Work Text:
i killed a plant once because i gave
it too much water. lord, i worry
that love is violence.
(josé olivarez)
Your second husband was a dope-dealer in a past life. What that means is that he used to cover the corners his brother told him but got distracted too often to climb up the ranks. That his brother cuts him loose at all is impressive—your own lingers in the home you grew up in, selling whatever his so-called clients ask him for, his hair growing longer and his face looking less like Tim's every day. Joey's a different kind of man, does what he's told when his brother demands it and gets a cut of it all without having to get his hands dirty anymore.
In the mornings you wake up and sit at the table and drink Café Bustelo while your mother works on breakfast. There's an uneasy alliance between the two of you, the kind that can only be borne of a finally-dead husband-father that tortured mother and daughter alike. You look like her twin even if you're twenty-five years her junior. She's beautiful again like she was in your youth, before your father hit the bottle and the rest of you who lived in the house, besides.
He may have died young, but you weren't so young, not really. Something as precious as childhood doesn't last long on the Eastside. It can't. So at fifteen you are half-orphan and child and girl; you are always your mother's daughter, and for years the sounds of her screaming is a comfort. That you, too, were caught up in it—adolescence turning you into your mother's mirror, your brothers wreaking havoc like your father once did—seems a distant memory. Dead men are easy to come by, and not all that hard to overcome.
When you married you told your husband your mother was coming with without consulting her. You think of your hands in her hair picking out glass and the way she would shake with fear and anger alike when you showed up half-crocked on weekdays, smelling like the good time your boyfriends would have. You want a palace where you can pretend the two of you have always been on the same team. Your new brother-in-law makes sure you get a house with rooms for everyone and children besides.
The inside is classy like you fantasized. White walls and matching furniture, red and pink accents everywhere. An altar to la Virgen next to your bedroom. You look in the mirror every day and here you are, a new life, a new you, the woman you wanted to be at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, before during after a marriage that dragged you kicking and screaming from your mother's grasp.
You spent so long trying to get away that once you did you wanted to come back. You are working on forgiving yourself for that, like you are your mother, who moves differently now that she's no longer under the thumb of a man who wanted nothing to do with any of you.
Sometimes you wonder what your father would say. If he would resent the life you've managed to create for yourself or if he expected nothing less of you, a Shepard to the bone. What's it matter that his wife found God again after he drank himself to death—that's just Catholic women, especially the kind that your mother is, praying to la Virgen like she's got any claim to her anymore, snatched up from the borderland and not needing a visa besides, no matter that she still hates to speak English at home and Spanish outside of it.
Growing up she would say she was beautiful in the river valley, and then she met your father and when he brought here she was suddenly not. For years she had only Tim and then Curly and then you to speak Spanish with, no family nearby and no driver's license to get her down to Mission.
"You kids are too light for me to take you so far," she would say, hair gleaming blue-black in the afternoon light. You are maybe eight or nine in this memory, begging to go see your grandparents, who come up only on Christmas. Your grandfather has the same nearly golden eyes your mother has, so light you could pretend she was a bribe for Charon. You loved to read in those days, devoured books in the afternoons when you would wait for Tim to walk to your school and pick you up, distracted by the same things that have him locked up near ten years later.
As a child you didn't realize how much it mattered that you were lighter than your mother, who was not all that dark but dark enough. In Mission she was beautiful and in Tulsa she was a Spic. Winter turns you the color of mazapán and as a teen you tanned until you were golden and beautiful to any man who blinked at you twice. You thought yourself as good as a king, but then the real ones came knocking, and now you're freshly nineteen years old and on your second husband—not that the first one counts.
He comes downstairs after breakfast, while you wash dishes and stare out the window into a pristine yard that you know he expects to fill with laughing children. Your womb is as empty as it was at fifteen, a child lost before it could become one at all and your first husband running from you the second he could. It's funny now, you think, and scrub like it might make you forget the weight of these first sins any better than the years that have already failed.
He kisses your neck. In another life you love him beyond all words, but this is the one you're living, and the memory of your father makes you hesitate. He says, "Jax is stopping by tonight."
