The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert (6 page)

SWEET GUM

It snowed the night you told me we should separate. I went outside with no shoes and no coat. I cried as frost collected on the cars and in my hair. We met four summers back. Four years was nothing. That’s what my older friends used to say. I wanted to crawl back into bed with you. The urge to say sorry was overwhelming even if I wasn’t sure what to be sorry for. I went back into the apartment and you sat in silence. I said nothing. You said nothing. It went on for days in between my bursts of crying which I couldn’t help. I had to stay with you for a month until I could find a place of my own. Anytime you left the apartment, I called you and called you and you never answered. I knew you were with other women. I knew, but it wasn’t anything I could stop. It wasn’t my place. I found a small house with cheap rent and I painted it purple. I used neon pieces of construction paper as wallpaper and napped every single day for three months.

The first night I decided to go out it was because I stepped on a flyer to a three-story night club, “Area 21” on my way home. The flyer promised free drinks before 10 and an art gallery tucked away in a tent on the roof of the building. At the entrance, the bouncer stifled laughter when he saw me. He pointed at my mid-section and told me if I cut my black tee shirt into a crop top, I could go in. I scratched my scalp and slid lipstick on my mouth. He handed me the scissors. I took my shirt off and cut above the belly button. I put my shirt back on went around him as he caught drift of fake IDs. Heard him tell the girls they could go in if one of them cut slits into the side of her dress. I nudged at the short purple door and crawled through the entryway. I crawled inside a black and white checkered tunnel that led my body up and down until I tasted artificial fog and saw pulsating white light.

Area 21 is an old office building with sticky floors and vomit phantoms. Cubicles from the previous 9-5 ghosts are individually themed. I picked “Mermaid Cavern” because a young pretty couple took “Manatee Mansion.” I danced alone as lasers splattered sweaty messes meshing together. I bumped into a masked man and woman. One of them offered me a drink. I declined. The woman offered me shrooms and I stuffed the fungus into my bra. The masked people attempted conversations. I covered their mouths and shook my head. We danced close. I tasted their exhaling breaths. They tasted my fingers. I left them in the Manatee Mansion and headed toward the center of the club. I chugged water from the mouth of a spitting angel water fountain and then followed an exit sign home.

Sweat is clinging onto clumpy strings of curls and down my temples. I had a dream about a neighborhood burning. My house was engulfed in emerald flames. Smoke twirled around me. I grabbed at my throat and coughed out silence. I woke up alone. The piercing through my gut is thick. I can hear the branch digging into the mattress underneath me. The sweet gum’s branches are growing fast. I can’t wipe away the dark arms of the tree reaching toward me like I usually do to the shadow people of sleep paralysis. The sweet gum grazes my cheek. A twig initially tickles. Then, with all its might, it settles into my bicep. The thought to scream is secondary to the creeping regret of never having a child. I regret not leaving with the masked couple. I regret not erasing you completely out of my memory.

I imagined you as the father to my kid because of your persistence on calling yourself a future soccer dad. I drove to Arizona in the summer. I hiked down the Grand Canyon alone, tasting dust and wishing you could see how much it looks like a painting. Our little girl, vocal and stubborn, a combo of you and I would say that it looked better in HD. If I had given birth, my endurance for this pain could compare. I could claim this was nothing because I brought a god damned human being onto this floating speck in space. She would be my gift to you along with a box full of this sweet gum’s spiked capsules.

I am stuck to these branches and twigs soaking my mattress with reds of Blood Type O. I only figured this out because you told me what yours was at a house party as meaningless mingling and curiosity brewed for my own. This is where we first met. You called me pretty. You told me you enjoyed the cadence of my laughter. I shook your hand and waved as I left the party.

The sweet gum continues to expand and reach into my home. Parts of the ceiling are crumbling into a skylight. Patches of twinkling atmosphere expose themselves. The air is cold and still. Every breath is harsh. I can still smell hints of the earth.

I couldn’t hear the message you left me on New Year’s Eve because I had just kissed someone new and music was blurring into drunken ears. I danced against a person I didn’t care for and I felt his warmth at the end of the night. I deleted your number, but I had it memorized. I never read the long texts you sent me because I was finally sincere with my disdain. I missed your last voicemail because I was busy at work. You got stuck on the interstate driving from Illinois. Tornado sirens wailed at plots of people piled into cars. You said you loved me and apologized about some bullshit we argued over before you bolted to a woman you met online. I was adamant on not speaking to you, so I erased the message and called you a fucking liar under my breath.

