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They hear the sounds coming from above, from Apartment 303.
A woman weeps, the sounds of her bawling carried through pipes
and mortar. Something falls over, a dull thud. A glass breaks, or
maybe a plate. These things are not enough to draw Ben and Marie’s
attention, because the couple upstairs, they fight all the time. Tooth
and nail. Like it’s the end of the world.
But the sounds continue. The sounds change.
The woman screams. Then, it’s the man that weeps. Great
guffawing sobs.
Then, soon after, a noise rises — quiet at first, just a dull whining
hum. Marie looks to Ben across the kitchen table. She mouths the
question as if someone is listening: “Call 911?”
He shakes his head. Not yet, not yet.
The low hum becomes a thrum, and soon it reminds them of
something that it cannot be: flies, the sound of a fly’s wings buzzing,
multiplied a hundred times. Or a thousand. It’s coming from upstairs,
but even here, Ben and Marie can feel it in their ears, an echo boring
its way to the brain.
Ben draws a deep breath. He tells Marie he’s going upstairs. She
tells him she’s going with him. It’s a mistake for both.
The door to 303 is water-stained. Rust-water. Red like blood,
almost. They don’t hear the sound anymore, which makes them
hesitate. Maybe it’s over. Maybe it’s done.
Ben knocks anyway. Of course, the door’s not properly closed, and
it drifts open like a yawning mouth. The apartment is dark. Ben and
Marie take a step inside. Behind them, the door closes — not a slam,
but a tight
snap,
as if shut by a deliberate and invisible hand.
The sound in their ears rises anew — fly wings, a thousand,
a
million,
and when their eyes adjust, they see. It doesn’t make
sense. The ceiling is carpeted with them, fat black beads, jostling
for attention, flies, all flies. The walls are wet, dripping, and the air
sits suffused with the smell of saltwater. Furniture lies in pieces.
In the center of the floor three figures wait, two of them dead. The
couple who lived here lay arranged in an awkward circle, their
fingers clasped together. Their bodies are bloated, gray, with hair
like seaweed. They look drowned, which is appropriate, because
that is precisely how they died. Lungs bloated with brine.
Sitting in the middle of this corpse-circle, a young black boy, no
older than 12. He looks up with innocent eyes and wipes wet hands
on his Superman T-shirt.
Ben and Marie don’t know what to say. They want to help this boy,
whoever he is. They want to take him far from this place, but their
feet won’t move and their mouths cannot speak, cannot scream.
The boy speaks, instead.
“You all don’t look too good,” he says. He shrugs. “Old Salt says
that sometimes, people just have to
go,
like they’re overstaying their
welcome. You folks ever feel that way?”
They didn’t before, but they do now. Marie sneezes — saltwater
and blood. Ben screams but it’s choked off by a knot of bile and
seaweed. The boy changes, seems to grow taller without standing,
a great black shadow with anchors for eyes and fishhooks for teeth,
and then it’s all over for Ben and Marie. The flies are still hungry.
Old Salt smiles.
Cason stands apart. He always did, and always does. Right hand
resting on an old Singer sewing table, one of the few pieces rescued
from the fire so long ago; left hand curled around a brown paper bag,
clutching it tightly; eyes drifting over the room, over all the mourners
gathered in their black suits and gray dresses, except for that one
asshole who wore jeans and a button-down flannel shirt. Probably
some cousin of a cousin.
Occasionally, one of them drifts over to him. They offer him
condolences. She was a beautiful lady, they say. She was a smart
woman, they whisper. A good mother, they explain, as if they’re
trying to convince him.
He feels Cassie before he sees her, but that’s been true since
before the fire. Been true since day one, really. Twins work like that,
sometimes.
She is, of course, in a red dress. Lipstick the color of oxblood.
Around her wrist, an elastic cord from which tiny charms dangle:
two silver skulls, one golden Saturnian sickle, three runes of Tyr. On
her neck, a tattoo — a fat-bellied snake biting its own tail. Pinned
to her dress, a red poppy on red fabric, colors so close they’re lost
in one another.
