Loteria (11 page)

EL SOL

I
t was ripe outside and we were lying out on the grass. Estrella was wearing the white bikini Papi bought her at Target, and I was wearing Hanes with small yellow fish. Papi was wearing boxers, the ones with blue stripes, rolled down two times.

“You’re going to burn if you do that,” I said, but Estrella looked at her skin like if she were made of something expensive. She’d brought a container of Crisco outside and was smoothing it over her legs. Her nails had been painted red the night before and she was wearing black sunglasses. “The bees are going to get us. We’re going to have to go inside.”

“
Mija
, let her be,” Papi said, as he sprayed us with the garden hose in his hand. The water was cold but it felt good in the heat, and I stuck out my tongue.

Estrella picked up her towel, lay down farther away from us, and started mumbling, “Ugh, Ugh . . . UGH!” Like if it were some language me and Papi were supposed to understand. “Be that way then,” I said. “I hope you burn.”

She looked at the sun with her sunglasses on and propped herself up on her elbows. Papi lay down, wiggling his toes as if ants were on him, and I lay down next to him. After five minutes I turned on my stomach and could hear a bee flying close to my shoulder. I saw Estrella lift the string of her bikini to see if she’d gotten any color.

“Take it off,” Papi said. And I thought the same. If she didn’t want any tan lines, she should just take it off.

“I’m not taking it off!” she said.

“
¿Y por qué no?
You want a tan so bad. Just take it off,” he said. He’d been drinking since breakfast. “No one’s going to look at you.”

I turned around and saw him taking off his boxers. He took them off, like normal, and tossed them behind him, laughing. I’d never seen him naked before. “That’s why we have fences,” he said, then plopped down on his stomach with his
pompis
in the air.

“Yeah,” I said. “No one’s going to see you. No one cares, don’t be stupid.” She was so disgusted she got up and went inside.

Papi turned and looked at me and made a face like, Oh well. He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and said,
“Ándale, ¡otra!
”
Like when I’d dance for him by the garage. Or when he’d play music on the boom box. Or when he’d want another beer.

“¡Otra!”

I closed my eyes and fell asleep, and because there wasn’t Crisco in the air, there wasn’t a single bee that came near us.

LA MACETA

“
¡Cállate, chingada madre!”

Tencha would get mad sometimes and change colors, sometimes yellow, sometimes green. But when she was in a good mood she’d put on her one-piece and swim with me in the pool. She’d say,
“Somos sirenas.”
All cute. Then wiggle her hips and call me
sirenita
.

I’d stay underwater in her pool for as long as I could and she’d think I was drowning. I could stay there for so long that if she saw me she’d think I was dying. I’d come out and see her at the edge of the pool getting close to me, all red, all over, moving like a gorilla. Like when they look confused. Yelling,
“¿Qué haces? ¡Estás loca!”

“No,” I’d tell her. But she couldn’t hear me because her voice was louder than mine. I’d keep saying it as she dragged me toward the table under the portico. She’d dig her thumbs into my cheeks and pull down like if she wanted to see what was behind my eyes.
“¡Me asustaste!
”
she’d say. Then I felt bad because her breath would shorten. Like if she couldn’t breathe. She’d rub her heart and say things like, “And what do I tell your Papi if something happened? What do I tell the police? How can you be so stupid?” She’d say so many things I wouldn’t have time to say anything back. And when she calmed herself down she’d give me a spoonful of sugar, pull me to her chest, and hold me so hard I could hardly breathe.

I walked into her house one day and saw Estrella telling Tencha that Papi was hitting her. Tencha was holding her arm like if she was about to tear it off, telling her she shouldn’t say
maldiciones
. Papi was a good, good man and he’d never do anything to hurt her. How in the hell could those words come out of her mouth? Tencha let go of Estrella’s arm when she saw me and called out my name like if she had forgotten who I was, but then remembered.

Estrella wasn’t supposed to say anything. “What did you say?” I said. And she got all attitude like she does. Because she’s older. Tencha looked at her and started screaming, saying she was a
malcriada
, to say
maldiciones
, to disrespect her father like that. Estrella looked at me and shook her head No, No, No. Because she knew I was lying and she was telling the truth. But I pointed to her like if she were some dirty rag a dog would lick. “He doesn’t hit you unless you deserve it!” I said.

Tencha grabbed a flowerpot and slammed it down on the floor. She screamed,
“¡Cállense ya, chingada madre!”

We looked at her and the dirt on the floor. And because she’d said
madre
, not on purpose, I thought of Mom. Estrella thought of her too because her eyes welled up like if the words themselves had hit her across the face, and that’s when I knew why she was saying things about Papi. Tencha told her to go home and to lock herself in her room and pray until she knew what she’d said was wrong. Papi wouldn’t hit us unless he had to. There was a right way and a wrong way. Papi did things the right way. And when it was time to protect us, he would. “You think he’s not allowed to hit you?” she said. “Huh? You don’t know what it’s like to be beaten! You better be grateful you don’t have your Buelo Fermín looking after you.” Then she called Estrella
¡Una chiflada! Una desgraciada!

Estrella ran out of the house and Tencha mumbled something under her breath.
“Que Dios la bendiga.”
Then she looked at me in surprise like if she’d forgotten I was standing there. I ran to the pool and held my breath and jumped inside.

