Wish You Were Here(27)

I have not been inside her home before now. It is bright and cozy, with a tangle of plants on the windowsills and yellow walls and a crocheted afghan on the couch. There is a ceramic cross hanging over the television set, and the entire space smells delicious. On the stove is a pan; she walks to it and moves the contents around with a spatula before lifting the utensil and pointing at the kitchen table so I will sit down.

“Tigrillo,” she says a moment later, when she sets a plate down in front of me. Plantains, cheese, green pepper, onions, and eggs. She motions for me to take a bite, and I do—it’s delicious—and then with satisfaction, Abuela turns back to the stove and loads a second plate. I think she is going to join me, but instead she calls out, “Beatriz!”

Beatriz is here? I haven’t seen her for four days, not since we built the sandcastle together.

I wonder if she ran away from her dad’s farm again.

From behind a closed door on the other side of the living room comes a flurry of angry response I cannot understand. Abuela mutters something, setting the plate on the table and resting her hands on her hips in frustration.

“Let me try,” I say.

I pick up the plate and walk to the door; knock. The response is another muffled stream of Spanish. “Beatriz?” I say, leaning closer. “It’s Diana.”

When she doesn’t answer, I turn the knob. She is lying on a bed that’s covered by a plain white cotton blanket. She is staring up at the ceiling fan, while tears stream from the corners of her eyes into her hair. It is almost as if she doesn’t realize she is crying. Immediately I set the plate on a dresser and sit next to her. “Talk to me,” I beg. “Let me help you.”

She turns onto her side, presenting her back to me. “Just leave me alone,” she says, crying harder.

After a moment, I stand up and close the door behind me again. Abuela looks at me, her heart in her eyes. “I think she needs help,” I say softly, but Abuela just cocks her head, and my worry is lost in translation.

Suddenly the front door opens and Beatriz’s father stalks in. “Ella no puede seguir haciendo esto,” he says. Abuela steps forward, putting a hand on his arm.

He makes a beeline for the bedroom door. Without thinking twice, I step directly in his path. “Leave her be,” I say.

Gabriel startles, and I realize he has been too furious and single-minded to clock my presence. “Porqué está ella aquí?” he asks Abuela, and then looks at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Can we talk?” I say. “Privately?”

He stares at me. “I’m busy,” he grunts, trying to dodge around me for the doorknob.

I realize I’m not going to be able to divert him, so I pitch my voice lower, assuming that Abuela cannot understand English any better than I can understand Spanish. “Do you know that your daughter cuts herself?” I murmur.

His eyes, already nearly black, manage to darken. “This is none of your business,” he says.

“I just want to help. She’s so … ?sad. Lost. She misses her school. Her friends. She feels like there’s nothing for her here.”

“I’m here,” Gabriel says.

I don’t respond, because what if that’s the problem?

A muscle tics in his jaw; he is fighting for patience. “What makes you think I would listen to a Colorada?”

I have no idea what that is, but it can’t be a compliment.

Because I was a kid once, I think. Because I had a mother who abandoned me, too.

Instead, I say, “I guess you’re an expert on teenage girls?”

My words do exactly what my physical interception didn’t: all the anger leaches from him. The light goes out of his eyes, his fists go slack at his sides. “I am an expert on nothing,” he admits, and while I am still turning this confession over in my mind, he reaches past me for the doorknob.

I do not know what I expect Gabriel to do, but it’s not what he actually does: He goes into the room and sits gingerly on the bed. He brushes Beatriz’s hair back from her face until she rolls over and looks up at him with her swollen, red eyes.

I feel a shadow at my back, and Abuela walks into the bedroom. She stands behind Gabriel, her hand on his shoulder, completing the circuit of family.

I feel like I am in the middle of a play, but nobody has given me a script. Silently, I back away and slip out the front door.

Isolation, I think, is the worst thing in the world.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Before the mayor closed all nonessential businesses in the city today, I went to Starbucks on my way to work. I was in my scrubs, and I was masked, of course. I don’t go anywhere without a mask. The barista was joking around. She said, I sure hope you don’t work with Covid patients. I told her I did. She literally fell back three feet. Just … ?fell back. If that’s how I’m being treated—and I’m not even sick—imagine how it feels to be one of those patients, alone in a room with nothing but stigma to keep you company. You aren’t a person anymore. You’re a statistic.

The Covid ICU, which used to be the surgical ICU, is just a long line of patients on ventilators. When you walk into the ward it’s like a sci-fi movie; like these very still bodies are just pods incubating something terrifying. Which is kind of the truth.