Cassie walks — no, slinks — over, and slides her arm across her
brother’s shoulders. It sends a chill down his spine.
“Welcome home, Cass,” Cason says.
“A little Southern Horse Brutality, huh?”
“Yup. Been a while.”
“A year, now,” she says. She kisses him on the cheek. “Shame
about our dear mother.”
“I think so. But do you?”
She doesn’t answer, and that’s probably good of her. “Last time
we saw each other was…”
“Tampa,” he says, but he knows that
she
knows damn well when
they met last.
“Oooh, right, Tampa. The Bucs are, what, four games up?”
His hand tightens around the brown paper bag. “I don’t dig the
football, sis.”
“Still? Always the brooding artist, you. And yet, despite your
refined tastes, you still dress like shit.” Cassie starts going over him,
fingers like pecking hens. “Houndstooth jacket with elbow patches?
You a forty-year-old professor, or a young, vibrant sculptor? And
this tie — burgundy? With an oil stain on it? You have to be fucking
with me, little brother.”
They were born 30 seconds apart, but she came out first. Cassie
relished that.
She relinquishes her grip after scowling at the buttons up and
down the jacket.
“Anyway. Tampa,” she said. “That went well for you. I hear Charlie
Mars is still alive and kicking, that ol’ corker.”
“No thanks to you.”
“I suppose not. I did try, didn’t I? Came so close.” Cason can’t
help but think back: Charlie Mars with his wrinkled bulldog face,
screaming as Cassie stands over him, and she’s stuffing a fistful of
lavender and licorice root into his mouth with one hand, a gleaming
black sewing needle in the other. “But, you had other ideas. Figurin’
on going against the
natural order
of things.”
Cason doesn’t say anything. He just watches the mourners mill
about. From his vantage point, he can’t see much of his mother —
just the end of the casket spotted through a doorway. Her permanent
home, now. At least for her body.
“Come back to me, space case,” Cassie interrupts, snapping her
fingers in front of his face. “Get out of your own head. Isn’t good for
you, never was. You hear the news? I’m fixin’ on putting together
a new krewe.”
He sniffs. “I heard.”
“Exciting.”
“That’s one word for it.” He thinks on keeping quiet, but he can’t.
The bouncers that guard his mouth must be asleep, because words
just start streaming through the doors. “You know what? I don’t
want to talk about your fuckin’ — about your damn krewe. I want to
talk about Mom, Cassie. Mom’s dead, case you thought she was
in there having a quick little lay-down from a hot day in the garden.
She’s dead. She’s dead too young, and I know you have certain
feelings in that regard but this is
our mother
I’m goddamn talking
about, and you come in here looking like a, a, an I don’t know what.
Mom’s dead. You get that? You feel me,
big sister?”
Cassie goes quiet. It doesn’t happen often. Her face droops. She
casts her gaze toward the other room, and gnaws on her painted
lip. Cason can see when it hits her: it’s like an invisible mask drops
off, revealing the real Cassie, if only for a moment.
She swallows, and when she speaks, her voice croaks a little.
“I see a brown paper bag,” she said, blinking back something
that might be tears, something she hasn’t felt in so long she thinks
they might burn trails down her pale cheeks. “You have what I think
you have?”
“The good stuff. Angustura, dark. Aged 12 years.”
“Cemetery, then?” she asks.
“Best do it before she’s buried,” he says, his voice quiet. He
pauses, thinks for a minute, and then decides: “On the way, I’ll tell
you how she died.”
They burn the fields here in Jalisco. It’s how they harvest the
sugarcane. The fire strips the leaves, leaving the stems intact. Manny
Ofrenda darts through a part of the field where the fire has not yet
caught. He’s not a tall man, and the sugarcane towers above him. He
laughs as he runs, drawing in deep the smell of smoke, which in turn
smells of molasses, which in turn reminds him of his mother’s flan.