I went to the movies alone. It was a B-movie about wizards. I wore 3D glasses inside and reached toward the screen when the leading wizard winked at the audience. She stepped out of the screen and sat next to me. She showed me her pet scorpion and the constellations on its tail. She didn’t need a wand, she simply needed her hands to cast spells. She took her hands and gently placed my hair behind my ears. She waved her hands from side to side and LED lights dispersed from the ceiling. They synchronized in colors then they blinked at different rhythms and colors. She snapped her fingers and mirrors surrounded the audience. We sat amongst makeshift stars with our buckets of popcorn and crinkly wrappers collecting on the ground. I walked out of the theater and I wanted to call you. The movie ends with the head wizard winking and blowing a kiss as she makes the theater pitch black. Droplets from the ceiling landed on my head and exposed skin. I felt hundreds of legs crawling on me. I sat in darkness and applauded. The lights came on and my skin was covered in pink and purple dust. The crawling came from the scorpions let loose as a consolation prize for watching the movie. I thought you might like the ending. I left you a message and asked you to call me back.

Sirens go in and out of my hearing and a helicopter’s searchlight seeps through the cracks of this foundation. Gray is filling up my sight. I can’t feel the branches or the cold air. I catch glimpses of an overcast beach, holding your hand, running up and down the shore, finding an abandoned bouquet that you said Poseidon delivered to me because of how much potential I had at nineteen.

LA REINA

The crown of nopales reaches up at the stars with pink and yellow flowers hidden due to the darkness, but unafraid to blossom when Reina wakes in the morning to watch over the children. She paints her face with blue, red, yellow and white. Small triangles in blue on each cheek and lines from ear to ear, gliding over the bridge of her nose like a heart monitor pulse mimicking mountain ranges on the earth below. The children line up in the morning to get a glimpse of Reina. She sits on a throne made of crystals in her deep violet gown with rainbows of geometric patterns following the seams. She wears earrings made of black scorpions and a ring on each finger representing the stars she’s had the pleasure of visiting. She smiles at them always. She notices the ones who are becoming more and more transparent each morning. They are becoming part of the nebulous disorganization in the cosmos. They are becoming bigger than themselves. Her chest is heavy every day as she loses them, one by one. So, she goes to earth every night. She travels down the black spiral staircase stretching from the sky to the earth to float around and look through the windows of homes about to lose the child inside. Her feet are silent down the steps. She sniffs out abnormally slow hearts and looks inside window panes. She can see blue lips glowing and parents dreaming. She can see the little soul stretching and yawning. Reina motions at the child. Looking into his eyes, she can see his chronological health complications and DNA strands shrinking and snapping. Reina smiles at the child. Her smile is brighter than the full moon and the child walks toward her. She carries him up the spiral staircase in silence and shows him the cloud garden. The clouds sprout springs of white. Some of the vines reach higher than the child can see. Reina tells him not to be afraid. She tells him to play until the day he is finally gone.

Reina is not the only being looking for souls. There are fouler creatures and more nurturing ones too. Reina leaves the children be. She leaves them to their imaginations. The bear cub lures children with her cuteness. She lets the children pet her and then leads them to the shadow forest. Those souls become echoes. Background noise. The souls become those moments when you hear your name in silence and there’s no one there. El alacran carries souls on his back into caverns where the souls become stalactites and stalagmites. Cave pools soak up the remnants of the ones who couldn’t choose between being stuck in the sky or rooted to the earth. La llorona drowns the souls and wails as they are in the grasp of her arms. These souls become the grit in your throat that you gain before crying. Reina cannot save them all, but she saves the ones she can. The trace she leaves behind on this planet is in one patch of the Sahara desert. If you find the patch and place the sand under a microscope, you can see miniature skeletons in the fetal position as though they fall asleep inside tiny capsules.

MARIGOLDS

“The spirit of our Tía Lily sits in the swing set we bought from the garage sale the other week. She is like a Llorona wannabe. She wails at night, except it’s for you.”

