Houston Noir

A Dark Universe by Larry Watts

Clear Lake

Curtis Simon maneuvered his year-old Nissan 370Z into a parking space in the strip center on Egret Bay Boulevard. On the window in front of him, he saw a bumper sticker proclaiming, Proud supporter of the Clear Lake High Falcons.

Curtis thought of his days at Clear Lake High, which was three miles from where he sat at that moment. Back in school, he’d rubbed shoulders with the children of astronauts. That was back when it was first announced that Houston would annex Clear Lake. Curtis’s parents dragged him to their Saturday marches to voice their objection to the annexation. He was always embarrassed by their activism or anything else that exposed him to public display. The astronauts and their children didn’t participate in that sort of things. They seemed to consider it an activity for the lower strata of society. And he’d lived anonymously in that strata, until he met Jennifer.

Jennifer was born in Galveston — born on the island, or BOI, as the locals said — which put her as close to royalty as the local hierarchy offered. She was self-assured and popular. Willing to be and beautiful enough to be the center of attention in any situation. That would create problems for Curtis, though he didn’t know it at the time.

They’d met as students at the University of Houston. While Curtis was handsome enough and excelled in math, he was shy. Jennifer needed a calculus tutor, and he relished the opportunity to share his expertise. They began dating.

After graduation, Curtis landed an accounting job with a prominent NASA contractor. Jennifer skillfully groomed him to become a husband she could control, who would let her lead her life as she pleased. Curtis put his math skills to use in the stock market. Within a few short years, his and Jennifer’s financial well-being no longer depended on a paycheck. Until recently, he reflected as he sat in his car, marrying Jennifer had seemed like the greatest achievement of his life.

Curtis reached for the ignition and turned off the engine. He opened the door and unfolded from the low-slung sports car, carefully avoiding the many potholes in the parking lot. He stood at the glass-fronted office in the middle of the retail center that seemed otherwise devoid of tenants. The sign on the door declared in large red letters: DONOVAN AINSWORTH, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.

Curtis took a deep breath and opened the glass door. A bell jingled, announcing his arrival. There was an unoccupied dusty desk just inside the office. From the looks of it, no one had worked at the desk for some time.

Just as he was becoming uncomfortable standing in the empty office, he heard a toilet flush. A door opened from a narrow hallway at the back of the room. A man about his age, forty-five or so, raised his hand in a half-hearted greeting and walked toward Curtis. The man appeared to have slept in his clothes. From the pained expression on his face, he might have been hugging the commode a few minutes earlier, rather than using it for traditional purposes.

“I’m Ainsworth. What can I do for you?” he said in a hoarse, less-than-welcoming voice.

“My name’s Curtis Simon, and I’m looking for help,” Curtis muttered as he held out his hand.

Ignoring the outstretched hand, Ainsworth reached for the chair behind the desk and rolled it into an open space before plopping his body into it. “Pull up one of those other chairs,” he said, pointing to three chairs positioned in a semicircle in front of the desk. “If you want help, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

Curtis dusted the seat of the chair closest to Ainsworth’s and turned it to face the other man. As he sat, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. He felt vulnerable with no desk between himself and the man he hoped would keep him out of prison. He realized, however, based on the detective’s greeting and apparent attitude, that telling his story was necessary if he didn’t want to be thrown out of the office.

“My wife’s been murdered,” he mumbled, clearing his throat before continuing, “and I think the police believe I did it.” Lips tightened, he studied Ainsworth’s face in anticipation of a useful directive.

After a few seconds of silence, Ainsworth leaned back in his chair and asked sarcastically, “So, do you think you could give me a little more detail, or is it all a big secret?”

“No, no, it’s not a secret. I... I just wasn’t sure you wanted to hear more. My wife was shot in the head as she was getting in her car in a hotel parking lot on Bay Area Boulevard. It happened three days ago. The police have questioned me about it every day since. This morning, the detective asked me why I killed her. I’m not a murderer and, if I was, I would never have killed Jennifer. Marrying her has been the greatest accomplishment in my life.” Curtis’s voice was pleading and his face twisted in anguish. “Can you help me?”

Donovan Ainsworth would take the job, even if the prospective client had only a few bucks, because not one other person had jingled the bell on his front door for two weeks. But Curtis Simon didn’t know how desperate he was for a client.

“I’m not cheap,” Ainsworth began, “but if you’ve got a $5,000 retainer, I’ll try to help you.”

For the first time in the conversation, Curtis showed an inkling of confidence. “No problem, Mr. Ainsworth. Will you take my check?” He reached for the inside pocket of his sports coat.

The two men spent the next hour discussing Curtis Simon’s life. Ainsworth learned that Jennifer had an affair less than a year after their marriage and that she’d engaged in several more trysts in the years since. Curtis knew the particulars of some of the conquests. In fact, he’d considered one of the men his best friend. But nothing Jennifer did had been enough to cause him to end the marriage. He loved being married to her. Curtis chose to bury himself in his work in the hope that she would eventually mature and recognize the shallowness of flirtations with other men. He told Ainsworth he believed Jennifer had recently become involved with an astronaut, Brodie Bancroft.

As Curtis walked out the door, Ainsworth glanced at his watch. Still time to get to the bank and deposit the check. He wasn’t worried about it bouncing, but about several checks he’d written in the last few days. One was for the office lease. Since he’d been kicked out of his apartment for failing to pay the rent there, losing the office would mean sleeping on the streets.

After making the deposit, Ainsworth returned to his office. Past the bathroom, at the end of the hallway, was a room just large enough for an army cot, a small table with a George Foreman Grill, and a refrigerator, on top of which a microwave perched precariously. Under the table was a cardboard box containing Ainsworth’s drinking supplies. He retrieved a relatively clean cocktail glass and a bottle of Scotch. It was Johnnie Walker Double Black, the one extravagance he allowed himself, even if it meant hot checks and no food. At nearly fifty bucks, the bottle was more than twice the cost of what he referred to as bar Scotch.

Sipping the golden liquid at his office’s dusty reception desk, Ainsworth spent a few minutes pecking on his computer keyboard and learned that Bancroft had flown on the final mission of the American Space Shuttle program, on the orbiter Atlantis in 2011. He was a throwback to the old days, when astronauts were former test pilots — raucous, hard-drinking, and living life as if it would all be gone tomorrow. But Texas Monthly magazine had published a profile on Bancroft, noting that he had settled down since his marriage to a Houston socialite.

Two days later, Ainsworth discreetly obtained copies of the reports on the ongoing murder investigation from an old friend who worked homicide cases at the Houston PD. From these, he learned Jennifer was shot with a 9mm pistol. The slug had been recovered in good enough shape to be matched to a weapon, if one were to be discovered. The reports indicated that Curtis had told the detectives everything he’d told Ainsworth, including his suspicions about astronaut Brodie Bancroft. When interviewed, Bancroft acknowledged that he knew Jennifer, but denied a relationship beyond casual acquaintance. Ainsworth concluded that Curtis Simon was the focus of the homicide investigation. There appeared to be no more than a passing interest in Brodie Bancroft as a suspect.

After reviewing the reports, Ainsworth spent a few minutes on his computer and had Bancroft’s address. He wasn’t surprised that the man whose personality was much like that of the sixties-era astronauts lived in Taylor Lake Village, a small, elite community where some of those older astronauts still resided.

The following morning, he drove to the Village and located the stately lakeside house where the astronaut lived. It was easily worth a million, maybe two or three. He could imagine why Bancroft might want to deny an affair. He had a lot to lose.

