I came home from my graveyard shift to the smell of burned butter left frying too long and a woman’s sultry voice crooning Spanish on the TV. Abuela must have gotten sucked up in her telenovelas again while cooking breakfast. My ankles throbbed, my feet ached, and I couldn’t wait to plop down on the futon and wait with Mom for food. Instead I found her huddled in the corner of our tiny living room with her knees tucked to her chest.
“I’m home.” I locked the door behind me and set my keys in the small bowl nearby. “Is everything okay? Where’s Abuela?”
“They took her.” Mom’s blonde hair was a mess of tangles and her entire body shivered. She stared ahead, fixed on a certain point. Had I interrupted a panic attack or a delusional episode? I followed her line of sight.
There was my grandmother sprawled across the kitchen floor.
I ran over and fell on my knees beside her. An open bag of flour had fallen from the counter and splattered her with white. Thick smoke floated up from the sizzling pan on the stove. Abuela hadn’t even taken off her salon apron or let her hair down from its messy work bun.
“¡Despierta!” Wake up! I grabbed her shoulders and shook. Nothing. I whipped around. “What happened? How long has she been like this?”
Mom flinched and buried her face into her knees. The TV drowned out her panting whimpers.
I scrambled for my phone. My eyes burned, but I reigned in the urge to curl up in the fetal position and make a lake-sized puddle of tears. The only person I trusted to take care of Mom still needed my help. I unlocked the phone and keyed in 9-1-1. It rang once, twice, three times.
“911, what’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice answered.
“My grandmother’s on the floor and she isn’t waking up. I don’t have a car. I need an ambulance now.”
“Of course ma’am. Where are you?”
I rattled off my address and my phone number. The clacking of a keyboard and the operator’s calm breathing came from the other line.
“When did she fall?”
“I don’t know. I just walked in. My mom was with her.”
“Is she there? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s not talking.”
“Then I need you to stay on the line with me, ma’am.”
The operator asked if Abuela was breathing, if I felt any pulse under her neck or on her wrist, if I knew how to perform CPR. Each one I answered “no” as I squeezed my eyes shut to keep everything from getting too blurry. She took me through the first steps of CPR as I put my cell phone on speaker and set it on the floor so my hands were free. I placed both my hands in the middle of Abuela’s chest. Right as the operator explained how I should push, the door rattled.
Mom tugged and turned the knob. It didn’t budge. She reached for the key bowl, but slipped and knocked it on the floor. The clay dish shattered into chunky shards. Her shaking fingers closed over the deadbolt.
What would happen to Mom if she ran away? Could she help the doctors save Abuela if she stayed? I left my grandmother and charged for the front door. Before Mom could turn the lock, I grabbed her wrists and shoved myself in front of her.
“Move!” Mom said, jerking away from me. “I have to leave.”
“No, you have to stay.” I struggled to sound calm and gentle. “Somebody’s coming to help her, but we have to go with them. You have to answer their questions. You’re the only one who saw what happened.”
“No! They’ll come for you next.”
My attention flicked to Abuela lying there. The operator’s digitized voice asked “Ma’am? Are you still there?” over and over again. If I tried the CPR, would Abuela miraculously cough and start breathing again? But that left Mom alone. There’d been other times she’d spiraled. She’d run away and hid out until my grandmother or I found her. I had to keep her inside until she calmed down. I had to do so many things but I didn’t enough hands to juggle them all. The only two I had were holding on to Mom.
“We have to stay.”
“I have to get away!” Mom slapped my arm. “Don’t you get it? The angels are punishing me again. First they took Manny, now Mercedes. I messed up again. But they haven’t noticed you. If I stay, they will.”
“I’m safe, I swear. I’m not going anywhere. You need to stay and tell the paramedics what happened so they can help.” My voice cracked. “Please, Mom. I need your help. Please stay.”
“I can’t. I can’t.” Mom shook her head. “It’s my fault. She’s gone because of me.”
“She’s right there! She’s not gone. Nothing’s taking me, I promise. Just wait with me. That’s all you have to do. Hold my hand. Don’t let go. You can do that right?”