You hum. Your nail scrapes down a clean dish. "Is he bringing everyone?"
Jax has one child with the woman he married at the end of '65, before you were half the woman you thought you were. It's kept him from being shipped out, but the baby is older than his parents' marriage—at Our Lady they whisper about it while you stare stone-faced towards the pulpit, eyes never leaving la Virgen from where she watches every move.
This city is too much and not enough for you, and yet here you are, tied down. Sometimes you think about the things some girls get up to—not downtown but out West, down in the desert and all the way to the ocean. You keep an eye on the CPA and pretend they'd want a girl like you, married to some pusher, the both of you speaking broken Spanish over atol and bolillo.
In the end it won't make a difference. You brought your mother into your married home because you ain't had to chance to figure out how to be a good wife, let alone a good woman; no way you could drive out to East LA and get them to take you seriously, when all you know is how to drag someone down to your level. Lucky for you your husband doesn't care about that too much. He gets a beautiful wife and three meals a day and no one talks about how you were fifteen and married, once.
Joey says, "You should call your brother," and you try not to go stiff in his arms. You have practice so it's easy, and soon enough he's at the table with fried egg and aguacate and a side of rice and beans. He drinks his coffee with cream, no sugar; you like it best the opposite. You sit across from him and drink a second cup and when he gets up he kisses your brow before leaving the house.
You want to trust him desperately, but you can't. You wonder much of it is your fault. Some of it must have come naturally, Shepard blood running hot in you and your brothers no matter that they got the worst of it, arrested and thrown around by fellow hoods and police officers alike. They didn't care much what happened to you until the worst did, plain wedding band on your finger because your first husband wasn't even pushing, money stretching into nothing between your clutching fingers.
Not like this one. Joey Milagros—qué milagro, that he serves at his brother's right-hand at all when his reputation's as bad as yours. But so far there are no unmarried mothers on your door demanding he take responsibility and the bar is low, you know it, but you like the thought of winning. Seems you've spent your whole life trying not to get the short end of things—you'd like to think this time you haven't.
You may have adjusted to the life Joey could give you quite easily, but there are things you can't forget, and that includes the Shepard name.
Tim is like steel. Forged and made anew so many times, there's no one like him in Tulsa. Not your brother-in-law, not any of those Brumly Boys, pushed to the fringe of the city as it is, and not the Tigers on the Northside. Tim's a different kind of man. The only real father you've known, no matter he's only five years older. When it was your late father yelling it was Tim taking it, cleaning up the mess while you pieced your mother back together, making ends meet before and after you were all left with nothing. It's always been Tim.
He still lives in the house you all grew up in. Curly stays there, too, when he's not shacking up with whatever girl of the week he's convinced to play house with him. He says he misses your mother's cooking but when he stops by they get into arguments about how long his hair is. Sometimes you're kind enough to bring him bistec.
Tim is barely having breakfast when you show up; you don't bother knocking because you still have a key. You're not sure who owns this house officially—perhaps it was Shepard before any of you were. Tim seems content to have it mostly to himself, though it's clear a man lives here without a woman to clean up after him based off the dishes alone. Tim's always said he's got better things to do than pretend at Westside snobbery; you used to just call him a pig.
You turn down the cup of coffee he offers you. He likes a different brand and you've had enough today as is. Instead you lean against the counter, ignoring the filthy sink, and watch him eat eggs—over-easy on what must be leftover rice. Every man you've known has liked his breakfast like this, even your father, no matter how prone he was to bruising and burning and the way he'd slam his fist into someone's face for calling him Mick. He always said he liked Spanish girls too much, no matter that your mother, when you pretend not to look, steals your out-of-state newspapers—titled things like La Voz Chicana, La Raza Habla, or even Sí Se Puede!—like they're promising gold.
"You're up early," you say, and he snorts.
He reminds you of the working horses your grandfather would keep on the little plot of land he lives on, down in the valley. It wasn't enough to make money, not really. Just enough to tide the family over between the seasons, homegrown vegetables traded with the neighbors as needed, only three kids surviving childhood and your mother the youngest and the only one to leave. Your uncle follows the harvest, still, from Texas up to Michigan, hauling your girl cousins with while the boys run wild. Your mother's older sister stays down there with your grandparents, still. On Sundays she calls your home and you pass the phone to your mother, and they spend hours there reminiscing on a past they'll never get back.