As Ainsworth circumnavigated the block to make a second pass by the home, he spotted Bancroft ahead of him, pulling out of the circular drive onto the tree-lined street. He easily identified the astronaut because Bancroft was driving a Mercedes SL 450 Roadster with the top down. His face matched the photo in the magazine article Ainsworth had looked at again just before leaving his office. He fell in line behind the Mercedes.

The driving surveillance was short-lived. Bancroft’s sleek convertible pulled into a convenience store/service station at the corner of Kirby Drive and NASA Parkway, just blocks from where he’d spotted the astronaut leaving home. Ainsworth parked beside the convertible and waited for its driver to exit the store. When he returned, the detective approached Bancroft, identified himself, and asked if they could talk. His request was immediately rejected with language that clearly expressed the astronaut’s displeasure. The diatribe ended with a threatening demand that the detective stay away from Bancroft’s neighborhood and family.

Donovan Ainsworth returned to his office, not shaken in the least by the astronaut’s aggressive behavior. He poured a half glass of Scotch and pondered the murder of Jennifer Simon. He was certain that the focus of the investigation needed to be redirected toward Brodie Bancroft. That would require another visit with his client.

“So why do you suspect that Bancroft and your wife were having an affair?” Ainsworth asked as soon as Curtis was seated.

“Two days before she was murdered, I saw them drinking coffee at the La Madeleine Café on Bay Area Boulevard, just down the street from where she was killed,” Curtis murmured.

“And... is that it?” the detective asked. “Nothing else?”

Curtis looked uncomfortable. “She has a history. I told you that. I just know her. I thought you were on my side.”

“Here’s the deal, Curtis. There’s nothing about Bancroft that has piqued the interest of the police so far. If you want me to try to get them interested in him, I’ll have to set up a surveillance on his activities. If I do that, we’ll blow through your retainer in a day or two. I’ll need another five thousand if you want a surveillance. Even then, I’m not promising you anything.” Ainsworth suspected he’d be off the case momentarily, but the retainer he’d already received would keep the rent paid and the Scotch flowing for a month or two. To his surprise, Curtis Simon reached for his checkbook.

“No problem, Mr. Ainsworth. Have you been to the scene of the crime? Would there be any reason to take a look at where it happened? I’m happy to increase the amount if you believe it will help your investigation to examine the parking lot where she was killed. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I’m not the suspect.” Curtis paused with pen in hand, which hovered over the checkbook.

Before he responded, Donovan Ainsworth pondered just how low he’d fallen. His head ached from too much Scotch. Though he was relatively sure there was nothing in the parking lot the cops had overlooked, especially several days after the murder, Ainsworth knew the words with which he would reply. “Well, if you want an in-depth look at the crime, rather than just trying to get the focus off you as a suspect, that will require more money. Let’s say $7,500 additional. That should get us close. I’ll let you know if there’s more needed.”

Curtis Simon wrote the check without comment. As he handed it over, he took a deep breath. “When do you think you’ll be able to survey the crime scene, Mr. Ainsworth?”

The detective said, “I’ll be out there first thing in the morning, probably before ten. Why do you ask?”

Curtis retreated with slumped shoulders and diverted eyes. “Oh, no real reason. I just feel like I can’t get on with my life as long as the police think I was involved.”

Ainsworth stood, anxious to get the tortured little man out of his office. He had considered offering him a drink, but decided a quick exit was the better plan. Once Curtis was gone, he could nurse the Scotch bottle the rest of the afternoon.

Curtis didn’t need encouragement. He jumped from his chair.

“I’ll let you know if there’s any progress tomorrow,” Ainsworth said, following his client to the door.

The next morning, Ainsworth slept late. After Curtis had left his office the previous evening, he’d finished a fifth of Scotch. He slept until after nine and only woke then because the garbage truck in the alley made a lot of noise emptying the giant container there for his office and other nonexistent tenants.

He prepared a cup of black coffee, topped it with a splash of Scotch, and drove to the hotel identified in the police report, where Jennifer Simon was shot in the parking lot. On the way, Ainsworth thought over his last few years, how he’d gotten to this point. He’d been a young cop in Houston for eight years when he was dispatched to the call that ended his career. The call was made by a mother, concerning the rape of her daughter. When he arrived at the scene, Ainsworth found a mother waiting at the curb with that five-year-old girl. The girl had blood on her legs; her dress was ripped. She stared at him with eyes that said no one was home inside her pretty head. She’d been viciously raped and sexually abused by the mother’s boyfriend. He was still inside the house.

Without waiting for backup, Ainsworth had walked into the house, pistol in hand. He found the boyfriend in the little girl’s room, beside the bed. A butcher knife lay on the bed, within the man’s reach. This memory triggered Ainsworth’s hands to clench into fists, and a bitter taste of bile burned his throat. He had raised his pistol and shot the man twice. As the body crumpled onto the floor, Ainsworth used the barrel of his pistol to push the knife off the bed, to the floor beside the man’s still body.

The inquiry was over quickly. An older child, the brother of the little girl, had heard Ainsworth enter the house and followed him to the door of the bedroom. Once the boy gave his statement, Ainsworth was suspended from the department. Luckily, there was quite a lot of support for him when the shooting made the evening news.

He made a deal with the district attorney, who didn’t want to try a case against a police officer who had shot a pedophile only minutes after the man had raped a child. Ainsworth pled guilty to manslaughter. The little girl didn’t have to testify. He received a six-month jail sentence and a short probation. The district attorney was elected to another term without opposition.

After the conviction, Ainsworth couldn’t get a private investigator’s license, so he worked under the auspices of an attorney who was an old friend. Even so, since leaving police work, he’d been on a spiral toward self-destruction, pulling himself out of the bottle just enough to survive whenever he lucked into a case. This time, it was one that would pay well. After that, he would drown himself in whiskey until another case came along. Or... well, who knew what turns life might take?

He parked in the hotel’s lot. Although the shooting had occurred early in the evening, the police had shown a photo of Jennifer Simon to all three desk clerks on shift that day and night. None of them admitted to having seen her before. Ainsworth wasn’t sure he would accomplish anything more than adding to the billable hours on his client’s tab, but Curtis had nearly begged him to take more of his money, so he’d walk the parking lot and interview the desk clerks again.

According to the diagram attached to the report, Jennifer’s car was parked in the middle of the parking area behind the hotel. Ainsworth walked the entire lot and found a quarter on the ground next to a minivan loaded with fishing equipment. But he discovered nothing of interest to the case. He made a pass around the lot’s perimeter, which was separated by a thick hedge from another, larger parking area for commercial businesses along the boulevard. The hedge was not well-trimmed; wind had blown newspapers and fast food wrappers against the line of vegetation.

Ainsworth strolled, thinking the grounds crew was shirking its duties. The sun emerged from behind a cloud, and he noticed the glint of an object struck by its rays. He leaned over, pushed branches aside, and discovered a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol on the ground, next to the trunk of a bush. Looking back toward the area where the shooting had taken place, Ainsworth realized he was as far from that location as one could be while still in what could be considered the rear parking lot of the hotel.

Ainsworth called his friend in the homicide office, told him what he had discovered, and agreed to wait for officers to arrive. Minutes later, a patrol car pulled up. The officer wrote down the information regarding why and how Ainsworth had discovered the weapon, placed it in an evidence bag, and drove away.