Mom paused, still breathing too fast. She let go of the deadbolt and grabbed my hand so tight it hurt. I kept eye contact with her, not daring to glance over at Abuela. We sat back on the futon and waited until sirens screamed into the parking lot.
* * *
It took awhile for Mom and I to adjust during the couple of weeks after Abuela’s heart attack. Once Mom’s Baker Act ran out, she left the hospital’s psych ward, then I was a roadrunner and she was a zombie. I left her sandwiches between calling around to funeral homes. A couple hours later I reminded her to eat them. Dealing with my grandmother’s death meant scheduling constant appointments with government agencies, my mother’s social worker, and low-income lawyers. At first Mom wanted to stay home alone while I went out to handle stuff. That went okay until she called me and said the angels were sending her messages again. I called my aunt on the other side of the country to finish handling the funeral arrangements.
From there I tracked down Mom’s psychiatrist and found out the clinic had fired him. During the first appointment, the new doctor remarked how the last guy’s willingness to prescribe drugs—without reevaluating his patients periodically—bordered on malpractice. That was the reason Abuela had picked the last guy. “Dios y la familia arreglan todo,” she’d told me. God and family fix everything. That left room for church and me, not pushy doctors.
This psychiatrist talked to us instead of a clipboard though, and eagerly handed Mom some literature about her schizophrenia she said could help. I was lost in a daze while Mom obsessed over those papers on the bus ride home. After her medications were adjusted, she laid in bed all day with my laptop, typing things into search engines instead of sleeping. The new pills seemed to balance her out more quickly than the old ones. We didn’t look for someone else.
My half of Abuela’s assets made up for the shifts I’d missed up to that point, but bills sucked them dry. I had to dive into work to make up the difference. The funeral came and went. Mom and I fell into a loose routine. Quiet moments crept up on me—while Mom slept, whenever I didn’t have a shift, after I finished scrubbing the apartment sterile every day. As soon as my racing thoughts settled, I plopped into our futon and waited for someone else to come home. It took a solid minute of staring at the front door before I remembered everyone was already there.
* * *
I stood in front of Mom in the living room and marked routine questions off on my fingers. “Emergency numbers?”
“By the landline in the kitchen.” Mom rolled her eyes. That morning had left them puffy.
“Did you take your medication?” I tapped my pinky, the last one on the list.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“You saw me swallow them at breakfast.” She maintained eye contact the whole time. Her hands rested at her sides and there was a relaxed ease in her posture. No subtle tics. If she was trying to lie, she shoved her hair behind her ear or tugged on the bottom of her shirt.
“Just part of the routine.” I tugged her into a bear hug and kissed her cheek. “We’re still on for Movie Morning, right?”
“Wake me up when you get home.” She stood a good couple inches shorter than me and had to reach her skinny arms around my ribs instead of my shoulders when she hugged back. “Have a good night at the bar. And tell Nico he needs to get his big self over here for some Rummy.”
“I’ll pass the message along. You sure you don’t need Nate and I to pick something up?”
“Maya Alvarez-Diaz, stop fussing over me and get your butt to the parking lot before I kick you out myself.” She shoved me away and her face lit up some.
I stuck my tongue out while grabbing my wallet and keys from their home in our new plastic bowl. On my way out, I tripped over the suitcase Mom had started unpacking earlier. Its cloth guts hung over its edges: more of her pastel v-necks and a formal black dress. I started to ask when she would finish putting her stuff away. That dress made the question catch.
The deadbolt clicked as Mom turned it behind me. So far, so good.
An older pea-green Prius slid into an empty parking space by my apartment. I trotted down the stairs, over to the passenger side, and ducked in. The driver—my twenty-something co-boss, fry cook, and best friend Nate—looked like one of those macho, Fabio types. He had dark features, towering height, and a gym-hardened physique. But behind the wheel of that tiny tree-mobile, the mystique vanished.
“Dressed to the nines as always,” I commented when I noticed his suspenders and creased khakis.
“I take pride in my appearance,” Nate replied with only a hint of his Mediterranean accent.
“A pair of jeans wouldn’t kill you. Customers don’t see you in the kitchen.”
