“I’m glad too.”
We held hands.
“I’m a proper Harlemite now.”
He laughed. “Close enough, sugar. We won’t ever leave.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Justine Larbalestier is an Australian-American author of eight novels, two anthologies and one scholarly work of nonfiction, many essays, blog and Instagram posts, tweets, and a handful of short stories. Her most well-known books are My Sister Rosa, Liar and the Zombies Versus Unicorns anthology which she edited with Holly Black.
You can find her on Instagram @DrJustineFancyPants.
FROM
GOLDEN STATE
Isabel Quintero
THE PART WHERE
MARLENE FIRST SPEAKS.
My father and tíos with bloody hands. That is the first memory I have access to. It was my birthday, and I was turning four. I remember a red dress, swollen with crinoline and satin, the kind my parents would have bought at the Chino swap meet on a Sunday after mass. The kind I would’ve begged for, because the shape of the dress made me feel like one of the dolls my dad was always bringing me from his long trips away from home. The hard plastic dolls with movable arms and legs, eyes that opened or shut depending on whether the little baby was lying down or up and about. About five feet from the bloody mess of a dead pig that my father and uncles were cutting through, I watched my tío Jorge carve a smile into the pig’s throat. A horrific version of the ones I’d seen spread on the faces of cartoon pigs. Pero la niña, my dad says looking worried. This is my first slaughter. ¡A la verga pariente! Si estuviéramos en el rancho ya nos estuviera ayudando, Tío Reynaldo, Marlene’s favorite tío (second cousin really) teases his youngest primo. But we are not on the rancho, we are in my backyard in Riverside. My legs were so slow to move that I believe I turned into one of those dolls my dad brought me. My once alive arms and legs froze in the upright position. I wasn’t able to look away. My large, unblinking, brown eyes opened wide enough to take in every inch of the butchering. That memory, that scene, now reminds me of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt—a careful dismembering of a life by hungry hands. A delicate procedure. But that’s a more recent connection. Before, I associated that memory only with the last squeal heard before the silence; before carnitas. Back when my tíos made clear their disappointment for the way their youngest brother was raising his American-born daughter—pobre y delicada.
THE PART WHERE THE NARRATOR TELLS
YOU A BIT ABOUT LA MARLENE,
THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THIS STORY.
The girl in this story does not speak Spanish very well. She doesn’t really speak it at all, but her tongue lolls its way over ñ and rrs, hoping to land on correct pronunciations. It dips its tip in accents twice removed. The girl in this story calls herself Mexican even though she was born in the United States. She calls herself Chicana. She calls herself American. She calls herself whatever she wants to, because she doesn’t believe in borders or other people naming her. The girl in this story is brown. Brown like her father. Arched eyebrows and freckles like her mom. Small brown eyes like the great-uncle she’s never met, whose voice she’s heard only on the telephone and through letters. The one who lives in a jacalito in a pueblo whose name her mouth trips over when she tries to pronounce it correctly. Her mom’s favorite uncle with the peacocks and incense. She has her grandmother’s thick brown hair and her great-grandmother’s sternness. She does not smile on command. Her grandmother didn’t, her mother doesn’t, and neither will she. The girl in this story could give a fuck what you think and less fucks about the labels you think she should adorn herself with. She doesn’t care if this makes you uncomfortable. She is not here to make you feel good.
THE PART WHERE THE NARRATOR
GIVES YOU A SYNOPSIS.
Marlene is about to embark on a journey. She has just found out that her father has another family he’s kept hidden—in the same damn state. The same fucking state, but up north. Can you believe that shit? Dude kept another entire family in Northern California.
Marlene didn’t know what made her look up her genealogy on one of those find-your-ancestors websites. But you know how sometimes you do things almost without thinking, because it’s like your subconscious is guiding you, leading you to some higher truth? Well, she was high, and luckily so, because when she saw that her father, Doroteo Hidalgo, was recently divorced and had a son, she felt the weight of everything on her shoulders. Had she not been high, she would’ve lost her goddamn mind. Marlene calls her carnala del alma, her good friend Loli, and says, Read this shit. Loli does. Both of them fall silent. You don’t say jack shit, because there are no fucking rules for this. But like I said, Marlene is about to embark on a journey to find her brother. She’s going on this trip with Memo, her best friend. Loli would be going too, except she’s too busy getting ready to move into her dorm in a college far, far three states over in Texas. Marlene has tried not to think about what Loli’s departure means for their friendship. She is not so naive as to think that it will stay the same, but how far apart they will drift is hard to predict. Besides Memo, Loli Williams has been her closest friend since first grade. But unlike Loli, and to the disappointment of her parents, Marlene doesn’t have a Plan for the Future. Or a plan they approve of. In any case, Loli has her shit together and Marlene doesn’t, and maybe that’s a good thing, because if she did, she wouldn’t have time to look for a
