Stephanie Macias Gibson is a writer, artist, and musician living in Austin, TX. She is currently an MFA candidate in the New Writers Project at the University of Texas.
My wife steps out onto the porch, fingers flecked with crusting tortilla dough. She leans over the railing and rubs her hands together. A hailstorm of doughy crumbs pummels the grass.
I’ve interrupted her cooking to show her the red and orange flames on the hood of my tow truck. I want her to appreciate how complete the truck looks now—the short fast front, the flat silver bed, my cowboy hat on the dash, my red cap, too, accenting the flames meaning this-part-louder!
She laughs all the way back to the kitchen.
From the yard I yell, “Es solo un wrap! I can take it off when I want!”
But I won’t so long as Flaca is impressed. I pick her up at the bus stop to take her to work, and she says, “Ay, es dangerous.” She draws out the ay like she’s peeling an apple with her tongue.
Flaca is half-white, half-Mexican, and thin as a cigarette. Tobacco-colored hair, too, plastered against her fine-shaped skull, cinched into a short ponytail at the top of her head. She’s younger than me by at least thirty years. Sometimes I wonder how it is I arrived at fifty-four when I still feel the way she looks hopping up into the truck.
Today is one of those days. She’s impressed, and her pleasure takes years off me.
But then she says, “Let’s leave town. Just for the day,” and all my skin sags.
“We got work, chica. Antonio will be pissed if we both don’t show up. He’ll call my wife.”
Saying her name—as if Flaca doesn’t know it—feels more sinful than playing hooky with Flaca. “I already called in sick,” she says. “Now you call for a different reason.”
Flaca and I, we’re friends. I pick her up anytime she’s waiting at the bus stop, usually a few mornings a week. She jumps in, flashing teeth and singing my name like a mockingbird, different every time. Sometimes she lets me hold her hand on the center console, and we talk about what it would be like if we were dating. It’s possible she’s doing this to be funny or to give an older man some confidence. Either way, I’ve dreamt of the day she says, oh, Miguel, please take me away. But in my mind, though the fantasy that follows seems very real, the end is never clear. So when she finally says it, I begin to sweat.
There in the H.E.B. parking lot, I call Antonio and tell him I have a family emergency and I may be able to check in this evening. That last part convinces him. Also, I’m not a liar. I’ve never lied to Antonio.
Flaca grabs my cowboy hat from the dash and puts it on. The red cap sits alone like a do-not-press button. She takes my hand and smiles.
Híjole.
. . .
Flaca isn’t what most would call pretty. Her skin is pale as a vampire’s. Her eyes are black as olive pits. She complains it’s just like her absent father to withhold his blue eyes, and if she had them they’d make up for her overbite. She may be right. Her front teeth are two white Chiclets those kids try to sell you in border towns. Overall, the combination makes her look creaturely, like a really thin rodent.
All of this to say, I wasn’t seduced. No lie, nothing about her looks convinced me to get close to her. No one at the shop gave her a second thought either. But one day she came up to ask about a mistake on my timesheet, and my mouth went dry. She said something and I said something, but I don’t remember. Maybe she touched my arm. Maybe the light fell on her cheek just right. What a soft gordo I’ve become.
Mama, as I’ve called my wife ever since her belly first watermeloned, would laugh at me. She would say I’ve mistaken myself for Michael, our oldest, who has recently started dating a white girl, full-white, blonde and blue-eyed. He’s strayed much farther than me. The girl’s parents will be disappointed when they meet us and see our crooked house, and I don’t have the heart to tell him. Maybe it’s not my place. Maybe these things are better learned alone. Liliana, our youngest, has given us our first grandchild. Afro-Latino, I’ve heard him called. Double-cursed or double-blessed, we’ll see. But he’s already affecting me. Mama now calls me Abuelo. Not even the informal Popo. I have done her the favor of continuing to call her Mama, and she has made me formally and permanently old times two.
Mama would laugh at me. But sometimes, I only hope so. If I were to hurt her, she’d never show it. Mexican women can be stones where weakness is concerned.
. . .
We drive south to a small gulf town that’s making the most of its waterfront location. The saltwater here is usually the color of milk after Cocoa Puffs, but today we luck out. It’s an autumn weekday so the town is quiet, but also, the water is calm and almost aqua.
