A Drought of Rainfall

It was the heat of that summer that finally pushed us to the ground, like a muscular hand on the back of the neck. To spite the heat, I found my word in an American romance paperback and threw it around everywhere. Sultry. Late into the night, sewing slits into my skirts and wearing my blouses unbuttoned to here, I said let everyone else sit in the sun like frogs, desperate and beaten, clustered around a pair of dusty slipper shoes, left pigeon-toed in the gutter like someone had just been lifted out of them and carried away.

Not me. I painted my mouth with melted lipstick, dug out of the tube with my finger, and at work, I was the only one who still wore my hair down. Its' weight reminded me I was a hero.

There was no rest from the heat and no place to run to. People had stopped talking about it, but innocent conversations about management at the plant or the price of things erupted into a couple of knifings and a serious cat fight between Mrs. Sanchez and Julio Ramirez' mother, who is about sixty-seven and has four chins. Behind them, tick ticked the mercury needle on the video store thermometer.

I was young but thought I'd already seen so much. People here died from pride more often than in other places. Or at least that's what they said. I think they were scared to shit, watching their spirits fall into a pothole, lost. You never saw rich gringos going around stabbing one another to prove how proud they were. Mama told me and my baby brother, Jimmy, all the time with her voice nearly choking her, how she worked damn hard to get us here, that she had to sacrifice everything.

I could see Mexico if I sat on the roof, across the barbed wire fences and junkyard cars, flat houses with steaming corrugated metal roofs and bleached clothes on the line. But it wasn't so different from here except that people on this side were trying so hard to be 'somebody', with their new baby strollers and stucco houses built in tracts. Here in the American dream barrio. Where the same sun as three miles south was still doing its best to bake us all into beef jerky.

In the beginning, we were just coping, but after a while I could see everyone here in some way was sweating away their shells, and the real thing that each of us is, was becoming apparent.

*

Every late afternoon, Jimmy sat at the kitchen table learning his vocabulary. Rubbing one finger slowly over and over the center of his forehead, tracing the hairline crease across his temples.

I explained to him as I poured his milk that six-year-olds don't need to worry so much. He looked at me with no expression, which made me think he hated me every time. 'You love me, Jimmy honey, honey, don't you? You do,' I whispered my little sing-song into his hair, picking up his tiny, limp hand and clutching it tight to my breast. I wanted him to feel how my heart beat only to love him. 'The world will try everything it can to suck us dry, Jimmy', I said, squeezing his hand harder. He began to squirm.

'You're gonna make me miss my show.'

'That's ok, Jimmy. We're being together.'

'No. I can't miss my show.' He tried to pull away and run for the TV where his precious white teenagers swished and contorted on American Bandstand, but I tightened my grip around his small, fragile bones. I would always be here for him, I would teach him things about the world, vocabulary so he could go to college. I taught him how I liked the big words. A long time ago, a boy from near San Diego had said some to me. Right into my face. Nobody ever looked me right into the face. That's how I'd known they meant something good. Something beautiful and important. He'd worked in an insurance firm and wore colored button-up shirts with white pointed collars.

But that was a long time ago.

Baby-fine hairs were matted to Jimmy's flushed forehead and I pushed them away. I was teaching him times tables, too. Doing my best to avoid thinking about work, about how by then all the sunbaked builders and malnourished sales agents had finished for the day and were out on the street, some heading toward the Circle K to get 40s, some still stunned from the air conditioning, standing around lighting cigarettes. They were hoisting briefcases, leather and canvas, onto their shoulders in the parking lot, grimacing as they tucked their ties or grimy wife-beater bottoms beneath the door handles, flipping the radio to everyone's favorite big-breasted, ex-porn star turned news anchorwoman for the long drive home.

Manuel was going to fire me anyway. I could practically hear everyone laughing. In their offices and slacks and fake leather loafers, they were all still vatos, gangsters wearing ties and cellular phone caddies on their belts who didn't give a shit about anybody. I told him what happened wasn't my fault. That he should talk to Alvarez. Then Manuel called me names I wouldn't say in front of my mother and told me to get back to the loading dock and quit wasting company time, 'disrupting the office', he said. I thought I'd be cool and try and forget it ever happened, but the air was hanging thick with whispers.

I'd also lost three buttons on my good blouse and my wrist stung from where it had banged over and over evenly like music against the A-F filing cabinet drawer handle.

So I said I had a headache after lunch and left. I walked the whole way.

