted his eyebrows and slapped the belt against his hand as hard as he could, and I let out a yelp to make it seem as though he were hitting me.
I
didn’t feel like remembering today so I laid out the cards close to each other so that they were touching like tiles, like
El Nopal
. Now they make up a collage and the water cards are on the bottom and the sun is on top.
I asked Papi once what the sun riddle meant and he said it was the roof of the poor.
La cobija de los pobres
. To the right of it I put
El Catrin
and to the left
La Dama
.
El Corazón
is at the center, and below it,
El Tambor
. Between them they make music.
El Árbol
is next to them, then
La Rosa
with
La Chalupa
and
La Garza
two cards over. Below is
El Mundo
y El Diablito
. Next to them there’s the harp. If there were two I’d put one by the star and the other under the rest, where it’s at, so that in a way all of them could be close to the sound of music. On the opposite side are the parrot and bird,
los
primos
. They fly in and out of the other cards. The Flag, the Soldier, the Indian, the Drunk.
La Sirena
is on the left. I laid them out and she ended up there, not far from the edge. I looked at the frog for a long time because I didn’t know where to put her. Her dopey eyes look like she’s about to jump. Like if she can see a fly we can’t see, and what do they eat, anyway? Those stupid eyes, the way she sits there. Wouldn’t it be funny if she jumped? Where would she go?
I went through the deck three times and I can’t find
El Gallo
. Maybe
he
jumped? Maybe he sang himself to death and no one heard him and so he went out the door and down the hall and out the building, cawing like he does to wake people up. But no one heard him, and we missed it. Maybe I left him at the house when I came here, which means by now he’s been swept up in the trash or hiding under a piece of furniture. If he were here I’d put him by the sun. Maybe he’s in some dark place trying to get someone’s attention, singing like he does,
“Kikirikiki! Kikirikiki!”
Estrella had her own card, but there isn’t one called
La Luz
, so I chose
El Sol
as my own. But in the way that The Star needs The Moon, Luz needs
El Gallo
and so maybe without him I don’t have a voice. So what happens when something is missing? It’s like the thing that’s missing might be the one thing I need in order to win. And why do I always need the one thing that isn’t here?
Why don’t You bring her back so she can show them that she hit him too? That it’s not his fault. Like that they will let him go.
And how loud do I have to sing before You wake up?
¿Dónde está
El Gallo?
I
t was only a matter of time before we woke up and found her missing. I don’t know what we expected, but we were expecting something. And when it happened I went straight to the kitchen cabinet to see if there was any peanut butter left.
Mom was usually the first to wake up in the mornings, to make a pot of coffee and put the dishes away. The morning she was gone we figured she was getting milk at the grocery store. But it was different. Everything was the same as the night before. The dishes were in the sink and the table hadn’t been wiped. Liters of Coke were still on the counter, all warm. It was like she waited for us to fall asleep and then got her suitcase and went wherever she was going.
Papi didn’t come out of his room until later, and I wondered what their bedroom looked like. Maybe he realized she was gone because something was missing. Or maybe everything was the same. None of us spoke about it, not until the following day.
It was almost a year ago when she left. I was ten and Estrella was twelve.
The following morning Papi was in his room and Estrella and I were sitting on the steps that lead to the backyard. She kept asking me if I was okay, like all of a sudden
she
was my mother.
“You know she loves us, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “She’ll be back.”
“No, mama,” she said, and touched my shoulder.
I pulled away from her and said, “Who do you think you’re calling mama?”
She snapped and said she wasn’t going to try to help me if I was going to be that way. “Help me with what?” I asked, and pushed her. She pushed me back and then I punched her in the chest and she ran inside. I chased her to the bathroom but she couldn’t get the door open and so she lifted her arms in front of her. I kept punching her even though she cried.
“How’s that, mama?” I said. “You like that, mama? Huh, mama?”
We were next to Papi’s room and he opened the door and screamed,
“¿Qué chingao?”
We backed away and Estrella’s hair was all over the place. Her face was puffy and neither of us said anything. The sunlight was coming in from the window on the other side of Papi’s bedroom, and it only took a few seconds of us standing there, looking at each other, before I could tell we were thinking about her and wondering whether she was coming back.
Behind him, past his window, I saw something move. I heard Estrella sucking in her saliva, but when I felt something in the backyard, I turned. I couldn’t help it. Papi turned and saw it too. A deer was standing next to our only tree, staring at us with his brown marble eyes.