His machete swings hard: cane stems slice in twain before him.
His pursuers aren’t far behind. RJC:
Raja Jaliscos Criminales.
Gang thugs. And, for Manny, old family. But times have changed
since Manny caught a bullet in the lung and almost died. No, he
thinks, times
haven’t
changed. Times have changed
him.
He hears them crashing through the cane. Cursing as they do.
One fires off a few rounds from a cheap Russian Bizon knockoff, but
it’s just a threat — the submachine gun chatters a hollow warning,
bullets dancing skyward.
Manny — still laughing because he’s genuinely enjoying this,
loving the rush — skids to a halt at the edge of a small clearing in
the dead center of the field. Plumes of dark smoke rise above. The
fire will be here, soon.
The
cholos
come barreling into the clearing. One catches a foot
on a broken stem and tumbles onto his ass. The other three (Manny
only knows two of them, Paco and Alonso) are caught off guard
by their fourth’s ineptitude. It’s just one more excuse for Manny to
laugh. He drops the machete and holds up his hands, but not before
wiping some tears out of his eyes.
“You lovable idiots,” he says, shaking his head. “You always were
great fun.”
They aren’t caught off guard for long, and they raise their guns
up at Manny, creeping closer, as if that matters.
“I know what you did to me,” Manny says, “I know about the
betrayals. You thought to have me killed because our fearless
líder
was going to favor me, make me his
carnal,
his brother. But here
I am, friends!” He pats his chest, right where the bullet took him,
punching a hole in his lung. “Good
as new,
yeah?”
Paco and Alonso share a look. They really don’t understand. They
watched Manny die. Didn’t they?
“Look around you,” Manny says, sweeping his arms in a wide
gesture. Hesitantly, they do. Manny registers their confusion, and
happily explains: “Cempasuchitl, marigolds, each the color of fire. A
cup of clean water, and a plate of salt. Over there, you’ll see the feast
— tamales,
arroz rojo,
lemons, oranges, bananas. The cigarettes
are next to the
pan de muerto,
but you won’t get to smoke them or
to partake in the meal, my old friends. They are offerings, you see,
ofrendas,
just like me.” All the offerings sit on bamboo mats and
white tissue paper.
The
cholos
grow tired of this game, and they raise the guns. This
time, they intend to finish what they started. Manny interrupts them
one last time with hands clasped, as if in prayer.
“But the offering wasn’t complete until you showed up,” Manny
says with a wink. “Por
vida,
old friends,
por vida.”
The ghosts come out of the smoke and out of the cane, moving
fast. They are insubstantial, as much a part of this world as they are
not a part of it at all. Gray mouths open, silent screams, and Manny’s
old friends and betrayers die on their feet. The bodies topple, and
the specters move onto the feast, the famished dead consuming all
that has been left for them. Manny waits for them to finish before he
tells them what he needs them to do.
This is what Cason tells Cassie:
He tells her that the cancer moved fast. It was lung cancer, but
it was everywhere: tumors in her hip, tumors inside and above her
colon, and worst of all, it had crawled its way deep into their mother’s
brain, a worm boring deep to the heart of the apple.
He tells her he was alone with her when it happened. Up until now,
he didn’t know it had gone to her brain, and she only told him when
she started feeling it: her thoughts became muddled, her words
confused. Sometimes she’d just seize up, going rigid, drooling. A
low whine came from the back of her throat. She wasn’t a big woman
before, always frail and bird-like, but now she looked skeletal. A
vulture’s skull tottering on a crooked broomstick.
He tells her how she stood up suddenly—odd, given the brain
tumor and the fusillade of drugs firing in her body—and said she
wanted to sew something. He tried to stop her, tried to get her to go
lay back down, but she was adamant. She sat down in front of the
Singer table, opened the top, and pulled the dusty black relic from
within its shell. Her trembling hand traced the lines and curves of
the sewing machine. Their mother put her foot on the wrought iron
pedal beneath. And then she died.

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