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  Noeli chuckled slightly. “Feminist poetry in the Oaxacan diaspora.”

  “You are way too smart to hang out with me,” Cassidy said.

  Noeli smirked. “But also, you tell your kids about home. Do you know how many times I’ve heard the song ‘Bésame Mucho’? I know the life story of literally every single relative we have in Mexico even though I see them maybe once every five years. You make your home a part of your kids, too.”

  Cassidy nodded, pursing her lips. It was good, coming here. It was right to be near Noeli.

  They sat for a long time, staring out over the scraggly trees, until the light started to dim and the valley lit up with millions of lights, shining like so many stars. A coyote howled in the distance and the women looked at each other, eyes wide before jumping to their feet and running down the path to the car, dust kicking out behind their rubber soles.

  Paloma

  Paloma tried to remember if she’d ever told Cassidy the story of her miscarriages. She’d told her she’d had them, of course—that they’d struggled to conceive and to carry pregnancies to term, but Paloma was unsure if she’d ever told her daughter the full story. Maybe if she’d known, Paloma thought now. Maybe if Cassidy had known why they left Prague, how much Prague had meant to her, and that she had given it up to be a mother, maybe then Cassidy would understand her.

  Paloma had told Jan she was leaving over a stack of ungraded papers.

  “You are history from me?” he asked, putting his pen down and looking at her. His shoulders sagged, as if his jacket were too heavy.

  “I don’t want to be,” Paloma said. “But the baby. And the coal.” She wouldn’t hear Czech-English anymore, she thought. Appalachian English couldn’t be nearly as charming.

  Jan nodded. “I understand. Just is . . . I always have problem to keep my friends.”

  “Me too.”

  “When will you go?”

  “Tomorrow,” Paloma said.

  “Then what we doing working?” Jan asked. He stood, taking Paloma by the hand. In spite of his skinny arms and scruffy beard, Paloma thought of royalty at a ball, requesting a dance. Around them, dust floated and glimmered in the winter sun illuminating the room. Paloma breathed in the library fragrance of books and printer ink.

  “I cough outside,” she said.

  “We won’t go far.”

  The smog lifted as they exited the fakulty, as if by magic. They walked to the pub where they had gone on their night as lovers and again had utopenci, this time Jan with a beer and Paloma with a Pellegrino. The nostalgia was so sweet that Paloma felt buoyed by it, as if she might float out of the pub and across the bridge, over the castle, until she had flown far from the city.

  “I wish for you radost, Paloma,” Jan said after they’d sat and talked for several hours, extending a hand in a too formal gesture. “Joy. Thank you for all you do here for me and for Czech students. You will remember us?”

  “Always,” Paloma said.

  The bell of the astrological clock chimed a farewell. Prague did not mourn its comings and goings.

  Ken and Paloma boarded a train bound for Frankfurt. As Prague rolled away behind them, the thick and bready air in the compartment became a sharp acidic tang that entered Paloma’s nose and straightened her back. The quiet clunky syllables around them grew clipped and barbed.

  From Frankfurt they flew to New York, where languages jingled together like bells. Paloma remembered the sensation of disappearing into the manifold rumpus of humanity and felt something like tenderness until the excesses and victims of two centuries of capitalism assaulted her senses. A woman in mink brushed against Paloma’s hand, the coat oily and ominous. A legless man opined on the ground beside her in a puddle of acrid urine, unacknowledged.

  In Brooklyn, they met a friend of Ken’s who sold them an old car, which they drove to Ken’s hometown in West Virginia, where Jane still lived.

  The drive was uneventful, though the jalopy they’d purchased, a ten-year-old white Pontiac Bonneville station wagon with wood paneling, refused to go more than fifty miles per hour. Paloma considered that this was a sadder version of On the Road. There was no vast American dreamscape. Unlike east to west, going north to south was turnpikes and backroads. Claustrophobia and nausea took turns with her psyche and stomach.

  At the farm, finally, Jane threw open the door and embraced them both—a mountain queen in her kingdom.

