Arden swallows. This house has eighteen rooms. Eighteen rooms full of expensive furniture. Expensive carpets and tapestries and paintings and antique décor. But this house is empty. Empty without Aunt Dorothy.

I don’t want anything that matters, Arden wants to say. I don’t want anything else to lose. The pain isn’t worth it.

“I was thinking I could bring over Dad’s pressure washer and get your steps in front cleaned up,” Arden says. “And your azalea bushes need more trimming than your ear hair, and that’s saying something.”

Cletus huffs. “They could use a trimming, now that you mention it. The azalea bushes too.”

Arden grins. “I’ll be back this weekend. Anything else you need done?”

His uncle thinks for a moment. “I can’t find my spare keys to the truck—had to have it towed home, did your mom tell you? Maybe since you’re not going to be sleeping anyway you could swing by the Breeze Mart and check on Carly. I’m sure she’ll be there even after what happened. Did I tell you that girl’s a spitfire?”

“I’ll try to make time for it,” Arden says, delighted that now he actually has an excuse to see her again. He could tell she wasn’t feeling the whole friendship scenario.

She’ll get used to it after a while.

On his way out the door, Arden hangs the keys to his uncle’s truck on the coatrack. It’ll be a while before he finds them there. Especially because he’s probably already looked.

Nine

I brace myself on the metal steps to the trailer; the door tends to stick when you open it and a few weeks ago I pulled too hard and found myself sprawled onto the broken concrete slab we call a porch. When I step inside, the aroma of whatever Julio’s cooking in the slow cooker hits me like a spicy snake slithering up my nose.

Julio insists on doing the cooking because whenever I cook, I make things like hamburgers and pizza or pasta—what he calls American food. Which, of course, I’m proud of. It’s something that’s mine. Our trailer might be the tiniest version of Mexico you ever saw, but at least my cooking—and my bedroom—are the one place you can experience American culture. Or, you know, whatever American culture I can find at garage sales and thrift stores.

Since Julio won’t be home for another hour or so, I set my backpack down and head over to Señora Perez’s to see if her washer is available. I knock on the door and am greeted with an invisible wall of stale cigarette smoke when she opens it.

Señora Perez is in her usual pink matching sweat suit with a magazine rolled up in her hands. She’s obsessed with keeping flies out of her house; that particular issue of People en Español probably has the guts of hundreds of flies on it. “Que?” she says.

I wouldn’t call us friends, Señora Perez and I. We have an arrangement, one that benefits us both. I’m not even sure if Señora Perez has any friends, anyone who comes over regularly to gossip about the celebrity drama she’s obviously so fond of. I never see anyone in our mostly Mexican trailer park coming or going from her door. Some say that she’s not one of us, because she had an American husband who died a few years ago. I wonder what they say about me, and my taste for American culture. Either way, Señora Perez and I are not so different. Probably if we were both more friendly, we might be friends.

“I was wondering if I could wash a load or two in your washing machine,” I say in Spanish. “I noticed you had some weeds that needed pulling in your garden.”

Garden is hardly the word for the hodgepodge mess of plants Señora Perez keeps in the sunny part of her lot. There is a stone bench, around it some seasonal flowers, and then for some reason she planted bell peppers, which she doesn’t even eat. Maybe her husband used to love them. She sells them to my brother for dirt cheap though, so who am I to complain?

She leans against the doorframe. I wonder how small she really is under those big baggy clothes. I wonder if Señora Perez is secretly sick, and that’s why she’s grouchy all the time. “I suppose. But you’ll have to come back in an hour. I’ve already got a load washing. And bring your own detergent. I’m not a Laundromat here.” With that she shuts the door.

I’ve got to find a cheap washer one of these days. I bought one a few months ago for fifty bucks but it broke after a week and Julio was so pissed for me wasting the money when we can use Señora Perez’s most of the time. But Julio isn’t the one who has to deal with Señora Perez. And most of the time doesn’t cut it when you’re out of clean panties.

I get back home just in time to answer the phone. I’m pleasantly surprised to find it’s Mama. “Carlotta, what are you doing home this time of day? Shouldn’t you be working?” Mama only speaks Spanish to me. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks I’ll forget where I came from—even though I’ve never actually been there. I want to tell her that Julio is making sure that I don’t forget.

“I miss you too, Mama.”

“Carlottta, shame on you. You know I miss you. I miss you so much that I’m trying to get back to you. So we can be a family again. I just thought you’d be working since you’re out of school.”

I wince. “Sorry, Mama. I do work today. My shift doesn’t start until ten o’clock tonight.”

“Oh, my child, please tell me you’re not still working at that convenience store?”

“I am.”