There was little for Ainsworth to do on the case until ballistics tests were run. True to his effort to maximize billable hours, he spent the next few days tailing Brodie Bancroft around Houston. Bancroft met no women except at a garden club event where he spoke. He either wasn’t a player or had suspended his extracurricular romantic liaisons while the murder investigation proceeded. After a week of following Bancroft for three hours each day and billing for eight, Ainsworth ended the surveillance. It wasn’t conscience that prompted him, but boredom with the astronaut’s routine.

Two weeks after he found the pistol, Ainsworth sat in his office just after noon, sipping on his third drink as he half-heartedly watched an old episode of Bonanza on the television set he’d purchased with Curtis Simon’s second retainer. The show was interrupted by a breaking news alert, indicated by the words Breaking News Alert flashed on the screen and several beeps loud enough to get the attention of every living thing within earshot, including the cockroaches that had been scampering about the detective’s feet.

There’d been a break in the Jennifer Simon murder case. High-profile — some would even say famed — astronaut Brodie Bancroft had been arrested. Officers had recovered the weapon used in the crime and learned it had been purchased by Bancroft several years earlier.

Later, Ainsworth watched the evening news. The astronaut’s attorney denied his client had been involved in the murder or an affair with the dead woman. The attorney claimed Bancroft had placed an ad in a local weekly to sell the pistol. He said Jennifer Simon responded to the ad, and they met at the La Madeleine Café to complete the transaction, for which there was no written record.

Donovan Ainsworth garnered some local attention during Bancroft’s trial, but squandered it on getting a few free drinks instead of increasing his client list. Curtis Simon reaped much sympathy as the betrayed spouse. Brodie Bancroft was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The judge gave him two weeks to get his affairs in order before imprisonment. Bancroft’s socialite wife filed for divorce.

Ainsworth sent Curtis Simon a final accounting of his time on the case, including his court appearances as a witness. It came out to an additional $2,000. There was no objection.

The morning Brodie Bancroft was scheduled to report to begin his incarceration, his attorney found the astronaut’s body in his Mercedes SL 450 Roadster. The suicide note read simply: I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t have an affair with that woman. I will not go to prison. Ainsworth heard about it from his buddy in homicide.

He drove to a convenience store and bought a Houston Chronicle. Back at his office, he read the details of the suicide. After a few minutes of contemplation, Ainsworth called Curtis and asked him to drop by the office.

When the introverted accountant entered the room, he held out his hand in greeting, just as he had the first time the two men met. Again, Ainsworth ignored the outstretched hand and told Curtis to have a seat. Then he began.

“I know what you did, Curtis. You shot your wife with the pistol she bought from Bancroft.”

It was impossible to detect any reaction. Curtis’s body shrank into the seat as if he were trying to hide, but that was how he’d always sat. “Mr. Ainsworth, I’m surprised you would think such a thing. What would make you believe that?”

Ainsworth noticed, then, just a hint of a smile on Curtis’s lips. Or was it a smirk? It was accompanied by a vague sense of self-confidence the detective had barely seen in any of their previous meetings.

Curtis continued: “You have no proof of anything. I will concede to you and only you that I suggested Jennifer needed a weapon for self-protection and showed her an ad in the newspaper. But your accusations are just that. And, of course, I would deny even this conversation, if asked.”

Smiling broadly now, the accountant stood, nodded his head at Ainsworth, and walked toward the door. He paused, turned back, and added, “You know, I shouldn’t have had to suggest you look at the murder scene. You should have gone there the day I hired you.” With that, he was out the door.

Ainsworth walked to his makeshift home at the back of the office and reached into the cardboard-box liquor cabinet.

He’d never regretted killing the abusive pedophile, though it had cost him his career. The little girl’s face had been with him every day since. Now, it would be replaced by that of a swashbuckling astronaut.

He poured a full cocktail glass of Scotch, and thus began the rest of Donovan Ainsworth’s miserable life.

Xitlali Zaragoza, Curandera by Reyes Ramirez

Spring

Xitlali leans on the bar at her other job as a Mexican restaurant waitress, five hours into her shift, feeling the bags under her eyes deepen. A customer waves her over to his table, to pay the tab for four margaritas and three cervezas, drunk and alone on a Tuesday at five p.m. He has a sad aura about him, thick and gloomy-colored like cough syrup.

“Ah-kee ten-go el dee-naro.”

“I speak English, sir,” Xitlali says.

He hands over cash and barely leaves a tip. Xitlali yawns and doesn’t bother to offer a blessing, as much as it seems he could use one. Dios mío, she thinks, prayers and alcohol are the two most abused inventions in human history. Any method to not completely accept this reality will do. That’s when the phone in her pocket vibrates. She walks outside and answers.

“Curandera Zaragoza, we have an assignment for you. Es urgente.”

“It can’t wait?”

“We tried calling other curanderas, Xitlali. No one else wants to touch this.”

“Why is that?” Xitlali asks, leaning against the brick exterior of the Mexican restaurant and watching out for her coworkers.

“This client is gay. The other curanderas say they cannot save a sinner from himself. We know it’s short notice, but can you take it?”

“Ay, pues... of course. If evil does not discriminate, why would I?” Xitlali says as she pulls her notepad from her back pocket. Desgraciadas. “Digame.”

“Jose Benavidez has been experiencing a haunting. Says that every night, while walking home from work, there’s a presence that follows him. Won’t say what exactly. Says he might encounter it again tonight.”

“Has there been physical interaction?”

“No.”

“Bien,” Xitlali mutters, scribbling onto her notepad. She can sense his energy already, tense yet weakened by anxiety. Pobrecito. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Bien, bien, bien. Mira, the code is 1448 to get into the gate. Complex is called Cherry Pointe. Apartment 13.”

“Gracias. Que Dios le bendiga.”

“Que Dios le bendiga, Curandera Zaragoza.”

After closing all her tabs and sneaking out of the restaurant an hour early, Xitlali jumps into her 2004 Ford Taurus with over 138,000 miles on the engine and leaves for the complex, fifteen minutes away. The air is thick with blaring lights like cheap knockoff suns. Every stoplight turns red, as though trying to slow her reaching Jose Benavidez. Xitlali uses these short pauses to turn and sort through her messy backseat, littered with clothes, various documents, and crumbs from the many dried herbs she uses day to day. I gotta make time to sort through all this shit. Always something. Juan Gabriel sings sadly through the radio.

As Xitlali pulls up to the apartment complex’s box to enter the code, she can feel music and taste food grilling. She’s so hungry she can’t think of the code. Notepad out, she looks for the page, flipping through scribbles on other cases she’s solved.

Xitlali gains some confidence, remembering she helped solve these cases and many more in her other notepads. This will be no different... but I have a bad feeling.

As she parks, she sees where the sounds and smells are coming from. In the apartment complex clubhouse a quinceañera is underway. Xitlali can tell from the strobe lights, cumbia pounding out from speakers, the drunk uncle standing before a grill loaded with carne asada, and a young woman in a light-blue dress with rhinestones lined vertically on the bustier, sequins and pearls in a swirl design on her belly, the gown raining down the rest of her body like thin tissue. Her silver crown peeks out of her hair, styled in a bouffant. She’s gorgeous.

A grand sadness yearns out of her heart. Xitlali hasn’t spoken to her own daughter in twelve years. She tries not to think about it. There used to be a picture of her daughter on her dashboard, but Xitlali took it down awhile ago, so as not to be reminded. Bad energy for the job. She looks at the spot where it was, a patch of plastic darker than the rest of the dashboard. Twelve years. Not a word. I can’t do anything about it right now. Twelve years, carajo. Her tire bumps into the curb, waking her from her trance.