  “You’re here! Oh, I’m so happy!” she exclaimed. “In! Come on in! Get yourself situated.” She directed them to a rough sofa with mauve flowers and green vines winding in every direction on the worn fabric. Paloma marveled at the dirt floor. She had wanted the antithesis of materialism and here it was.

  The farmhouse was cramped but homey. Jane handed them a plate of chocolate chip cookies and said, “This will be the fourth generation in this house, when the little one arrives. And I believe the eighth on the land. I can only imagine what my mom and daddy would have thought. I was thinking, this is all because of their love.” She stared off wistfully, then took a cookie from the plate and sat across from them in a rocker. “So, I’ve rented you a place out in Adrian,” she said, taking a bite and snapping back to the present. Crumbs fell to her lap, and she brushed them to the floor. “Of course, this isn’t an excuse to loaf around, Kenny—”

  “You—” Paloma started.

  “Thank you,” Ken said.

  Paloma had known Jane was planning to help them get on their feet, but she had imagined them staying with her on the farm until they found a home of their own. Hadn’t Jane just said the fourth generation? The news that she was renting a house for them did not seem to be nearly as surprising to Ken as it was to her.

  “Thank you,” she repeated.

  It was the third night in the gifted home—a dilapidated two-story shack, really. There was no insulation, and they slept curled near the small woodstove. The farmhouse was small and cozy. This was tall and drafty. Paloma shivered, annoyed that she had left misery for something worse. They’d traded coal for wood smoke. Paloma reminded herself it was temporary, that soon they would get their own house and she would get to just be, in the present, with her family. Suddenly she felt something warm and wet between her legs. An earthy smell rose to her nose and instinctively she reached down. She stood, and a sharp pain seized her left side.

  “Ken!” she called, and he jumped up beside her. Blood pooled at her feet.

  They drove over twisting roads, past pastures of dozing cows, and Paloma wondered if their legs were shorter on one side from the hills, or if maybe, after some generations they were born that way.

  They drove on through town, up the hill to St. Joseph’s. A nurse who repeatedly called Paloma “honey” took her blood pressure and asked how many weeks along she was.

  She started to answer in Czech, but stopped herself. “Almost twenty,” she said.

  “How heavy is your bleeding, honey?”

  “Heavy. And clots.” She didn’t need them to tell her what was happening. The ultrasound only confirmed it. The kind, stern doctor searched for close to ten minutes before announcing that there was no heartbeat. “You’ll have to deliver the baby,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Deliver the baby. The words came to her through the fog of his Appalachian accent so that she could not fully process what he was telling her. She was entranced with the way the vowels curved back around themselves, how his tongue floated and rolled where hers would have clucked and tapped.

  The nurse inserted an IV before Paloma could ask any questions, and immediately she began contracting.

  “I don’t want to feel anything,” she said, suddenly understanding, and Ken held her hand and nodded. He called for the doctor who called for an anesthesiologist, who inserted a long needle into the epidural space of Paloma’s spine.

  “I want it to be over. Take it out of me. Take it away. Th
is can’t be happening. This is why we came to West Virginia,” Paloma cried. Ken held her hand and cried along.

  The scene moved in front of her like a silent movie, doctors and nurses in blue scrubs and white masks moving about, busy, never quite looking at Paloma save for an occasional pitying smile. Each sad glance made her wrench forward with the renewed knowledge that her child was coming—she would see her soon, and she would be dead. Dead. All of the walks, all of the vegetables. They’d meant nothing. There was no purpose after all. When the baby emerged, impossibly tiny, from between her sprawled legs, she couldn’t look. She did not want to hold her.

  She would never get to sing to her. She would never get to brush her hair. How could she hold her and then give her away? “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” Paloma said. She’d thought she was arriving, but now she was stranded at sea.

  The doctor had passed the motionless being to Ken, who’d held it tight to his chest, his back turned to Paloma, huddled and hunched in the corner, silently sobbing.

  She should tell her the story, Paloma decided. She should tell Cassidy why she’d come here . . . and why she’d stayed.

