It was Father’s Day and Maeve was in Friendly’s. After all this time, she was still a sucker for a Conehead. She and her father had spent countless hours here scarfing down the clown-faced sundae with whipped cream for hair and Reese’s Pieces for eyes when Maeve was a child growing up in Levittown. They always ate the cone that doubled as a hat dipped in fudge first.

She was approaching forty and already a sneeze could make her pee, yet she still wanted her daddy despite the fact that he was a loudmouthed prick who’d made millions out of bullying anyone who disagreed with him.

The last time Maeve and Dad had spoken was on the phone one year earlier when he was trying to give her advice about her own career, not so subtly suggesting that she wasn’t thick-skinned enough. She was a political pundit, like him. She was doing just fine. She had tons of requests for radio interviews and podcasts and even had a book coming out, Liberal Two-Step: Screw and Be Screwed. So she politely told him to fuck off and that she’d speak to him on her own time. He’d respected her wishes. That pissed her off even more.

Now he was off the air and trying to make amends with anyone he’d ever offended, including her. So, Maeve had made the trip down from Albany to the Friendly’s on Hempstead Turnpike. It was a Santa Claus-red building with Taco Joe’s to its right and a giant abandoned Kmart to its left. Maeve stood in the foyer, sunglasses still on inside, because God forbid if anyone recognized her. On the drive down, she’d already seen a bus with her mug plastered on it, her jet-black bob and seaweed-green eyes staring back at her as if she dared herself to disagree. The bluster, the rapid hand gestures she was known for—it was all for show when it came down to it. The last thing she wanted was to discuss taxes or school budgets with this crowd even though she probably agreed with more than half the people in here.

She leaned against the pole by the takeout window and hid behind a sticky menu that no doubt someone’s entitled brat had touched. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. Already she was disgusted by the dirty-mop smell of the place. But she had to give it points for longevity, for surviving when most of the other chains across the island had closed, and for keeping the names of their ice cream sundaes as is. Like “Happy Ending.” What a riot.

The place was teeming with dads as expected. Normal dads who gelled their hair and donned NYPD T-shirts and blue jeans instead of a suit every day. Every now and then she’d look up from behind the menu to find one of them about to jokingly smack his kid or give them a noogie in a headlock and she was thankful she hadn’t stretched her uterus out. Just as she was questioning the cost-benefit of the $5.55 entrée section for the umpteenth time—where the hell was Dad?—one man caught her eye and limped over to her with a toddler clinging onto his leg. Damn it.

“You’re Maeve O., right? The Bull’s daughter,” he said. Maeve O. That was her dad’s brilliant marketing idea. “I’d recognize that pretty face anywhere.”

“Nope. Must be another pretty face you’re thinking of,” she said. She turned her back and pretended to be impressed by a teen swirling hot fudge behind the counter.

A few years ago, she’d made it onto Manplate’s “25 Most Gorgeous Female Politicians” list even though she wasn’t a politician, technically, but she let it slide. It helped her political game.

A few years ago, she’d made it onto Manplate’s “25 Most Gorgeous Female Politicians” list even though she wasn’t a politician, technically, but she let it slide. It helped her political game. All the crusty men she kicked back martinis with loved that she, who had a standing appointment at the salon every week, was one of them. She had to give a shit upstate; it was part of her job. Down here was different. Being home gave her the ultimate permission to be a slob if she wanted to. But she’d second-guessed herself and opted for a breezy blouse and capris combo, with a gold necklace that doubled as a pencil. It had been a gift from Dad when she received her first nasty comment on a blog. He told her she was on the right track to success.

Now look what this clothing choice had made happen.

“No, really. I know it’s you,” the man said. He tapped her shoulder and she turned around out of habit from fundraising parties she reluctantly attended. He was waving to a woman who was standing underneath a giant sign of a Friendly Frank, swinging a crying baby in a car seat. “Honey, come here a minute.”

The woman gave him the finger. Maeve would much rather talk to her.

“Skeedaddle,” she said. She waved the menu toward the woman who looked like she might throw the car seat through the window. “Go be with your family. Stop talking to strangers.”

Dad would be flipping his shit if he heard her. If this were him, he’d slap the man on the back, make some joke about his kid being a cracked-out zombie, and they’d be talking about how there’s never been a better deli than Fred’s.

“Fine, fine. I know when I’m not wanted,” he said. “I just gotta tell you, you socked it to that news anchor the other day.” He winked at her. “Fucking bleeding hearts, you know what I mean?”

Sort of. She was a sucker for cute cat videos and if really pressed, believed heroin antidotes at CVS were the way to stop the island’s epidemic. Dad was more of a secret liberal than she was. He gave money to the homeless as frequently as he ridiculed them. But only when he was in a car, so he could zip away without anyone seeing him. One time, years ago when she was just starting to make a name for herself, she’d teased him about leaking it to the press. “Don’t be a moron,” he said. “Maeve the Moron. That’s one for the tombstone.” He’d been calling her that ever since. And each time it was a gut punch—a soft one of the kind a man who only used his hands to pick up a knife and fork could do, but a punch nonetheless.

“Table for one?” The hostess was an older woman, and had a plastic gold name tag with Joanne written on it.

“God no, Joanne,” Maeve said. “Two. My dad’s meeting me here. He’s late.”

“Bastard,” Joanne said. “You’ve been standing here for a while.”  The nerve of this woman.

“It’s not his fault,” Maeve said. “He’s probably stuck on the L.I.E. like every other schmo today.”

“Sure, honey,” Joanne said. “Follow me to your table.”

Every table in the restaurant was buzzing. There were kids climbing over booths, kids crying, kids throwing their chicken fingers on the floor. Every now and then scattered in the chaos was an elderly couple slowly lifting spoons of ice cream to their mouths.

Joanne tried to seat her in the middle of it all. Maeve pointed to a booth tucked in the corner.

“That one,” she said.

Joanne shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

Maeve sat down and kept expecting one of the adults to recognize her, but nobody said a word. They were too busy dealing with the messes of their own lives. Just as well. She took her sunglasses off. She grabbed for the napkin holder so she could keep busy and started fiddling with the waxy paper napkins. She made a pinwheel first to see if she could still do origami after all these years. She nailed it. Next up was the crane. Then the rose. As she was creasing corners, her phone dinged. It was a text from Dad: Too many knuckleheads in traffic today. Got off on the wrong exit. Love, Dad the Dumdum.

She could just see him deadlocked on the L.I.E. checking himself out in the rearview mirror, combing his hair while puffing his cheeks. The windows would be down and he’d be inevitably snapping his fingers outside the car to some horrible Eagles song. He could be a bastard but she missed how ridiculous he was and how seemingly oblivious he was to it.

She texted back: If by “wrong exit” you mean Mr. Beery’s, I swear to God!

He sent a smiley face back. He loved his $1 pitchers of Bud. Man had tons of money and still was Cheapo Charlie.

She sighed. She couldn’t believe she had to sit at this dump longer than needed. Although the vintage black-and-white photos of men in bowties scooping ice cream were charming, she’d give them that. Nostalgia always wins. And boy, did Friendly’s go for it. There was a giant “Share Your Memories” wall in the far corner with scribbles and doodles of all kinds, what, she couldn’t exactly see from where she was sitting, but she could tell they were sappy. She fiddled with the card for a Sharks Frenzy Sundae. The electric-blue color of the ice cream tickled her gag reflex, but her stomach was empty and she wished she could bite off the heads of those gummy sharks. Right. This. Second.

Once, Dad let her slip underwater at Bluegrass Lane pool when she was about seven. When she came up, spitting water, he was laughing.

Once, Dad let her slip underwater at Bluegrass Lane pool when she was about seven. When she came up, spitting water, he was laughing. The only thing he’d said was, “You survived the shark tank, kiddo.”

She turned the crane over and wrote with her necklace pen: You got to learn to swim for yourself.

Joanne walked by after escorting a family of five to their table. She stopped in front of Maeve and drummed her hot-pink nails in front of her.

“Dad still a no-show?”

“What’s it matter to you?” said Maeve.