We take Subway sandwiches and bags of Doritos to picnic tables on the beach. The gulls park in the wind above us, hopeful. Sand sneaks into every bite of food. I wipe my mustache over and over again, afraid it’s in my hair. Flaca finishes her sandwich and chips before I’m even halfway done. She licks the powdered cheese off her fingers to spite the birds.
Out past the breakers, two surfers sit on their boards, talking. They float left to right with the current, waiting for a limp wave. Flaca runs to where the water nips at her toes and yells, “It’s not California!” Then she runs back to our table, pleased with herself.
We drive into town for ice cream cones and try to eat them before the heat can. She straddles the bench and licks her scoop so seriously, I forget I am holding one, too. Sweat beads down her neck to the smooth space between her breasts. She’s wearing a pink lace bra, not a swimsuit. She hasn’t planned any of this—the day off, the beach, the ice cream—and it amazes me.
“Miguel,” she whines.
“Qué dijo, chica?”
“I said, have you ever wanted to live in another country?”
“My grandmother still lives in Oaxaca.” I lift my red cap to wipe away sweat.
She rolls her eyes. “No, not Mexico. I mean a real other country. Like France or China.”
“God no,” I say, laughing. But I’ve disappointed her. My anger spikes like a thin nail. Get used to it, I want to say. Quickly, I soften. “You tell me where you want to live.” And she does. But it’s not important here. We all want those things when we’re young. She’s no different.
I eat my bland chocolate ice cream, and I, too, am disappointed.
Back at the beach, she convinces me to walk barefoot in the sand. The squish of it between my toes tickles. She grabs my hand and pulls me along. For a second, I’m sure I’ll waste my efforts right then and there.
But then she’s distracted by a vendor at the pier renting out bicycles. We rent two red ones from the pimpled young man who can’t keep his eyes off Flaca’s glistening collarbones. I thrust my ID into his hand. We have to leave it for security, and I surprise myself by doing it. I’d never do this in real life.
We walk the bikes on the pier and stop to stare out at the long stretch of planks that ends over deep blue waters. A few fishing poles arc out into the sky, their lines invisible through the rippling heat.
“I know you think I’m a kid.” Flaca takes off her chanclas and tosses them in the bike’s cheap white basket. “But I’m not. And you’re not old.”
“Wanna bet?” I say.
“No.”
She looks at me, and the sun hits her face. No lie, I can see who she will be in ten more years. It isn’t pretty, but I don’t change my mind about anything. She smiles, her big teeth covering her pink bottom lip.
“I want to race,” she says.
And she takes off on her devil-red bike. It’s a cruiser so she has a hard time getting it up to speed, the wind smashing against the basket and her large teeth.
I follow at a slower pace, my beer belly dragging me down. The day’s activities are catching up. Part of me wants to know what lies at the end of our secret trip, but another part just wants my recliner and a beer and Wheel of Fortune. And Lucy’s recliner next to mine. My wife’s name lands like a stone in my gut.
I’m weighing these two parts when Flaca crashes halfway down the pier. It’s as though she’s hit a brick wall, and her body goes flying over the handlebars. The moment she’s airborne I think, ay chingado that careless child. Then she thuds and bounces across the wooden planks to a dead stop. She doesn’t move.
I ride hard against the wind and jump off the bike, letting it fall like I own the damn thing. She moans, tries to sit up, but collapses when she puts pressure on her hands. I take her by the elbows and help her stand.
“Flaca,” I say. “Flaca, mi’ja, are you okay?”
She wipes her hands on her shorts, smearing dark blood. “My name is Doreen.” She sloughs me off, picks up her bike, and limps back to shore. The bike is bright in the wet sun, happy and unharmed.
Everyone at work calls her Flaca, though I’m the one who gave her the nickname. Doreen is a woman’s name. I think I may have underestimated her, expected too little so that I might have more to offer.
. . .
The motel we check into boasts a five-minute walk to the beach. We don’t plan to stay, but Flaca needs to get clean. Back at the beach we’d tried to stop the bleeding on her hands and knees using a roll of stiff brown paper towels. After we returned the bikes, neither one of us mentioned an emergency room. The motel is middle ground, and maybe a little hopeful on both our parts.