  Cassidy

  Once in Fontana, Noeli exited the freeway and made her way to a little house. This neighborhood broke the sepia filter spell of the Inland Empire’s matching stucco box houses. Noeli’s house was light blue with a short wire fence. Next door, a rooster strutted around a dirt yard, a menacing rumble emerging from behind its waddle.

  “Come meet Abuela,” Noeli said as they entered through a door on the side and walked into a small kitchen. Noeli hung their bags on hooks already crowded by her grandma’s teal windbreaker and several designer knockoff purses.

  Cassidy followed Noeli through the kitchen to a dark carpeted living room, lit only by the glow of the television and a single halogen light on a bendable arm, positioned directly over Abuela’s head. The old woman sat in a reclining chair, a colorful knitted afghan over her legs, watching The Price Is Right.

  “Abuela,” Noeli said, and the woman lifted her head slowly. She was tiny with large brown eyes, piercing next to her dark sagging skin. Her gray hair was clipped into a neat bun. She was beautiful, and Cassidy could tell by looking at her, kind. “This is my friend Cassidy. Cass, this is my grandmother, Antonia.”

  “Abuela.” Antonia smiled and offered her small hand.

  Cassidy reached her own hand toward Abuela. The woman took it and squeezed, her skin just like Grandma Jane’s—incredibly soft and thin, gliding over delicate metacarpals. Cassidy smiled, too. Abuela gently let go, her hand floating back to her lap.

  This was where the soft part of Noeli came from, her empathy, her passion for social justice, the part that made her such a good friend.

  Abuela returned her attention to Bob Barker, and Cassidy followed Noeli down a narrow hallway lined with dozens of framed photos—smiling faces of cousins, aunts, uncles, and who knew who else. As Noeli had explained on their hike, distant relatives were clearly an important part of the family. Cassidy paid attention as her friend pointed out the salmon-tiled bathroom, her room, and the extra room across the hall, which she had prepared for Cassidy—fresh sheets folded at the foot of a high twin bed.

  “Make yourself at home, seriously.” Noeli watched Cassidy for a moment and then left her to settle in. Cassidy allowed the door to stay open a crack while she made the bed. The room was clean and homey—a bowl of seashells on the nightstand and a decorative pocket watch on the windowsill. She climbed into the bed and fell asleep quickly to the sound of her friend typing six feet away.

  Cassidy awoke part of the family. Whenever Abuela saw her, she gave Cassidy a conspiratorial look, her wrinkled face creasing in thousands of places as her thin lips turned up slightly. “I swear Abuela’s eyes sparkle when she smiles,” Cassidy said to Noeli.

  “My abuela is a goddamn mystical being,” Noeli confirmed.

  Even Noeli’s mom, Rosa, didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. She put down her Us Weekly whenever Cassidy walked into the kitchen, reaching out to hold her belly and say a quick prayer to Saint Gerard, the patron saint of pregnancy.

  A few nights in, after they’d cleaned up from dinner, Noeli excused herself to Rosa’s room and returned with an oversized pack of playing cards.

  “By the way, Mom, I do not even want to know about the lingerie, but you need a better hiding place for your weed.”

  Rosa glared at her daughter and Antonia crossed herself.

  Noeli began dealing as the women returned to their regular seats around the table.

  “How did this get in here?” Noeli asked as she turned over a card whose back was blue instead of red. A picture of a mermaid stared back at them all, a misplaced card from a Lotería set. “Con los cantos de sirena, no te vayas a marear,” Noeli said in a low, raspy voice. “Don’t be swayed by the song of the siren.” She pouted her lips and set the card to the side.

  “No drinks?” Rosa asked. Noeli pushed back her chair, stood, and selected a bottle of red wine from a cabinet above the sink. Snorting, Rosa stood, pushed Noeli aside with her hip, took down a bottle of cheap vodka, and poured herself a large glass.

  “Anyone else?” she asked.

  “Sí,” Abuela said.

  “Probably not okay,” Cassidy said.

