It all seemed so glamorous then, to both of us. Charlie was the outermost layer of a complex shield system that kept most people from discovering the depths from which my resolve can draw. He was one of the few who had been through nearly every step of my descent right beside me, one of the few who had seen my worst moments, and who knew better than to be fooled by my wiles. Now that he's gone, I'm facing parts of myself that I've never had to confront, and all in quick succession. You gotta learn fast if you live fast.
The movement of Isaiah putting out a cigarette catches my attention, prevents the eye contact between me and Josh that will happen if I don't look away. The workers in the yard have stilled. They're looking toward the driveway. A shiny black car is crawling through the grass toward the backyard.
Abuela has arrived. She, too, rides in a Cadillac.
The workers remove their hats. What may seem like an action of subservience to people who grew up like Izzy and Josh is actually a show of respect. Though my grandmother is a hard-ass, she is also kind. Her charity is strictly earned, never freely given. She's a woman who has seen unbelievable tragedy and overcome years of daunting obstacles. She has earned her steel reputation.
Frederick understands. He stands at the same time I do. The other two are a few beats behind us. All three men wait for me to move first. They follow just as the driver hurries around the car and opens its back door. We slowly take the stairs and wait, the boys staying a few feet behind me in an orderly row: Joshua to the left, then Frederick, and Isaiah to the right, my dramatic posse, my gang. The guards confiscated their weapons upon our arrival, so they are as good as naked before Abuela. I have only Charlie's gun.
The shiny Caddy's tinted window catches dramatic glints of the fading daylight. Soon the night bugs will begin their assault. Soon the workers will go to their quarters, eat with their families, get drunk by the summer moon. Soon I will do the same, in a sense.
Abuela emerges and the hush thickens. As if by some cosmic cue, a few lightning bugs make themselves known around the car's tires. She's a tiny woman, just over five feet tall and quite thin. She wears a long dress made of white linen and a shawl of intricate crochet work. A wide-brimmed sun hat covers her long, gray hair, which is pulled high and under the hat. Large, dark sunglasses hide her eyes. For a woman in her early sixties, she's in excellent shape. Her skin is brown and vibrant in the long shadows.
She studies us as a lioness might, shrewd and cold and fast. She owns the moment so that no one who doesn't know her would ever believe that she has lived as a poor woman. In the same thought, no one would ever doubt that she has killed.
She turns, nods to her workers and thanks her driver. They carry on with their duties when she turns away from them. Her expression is impossible to read without a glimpse at her eyes. I have no idea whether she will reprimand me for my retribution against the Reaps, or blame me for my brother's death. I can't know if she's happy to see me, or if my face might only remind her of the parts of our family that we've lost.
I'll never fool her with my façade, I learned so much of it from her, but I present it anyway as every step she takes seems to drain the oxygen from the already repressive dusk. Every inch of ground that she covers is like my blood, dripping into the dirt, like Charlie's blood smeared all over our home and my hands. Of all the things to which she's been a witness, I wonder if she ever found her sibling in a puddle of his own life, already dead without the chance of a last word. Of course, she buried her son, my dad.
She comes to rest several steps before me, and for a long time she just stares from behind the black lenses of her glasses. Her expression is at a level of unreadability that I can only dream of achieving. Charlie was always much closer to her than I was. He always said it was because Abuela and I were too much the same.
I don't feel close to adequate now. My blood runs cold in the torrid heat around us, under the weight of her attention. Even the swamp things have hushed, as if the whole world has stopped in anticipation of how she will react. Friction mounts in my gut. My hands are shaking so I press them to my sides in hopes of steadying them. I have no place for fear in my life, so I push it back down into the depths of my emotions, swallow the knot in my chest, and seal the gate from which pain rises. It tastes like death and feels like smoldering coals within me.
“You shot the messenger?” she asks, chin held high in a way I can't mirror, her accent sharp and proud.
This is the closest to a greeting that I'll receive. She sounds neither pleased nor angry, and the wait continues.
Of course she would already know about my theatrics from last night. I want to look away, to stall for time in order to consider the wisdom in
