Fiction

El’s house, like her, sat on the fringes of a polite community. Where the town ended and the fields began, a few houses, including El’s, barely remembered how to belong.

Ethan sees an empty highway. Prickly green trees squeeze the highway from both sides. He kicks a pebble. Sometimes there’s a chirp from a bird or a buzz of a fly. He glances down the road behind him, hoping for a car. Nothing. Hours of nothing.

I knew Max would be proposing when, under a low, gray sky, my mother herded me to get a manicure. I’d never even stepped into a salon, never showed interest in anything remotely feminine growing up. Except for the sake of ring photos, I couldn’t see any other reason why she’d take me now.

She walks on four legs, and they are weak. She makes her way towards the steps. She cannot see where they start, where they fall off. She doesn’t need to; she hasn’t for a long time.

I wake to her fingers on my cheek, heavy and sweet-smelling. My body protests with a sharp yawn as I take her in through the sleep haze. Leg cramp? Nightmare? Do I need to change the sheets?

Milagros had never climbed a tree in her life, her father wouldn’t allow it. Just as he had forbidden her from going with her cousin to the concert tonight. She swallowed the lump in her throat and kicked off her sandals to make the climb easier.

Mom died on Tuesday. On Friday she returned. I slept until eleven that day (it had been increasingly hard to get out of bed). When I finally shuffled into the kitchen, I saw her.