EL CORAZÓN

W
hen Tencha told me about it later she cried like if she were lost. She was at a friend’s house when she got the phone call and didn’t know what was going on until she drove down our street and saw the neighbors standing in our yard. The red lights, the white and blue. The crowd of neighbors. The police officers and yellow tape pulled around the trees.

She wanted to know what had happened, the way she was looking at me sitting in a room at the police station, upset that I wouldn’t say anything. But I couldn’t get any sound out. The officers told her what happened, but she wanted to hear it from me. I could tell she wanted to hit me like if I were a broken machine, but she didn’t. She kept squeezing her nose and wiping her eyes. She held me and then let go, held me again, like if she were confused of what to do. She couldn’t decide whether to stay with me or go to the hospital to see Estrella.

Eventually, she left because it was time for visitors to leave, and that thing started, when it’s hard for her to breathe. “I’ll come in the morning,” she said. But it’s like she’s too big for her own breath and she chokes on the things she tries to say.

In that room, not this one but the other one before here, the pillow was flat and hard like sand and I had to act like I was asleep before they turned off the light. I was alone with just a window and it was me and the sound of my heart, and my body, and the beat of it.

Sometimes, even now, it’s like someone is knocking on the door of my chest and I’m on the other side trying to figure out how to open it. But it won’t open, and so it bangs and bangs.
Poom! Poom! Poom!

Until my mind shuts off and I fall asleep.

EL PÁJARO

R
emember the yellow birds that used to sing pretty? We’d run in circles in Buelita Fe’s backyard after church and they’d come and they’d sing and we’d dance. There were two of them. We’d call them Hector and Louise. I looked up at the cloud above the garage and You told me. You said, “This is Hector. This is Louise.” Then I flapped my arms and ran on my toes and got all excited like I was going to explode
¡pee pee pee pee pee!
For a long time I didn’t know they were yellow. I never saw them just heard them. They were sounds coming from the tomatillo vines. You told me to look up when they were singing instead of when they were quiet because when they were quiet they were flying around the house. And when they were singing they were sitting in the tree. There was one time Hector landed on the edge of the fountain. He looked at me, then at the barbecue grill, then at You. And flew away. I ran after him but got as far as the fence. He wasn’t in the tree anymore and neither was Louise. And every Sunday after that it was quiet.

EL VIOLONCELLO

T
encha came to tell me he was here. Dr. Roberto. “He’s in the activity room waiting for you.”

“What does he want?” I said.

“He wants to give you something.”

There are tables along the windows with game boards stacked on top, Checkers, Scrabble, Monopoly. He was sitting at the far end with a white button-up shirt and the light coming in through the blinds drew bars over his face. He held his hands over the table.

“Just let him give you whatever he wants to give you,” she said, and pushed me toward him. “Then he’ll leave you alone.”

She stood in the hallway and monitored me as I walked toward him. He saw me and sat up straight in his chair. The way dogs do when they see you coming. No one else was in the room. The other kids in the center were down the hall playing with blocks, squealing, knocking towers over. Julia was sitting in the counselor’s office across the hall. I sat down and looked at his hands, then looked out the window. After a few minutes he reached into his bag and took out a book from his briefcase. Hans Christian Andersen, it said, in big blue letters across the top.

“Your mom always said you like to read.” He turned the book around and pushed it toward me. There was a boy in a boat on the cover, all alone in the middle of the sea. “I thought you might like this,” he said.

We sat there without saying anything. I looked across the hall and saw Julia looking up from her desk. When she saw me, she turned away.

This redhead boy who’s been at the center for two days started crying in the other room. I recognized his voice because his screams remind me of a siren. A counselor walked out with him in her arms and took him outside, bouncing him up and down, patting his head. I could see them through the window. I stared at his face, the way it looked as if it were being torn.

“How’s your hand?” Dr. Roberto said.

I rolled my eyes, wanting him to leave me alone, wanting to go back to my room.

“You like to read?” he asked.

Yeah, you stupid. I like to read. I looked at him, and he mentioned that he should’ve gotten me something else, something more grown-up, since I wasn’t a child anymore.

He took a long, deep breath and held his hands like if he were washing them. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” he said.

Then I looked at him in that sort of way I do when I try to tell people I hate them. I pushed the table as hard as I could and the edge of it slammed into his chest. The book fell on the floor and I ran to my room and closed the door and Tencha called after me, “Luz! What’d he say to you?” She knocked on the door.
“¿Luz? ¿Qué pasó?”

From the window in my room I saw him get into his car. He opened the door and stood there with his arms over the roof. He stared at the building like if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to leave or not. But in my head, I thought,
Leave. Leave, you asshole. Go already.
Then he got into his car and drove away. When he was out of the parking lot I was mad I hadn’t asked him. But I couldn’t when he was in front of me. If I could’ve I would have: “Where is she?”

“Luz?
Mija
, let me in.”

Tencha knocked on the door as I lay in bed. I looked at the ceiling with my journal in my arms. I could hear that redhead boy from down the hall screaming and I tried to turn his siren into music, into a note, like a string. But she kept knocking. And after a few minutes, she knocked again.