Inside it’s stuffy as hell. The window unit struggles to cool the dumpy room. I watch her in the mirror as she runs her pink hands under the faucet. Streaks of blood drip down her clothes like one of those bad modern paintings. It takes ten minutes of chewing my mustache, of Flaca hissing and making wrinkled faces, before the water rinses away enough red crumb and sauce to reveal the wounds. Two perfect pea-sized holes in the centers of her palms.
“There must have been nails,” she says, pushing them toward me.
I pull back, my chin doubling.
She runs them under the water again, avoiding my eyes in the mirror, her brow a knuckled knot. She cries. Her tears are constant, but she’s hardened herself somehow. She opens and closes her mouth in silent pain. “My feet hurt, too.”
She turns her palms down. The wounds go through the backs.
“Let’s wrap them.” I reach past her to turn the water off. On the way to the motel, we’d bought enough gauze for an army’s first aid kit. I sit beside her on the bed and unspool the clean web around her weeping holes. I make her palms into white mittens, and watercolor roses bloom.
“Like Rocky,” she says, opening and closing her fists.
“You know Rocky?” I say.
“Everyone does.”
She pretends to punch me in the gut. I pretend to be hurt.
“You’re just as tough,” I tell her.
I promise myself that if the blood drips out of the mittens we’ll go to the hospital. I also pray, but I’m not sure for what. Please God, but then silence. It’s the familiarity I want. The touch of something that I can forget is always touching me.
She rests her hands in her lap and looks up. Her change in color startles me. She glows so pink that for one split second the taste of strawberry cake haunts my mouth.
“Don’t remember the last time I rode a bike,” she says.
“Me neither.”
“Didn’t like it then. Don’t like it now.”
I’m uncomfortable in the silence that follows. Time rushes through the room. I’m thrust forward, a man at the end of his life, sitting next to someone who knows all the wrong things about me. I feel the urge to explain myself, make some last apologies.
I look at her. She’s still Flaca, the office manager at Antonio’s Tow Service, but her eyes have dilated. They seem to strain the skin around them. And I can’t locate her in those pupils. My Flaca must have fallen out of her when she crashed, spilling through the planks. She’s out there right now, swimming in the surf, tripping up the surfers when a wave finally comes. But this Flaca is someone—something—else.
To fight the dread between us, I take up her bandaged hands and kiss them. Even through the wrappings I can smell it: the blood, sour as copper pennies.
“I need to clean up,” she says.
I draw a hot bath and leave the bathroom. She calls me back in, asking for the ice bucket to pour water on herself. She’s hidden behind the shower curtain pulled halfway. I only see her legs and feet in the pink water. A gauzy hand takes the bucket.
“I’m sorry,” Flaca says. Because who else could it be? “I didn’t mean anything by this.”
“By what?”
“You’re a good man, Miguel.”
I reach for the curtain but, having possibly seen the shadow of my hand, she pulls it taught. When I glance at her submerged feet, more wounds have come to life. Blood rises from them like tendrils of smoke. This frightens me, no lie, but what alarms me most are her stringy legs and big feet. It looks like she hasn’t even grown into them yet.
Viejo cochino.
I leave her to soak and walk that five minutes to the beach.
. . .
Driving back at twilight, she points out all the great horned owls in the naked limbs of dead trees. The windows are down so she thrusts a bandaged hand into the rushing air. I think to tell her about La Lechuza, the witch who turns herself into an owl, but I don’t have the energy. Besides, her mother should have already done that.
By the time we get back it’s dark. I pull into a spot just outside the broken gate of her apartment complex.
“Fucking bicycles,” I say.
Usually, she thinks my English cussing is funny, but she doesn’t laugh.
“It’s fine,” she says.
She leans across the center console, quivering as she presses on her hands, and stings my cheek with a kiss. I accept as gracefully as I can, but it isn’t what I thought it would be. Even after the day we’ve had, I still expect to steal youth from her lips. But I’ve already come back to my time.
“Adiós,” she says just above the rumble of the truck. Usually, I laugh at her Spanish.
She stumbles out and hobbles past the taillights. Her image burns red in the rearview mirror.
I clamp my eyes shut until she’s gone. Then I jump out of the truck and inspect myself. I search my clothes for blood by the headlights but find nothing. I pull out the floor mats and dump the sand. I take off my shoes and bat them against the tires. My left sock reveals a dark cherry. I peel off both socks and toss them behind the seat.
