“Mama?” Her older daughter, Valeria, stood at the screen door that led into the kitchen. “Can I have some marshmallows?”
Sofia squinted at Val. The girl was eleven years old and obsessed with chemical reactions, so there was plenty of reason to suspect that Val was not going to eat the marshmallows that she’d just requested. More than likely the final result would involve a sticky mess on the floor of her bedroom or a plume of smoke coming out the window.
“What are you going to do with them?” Sofia asked.
“Um,” Val said, the toe of her sock tracing a pattern on the floor. “Just, you know, some experiments.”
“Experiments,” Sofia said flatly. “Do these experiments involve fire?”
“Um,” Val said again.
From inside the house Sofia heard her other daughter, Camila, arguing with her cousin Daniel. They were both eight years old and always seemed to want the same thing at the same time.
“Go and see what the problem is this time,” Sofia said, turning back to her sheets.
“The marshmallows . . .” Val said.
“When I’m done you can tell me exactly what you want to do with them and then I will decide,” Sofia said.
Val sighed and went to separate her sister and cousin.
Sofia liked to encourage Val’s interest in science, but she didn’t like worrying that Val was going to burn the house down. She wished there was someplace she could send Val where she could safely perform whatever experiments she liked, preferably under the supervision of someone with a chemistry degree.
But there wasn’t anywhere like that in Smiths Hollow. In Chicago, maybe, but they’d moved here from Chicago so everyone could have a better life, and that meant that Valeria could observe chemical reactions outside in a backyard rather than in their cramped two-bedroom apartment in the city.
Despite what the Old Bigot across the street thought, neither Sofia nor her husband Alejandro nor Alejandro’s brother Eduardo nor his wife Beatriz had been born in Mexico. They were all U.S. citizens, born and bred, and their parents had immigrated legally.
And I’ll never tell her that, either. Let her think what she wants about us.
Alejandro had served for ten years in the Chicago Police Department, while Sofia and Eduardo and Beatriz had all worked at the Nabisco cookie factory on the southwest side. Eduardo and Beatriz and Daniel had lived across the hall from Sofia and Alejandro in the same apartment building in the Blue Island neighborhood, and they’d all taken different shifts so they could care for the children.
But all four of them always felt like they would never get ahead in the city, where rising costs made it difficult to even think about buying a house. Even with all seven of them living in this house in Smiths Hollow, they still had more room than any of them had ever had in Chicago. Just having separate bedrooms for Camila and Valeria had saved Sofia’s sanity, which had been on the verge of cracking if she heard one more argument about “her stuff is on my side of the room.”
Most of the neighbors were friendly and welcoming, and the Lopez families quickly found their place in their new home. Beatriz and Eduardo got better-paying jobs at the chili factory, and Alejandro had no trouble joining the tiny police force. Most days he was able to come home for lunch and he was never late for dinner because, as he put it, “There’s really nothing resembling crime in this town.” The dark circles that he’d always had under his eyes in Chicago from working shifts that never ended cleared up. And Sofia was able to stay home with all the children because her income was no longer vital.
There was the Old Bigot across the street, Sofia conceded, as she hung up the last of the sheets. Mrs. Schneider was always peering through her curtains at them like she thought Sofia couldn’t see her. Whenever the Old Bigot went to the end of her driveway to get the mail she’d glare at the Lopez house like she thought one of them had stolen her social security check.
When the screaming started Sofia at first thought that Daniel had hit Camila again. Even though he’d been told repeatedly that he wasn’t supposed to hit his cousin, their arguments usually seemed to devolve into smacking and punching if an adult wasn’t there to supervise them. Camila would hit back, too, but she was a pro at making it seem like Daniel was the only one at fault.
Her younger daughter was a born actress, and the slightest bump, bruise, or whack resulted in waterfalls of tears and the kind of melodramatic accusations that would be better suited to a Joan Crawford film—or rather, that movie about Joan Crawford, what was it called? There had been a lot of histrionics in that movie, and Camila seemed to be taking her cue from the same director. Sofia was immune to these performances, but Camila still managed to snow her father, who never believed that his little princess was exaggerating.
Sofia took one step toward the screen door, then stopped. The screaming wasn’t coming from inside the house but outside it. Had the kids gone out on the front lawn? Alejandro had left the sprinkler attached to the hose up there so they could play in the water on days like today, but Sofia hadn’t heard any of them turn the faucet on the side of the house.
Val came to the back door, eyes round, and Camila and Daniel crowded behind her. “What’s that?”
Sofia shook her head. “I thought it was you kids.”
As soon as she said it, she realized it was an idiotic thing to say. The noise wasn’t anything like the sounds the kids made, short bursts of raucous joy or just as raucous arguing. This scream was a long sustained thing, almost impossible in its breadth and length. How could one person scream for so long and never take a breath?
“Stay here,” Sofia said.
Camila immediately tried to push past Val to follow her mother—Camila had a nosy streak a mile wide—but Val snagged her around the waist before she could escape.
“Hey!” Camila said, and kicked her sister in the shin with the heel of her shoe.
“Ow!” Val shouted, dropping Camila to the ground.
Camila collapsed and immediately started howling like her ankle had broken upon landing.
“Enough,” Sofia said, slashing her hand through the air. Her mother’s tone was firm enough that Camila ceased the fake crying immediately and stared up at her in astonishment. “All of you will stay right here while I see what’s happening, and you will not put a toe outside unless you want to lose all your privileges for the rest of the summer.”
“Yes, Mama,” Val said.
“Yes, Mama,” Camila repeated.
“Yes, Aunt Sofia,” Daniel added.
“I will be back,” she said. “If I’m gone more than fifteen minutes, call Papa at the police station.”
Val glanced over her shoulder at the clock, starting the countdown from that moment.