Mario Alberto Zambrano - Loteria

When Tencha told me about it later she cried like if she were lost. She was at a friend’s house when she got the phone call and didn’t know what was going on until she drove down our street and saw the neighbors standing in our yard. The red lights, the white and blue. The crowd of neighbors. The police officers and yellow tape pulled around the trees.

She wanted to know what had happened, the way she was looking at me sitting in a room at the police station, upset that I wouldn’t say anything. But I couldn’t get any sound out. The officers told her what happened, but she wanted to hear it from me. I could tell she wanted to hit me like if I were a broken machine, but she didn’t. She kept squeezing her nose and wiping her eyes. She held me and then let go, held me again, like if she were confused of what to do. She couldn’t decide whether to stay with me or go to the hospital to see Estrella.

Eventually, she left because it was time for visitors to leave, and that thing started, when it’s hard for her to breathe. “I’ll come in the morning,” she said. But it’s like she’s too big for her own breath and she chokes on the things she tries to say.

In that room, not this one but the other one before here, the pillow was flat and hard like sand and I had to act like I was asleep before they turned off the light. I was alone with just a window and it was me and the sound of my heart, and my body, and the beat of it.

Sometimes, even now, it’s like someone is knocking on the door of my chest and I’m on the other side trying to figure out how to open it. But it won’t open, and so it bangs and bangs. Poom! Poom! Poom!

Until my mind shuts off and I fall asleep.

Remember the yellow birds that used to sing pretty? We’d run in circles in Buelita Fe’s backyard after church and they’d come and they’d sing and we’d dance. There were two of them. We’d call them Hector and Louise. I looked up at the cloud above the garage and You told me. You said, “This is Hector. This is Louise.” Then I flapped my arms and ran on my toes and got all excited like I was going to explode ¡pee pee pee pee pee! For a long time I didn’t know they were yellow. I never saw them just heard them. They were sounds coming from the tomatillo vines. You told me to look up when they were singing instead of when they were quiet because when they were quiet they were flying around the house. And when they were singing they were sitting in the tree. There was one time Hector landed on the edge of the fountain. He looked at me, then at the barbecue grill, then at You. And flew away. I ran after him but got as far as the fence. He wasn’t in the tree anymore and neither was Louise. And every Sunday after that it was quiet.

Tencha came to tell me he was here. Dr. Roberto. “He’s in the activity room waiting for you.”

“What does he want?” I said.

“He wants to give you something.”

There are tables along the windows with game boards stacked on top, Checkers, Scrabble, Monopoly. He was sitting at the far end with a white button-up shirt and the light coming in through the blinds drew bars over his face. He held his hands over the table.

“Just let him give you whatever he wants to give you,” she said, and pushed me toward him. “Then he’ll leave you alone.”

She stood in the hallway and monitored me as I walked toward him. He saw me and sat up straight in his chair. The way dogs do when they see you coming. No one else was in the room. The other kids in the center were down the hall playing with blocks, squealing, knocking towers over. Julia was sitting in the counselor’s office across the hall. I sat down and looked at his hands, then looked out the window. After a few minutes he reached into his bag and took out a book from his briefcase. Hans Christian Andersen, it said, in big blue letters across the top.

“Your mom always said you like to read.” He turned the book around and pushed it toward me. There was a boy in a boat on the cover, all alone in the middle of the sea. “I thought you might like this,” he said.

We sat there without saying anything. I looked across the hall and saw Julia looking up from her desk. When she saw me, she turned away.

This redhead boy who’s been at the center for two days started crying in the other room. I recognized his voice because his screams remind me of a siren. A counselor walked out with him in her arms and took him outside, bouncing him up and down, patting his head. I could see them through the window. I stared at his face, the way it looked as if it were being torn.

“How’s your hand?” Dr. Roberto said.

I rolled my eyes, wanting him to leave me alone, wanting to go back to my room.

“You like to read?” he asked.

Yeah, you stupid. I like to read. I looked at him, and he mentioned that he should’ve gotten me something else, something more grown-up, since I wasn’t a child anymore.

He took a long, deep breath and held his hands like if he were washing them. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” he said.

Then I looked at him in that sort of way I do when I try to tell people I hate them. I pushed the table as hard as I could and the edge of it slammed into his chest. The book fell on the floor and I ran to my room and closed the door and Tencha called after me, “Luz! What’d he say to you?” She knocked on the door. “¿Luz? ¿Qué pasó?”

From the window in my room I saw him get into his car. He opened the door and stood there with his arms over the roof. He stared at the building like if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to leave or not. But in my head, I thought, Leave. Leave, you asshole. Go already. Then he got into his car and drove away. When he was out of the parking lot I was mad I hadn’t asked him. But I couldn’t when he was in front of me. If I could’ve I would have: “Where is she?”

“Luz? Mija , let me in.”

Tencha knocked on the door as I lay in bed. I looked at the ceiling with my journal in my arms. I could hear that redhead boy from down the hall screaming and I tried to turn his siren into music, into a note, like a string. But she kept knocking. And after a few minutes, she knocked again.

When he wasn’t looking, I used to look at the label and see if there was a face on it like Papi’s. There were those nights when his eyes would get bloodshot and I’d want to drink with him. Not a lot, just a sip, so I could see what it was like to become him. To be someone else and to knock things over without caring. I didn’t want to hit or hurt anyone. I just wanted to know where it came from, to figure out why he did what he did because it wasn’t coming from him. It was coming from that man in the bottle, Don Pedro. He’d get inside Papi’s head and shake him until he turned into someone else. Like if he were in some storm and the wind that blew threatened him off balance if he fought back. But Papi did fight back and he held on to the boat that was his body as it spun and crashed, because that’s how he moved, like if he were on a boat in the middle of an ocean. And when he’d lose his grip he’d lose his balance and step over his feet, then hold on to something else and try to fight again, looking up at the sky and yelling in its face, “¡Estás loca! ¿Me oyes? ¡Loca!”