“Carlos—”
“You don’t need to explain.”
She doesn’t. She is floating, hovering somewhere outside herself. A hollow distance that can’t be measured. Far, but as close as skin to skin. She looks at his eyes.
She reads them.
She recognizes them.
They are her eyes. Her own eyes.
Her own eyes looking at Mama.
The hollow distance cracks with the fumbled jingling of her keys. The car. The door. The key. She drives, but she doesn’t go home.
Forty-Eight
Black meets black. Moonless sky touches earth and aqueduct. Only low rumbling and a dusting of light on steel beams proves the snaking water is there. Her shoes are gone, kicked loose somewhere in the gravel. A breeze rustles the mesquite, a clattering of leaves, a voice in the blackness.
Never say never. I learned that two lifetimes ago. So will you.
Her foot finds cold steel, and she understands. Can finally root into the feeling. The comfort a cold white bathtub holds. A step. Another. Her feet feeling the way. And voices. Voices twining in with the rumble, the air pushing them up.
What the hell you looking at?
Nothing, Mama. Nothing.
Six inches of steel that can’t be seen. Air rushing up her legs. Rushing up. Pulling down. A step. Her arms at her sides. No stretching for balance.
You’ll never make it.
No more steps. Just cold steel curling into her toes. Cold smooth steel, numbing, like porcelain. But not enough. Carlos’s eyes travel through the black. She sees them again. Sees herself.
Never say never.
Her hands slide up to her arms. She is cold.
Never say never. Grandma is right. She is always right.
The echo hits her in the face, nearly pushes her from the beam.
What Mama wouldn’t do for a drink.
What I wouldn’t do for the room.
/>
A choking gurgle comes from her throat. She feels the clammy lips at her neck, the paw at her breast. She needs to wash her crawling skin.
What I wouldn’t do.
Just like Daddy…just like Mama.
Her fingers loosen on the bill still in her fist. Loosen, a cold finger at a time, and the bill flutters like a black butterfly into the rumbling below.
You’ll come crawling back.
But she is never coming, never crawling. She can’t. There is nothing to crawl back to.