The Last Karankawas(68)

Inay will appear soon; it is only a matter of time. So I rise, say goodbye. Thank him. Maybe I’ll see you around. His eyes, his smile, hold mine. Buena suerte. I do not know yet that he will be my luck and my jinx. We will be each other’s.

My mother waits by the snack bar, scratching beneath her wig. The last treatment was stronger than ever, and she lost her hair, her eyebrows, and eighteen pounds. I waited two weeks before booking us a night on this casino boat in our own city, just down the road from the apartment we share in Fish Village. The last stop in our trip.

She sees me and waves. Tara na, she says as I draw close.

Opo. She takes my hand and I let her guide me into the crowd. We weave past blackjack and poker tables, around blocks of slot machines. People win and lose, shout and cheer and curse, and my mother’s face is glowing; she is alive with all of this. And I should be, too. Part of me wants to lean into her, laugh loudly, swear to love all I have been offered, susubukan ko, susubukan ko.

Play with me, anak? she asks.

Kahit anong gusto mo. And it is true. Whatever she wants, I will give, I will take, for as long as we have. After she is gone, I will go home.

We find two King’s Treasure machines empty, side by side. This game is her favorite; she loves the kings and queens and rascal jesters who cover their mouths and giggle when you lose money. Inay feeds one of her own twenties into mine. She winks as we both play.

It doesn’t take her long to lose the twenty. She digs into her wallet, slips out the debit card from the front pocket. Rises.

Bad machine. She pats me on the shoulder. I will be back. This is fun, di ba?

Opo. I watch her narrow, frail shoulders easing into the crowd. So many nights as a child on Mindoro I slept with a creased photo of her on my pillow, praying, Please, Diyos, bring her back. But Inay stayed in America, and I did not see her again until the day I landed at Intercontinental Airport and she was at the gate with plastic-wrapped lilies, crying too hard to say my name. Now when she looks at me, she imagines all I did to be with her: applying for a visa, packing my things, and leaving behind my life to fly twenty-two hours to a new place, new people who ask What are you? She thinks I will settle here, as she did. That our stories will be the same.

Se?orita, mira, miraló. The old man on the other side of me, black cowboy hat on his head, is gesturing to my screen. My little king has jumped down from his tower and is dancing around a tree with jesters, a yellow-haired maiden. I spun the bonus round and did not even notice it.

Oh. I smile and nod. I have to touch the screen and choose which of the four tower windows I want to open. Behind one of them is the jackpot—two hundred times the amount I bet. I only get one choice.

I turn to the old man. ?Quieres? I ask, and gesture. Choose, please. Choose the one that will send me home.

He shakes his head. Ay, no. No tengo suerte.

So I place my fingertip against the screen, against the tower window that is closest to him, where he hovers so close to my machine that his breath fogs a corner. Somewhere a white man rolls a seven and his table whoops; somewhere my mother draws American bills from a machine, foreign cells hurtling within her. Marcos the bartender refills a gin and tonic and awaits the Lone Star’s journey back to Galveston. The jester does a cartwheel and jumps to the window I have selected. The veils part.

Why I recall any of this now, hindi ko alam. I am standing with my bare feet in the Puerto Galera sand. I listen to the chatter of people and I breathe in the storm brewing, the humming energy of the air. An army of charcoal clouds across the water march closer; I pull my shawl tight against the rising wind. Perhaps Carly is a warrior, too. She must be grown now. The ship is long gone, but I imagine her riding the Lone Star and marveling as I did at the way people can sway and rock together, between water that belongs to Texas and water that belongs to no one, or to us all. I picture a storm bearing down and her stepping out from shelter to watch it come.





GALVESTON: A GLOSSARY & GUIDE FOR THE UNINITIATED TRAVELER





Bishop’s Palace, the


Once there was a Roman Catholic bishop—(Editor’s note: If you think that’s the right place to begin, you are wrong. Start again.) Once there was a Civil War colonel. Once there was a woman who married the Civil War colonel. The colonel’s wife casts her gaze about her, staring at the island where they will live, a snaky strip of land hugging the crescent curve of eastern Texas. She takes in the salt and stink of the ocean, the sun that beats down so heavily it feels like liquid, like rain soaking through her parasol and into the pleated fabric of her blouse. This is nothing like Virginia, where the colonel is from. She wants Virginia. She squints at the empty lot on the outskirts of town and tries to see what the colonel and the architect beside him are describing with such enthusiasm. She is a painter—she should see promise. She sees only an empty lot.

“It will be of its time,” the architect says, waving his hands about in the damp air. A mosquito whines into the ear of the colonel’s wife. There are no mosquitoes in her imagined part of Virginia. “Cast-iron galleries. I’ll incorporate the Tudor arches that are popular now with geometric forms to add structure. Sharp roofs, long chimneys.”

“Steel,” the colonel adds. “Stone.”

“Sir, of course. Your home will weather the strongest storms (see: hurricane) the ocean offers. Sienna marble columns flanking the entrance hall. Mahogany from Santo Domingo for the stairwell and a fireplace in the front parlor.” The architect is from Ireland, but his voice is a rumbling canyon, like the ones out West the colonel’s wife has always wanted to paint. She cradles it in her ear, turns it over like a seashell. There are seashells here. She has seen them.