Someone stroked her hair. Lilia opened her eyes. A red shirt. Emanuel. Crouching beside her. He smelled of soap. A trace of sotol on his breath, but his eyes were clear, gentle.
“Girl. Sweet Lilia. What a day you have had. Let me help you inside.” He smiled at her, and Lilia felt his hand gently lifting beneath her elbow.
“Emanuel,” she said, and let him help her to her feet.
“I have thought of you. Worried about you,” he said, as they entered the dark house.
He turned on a lamp.
“Do you need anything? Have you eaten?” He helped her to a chair.
Lilia waved his questions away, yawning. “So much food, Emanuel. Rosa acts as if I am dying of hunger, always pushing food at me.” She motioned to the table, piled with tins of sweets, and she smiled as she spoke, despite her tiredness.
“I am sorry I am so late. I see the wake celebration has ended.” He sat on the floor beside her chair. How young he looked, how much like the boy Lilia had known in school. When he reached for her forearm, his warm fingers gliding to her hand, she did not pull away.
“You did not need to come, Emanuel.”
He smiled. “You have been my friend for years.”
She tightened her hand around his and whispered, “Thank you, Emanuel. You are thoughtful.” She wanted to say more. To tell him not to leave her. To ask him to sit beside her and keep her company. She wished to say that she felt Crucita’s presence so heavily within these walls that at times she became frightened, and that Héctor’s absence left a void within her that she could never explain. She wanted Emanuel to know that Alejandra, who slept soundly in her cradle, might be all Lilia had left, and that her allegiance to the child burned within her breast, the incredible responsibility, the immeasurable love filling her in a way that nothing else seemed worthy of her emotion.
He squeezed her fingers, then cradled her hand between both of his. He lifted her fingers to his face, to his cheek, then pressed them to his warm skin.
She wanted to tell him of Rosa’s drunken harshness, of her cruel words, of the drink now soiling Crucita’s burial dress. Perhaps Emanuel would agree with Lilia that Rosa was crazy.
Lilia felt herself falling, letting go in a way she had not been able to do. Her fingers skimmed Emanuel’s cheeks and lips, and he kissed her fingertips.
So many emotions rose within her, but mostly a need for Emanuel to be right here for her now, for someone who knew her, really knew her, to hold her, to love her, to tell her all would be fine again. Rosa did not understand; Crucita was gone and had never understood fully.
She placed her hands on either side of Emanuel’s face, pulling him toward her lap. Lilia caressed his hair with her fingers as if he were a child in need of comfort and she his mother. He rested his cheek on her thigh.
Emanuel slid his hands beneath the hem of her skirt, grabbing her ankles tight and lifting his head from her lap, looking into Lilia’s face. His eyes burned bright, and he looked more alive than anyone Lilia could recall.
“I could take care of you,” he whispered, his breath hot.
She said nothing, unsure of anything. His left hand slipped up her leg to her knee, and with his right hand he pulled her chin to his. He kissed her gently on the lips and Lilia did not pull back, longing to be held, to be loved.
Emanuel raised himself to his knees, lifting the hem of Lilia’s skirt. He bent to her, kissing her ankles slowly, then moved to her calves, kissing one, stroking the other. His touch was more than she could bear and she leaned to him, pulling his face to hers. Her mind tumbled, blurring right and wrong. She pressed her lips to his.
The world twirled slowly, gentle and good for the first time in too long. Emanuel parted his lips, his hard, probing tongue pushing into Lilia’s mouth, his hands too tight on her forearms, pushing down on her, confining, trapping, and the world sped up, spinning uncontrolled and wild and wrong, and Lilia sat upright, pushing him away, her hands firm against his shoulders.
“No. I cannot do this,” she said.
He stared at her.
“Oh, God. I don’t want to do this, Emanuel.” She leapt to her feet, her hands at her temples.
He sat before her on his haunches like a dog caught stealing a chicken bone from the kitchen. “Lilia,” he said, half asking, half commanding.
“No,” she said.
He shook his head, wearing the unmistakable expression of disgust, of disappointment.
“Foolish Lilia. You make life difficult. Things could be simple for you and your child, you know. Almost easy.”
“You should go, Emanuel,” she said.
He stood, staring hard at her face as if he could will a change of mind.
“Please, go,” she said.
The waning hope in his eyes flashed to anger, and he shook his head in utter disbelief, as if discovering something unexpected and repulsive in Lilia.
“Now,” she said when he made no movement to leave.
“You will regret this, Lilia,” he said.
She said nothing but followed him to the door, and then watched him walk into the night. Heat lightning illuminated the far sky, and Lilia wondered what caused the flash. She’d learned in school about storms and electricity, but science could not fully explain such momentary brilliance in the black heavens. She imagined her soul as a dark mysterious place, and longed for a flash of light there, just a quick moment of lightness and clarity, of relief. She watched the skies a few moments longer, but no mysteries revealed themselves in that black expanse, and so she slipped inside, hoping sleep and dreams of distant places might help her restlessness.
Lilia unbuttoned her dress, and as was her habit checked her pockets before tossing the garment across the back of the lone chair in her bedroom. Lying across her bed in her underwear, Lilia opened the dirty scrap of paper. Scrawled in pencil were the words, Héctor called. He is across the border and good. He will call you later. Then in black ink across the bottom the words, Sorry about Crucita. But she is with God now, so that is good. Armando.
Lilia clenched the paper in her fist, laughing and crying. “Here is your sign, Rosa,” she shouted, waking Alejandra. Lilia laughed louder, scooping the infant into her arms, pulling her close. An old t-shirt of Héctor’s remained in Alejandra’s cradle where Lilia had placed it that morning. Lilia grabbed it, clutching the fabric to them both.
“Do you smell that shirt, Alejandra? That is Papa’s scent, and he is safe, my baby. You will know your beautiful, brave papa.”
6
HÉCTOR AND MIGUEL shared a hard bench beside a soda machine and waited for Miguel’s cousin to arrive. Outside, the air had smelled of diesel and exhaust fumes from the buses, but here, inside the terminal, Héctor breathed the sterile scent of cleaning fluids and air conditioning, institutional odors he hardly knew.
Miguel picked up a newspaper from the floor beside a trash bin at the end of the bench.
“Can you read any of that?” Héctor asked.
“Not too much, no, but I can look at the photos.”
Héctor waved him off. “You cannot learn news from photos.”
“I see they are playing baseball here,” Miguel said, flicking a picture of an angry first baseman and an umpire, nose to nose. The player pointed at the base while the umpire pointed at a player from the opposing team, a cloud of dust at their feet.
Héctor laughed. “They get just as pissed about bad calls as we do.”
Miguel nodded, flipping pages. “Looks like they had a big storm somewhere