“Ha! Not so friendly are we, doll. Might want to try Fire & Ice over there,” she said, waving menus toward the Turnpike.

“Funny,” Maeve said. She wanted to tell her to fuck off. But she couldn’t be too much of an asshole in person or else the leftie loons would be all over her.

She handed the crane to Joanne, who raised one badly plucked eyebrow and shoved the crane into her apron pocket. Maybe now she’d leave her alone.

There was a man to her left, sitting alone in the booth and slurping the bottom of his strawberry Fribble. Gross. At least she wasn’t that guy. She could take out her phone and Google her name like she always did when she was bored and needed to feel good about herself but lately, the internet trolls had been too much for her. There was one comment from armoredarmaggedon about her one stubborn tooth that stayed buck despite braces (okay, so she forgot to wear her retainer when she was younger), and as much as she tried to forget about it, every time she looked in the mirror now that’s all she could focus on. These trolls destroyed her father’s politics, but never mentioned the stray nose hairs that creeped out the corner of his nostrils.

That’s how it went in this game. She knew it and still loved it. The minute she became a lifeguard at age sixteen, she had no problem declaring herself a Republican. It was the way to get promoted, after all.

She turned the rose over. Follow the crowd. They’re always right.

Joanne breezed by again. It seemed every time Maeve looked up there she was, looking like she owned the damn place, as if she were seating guests at her own private dinner party in the Hamptons. This time Joanne was arm-in-arm escorting some Latino or Hispanic guy—she still wasn’t sure of the difference—to the table catty-corner to her. Two preteen girls were behind him, phones out and giggling. She could smell their obnoxiously coconut fragrance. Joanne handed the man the menu, but not before patting the tall, stiffly gelled spikes he called hair. He acted offended before squeezing Joanne’s shoulders in an embrace. Maeve let a laugh slip. He looked at her. Holy shit. It was Ian. Ian Bonilla. She was almost sure of it.

Her phone dinged. I’m sorry.

She was starting to get pissed, really pissed and not fake pissed. For what, she wanted to text Dad back. Selling her mother’s new boyfriend up shit’s creek by getting him arrested on some phony drug charge? Making her sit here while he shucked off responsibility and a promise, again? Or how about squeezing her arms so tight during a fight her senior year of high school that even concealer couldn’t hide the bruises in her yearbook picture? But saying anything would set him off and upset the fragile everything-is-fine illusion they’d both agreed to just so they could sit down at this sticky table. She’d gotten this far.

She needed a drink. She wished the Conehead had a boozy option for adults. Five shots of chocolate vodka poured over the clown’s face instead of hot fudge.

Joanne made some comment, that Maeve couldn’t hear. The man who she thought was Ian laughed. It was the sputtering kind, starting out in small fits and gradually going full steam into a guffaw.

The laugh removed any doubt. His lips had thinned and he’d gained some much-needed bulk on those skinny ribs of his, and let’s not even get into his ridiculous coif, but that laugh made her sure that this was her best guy friend from high school. The guy who at one point in her life had been the only person to see through her bullshit and call her on it and still want to hang out with her anyway.

Fuck. This was the last thing she needed. It was a good time to go to the bathroom. Or walk out the door. She got up quickly and the origami rose that had fallen into her lap, unnoticed, bounced along on the floor. It slid right under the table at one of the girl’s feet. The one whose braces somehow made her more attractive.

She leaned down. Her cleavage was tiny, but taut, and Maeve stared unapologetically.

“Your, uh, flower?” the girl said, as she picked it up and handed it to Maeve. She turned to the other girl wearing a sweatshirt with white HOFSTRA letters sewn on it and they both burst out laughing. The buns on the top of their heads bobbed back and forth, taunting Maeve with how young and perfect they were.

“Oh, this, I don’t even know where I got it…” she said. The girls scared her.

“Maeve?” Ian said. “Maeve O’Flannery?”

His bedroom. A couple of weeks before high school graduation. The two of them rolling around on sheets that smelled of musty Cuban cigars and fried plantains mixed with Ian’s Drakkar cologne. Downstairs, the party sounds of Rolling Rock bottles clinking and exaggerated moans from the Spice Channel. His drunken hands on her, grabbing aimlessly, hungry for whatever her body would give. They said they’d never do this but it was nearly the end of high school and they were both still virgins so why the hell not. It was an agreement they made during one of the phone calls they’d had every night.

She didn’t love him, at least not that way, and was a good Irish Catholic girl. She put the condom back into the drawer, moved his hands down. His fingers stabbed around inside her. It hurt. She squirmed. He pulled her panties off, put his warm mouth on her, and her body fizzed. When he was done with her he went downstairs. She turned the light on and there was blood on the sheets. Shit.

The next day at school there was a jar of maraschino cherries by her locker. Ian’s friends walked by her in the halls and chanted, “Bloody Bloody Maeve-y.” Like it was her fault that he didn’t know what he was doing, that he wasn’t gentle enough. Ian didn’t meet her at her locker to go to the deli for lunch. That night she went home and cried. It was Dad who came in the room and held her. She didn’t say a word about it. Neither did he.

She ran into Ian at a few parties here and there, but their friendship was never the same after that.

“Ian! Oh, my God! I had no idea it was you!” she said.

“Dad, you know her?” said the girl who picked up her flower.

She tried to be a good role model, show them that politics wasn’t all nasty business.

It was sweet when the young ones recognized her. She tried to be a good role model, show them that politics wasn’t all nasty business. She reached across Ian’s table, grabbed a couple of napkins, and twisted open her necklace.

“Maeve and I go way back, sweetie,” Ian said. He patted the girl on the back. “I used to draw tattoos of the solar system on her arms in science class.”

“Yeah, and I had to scrub the damn things off every day,” she said. “I could never get all the ink off. My mom hated it.” She signed Maeve O’Flannery on the napkins and added an extra swirly flourish on the y.

“But you still let me do it,” he teased.

“Yeah, well, that was light years ago.” She didn’t know what else to say. She bit the inside of her cheek and handed the girls her autographs. “Here. One for each of you.” The napkins dangled in the air.

The girl with the Hofstra sweatshirt took them both.

“Uh, thanks?” she said.

They didn’t know who Maeve was. Of course, they didn’t. It was stupid of her to think otherwise. She screwed the pencil back, tight, into its insignificant hole.

“Maeve’s a big deal, honey,” he told his daughter. “Right, Maeve? I’ve seen you on TV a bunch.” When he tilted his head up toward her, one of the stiff spikes of hair fell onto his brow. “I always knew you’d do something with those smarts of yours.” Goddammit if he wasn’t still charming.

Joanne’s butt bumped into Maeve. She was carrying two strawberry Fribbles whose cream was frothing over the sides.

“Sorry about that, doll,” she said. She looked at Ian. “Your sundaes will be up in a minute.”

“You be with your family,” Maeve said to Ian. She wanted him to shut up.

“I see these girls all the time. They’re sick of me. Why don’t you take a seat?” Ian said. “Catch up.” The girl with the braces rolled her eyes and elbowed her sister.

“I can’t,” she said. “Good to see you.” Maeve forced a smile that stretched her gums and reached out her hand to shake his. He looked it at for a second. Then he shook it anyway with hands that were limp and clammy. She expected different.

She sat back down at her table, facing the back of Ian with his neckline that faded into a perfect triangle, decorated with a birthmark the shape of a lumpy potato. A neck she had stared at so many times while daydreaming in class or sitting behind him as he drove to the billiards place. It was thicker, but still familiar. She opened up her phone and Googled Ian. There was next to zilch on him. He didn’t do the social media thing. There his name was in the Yellow Pages as the owner of a custom wood furniture business. Good for him. She found one picture of him by a lifeguard stand at Jones Beach with his arms around a woman who looked like she frequented Beach Bum Tanning. Could be his wife, but the girls looked nothing like her. Most likely girlfriend. Oh, and here was his member picture in a club of men who liked to fly toy planes.

Maeve grabbed a napkin and fumbled as she tried to make an origami butterfly. She tried folding the wings but her fingers were shaky and slippery and the napkin couldn’t hold the creases.

