He arrived in a beat up old truck, but Soraya only noticed the baby blue color of its paint against the yellow dust. She thought it was a beautiful color, like an oasis in the desert, like a stream. She wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but as she watched the handsome stranger pull up in a cloud of dust and radio music, a rosary swinging from the rear-view mirror, her mind was filled with them.

She watched from her window as he moved in with a single suitcase and a few cardboard boxes to the vacant trailer diagonally across from theirs on the plot. He was tall and broad-backed. When he came back out to the truck, Soraya noticed there was a dark Latin cast to his features, sensual lips and a sharp jaw. 

The stranger’s presence next door changed the chemistry of the air. Soraya flushed as she imagined what intensely masculine activity he might be engaged with at that exact moment. It had been so long since she’d been in close proximity to an attractive man, and she’d been too young to care before. She promised herself she would find out something about him, even one thing would do. One small bit of trivia to muse on, like his favorite singer, or what he ate for breakfast. She didn’t feel too guilty; after all, these were only daydreams, but she knew Jan would be angry if she found out.

                                                                                                       #

“Don’t you ever get a boyfriend, Raya. They only want one thing and it leads to nothin’ but trouble and violence. You hear me?”

The first time she was told this, Soraya was five-years-old. Soraya, who’d always been a light sleeper, woke before dawn to find her sister at work in the garden and wanted to help. She liked to help, remembering how much it had warmed her heart to fell their Christmas tree in the woods together. Her sister’s face was smeared with dirt. Her eyes were red, and her chest strained hard against her sweat-soaked blouse with each breath. Jan refused, snapped at Soraya to go back to bed, but not before she’d issued her ominous warning. Soraya felt uneasy at the sight of her sister, her wild-eyed expression as she tipped dirt onto the heap. Tendrils of her hair curled around her face like feathers. Not long after that night, the four sisters packed their things and left the yellow house for El Komei.

​                                                                                                       #

Wandering through the trailer-park, Soraya came across a cluster of rocks in the dust, scattered over a few square meters. She started a game of jumping from one to another. It was good fun until her foot slipped and she went over on her ankle. She sat down on her butt to inspect it.

“You alright there?”

It was him, the man, calling out of his trailer window.

Soraya knew she couldn’t be seen from her sisters’ trailer so called out in reply that she’d injured her ankle. She watched the stranger’s trailer door open. He was shirtless, and his skin gleamed in the sun. Soraya thought he looked like a dream. He wore his black jeans low on his hips. The suggestion of dark hair at the low-slung waistband of his boxers made her mouth go dry.

“Your ankle, you said?”

“Yeah.”

He crouched down beside her, close enough for Soraya to smell the tang of store-bought pizza sauce on his breath. She noticed his hands, so different from female hands, the size and shape of the fingers, the setting of the fingernail. His index-finger hovered over her ankle, less than an inch, but didn’t touch her.

“Is it broken?” she asked him. She didn’t know why, but she felt sure he was the kind of man who’d know a thing or two about broken bones.

He smirked. “Nah, you’d be in fuckin’ agony, and you’re not, are you princess?”

“Guess not,” she said.

“Can you stand up?” He offered her his hand.

She put her hand into the expanse of his palm. He helped her up. She took a few tentative steps on her injured ankle.

He smiled. “See? You’ll live, mija. You want a beer?”

Was he really inviting her inside? That would be too much, surely. Soraya felt sure that Jan would find out, she would just know. He was only supposed to be a daydream, not a thing that happened in real life. But if she didn’t go now, then she might never have the chance again.

                                                                                                       #

“Come inside, you crazy child,” said the man, chuckling to himself as Soraya hovered in the doorway.

She took one glance backward before ducking inside. She thought his trailer was clean for a man’s. Specks of dust glittered in the light from the window, but the surfaces were spotless. He had an ancient television set up in the corner on top of an upturned crate. Soraya’s eyes were drawn to the colors on the screen, too rich and saturated to be realistic. They were better that way, she thought. She watched the actors in the movie as they argued. The woman’s mouth was blood-red and the man’s eyes were wide enough to show the whole of his violet-colored irises. Their posturing stirred something in her, an echo of a memory.

“You seen it?” He picked up a t-shirt from the couch and put it on.

Soraya shook her head.

