Loteria (8 page)

LA ROSA

W
e had rosebushes in the front yard. You’d think it was Mom’s idea, but it wasn’t. It was Papi’s. He wanted rosebushes because they reminded him of
La Virgen de Guadalupe.

We were drunk and had come back from a wedding reception for Papi’s boss’s daughter. He told Papi we should go and have a good time because there was going to be a margarita fountain. There wasn’t going to be much tequila in it so it was okay. “Your family will have a good time,” he said. And when Papi came home and told us we ran to our rooms and got dressed as fast as we could. But he called out and said, “Not now! The wedding’s tomorrow.”

The following day Estrella put on a dress and wore her white satin shoes. I wore jeans and a shirt. Nothing fancy. When we got there Papi headed straight for the fountain while Mom, Estrella, and I sat at a long table at the end of the room where no one else was sitting. We didn’t know anyone and all we wanted was a margarita. I convinced Mom that it was a good idea to have a drink because we had to show respect to the people getting married.

There’s always
barbacoa
at weddings and so I asked if I could get some. Mom said okay, but not too much. She reminded me to watch my manners.

I nodded but then grabbed two paper plates and piled it with frijoles,
arroz
, tortillas, chorizo and
barbacoa
. When I got back to the table Papi had four margaritas in clear plastic cups in his hands with limes hooked on the rim. Mom pushed her lips together like if it was a bad idea, but then took a sip and started dancing with Papi.

In the car on the way home Mom asked us how we felt, but then she laughed and rolled her eyes like if she’d forgotten the question. The car felt like a boat and everything moved twice as much as it should’ve, but I could still bring everything into focus. It was Estrella who looked like she was going to faint or throw up, and Papi told her to stick her head out the window to get some air. She had drunk three cups, and I had four.

“Como la flor” came on the radio and we started singing real loud, real bad, all together. Out the windows and in each other’s faces. We didn’t know the words but we made them up and it didn’t matter. When the chorus came, we turned into one big voice and screamed so loud we felt each other’s breath on our skin.
Ayyyyy, cómo me duele.

When we got home and pulled into the driveway, like a
borracha
, Estrella got out of the car and ran around the house singing the chorus as loud as she could. She looked stupid and funny with her arms above her head until she ran through the rosebushes, and she didn’t even know it, not at first. But I could see it in her eyes. She felt something. Then she touched her face and felt the blood and started screaming like if someone had cut off her hands. All dramatic. I mean, they were just scratches. Mom pulled her into the house, screaming to Papi,
“¡Ya ves! ¡Mira lo que hiciste!”

Estrella sat on the kitchen table looking up at the light as Mom patted her face with a wet towel. Her dress was spotted with drops of blood, like roses, and it reminded me of the story about
El
indio
and
La Virgen de Guadalupe
. She appeared on his poncho a long time ago when no one believed she existed, when no one believed we had our own mother in the sun. She appeared out of nowhere on top of a mountain outside Mexico City and asked
El indio
to collect roses for her, and to take them to the bishop who wanted proof that he’d really seen her and that she was real. When
El indio
carried the roses in his
tilma
to the bishop and released the corners of the fabric, dropping the roses to his feet, there she was on his chest,
La Virgen de Guadalupe
. It was the first time we knew what she looked like, the first time You gave us a sign. We saw her hands pressed together and her head tilted to the side. And her dark skin. And her soft face. And her almost-closed eyes.

All because of the roses.

LA ESCALERA

I
used to chase Estrella around the house and hang out in front where the sidewalk is, saying hi to the people who passed by on their way to the supermarket. When I’d get bored, I’d grab the ladder from the garage and climb it to the roof. From there I could look down and see Estrella and all of Magnolia Park. She wouldn’t notice me. She’d be wearing her sunglasses and flip through the stations on a portable radio and act like she was a teenager already, like the girls who would pass in their boyfriends’ cars, sitting in the passenger side with the window rolled down and their hair pulled back, wearing their bikini for a top. I could tell by the way Estrella looked at them that she hoped they’d notice her and her dark sunglasses she thought were so cool. She’d roll up her tank top so it looked like a bikini, and from the roof of the house I could see the cars passing by and the guys who drove them. They were always bigheaded and lowrider looking, blasting
cumbias
from a piece of shit car that might break into pieces by the time it got to the corner.

After I got bored, I’d climb down the ladder and go inside, lie down on the couch and listen to the fan in front of the window. Mom would either be cleaning or on the phone talking to someone in Mexico.

Papi by then was getting better, but he was still drinking, just not as much.

Around that time there’d been a family talk. Estrella and I were in our room and Mom told us to come to the kitchen. She had two cups of coffee and two cups of Abuelita hot chocolate. “Where’s the marshmallows?” I asked, trying to be funny.

“We ran out,” she said. “Stop talking and listen.”

Papi had just showered and was clean-shaven. He’d combed his hair and was drinking coffee like if it was morning. He told us that he wasn’t going to drink anymore. That it wasn’t good for him. Mom was sitting next to him, nodding at every word he said.

“It’s not good for you,” he said. And I thought,
It’s not good for you, either.

But a week or two later, instead of staying in the living room he went to the garage and acted like he was working on his truck. It made funny sounds when he turned it on, but I don’t think there was anything wrong with it.