She texted Dad. Be straight with me. You coming or what?

Ian was laughing, tapping the handle of his knife against the rims of the glass bowls their sundaes came in, pretending to make toasts to pretend people. “To Queen Cookie Butter, the sweetest ruler in all the land! To my friend Jim Dandy, the most stylish man I’ve ever known!” The girls tried their hardest not to giggle.

Maeve kept trying with the butterflies until the holder was nearly empty. Ian tapped louder and faster. His laugh started to sound like a distressed seal. Her whole table was a stockpile of mangled butterflies, her shaky hands botching their fragile wings. She grabbed one and wrote: Broke but not forgotten.

She was one second away from screaming at Ian. Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.

Hofstra girl jumped up. She moaned, covered her mouth with one hand, and stomped in place. Blood trickled through her fingers.

“I ate glass! I ate glass!” she screamed. She tried to spit out a wad of blood. It dribbled down her sweatshirt and colored the H and O.

Ian scooted out from the table.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” he said. He put his arms around his daughter’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”

What did this asshole expect? Actions have consequences.

He grabbed the last two napkins on his table.

“This fucking place!” he said. He threw the holder onto the floor. “I need napkins!”

She texted Dad again: Mr. Beery’s. 15 minutes. He gave a thumbs-up back.

On her way out, she grabbed a handful of butterflies from the pile and chucked them at the girl. Ian scrambled to pick them up off the floor while Maeve sidestepped him.

 

Celeste Hamilton Dennis is a freelance writer and editor in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Drunken Boat, Boston Accent Lit, Gravel, Barely South Review, and more. When she’s not engaged in the arts activism space or being a mom to two little girls, she’s working on a book of short stories connected by her hometown of Levittown, NY. She can’t stop writing about chain restaurants and mouthy women.

Photo by Ali Lanenga

Shaving’s my contribution to society. Like, who needs a brown guy with a beard sitting next to them on the plane these days, you know? Look, no beard, I come in peace brother. Wrong word! Beep. Don’t say brother. Like ever. You don’t want them looking at your backpack.

Whatever. So I shaved this morning, like, with a six a.m. flight. You know how people donate hair to cancer? I donate beard to airplane goodwill, ha! Making my fellow humans comfortable, you know. You might think I’m playing it safe, chickening out. I dunno, okay maybe I am a bit. Cluck cluck, so kill me.

Don’t say brother. Like ever. You don’t want them looking at your backpack.

I’m not the placard-holding type. That’s my crazy-ass sister. She’s the one who designs shirts with passive-aggressive shit printed on them like:

I’M A BOMBShell.

ALL BROWN SKIN AND NO BOMB.

THAT’S NOT A BOMB. IT’S MY BRAIN TICKING.

Like wait, what?! She even had this poem. Something on heaven, harems, and explosives. I was like, Dude, you don’t wanna wear that. She was like, why not, you gotta shake things up, make people think. Yeah, but you gotta be cool about it, Dude, subtle, not like freak people out on the subway. I mean! They’re just chilling, reading their book, listening to their music, and you’re like, boom, planting explosives in their head. You know?

So here’s me: clean-shaven, JFK to Heathrow. Went through security check, no random scans, no one feeling me up. Like smooth, peaceful.

Okay, so where am I? 14C, 14C…14… C. There. Next to hijab-lady-with-toddler, seriously? Awesome. The kid looks like he’s going to throw up already. Like shit.

The air hostess, though! Cute. I’ve got eight hours to get her number.

*     *     *

Goodness. I wish he’d stop chatting up the air hostess and just sit down. Quite annoying, to be honest. Blocking the aisle like that. What if I’d needed the toilet?

The way these young Americans talk these days. Makes me despair, really. Like this like that, like like like. The vocabulary of a lampshade. He looks Indian. Could be Pakistani, they don’t all have beards now, do they? Where are the exits? They always say note the exits. Increases your chances of survival. Well, not if it blows up, no. But maybe if it landed on water, in one piece. On the Atlantic. Endless water. Freezing. Freezing water in lungs. Oh.

I better do my breathing exercise.

They say the water feels as solid as a cement floor when a plane hits its surface. I remember reading that somewhere. Impact, and instant death. I can handle instant death. It’s the slow seeping of water into a plane that, that…

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Oh. It’ll be lovely to get back to grey old England. My allotment. The spuds’ll be ready by now. I hope Mr. Davies remembered to water them. New York’s too… too erect, too anxious really, there’s no sky. No, it’s not for me, New York.

I should’ve taken a different airline. Emirates, or the other one… what was it… Qatar. They wouldn’t go blowing up their own planes now, would they. Gran! What a horrid, disgusting, racist thing to say! Emma would’ve launched at me. Her best friend’s from Bangladesh you see, “bestie” they say these days don’t they, BFF. Death of the language, I tell you. Abbreviate everything, save time! And if you agree with someone, all you need is one word. Word. Yes, I learned that recently, you see. Just nod your head and say “word.” It seems that says everything without you having to tax your vocabulary. Or your opinion. In my time, young people had opinions.

I can’t follow anything anymore. On top of that, all you hear on the street is Polish, and… and… Spanish and Arabic. Too many of them, really. Everything’s changing.

Anyway, Emma’s fiercely loyal, she is. Blind too. If you ask me, that bestie of hers is a flight away from Syria. With people like you, who can blame anyone for leaving?! Emma would shout. We don’t get along much these days.

I text her now: Hello darling, been sitting in plane for 40 mins, hasn’t budged!

She sends me an Aww! and some… what are they called?… emoticons. One’s a sleepy face with zzz. No, I don’t want to try and get some sleep, but I don’t tell her that. I send her two yellow smiling faces and a heart. I notice there’s a bomb emoticon near one of an aeroplane. Are they called emoticons even when they don’t emote? I wonder if it’s a sign, that I’ve seen the bomb and aeroplane just before the plane takes off. And that woman in her hijab.

The Atlantic. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

*     *     *

Right. Here we go with the stares now. They look at me, at my head, the hijab. Every one of them, flicks of the eye, like flames licking. They think they’re being real discreet, oh yeah, but I can feel those glances sharp and hot on my skin. I’m smothered in eyes. I hate travel. I feel loud. Like an announcement, a warning, a reminder. Even when I’m silent, to them I’m a scream. On this airplane, in the subway. I hate that I have the power to make people shift in their seats or think of death. I feel sorry for them, I feel fucking sorry for myself. And I feel sorry for my two-year-old who has no idea that the world is waiting to judge him by the sound of his name.

There are more people walking up the aisle, stuffing their suitcases into the overhead bins, and taking note of my covered head. Their eyes are blanched of all expression. Let’s all be politically correct at least, yeah? Small mercies. I read about a man who was escorted out of a flight just before takeoff because he was writing something in Arabic. In Arabic, how dare he?! If it wasn’t painful, it’d be funny.

Some of the passengers notice there’s a child on my lap, they relax a bit, they smile. Ah, a mother! I look a little less lethal now, don’t I? In my head, I see myself standing under a spotlight waving at everyone with a big ol’ smile: “Hey everyone, look—B for Baby, not B for Bomb!” (I pause for punchline.) “The baby can be a terror though.”

I don’t have a cause. I have no wars to wage. I’m tired, I need sleep, I need to wax my legs, you know, get a manicure, get through this flight without a toddler meltdown.

LOL in my head! That was good, right?

Sometimes I have no jokes though. I worry too. Every time I fly, I panic. If this plane blows up, I will splinter into as many pieces as that poor woman there doing her deep breathing. I don’t want to go like that.

I don’t have a cause. I have no wars to wage. I’m tired, I need sleep, I need to wax my legs, you know, get a manicure, get through this flight without a toddler meltdown. That’s all.

And maybe a tub of ice cream, butter pecan. I could use that too.

*     *     *

Hungry, Mama! Mik mik mik! Sami hungry, Sami hungry, Mama. No can wait, now now! Bananana bananana Mama. Sami want bananana now now now.