"You sure 'bout that, princess?" Tim says to you, and you try not to smile at the endearment. "Last I remember, you was always tryna catch up on beauty sleep."
"I don't need beauty sleep," you say, and watch him drink his coffee. "Surprised you ain't sleeping off a hangover, the way this house smells like that shitty beer you like."
"You sober now?" Tim's never been one to let shit lie. You love and hate it about him, not that you'll admit it. He'll cut you right to the quick and then gather you up right afterwards like it weren't his fault in the first place that you was blubbering like a baby again. You're tired of giving him the satisfaction.
You've only been married a couple months—the wedding in October, this time in a white dress in a real church. You stopped drinking the day after; not because anything bad happened, but because it felt like you needed to move on. Maybe it's because your ma's got you going to church with her, lately, no matter that every Catholic you know drinks like it'll get them that much closer to Jesucristo's very own label. You lost your taste for it; the few memories it gave you account for nothing.
You say, "Why, you worried? My husband takes care of me."
"Your husband's an idiot," Tim drawls, and then stands, moves towards the sink. He says, water running while he scrubs at his dish and starts in on the pile that have no doubt been awaiting him for days, "'S that why you're over here? Tired of this one already?"
"You're an asshole, Tim," you say, and cross the kitchen to join him. He hands you a few utensils and you get to drying, a team like you never were when you still lived here. "Joey treats me real good."
"Pretty sure I owe him a thank you," Tim says, a hint of a joke beneath his tone, "now I don't gotta deal with nobody 'round here…'cept Curly, I guess."
You roll your eyes. Tim, no matter that he runs his own outfit and has for years, and no matter the tenuous agreements he's had with the Kings for nearly as long, has always been the loner. Didn't matter when all five of them were around the house or now, with Curly in and out worse than shitty motel customer. Tim just seems suited for it—too serious, too angry to keep up with the kind of back-and-forth you all grew up with. You try not to let it bother you. You don't miss this house, no matter that you miss him, sometimes.
There's no reason to think about the way things used to be. If anyone asks, you wouldn't tell the truth, anyway.
Instead you say, "You got dinner plans tonight?"
He turns the water off, sink half-full now, and when he looks at you any good cheer he might have had is gone. "What's your husband want."
"Don't look at me like that," you say, but Tim knows you better than himself. "Ain't nothing but dinner. I don't see you nearly enough since moving out."
"That's the point, Angel," Tim says, drying his hands first before moving towards the table again. You stay standing, hands on your hips and feeling like your mother. "You get married and start your own life. When's the last someone took care of me?"
You pretend not to notice how bitter that last sentence sounds. Instead you say, "I used to cook for you."
"You want a medal?" Tim says, "I used to cook for you, too. Shit, pretty sure I'm better at it than you are."
"You're full of shit," you say, like it ain't your mama doing most of the cooking in your new house. Tim doesn't need to know that. "Point is, I don't hardly see you no more. Ma was asking after you."
"Now you're the one who's full of it," he says, and leans back in his chair, cup of coffee still in hand. "When's the last she did shit 'round here, huh? Seems like you got a whole new mama when you got married. You see your in-laws near every week, don't you?"
The Milagros are a close-knit group. Your mother-in-law doesn't like you, but you're used to that by now. "I ain't here to talk about my suegros. You oughta come by to dinner tonight."
"Angel…"
"Nah, I ain't asking you," you say, and cross the kitchen to steal his coffee. You're your mother's daughter, but your daddy's, too. "Dinner's at seven, don't be late."
Tim cleans up nice. You hate to admit it. Truth told, you were expecting him to skip out like he did your first wedding reception. He brings Curly, which is a bigger surprise, and the three of you fall back to bickering like it's five years ago again. It makes something settle in your lungs. The house starts to feel like home.
"Your latest hyna kick you to the curb, Curly?" you say when they walk in, and when he passes by close enough to you he reaches out to pinch you, knuckles digging into your side and making you yelp. You always hated it when he did that.