Xitlali gears up: three vials on a chain around her neck (one full of sage, one of holy water, and one with a tiny doll made of wire and various colors of string), ajo in her pocket, and a case of tools and containers with crystals, holy water, and herbs.

What makes Xitlali special is that she goes deeper than most curanderas. Rather than just addressing the symptoms of a haunting or bad energy, she investigates what caused the problem. Her clients love this about her.

She finds apartment 13 and knocks. She can feel a headache coming on from hunger, and her ankles are swollen from standing around all day.

“Yes?” a man yells from behind the door.

“Xitlali Zaragoza, curandera.”

Locks clink sharply behind the door.

“Come in, please,” the man says. He’s light brown — skinned, in his early thirties.

“Jose?”

“No, he’s my partner. I’m Rolando. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

There are unframed photographs all over the walls, ranging from portraits to landscapes to abstractions, some color, some black-and-white. One in particular stands out to Xitlali: a shoulders-up portrait of a young man. He peers at the camera — beyond it, at you — and his eyes portray a deep lethargy or an accepted sadness. If there’s a difference. Xitlali stares into the picture, entranced by his eyes, which are unblinking, watching ceaselessly. You cannot return the gaze. His gaze has power over you. That is its beauty.

“Ms. Zaragoza, you like my self-portrait?”

Xitlali looks at the young man in the picture and the young man now standing before her. They are the same person, except that the one before her has eyes and an aura that aren’t as strong.

“Oh, yes. I love this piece,” Xitlali says.

“I took it after I had a nightmare,” Jose says, rubbing his neck with his right hand.

Xitlali pulls out her notepad and pen. “What is this dream?”

“Can we sit down?”

“Yes, of course. But the dream. Digame.”

“Why? It’s nothing really.”

“If you want me to help you, you must answer my questions. Everything I ask, say, and do is to help. Entiendes?”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Go on.”

“It starts with me in a room, surrounded by mirrors. I’m wearing jeans, a white shirt, and these really tall high heels. I’m staring at myself. I can’t leave or move, and I work myself up into a panic. Then my father appears and looks right into me. I can’t talk. I can’t do anything. Then I wake up. It’s funny — in that self-portrait, I’m trying to make the face he made in the dream.”

“Why do you think you have this nightmare?”

“Well, because it really happened. My dad walked in on me wearing heels and gave me this angry look. In the dream it’s more melancholic, but in reality it was rage. Every time I have that dream, it reminds me of how disappointed he was in me.”

“Was?”

“We stopped talking when I came out, and he died a few years ago. We never really reconciled.” Jose’s eyes well up. His partner rubs his back with one hand, but Xitlali can sense anger and helplessness from within Rolando.

Xitlali feels the same sadness from earlier creep up within her. He must feel awful for never reconciling. It causes bad energy. I know the feeling. Shit, not right now, Xitlali. She concentrates on the job. There’s a lingering feeling of regret haunting Jose. If I can find a connection, we can finish this quick.

Rolando speaks: “This all just seems like a lot of nonsense.”

“Whether you believe it or not, this is causing tangible pain and dislocation. You dismissing it only feeds the evil power. Your bad energy is wasting our time,” Xitlali says. Rolando is startled.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Zaragoza,” says Jose. “Rolando doesn’t believe in any of this.”

“Ya. It’s okay. Look, take me to see where this happens. Then I can make an accurate assessment.”

As they head to her car, Xitlali sees the party still going. She sees the birthday girl hiding behind a sedan, drinking a beer. She and the girl meet eyes for a second. Xitlali looks away. You only get one quinceañera.

She drives Jose to the movie theater where he works, a few blocks away. Its bright lights fight with the night sky, long enough to attract families, couples, and loners to sit in silence together and watch. Jose has explained that he works as a ticket attendant, sometimes as late as one thirty a.m. He walks home alone after, in the odd time before the bars set the drunks loose, but after the certainty of the buses still running, sometimes yes and sometimes never showing up, the homeless sleeping under the bus stop kiosks. Xitlali parks in the back of the theater lot, close to the street.

They walk down Westheimer, a long, long street that always smells of burnt rubber and carbon monoxide, occasionally interrupted by the aromas of foods from all over the world: Mexican, Japanese, Indian, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Guatemalan, etc. Passing cars honk and muffled strip club music whispers through the streets. The streetlights produce a yellow glow. As Xitlali walks, she feels the looming sensation that a truck could swerve into them at any minute, or a car could pull up and drunken voices from within call them spics, dirty Mexicans, job stealers, illegals, then step out of the car and ruin you. A lot of dark energy here. White bicycles and crosses dot the sidewalks, memorials where Houstonians were run over. Conduits by which the dead speak to the living.

“Why doesn’t Rolando pick you up from work?”

“He’s a bartender,” Jose says. That explains a lot. “So I walk along this big street, and then I get this feeling that something is following me. I get closer to home, and this feeling of dread fills me.”

“And?”

“This little stretch of road that connects Westheimer to my apartment. This is where the thing starts to follow me.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“Yes. It’s hard to describe,” Jose says, rubbing his head with his hand, trying to stimulate thought.

“Look, I understand it’s hard, but I have to know what it is. Otherwise, I won’t be able to help you.”

“Okay,” Jose says, massaging his left bicep with his right hand.

This smaller road only goes a quarter-mile, and it wallows in a murky darkness. Garbage fills the ditch alongside it. The sidewalk is cracked with no indication of future repair. There’s no more sound from Westheimer.

“It’s when I walk on this sidewalk that I hear them — these footsteps — clack-clack-clack,” Jose says.

Xitlali can sense the fear running up his spine. Blood rushes into his head, reddening his ears and cheeks. “And what do you see?”

“I’m going to sound insane.”

“Mira, I’ve seen and heard crazy. Digame.”

“I... I look back and there’s this... this dog. A brown-coated, white-bellied pit bull with a human face... this face of extreme grief. It follows me, and it’s crying. What’s making the clacking sound are the heels it’s wearing. Bright red heels. It can walk perfectly in them, on all fours. It’s sashaying, dancing even, like it’s mocking my fear.” Jose trembles, a sheen of sweat on his face.

Xitlali nods. “Yes. I can feel a dark presence here. Let me inspect the area.” She pulls a flashlight from her bag and uses it to illuminate sections of the sidewalk, like a prison guard searching for a convict. There it is: another white cross, surrounded by McDonald’s wrappers, cigarette butts, and tall weeds. Xitlali approaches it and feels her pulse quicken, skin becoming cold. Yes, this is it. The cross has something written on it, smudged by time and rain: Gabriel Mendez. Xitlali is light-headed from the hunger and humidity and finds it harder and harder to think. Virgen, ayúdame, porfa. Dame la fuerza.

“Pues, Jose, I think I know what’s happening. There was a death here — an unresolved one. Many dark feelings have lingered here and grown. It seems someone mourned this death for a moment, but not enough to give this spirit peace.” Xitlali rubs her temples to ward off the forming migraine. “Could be because people around here move a lot. Or they lost hope.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You’re already spiritually fatigued and carry traumas. That makes it easy for this spirit to feed off your fear and pain,” Xitlali says. I know, joven, because I, too, have a past to reconcile. Who am I to lecture anyone on that? “You being tired after work and the fear the night instills in you make it easier for this spirit to take advantage. It’s why it manifests into our reality, wearing the heels from your nightmare. It knows what gets to you. I will give this spirit peace. However, you have to make peace with whatever is happening in you, or it’ll only be a matter of time before something else happens. I can’t help you with that, but I know you can do it. You must. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand,” Jose says.