On the way home, my yellow flashers wash the streets with warning. I want to feel so large that nothing can frighten me. I’m yelling with light, and the night is swallowing it faster than I can get it out.
A block from the house, I cut the flashers. As I pull up, every window smolders like fresh-baked bread. Michael has come home for a visit. I’m coming home late, but this isn’t uncommon. Everyone’s smile gives me the benefit of the doubt, and I think I’ll throw up in disgust. Michael’s girlfriend is as white and blonde as I remember, maybe not as young.
“‘Buelito,” Mama says, “you look tired. Go sit down. I’ll bring you a beer.”
Next to my recliner is Mama’s, the seat a mold of her gorgeous round ass. She hands me the beer, and I kiss her hand, its smell of onions so familiar I want to cry.
. . .
Flaca disappears. She never waits at the bus stop anymore, and she never comes back to work. I miss her. But I keep imagining I left her back in that beach town, and now she’s settled down and married to the kid who rents the bikes. I often forget I brought her home. It’s more like I brought the shell of her. Who or what’s inside, I couldn’t tell.
In November, I begin to hear rumors about Flaca. She’s a liar; she’s a saint; she’s sick; she’s blessed. At first, I write them off as jealous old women gossiping. But when Antonio says Father Luís has been asking about her history at work, I start to worry. Not about her but about myself. She is young. She can recover from lies and fanatics. I’m too old to be a committed sinner. I don’t have enough fire to play the dirty old man.
If Father Luís comes to me, I’ll be honest. I did nothing wrong.
One evening at home, in the after-dinner fog of fried garlic, Flaca flashes across the local news. Mama says, “Didn’t she work for Antonio?”
I just nod.
Mama crosses herself.
The Vatican has launched an investigation into Flaca’s wounds. In the picture they show, her wounds are wrapped, their roses small but still blooming. She stares at her hands. Her skin is flushed and her eyes reflect the white gauze. Her irises appear lighter and—she was right—her overbite is gone. Some priest took that photo, licked her with his camera lens.
I get up and grab my keys.
“Qué?” Mama says from her recliner, unable to take her eyes off the TV.
“I just remembered. Antonio needed my log today.”
I’m out the door before I hear a reply.
I drive to Flaca’s building and bang on doors until I conjure up an old Mexican woman who doesn’t know a Flaca but tells me where the woman Doreen lives. “Por qué?” she says. “Ella se fue.” She waves a hand dismissively.
I cross a narrow swatch of fried grass and march straight up to Flaca’s door. It hovers, its latch busted, and I only need to nudge it to open the apartment.
In the living room, stacks of flowers sag like sandbags after a flood. Some single roses, some bouquets in plastic cones bought at the H.E.B. nearby, price tags still on. The flowers wilt honestly, but the store’s branding is vulgar. The scent is so powerful my eyes tear up. It’s the rot.
No one has cleaned out the dead offerings, and a strange ammonia rises from the stacks. A last wave of autumn heat cooks the smell into the walls.
“Flaca?” I call out, but of course she’s not here.
She’s probably on a plane, gliding across the ocean in order to claim her sainthood, though something tells me she won’t have an easy time. No one believes in this sort of thing anymore. These days, faith is hard enough.
Passing the bathroom, I spot rust-colored splatters on the lip of the sink. I don’t have to turn on the light to know what they are. In her bedroom, the bed is empty, but the sheets ripple like a pond she’s just risen from.
I lay where she laid and take myself there. I can’t help it. I’m not thinking of this Flaca—some angelic youth plucked from her dingy little life. No, I’m thinking of Flaca who sang my name; Flaca who made me put my feet in the sand; Flaca who thought flames on my truck made me dangerous. But it isn’t Flaca at all, I realize, coming to the end. It’s me.
When I’m done, I feel ten years older.
The blinds are raised and orange light spills into the room through ghostly curtains. If I squint, a shape in the ceiling’s popcorn texture reveals itself. A face. Large eyes, the short ponytail on top, the threat of an overbite. It could be anybody, sure, but I know better. She sees me.
“Perdóname,” I say.
No lie, she smiles, two large teeth covering her bottom lip.
