Rosa had just found a place to sit near the peak of the roof when she heard a rustle from the oak tree. The leaves then shook, but it was too small a shake to have been caused by a squirrel. Rosa took a step back down toward the tree. It was dim in the twilight, but she swore she could see dark red deep in the tree. Her first thought was that it was the wing of a lonely bird.
Rosa took another step and lost her balance. There was no traction between the sole of one of her shoes and the roof tile, so her right foot slid forward six inches. She fell on her left knee and caught herself in an awkward split. Rosa closed her eyes and let out a breath. Another airplane flew overhead. When she opened her eyes she saw the red again, deep in the leaves. Crouching, Rosa leaned forward as far as she could. She didn’t look down.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Rosa said, pressing the palms of her hands into the roof tiles to gain as much traction as possible. She wanted to be ready for anything. Then she said, “Play tricks.”
Iridian
(Friday, June 14th)
There was nothing like standing in the middle of the orange groves in the summer in South Texas. The scent hung so heavy it wasn’t even necessary to really breathe it in. It was there, always—that oily bite, that sting of citrus.
Iridian had only stood in the middle of the orange groves—the ones down in Mission that belonged to her aunt Francine—at two points in her life. The first time was when she was just over a year old and had walked without having to hold her mother’s hand. Of course she didn’t remember that. The second time was three years ago, the summer when she was thirteen, when Francine had come up to San Antonio to take Iridian and her sisters for a long weekend over the summer. There had been four of them. Ana had been alive then. The long weekend had turned into a week had turned into a week and a half.
Iridian remembered the smell of oranges most of all, but also the feel of the wind, in particular how that wind would blow dust that would then get caught in her hair—all the way from her scalp to the ends. She’d liked the gritty feel, and would go days without taking a shower.
Iridian also remembered the day Rafe came. There was no wind that day. The girls had just finished breakfast when they heard his truck approaching, rattling like a sick person. While Iridian and her sisters had stayed seated at the table, Francine went to meet Rafe at the door. There had been shouting. Iridian had plucked out a few of Rafe’s words: kidnapped, mine, no right. Ana had looked to her sisters and then had taken a bite of buttered toast.
“Don’t worry,” she’d told them, smacking crumbs from her lips. “We’ll come back.”
“We’d better,” Iridian had said.
In the truck, on the way back to San Antonio, crammed between Rosa and Jessica, Iridian chewed on the end of her braid, sucking up the dust and the bitter smell of oranges.
She wasn’t a writer then, or even that obsessive a reader, so she didn’t yet know the pure joy that came along with smelling the pages of books, how a new book smelled like chlorine or how a used book sometimes smelled like cigarettes or tangy breath. All she loved that summer was being coated in dust and the smell of oranges.
And now, it made Iridian mad thinking about how much she once loved being outside. It made her particularly mad on a night like this one, when she was on the couch in the living room, covered up by a crocheted blanket and pretending to be asleep. She had been clamping her jaw shut for so long that a headache had taken root and bloomed behind her right eye. She was angry, but she was also scared—angry at herself for being so scared. She couldn’t help it. The house had been making sounds all night. Windowpanes in the kitchen were shifting in their sashes. The refrigerator kept clicking. Ice cubes were falling from the door to the floor and shattering, one every half hour or so. The sounds then got closer. The ceiling fan above her head creaked. Something—a fly maybe—buzzed around her head, but then it stayed in one place, and the buzzing got louder and more persistent. Maybe she was making that up. Maybe it was just a symptom of her headache.
Then, Iridian heard the click and fizz of a soda can being opened. She tossed the blanket aside and sat up, knowing exactly what she was going to see: Jessica holding a Diet Coke. She didn’t have any makeup on—not even the faintest flick of mascara—and she was wearing red plaid pajama bottoms and a blue-striped tank top. Her socks didn’t match. There was a ragged hole in one, at the big toe. It was jarring—the clashing patterns, the bare face. Iridian hadn’t seen Jessica look so un-put-together in a long time.
“Hey,” Jessica said. “Do you know where Dad is?”
“What are you lurking around for?” Iridian demanded. “What time is it, anyway?”
“After three.” Jessica slurped her soda. “Dad should be home by now.”
“Why don’t you just call him?” Iridian asked.
“He’s not answering his phone.”
Didn’t they just have this conversation?
Iridian waited, then waited some more, but Jessica just kept standing there. Finally, Iridian rolled onto her side, burrowing her face into the cushions of the couch.
“You can’t stay down here forever, you know,” Jessica said.
“I can try!” Iridian shouted.
If she closed her eyes and thought about it really, really hard, she could feel the fibers of the cheap, scratchy couch and those of the cheap, scratchy crocheted blanket weaving together with the hairs of her arms and unshaved legs. Those fibers poked into the skin of Iridian’s face, trapping her there, pincushion-style. She would become the furniture. The furniture would become her.
Iridian had been downstairs for two days now, camped out on the couch. This was her haunted life. She slept whenever—it didn’t necessarily have to be night. When the seemingly never-ending storms weren’t causing the power to blink out, she’d watch the channel on satellite that showed only soap operas, one episode after the other after the other. She was vaguely aware of her dad and her sisters coming and going, passing behind the couch on their way to and from the front door and the kitchen. Jessica was going to work or to John’s. Rosa was going to church or to look for her hyena. Rafe was maybe going to work, maybe going to the bar, maybe going to sad Norma Galván’s house a couple of blocks away.
Iridian hadn’t changed her clothes. She hadn’t taken a shower. Eventually, Rosa had warmed Iridian a can of tomato soup and brought down a toothbrush and some toothpaste from upstairs.
Iridian mourned the absence of her books. She’d find herself reaching for them, involuntarily. She missed the feeling of paper against her fingers. The loss was painful. The pain wasn’t in her heart, but in her throat, where words come from.
“I keep waiting for something else to happen,” Iridian said. “Every little sound makes me want to jump out of my skin.” She paused. “Have you seen anything?”