“Bueno. I need you to help me purify this space.”

Xitlali takes the holy water from a vial on her neck and sprinkles it over the cross. She pulls some of the weeds out and collects the garbage from the ground. Jose, as instructed, places candles around the cross and lights them. Xitlali says her prayer: “May God bless this space, la Virgen ayúdanos, porfa, forever and always, con safos, safos, safos.” She takes the sage from her other necklace vial and burns it so it emits a fragrant smoke. She hands a piece to Jose, then makes the sign of the cross on herself, thumb touching left shoulder, right shoulder, forehead, and heart, then a kiss to seal it all in.

When they’re done, Xitlali can sense Jose’s energy lift from his new peace of mind. She has him sign forms and gives him her bill.

Later, after she’s dropped Jose at his apartment complex, she sits in her car for a while to write notes.

Xitlali reaches down to take off her work shoes. She gets another call. She sighs.

“Bueno?”

“Curandera Zaragoza, we have another assignment.”

“I can’t. I’m exhausted,” Xitlali says, running her fingers through her hair.

“This is an emergency. You’re the only one who can handle this case.”

Puta madre. “It can’t wait?”

“It’s a woman and her children, and they’re desperate.”

Evil never rests. I can’t turn down a mother and her kids. I wouldn’t sleep.

“Digame,” Xitlali says.

“Trailer park out near Spring called Strawberry Glen. Contact’s name is Petra Ruiz. Three daughters. Recently separated from her husband.”

Fucking Spring? “Got it.”

Xitlali leans her head back and breathes in deeply. She turns on the car, opens a vial and sniffs the sage inside, rubs the exhaustion from her eyes, and drives. She looks at the road in front of her rather than at the spot where the picture of her daughter used to be.

During her drive, the purple sky becomes black. Xitlali has never been to this part of town before. She had heard about these recently established communities on the outskirts of Houston, where many Latinx families, immigrants and nonimmigrants, settled down to provide underpaid labor and expendable energy to the growing needs of white middle-class suburbs of Spring, the Woodlands, etc. At its outer edge, separated from the rest of the suburb by a band of tall pine trees, is the trailer park where her next client lives. The trailer park is so new that there are still logs stacked from all the freshly cleared trees, and proper streetlights haven’t yet been installed. Generators on wheels power scattered lamps throughout the dark plot. Cicadas scream through the hot night. Xitlali can imagine who lives here: the cooks and busboys that work in Spring’s restaurants, and the women who clean the mansions and schools. They live close enough to get to work, but far enough for those who benefit from their work to feel safe.

Xitlali drives slowly around the trailers, trying not to linger too much and cause concern. She doesn’t have to wander long. A woman sits outside the trailer with her three daughters in patio chairs, weeping, her tears falling into her bowled hands.

“Señora Ruiz? Are you Petra Ruiz?” Xitlali asks, getting out of her car.

“Sí, sí. Gracias a Dios,” Petra cries, shaking Xitlali’s right hand with both her own.

“Señora Ruiz, por favor, let’s go back inside. It’s very dark out here.”

“No. No me meto con mis hijas. It’s not safe in there.”

The oldest daughter, around fourteen years old, has a sheathed machete in her lap, the handle resting in the grip of her bitty fingers. She looks restless, eyes peering far into the night and her torso rocking back and forth in her blue pajamas. Her aura is dim and purple. Her sisters are playing near the trailer’s little light, shrouded in moths, giggling as they serve invisible tea at a small pink table. Their auras are bright and yellow, oblivious to what’s happening.

Xitlali remembers her daughter at that age. She didn’t play with tea sets, but collected crystals and spent hours organizing them, naming them, enchanting them, getting to know each and every one. She used to beg Xitlali to bring her more during her supply runs. Then, at some point, she stopped. She turned fourteen and said she didn’t want a quinceañera. She would argue with Xitlali about it and give her that look — staring at nothing, especially not at her mother. Once she left a crystal on the windowsill, burning in the sun. That’s when Xitlali knew: her daughter didn’t want this work. She showed it through little things: not watering her herbs, her crystals gathering dust, her eyes rolling when Xitlali tried to teach her prayers. Until she left for college. And then, well... Xitlali forced herself to stop this train of thought, pulling out her notepad and pen. Anyways.

“Let’s begin. The sooner we finish, the sooner everyone can go back to sleep.”

“Bueno,” Señora Ruiz says. “Okay, pues, let’s not talk too close to mis hijas. Mijas, voy a hablar con la curandera. Aqui voy estar. No se mueven de aquí.”

“Sí, ’amá,” they say in unison.

Xitlali and Petra walk to the end of the trailer. Petra leans against it and takes out a pack of cigarettes. She offers one to Xitlali before putting one between her lips and lighting it with a match. Her aura is thick and pulsating with anxiety, mostly purple and bordered with red.

“Pues, mi marido left about... hace two weeks, ya.” Petra’s eyes fill with tears. She wipes them away and takes a puff of her cigarette. “Y, pues, this started a week after he left.”

“What happened?”

“On Monday, I came back into my house after seeing mis hijas off at the bus stop for school. I was getting ready for work, when I felt this presence watching me.” Petra takes another drag of her cigarette, her exhaled smoke resembling a ghost’s hand moving through the air. The smell of the smoke exacerbates Xitlali’s headache. “I couldn’t shake the feeling. Like someone invisible was standing in the corner, watching me. I thought I could even see it in the corners of my eyes, sabes?”

“Lo siento, but what do you do for a living?”

“I clean houses in the neighborhood nearby.”

“Okay. Go on,” Xitlali says, marking in her pad. Typical work around here, I hear. I’ve been there.

“Sí, pues, it got worse as the week went on. While we were sleeping, I’d wake up to hear breathing that didn’t belong to my daughters. When I looked into the darkness, the breathing stopped, as though to hide itself. Soon, things started falling off the walls, and I started having these headaches that make me imagine the craziest things, like my daughters dying. Or from back when my own mother was sick — I think about her dying and I can see her right in front of me, dying all over again, with her graying skin and cracking voice. I’m scared it’ll get worse. Mi hija, mi mundo, my oldest tonight started crying, and I asked her, Qué pasa, mi linda? She couldn’t tell me. What if she’s seeing the same things? Tonight, she woke up screaming, saying she had a horrible nightmare that she doesn’t want to tell me about. I brought the girls out here and called your agency. Ay, Señora Zaragoza, I can’t let it get any worse. There’s something muy, muy evil in this trailer.” Petra’s cigarette is now two inches of ash, ready to crumble. She struggles to get another from her pocket.

“And this all started happening after your husband left?”

“Sí, señora. Where is he? He would know what to do. I can’t afford to move out of here alone.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why did your husband leave?”

“Pues, la verdad es que... there’s a lot of reasons. He had problems with drinking and he didn’t like this place because it’s so small, and we started to argue a lot. What made him leave was that I told him my boss, un güero, kissed me and asked me to have sex with him. I said no, of course, but he made me promise not to tell his wife. Yo no digo nada a ella. I don’t want any trouble, me entiendes?”

Ah, I see. She’s powerless at work.

“My husband told me to quit, but I said that we just moved here. The schools are good in this neighborhood and mis hijas deserve that. It reached a point where, when he got drunk, he would keep bringing it up. He said if I wasn’t going to quit or let him confront my boss, it would hurt him as a husband and man. I said no, qué no, and, well, se fue.”