Pane whoosh? No whoosh, Mama, pane no whoosh. Piot fly pane Mama? Where piot, Mama? Mama? Where piot, Mama?

*     *     *

Steve had to fall ill today. Of all days, today. My one weekend day off in months, but here I am. Stuck in the cockpit clocking hours. I could’ve spent them sleeping. Or with the kids. I’d promised to take Beth to ballet today. But no.

I issue yet another apology to passengers for the delay; I say nothing about the last-minute switch in pilots. Cabin crew please take seats for takeoff, take seats for takeoff. The PA system fizzes into silence. I set the aircraft in motion.

The runway stretches and splits. Every time you choose a path from a fork in the road, you set your life off on a certain course. I agreed to cover for Steve today, so here I am. On the runway instead of my bedroom. Someone up there was writing the screenplay.

Maybe we’re going to crash and die. Maybe I’m here today because I’m the one meant to die. Steve is meant to walk his daughter down the aisle in twenty years, but not me. An explosion midair, no survivors, lost black box. Bodies scattered over rock and sea, doomed clumps of DNA.

I can see Steve being interviewed by the tabloids later. For articles on fate and destiny. The narrow escape. The one that got away. Everyone marvels at it. At how Steve fell ill the very day the plane was carrying a suitcase full of cheap homemade bombs.

Steve is on CNN, he’s blinking back tears. He looks up to thank the hand that spared him, only to encounter the tangled wires of the studio ceiling. The lights make his teeth shine and hair glow.

I’ve never missed a day’s work, Steve tells the presenter. Stevie’s never missed a day’s work, his wife tells their friends. In fact, would you believe it, he was already in his uniform when he doubled up in pain. Thought he was having a stroke, rushed into ER. But turns out—too many southern-fried chickens.

Gas. Gas was what it took to save him.

Newspaper headline: Pilot’s stroke turns out to be stroke of luck!

But, Steve’s dinner has me in a coffin now, my family’s standing there crying. One man’s fried chicken is another man’s forever. Church music.

Look at me. Damn. I stop; I pull my thoughts back, and push the plane forward. This fear, it rises and runs so fast and wild when we let it. ‘Til we’re all exploding over and over in our heads. Trusting nothing and no one.

The takeoff is done. We’re almost at a thousand feet, in perfect weather. The passengers are starting to switch on their movies now. The babies have stopped crying, their ears don’t hurt anymore. I shake my head. It’s autopilot from here, and I need coffee.

 

Pia Ghosh-Roy grew up in India and now lives in Cambridge (UK). She is the winner of the 2017 Hamlin Garland Award. Her work has been placed, shortlisted and longlisted for several other awards including the Aestas Fabula Press Competition, the Brighton Prize, and the Bath Short Story Award. Pia is currently working on her first novel and a collection of short stories. Twitter @piaghoshroy

 

I remember that it was a hot summer day in Hawthorne. The concrete outside of my house was splattered in red, blue, and purple Popsicle stains as el heladero’s bell echoed far away towards the high school. The trees bent in agony against the rays of the sun that cracked branches and drained the moisture from inside. I sat cross-legged in the shade of a large weeping willow tree that hung over from my neighbor’s yard while I drank a Capri Sun, ate Oreos, and played Super Mario World on my Game Boy Advance. I was watching my sister, Gloria. She was twelve years old at the time, four years older than I was. She sat with her legs under her as she made flower chains for herself and our aging keeshond named Timmy. He was lying like a dirty cotton-ball next to the washer and dryer that was rusted from being outside. He didn’t seem to mind the flower chains, but if I were him, I would have knocked them off. A fierce wolf dog shouldn’t be covered in flowers. From inside, I heard my Mama’s strained voice calling out to us in the backyard.

“Gloria! Tabitha! Ven acá! I want you girls to get ready for prima Veronica’s party!”

“I’ll race you!” I shouted to Gloria as I stuffed my Game Boy into my back pocket.

“I don’t race anymore. I’m too old for that,” she said, as she carefully plucked the flower chains she had made and hung them from her left arm.

“Fine, be like that,” I said. “And if I were Timmy, I would have attacked you for putting those stupid flowers on me.”

“Flowers look stupid on you anyways. You look like a dead person with them,” she said, laughing.

Timmy looked up at the call of his name but then flopped down, disinterested. I stuck out my tongue at her and I ran into the house. My dirty toes left black polka dots on the kitchen tile. I could smell that Mama was baking something in the oven, and I tiptoed over and opened the door. The air was warm and cheesy. Gloria walked into the kitchen, coughed, and surveyed the spots with a smirk.

“Oh, when Mama finds out, you’re gonna get la chancla!” she laughed.

I shut the door with a loud metallic clank. She took her sandal off and began to chase me around the kitchen with it.

“Hey! Stop! You’re being stupid!” I said.

Each time I dodged my sister’s sandal, my killer moves showed on the floor, the polka dots multiplying. Finally, she chucked the sandal at me and it landed hard at the back of my head.

“MAMA!” I cried.

I flopped down onto the wooden kitchen chair and rubbed the back of my head. I felt the warm tears gather and blur my vision as I pulled my knees up to my chest.

“OK, OK, what is going on, aye?” Mama asked.

Her dark chocolate hair was pulled back into a loose bun and she was dressed in a ratty pink T-shirt with loose green sweats.

“Mama, it hurts! I’m bleeding,” I said.

“She’s not bleeding,” Gloria said. “You can’t even tell because of her hair anyways.”

“Shut up! How about I throw it at you then?” I said as I stood up on the chair. It wobbled but I tightened my grip on the backing.

“Cállense! You two are giving me a headache,” Mama shouted.

She grabbed me and placed me on the floor next to Gloria.

“Your dad is going to be coming home soon any minute and when he is, we’re going, claro? Now, say sorry and get dressed.”

Gloria and I looked at each other and mumbled, “Sorry.” Gloria was much taller than I was. Her long brown hair matched mama’s curls, and her sun-kissed skin always had warmth to it. Mama would say how Gloria looked just like her when she was growing up in Sinaloa. But Gloria had blue eyes, and they were so icy that it gave me shivers when I stared at them for too long. She turned around, gave Mama a kiss, and walked towards her room.

“OK, I guess I’ll get ready then,” I said, slowly shifting myself away from her.

“Not so fast, mija,” she said. “When you dress yourself I can’t tell if I have a son or a daughter. I pick out your clothes.”

“Not so fast, mija,” she said. “When you dress yourself I can’t tell if I have a son or a daughter. I pick out your clothes.”

As we walked to my room, I prayed that Mama didn’t take a closer look at the kitchen floor, and that she would notice only when I was at safe at school tomorrow. I rubbed my head thinking about how much my butt would be hurting when I got home.

When I walked into my room, Mama was already digging in my closet. She pulled out a dusty pastel-yellow dress with a white lace collar that I had tried to hide in the corner.

“How about you wear la muñeca dress?” she asked.

She called it that because when I wore it I matched the porcelain dolls that sat on my bed covers.

“But Mama, it’s a party. I don’t want to wear that!” I said. I crossed my arms and pouted on the bed.

“Put it on,” she said.

She pulled me up to my feet and grabbed my dirty Pokémon shirt. She then pulled my dirt-stained purple shorts off and dunked my head into the pastel-yellow sea of fabric.

“It’s stuck!” I said.

“Aye, stop moving,” she said, and tugged it down with a single swoop.

My little head popped out with my hair in a nest and small prints showing the lace that was stuck on my face a couple of seconds ago.

“You look so beautiful, mira!” she said.

I walked over to the mirror and saw my pale arms sticking out of the light-colored dress. My legs were covered in bruises, scabs, and Band-Aids from my adventures in fence scaling, soccer playing, and wrestling with Jacob from next-door. I also had a tendency to mess with the wandering cats outside, and multiple scratches let me know they did not enjoy having their butts poked with sticks.

“I look ugly,” I said, with a tongue sticking out.

“Look at your hands, están sucias! Go wash the dirt off,” she said.

I tried to pull the dress off, but it was stuck. I could tell that Mama was going to swat my hands until we both heard the front door open.

