“Your daughter provoked Mr. McGhee with callous and baseless accusations regarding, the, ah—” He coughs for a few seconds and I shake my head, biting back a grimace. He can’t even say it.
“I don’t give a damn what she did or didn’t say. I want a good reason why I shouldn’t sue your school for a callous and baseless assignment that triggered Sia’s PTSD.”
Mr. Savoy turns a deep shade of pink as my dad continues. “Do you routinely allow your teachers to interfere with the students’ psychological processing of traumatic events?”
Mr. Savoy is now shuffling papers like he’s looking for lost correspondence from the president.
I know people threaten to sue everyone all the time, but my dad has a lawyer and she’s totally sued the Caraway Police Department for racial profiling anyone who’s remotely brown with the hopes of deporting them. My dad’s been searched a dozen times for “papers” in the last two years alone, even though he was freaking born in Oklahoma. Plus, this town is so small, everyone knows he’s legal. Word got around about the lawsuit I guess, as it always does. And now he can get any petty man to tremble with the idea of their worst fear. Losing money.
“Let’s not get carried away, now,” Mr. Savoy says finally. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
6
“WHY’D YOU DO IT, M’IJA?” Dad won’t look at me. “Why’d you call him a murderer?”
I glance out the window of his Chevy at the sky, so blue and cloudless it looks like someone draped a silk up there. “Revenge.”
Dad sucks in a breath. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
When I glance at him, his eyes are closed. “Sia. We can’t hold onto anger, to hatred like this. It makes us no better than them.”
“Have you forgiven the sheriff, Dad?”
His eyes whip open and he stares at me for ten whole seconds. I can see myself in his pupils. The clench in my jaw. Finally, he blinks away and turns the car on.
Neither of us says anything on the way home.
7
IN THE END, I GET transferred to a new science and English class. Dad can’t get me out of a three-day suspension. It’s not fair the true villain, Jeremy, doesn’t have to deal with any punishment whatsoever. Just like his dad. But at least I don’t have to see his ugly pug face first thing in the morning anymore.
I hear Sheriff McGhee wants me kicked out. Not a surprise. He wants every brown person kicked out of everywhere.
8
MY GRANDMOTHER LIANA HERNAN TOLD me she sent spirits to help my mom survive the Sonoran. Up until the day she died, Abuela was convinced Mami was still out there. “Ponte una flor en tu cabello, Sia, your mamita might come back today.” And it didn’t matter what anyone told her. She said, “M’ija vive.” My daughter lives.
I can’t believe that anymore, but I’m just as superstitious as that viejita. Every new moon, I drive deep into the desert and light San Anthony’s y La Guadalupe’s candles for one hour, to guide Mom home. Abuela used to do it like clockwork. Moonwork, she’d call it, but now it’s up to me.
Sometimes Rose joins me, but tonight she’s at choir rehearsal. Tonight it’s me, Anthony, and la Madre, the blue-core flames, and a river of saguaros, tall, arms stretched like a welcome. Or like an attack.
Once I looked up what it’s like to bake to death in a desert. How in only a matter of weeks, someone goes from alive to half-eaten by birds and coyotes to bone, white and smooth against the taupe sand.
When I’m eighteen, I want to find my mother’s skeleton. I want to string it together and sing her alive, just like my grandmother said the first curanderas did, their clay skin still wet from the fog of God’s breath.
9
IT’S GETTING DARK. I PROMISED Dad I wouldn’t be out too late, so I snuff the candles with my fingertips and climb back into my rickety Jeep. As I turn the key, I stifle a gasp when headlights approach. They stop some thirty yards away.
I don’t know what to think. I’ve never seen anyone else here in my spot before, between the two cacti that look particularly humanoid. The ones my grandmother said might’ve created the world.
The car stops and its headlights shut off. I wait a few minutes and press the gas. Screw it. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but what could happen?
I gulp, thinking what Sheriff McGhee would do to me out here, too far away for anyone to see.
I know he didn’t pull the trigger on Mom. But I think he wouldn’t mind at all if my skeleton joined hers.
I drive by, slowly, and exhale long and thick when I see it’s just an old pickup truck, red and rusty. I can’t see who’s inside. I just make my way home.
10
NEW STUDENT ALERT, ROSE TEXTS the next day. I check my watch. She’s at lunch.
Guy or girl? I text back.
Guy. Very much.
I raise my eyebrows. So you like him?
I didn’t say that.
I chuckle. I can almost hear her, the playful tone in her voice.
Name?
Noah.
Noah what?
Dunno.
I wait a minute. You’re not gonna tell me how he looks?
Later. Gotta go. Class.
I roll my eyes and groan. Rose loves keeping things in suspense. I know she’s planning on giving me the details in person, stretching drop by teeny drop like coconut syrup. I sigh and toss the phone on my bed.
11
I’VE READ SOME OF THE house of the spirits by Isabel Allende (one of Mom’s books), had brunch, made tea, spent an hour scrolling aimlessly on social media, tossed dinner in the slow cooker, and organized our spice rack. I can’t believe I still have six hours before Dad gets home from work.
Even though it’s too damn hot to do anything outside but pant like a hare, I push my sunglasses on and wander into the light.
My abuela always had a reverence for maíz. She lined kernels on all her altars, small and dried like saved baby teeth. She said maíz es la madre, el padre, los hermanos y hermanas, y toda las familias. She said for all we knew, we came from pieces of corn at the beginning of everything. She spoke like that a lot, as if she wasn’t sure about some things, like whether or not it was okay to go to church while bleeding. Or whether we are the descendants of plants.
She grew corn every year, until she was too old and rickety. Then Mami grew it. And now they’re both gone, so I grow maíz. My corn patch is little, but it’s always stuffed with stalks. I plant too many kernels and I can’t bring myself to thin them out.
This year, I’m growing Oaxacan dent and a variety that’s so red it looks like blood. I planted marigolds between them, to attract pollinators that will cross the corn.
I want to make something new. Make something that will mean living here is less painful.
The stalks reach up and up like they see something out there I can’t, something they need to touch. I take a husk in my hand and give it a gentle squeeze. They’re already bigger this year than the last.
Feed them coffee. My grandmother’s voice is as thick and defined as the wind, and I roll my eyes. Always meddling, that vieja, even from the afterlife.