When I went out there to see what he was doing I could smell Don Pedro on him. Sometimes, to be nice, I’d start singing
rancheras
to see if he wanted to sing, but he’d prop open the hood and start checking things like if he was in the middle of something. And because he was in the garage, I couldn’t get the ladder and climb to the roof. Because if he saw me he wouldn’t let me. But from there I would’ve been able to see what he was doing, even though I already knew.

EL ALACRÁN

M
om would put on a face when other people were around, like when we’d go to the Silvas or to the supermarket. People would think she was sweet and kind, running errands in the neighborhood with her two daughters. They’d say, “The taller one looks like you,” then look at me and not say a word.

We’d go to Kmart and Estrella would get something she wanted, either another pair of colored pencils for the books she liked to draw in or a new pair of pink stockings she might one day use for her
Quinceañera
. I asked for a skateboard once but I didn’t get it, even after I asked nicely. We got in the car and Mom turned around and said I was being a pain in the ass. She had a lot of errands to run and if I kept pestering her I was going to make her blow up. She grabbed the steering wheel like if we were about to crash and said, “You want me to blow up?” Sometimes she’d turn around and pinch me, and all that sweetness people thought she was turned into something
picoso
. Papi used to call her
una pinche loca
because when she lost it, she really lost it. And if he called her
una pinche loca
she’d call him
un
hijo de puta
. And that would start the fighting.

Papi hated the word
puta
because of that time with Memo, the way he probably saw my hand on his dick even though I’d never touched it because his pants were on the whole time. Papi’d see my face when he’d hear the word
puta
or
putita
, and I think Mom knew that. She’d say it on purpose because it would remind him of me. Then he’d remember how he broke my hand even though it was an accident.

After Mom called him
un hijo de puta
they’d call each other all the bad things they could think of. He’d grab her wrists and press her down, probably telling himself that she’d shut up if he could only keep her down. And when I’d see him on top of her like that, I could see it in his eyes, the way he looked at her. He didn’t want to hit her. He just wanted her to stop fighting. But she’d call him names and hit him across the head and when he couldn’t take it anymore he’d use the back of his hand. She’d yell with tears over her cheeks.
“¡Eres un hijo de puta! ¿Me oyes?”

In the kitchen the next day, she’d be at the stove making eggs, not wanting to turn around. Then finally she’d turn around and we’d see Band-Aids on the sides of her eyes. Estrella would try to help her with the dishes, but she’d brush her away like if she were some fly.

Whenever they’d fight we’d go to our room because it was safer there. Sometimes watching them would make us feel like throwing up. I can’t remember the first time it happened but I remember when he knocked over the table and we ran to our room like cockroaches when a light is turned on.

We locked the door and held each other like if we were waiting for an earthquake, afraid the ceiling might cave-in. A chair would slam against the wall and we’d flinch. Glasses would break. The walls would tremble. They’d scream so loud it felt like wolves were tearing up the house, saying words that didn’t even make sense anymore, and the sounds that did come out of their mouths were like dogs.

We’d stand in our room staring at each other until it ended. Because that was the game, to see who could last the longest listening to the furniture being thrown without running away. But there’d be a note in Mom’s voice that would mark her breaking point, when she couldn’t take it anymore, and the way we could tell was by the sounds being pushed out of her body. Because when he’d kick her in the stomach or hit her across the face they were different kinds of sounds. And when those sounds would alternate, Estrella would lose.

“Let’s go,” she’d say. Her mouth would tighten and she’d try to hold it in but she’d crawl out of the window and look at me, asking me with her eyes, “What are you doing? Are you stupid?” I’d stand there not saying a word, like a statue, thinking, no, I’m not stupid. I stayed until it was over. Sometimes I’d sit on the floor and deal the cards because looking at the cards would help me forget. I’d tell myself the riddles to keep me from hearing them scream:

The one who dies with a hook in its mouth.
El Pescado
.

A lamp for the ones in love.
La Luna.

Something identical to the other.
La Bota.

I stayed in case something happened, in case I’d have to call someone.

After a long stillness, I’d hear them walking around in the living room, neither of them saying anything, putting furniture back where it belonged. The sound of
Three’s Company
on television.

One time during the quiet that usually came afterward, I crept into the hallway to check whether or not they’d killed each other, because I couldn’t hear them and a long time had passed. But from the hallway I saw Papi holding Mom from behind, leaning over the kitchen table with his hand over her face and her cheeks pulled down. I could see the whites of her eyes and he was banging the table like if he were trying to move it, but it wouldn’t move, and I could hear her sighing. It reminded me of when we’d go hunting and have to twist a deer’s neck after we shot it in case it hadn’t died. Something turned in my stomach and I ran to my room, but even there, with the door closed, and the door locked, I could see him banging her over the table and I wondered if it was my fault, because of that time he’d pushed me down the stairs and I’d broken my hand. Mom said she’d never forgive him for that. And from then on that word
puta
would start everything. I don’t remember them fighting before my wrist broke or before Papi called me
putita
. Maybe throwing it in his face was Mom’s way of fighting back, defending me somehow. Or maybe she was mad at me because of what I’d done, and she was taking it out on him, blaming him somehow. Or they were taking it out on each other and really they should’ve been beating me, banging me against the table until I was sighing like a dying dog.

That time I saw them over the table, I crawled out the window and ran down the street to the corner store and stole pieces of chewing gum and put them all in my mouth at one time. I chewed so fast my cheeks burned, and they burned so much that I told myself I was crying because of the sting, not because they were fighting.