“Hello?” a voice said.

I ran out to the living room and into the arms of my dad. He wasn’t very tall, but his arms were muscular and he smelled of fresh linen. My favorite thing about him was that his hair and skin mirrored mine.

“Hey pumpkin, you ready for a fiesta?” he asked. He accentuated the “fi” part, which made him sound crazy, but I loved it. It reminded me of the “wazzup” commercials I would see on TV.

“Yes!”

“Your dress is beautiful, is Mama forcing you to wear that?” he asked, and winked at her.

She rolled her eyes and smiled. He put me down, and wrapped his arms around Mama’s waist. He pulled her into him, his face nuzzled into her neck and held her. He was the only one who could tame her, and make her melt like butter.

“Where is Gloria? Gloria!” he called.

She floated around the corner and ran right into Dad’s leg. She held on tight—obviously she wasn’t too old to still get hugs.

“Every day you look more like Mama! Pretty soon I won’t be able to tell!” he said. “Wait, are you wearing makeup?”

She giggled and then stood up, straightening her blue dress.

“I told her it’s OK this one time,” Mama said.

“OK, all ready to go?” Dad asked smiling.

Mama looked down at her clothes and then back to Dad un-amused.

“Let me get dressed and we will go.”

She rushed down the hallway with Dad chasing her into the room to get ready.

*     *     *

Going to my cousin’s house was always my favorite. They lived in the house on Euclid that Mama, Tío Rudy, Tío Leo, Tía Esther and my cousins’ dad Tío Arturo grew up in. Their backyard was much bigger than ours, and they would hang up lights for when it got dark. I loved following the strings that ran through the lemon trees against the backdrop of the pinholes in the darkening sky. It always made me wonder if that was what chasing fireflies was like.

When we arrived, I could hear the other kids laughing and screaming in the back. I was in charge of the mac and cheese, per Mama’s orders. I speedily walked to the black wrought iron fence while balancing the ceramic dish between my hands. I shifted the dish to my hip and shook the fence until someone noticed I was there.

“Hey! Cool it, crazy!” Tío Leo said coming down the driveway.

“Hi Tío!” I said.

I was bouncing up and down excitedly and making tiny screeches between breaths. Tío Leo began to open the fence, but I squeezed through the crack and scurried past his legs to the backyard without dropping a single macaroni. I could hear Mama yelling at me to come back, but I was already searching for Vero. That year they’d gotten a giant castle jumper for her birthday, and I wanted to see who could jump high enough to touch the hot pink ceiling.

“Aye mírala! Tavvy, cómo estás?” a woman asked.

My name was chopped up against the rolling of her Spanish tongue. I looked up and noticed it was my grandma, Abuelita Maria. She was a round woman with short brown hair, square glasses, and a giant smile. She wore a pink apron adorned with bright yellow flowers and red stitching. I can never remember a time when she wasn’t wearing it. She grabbed me and started stamping my face with kisses.

“Tavvy, Dónde está su mama y su hermana?” she asked.

I looked around for my mother and my sister, and noticed them by Tía Esther who was touching Gloria’s hair and smiling. Tía Esther was smaller than Mama, but she was what my dad called a “tough cookie.” She was the lead accountant at a big bank, something my abuelita’s eyes brightened at when she met new people. I moved my head to their direction, but the dish was drooping in my stick-like arms.

“Aye! Ponlo acá,” she said.

She motioned me over to the long plastic table. I could smell the carne asada as it sizzled on the grill next to it. Tío Arturo was turning the meats, warming the tortillas, and setting plump green chilies on the grill. I saw its shape shrink as it roasted in the flames. I put the dish in between the tin of green nopales and a bowl of fluffy arroz. I lifted the aluminum covering the mac and cheese, and with my dirty finger I scooped up a couple bits. It burned but the stolen cheese was worth it. Mama always puts in four kinds of cheese; she told me that was her secret.

I heard ice shift and clink as Dad went to the blue cooler and pulled a cold Corona for him and a bottle of Coca-Cola for me. He popped open the bottle and handed me the frosty glass.

“Grestian! Hola! Hello! How are chu?” Abuelita Maria asked as she walked up to him.

She loved my dad and would try to speak strictly English with him to show off how much she had learned from the last time they spoke. Dad shooed me off as he began to mingle with the adults, who all gathered around him to talk or sat in chairs whispering about him. I always thought it was because in the sun his hair glinted and came to life like fire.

I worried that Rudy was also eroding into a million pieces and maybe that was why he was sad.

I felt a large hand grab my shoulder and knew it was Tío Rudy. He was the quiet type who always had a drink in his hand and would nod in conversations. He was gone for a long time when I was growing up, but Mama told me to never talk about it. I could tell from his heavy eyes that he was thinking about something a lot. Back then, I learned in school that sand used to be large mountains and that over time they were eroded into millions of little pieces. I worried that Rudy was also eroding into a million pieces and maybe that was why he was sad.

He gave me a Styrofoam plate two times the size of my face. I reached over the bowls, and scooped up large helpings of soft arroz, watery frijoles, crunchy pollo y chili verde flautas, guacamole, ceviche, chips, and a glob of mac and cheese. I walked to Tío Arturo who flopped a giant piece of asada onto my small mountain of food.

“Someone is hungry! Tu madre not feeding you?” he asked with a smile.

“Don’t forget my tortilla, Tío!” I laughed at my little rhyme.

“Tío tortilla!” I shouted until he gave me my warm circle.

“You always are coming up with something, huh?”

I carefully walked over to an empty seat at next to Vero, who was now chugging a strawberry Jarritos that stained her lips a bright red.

“Hey, prima! Sit over here!” she said.

Next to her was a group of boys from school. Apparently, her older brother Ramon had invited them, each of them varying in shades of brown skin and black hair. I began shoveling food into my mouth, savoring each salty bite of the meat and creaminess of the guac. At first, no one said anything but then I heard them pulling their chairs closer to the table.

“You say she’s jur cousin?” one of them asked.

He was missing some teeth, but he had a shaved head and his peach fuzz was darkening near the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah, Carlos,” she said with a smile. “This is my cousin, Tabby.”

They all started whispering, just like Mama’s aunts who sat in the corner, their brown eyes always darting, and their mouths always slightly opened. Gloria was walking over from the table with a smaller plate of food, but she didn’t skip out on the mac and cheese. She sat down on the other side of Vero and nibbled at her plate.

“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked.

Vero rolled her eyes and pointed to the boys who were now smiling at Gloria and trying to slick their hair back for her.

“Who’s this?” Carlos asked.

“This is Gloria, my prima. She’s Tabby’s sister.” Vero said. “Any more questions or can we eat now?”

Carlos looked bewildered and his friends all started to pat him on the back oh-ing and ah-ing.

“Wait, so la gringa is Mexican?” the one with the glasses asked.

I looked up from my plate. I felt the rice cling to my lips as I rolled my eyes and let out a dramatic sigh.

“Hey, don’t call her that,” Gloria said. I looked at her sheepishly.

“Yeah,” said Vero.

“Why don’t chu look it?” Carlos asked me.

“Look what?”

“Mexican,” Carlos said.

I stopped eating and started moving the beans with my plastic fork. I felt a hot rush to my cheeks. Gloria looked at me and was about to protest, but I shook my head at her.

“I don’t know. If you’re Mexican, why don’t you look like me?” I asked.

They all looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. Their heads were tilted back, mouths wide open, their hands holding onto each other’s shirt collars until they stretched to keep from falling over.

“You’re not Mexican, you’re white. Mira el cabello,” the one wearing glasses said.

I took a piece of my hair between my fingers and examined its red color.

“But… but, we eat the same food.” I held up my plate.

“Is jur mom the one who made mac and cheese?” Carlos smirked.

My fingernails dug into the soft flesh of my palm. I could see Vero was becoming uneasy, her left arm partially extended in case I decided to pounce. Gloria stood up, her icy eyes locked on him.

“Chur like this,” Carlos said.