“Damn, really?” He reached down for two cans of beer from the mini fridge.

“We don’t have a T.V,” said Soraya.

“You’re kidding me, you ain’t got a T.V? That’s child cruelty, ain’t it?” He opened the can of beer and handed it to her.

“So what do you do all day then? You go to high school?” he asked her.

They both knew the nearest high school was too far to reach in a day.

Soraya shook her head and pointed out of the east-facing window.

The man squinted. “I don’t see nothin’.”

“Those plants, the purple ones, I make chains out of them sometimes.” Soraya expected him to laugh at her, but he didn’t.

“The flowers?” he asked, and nodded like it made sense.

Soraya was pleased he called them flowers and not weeds. She took it as a sign they might have the same way of seeing things. She wanted to ask him where he came from, how long he was going to stay in El Komei, but she didn’t want to annoy him. He kept calling her a child, which bothered her. She pushed out her chest in her t-shirt.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Raphael,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“Soraya.”

“Soraya,” he repeated it. Soraya liked the sound of her name on his tongue. “You wanna sit outside? I got some chairs.”

“No,” Soraya answered a beat too quickly. “Can we stay in here? I wanna watch T.V.”

“Sure,” he shrugged. They sat down on the couch.

“How long are you gonna be here?” she asked him. Too afraid to meet his gaze. She sipped on the can of beer, liked the feel of cool metal against her lips.

“Maybe a week,” said Raphael, “maybe a couple months.”

She was sad to hear this, a part of her had hoped they might be friends. It got lonely on the lot without any young people.

“Doesn’t feel real, does it?” said Soraya. “Yellow dust in every direction.”

“I kinda like it,” he said with a shrug.

“I grew up in a place with lots of trees. You could see them all from my window, like a forest. I liked it there.”

“How come you came here?”

“They won’t tell me.”

“Who won’t?”

“My sisters,” Soraya blushed. She felt bad for telling this stranger their secrets, but he wasn’t just anyone. He’d come to El Komei, and that meant he had a secret of his own, something to escape.

“What happened to your folks?”

“They died,” she said.

“What? Both of them?”

“Yep.” Soraya felt sure she could develop a liking for beer. It was cold and sweet and bitter at once. She wasn’t allowed it at home.

“And what happened to your house?” Raphael made a circular gesture with his hand, “the place with all the trees. You didn’t inherit it?”

Soraya confessed she didn’t know.

“Weird, man,” said Raphael.

“And what about you?” Soraya felt she was owed some facts about Raphael.

“I gotta lay low for a while, just a while before I go back west.”

“What happened?”

“Someone died but it weren’t me that killed them, gotta wait ‘till they figure it out.” He eyed her, nervous to see how she’d react.

Soraya believed him at once, she trusted him infinitely, Raphael was no killer. “Don’t worry,” she said, softly. “I won’t say anything to anybody.”

They passed the evening quietly. They laughed at the same things on T.V., which Soraya enjoyed. She didn’t often laugh, and it was nice to turn to Raphael and find his face a reflection of hers. They sat on opposite ends of the couch, and Soraya’s heartbeat quickened at the smallest of his movements as she imagined touching his hand again, or perhaps even his lips. He showed her how to set the station on the T.V by turning the knobs and tuning it in, and they ate Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from a sharing packet, passing them back and forth between them on the couch.

When Soraya saw the color of dusk out of the narrow trailer windows, she started to panic and knew she’d better go home.

“You leavin’ already, mija?” asked Raphael. “You don’t wanna eat?”

Soraya did want to but she couldn’t.

“Alright princess, how’s that ankle of yours?”

Soraya had forgotten all about her ankle, she got up slowly from the sofa. “Seems better,” she said.

                                                                                                       #

Approaching her trailer, Soraya saw Tanya unpegging laundry from the washing line, a basket hitched up against her hip. Tanya stopped and watched Soraya, statue-like.

“Hi Tan,” she said.

“Janet’s been waiting for you.”

Soraya pushed open the trailer door which had been left ajar. She tried to think of an explanation, but her mind was blank, it was always blank when she needed to think quickly.

Janet stood against the kitchenette counter. India watched from the safety of the faded pink armchair in the far corner.

“So, are you gonna be honest?” asked Janet, her arms crossed.

