Mario Alberto Zambrano - Loteria

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” she said.

I handed her the cup. Even with the kitchen towel underneath, it was burning my hand. “I made you some coffee.”

“Is there something you need?” she said, then set the cup down on the ground and covered her mouth.

“No,” I said. “Just made you some coffee. But why did you make peanut butter sandwiches?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you make them for breakfast?”

“Can’t I make peanut butter sandwiches?”

“Mom?”

“What?” She stood up and turned around, lifting the duffel bag to the top shelf against the wall.

“You want some ice?”

She said she was reorganizing things. She pushed a box toward me and said, “Here, open this and see what’s inside.” It was a box filled with clothes from when we were younger.

“What am I looking for?”

“Just clean it! Okay? Can you do that, Luz?”

I shrugged like if I didn’t know.

We didn’t say anything after that. She drank her coffee little by little, in between stacking boxes on shelves, then pulled out two peanut butter sandwiches from the duffel bag she was filling. She gave one to me and I stopped looking for whatever I was supposed to be looking for. Then, right when I needed something to drink to wash down the peanut butter, I heard Papi at the back door. “¿Que chingao están haciendo?”

And I ran inside.

You know that feeling when you fall on your back and the wind is knocked out of you? Or when you’re underwater and you can’t hold your breath so you swim to the top? Or when you wake up sweating from a dream and can’t figure out what’s real and what’s make-believe? That feeling in your stomach when you’re caught doing something you’re not supposed to? Or when you discover something for the very first time? That feeling when you got on a roller coaster and you were only eight years old but you felt like a grown-up because finally you got on? Or when you’re in a car and it’s going so fast it feels like it’s going to flip at any moment? That feeling five minutes before you open your Christmas presents? That feeling like if snakes are inside your stomach and they’re trying to get out? Or that feeling after you’ve hurt someone? When you go over it again and again in your head, what you did and how it happened, how you hit her so hard the bruises proved how bad you were? Even if she didn’t bleed you knew she was hurting. Or that feeling when you’re on the road and your stomach drops because you drove over a bump? When you’re looking at the clouds and out of nowhere it feels like something creeps up on you like a spider? That feeling when you walk up to a convenience store and see someone holding up the register with a gun? You back away and run to the nearest corner, or behind a fence, or a tree, or a mailbox, and wait to see what happens. That feeling when you’re holding a gun and it crosses your mind that you can kill someone? This thing in your hand can take someone? It comes and goes like a passing car in the middle of the night and you don’t even know where it came from. That feeling when you’re underwater and you start to wonder what it would be like if you stayed there and held your breath? You could stay there and deal with the panic and the not knowing whether or not you’ll shoot up like an arrow or stay where you are like a stone. That feeling when your body is not even yours anymore? You tell it to stop shaking, but it doesn’t. It keeps trembling like if you’re in some cold place and you don’t even have any clothes to cover yourself with. But it’s not the cold. It’s something else, something different. And you don’t even know where it’s coming from.

My fingernails would get black when we cleaned the house. Papi would do everything that had to do with the yard, and sometimes, in between scrubbing the tub and vacuuming the rooms, I’d go outside and pull the weeds.

Estrella would be in charge of folding underwear on the living room floor, and sometimes I’d help her. She’d sit Indian-style next to a pile of white and pink and blue, and the Bounce Mom would throw in the dryer would make me think it was what clouds smelled like.

Papi’s boxers were the easiest. Panties and bras weren’t. I sat with my legs open and sometimes Estrella would sit on her heels. I tried sitting that way but it was uncomfortable. We didn’t have the same hips. I had Papi’s hips and she had Mom’s. When I tried to lengthen my neck and sit up taller, because I felt short and round, it didn’t look the same, not like when Estrella sat up.

We were washing our hands in the bathroom. Mom was making dinner and Papi was on the couch watching television. We were washing our hands at the same time over the sink, but I finished before her and felt I’d done it wrong, so I washed them again. And still I finished before her. I said, “Why you taking so long?”

“Because, I’m doing it right.”

“Smart-ass,” I said, and splashed her face.

We’d decided, between all of us, that pendeja wasn’t a maldición but smart-ass was, so she yelled, “Luz called me a smart-ass!”

But before she could finish the sentence I grabbed her hair and pulled it, trying to make her shut up.

She called Mom but Papi came and pulled us apart. He grabbed me by my hand and took me to his bedroom and closed the door and took off his belt. He opened his hand and looked at me and said, “¿Lista?” And I nodded.

He pulled his arm back and lifted his eyebrows and slapped the belt against his hand as hard as he could, and I let out a yelp to make it seem as though he were hitting me.

Ididn’t feel like remembering today so I laid out the cards close to each other so that they were touching like tiles, like El Nopal . Now they make up a collage and the water cards are on the bottom and the sun is on top.

I asked Papi once what the sun riddle meant and he said it was the roof of the poor. La cobija de los pobres . To the right of it I put El Catrin and to the left La Dama. El Corazón is at the center, and below it, El Tambor . Between them they make music. El Árbol is next to them, then La Rosa with La Chalupa and La Garza two cards over. Below is El Mundo y El Diablito . Next to them there’s the harp. If there were two I’d put one by the star and the other under the rest, where it’s at, so that in a way all of them could be close to the sound of music. On the opposite side are the parrot and bird, los primos . They fly in and out of the other cards. The Flag, the Soldier, the Indian, the Drunk. La Sirena is on the left. I laid them out and she ended up there, not far from the edge. I looked at the frog for a long time because I didn’t know where to put her. Her dopey eyes look like she’s about to jump. Like if she can see a fly we can’t see, and what do they eat, anyway? Those stupid eyes, the way she sits there. Wouldn’t it be funny if she jumped? Where would she go?