Chapter 16
LEONARDO
THE ROOF IS LEAKING AGAIN. Rico fixed it last year, but then the dry season came, the Odessa dust blew, and the fix didn’t hold. Monsoon season turns the trailer park to mud, and Leonardo is out playing in it with all the other kids.
The sky darkens as Ana pulls the mini-blinds and scans for her son among mud-splattered children. Rico sticks a pot under a leak and goes to the cabinet for another.
“We need the other pot for mac and cheese.” Ana heaves herself up from the couch, baby Mirabel due in two months. Ana is hungry enough to eat three boxes of macaroni. She is all belly, just shy of twenty-one years old.
“Chingale,” Rico mutters.
Ana combs through cabinets. They were supposed to be out of here already. The plan was to move before this next baby comes. But plans, Ana thinks, are for people with means.
“Mami!” Leonardo runs inside, tracking mud. “Mira!”
Giggling, he shows her a roly-poly that’s tickling his arm.
Ana’s gaze drops absently to the insect and then back to the cabinets. Her hand rests on her belly, her stretched-out Selena shirt. It’s hard to focus when she’s this hungry. She pushes aside a near-empty bag of rice and a box of cereal. “Where’s the mac and cheese?”
Rico is still hunting for something to catch the rain. The lion tattoo on his arm twitches with his movements. Thunder crashes, and Leonardo drops the roly-poly, latching on to his mother’s leg. She pats his head and says over it, “Looks like we’re out.” She thought they had one more box.
She opens the fridge, releasing a sharp, tangy smell. It’s empty except for sodas and something that has spilled in a drawer. Ana looks down at her son searching for his bug, and she feels a ping of love. She hands him a Dr Pepper, knuckles his cheek, and gets one for herself. “Jesus, I’m hungry.”
Ana looks to her boyfriend, the one she left high school for, the one who always seems to find help for them just in the nick of time.
He almost never resorts to stealing. Once, he took a single loaf of Mrs. Baird’s from a convenience store and felt so guilty that a few days later he snuck to the counter and slipped a five-dollar bill beside the register, overpaying and then bolting as if the payment were the crime.
Rico shadows his girlfriend now, moving the same rice bag and cereal box, blinking at the same cans of soda. He shuts the fridge. “I’ll go find us something.”
He slips into boots and leaves the trailer, closing the door behind him as rain begins to fall in sheets.
An hour later, Rico is still gone, and Ana feels like she could capsize from hunger.
Leonardo is asleep on the couch, his mouth sticky from soda.
They have no phone service or car, and Ana’s stomach calls out like a whale.
She looks down at the tight roundness of it, her hunger so strong that she’s starting to cramp. Mirabel has gotten very still.
So Ana takes the pot reserved for macaroni, slides it under the worst of the leaks, and kisses her son softly.
She brushes a sugar ant off his neck, covers him with a towel, grabs change for the bus, and leaves the trailer in slippers because they’re all that will fit over her swollen feet.
They will get muddy, but she will get food.
And she’ll be back before Leonardo wakes up.
She imagines how happy he’ll be if he wakes to a cheeseburger from the dollar menu. Maybe even a cookie.
But when he wakes, there is only darkness, and the storm is rocking the trailer.
Leonardo is not afraid of the dark or the leaks or being alone. He’s used to those things. But he hates thunder. So he rises from the couch to seek the warm softness of his mother. He carries the burden of the born: the want of his parents, whoever they are.
His papi isn’t there, but his papi often works nights.
It’s the absence of his mother that makes him feel strange, like he’s lost even when he’s home.
He stumbles to the bathroom, water plopping on his head in the narrow hallway.
She’s not there. When she’s not in the kitchen either, he is out of places to look.
He thinks to call for her outside—sometimes she watches the lightning.
But the front door is locked and Leonardo can’t get it open. He is only four years old.
He takes a sip of flat Dr Pepper, his bottom lip quivering. But he doesn’t cry; tears have never served him much.
Mami loves her bed, especially with her baby tummy, so Leonardo decides to wait there. He flops onto the bare mattress, covers his ears when it thunders, and then next thing, it’s bright. And he is still alone.
He wanders into the kitchen, where he dumps cereal crumbs into his mouth. He considers, and then he takes a few bites of the cereal box.
When his parents finally come home, they give him a whole chocolate chip cookie, which he crams into his mouth. His mami’s belly is loose. Empty. She takes to the bed.
After that day, his papi works even more. They put Leonardo in school, but he spends most of his days worrying about his mother. When he finally gets home to take care of her, she sends him out of the room.
There are rare days, however, when she motions for him to come sit with her, and she sings or cries or falls asleep holding him.
He lives for these days, but he will not remember them.
The memories will be intrinsic, physical, embedded into him as a sense of uncertainty, a heavy isolation, a malignant love.
They will be in the fizz of Dr Pepper, the tickle of bugs, the mud caked between toes, and the lilting and unpredictable Spanish ballads of a hollow mami who would eventually call her brother, Nacho, and say to him, I can’t.