Soraya lingered in the entrance, felt her cheeks burning.

“Come here,” said Janet.

Soraya took a few steps forward.

“Who is he?” she barked.

“Who?”

“Don’t you dare!” She struck Soraya across her face.

Soraya tasted blood.

“You know the rule about boyfriends,” said Janet. “We have these rules to protect you, Soraya. What do you think you’re doing spending all day in that grown man’s trailer? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Soraya hadn’t seen Janet this flustered since that night in their old garden. She could even smell the fresh-dug earth, feel the icy dawn breeze as the memory played in her mind.

“It wasn’t like that,” Soraya stuttered. “I hurt my ankle and he gave me some water, we talked, that’s all.”

Janet wrapped her hand around Soraya’s jaw like a vice. The bones of her fingers dug hard into Soraya’s cheek. India didn’t move from her seat. She watched things unfold with expressionless dark eyes. Tanya didn’t come inside even though Soraya knew she’d finished with the laundry. She imagined her eldest sister hunched over, clutching tight to the basket of clothes like it was an anchor that might stop her from being washed away.

“But what did you talk about, Soraya? Huh? What did you tell that stranger about us?” Janet let her go. Soraya’s cheeks flushed with blood and feeling again. “We haven’t got this far only for you to ruin it all, run around acting like a slut. You don’t want everyone to think you’re a slut, do you Soraya? Huh?”

                                                                                                       #

Soraya had a new memory then. She remembered holding tight to the wooden rungs of the bannister. The house shook with the bass of her father’s voice. Deep and booming, it vibrated her infant rib-bones and her mother’s pleading drew goose-bumps from her forearms. She felt the presence of her sister Tanya beside her.

“Why is daddy angry?”

Tanya said nothing.

She heard her father calling her mom a slut. He said it over and over until the word was a sound and not a word. She heard the metallic clanging of pots and pans falling onto the kitchen floor, a smashing plate, and then a scream. Her father called for Janet.

Soon after, Janet came out into the hallway and told Tanya to take Soraya to bed.

“I want mommy.”

Tanya told her that her mom was gone and wasn’t ever coming back.

                                                                                                       #

“He killed her,” said Soraya. She felt as though she were alone in the trailer kitchen, alone in the world. It came back to her in small, undeveloped snapshots like bits of negative film. How Janet had choked up when she told them their father had left in the night, leaving only a bundle of twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen counter. And a photograph with their mother’s face scratched off of it. Soraya remembered being pinched hard on her thigh if she asked questions. Told of what would happen to her if she said anything to strangers. Janet had erased their past with sheer willfulness, with new traditions, silly food and comic books, songs they made up on the long coach journeys they took across the country.

Janet’s face was ashen, grey. She turned away to steady herself, her hands rested on either side of the sink. The vertebrae of her bony spine heaved with each breath. India leaned forward in her seat, listened with the intent of someone afraid to be interrupted by even her own breath. Tanya stood at the doorway, outside of the threshold. She was as she’d always been, present and absent at once.

“You buried her in the garden,” said Soraya. She was as sure of it as she was of her own existence.

Soraya turned and started for the door. She didn’t know much, but she knew she had to get out of the trailer. Tanya stepped aside to let her pass, something apologetic in the downward turn of her pale blue eyes.

“Take your crap with you, then!” Janet reached for the waste-basket full of the purple flowers under the sink. The long chains had been broken, and many of the plants were speckled with black death. She threw the contents of the basket out of the trailer door after Soraya. For a half-second the sky was filled with them, the air full of their fragrance. They were butterflies for just a moment before they fell onto the dirt to be covered with dust and forgotten.

                                                                                                      #

Soraya rapped hard on the door of Raphael’s trailer.

“Back again so soon?” he smirked at her.

“I need to get out of here, will you come with me?” asked Soraya, feeling like her skin had begun to itch and the only cure would be to get as far away from El Komei as possible.

Raphael looked around his trailer, exhaling through pursed lips. He scratched the hair at the back of his head.

“Please,” said Soraya.

Raphael shrugged. “Well alright, we’ll leave. My god girl. Don’t suppose you actually got somewhere in mind?”

“Somewhere with trees,” she breathed. “Just anywhere with trees.”

                                                                                           End of Part Two