The Nowhere Girls(48)

They turn onto the busy street that leads to the highway on-ramp, all six lanes and a median, the fast cars and stoplights, the turn lanes and crosswalks, the big-box stores and fast-food restaurants, the bright lights and blinking signs. Abuelita must be so scared, Rosina thinks. Does she remember that things like this exist? Or does she think she still lives in the little Oaxacan mountain village she left years ago? Is she wandering around here, lost, thinking she stumbled onto another planet?

“There!” Mami shouts, pointing at an intersection a block away. The car speeds up and they swerve just in time to avoid rear-ending a car turning right.

Abuelita is standing calmly at the corner, pressing the button for the crosswalk. The car screeches to a halt in front of her, and Mami jumps out. Rosina pushes the hazard lights on and pulls up the emergency brake lever. For a brief moment she wishes Mami could have witnessed her quick thinking, could have seen her taking care of things.

“Mami,” Mami says gently to Abuelita. She puts her arm around her and says, “Vámonos.”

Abuelita blinks, confused but trusting. Mami speaks to her cheerfully in Spanish, all of her previous rage suddenly gone. Rosina has to turn her head. Something about witnessing her mother’s softness hurts. Because Rosina never feels it. Because it is never directed at her.

Rosina gets out and opens the door to the backseat as Mami guides Abuelita back to the car. She looks across the lanes of traffic, at the Quick Stop gas station and mini-mart. She wonders if Spencer is working right now. She wonders who he’s hurt lately.

Then thwack! Rosina stands, stunned, as she realizes the side of her face is burning. She turns her head to see Abuelita right next to her, her open hand raised in the aftermath of a slap, eyes wild with a combination of anger and terror.

“?Qué has hecho con mi hija?” Abuelita demands. What have you done with my daughter? “?Qué has hecho con Alicia?”

“Soy yo,” Rosina says. “Soy Rosina.”

“Tienes su cara, pero no eres ella.” You have her face, but you are not her. Abuelita thwacks Rosina again. “?Demonio!” she screams. Demon!

“Mami!” Rosina’s mother calls, reaching for Abuelita’s arm, but the old woman wrestles herself free. Rosina covers her face with her hands while her grandmother hits her with everything she’s got. Rosina doesn’t fight back. She doesn’t try to stop her. Each impact seems somehow earned. She deserves this.

“?Basta!” Mami shouts. Enough! “Rosina es su nieta. Ella te ama.” Rosina is your granddaughter. She loves you. “Ella es buena.” She is good.

No, Rosina thinks. Mami’s lying. She doesn’t believe that.

Rosina and her mother manage to wrestle Abuelita into the back of the car. She stops fighting as soon as her bony butt hits the seat, as if, just like that, something switched in her head and she forgot her torment. How nice it would be to turn off feelings like that, Rosina thinks as she leans in and buckles Abuelita’s seat belt. Something wet from her face makes a tiny splash on her grandmother’s knee.

They drive home in silence. Abuelita falls asleep as soon as the car starts. “Like a baby,” Mami says softly. “You used to do that. When you wouldn’t stop crying, I’d put you in your car seat and drive around the block. Worked every time.”

But it’s not working now. Rosina is turned as far away from her mother as possible, her forehead pressed against the cold window. It has started to rain, and the thick drops outside match the ones falling down Rosina’s cheeks.

Rosina gets out of the car as soon as it comes to a stop in front of the house. She lifts Abuelita out of her seat, and her bony arms hold tight around Rosina’s neck as she carries her into the house. Rosina lays her down in her bed, pulls the blankets up her to chin, and tucks in the sides slightly. Rosina knows Abuelita likes her blankets tight, just like Rosina.

Mami is standing in the doorway of Abuelita’s bedroom. The room is dark and Rosina cannot see her face. She steps quietly away from the bed and says, “Excuse me.” Mom gets out of her way.

“I’m going out now,” Rosina says. In the darkness, she can see her mother nod.





US.


“At least this place is a lot cleaner than where we had the last meeting,” Grace says.

“But it’s probably even more illegal,” Erin says.

The big stone sign at the entrance to the road says OASIS VILLAS, but there is neither an oasis nor villas in sight, only acres of muddy, bulldozed land dissected by a tangle of roads that circle around and go nowhere. The only signs of life are abandoned tractors sitting on piles of dirt and, way off in the distance, far from the main road, this one empty, perfect house on top of a hill, which the girls are sitting in right now. The sign stuck out front says MODEL HOME! in cheerful green letters, but there is nothing cheerful about it.

“Oh, look,” Rosina says. “I’m not the only brown person here anymore. There’s Esther Ngyuen and Shara Porter. We have our token Latina, Asian, and Black girls now. Aren’t we just the model of intersectional feminism?”

Rosina plops down in the corner and leans against the wall, glaring at the rest of the room.

“What’s your problem?” Erin says as she sits down beside her.

“I don’t have a problem,” Rosina says.