Then he ran off.
W
hen she disappeared, Papi didn’t eat for weeks. We’d find him holding photographs of her in one hand and a lighter in the other, flicking it on and off, thinking of whether or not to burn her face off. Sometimes he did because we found photos in the family album where there was a burned circle over a woman with a blue dress on. But I never heard him say he wanted to burn her face off. He just didn’t want to see her face.
The clothes Mom left behind were there to remind us, because who knew if she was coming back. Papi held the lighter but it wasn’t like he didn’t miss her, wasn’t like he wasn’t trying to figure out where she ran off to. Estrella and I thought about where she went, and whenever we’d mention it to him, he’d tell us to shut up.
That’s when Estrella started having ideas. She thought maybe they got into a fight and this time it was so bad that something happened. “But why would he burn her face off?” I said. “He wouldn’t do that unless she hurt him too.”
Why would he want to forget her? He burned her face, but then he held her photograph. Even though he didn’t want us talking about her, I saw him holding it, flicking the lighter on and off. And maybe it was because she said something or did something. She told him she was leaving and he hit her. But what about us? Why would she leave? She could’ve come to us in the middle of the night and whispered, “Get in the car! Come on.” Maybe I would’ve said no. Maybe Estrella would’ve said yes.
A few weeks after Mom was gone, it was a Sunday and Papi was still sleeping and we tried to make noise in the kitchen. Estrella washed the dishes while I opened and closed cabinets. When he came out of his bedroom he didn’t even notice we were standing there. We could’ve been monkeys and it wouldn’t have mattered. We asked him if he wanted some eggs.
I was putting the dishes away and put the bowls on the wrong shelf. Estrella said I wasn’t putting them where they belong. Mom would never put them there. Then he snapped,
“¡Cállense!”
and went back to his room.
Before Papi had a chance to throw everything away, Estrella and I took some of Mom’s stuff and hid it in our room under our beds. Most of it clothes. Only one suitcase was missing from the garage and we figured she had packed as much as she could. No photos, no knickknacks, not even all her shoes. Just whatever she could pack into one suitcase.
There was a T-shirt she used to wear to go to bed, baby blue cotton. Estrella brought it into our room, and I was shocked she hadn’t taken it. I thought it was something she’d want. It was too big for me, but I put it on and liked the way it felt against my skin. Estrella and I would take turns wearing it, but we were afraid the smell would disappear if we wore it for too long.
Estrella was at Angélica’s house when Papi caught me in my room wearing it. It wasn’t a school day. I remember sunlight coming in and Papi looking tanned against it, standing at the doorway with his boxers on. He had a mustache. He’d grown one after Mom had left, and on that day, it looked real pokey, like a scrub.
“¿Y eso?”
he asked. He scared me, because I didn’t see him standing there. Mom’s T-shirt would blow up around my hips if I spun around, and so I was spinning and humming a song. His arm was against the wall and his armpit was black.
“Answer me,” he said.
I figured he wanted me to take it off and burn it or something. His feet came closer, so close I could smell him. He smelled like an unmade bed.
“Dámelo,”
he said, and his voice hit the top of my head. But I didn’t move, and I wasn’t going to give it to him.
“Dame,”
he said, then hit me like if I didn’t hear him. I lifted my arms. After he pulled it off, I felt naked underneath. I saw him smelling it. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked. But he didn’t say anything.
I stood there in the middle of the room staring at the carpet with my fingers hooked in front of me.
“Oye,”
he said, and I looked up. “What?” I said.
“
No dices
‘what,’ ” he said.
“
¿Mande?”
I said.
“¿Mande,
what
?”
“¿Mande, Papi?”
I was wearing nothing but panties and I was already ten. But all I could think of was how much I wanted him to understand what I was feeling. I lifted my head and stood there as strong as I could because I wanted him to know that even though he missed the way she smelled, the way she was, the way she looked, he was taking her from me. I stared at him in the eyes and the light in the room was all gold and I didn’t have a shirt on and my hair was all
pelos parados
. I tried my hardest to show him how I felt with my eyes. And maybe. Maybe You passed through me. Maybe You spoke in a way my voice couldn’t, because then, it was like he saw something in the way I was looking at him, and he threw it back to me, in a gentle kind of way and it landed over my face.