My cheeks went hot and my fist balled. Just like the time in middle school when I was blamed for a game of truth or dare. I sat in front of my mother and stepfather as they recounted the other parents’ accusations. It was all my idea. I was the corruptor. Was I already having sex? Smoking? Knowing nothing I could say or do would make anyone less mad, I stayed silent and took the blame for the schoolyard game. I carried our sin for being curious prepubescent kids. Fuck her. I walked away because if I dug my heels in, I would be late for my shift.
I couldn’t sleep thinking about Fernanda. My texts went unanswered, as did my phone calls to her home landline. The girls had as much luck as me trying to contact her, and they were getting freaked out.
I thought everything was fine when you left her? messaged Pauline.
I did too. I don’t know what is happening. Keep trying. I wrote back.
We decided to give it another week before we all showed up at her front door. Pauline, the young woman with the silver tongue, would knock first. Mrs. Garcia had the demeanor of a bloody bull being prodded in a ring. She had no problem calling everyone’s parents to give them an earful for at least half an hour. No one wanted to be on the other end of that conversation or be marked in her bad books. Even Mr. Garcia got ribbed regularly for holding his tongue around his wife, sheepishly replying, “She is the boss.”
When I slept, I dreamed about a naked woman climbing out of a cenote with thick lips smeared with black and eyes of an ancient beast, a caiman. Double lids blinked over horizontal pupils rolling in every direction, inspecting her surroundings. As they moved, the light reflected off flecks of gold in her irises. Water rolled off her body as steam floated into the air in gossamer wisps. Black hair heavy with water lay flat against her scalp, accentuating high cheek bones on a square, wide face. When she opened her mouth, an elongated tongue covered in raised bumps licked the ground. The tip struck hard, leaving red and blue flames in its wake. The woman took the same stance as Fernanda, bleeding between her legs, pleading to the sky in Nahuatl with eyes facing the back of her head. When she spoke, her open mouth showed teeth worn from gnashing. In her nudity I could see the tips of her nipples glistening with white milky stars made of hot gas. Her skin was the same dark brown as my own, but she seemed to burn from the inside like a human candle.
Everything about her could be considered a nightmare, but I wasn’t scared. She glowed with fury, beauty, and power. Half woman, half beast, this was no ghost or demon. She was everything I wished I could be. Fire and anger with bitterness wet my lips. My soul wanted to fall to its knees and beg her to tell me her secrets. When she became aware of my presence, turning that caiman gaze straight at me, I awoke startled and sweating, as if I had slept next to a bonfire.
I persisted in my calls to Fernanda’s home. Her mother told me to stop pestering. They had everything under control. The others had no luck, either.
Summer is supposed to be lovely, but things seemed pretty bleak. Bad news and bad weather. That summer measured the hottest on record with the lowest amounts of precipitation in recorded history. You could call it being baked in an oven of our own design. Off the coast of Texas colossal storms gathered momentum, sucking the ocean dry to dump onto either the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. or the Caribbean and Mexico. No one knew which way the witches’ brew would be spilled; all people could do was try to prepare, but prepare for what? The unpredictable future of climate change was again up for debate on every channel, in every magazine and newspaper. The volatility of the planet was only matched by the volatility of the debate as the storms continued to threaten havoc. The sun remained in hibernation, yet at night clouds made way for the moon. Its light shone brightly, clear as day against the black backdrop of space, giving us a false sense of calm.
I suppose it was calm up there because all the humans are down here. Was this hell? Global bad news, political bad news—we were used to hearing about the chaos at the border, but young women were going missing locally. Cops called them runaways or high-risk youth, but their families disagreed. They spoke out anonymously because they feared their status in the country. Some did not have American citizenship and others were the children of immigrants. They wouldn’t be kicked out before they knew the whereabouts of their missing.
Two days later Mrs. Garcia showed up at Sonic at the end of my shift looking like a bull that lost the fight. She scanned the fast food menu in disgust, and then looked at me with the same revulsion. My hair and skin were a pile of oil and sweat as the air-conditioning only worked at half capacity, the small space all counter and kitchen. The overworked machinery couldn’t handle extra bodies in here. All I had were syrupy lime slushies to keep me cool with the heat of the kitchen at my back and the heat from the outside blasting my face whenever the doors were opened.
“May I take your order, Mrs. Garcia? Fernanda always orders the chili dog and tater tots.”
“How will you ever learn to cook eating junk like this? Don’t expect to keep that figure, either. One baby and that will be it for you.”
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