  “Not to worry. I’ve got snacks for the pregnant lady,” Noeli said. She set a bowl of potato chips in front of her, then popped the cork on the wine bottle and took a swig.

  Noeli went through the complicated rules of the card game, and they began to play. As grandmother, mother, and daughter drank, they grew progressively louder and more rambunctious, the English in the conversation growing less and less frequent, until eventually Cassidy was surrounded by a sea of rapid Spanish. Cassidy laughed when the other women did, watching their faces grow more and more animated. She felt warmed by their glow.

  Now two inches into her vodka, Rosa was bolder. She picked up the discarded mermaid and held it up to Noeli’s face. “Oyes, Noeli? Do not be swayed by the siren.” Noeli ignored her, but Rosa continued. “You’ve been swayed though, haven’t you? Can’t ignore the sirens.” She had switched back to English, and Cassidy realized this was for her benefit.

  “I guess not, Mamá,” Noeli conceded, and Cassidy could see the anger in her eyes. This was where the hard part of her came from.

  Abuela jumped in. “Rosalinda,” she said sharply, looking at her own daughter. “Déjala. Leave her.”

  “Oh, I think I left her for too long,” Rosa went on, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms. “That’s how she ended up this way. Marimacha,” she hissed.

  It was clear by the way Noeli rolled her eyes and leaned back in the wooden chair that this had been rehashed many times.

  “Nonsense!” Abuela snapped, pounding her open palm on the table. “Our Noeli is who she is.”

  “Qué pena, though. I’ll never have my own grandbabies.” Rosa sighed.

  Cassidy looked away, at the Felix the Cat clock ticking on the linoleum tiled wall.

  “How do you know I won’t have kids, Mamá?” Noeli asked. “And you could blame my jackoff brothers for that too, you know.”

  Cassidy was about to excuse herself to go to the bathroom, when a single knock on the door silenced everyone.

  “Was that a knock?” Noeli asked, sitting up straight. The women listened.

  Sure enough, it started again, several hard knocks in a row this time, unmistakably someone at the door.

  Noeli stood and walked toward the door. “Speaking of jackoff brothers. Probably came back to get something and forgot their key.” She stood on her tiptoes to peer out the peephole. “It’s some white guy,” she said, turning to face Cassidy.

  “Because I’m the only person who could know a white guy?” Cassidy asked, and Noeli smirked.

  Cassidy joined her at the door and looked out.


  “What the fuck?” She threw open the door. “Manny?”

  “Oh my God. Is this why you’ve been so distant?” The man stared at the small pooch forming at Cassidy’s middle. He looked just like he did on-screen, down to the plaid shirt from his profile photo. “C, you should have told me.”

  “What the fuck are you doing here? How did you . . .” Cassidy took a step backward.

  “The things I sent from your wish list . . .”

  “Amazon hides my address.”

  “Well, sometimes, if it’s through a third-party seller, they include the address on the receipt.”

  “This isn’t the address where I got gifts.” Cassidy shook her head. She’d been careful. She’d taken steps precisely so this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.

  “I went there first and they gave me the number of the person they talked to about subletting. I googled that and—”

  “Okay, buddy.” Noeli stepped up beside Cassidy. “Time to leave.”

  “Out,” Rosa echoed.

  “It’s okay. She knows me. I help her out.” Manny scratched his head.

  “This is definitely not okay,” Cassidy said. But even as she said it, she felt guilty. This was the man who had sent her hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over the last year, had helped her pay her rent and fly back home. She knew intimate things about him and had confided in him, too. But that was all the distant idea of Manny—Manny as a brain, a disconnected mind, a bank account, not a real flesh-and-blood person.

  “This is a fan?” Noeli asked. “That is some stalker shit. Jesus. You need to get the fuck out.”

  “Manny, I think you should go,” Cassidy said gently.

  Manny planted his feet firmly. “I just want to help. I was worried about you. I care about you.”

  Noeli reached for her phone, but before she could do anything with it, Abuela stood, holding a small beige sneaker in one hand. With the other, she reached for the broom propped against the counter.