I didn't get this new attitude of theirs at all. Back home in Mexico, most of us had grown up together. When they slicked their hair and stole vats of colored syrup from the ice man. But, oh, hadn't they all become `big American-man-businessman´. In the city, making money, working deals. No one came by anymore. Except to say how they couldn't stay and drive off, spinning dust. They made up some shit like someone'd lift their rims or steal the whole shiny thing with its leases and warranties and fancy silver detailing. If they visited their Mama, right in front of her house, it'd be four fast seconds before someone'd take the vato's wheels. So they didn't come. We all knew how it worked. Know what I said? I said take the fucking bus, she's your Mama.

But what did I know. My Mama was sitting wide-legged at the kitchen table wheezing out her nose and working her way through a tall plate of fried tortillas, tearing them into long strips, tiny drops of yellow oil raining down.

I once begged Mama, 'Eat some vegetables.' 'Vegetables are poison,' she said, hunched over the frying pan. Splatters of hot oil hit her forearms as she braced her girth against the counter and I didn't see her flinch. Not once.

I had visions where she ate herself into a fat red balloon and I turned into a sharp silver pin and one day I pricked her and she flew out, out into the sky and never came home. 'Men like a girl with some meat on her' she tried to tell me. Her body smelled stronger and stronger of rancid oil, like her body wasn't able to digest it as fast as it went in. With every new plate of food, came the rhythmic wheezing followed by the slurping of her coffee, tongue slapping against the plastic of the extra-large 7-11 sipper as it licked its way around the rim. Her tongue was nothing like the rest of her, agile like a monkey's tail, and she found lots of uses for it, like wagging it at me and Jimmy to go get her something, to do better in school, that our father, who went out to buy a case of beer fourteen years ago, was a hijo de puta madre and her life was much better since he'd gone.

When she slept she couldn't eat and snored with her mouth yawn-wide from before her eyes finished closing to when her fingers curled around her coffee cup, ready to begin the next day.

Deep blue-moon crescents had become obvious beneath Jimmy's eyes. He was exhausted from sleeping with Mama. I think the noise finally got to him, because he went to her seat on the porch carrying his feety pajamas in one hand and his favorite Snoopy pillow in the other and with complete seriousness, explained how he'd need to sleep in the bathtub. 'See, Mamita, that's the contestants' waiting room. After they finish dancing, the kids are always very sweaty. They have to go and get clean afterwards so they look nice again'.

I told him if he had a nightmare he could come up to my room. Or, maybe, I joked, he could find his own rhythm in her snoring to fall asleep to, like one of the sexy soft numbers from his shows.

'I'm sure the bathtub can't be that cozy,' I said, and grazed my hand over his shoulder. He looked at me with that empty face, staring with round brown eyes, cloudy and pond-bottom deep. He was a good little actor because I knew he loved it when I paid so much attention to him. 'Jimmy, you're not really mad at me. Come on.' His face didn't change, but then I reached out and tickled his stomach. He loved to have his stomach tickled and rubbed and he giggled every time. So I hugged him and tickled him and tickled him and tickled him. I could tell he liked it because his body always got all warm and wiggly like a puppy's. I knew he loved me then, loved me with all the passion and strength of his small heart, knew it beat to love me and that we were soul mates. But every time, after a few minutes, for no reason, he would stiffen up like burned grass.

This time I let him wrestle away and didn't follow him. I sat down in the orange plastic kitchen chair with a bowl of ice I'd chipped off the insides of the freezer and rubbed some on my wrists. The air was heavy and my body felt bent over and wilted. He ran off to his precious TV in the family room, forever lit up with shadows of little dance contestant Jimmy, either twisting his heart out or sitting still like a small mushroom only a boy's arm's length from the flickering lights. He never missed the Dick Clark or Soul Train reruns, and unless he'd danced hard enough to jiggle out the wire antennae, within seconds, could lose himself completely in the world of lanky, long-haired kids with symmetrical ear to ear teeth.

I often caught him tracing their shapes with his finger when he thought he was alone. I tried to understand. We were always being so close when he pushed me away and ran for the TV. For the last few weeks, the picture hadn't even been working. It just rolled and rolled.

My ice melted onto the table. I left the puddle, sat next to him on the floor and taught him the word for what the wavy lines on the TV were doing. Undulate. He chewed his fingernails and craned his head around me to look at the screen, so I jumped up and showed him the way I roll my belly when I go dancing. 'A couple of these, a bra-top and a skirt down on my hips can get me free drinks all night', I revealed to him with a whisper. Since he gave my brown stomach a half-interested glance, I did a couple more figure eights for good measure, grabbed a handful of ice from the bowl, then flopped down on the couch.

