It is an unusually windy day. The tallest palm fronds sway wildly, threatening to drop their heavy coconuts. We pull up to a pale yellow house on a block of stucco homes, each one a different desert color. Dad walks up to the front door with an air of command. Then he stops, slowly looks from side to side, and rings the doorbell.
The house is silent. I see a side window curtain pull back. The door squeaks open, a safety chain clinks across the gap, and a pair of dark eyes peek out. “Is Terry here?” Dad is polite, but firm.
“Why?” The eyes behind the door are suspicious.
“She’s fourteen, and I’m her father. She needs to come with me!”
The eyes glare at us for a few minutes longer; then in a sudden decisive move, we hear the chain rattle and the door opens. “She’s back there asleep.” We step in and scan the room. A young Hispanic girl peeks out from behind the door. “Terry told us her parents were dead and she had no place to go,” the girl explains to my father, her accent thick. “She’s in the back room to the right.”
“Go get her, Dawn,” Dad instructs, holding his head down and away so the girl won’t stare at his bandaged face. “Tell her to hurry!”
I scoot past them, hurry down the hall, and barge through the door. Terry is under a pile of blankets. Her foot sticks out from under the covers, bearing a macramé anklet I made for her last birthday.
“Terry! Terry!” I bend to feverishly shake her bare foot.
“Ump, whaaattt?”
“Terry. It’s Dawn. Dad’s waiting for you in the front room. You gotta go. Now!”
“What?” Terry sits bolt upright. “He’s here?”
“Yes! Now let’s go!”
“No! I’m not going!” Her hair wild, she scans the room. “Where’s Juan?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Now let’s go before Dad gets real mad.”
“Is he mad?”
“Not yet, but don’t push it. He’s in a lot of pain, and this is the last thing he wants to do today. You know we’re leaving for California in a couple days. We gotta be ready!”
“He doesn’t want me to go with him, Dawn.” Her voice is a whimper, and I know she is feeling insecure. “Besides, I love Juan!”
“Oh my God, Terry, you do not! Let’s go. Now!” Terry lets out a few audible groans and slowly gets up. She stalls for time, rummaging through her things, stuffing a large, plastic garbage bag full. “Come on!” I’m getting antsy. Things are too quiet, and Dad’s been waiting too long.
Giving in, Terry picks up her bulging trash bag and follows me out to face Dad. He is standing with his hands in his pockets, jiggling his change, and nervously looking out the window. The Hispanic girl fidgets at the door as she watches us come out. Dad avoids our eyes. “You got everything, Terry?”
Terry stands still, eyes filled with horror. She hasn’t seen Dad since the day of his surgery, and the gruesome evidence of the missing piece of his face stops her cold. “Yeah.” She looks down and brushes a tear from her cheek.
“Then let’s go.”
I stop to thank the girl and her family for taking care of my sister, and then I fall in to follow Dad to the car.
“Tell Juan I’ll call him later, and let him know where I am, okay?” Terry calls out to the girl from the backseat window.
Dad presses down on the gas.
We drive back to Carol City in silence. Terry sits by herself hugging her plastic bag and looking despondently out the window.
We arrive at the house in time to see Mom and Wayne packing boxes and small pieces of furniture into her car. I try to catch a glimpse of Wayne’s eyes, but he averts my gaze. His long, stringy, sun-streaked hair hangs in his face, and his shoulders sag like a tattered dog toy. He briefly looks my way long enough for me to see that his eyes are red and swollen and his cheeks are streaked with tears. He is taking the breakup of our already broken family really hard, and I am going to miss him just as much as I know he will miss me.
Terry makes a beeline for the house, not looking at Mom or Wayne, while I stand in the front yard, immortalizing the images of what I called home for the last seven and a half years. It is time to close things up and say good-bye to the shapes, smells, and shadows of a difficult part of my childhood. I stare at the cherry hedges on the side of the house. I gaze at the royal palm by the mailbox, noting how much it has grown. Then I think about Grandma.
The presence of Mom is everywhere also. I memorize the multicolored bushes that rest just under her bedroom window and recall with a strange attachment the sadness that lives there. I stare at the sidewalk in front of the house, where I roller-skated on a Christmas morning in my new faux fur and Naugahyde jacket that Mom worked so hard to be able to afford, and I smile. What is a nauga anyway, and how many did it take to make this jacket? I wonder and laugh. Even with her many jobs, Mom always tried to make Christmas special. I know that despite all the rage between us, I am going to miss her. I picture how we might have been closer, and my heart hopes that all the hurt between us could somehow be instantly fixed.
“Are you coming in, Dawn?” Dad’s voice snaps me out of my daydream.
I figure Dad probably wants me to roll him a joint, and I answer, “Yeah, be right there.” It is becoming twilight, and everyone has already gone in. I walk past Mom’s car, loaded to the brim with the precious treasures of our home, and I brush a tear from my eye.
Why does it have to be this way?
It is so hard here. If we stay I will probably end up dead, like a lot of the other kids I grew up with. Drowned in a canal like the girl I sang with in the choir before Grandma died; wiped out in a car wreck from a midnight race; shot down for whatever might be in my pocket. I know this. I want a better life, but why does it have to be so hard?
The next day Mom and Wayne are gone early. They are busy renting an apartment in North Miami. Dad and Mom have made arrangements to split the proceeds from the house, and Mom is very fair. As long as she can help it, she will never let her children go without, and in her own way, she wants to make sure her two girls have enough.
Dad is busy packing all his medicines and bandages together for the trip when he focuses on Terry and me. “Pack only the things you really need,” he says, counting his rolls of gauze.
“Dad, I gotta talk to you,” Terry insists, pulling him off to the side of the room.
“What, Terry?” He sounds annoyed at what he knows she is about to say.
“I’m not going without Juan!”
Dad looks up at her, then challenges, “You’re not what?”
“I love him, Dad, and I just can’t leave without him!”
“Do you know what you’re saying, Terry?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice shaking.
“And where am I going to put him? We don’t have enough room.”
Seeing a possibility that Juan can come with us, she shoots back a response. “Yes, we do, Dad. I’m only bringing a little bit, and he doesn’t have much stuff, either,” she rationalizes.
Dad thinks for a moment. “What’s he got, Terry?”
Terry stands, looking blankly at him for a minute, then asks, “What… what do you mean?”
“What’s he got?” Dad repeats. “Money… pot… you know. What’s he got to contribute? To bring with him?”
Terry smiles as she comprehends Dad’s meaning, knowing she has good news. “He’s got money, Dad, and pot.”
“Yeah? Really?” He perks up with interest. “Well, where is he?”