Shit. It goes beyond the workplace. The source is her boss, but the chain continues at home. “I see. Bueno, whatever is making you see these visions could be something strong at work. I will investigate. Your husband may be involved. You don’t know if he’s come back? Like while you are at work?”

“I wouldn’t know. Mis hijas stay with a neighbor until I get home from work at six en la noche.”

He can come and go as he pleases. “Okay, I’m going inside.”

Xitlali enters the trailer. She turns on the light and it gives a yellow tint to everything in the room. The trailer is small: a kitchen area with a sink, table, and hot plates; living room area with a love seat, shag rug, and HD television; and the bedroom area where futons and blankets are spread across the floor, disheveled from sleep. Xitlali sees that all the pictures on the walls are warped and worn, and all the crosses look loose, ready to fall. The good thing about this case is there isn’t much to inspect. She’s tempted by the tortillas on the counter and the soft blankets on the floor. All the day’s fatigue spreads through her muscles and bones like a possession. She has the urge to sit down, just for five minutes. Get it together, floja! Porfa, ayúdame Dios.

In the bedroom area, Xitlali feels a presence — a strong energy pushing against her. The energy travels up her arm, into her head, as though someone put a wet cloth on her brain. Not good at all. I can see how they get visions. To someone not ready for this, it’ll cause some bad shit. I have to find the source. Xitlali looks under the futons and on the walls to see if there’s any point of connection for a spirit or a conduit of evil energy. Right there! On a wall next to the futons, there is a hanging black-velvet blanket with a snow tiger majestically standing at the top of a mountain. Xitlali notices a bulge near the bottom, where the blanket meets the floor. She lifts the blanket and sees an egg.

The egg is white and seems to be breathing, the shell straining and relaxing, almost seeming to emit a wheezing sound. Xitlali taps on it, and a muffled sound resonates. She grabs the egg and its shell seems to stiffen, as if it doesn’t like being touched. It feels less like a shell than a layer of warm skin. What the hell is this thing? Xitlali picks at the shell. The white peels off and the egg begins bleeding. The egg’s energy surges through her body. Fuck! She feels it release more energy. She can’t fight it...

I can see someone, off in the white distance. It’s my daughter! I see her as she is now. She’s so gorgeous. Her brown hair is long, reaching down to her lower back. She’s aging like me, Dios mio. I don’t miss her father’s nose. She’s wearing nice jeans and a green sweater. Ay, she’s always wearing the wrong thing! It’s summer! Ay, mija, why do you always wear a sweater in the summer? Pues, I guess it doesn’t matter. She’s here! Mi vida, she’s here! She seems to be talking to people. I’m going to walk up to her and surprise her. Mija! It’s me! Tu mamá, la unica qué tienes, mi vida! Dígame! Tell me everything. Oh, how I’ve missed you. Digame todo. Qué pasa? What are you doing now? Where do you work? Where do you live? Are you seeing anyone? You’re not married, are you? And your studies? Hey, por que... why are you looking at me like that? That’s no way to look at your only mother. Twelve years and this is how we start? No me mires asi. Mija, where are you going? Where have you been? Please, mija. Don’t go. If I reach out to you, will you hold me? I’m trying to hug you, mija, but you only go farther away. Please stop looking at me like that. Please stop going away. I can’t take it. No seas cruel, mija. I can’t see your face. I can’t. I can’t—

Someone bangs at the trailer door. Xitlali opens her eyes and finds herself lying on the floor, on the blankets.

“Señora Zaragoza! Is everything okay?”

“Yes!” How long was I out? Holy shit, that was strong. Xitlali sits up and rubs the tears from her face. She sees the egg lying where she dropped it, on the blanket next to her. Whoever did this really wanted this family gone.

She takes a pair of tweezers from her bag and uses them to remove the tiny doll from the vial on her necklace. She places the doll on top of the egg, says a bendición, and gives the doll time to absorb the egg’s energy. Then she burns sage near the doll and egg. The smoke surrounds the egg but doesn’t touch it, pushed away by dark energy. Xitlali waits a bit, then uses the tweezers to pick up the doll and hold it near the burning sage. Like the egg, the doll repels the smoke. The energy transfer was a success.

She puts the doll back into the vial. She puts the egg in a black pouch with sage, rosemary, and hierba santa. She blesses both, egg and doll.

As Xitlali steps out of the trailer, she thinks about advising Señora Ruiz to leave. But she knows that if the woman could do so, she would’ve already. There’s no use telling her the obvious. There’s only so much we can come to terms with. Así es...

Instead, she says, “Someone cursed an egg and placed it near your beds, Señora Ruiz. It was a strong curse, done by someone either inexperienced or evil. Your daughter must have slept too close to it tonight, causing her nightmares. I got rid of it, but someone put it there. I don’t want to say it’s your husband, but that’s the only person I can think of. He may have paid someone to place the curse. I don’t know. What I’m saying is, it’s gone for now, but he might do it again. You need to talk to him and tell him he’s hurting your daughters.”

“Thank you, Señora Zaragoza. Gracias, gracias, gracias,” Petra cries.

“Claro, señora. Bueno, let’s all get in a circle.” The family gathers and Xitlali has them clasp hands. Do they know any of this? Is it better for the little ones to not know? Perhaps if you don’t believe in these things, they have less power over you. Maybe it’s best if my kind die out. Ay, mija... maybe you were right.

Xitlali recites the prayer: “May God bless this house, la Virgen ayúdanos, porfa, forever and always, con safos, safos, safos.” She tells Señora Ruiz how to purify the trailer with sage, hierba santa, and rosemary, every day, for as long as they have to live there.

Señora Ruiz signs the standard form for purification services and pays the bill in cash. “Gracias, gracias, curandera. If it weren’t so late, I’d invite you in for café.”

“’Sta bien. Take care of your hijas. Their fear only provides more dark energy for evil spirits. Love them. Dales todo.”

“Claro que sí.”

In her car, Xitlali watches the Ruiz family walk back into the trailer, one by one. She wonders if they will be safe.

Her gente, spreading into spaces where they weren’t allowed before. Opening new traumas and wounds that will take years and lifetimes and generations to even diagnose. New manifestations of spirits, dark energy, and evil entering into our reality, evolving within these transitions. Then comes the work of accepting past truths. Reconciliation. She will always have work. There will always be a need for her services.

I’m so tired.

Xitlali drives back into the city on the great spine of the freeway that connects the suburbs, where people like her work and clean, to the skyscrapers, where people like her work and clean. The drive feels like a dream, the passing billboards and landscapes acting as newsreels for the imagination. Over yonder, the light from the sleepless metropolis fights with the darkness of the cosmos above.

Xitlali will drive these freeways many times over the coming years. She will take her daughter’s picture from the glove box and tape it, again, to her dashboard. It would behoove her to come to peace with herself, her past, with what she’s done. That’s another story. For now, Xitlali Zaragoza, curandera, will rest as much as she can until her next assignment.

Photo Album by Sarah Cortez

Downtown

There’s a place I remember perfectly without a photo. A hotel lobby, with its shabby wingbacks and dirty octagonal floor tiles just inside the wide doors. Dust motes circling in hot afternoon air. The smell of chlorine on my skin as I walked from the car through the broiling downtown sidewalks’ reflected heat. The stolen keys in my pocket. Hot metal grazing my thigh at each step. I was crazy with longing, crazy to feel his quick rise. He wasn’t there anymore. That’s what the old clerk at the front desk said, his eyes going too bright, going down to where they shouldn’t. Okay, I said. Okay. I wasn’t going to die.