He reached across the table and grabbed a handful of my arroz, squishing it between his brown fingers. He flashed a silver smile and then threw the rice on the ground.

“You jerk!” Vero said. “Leave or else I’ll get Ramon to kick you out.”

Carlos got up and rubbed his hands on his shirt. His little squad of menaces got up as well, like puppies. Carlos smiled until he looked up into Gloria’s eyes and grimaced. It was only when they were at the jumper that they had the courage to look back and laugh. Their little gang now terrorized the house on Euclid.

“They are a bunch of cabrones,” Vero said making a face. “Nothing but air in their heads.”

My carne asada had become cold and I wiggled uncomfortably in the plastic white chair.

“Don’t let them scare you. I’ll use la chancla on them if you want me to,” Gloria said reaching for her sandal.

“Nah, it’s all right,” I said. I pushed my plate to the side, no longer hungry.

“Thank you for the mac and cheese,” Vero said. It was her favorite, and we all knew.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“I’m sorry sis, but we can still have fun. Forget about them.”

Gloria tried to reach for my hand, but I sat on it to keep her from touching me. I could tell that I looked different; they had shiny black hair and olive skin. Perfect.

“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”

From inside the bathroom, I could hear echoed laughs, and the whir of the jumper. I looked at myself in the mirror. Pastel and red. I pinched my skin between my fingers, hoping to darken it, but it only left a large blotchy red mark. I sighed, washed my hands, and went back outside. I hoped we were leaving soon.

“It’s time for the piñata!” I heard Tío Leo cry out.

I saw dozens of little bodies rush past the door and toward the large lemon tree. Tío Leo was standing on the concrete wall, trying to hang the Powerpuff Girl piñata from a branch.

“No one ever hits the piñata when Tío Leo is doing it,” Ramon said out loud to his friends.

They were all wringing their hands just waiting for the opportunity to bust it open. I looked around and saw Gloria was talking to Tía Esther again. Vero saw me from inside the jumper, but she didn’t come out.

“OK, OK, step right up, niños!” Tío Leo shouted. “Who wants to go first?”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

I felt everyone’s eyes glued to my little self as I walked over to Tía Esther who was waiting with a blindfold and a wooden bat.

“Go get ’em, sweetie!” I heard Dad shout.

Tía Esther put the blindfold over my eyes. Darkness. I felt her hand gently guiding me into the squishy grass from spilled soda until she grabbed my shoulder to stop. She put the bat into my hand, and whispered, “Sí se puede, go show Leo what you’re made of, chiquita.”

The bat was heavy but I could feel that the Powerpuff Girl was only a few feet away. I swung and hit the dirt.

The bat was heavy but I could feel that the Powerpuff Girl was only a few feet away. I swung and hit the dirt. Missed. I heard the boys laughing in the back. I waited before I swung again; this time Gloria was giving me directions on where it was.

“To the left!” she shouted. “No, your left! Oops, I mean right! Swing! Swing now!”

I swung again and got nothing but air. The laughs multiplied as I frantically searched for the piñata. I was going to hit it. I then waited, like a tiger in the long grass, until my prey was no longer moving.

“You give up already?” Tío Leo asked.

I jumped and gave one last swing with all my strength. I let out a loud yell, as loud as I always imagined Timmy would if he were in the wild. I felt the wooden bat rip through the paper, and the poor Powerpuff Girl was torn in half. I lifted the bandana and saw it raining red Vero Mango lollypops, multi-colored Duvalíns, chili Lucas, and powder-white de la Rosa circles from the sky. I extended my arms and felt the dulces bounce off my hand and onto the floor. I heard a roar of excitement and felt little bodies swarm around me as they dove to the floor.

“How did you do that?” Vero asked, with her hands full of sweets.

I shrugged and picked up a Vero Mango lollypop. I ran over to Gloria showing her the dulce.

“I have an idea,” she said.

She took me over the plastic table and broke off the candy part of the lollypop from the stick and wrapper. She grabbed a tablespoon of rice and carefully placed it into the wrapper and then back into my hand. She smiled and it was if I had read her mind. I frantically searched around for him, and soon spotted Carlos alone in the corner just watching us.

“Un regalo, from us.”

I handed him the lollypop and walked back to crowd of high-fives. Gloria pulled me aside and hugged the tightest I’ve ever felt.

When Carlos would decide to eat the lollypop, he would see that the sweet was gone and it was stuffed with orange arroz instead.

 

Rebecca Komathy is an emerging writer from Southern California. She is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing (fiction) from California State University, Long Beach. This story is based on her childhood of growing up in the LA area. Her narratives showcase the strength in familial communities while hoping to make the readers a bit hungry afterward.

When I was nine years old my first love died. She liked to sit out in the sun, in front of Niña Marina’s whorehouse, her face to the sky, her long hair behind her, the tips touching the sandy soil of Acajutla, that little town where I grew up. People called her La Garroba: The Iguana. I remember her as a thirty-two-year-old prostitute who, aside from sitting out in the sun, liked to sing the songs coming out of that whorehouse’s jukebox. She’d sing everything: the Spanish songs sung by Roberto Carlos and José José, the English songs by Air Supply and Scorpion. A Korean businessman stopped by the whorehouse one day and donated one of his records to Niña Marina. She had it put into the jukebox. La Garroba learned those sounds too.

I don’t remember being in love with her. I do remember coolness in my chest, happiness, I think, whenever I was with her. My mom’s friends claimed it was love and nicknamed me after her. They were all truck drivers, including my mom, and they’d sit on the ground, in a circle, in front of a fish warehouse, gambling while someone loaded each of their Toyota pickups with fish and crushed ice. Then, when the vehicles were fully loaded, they drove to other towns in El Salvador to deliver their load. The warehouse sat on a small hill that overlooked the ocean as it stretched comfortably on dark sands. North of the ocean was a line of palm trees that stretched as far as the eye could see. In the midst of all that green flowed two long rivers. Sometimes I liked to stand right at the place where the hill began to descend into the water. I’d close my eyes and I could hear the waves, the rivers, the palm trees, all, talking to each other in hushed voices.

At one point, I knew all the men in that circle, the way they always smelled of fish, the way their dark skin hung loose on their face, creased by the weight of the sun. The finer details of their faces are blurry, hazy in the collage of the many other noses and mouths and foreheads I saw throughout my childhood. Even their voices, the sounds that remain in my head, are lost in the collective harmonies of the many other people who populated the periphery of my youth. However, two of the men in the circle I remember well: a fat man nicknamed Panza and another one they called Funes. They played with me the most.

The men in that circle saw me come daily to ask my mom for money or for food or just because I missed her. My father couldn’t feed me. He often left the house early to go to work. When I’d wake up he and my mom would already be gone.

“It’s La Garroba!” the men in the circle yelled whenever they saw me. They would laugh and pat each other on the back, proud of their old joke. My mom would give me money for food. “For a Coke,” she’d say, and I would sit with them for a little bit, my back against my mother’s back, her straight hair on my shoulders. Her friends would ask how old I was and they’d make up ages that were obviously not possible: “Thirty? Thirty-five?” Then they would ask where La Garroba was hiding. They’d search their surroundings just in case they’d somehow missed her presence. Sometimes they’d look inside my pockets for her. Most of the time I knew where La Garroba was.

“Está en el salón,” I’d tell them, because that’s what we call whorehouses in El Salvador. When she wasn’t at the beach she was there. That’s where she was the day she died.

Then they’d tell me that when I was little, La Garroba would sing me a song about a man who’s heartbroken because he falls in love with a cabaret dancer, who only loves him for his money. It was a popular song for a long time and I heard it often coming out of the jukeboxes of the whorehouses of that little town. “Cabaret love, you kill me little by little,” the singer sang. My mom’s friends would hum it and Funes would grab my hands and spin me in place. I always laughed at that part.

What I know about La Garroba I learned from bits and pieces of information I’d hear from my mom and her friends after they stopped harassing me and continued gossiping over their game of cards, as if my presence and their use of the nickname summoned from sands nostalgia of past lives. They shared stories that La Garroba never shared with me. I always listened.