“Yes, but the cucina, she has eyes, and she’s always watching.” Nate became a bad stereotype as his hands made exaggerated kissing gestures. “She deserves my respect, my love, my best foot forward.”
“Did I miss a pair of eyes in all those inanimate grills and counters?”
“My dear Maya, you lack imagination.”
“You keep that up, I’m taking the wheel and leaving your ass to walk.”
He shifted from park to reverse with a subtle smirk.
“Do I need to fix any of Cindy’s disasters when I clock in?” I asked, buckling my seat belt.
“Not tonight.” He tilted his head over his shoulder as he pulled out, even though the car’s backup camera had popped on the dash screen. It beeped until he shifted to drive. “Nico had Freckles clean it up.”
“You mean David?”
“Yeah that’s who I said. Freckles.”
“Nico’s going to kill you if he runs off because of that nickname.”
“Better than Greasy or Droopy.” We came to the stop sign at the entrance of the complex, nobody behind us. Nate turned his attention from the road to me. “He hasn’t tried bothering you about a date again, has he?”
“No, I think you played Papa Bear enough last time.”
“Good. He’s a bum. Michelle was better, but she bad-mouthed everybody.”
“You get I can chase off people looking for dates by myself, right?” I finger brushed my purple pixie-cut and swiped my bangs out of my face. “If saying I’m not interested doesn’t work, ignoring them usually does the trick. I’ve tried it on both boys and girls with good results.”
“So you want me to stop driving away the losers?”
“I want you to do it to the drunks.” I suppressed a shudder. “Nothing but bad pickup lines and Spanglish for idiots.”
Nate cocked his eyebrow.
“You know the type.” I deepened my voice to the most college jock it could go. “Hey chicka, mi casa, su casa. Let’s go there and I’ll make you a princess.”
Nate laughed so hard his shoulders jiggled.
A horn blast behind us shifted his focus back to driving and he turned out onto the main road. The other car whizzed ahead as soon as the opposite lane cleared.
A pregnant, waiting silence filled the Prius. When I first got the job, my apartment was closer to South Tampa, by Nico’s Tavern right along the bay. Then we had to move to a cheaper neighborhood that was right before the rural edge of Pasco County. We had about a thirty minute drive to fill.
“Out with it, Nate.” I crossed my arms. “What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up.” He idly tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Just wondering how your trip went.”
“Fine.”
“Is your aunt well?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t get to talk to her much. She was dealing with squealing cousins half the time and ignoring me the other half,” I said with a stiff shrug. The upholstery on the side of the door got fascinating all of the sudden. “The usual.”
“How much family came up?”
“How much would you expect if none of them can afford the trip?” I narrowed my eyes at the cloth lining.
“Was it a good service, at least?”
“It was dandy.”
“You know what I mean.”
“What am I supposed to say?” I ignored my inner Abuela’s voice telling me to have patience and turned my glare on my friend. “Yeah, Nate, I enjoyed seeing some stick-up-his-ass priest talk Latin over my Protestant grandmother’s ashes because my uncle decided that she needed a traditional Catholic service. And they paid for it all, so nobody listened to the family who actually lived with her for the last eighteen years. It was fantastic!”
“I get the picture, Maya.” Nate tightened his fingers on the steering wheel. “You don’t have to yell.”
“You wanted to hear about it, didn’t you? I had to talk Mom down three different times during the plane trip. Top that off with only getting a couple hours of sleep on an air mattress because the horde of little cousins wouldn’t shut up. It was like Disney World.”
“Excuse me for worrying.” Nate took a deep breath, let it out slow. His fingers eased on the steering wheel, one by one, but the cover had already cracked under the pressure.
“It was a damned funeral, Nate. How did you expect me to answer?” My fingernails dug crescent trenches into my forearms. If only the person we’d been talking about was in that car. She’d close me in a tight hug and call me “Silly mija,” then everything would be okay.
* * *
Midnight on the dot and a large bachelor party was still in full swing at Nico’s Tavern. Half the guys grumbled about the lack of strippers while the other half made the groom feel like a rock star while he sang karaoke. Both groups wanted the liquor flowing. All insisted on sitting around the stage at the other end of the room. Nico worked like wildfire, pouring drinks while I walked them across the main dining area.