'You want some ice, too?'

'Nah'. His eyes were glued to the fuzzy screen. He was squinting and I swear those wrinkles were starting up again.

'Hey, old man. Watch it. Your face is gonna freeze that way.' His T-shirt stripes were clinging to him. He was moist, fever moist and strings of his wet hair stuck out at awkward angles. He looked ragged, like he had no family.

I licked the smooth place on my wrist where the ice had melted, catching the water drops as they slid to the edge and dripped off onto my legs. He was watching me.

'You want to go outside? We can sit on the curb, or you could play with the other kids. I'll bring some more of these if you want.' I hopped up to the table, grabbed more ice, and fanned my face with another fistful of the dripping chips. He turned away. The cool air felt nice, but it smelled exactly like the air seeping in from outside. Like sweating garbage, jasmine, burning rubber. Despite the plant closing down after it hit 105, the smell still hung low over the close-set streets.

I went to him and wound my fingers in his hair. I held the fistful tight. 'We can play boyfriend and girlfriend. You can pretend you are in love with me and you think I'm beautiful and that you'll never leave me.' I was staring out the window, not seeing anything. I tugged. 'Come on, old man. It'll be nice. You're done with your homework, aren't you?'

'Ok.' He got up slowly, deep red marks from his gnawed and jagged fingernails raking up the skin of his little brown legs. He was looking at something. I bent at the waist to be in his face, but he shrugged me back, looking annoyed and around my head at the TV with the fuzzy picture.

*

In the middle of the night, I found myself in the kitchen. Hungry, very hungry. But not in the stomach. I dumped cereal into a plastic gas station cup. The metal spoon scraping against it left a chalky sound in my head. I tried the other room but the smell had gotten worse. It wasn't fair. Night was supposed to be still, a time when the world could get some rest, and us, too. But there were so many thoughts were trapping me in a tormented half-sleep, arms locked, jaw tight, moisture drops gathered on my chest, trickling between the tiny hairs the way a pinball maneuvers around alighted bumpers. Ping, ping, brrriiinnnnggg. Some rolled down my stomach and when I awakened and unclenched my fists, I scratched and flicked at them as if bugs were walking across my skin. I couldn't seem to remember from one hour to the next that it wasn't that at all.

*

I sat with Jimmy on the edge of the sidewalk with my head between my knees, while he scraped at the dusty gutter with a broken stick, making patterns and pictures in the dirt. He drew the sun, the moon and a sad face. I pointed to the face and asked him if that was supposed to be his face. He sighed for what seemed a long time for a kid to sigh, and without saying why, scratched it out with the blunt end of the stick.

Juanito came out of his house next door and offered me a cigarette. He walked with his hips swinging forward, and when he pulled the Marlboro box from his back pants pocket, his silver sunglasses clattered to the ground. He walked three slow steps before turning around on the ball of one bare foot to stroll back and pick them up. This was strange because Juanito always moved with intentions, fast and purposeful, transitioning cleanly from one position to another like a seasoned break dancer. It was also unusual to see him alone with his eyes just sort of sitting in his head, not roving around to scope out the short-skirted chicas. Since we moved here, when I was twelve or so, he'd had a non-stop string of girls at his hip. Even when we were still kids and I had little birthday parties, he'd have his nose resting on the brick wall between our houses, following all my friends' silhouettes through their thin summer dresses, while they were hitting the piñata and making Froot Loop necklaces on strings of licorice.

'Jimmy, lover, come over here.' I tried to sound inviting, delicious. My brother had wandered down the gutter's length, poking and scraping at the garbage, the dry and crumpled leaves of crisp paper. His legs were ribboned with fingernail scratches. He threw down the stick and came to sit with me. The outsides of our knees touched. Lightly. I snuck a look at Juanito but he had already sauntered back towards his house.

'Jimmy, you tired?' I asked.

'Nope.'

'Hungry?' I knew the answer to that. Nobody was hungry. I couldn't force myself to put food into my mouth because lately I was feeling sick all the time. Maybe it was from watching Mama railroad tortillas into her face, lined with grease. But oddly, my stomach protruded from between my sharp hips, bloated and heavy. I figured the pressure of the earth was filling me up. I looked at my belly, pushing at itself with unrest.

'Maybe.'

'I could make you a sandwich.'

'No.'

'What do you want?'

'Dunno.'

'Did you finish your homework?'