Before she was La Garroba she was Carla. My mom was two years older than her. They went to the same school, as did many of the other fishermen in the circle.

Before she was La Garroba she was Carla. My mom was two years older than her. They went to the same school, as did many of the other fishermen in the circle.

“Carla didn’t like going,” my mom said. “She would go to the beach instead.” She’d sit on the sand and stare into the ocean.

They said she liked the waves more than she liked learning about mammals and reptiles and fish and math. At the age of seven, she told her parents she didn’t want to go to school anymore, that she’d help clean fish at the fish market. Her parents didn’t let her. They told her she needed to learn to read and write and do math. She would be more help that way.

Panza often said that Carla began offering sex for money after both her mother and father were lost at sea during a storm. The coast guard searched the water for two days and managed to find only the inner tube on which both her parents fished, one with a nylon mesh in the middle. It would be four days before her mom washed up on some rocks and her father washed up on the sand. Both were bloated and covered in fish bites.

Whenever Panza shared that detail my mom would cover my ears with her hands. She’d tell him that I was too young to hear of such things. But I’d already heard the entire story many times before.

Carla was thirteen when her parents died. I wasn’t born yet. She tried working at the fish market, cleaning the hammerhead sharks, the tilapias and the glossy tunas. She wasn’t skilled and the man who hired her fired her and hired an older boy who was better with the knife. She’d also tried to fish. Her father had taken her on many of his fishing trips and taught her how to sit quietly on the inner tube, the waves lapping at the rubber and the night wrapping around them. He’d taught her to release the hook and bait and to wait patiently for the fish to nibble, to wait for the right type of tension on the line, for the hungry pull of an eager mouth. She’d bought a small inner tube from a fisherman and had created a colorful mesh of synthetic fabric to attach to the inside of the tube, just like her father taught her. She knew from where to launch her vessel so as to not get pummeled by the waves. But no matter how much she tried to stay out in the open sea, a current always brought her back to exploding foam where she was flipped over and pushed onto the sandy shore. The first time this happened she laughed and blamed it on the ill nature of the ocean. The next day she tried it again and again she was dragged toward the waves and slammed against the dark sands. That time the ocean broke her nose, gave her a black eye for three weeks.

“I saw her,” Funes said. “It was like someone had punched her.”

She tried it again, this time using a paddle to push the dark rubber deeper into the waters, away from any strong currents but, again, the sea shoved her back toward the waves even though she paddled with all her strength until the blisters on her palms sent streams of blood running down the wooden oar. Some fisherman laughed at her. They said she didn’t know what she was doing. Others, older fisherman, knew the ocean did not want her in the water and no matter how much she tried she wouldn’t be successful. The ocean, Panza said, was trying to keep her from a similar fate as her parents.

“El mar es sabio,” he’d say.

Everyone nodded.

“Y el hijo de puta de Manzanilla?” someone would say, reminding everyone to not forget Manzanilla’s role in Carla becoming a prostitute.

Two years before Carla’s parents died, when she was eleven, she’d been walking home from school when Manzanilla walked behind her and told her he wanted to fuck her. This was another part of the story from which my mother tried to shield me, her warm hands around my ears.

Carla ran home and told her father, Don Julio, who went to Manzanilla’s house, pulled him out in a headlock and dragged him to the beach where he tried to drown him. Had it not been for a then fourteen-year-old Panza, who was standing on the beach watching the whole thing happen, Don Julio would have killed Manzanilla. Instead, he released his grip around Manzanilla’s neck and walked back home. Panza, teary-eyed and confused about what was happening, stared at the injured man. Manzanilla got up, his eyes red and swollen, and, silently, dripping water from all over his body, walked back to his house.

“I was scared,” Panza said. “Don Julio almost killed him.”

“That son of a bitch deserved it,” my mom would say. Funes put his hands on my ears. Everyone laughed.

After the death of her parents and after her failure at the fish market and her failure out in the ocean and the fact that she had no money to eat and no one would help her, Carla went to Manzanilla’s house and told him she would have sex with him for twenty colones. I think that was about two dollars back in those days, a lot of money.

“No one helped her?” I asked. The answer was always the same, recycled by everyone in the group at one point or another.

“We all had problems.”

My mother and friends would fall silent after that line and all movements of their bodies seized, as if the suddenness of a memory stopped their breathing, as if whatever force was keeping back pain took a break and allowed all of that life, all of those stingers held back by deliberate attempts, to be released all at once, to penetrate flesh and soul. They all had problems. Carla’s were just different than theirs.

My mother would undoubtedly be thinking about my great grandmother, how she had enough money to take my mom and my grandmother out of poverty but how she’d chosen my aunt instead. Sometimes I would ask my mom about my great grandmother, but she didn’t like talking about her. “She loved my sister more,” she’d say sometimes. My great grandmother paid for my aunt’s education, sent her to expensive Catholic schools. Along with Carla, my mom had to go to the poor school in town, the same school I went to.

Panza would probably be thinking about the death of his mother. He often talked about how, when he was twelve, he had to drop out of school to take care of her and to get a job unloading boxes from the ships that arrived in Acajutla. He would cross himself whenever he talked about how, on her last days, it was difficult for his mother to breathe, how he would spend many hours at night, awake, hearing every single strangling breath scrape out of her throat.

“It’s a horrible way to die,” he’d say. “Who knew seconds could last so fucking long. When I go I wanna go quick.”

He said he’d have to sneak in naps throughout the day just to be able to survive the sound his dying mother made at night.

The others kept their fears to themselves when I was around. I have no memories of listening to them describe their pain.

Panza said that no matter how much Carla tried to convince herself that sex was just sex she felt shame and cried through that first time with Manzanilla. He said that Manzanilla told him what had happened, that he even gave him money to buy the same services from Carla. He said Manzanilla pulled him close and told him that Carla was good at what she did. Again, my mother tried to cover my ears during this part of the story but all she did was make Panza’s voice hollow, like he was inside a cave. Panza gave Carla the money Manzanilla gave him. He said he didn’t ask for anything in return.

Trips to Manzanilla’s house became weekly and when she turned seventeen, Niña Marina, one of the madams in our town, offered her a job in her whorehouse. My mom said that on the first day, eleven clients came to seek the services of La Garroba. This she found out through Niña Marina, who bragged to everyone she could about how well her whorehouse was doing. That day, and for the entire length of that first year, La Garroba would make more money than any of the other women. She was young. Her body still resisted gravity and her supposed innocence enticed single men, married men, and even some of the boys with whom she’d gone to school.

A wave surprised me, grabbed me by the feet and threw me against one of the cancerous iron legs, cutting a long gash into my thigh.

I never met Carla in her younger years. My memories of my relationship with her wouldn’t start until three years before I left that little town. I was eight. She was thirty. By that age, I’d already almost drowned three times. Each time I was saved by someone who’d gone to the beach to look at the ocean and throw their thoughts into the blue, to feel weightless while the heavy things they carried on their shoulders floated out onto the waves and swayed back and forth in the glistening depths. The last time I almost drowned, Carla was there, on the beach, staring at the waves. I was swimming too close to the old dock, the tall rusted relic from the past that still stood ten feet tall, pushing into the ocean decades after the last train stopped traveling its length, many years after the last ship had docked on it. A wave surprised me, grabbed me by the feet and threw me against one of the cancerous iron legs, cutting a long gash into my thigh. I think I fainted immediately. When I woke up Carla was above me, her hair dripping salty water onto my face. I coughed and cried and she hugged me and rocked me back and forth.

“Estás bien, Marquitos. Estás bien,” she said, and she sang a Korean song to me and it calmed me.

I spent many hours with her after she rescued me. I’d stop by after school, almost daily. I’d ask Niña Marina if Carla was busy and if she said no I would run into the whorehouse. I’d say “hola” to the other prostitutes but my voice could never penetrate the music coming out of that dark brown jukebox. I’d run to the last room at the end of a long hall, quickly, so as to not hear the sounds coming out of the other rooms. I’d often find Carla alone on her bed, singing romantic songs. I’d say hi and she’d smile and then I would tell her about my day while she listened. She always listened. While I talked I ate the fruit meant for the clients who weren’t coming around anymore. Niña Marina didn’t mind me there. No one thought it was strange for a child to hang out inside a whorehouse talking to La Garroba. I visited her many times during those two last years of her life.

