A low, thudding bassline of shouts meant I should try to go back to sleep.
The shrill wail of my mother passionately defending herself meant I should try to stop Dane from getting involved because one or the both of my parents might turn their anger on him.
My mother was known to hit as well, pretty yet mean as a rattlesnake when she went up against Ignacio.
That night the house filled with static, the air buzzing, thick and hot with summer heat and deep, vibrating anger.
“You’re a filthy cunt, you know that, Ellie?” Ignacio demanded coldly. “Only a fuckin’ bitch would sleep with a man for money.”
“It wasn’t for money,” she shrieked. “It was for one ounce of affection! When was the last time you touched me?”
“When was the last time you deserved it, hmm? When was the last time you made dinner for the family? The last time you played with Lila or even asked Dane how he’s been doing?”
I could hear them as clear as if they were in my cramped bedroom at the back of the bungalow with me, and no amount of layering my pillow, blanket, and stuffed rabbit over my head would muffle their fury.
“You sleep around like a goddamn whore,” Ignacio fumed. “And what do I do? I fucking let you because hey, I don’t wanna touch that snatch, and it keeps you away from the house, away from our kids, so I’m fine with it. What I am not fine with, puta, is you selling information about my fucking business.”
“You’re scum,” Mamá screamed, high and shrill like the whistle of our rusting tea kettle. “You’re fucking scum, and you think you’re king of this place, but you know what you are? You are king of shit all, Ignacio. Shit all!”
There was a whoomphing thump, and I winced in bed, wishing more than anything that Dane was there to comfort me.
But he wasn’t.
It was a Thursday, and on Thursdays, Dane snuck out to see his secret girlfriend, Anne Munn.
So I was alone amid the wilting blooms in my bedroom, the air hot and stale because it was mid-summer and so hot the Okanogan Valley was alive with wildfires. I was sweating, so thirsty my tongue peeled like Velcro off the roof of my mouth, but I didn’t dare to venture to the kitchen for water.
That was their battleground.
I curled tighter beneath my blanket, listing off flower varieties in my head to distract myself from the chaos in the kitchen.
I always started with sunflowers because they were my favourite, their bright, smiling faces such a marvelous contrast to the grit and grime of my reality.
Little Becka, Soraya, American Giant.
“I’ll take the kids and run!” Mamá screamed over the clang of falling pans.
“Over my dead fucking body,” Ignacio roared.
Pacino, Zohar, Baby Bear, and Elegance.
“You can’t keep an eye on them all day long, Ignacio, and I swear, I’m taking them with me.”
“No one takes my kids. You think they’d wanna go with you anyway? You’re practically a stranger to them, Ellie. They’d be more likely to go with the fucking ice cream truck driver.”
A female war cry and then a series of thumps.
Mamá always ended up hitting Ignacio when she was in a rage.
Bashful, Frilly, Suntastic Yellow.
“I’m taking them, I’m taking them, I’m taking them––” Mamá chanted, high and clanging, an alarm I wished I could shut off.
There was a sharp rap against my bedroom window that startled me so badly it broke the seal on my lips and a bright, high sob burst through. I peered under my blanket through the low light at the window, heart beating so hard in my chest it felt like a hammer strike.
Some of Ignacio’s friends had come by before and peered through the window after a deal or on their way to the back porch where Papá held court. Luckily, they hadn’t done anything but look and leave streaks of greasy fingermarks against the window pane.
It wasn’t one of Ignacio’s friends there now.
It was mine.
Jonathon’s face was cut into harsh angles by the grimy yellow light of the street lamps, but I recognized him in the dark, even in the midst of my own personal hell.
It wasn’t strange to find him at my window either.
He was an insomniac, which he’d told me meant he couldn’t sleep. Embarrassingly, I’d followed that up by asking if he was a vampire.
He hadn’t laughed in a mean way, which was one of the many reasons I loved him. He never made fun of people who were inferior to him in any way. He was more handsome, funnier, and more charismatic at seventeen years old than most people ever were, but he was also kind, his endearing smile authentic.
It wasn’t until a few years later that the smile I’d once loved turned brittle at the corners and cracked like an ill-fitting mask.
But right then, in the midst of my terror, I’d never seen anything so lovely as Jonathon Booth’s smile through the yellow glint of the window pane.
He jerked his chin at me then worked his fingers under the ledge to jimmy the window up its tacky seams.
“Come here,” he whispered, his hand snaking through the gap, fingers unfurled, a pen drawn image of a lotus flower in the center of his palm. “You come stay with me tonight.”
I bit my lip as there was a crash of breaking porcelain in the kitchen. Sometimes, when Dane wasn’t home, I thought Jonathon made a special effort to check in on me. And sometimes, if I needed him, he would arrive at the window and pull me free of the stinking wrath boiling up the walls of my house before it could scald me.
But sometimes, when I was too terrified to leave Mamá alone with Ignacio or Ignacio alone with Mamá, worried their fury would raze the house to the ground, I begged Jonathon to stay.
I unpeeled my sticky tongue from the roof of my mouth to do just that when he sighed gustily and heaved the window open even farther so he could swing himself through it. He landed nimbly on his scuffed black converse and made his way to my bed. When he sat, I felt the ugliness in my chest, the knotted mass of emotions residing there, loosen.
He smelled like tobacco and something spicy that itched my nose in a good way.
Instantly, my hand snapped out of the covers to clutch at his.
His wavy hair fell across his brow as he stared down at our cinched hands, and for one moment, almost scarier than the minutes before that, I was worried he’d reject me.
But then he gave my small hand a firm squeeze and tipped his chin up so I could see the depthless brown of his shadowed eyes.
“I’ll stay ’til Dane gets back, yeah?” he whispered.
I nodded, scooting back on the bed so that he would have some room to lay beside me on the lumpy mattress. He hesitated for a second before swinging his shoes up on the covers as he settled on his back.
I closed my eyes and dragged a deep lungful of his familiar scent. His big body was effectively between me and the door, me and my fighting parents, me and the raw brutality of my life. Tucked away in the floral, humid air of my bedroom amid the pots and plants, rucked up against the wall with a boy I trusted almost as much as my brother, I finally let myself relax.
We were quiet for a long time, long enough for the fight to die down, the front door to slam as one of my parents left in a huff, and silence to descend.
I thought maybe Jonathon was asleep until he shifted his head on my purple pillow and looked at me with wide, alert eyes.