I closed the paper and handed it to Walter.
A few days later, we lost our phone line.
We didn’t miss it. Sometimes I thought there was nothing we missed anymore, that we could adapt to anything so long as we, my brother and me, were together.
We didn’t miss the phone ’cause we hardly ever called anybody and hardly anybody ever called us. Our friends just dropped in; the rest steered clear. The week after we got the package, the phone rang a lot. Whenever one of us answered, a voice said:
“You’re gonna scream, bitch.”
My brother got sick of it and cut the line with a knife. Ta-da, no more phone.
For the first few days, my brother skipped work and stayed with me.
Which was even worse.
Walter was leery of cell phones, the front door, the cars that rolled past, even the handful of zombies that crept up our block after a night out. Everything was on lockdown. Us and the house, in the dark all day long.
I wanted Hernán to come by. Whenever he did, Walter stood his ground and didn’t let us get a word in without him listening. So Hernán would just eat and drink a bunch of crap and come up with an excuse to leave.
One afternoon, you could slice the air with a knife. I opened the door and sat on the floor without venturing out. Walter said nothing.
As a storm brewed outside, I started to cry. My brother sat beside me. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d watched the rain together, if that was something we ever did. I looked up at the sky, then at the droplets battering our land. It was like the rain swept everything away.
The next day was a Friday and the night was thick with kids.
Hernán came through early. He was twitchy. I don’t think he could put up with my brother anymore either, which was painful to watch. I wanted them to stay friends.
As the boys trickled in, my brother went back to his usual self.
And for a few hours, the rest of the world melted away.
We played like we used to when we were little kids, unworried, wanting only to win.
Then, around one, a boy came through. Said there was a car parked by the gate. I thought Walter would tell us to stay put, indoors, locked up, but he and Hernán wanted to check it out right away, like they’d agreed on it beforehand. The rest of us abandoned the PlayStation, walked out of the room, followed them to the door. Not two minutes passed before we heard screaming. We couldn’t see anything, so we all stepped outside.
“No, not you,” my brother yelled as soon as he saw me. “Back inside.”
Till that moment I’d had eyes only for him and Hernán. Then I turned my head and glimpsed the car. That’s when I saw the guy. It was dark out and he wasn’t in green coveralls, but it was him. His eyes. Though his son couldn’t follow or focus his eyes on anything for more than thirty seconds, the father’s eyes could pierce bodies. Fear enveloped me and left me frozen in the front yard of my house. I tried to go inside but couldn’t move.
How was I seeing him? I thought of the vision and wondered if I’d seen him with the same eyes that looked at him now or with some other part of my body.
Still staring, he turned on the engine and pulled out a gun. There was no time. All I knew was I didn’t want to watch him kill me. I turned around and heard gunshots, the revving car, and my breath, my furious heart, my body springing to life.
One of the bullets struck the water tank and water rained from the roof. My brother touched me. It was dark and we could barely see. I had the urge to hug him. Slowly, as if thawing out, we began to move.
I turned to face the street. The car was gone but I still wanted to have a look.
I don’t know if he was a bad shot or if he hadn’t wanted to kill us. Either way, he missed.
Walter was saying it’s all right, the guy’s gone, that he could remember the car and would go talk to the cops. He told me to stay inside, to play a game or listen to some music, that he’d take care of everything. Unlike my brother, Hernán was quiet and distant.
Walter led me inside by the arm. We saw a huge bullet hole over the doorway. Nobody breathed a word.
As the sun rose, I drifted off. I didn’t hear my brother leave, but we’d agreed he should file a report with the cuffs. Even if we didn’t like it one fucking bit.
I slept like in a coma and woke up late feeling like I’d been hit by a train. There was no water and my brother was asking his buddies to go to the junkyard with him for a new tank. They all said yeah, they’d help him buy it, bring it home, it was no bother. But when Walter asked them to keep me company—he didn’t want to leave me alone—they all went quiet. So my brother took a wad of cash out of his pocket and handed it to them, and they said they’d handle it, that’s what friends were for, they’d hit the junkyard and be back in no time. They’d help him change the tank too.
Once they had left, Walter looked at me and said:
“We’re on our own again, lil sis. Just the two of us. Can’t blame them.”
I was quiet. I didn’t expect anything from anyone either.
If it wasn’t their fault, whose was it? My body’s? I couldn’t change what my body saw.
I went to the bathroom and peed. Then I scrubbed my face, trying not to check my reflection in the mirror.
When I came out, it was just Walter and me. He put the kettle on. Tried to get us to buck up. We didn’t talk about it, but I knew he was right. We were alone because of what I saw.
Hernán had left in the morning. He didn’t even take his joystick. No kiss, no chau, nothing. As I smoked and stared out at the street, I knew I couldn’t expect his music to come back through that door.
Part Two
The sun dried everything that yesterday’s rain had turned to puddle and mud, wiping away the footprints of those who were gone: Mamá, our old man, Tía, Hernán, all of them leaving single file like those ants that, no matter how much you set them on fire, keep building their homes underground, where there’s no green nor sunshine and where Florensia’s flesh was turning to bone.
The grass was overrun with weeds. The bay laurel was out of control and grew wherever it pleased. A thousand seedlings that, struck by the sun, shot up and bent the wire around our land like cardboard.
Some plant or other had gotten stuck to the corrugated iron wall and rotted into a stain on the side of the house. Above, passionflower, like in the properties around the abandoned line. Once it blossomed, the flower buzzed with bees hypnotized by the cross at its center, by its dampness and gummy filaments.
If my hair keeps growing, I thought, I can become a wild and strong-legged plant too, daughter of the bay laurel.
No one had yanked me out in time; there I was now, on the stoop, hugging my legs.
Someone tossed a piece of paper over the property fence and I followed it with my eyes. They didn’t care to clap or call out, too scared to even say my name. The wind whipped the paper across the tall grass. “GOD LOVES YOU,” it read and I wished the wind would take it away from there, past the wire fence, which was as far as I went barefoot. There were no voices anymore to say: “Your feet are trailing muck.”
“You’ve got mud in your teeth and fingers,” said the mother of my classmate, Florencia, when she decided to stop letting her hang out with me.