This picture is the new house Dad bought us, close to the airport, near his work. A bare yard with no trees, scattered grass; a neighborhood with almost no people. My small tan-and-white dog dead of a broken heart. Old English. A clean pad of concrete for a circular patio in the back. A built-in vanity for Mom with two shades of brown tiles shaped like leaves. Daddy also bought Mom a new car. For her long commute — too long to ride the bus anymore, as she’d always done. She didn’t even try to plant flowers in the flowerbeds this time.

He wouldn’t let me take a photograph of him. Once I even brought my Instamatic upstairs to his room. Late-afternoon sun across the short golden hairs of his belly. Sparks of the sun’s fire in each lower curlicue. His blue eyes blazing with a light I couldn’t define and didn’t need to. Sheets pushed off the foot of the bed, onto a dismal braided rug. Strong, tanned fingers girding my pelvis. Wordless time spent with a man who didn’t need words to convince me to be with him. I remembered him from before, when he’d worked for my dad doing yardwork, then at the airport hangar. You gotta give people a chance, Dad liked to say. Everybody deserves a chance.

Oh, that’s Frankie Petras, the boy I had such a crush on back in grade school. We were both so shy. He had blue eyes too. He never would’ve asked me to steal. I think the only conversation we had in twelve years of grade school was the day Kennedy was shot. We talked by the bike racks after school, where we’d prayed for hours for a miracle. We prayed until they pronounced him dead — the man we’d seen the day before at Rice. Frankie started crying — a thirteen-year-old boy crying in public — as we stood holding our bikes. I stood mute, watching fat tears squeeze from under eyelids he tried to shutter with a thumb and crooked index finger. A few moments later, he turned without a word, undid his bike lock, and pedaled away without once looking back. His body, a slender torch burning, consumed by grief and betrayal. At home that night, none of us could speak of it. And what would’ve been the point? There were no answers to the whys. Nothing beyond our sadness and loss.

Our confirmation class between the front pillars of the church. After Mass, the men talked in groups, without their wives and kids. Clean-jawed, still-athletic World War II vets like my dad. Grim and silent, they returned to walk us to the cars. Every Sunday became a litany of defeats — more families driven out by the blacks as they block-busted South MacGregor, someone’s watch dog murdered, the Sakowitz mansion sold for pennies. You see, even the Jewish families moved out, fled to Braeswood. Mom would try to talk about something cheerful as we drove home. Beneath her summertime straw hats, I’d see her forced smiles in Charles of the Ritz’s reddest lipstick. Only grunts from Dad’s side of the car, if that much. We started going out for breakfast after church, instead of cooking at home like we’d always done. The smell of pancakes and bacon frying in cast iron no longer felt safe. Anything could happen, at any moment.

I wish I had just one photograph of our old neighborhood before all this started: The enormous white antebellums along Braes Bayou, with acres of undulating beauty beneath long-armed oaks. The large yards, restful. Every spring, I waited to glimpse the azaleas — a six-foot-tall solid wall of vibrant pink next to the long white porches. We lived several blocks south of there, in the middle-class section where all the streets were named after the South’s beauty: Charleston, Tampa, Shenandoah, Allegheny, Ozark.

Near the end, I couldn’t walk half a block down our street to my friend Miriam’s. Mom still hadn’t learned to drive and refused to go to the neighborhood grocery without Dad. Her lips were pursed and eyes serious all the time, especially when she thought I wasn’t watching. When Dad got home from work, he wouldn’t drink his highball. I have to be ready, he’d say. I don’t know when they’ll come. The voices who called us at night had promised rocks, firebombs, bullets. The voices of people we’d never met. Did we pass them at the grocery store on Saturdays? Did we sit with them on the downtown bus? Were these the husbands and sons of the black ladies who called me honey chile and smiled in radiant friendship while patting my cheeks?

I don’t have an outside photo of the place he lived. A run-down three-story hotel downtown on Caroline. Painted-over yellow-brown brick. Squares of glass windows on the first floor as if it had a diner inside. Red neon on the outside advertising Pecan Waffles in block letters — food that didn’t exist. That wasn’t why I stopped. His room was on the second floor.

His strong, sinewy arms were perfectly tanned. Nails split from the yardwork, the lawn mowers and the tools. But always clean khakis with a crease when I was there. A thin belt around a trim waist. An ease of movement that, even back then, I would’ve described as graceful. Calm. Purposeful. Never rushed. A strong tongue. The barbed wedge called loss cutting into my sternum from underneath, where no one could touch its excruciating facets — not even him. Besides, we didn’t talk much. That’s part of why I remember so clearly when he told me to get a copy of Mom’s car keys — both of them, ignition and trunk. We could drive to his folks’ farm — farther south, near Victoria. He’d introduce me to his mom. I’d just have to make up a reason to get away for a Saturday. I did sports — it’d be easy. Piece of cake.

Those damn high school photographs. Crooked grins and a patchwork of colorful optimism and plans for bright futures, full of achievement. The hidden truths of hatred and fear I’d learned during that last year in our old home. All of it swallowed but stuck partway down your gullet. Terror that what you retched up would be your heart. The one thing you wanted: to be truly dead so you’d forget all those childhood things you loved that had been taken away by people you didn’t even know well enough to hate. Your heart, the only thing you’d convinced yourself you could kill with no one noticing.

See how straight my mother is standing? That strained smile. In every photo. That ugly wood paneling we thought was so modern. I showed him that photo once — our little family in the new den. Behind us, the gilt-edged rows of the World Book Encyclopedia stand at attention. He kissed me up the side of my face while extracting the photograph from my fingers. I’m your whole family now. Then he pushed me back on his bed and raised my skirt, lowering his lips to where they always went the second I was inside his room. I’m your everything, remember?

Yes, yes. I always said yes.

Oh, that was our dog at the new house — a hunting Lab for dad. He was a sweet dog — born during a norther in February at the first house. Four of the litter froze to death before we could get a heater into the garage for them. I got home first and could’ve saved them, but I was scared of the mewling puppies and couldn’t face the blood leaking everywhere in heavy clumps. So I didn’t go closer — just shut the wooden door and walked back to the house. I sat in the empty house listening to the sleet hit the windows. Too old for dolls, uninterested in reading books, I just sat in the kitchen watching the grayness outside. I didn’t call anyone for help.

One of the pups who survived became Dad’s. They spent a lot of time together on weekends — gone to the hunting lease. In the evenings, after work, Dad would toss a burlap dummy for the dog to retrieve in the narrow backyard of the new house. The dog always eager, no matter how many throws or how much slobber trailed down his glossy black fur. Dad was silent in the evenings, always silent by then.

This photo is back at our first house — the one we had to leave. Those flowerbeds were wrested from Houston’s famous black gumbo. Bright-headed hydrangeas, lavender and light blue, coaxed into bloom. Mom and I on our knees weeding every Saturday afternoon. There’s no photograph of Mom pulling weeds and crabgrass in her sweat-soaked pin curls. We only took pictures on Sundays, after church. That one day full of photogenic smiles and homemade pancakes, hot syrup and leisure. Even that one day ultimately wrecked, like all the others, by the cruising cars of men with two-by-fours and baseball bats.

The last Easter in our little house, in the front yard by the big picture window. Remember Jackie Kennedy and her color-coordinated pillboxes? Mom let me pick out a white one with a short veil. I still have it. The dress was also white. A square neckline showing my tanned collarbone. At thirteen, I had a collarbone like the First Lady’s — elegant, bones showing nicely. That’s what Mom said. She also said I was beautiful, but I knew it was the lie of a fond mother. Hopeful too. Above all else, hopeful. Boys your age are intimidated by your looks — that’s all. I was surprised when she said this. No one ever asked me out on a date, so she couldn’t be right.

