Mario Alberto Zambrano - Loteria

I went through the deck three times and I can’t find El Gallo . Maybe he jumped? Maybe he sang himself to death and no one heard him and so he went out the door and down the hall and out the building, cawing like he does to wake people up. But no one heard him, and we missed it. Maybe I left him at the house when I came here, which means by now he’s been swept up in the trash or hiding under a piece of furniture. If he were here I’d put him by the sun. Maybe he’s in some dark place trying to get someone’s attention, singing like he does, “Kikirikiki! Kikirikiki!”

Estrella had her own card, but there isn’t one called La Luz , so I chose El Sol as my own. But in the way that The Star needs The Moon, Luz needs El Gallo and so maybe without him I don’t have a voice. So what happens when something is missing? It’s like the thing that’s missing might be the one thing I need in order to win. And why do I always need the one thing that isn’t here?

Why don’t You bring her back so she can show them that she hit him too? That it’s not his fault. Like that they will let him go.

And how loud do I have to sing before You wake up?

¿Dónde está El Gallo?

It was only a matter of time before we woke up and found her missing. I don’t know what we expected, but we were expecting something. And when it happened I went straight to the kitchen cabinet to see if there was any peanut butter left.

Mom was usually the first to wake up in the mornings, to make a pot of coffee and put the dishes away. The morning she was gone we figured she was getting milk at the grocery store. But it was different. Everything was the same as the night before. The dishes were in the sink and the table hadn’t been wiped. Liters of Coke were still on the counter, all warm. It was like she waited for us to fall asleep and then got her suitcase and went wherever she was going.

Papi didn’t come out of his room until later, and I wondered what their bedroom looked like. Maybe he realized she was gone because something was missing. Or maybe everything was the same. None of us spoke about it, not until the following day.

It was almost a year ago when she left. I was ten and Estrella was twelve.

The following morning Papi was in his room and Estrella and I were sitting on the steps that lead to the backyard. She kept asking me if I was okay, like all of a sudden she was my mother.

“You know she loves us, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “She’ll be back.”

“No, mama,” she said, and touched my shoulder.

I pulled away from her and said, “Who do you think you’re calling mama?”

She snapped and said she wasn’t going to try to help me if I was going to be that way. “Help me with what?” I asked, and pushed her. She pushed me back and then I punched her in the chest and she ran inside. I chased her to the bathroom but she couldn’t get the door open and so she lifted her arms in front of her. I kept punching her even though she cried.

“How’s that, mama?” I said. “You like that, mama? Huh, mama?”

We were next to Papi’s room and he opened the door and screamed, “¿Qué chingao?” We backed away and Estrella’s hair was all over the place. Her face was puffy and neither of us said anything. The sunlight was coming in from the window on the other side of Papi’s bedroom, and it only took a few seconds of us standing there, looking at each other, before I could tell we were thinking about her and wondering whether she was coming back.

Behind him, past his window, I saw something move. I heard Estrella sucking in her saliva, but when I felt something in the backyard, I turned. I couldn’t help it. Papi turned and saw it too. A deer was standing next to our only tree, staring at us with his brown marble eyes.

Then he ran off.

When she disappeared, Papi didn’t eat for weeks. We’d find him holding photographs of her in one hand and a lighter in the other, flicking it on and off, thinking of whether or not to burn her face off. Sometimes he did because we found photos in the family album where there was a burned circle over a woman with a blue dress on. But I never heard him say he wanted to burn her face off. He just didn’t want to see her face.

The clothes Mom left behind were there to remind us, because who knew if she was coming back. Papi held the lighter but it wasn’t like he didn’t miss her, wasn’t like he wasn’t trying to figure out where she ran off to. Estrella and I thought about where she went, and whenever we’d mention it to him, he’d tell us to shut up.

That’s when Estrella started having ideas. She thought maybe they got into a fight and this time it was so bad that something happened. “But why would he burn her face off?” I said. “He wouldn’t do that unless she hurt him too.”

Why would he want to forget her? He burned her face, but then he held her photograph. Even though he didn’t want us talking about her, I saw him holding it, flicking the lighter on and off. And maybe it was because she said something or did something. She told him she was leaving and he hit her. But what about us? Why would she leave? She could’ve come to us in the middle of the night and whispered, “Get in the car! Come on.” Maybe I would’ve said no. Maybe Estrella would’ve said yes.

A few weeks after Mom was gone, it was a Sunday and Papi was still sleeping and we tried to make noise in the kitchen. Estrella washed the dishes while I opened and closed cabinets. When he came out of his bedroom he didn’t even notice we were standing there. We could’ve been monkeys and it wouldn’t have mattered. We asked him if he wanted some eggs.

I was putting the dishes away and put the bowls on the wrong shelf. Estrella said I wasn’t putting them where they belong. Mom would never put them there. Then he snapped, “¡Cállense!” and went back to his room.

Before Papi had a chance to throw everything away, Estrella and I took some of Mom’s stuff and hid it in our room under our beds. Most of it clothes. Only one suitcase was missing from the garage and we figured she had packed as much as she could. No photos, no knickknacks, not even all her shoes. Just whatever she could pack into one suitcase.

There was a T-shirt she used to wear to go to bed, baby blue cotton. Estrella brought it into our room, and I was shocked she hadn’t taken it. I thought it was something she’d want. It was too big for me, but I put it on and liked the way it felt against my skin. Estrella and I would take turns wearing it, but we were afraid the smell would disappear if we wore it for too long.

Estrella was at Angélica’s house when Papi caught me in my room wearing it. It wasn’t a school day. I remember sunlight coming in and Papi looking tanned against it, standing at the doorway with his boxers on. He had a mustache. He’d grown one after Mom had left, and on that day, it looked real pokey, like a scrub.

“¿Y eso?” he asked. He scared me, because I didn’t see him standing there. Mom’s T-shirt would blow up around my hips if I spun around, and so I was spinning and humming a song. His arm was against the wall and his armpit was black.

“Answer me,” he said.

I figured he wanted me to take it off and burn it or something. His feet came closer, so close I could smell him. He smelled like an unmade bed. “Dámelo,” he said, and his voice hit the top of my head. But I didn’t move, and I wasn’t going to give it to him.