This is what my brother Jesus tells me. Why is he saying this as I am about to fall asleep?

“Mira, estupido, quiero dormir en paz.”

He brings me a candle of La Virgen and tells me to light it for Tía.

“Tell her how you’re doing in school. I think she will appreciate it.”

I think he misses Tía Lily. She taught him how to read in Spanish and English. She also taught him the phrase “Shut the front door”. He yells it to shock people. I haven’t found the thrill in yelling obscenities or mimicking them. I called a girl a pendeja once and got detention for a week. I had to make a list of why she wasn’t a pendeja even though that was a lie. She took my lunch money on several occasions. Jesus told me to defend myself. On the way home he asked me to punch him in the face. Little fists bundled together. I tried. I cried instead.

“I am weak, Jesus. I can’t say no to her because I have a tender head. If she pulls my hair, I will fall to the ground and the spirit of Selena will be my only saving grace, me entiendes?”

Jesus hugged me and told me stories about Tía Lily. Tía Lily was sick and she managed to laugh and be mean to people every day, even when pendejos told her she should be sad about dying soon, but grateful to still be alive. Tía Lily went to the house of an ex and threw a big gulp of Fanta at his face and claimed it was holy water for his crooked soul. She ate tres leches every single day and told me to never trust a man if my gut told me not to.

I miss her too. Snot trails down my lips and onto my wrist. I grab the Vicks just in case anyone sees me cry. I can explain that I am acting and show them the Vicks on my face como en esa película where the girl lied in court. I light my candle and put it on my window sill. Jesus is in his sleeping bag next to me.

“Jesus? Do you want to play outside?”

“Esmai, it’s late. Plus, Tía Lily is out there. I’m telling the truth.”

“Then, let’s talk to her. I can’t fall asleep until I know you’re not lying to me.”

“Fine. Entonces, bring your candle and grab your favorite toy.”

“Why?”

“We are going to bury it and have a memorial for Tía Lily.”

“¿Y tú? Are you bringing something too?”

He digs into his sleeping bag and brings out a red Power Ranger action figure. I grab my yellow Power Ranger action figure and put on my yellow ranger mask. They sold out of all the pink ones and mamá could only afford one costume at a time. Jesus got to be the red ranger like he wanted. He told me the yellow ranger had superb fighting skills in comparison to the pink one. It’s April now, but I can feel my strength increase after I put on the mask so I wear it often. Jesus finds a plastic purple shovel from our trip to Cali last summer. I follow behind him in my mask with the candle in one hand and the yellow ranger in the other.

“We need flowers for Tía Lily.”

Our fence has honeysuckle hanging off of it. I stick my mask on top of my head. I pluck the sticky petals and inhale them after I have a pile in my palms. Jesus is digging a mini-grave for his power ranger. He hands me the shovel. I kiss the yellow ranger on the forehead and tell her to say hi to my Tía. I dig until I am sure the yellow ranger will fit into the grave. I place her in and slowly sprinkle dirt on her. I take my leg and shove the remaining dirt over her. I spread the honeysuckle petals over the two graves and place the candle in between them. Jesus holds my hand and we bow our heads.

I accidentally fall asleep with my yellow ranger mask on and I wake up to a bunch of indents in my face. Mamá is watching celebrity gossip and Jesus runs toward me with his mouth wide open.

“Jesus, your breath stinks.”

“Shut up, Esmai. Come outside with me.”

He grabs my wrist and I stomp out in pajamas and messy hair.

“Tía Lily?”

Marigolds are scattered in the backyard. I step into the yard and the pile is up to my knees. Did she leave these behind as a reminder to honor her in November? Mamá could not say no with a sign like this. Anytime we visited the cemetery, we prayed quickly and left with haste. Mamá told us she didn’t want a bad spirit following us home so we always listened.

Jesus is rolling in the marigolds. I grab a handful and stick them in my sleeping bag. I run back outside.

“Jesus, is this Tía Lily sending us a sign?”

“I think so.”

“What do you think it means?”

“No se, Esmai. I’m only a kid.”

I don’t know what it means either. I sit with my legs crossed and look at the sun settled alone in the sky. The purple spots emerge and I look over at Jesus. I exist in a space with good souls. I exist in this space and it inevitably ends.