I don’t remember posing for that Polaroid. It must’ve been taken by Pat, the girl who lived next door. She was a few years older than me. She loved to come over in the evenings with that camera while Mom fixed dinner. But this one was taken during the day. See, I’m holding a beach towel and leaning on the gray tiles of the kitchen bar. I tanned like it was a religion. Oiled and glistening, I became a long stretch of sweaty muscle. I remember being proud of my flat brown stomach. Green beans for dinner — that’s how I did it. Metrecal cookies at lunch — nine of them in a packet of crisp cellophane. For days on end.

Here’s another one of the front yard, from farther away. That other picture window was the dining room where I did homework every night in grade school, until Dad said I had to sit in the kitchen, farther back in the house. The phone calls were bad then. The blacks wanted us out. Threats in a deep bass voice: We gonna burn you out. We coming tonight. Mom didn’t cry, not that I saw. But every meal was ushered in by her urgent questions: Had any For Sale signs appeared on our block? Had I been threatened walking to or from school? What were the next door neighbors doing? Hard-eyed, Dad promised we wouldn’t sell. He promised. I kept quiet at dinner and lingered in other rooms whenever the telephone rang. The one time I heard a man’s voice full of hatred was enough — his voice reverberating inside my bones, permeating the marrow. It was a thick voice, full of intention and spite. I put the phone into its heavy black cradle slowly, so he wouldn’t know I was scared. No point to crying. No one had answers to the questions I could barely think clearly enough to ask, but that always hung in the air: Why do you hate us? What have we done wrong?

That one is out of order. Me, a fat baby. I look like my dad’s father — bald, same shape of head. See how I’m straining toward the edge, off the gray countertop? I knew what I was doing; I wanted to step off. Bright air would hold me — I was sure of it.

In the background of this photo, you can see a large picture window, off-center to the left. My first bedroom to myself. A reward for turning thirteen. It hurt to grow breasts, remember? That embarrassing growth of new hair that felt every breath of breeze, every sashay of fabric across its light-brown fineness.

From the front yard, you can’t see the gardenia bush, tall as a man on the side of our little house, just beyond my screen windows. At night, in early summer, the scent as heavy as a wrestler on my chest. White waxy flowers fragrant enough to eat, whispering all their secrets into humid air. The night’s friendships between creatures of earth and grass, air, and bayous were heard in a long murmur of comforting sounds. I missed that in the new house — the sound of night. A/C shut off everything.

Mother’s mahogany vanity in our little house. The curved front and large round mirror. I’d wait for impenetrable darkness in my still bedroom, decorated in my favorite colors — a splurge after turning thirteen. June bugs crawling on the screens, gardenias outside spreading their white lips. My hands on my breasts and nipples eventually became his hands. I’d raise my baby dolls and throw off the sheets. Dream his lips, recall his blue eyes. Shame, the greatest catalyst; and the forbidden geometry of a grown man, the most irresistible attraction on earth.

That’s Mom’s brand-new Olds in the driveway. My dad only bought Oldsmobiles, and he only bought green ones. I stopped by a hardware store on Telephone Road to get the keys copied. Then I hid them in the piano bench. Every time we ate dinner, I waited for my mom to ask me why I had an extra set of her car keys. After all, she handed me her only set to drive to school when I needed them. I couldn’t figure out a good lie. The only truth I knew was his mouth on the mess of fine hair he loved. A ceaseless tongue.

Yeah, that’s my new school, after we moved. A tedious commute through Houston’s small Downtown, then west, out 59 South. We’d just left our little house. Found a newly built one farther out. Cute freshman beanie, huh? For those days, twenty-three miles each way to high school was long. I did okay at first, but then I started failing. Me, the honor roll kid, failing: algebra I, world history, and British lit. Mandatory tutoring after school — I couldn’t see him on the way home anymore. Mom arranged carpools with older girls, so I could stay late at school. Pecan Waffles winked at me in red neon along Caroline every afternoon as I sailed past in some preoccupied upper classman’s car. I dug fingernails into my palms so I couldn’t feel what I was feeling. His window was always open, one panel of limp curtain hanging out into Downtown’s exhaust fumes. Those seniors were all in love with serious boyfriends they only saw on the weekends — we were an all-girls school. We sang along with the Beach Boys on the radio, and I pretended my ideal boyfriend would be a surfer like them — blond, cute, plenty of freckles, and tiki-god cool.

End-of-year swim party in May. Country club pool. Our two-pieces, so daring. We’re all holding in our breaths trying to look thinner. Guess I liked bright colors — look at the hot pink against neon green and white stripes.

That day, alone, I stopped by his hotel. The damp swimsuit kept me sweating and on edge. The stolen keys were in the left front pocket of a seersucker cover-up. My hair, still wet from the pool’s shallow end.

I’d been planning what to say, what to do, but I hadn’t planned for the old clerk’s drooping shoulders and brutal, hungry eyes. I hadn’t planned for a turning away of all my precious treasure.

He done gone, and be glad of it, girlie.

He had to be upstairs. I was sure of it. How could he not be? It had only been three and a half months. The cracked linoleum on the stairs beckoned. The loud horns of outside traffic scraped at my skin. Flies buzzing against the sunny front windows worked at breaking through their dirty glass prison. But I was impaled by the fierceness of the old man’s voice, the insult of his frank stare at my damp crotch. All this told me what I already knew — my time here was over. No need for the lie already in place, about the softball training camp this weekend. No drive south, my legs sprawled across the front seat and his right hand laced in the hair between my legs.

I walked back to the sea-green Olds parked at the curb. I looked up at the disgusting pink curtains one last time. The keys clinked in my flimsy pocket. Before I cranked the ignition, I sat up straighter. Mom’s words floated through my head: Smile, honey. Don’t scowl. Through thick and thin, keep smiling. I punched the radio buttons and kept the music loud all the way home. Piece of cake, little rake.

This photo he never knew about. His empty hotel room. A room where we stopped time. One wooden chair, painted blue. Smudged panes of glass on western-exposure windows — two of them looking out on tar-papered roofs dusted with pea gravel. Dust motes. Awful pink curtains blowing in the breeze. A mattress covering a box spring that looked like someone had been murdered or given birth on it, with blackened stains dripping down one side and at the foot.

For years, I dreamed of his family’s house — the one I never visited. He’s driving. He parks the car on an oyster-shell road and we cross sunlit weeds toward a small white clapboard. A shaggy farm dog barks, displaying ferocious little teeth, then relents and shows his belly. As we get closer, the sky darkens. He reaches the front door and opens it while grabbing my hand and tugging me forward. I walk inside, and it’s my childhood home — the home we loved more than ourselves. The unadorned walls and hardwood floors. The pale-green net curtains in the sunroom that float in afternoon breezes while I nap. In the backyard will be the rosebushes whose flowers are crushed red velvet, full of scent. The garage will contain the small tan-and-white dog’s bed and Dad’s decoys for duck hunting. Dark green 7-Up bottles — ready for Dad’s nightly bourbon and 7 — will stand in emerald beauty in rows of wooden cases. Dad will be there, whistling as he putters in shirts the same pale colors of his eyes — greens, blues, and grays. At the end of the street will be the weeping willow. Its green-gold leaves trailing the ground, the parchment where we kids write our giddy pleasure, walking home from school each day.

No one can find me. I won’t ever have to leave.