I should have been too busy to worry about Nate nursing one of his hard ciders at the bar counter, but my conscience found the time. He leaned over his half-empty bottle with his long bangs hanging in his face, staring into the spout. I caught a break after I refilled the wedding party’s tumblers and they all got distracted watching the groom slaughter AC/DC. Then I snuck back to the bar and collapsed into a stool across from Nico.
The burly bartender finished wiping up the drips from his most recent cocktail. While Nate looked like he should star in a trashy romance novel, his older brother resembled the models on a lumberjack magazine. He was built like a linebacker and had hair everywhere but his head. But the practiced way he made drinks and easy rapport he had with customers put him more at home in a Prohibition-era speakeasy. It didn’t matter if he wore a suit or a plaid shirt, bartending was in Nico’s blood.
“Take a rest,” I said. “Watching you is making me tired.”
“You know what they say about idle hands.” Nico tossed his damp rag back into the small sink nearby. He propped his elbows on the counter. “What’s up with you?”
“Guess.” I studied a gray vein in the counter’s black, faux marble covering.
“You know, when somebody dies, a little part of them always lives on in the people they leave behind.”
I couldn’t muster the fire to tell him to knock it off. Instead, I folded my arms to a pillow and rested my head in them. “Either way, she’s not here to help out anymore.”
“I guess you’re right there.” The vibrations from Nico’s fingers tapping on the counter boomed beside my ear. “How’s Jen doing?”
“Better, I guess. She’s not sleeping all day anymore, but she cried every night of the trip.”
“What about you? Those circles under your eyes are so dark, I’d say some bastard gave you two shiners.”
“That’s natural.” I rubbed said circles on reflex.
“How long has it been since you got six solid hours?”
“Four or five’s plenty.”
“If you need a break, bring Jenny over some time.” Nico gestured to the door, toward his and Nate’s house a few blocks from the bar. “We’ll stay busy with some Canasta while you nap.”
“I don’t need a nap.” I flipped my head so he couldn’t pick apart my face anymore. On cue, my traitorous mouth yawned.
Nico sighed and took the rag back up. A mother hen, just like Nate. Since I’d known them, the two brothers had done everything together: running the business, sharing a place, bickering over who won at cards. The decade and a half age gap between them never made a difference.
I peeked over at Nate as he sipped at his cider. Abuela’s favorite Bible verse played its way through my head, the one that said to treat others like you’d want to be treated. I half-baked a plan to slide into the stool next to Nate’s and ask if he wanted to come over for coffee on our next day off. Then I’d slip in the apology and we could hash out the rest.
My pocket vibrated. When I pulled out my phone, Mom’s cell number lit up the screen.
I jabbed the green accept button. “Mom? What’s going on?”
“Maya, get home now!” she said between shallow breaths. “I’m packing your stuff. We have to get out of here before she comes back.”
“She? What are you talking about?” Blood pounded in my ears as my heart picked up. Had her body built a tolerance to the new medication already?
“Can’t explain. Have to pack. Have to hurry.”
“I’m on my way right now. Nate’s getting in his car.” I waved at him. He beat me to the door in a few big steps. “Deep breaths, Mom. You can pack while you talk, right? Tell me what happened.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” Mom sniffled, her voice thick like she had a bad cold. “I thought you were safe. She wasn’t supposed to be real. Everyone said I was just traumatized by the accident.”
“Who’s not real?” I climbed into the Prius and slammed the car door behind me. Instinct made me buckle the seat belt. Nate pressed the ignition button and the dash display lit up.
“The angel that made you healthy. She was in the mirror. I don’t know where she came from. I was good today,” Mom choked out. “She said she was coming for you. Don’t let her take you away. I can’t lose you too.”
“I’m right here, Mom. Just keep talking.” I mouthed faster at Nate.
“I covered the mirror up, but she could still be in there. She could be listening.” Mom paused and a door slammed. “I need to break it or something. I need to keep you safe.”
The Prius’ engine revved and we took off.