One afternoon, a couple of weeks before she died, I’d come to the whorehouse and walked in on her having sex with a man. I knew what sex was. With five whorehouses within four blocks of my house I was surrounded by it. But seeing Carla bouncing on top of the man, her bored eyes open, her hair tied back with a brown clip, I felt a sudden surge of shame. He saw me first, yelled at me to get out. Then she saw me and tried to cover herself up quickly and threw herself, face down, on the bed. The man she was with, an old man I’d seen picking through trash at the landfill, cursed at me. He said he would come out and put his foot up my ass. I ran out, ashamed and scared, her naked breasts bouncing in my head. I ran to the beach and sat on the sand. I knew I was in trouble. I knew I should have knocked, should have asked Niña Marina if La Garroba had clients. But I didn’t; she rarely did, so I’d forgotten.

I’d been on the sand for no more than ten minutes when I felt Carla’s hand on my shoulder. She sat next to me. In front of us the ocean whispered in hushed voices. Dark clouds gathered in the distant horizon. Rain was coming.

“Estás chiquito,” she said. “You shouldn’t see those things.”

She ran her fingers through my hair. Inside my head their movement sounded like the rushing of water.

“Lo siento,” I said.

We dug our feet into the sand and stayed like that until the ocean reached and covered them with white foam. Then she got up, took a couple of steps into the water and crossed herself. Her lips moved in a short prayer while she bent down to scoop sandy water into her hands. She used the water to wet her hair.

A week before she died I found her crying in her room. I’d seen her cry before, many times, in fact. Sometimes I would watch her from her door as she sobbed into her pillow or her hands. Those days she and I didn’t talk and the next day I wouldn’t tell her I’d seen her cry. But that day I felt like I needed to walk up to her and put my hand on her back so I did. She wiped her eyes dry and hugged me against her for a couple of seconds. She said, “You are my only friend, Marquitos.” It made me smile but she didn’t smile with me.

I visited her the day before she died. Her room was clean. Fresh hibiscus glowed red from inside a green plastic vase. When I arrived she took my backpack off and offered me a fresh bowl of jocotes. I sat on her bed and finished the fruit while I told her about my day. She sat in front of her mirror, running her brush through her long hair many times. There were holes in the ceiling but someone had placed a pink curtain on the roof to keep the rain out during storms. Sunlight filtered through them, casting round pink circles onto the bed, on my lap and on her mirror.

“Do you love me, Marcos?”

“Sí,” I said. “You’re good to me.”

“Would you miss me if I left?”

I never considered her absence and when she asked the question I couldn’t help but feel sad at the idea of her not being there anymore, at not seeing her hair flow behind her, shiny strands of darkness.

I told her I had to go, that I had math homework to finish. I started walking out but she called me back and hugged me tight against her. She smelled of lavender.

“Sí. No te vayas.”

I watched her reflection in the mirror; it darkened under the shade of a passing cloud. It stopped brushing its hair. It stopped smiling. It turned around to face me and somewhere through that movement her smile had returned.

“I won’t leave, Marquitos. Don’t worry.”

I told her I had to go, that I had math homework to finish. I started walking out but she called me back and hugged me tight against her. She smelled of lavender.

*     *     *

The day she died I stopped by the market on the way to the whorehouse and bought us each a mango. I planned to eat it with her while I told her about how our teacher had let us play with a thermometer, how I knew how it worked. I knew she would ask me to explain it to her and I’d practiced my explanation: the mercury inside reacted with the heat in my hands. The heat made the silver water rise. But, when I got to the whorehouse I saw a crowd outside. Niña Marina was crying.

“¿Qué pasó?” I asked a man who was standing with his arms crossed on his chest.

He pointed with his lips and said, “Se murió La Garroba.”

The spirit is a coward. During moments of sudden pain it flees the body, leaves it empty, hollow. Everything sounds louder when we’re in that state, as if sound has newfound space through which it can reverberate, through which it can birth echoes that ring the loudest behind the ears. The ocean, which, on my way from school to the whorehouse, was far away, like the soft running of fingers along the scalp, was now raging inside my head, crashing against the emptiness within.

Someone should have stopped me as I made my way to her room. Someone should have noticed the unblinking eyes, the tears beginning to form behind stiff eyelids. But no one did.

Her toes looked crooked. Her dress, a white one I’d seen her wear when she walked along the beach, hung around her, still, like it was made out of wax. Her nails were painted red, on crooked fingers. Her arms hung next to her, still, flexed somehow. Her neck was bloated slightly along the place where the rope squeezed. Her eyes were closed and the darkness of her hair hung behind her, a loose mess of darkness.

“Her neck didn’t break,” someone said. I didn’t know it had to break.

“Qué trágico,” said another voice.

“Pobrecita,” another one.

Someone grabbed me by my backpack and pried me from where I was frozen, took me outside, left me standing under the hot sun. I tried going home but all that was once automatic became a thing I had to force myself to do. I forced air into my chest. I commanded one leg up and pushed the other down. I blinked to clear the blurriness in my eyes. I opened my mouth to let out a moan. But all this was tiring and I’d only walked a couple of steps when I fell to the ground and sobbed.

*     *     *

The next day I didn’t go to school. My dad was home when I woke up, sitting at the round wooden table he’d made himself. The morning sun had already begun to warm up the metal sheets that made up the four walls of that house. I could hear the clucking of the chickens outside. His eyes watched me from a distance as I tried to put on my school uniform. He walked up to me, told me it was okay to stay behind, that I shouldn’t have seen what I saw, that he was sorry he wasn’t there to keep me from seeing. Then he went to work. My mom would already be at her usual station, playing cards with her friends. At home I sat under the jocote tree until I felt hungry. I walked to the warehouse and found my mom at the same place, playing with the same people, laughing at the same jokes. They saw me approach but didn’t say anything. Their fingers gripped the cards. No one played any hands. I sat next to my mom. She patted my back and kissed the whirlwind of hair on my head. Her lips were warm.

They played their game in silence.

“I’m hungry,” I told my mom.

She gave me the Salvadoran equivalent of a quarter. I put the money in my pocket. I got up to leave. I could sense tension getting up with me. It would follow me when I left. I stood there for a second, trying to find a way to ask the question I wanted an answer to, a question I wouldn’t be able to ask Carla. I looked at my mom, tears in my eyes, and asked half the question.

“Why?”

All their faces looked at me. No one said anything. They all fiddled with their cards, looked at each other, looked away. My mom sat me down, ran her fingers through my hair and the scraping was so loud I shook my head and she stopped.

“She carried something that was too heavy for her,” she said. The others grunted in agreement.

I didn’t understand what that meant. I took it literally, thought about my grandfather’s oxen and how they pulled on the wooden cart when it was full of wet sand and how they didn’t kill themselves when they couldn’t pull anymore. They just stopped and my grandfather knew to let them rest. I asked my mom why Carla didn’t just rest, like the oxen pulling the wooden cart.

“Oxen are meant to suffer,” she said. “We are not.”

She put her hand on my back, told me to go play, to go distract myself.

I went to the beach and sat at the place where Carla and I had sat. I listened to the waves, trying to understand what happened to people when they died, trying to understand what would happen to me if I couldn’t make the suffering stop. But I didn’t understand it then. She was only the first. More people would have to die before I could look into the bloated face of death and understand why it amplified the ocean the way it did. I closed my eyes and listened. In the distance I could hear the jukebox and I imagined it was Carla’s voice singing that sad song about the man who fell in love with a cabaret dancer.

 

Andres Reconco is a high school teacher and writer living in Los Angeles. He was born in Acajutla, El Salvador and immigrated to the United States in 1990. He is a 2014 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. His work has appeared in The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tia Chucha Press, 2017). He is currently an MFA student at Warren Wilson College.

Photo by Casey Curry