'Yup.'

He was lying. But I wanted his company more than I cared that he'd be busted at school the next day. He smelled like burned dust.

'Want a hug?' I tried to wrest his shoulders from their drawn place on his body and clutch them to mine. Touching collarbones. The grinding was uncomfortable but soothing.

'Let me go. You're hurting me.' He struggled to his feet and looked away.

'You're right, honey. It's too hot for hugs.'

*

That night, I lay in my thin bed with a T-shirt pooled up around my neck, underwear next to the pillow. Thinking about the weary man from the back booth at Angel's who'd smoothed his hand over my hair. He had smoked through an entire pack of cigarettes by lighting a fresh one off the one he was finishing and drank coffee from the urn the waitress had left on his table. His eyes were the color of night water and he'd had no scent. Even his breath. I could've been anybody, he'd made that clear. He bought me drinks. I let him feel my legs. When his hand finally worked its way upward and bumped my stomach, he narrowed his eyes into slits, then scooted out of the booth, muttering something about making a phone call.

The sweat on my hand smelled like onions, making my stomach shiver. I watched the black ceiling with heavy, almost visible air snaking across the beams, slithering down to the floorboards, closing in. It was taking away my breath, replacing it with shallow puffs that sounded loud and hoarse, suffocating me. Just like Mama. I brushed my hand over my bare, perspiring stomach, then sat upright.

The plastic tiered blinds folded up into an accordion at the kitchen window tapped at the pane. Tap, tap, tap. But I couldn't hear any wind. There were no night birds. No other sound. The white moon, fluorescent white, stared in at me through the window above my bed, open to the night, letting in the cruel, thick air. I held my hands out in front of myself in the darkness.

Someone walking by picked up a piece of loose tin siding from a nearby house and began banging it at uneven intervals against a chain-link fence. A woman very far away hollered for her kids to get in there. My mother snored in short gasps and Jimmy wrestled his pillow. My body took in everything and pulsed softly.

I lay back, pushed off the damp sheet and spread my legs wide. The moon sat almost directly above me, almost on top of me. It was full and I pulled my shirt up again to feel it on my skin.

I ached to feel something gentle touching me. Could I pretend to think about Steven from the sales department, and his day-old Old Spice or slender Matthew in Personnel with the wan blue eyes and skin soft like new pillowcase fuzz, and remember how it happened differently? I was smart, I could create new pictures to replace the real ones. I had waited for each of them after work, tried to be alluring and smart, but after a couple of times, both faded away without saying why.

I knew it was my fault, so I vowed to wear my skirts shorter, hemming them with a flashlight between my knees in my room at night, and extra perfume behind my ears. My supervisor relocated me to the storage dock office where I had to work with donut-waisted Mabel who talked without stopping for breath about her brother's family in Mexico City and Earl who was blind in one eye and stooped from age. But at lunch, I walked through the yard with my hips swinging and my shirt wide at the neck. As soon as I came through, their heatstroke mouths, silent before, began talking it up among themselves, not looking at me, not at my face, even when I called out to them by name to say hi.

I just needed more time, I knew I could make them realize what they were missing.

I licked my finger, leaving a thick drop of saliva on the tip and touched myself with it. Water was coming out of my eyes, streaming in gentle rivers down my face, dampening the pillow. Lightning currents had begun flashing irregularly, and with this, the moon quietly disappeared behind a swirl of thick clouds.

I waited. There was no thunder. After a few minutes, I threw off the sheet and stalked out.

'Jimmy. Jimmy. Wake up.' I whispered in his ear. 'Let's go in the other room where it's cooler. I can't sleep.'

My fingers traced the lumps of spine down his little, warm back.

He let me wrap his limp arms around my neck. I hoisted him up and put my hands under his rear to clutch him to me. We walked slowly, slumbery, into the other room. The curtains tied with frayed pieces of yarn fluttered from the electricity.

I lay his body down on the couch. It shuddered under his weight, creaking at the places where the wood was wasting away. He immediately mashed his head into the scratchy fibers of the cushions. I lifted it and stuffed a pillow there. His thumb went immediately to his mouth. I slapped his hand away.

'No boyfriend of mine would be such a baby,' I said. He woke up then, staring at me without saying anything, just looking at me from under half-opened eyelids with the seeing part a little crossed, a little afraid.

'Why'd you do that?'

'You're too old to suck your thumb.'

'I seen you do it.'

'Shut up.'

'I did. On the bus. You was looking out the window. You do it all the time. And you're big.'

