Haunts

Agaves litter front yards like squids buried in the sand head-first, their tentacles reach toward the sky ready to strike. The plant scares Monica like the sea movie did when she was a kid, the one with the big underwater monster attacking the submarine. When she was a child she used to pull those tentacles back toward her until they cracked. Once split, the blue-green leaves rotted yellow then ash-colored and finally rolled up like a carpet. Still, she’s addicted to the thick spiked leaves. The noon sun has already heated the cement stoop so much that Monica winces from the burning when she sits but she’s too tired to get up so she closes her eyes and cups her forehead with her hands instead. Yellow agaves dance in the blackness behind her closed lids. She hates waiting. It reminds her of when she was eight years old and her mother would pack her father’s suitcase so he could go back across the bridge to Juárez. She’d wait in the car because they told her to. She would wait and cry. She never got used to his leaving, never, but what she did get used to was crying. The light reflecting off a car pulling into the driveway warms her eyes so that her lids part and she laughs when sees Bernadette opening the door before she parks. Monica waves, stands, then bends down, and bites her lip as she picks up her brand new pot.

“Ay, discúlpame. It was our sister.” Bernadette walks with a huff up the steps looks to either side of her and lifts a small potted agave near the door and takes a key from under it. “Why didn’t you let yourself in?”

“Hurry up, this is hot.” Monica waits behind Bernadette as she unlocks the door. She still doesn’t feel comfortable just walking into Bernadette’s house, even though it was her own throughout her childhood. They’ve only known each other for seven months. Bernadette pushes the oak door open with both hands holding onto the gargoyle that pokes out the farthest, which is grey from so many touches. Vicente brought the ridiculous door to the house from the other side, said it was from Pancho Villa’s mansion. Inside it’s only a bit cooler than out.

“I, I mean my sister. She wouldn’t leave.” Bernadette pants and heads for the kitchen. “Me estaba contando qué paso con Benjámin. He pulled her out of the shower. She was encuerada and he threw her outside and locked the door. She could hear the baby crying inside. He wouldn’t let her in, y le rogó, begged him to give her the baby.”

Monica follows behind and sets the pot on the stove and turns on a gas burner. She undoes the top button of her pink jeans. “Graciela will never learn, that woman. I remember her at school. She liked the wild ones then, too.”

The kitchen, long and narrow like a hall, is bookended by doorways and Bernadette’s hip grazes Monica’s thigh as she passes her. Bernadette lets herself fall on to the chair. “Si, yo me acuerdo. I was there.”

“Bernie, I don’t get it.” Monica lifts the lid on the pot and looks in. “They’re still all chewy? I thought you might know what I did.”

“How long did you cook ‘em?” Bernadette doesn’t move from her seat and Monica winces when she sees the chrome legs of the chair tilt as Bernadette leans toward the stove to get a look inside the pot. Chrome fenders are all Monica remembers when Vicente drove up with the gargoyle door in the van. He waved so big that his hand nearly touched the dented fender on the passenger side. He and the man driving hung the door.

“Two hours.” Monica waves the lid toward the Elvis clock on the wall.

“Valgame, Dios. No. They should take thirty minutes. Pues, thirty-five at the most.” She slaps her large thighs and then places her forearms on the table...