Árida Zona

Too tall. That’s what the teacher with the green eyes, the one from the boy’s side, says. She’s too tall to play Mary. Joseph is only just a little thing. She could be a shepherd or the innkeeper’s wife, but the teacher says no. She is too big for the sheep costumes, and they can’t make a new one because then they won’t all match. Mary can be a cactus, she says. A cactus is just fine with her because her parents won’t come to see a cactus. They wouldn’t have come anyway.

Mary practices standing like a saguaro. Straight and long. She lifts her arms up, up to the gym ceiling where the basketball hoops hang. Up to where the climbing rope starts. She will have a crown of yellow paper flowers to wear and more to hold. It takes all of a man’s life for a saguaro to grow arms. The green-eyed teacher said so. She rises onto her toes.

After school, the girls jump her. Her teeth hit the ground first. The other ones hold her hands so she can’t cover her face. The biggest one searches in the dirt until she comes up with something that sparkles in her hand. Like ice. Only it can’t be. She kneels on Mary, half on, half off. One knee is under her ribs. The glass drags against her cheek. Then it doesn’t catch any more, but the girl’s hand still moves. She feels something run back into her hair, collect in her ear. It can’t be tears because she isn’t crying. Maybe she would if she could get her breath.

Before Catherine can start on the second cheek, Mary sees the girl rise up. Off of her chest. For a moment, she thinks that she is sinking, falling away. The ground has become soft and is ready to swallow her. To take her back. Then she sees the green-eyed teacher. She sees the nun that is pulling the girl away by the hair. The glass in her hand is blue-tinged. A Coke bottle.

Don’t touch your face.

She feels the side that Catherine didn’t have time to reach. Then she feels the side that has started to burn. Moves her tongue inside her mouth to feel if it has gone through. The green-eyed teacher’s eyes roll back into her head until they are all white. Mary watches her collapse to the ground. It doesn’t open for her, it doesn’t make itself soft. Her tongue meets the tip of her finger.

She said not to touch it.

The nun doesn’t blink, she’s still holding Catherine. But the look. Mary feels the tears start, her face aching and burning. She sits up and opens her mouth, lets the blood run out. Someone is screaming and it’s her.

One of the older girls has seen it happen. Gracia, the girl two grades ahead who helps in the library, she looks out the window to see her on the ground. At first she can’t tell because there were so many other girls around. The little ones, the fat ones, the brown and white ones. Even the shy ones. But then they all part, drift away, when the real trouble starts. Then it is only Catherine and the girls that hold Mary’s hands up into a sign of surrender. She drops her stack of books and can only point to the window when the librarian comes to see what is wrong.

It’s the sister who drives her to the hospital. She wears the old habit and has hiked it up to work the pedals. Mary looks at her feet. Sister Agatha has black orthopedic shoes with frayed laces. Flesh-colored stockings that are colored for someone else’s flesh. They wrinkle and sag around her ankles. She tells Mary that Gracia is the one who helped her. If by helped, she says, you mean to say looked until it was too late.

Fight. You needed to...