'Shut up.' I hit him in the mouth, knuckling the back of my hand, the bony part, against his teeth. He didn't cry until I shoved his lifted head back into the cushions so we could sleep. He struggled to move as close against the fabric, away from me, as possible.

'Did not.' I muttered this into the back of his folded, wet neck. 'Did not.'

We stayed like that, spooned with his little body tucked into mine, sweating through our clothes far into the night. The dark was fat with anger, swelling up, ready to burst. The lightning was dancing, swarming all around. So much electricity scratching through the air, and still no thunder. Nothing but the sharp electrical crackles and then silence.

I kept awake, counting after each flash, waiting to see how close the storm was.

'Jimmy. Jimmy. Look.'

He was asleep. I shook him by the shoulder, hard. Then I touched his little foot. His eyebrow flickered. I put my hand into the back flap of his pajamas to feel his soft skin. His muscle tightened.

'Don't,' he whispered, and tried to get up. I pushed him back down and held him there.

*

The next morning, I found a dead bird with its head wedged between the bars of the sewage gutter, as if gasping for cool air beneath the asphalt. All around the grating, flecks of gold ore in the street shimmered and shone in the fierce dawn.

Fools gold, they call it.

*

My stomach stretched beyond patience, continued to grow, so much it began to drag me forward. I flicked the skin where it was tight, and when my hips moved, they took the mass with it. I clung to defiance, and told myself I would stretch until I could not stretch anymore. I had come too far and refused to give in.

Dogs lapped and lapped at parched rain drains. At the edge of the horizon, the wavy lines never revealed an oasis and despite wiggling with promises, filling us with hope, they served only to smear time and reason, pulsing like a quick, irregular heartbeat. Through these, I saw myself in fast motion from the outside, as if through the window of a film projector whirring on "forward", desperately trying to stay in control, snipping and tucking my clothes, walking with my ass held out, and gyrating for Jimmy, who looked anywhere but at me.

*

Juanito came by the house again, cigarette hanging out of his lips. It was unlit, and bounced with each step. He walked with his shoulders pressed together in front of him to make him look tough and muscular, but he actually looked shorter, though I wasn't going to be the one to tell him that. I'd just given Jimmy a bath and left him in front of the TV with a bowl of dry cereal. Outside wasn't better than inside, or worse either, and I was sick of Jimmy's little temper tantrums even when I was doing something nice for him, so I'd brought an old Newsweek out to read on the curb. I was halfheartedly underlining words with a pencil, not really paying attention, sneaking looks at Juanito, who just stood there with a strange expression on his face, staring at me. The neck vein beneath his tattoo pulsed softly, rippling the scripted letters of his last girlfriend's first name.

'He ain't never going to come back for you, chica.' He spoke soft and fast, whipping his eyes away from my middle.

'Who are you talking about?' He was acting weird, as usual. 'Do you see my name anywhere on your body? I don't think so. My voice sounded whiny and unconvinced, so I pushed out my chin and narrowed my eyes into slivers. He kept standing there, not looking at me, rolling the cigarette around his mouth with his tongue.

'You don't know anything about me, vato.' He didn't respond. 'Are you going to smoke that, or lick it to death?'

'Nah. It's too hot. I can't.'

That was too much. A gangster with more scars than limbs and a jail record he was proud of, telling me he couldn't smoke. I refused to let myself think about how charming he looked, just standing there helpless with his hands jammed in his pockets.

Finally, he asked if he could sit with me. Politely. I didn't know what he wanted. He had never been kind to me or paid me much attention except for his usual rude remarks as he passed by.

I continued to flip through the magazine without looking. Each page fell like dead leaves. Juanito was sitting very close, our hips nearly touching. I tried to ignore the terrible lightning bolts scratching through my stomach and the heat from the concrete bleeding through my skin, but after a couple of minutes heavy with silence, I stood quickly and lost my balance. Juanito caught my arm, but didn't let go after I was standing fine. He was staring intently into my face. He had never looked into my face like this. No one did. I began to wiggle, then pretended to turn it into a dance step. Because he still didn't say anything, even though I didn't want to, I gave him a fast look like he was crazy and he let my arm go.

I started to walk slowly back toward the house. Juanito blurted out, not too loud, 'You look real pretty-'. The words trailed off at the end.

Just for a minute, a minute, I thought I could stay. Turn around and stay. I am an ugly girl. I have never been pretty, everybody knows that, especially Juanito. But I wanted to believe him. I have waited years to believe him. Even though deep down, I knew, just knew he was full of shit and if I bought it and turned around, he'd probably be doubled over and shaking, dehydrated tears crumbling onto the pavement like salt.

