Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

Mami. Luca draws his legs back beneath the covers and leans against the wall of pillows behind him, and that’s when it returns, all at once. The memory of what happened. The truth of where they are. The breath squeezes out of Luca’s small body, and his knees curl up to his face. He covers his head with his arms and screams without intending to – the sound escapes from him. Mami sits up quickly on her knees and reaches for the lamp, groping for the switch. Now the room is illuminated, but Luca can sense that only through the clamped shutters of his eyelids. Mami pulls him close and folds him up, gets her legs beneath him so the knot of him is on her lap, and they stay like that for a long time. She doesn’t try to stop him from screaming or crying, she just hangs on and wraps herself around him as best she can. It’s as if they are riding out a hurricane. When the worst of it has passed, perhaps fifteen minutes later, Luca’s eyes feel like sandpaper and he still can’t find a way to loosen the joints of his body, but at least he’s breathing again. In and out, in and out. His face is swollen.

Lydia gets out of bed, wearing one of the long T-shirts she bought at Walmart, and Luca writhes. There’s a physical pain to their minor separation. She grabs a bottle of water from the dresser and then darts back to him.

‘I’m right here,’ she says. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Luca lies on his side, curled up. She twists the cap off the bottle and takes a drink, then hands it to him. Her black hair is a wild tumble. He shakes his head, but she insists.

‘Sit up. Drink.’

He drags his body upright, and she holds the bottle to his lips, tips it in for him like she did when he was a baby.

‘Someone once told me that the only good advice for grief is to stay hydrated. Because everything else is just chingaderas .’

Mami cursed again! That’s the second time since yesterday. Luca closes his lips, forcing the bottle out, but she hands it to him.

‘Have some more,’ she says.

Her face is splotchy but dry, and there are dark circles beneath her eyes. Her expression is one Luca has never seen before, and he fears it might be permanent. It’s as if seven fishermen have cast their hooks into her from different directions and they’re all pulling at once. One from the eyebrow, one from the lip, another at the nose, one from the cheek. Mami is contorted. She turns the alarm clock face so she can see it. When she leans over the nightstand, the weight of Papi’s wedding ring drags at the gold chain she wears around her neck, dwarfing the three little loops that have always lived there. She tucks it back inside the collar of her T-shirt.

‘Four forty-eight,’ she says. ‘No more sleep for us, right?’

Luca doesn’t answer. He drinks from the water bottle. She gathers her tumultuous hair into a ponytail, stands up from the bed again, and turns on the television. She finds an English-language cartoon. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Practice,’ even though he doesn’t need practice. His English is excellent.

She orders room service: eggs and toast and fruit. The thought of eating makes Luca’s stomach churn, so he stops thinking about it. He lets his eyes hook into the television, and his body soften. His head feels like a cinder block, his nose stuffed. He opens his mouth to breathe gently, but when Mami steps into the bathroom and turns the shower on, Luca gets up from the bed and pads across the room to join her. She’s sitting on the toilet, so he perches on the edge of the tub until she’s finished. Then he takes a turn. Not because he has to go, but because he doesn’t want to be alone in the other room. He sits there with his underwear around his ankles until he hears the handle squeak and the water stop. He stands and flushes just as she pulls back the curtain.

‘You should take a shower, too,’ she says, stepping out, wrapping herself in a towel. ‘It might be a few days before you have another chance.’

Luca looks at her in the mirror and shakes his head once. It’s impossible for him to shower. To be alone there, wedged between the tiled walls with the sound of gunfire raking across Abuela’s back patio. He shakes his head again, and shuts his eyes tightly, but it’s no use. He’s reliving it again, his body frantic, his breath a whip of panic. The sound that comes out of him this time is something between a whimper and a screech. He tries to be louder than the gunfire in his head.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,’ Mami says, holding him. And even though Luca knows those words are not strictly true, he clings to them regardless.

She washes him instead in the sink with sudsy water and a washcloth, like she used to do when he was a baby. Neck, ears, armpits, tummy, back, bottom, undercarriage, legs, and feet. She swabs off the grime, the spots of dried blood, the clinging flecks of vomit. She makes him clean and dry. She pats him down with a white towel, fluffy and warm against his skin.

Even though they’re expecting the room service delivery, the knock at the door, when it comes, startles them both. They are jittery from grief, and there’s a thinness in the air that amplifies every sound. He doesn’t want to, but Luca waits in the bathroom with the door locked while his mother answers the delivery. He hums softly to himself as soon as he’s alone, but it’s not music. There’s no melody in it. Lydia hesitates between the two locked doors. Behind the bathroom one, she can hear the tuneless humming. Behind the other, a man’s voice repeats the announcement of their breakfast delivery. She is barefoot on the carpet, and her hands shake as she lugs the desk chair out of the way and reaches for the doorknob. She wants to stretch up on her bare toes and look out the peephole to make sure, but how can she? How can she, when all she can imagine is seeing the dark tunnel of a gun barrel on the other side and then immediately seeing nothing at all ever again? But if that’s the fate that awaits her, she tells herself, then no, at least she won’t unlock the door and invite it in. She holds her breath as she reaches out silently and plants her hands on either side of the peephole. The young man outside pushes a cart laden with silver trays. He wears a uniform. His face is scarred with acne. His name tag says ikal. None of it means anything about their safety. She returns to the flats of her feet, pads over to the dresser, and removes her machete from the top drawer.

‘Be right there, just a second!’ she says.

She’s wearing the thick bathrobe she found in the closet, and she slips the machete into its baggy pocket. She keeps her hand in there and grips the handle tightly. She says the word ‘okay’ out loud to herself. And then she opens the door.

Ikal, it is immediately obvious, is not a sicario . He’s barely even a room service delivery boy. He ducks his head and clears his throat and seems embarrassed to be in a hotel room with a woman wearing a bathrobe. He averts his eyes as he steps past her and places their tray almost apologetically on the desk. Then he returns to his waiting cart in the doorway and hands her the billfold for her signature. Lydia feels confident enough to leave the machete in her pocket momentarily while she signs it. She thanks him and hands it back and then, just as the door is about to swing closed, he says, ‘Wait, I almost forgot,’ and Lydia’s hand darts back into her pocket. But he only hands her some cutlery wrapped in two cloth napkins.

‘And this,’ he says, producing a padded envelope from a lower shelf. ‘The front desk asked me to bring it up.’

Lydia takes a small step back. ‘What is it?’

‘A delivery,’ he says. ‘Arrived for you last night.’

Lydia shakes her head. No one knows we’re here, no one knows we’re here. A panic refrain.