I kept walking, but wasn't sure to where.

*

'So, I see you've been lunching with your Mamita a lot lately, Rosalita.'

It was afternoon again.

Soledad's perfect and gardenia-scented cleavage thrust itself in my face. The bus doors clacked shut behind me and we lurched forward.

'Hi Sole.'

Every seat was taken. I grabbed onto the metal bar.

Her eyes clamped onto my middle, then slid like an oil spill over the rest of me. Rita and Natalia like back-up singers, tittered from the corner. Rita tangled her acrylic fingernails in the three gold necklaces dipping down her v-neck as she leaned over and whispered something to Natalia.

Sole tossed her ponytail. 'We three aren't working today, I'm just going over to pick up something for Roberto. He says you haven't been at work lately.' She made a placid attempt at hiding a smile.

'I haven't worked there in months,' I mumbled.

'Really! That's terrible! I know how much you liked working there. Roberto used to tell me all the time, 'that Rosalie, she just works it'. I mean, Rosalie, come on. How could you quit? It was a perfect job. A construction site company. All those big, sweaty men.' She widened her perfectly circular eyes and leaned back a little. Rita and Natalia exploded into snorts. Their fangs were showing.

I lowered my head further. My eyes grew red hot and glazed with fumes and fire. The old cotton flower shirt I wore hung low in front and all of my baggy skin and scrawny bones collectively sagged into my bulge, happily sucking what was left of the life right out of me. If I'd had the strength, I would have punched the puta in her gold-plaited teeth.

I couldn't see my shoes.

*

'Where's Matthew?'

'I'm not sure, I don't really know.' The old woman had a weird smile on her face. I could tell she was lying. 'Who are you, dear?'

'I'm, I'm just someone from work. A friend.'

She squinted one eye to look at me better. I had on a white tank top, a black string bikini beneath that and a black miniskirt with lines around the perimeter of the bottom where I'd hemmed it shorter three times. High heels. A necklace. Pink, frosted lipstick. My stomach had led me to Matthew's house, to the address I'd once filched from his file at work. Sweet Matthew, so soft-spoken and kind. He was working very hard to become manager and didn't have any extra time for a girlfriend. I understood this.

'You his mother?'

'Grandmother, dear. Would you wait here just a minute?' She shut the door halfway and shuffled down the foyer in her house slippers. I heard muffled, arguing voices. Several minutes went by before Matthew opened the door. His lithe body was sticking out of a large T-shirt and Bermuda shorts.

'Uh, Rosalie, what are you doing here?' His voice was higher than I'd remembered. His eyes went directly to my stomach.

I didn't bring up the trivialities. One date, a long time ago. 'Do you want to go out?' It didn't matter that his eyes hadn't left my middle since I'd arrived. It didn't matter.

He scratched the back of his head. 'No thanks, but, well, don't you remember how I said, well, I said I was sorry, but it wasn't going to work out?'

I didn't remember him saying that.

He sighed sort of helplessly, then smiled tightly at my belly. 'Anyway', he started to shut the door, 'it looks like you're doing just fine without me.'

He was disappearing. I stuck my hand out.

'Please, Matthew. We can just go for a drink. Or a walk, or something, I don't care. I don't live far, I can get myself home. You won't have to worry about that.'

'Forget it, ok? I think you've got other problems to worry about.' His face was turning sour.

I began to cry. Tears rolled down my hot face, I jabbed at them, smearing lipstick into my cheek. 'Please, don't. Don't go. Please. Can you just look at me? Please?' He looked panicked and glanced around at the quiet homes, the two-car, whitewashed garages draped in fuchsia bougainvillea. 'Hey, Rosalie, don't do this to yourself.' He sounded sorry. 'Get some help, all right? God, if not for yourself--'

He shut the door.

The air lay heavy and grass green sweet. Heavy enough to stuff in my mouth like Mama, to pack like cotton around my chest. I sat on his doorstep with my legs spread, my sharp, dry bones digging into the imitation lawn mat. I made a beautiful ballerina's arc with my arm, fisted at the hand and brought it down, down hard on my stomach. All that had dammed within me for so long finally burst, watering the begonias, the quiet homes, and the bougainvillea-draped garages, raining down, down.

I stayed until a police car came and waited patiently in the street. I got up and walked away, barely able to see where I was going.

The roads were muddy and filled with puddles by the time I made it home.