"Ain't you got better shit to do?" he says, but he's grinning, "Like maybe treating us like guests?"
"You're the least civilized person on Earth," you say, crossing your arms. Tim rolls his eyes at the both of you and ducks into the dining room, bored already of the bickering, no matter how half-hearted. You and Curly are just over a year apart, birthdays separated by a few weeks and a few holidays—you a Capricorn, Curly born the same day you celebrate la Virgen. Days like today, him trying to rile you up like it's all a good joke, it's like you never left in the first place. "You telling me you think I belong in a kitchen? Think about your answer, jackass, my husband owns a gun."
"I ain't afraid of your husband, chica," he says, and you smack at him when he tries to tug on your hair, "you got your hair real long lately. Growing it out again?"
"Joey likes it," you say, and don't want to talk about this anymore, so you say, "C'mon, dinner's about ready," and make him follow you into the next room where your mother and Tim await.
Everything's dished up real pretty, mole verde and rice and beans—always rice and beans, you can't imagine getting sick of it, all that Mexican in your blood a beloved curse—with fresh tortillas you helped make. You bought agua de tamarindo from the market on the way home from the old house. Dinner like this makes you feel like a real family. Maybe it took too many years to finally get here, but you're here anyway. It had to have been worth it.
It's after seven when Joey finally shows up, Jax close behind him. You stand, greet your husband with a kiss. Behind you, you can hear Tim stand, too, waiting to greet both men. You know it's not for Joey's sake, but rather his brother's. They cut that deal years ago, moving product throughout the city, and somehow everyone's still alive.
Well. Maybe not everyone. Lots of boys die young in this city, and not all of them over in the jungle.
Jax doesn't seem too bothered by it. He's the type of man to see the future. One step ahead of near everyone, it seems like, building the Kings up into something that should be feared. He's prone to seriousness, not as handsome as your husband but twice as deadly just from the look in his eye. He might have helped make your new life possible, but you don't trust him, no matter that he's family now or that he makes nice with your mother over dinner. He's here for work, and the work he does is deadly.
When you think of all those organizers—when you read the newspapers you pay extra just to get your hands on—Jax is the type of man they want out. Not the kind they claim, like how you're not the kind they want, either. Doesn't matter that your color means you'd get put on the front pages. You're a bunch of no-good Mexican criminals. People like you are why rest of you got it so bad. It makes you gnash your teeth no matter the truth that lingers there.
Either way, you don't trust him with either of your brothers. You don't trust him at all.
After dinner, you and your ma clear the table. Water's put to boil, no matter that you like your coffee with milk better. Joey follows you into the kitchen and kisses you like he missed you, and you curl your fingers in his hair like it could keep him or anyone else you love safe.
He says, "Thanks for dinner," fingers creeping up your shirt, and you think of the way he sleeps, head tilted back, belly bared. How soft his skin feels against yours, the way he reaches for you even in his dreams. This life he has given you something like that, no matter that you're waiting to wake up.
You say, "Of course, baby," hands on his chest, and soon after bring the men coffee, pretending your brother-in-law's clear dismissal afterwards—the nod, the thank you, the see you next time—doesn't make you grind your teeth. Worse still that your own brothers say nothing, tiger eyes watching and waiting. As if you can't do that, too. As if you haven't fought like hell to get here.
You ain't stupid. You know these halls and the voices of three of the four men in your kitchen. They're smart enough to know whispers carry but you've always been good at lingering where you're not wanted. Their voices come in bits, but you're smart no matter that you dropped out of school when you got knocked up and ended up graduating late once you finally went back.
Men's business is all the same these days. You know what your brothers get up to, you know the sorts of things that pay for the pretty things in this home. You're a pusher's wife, which ain't much in the grand scheme of things, but at least you married one who has enough money to take care of all the rest. It's all you could've really expected.
Eavesdropping is unbecoming of you, but sometimes it has to be done.
Of course, knowing how things are supposed to go means that when they go south, you know this, too.
Joey's like Tim. Thinks women aren't cut out for this type of life, as if women like you haven't been getting married and popping babies out since men like him first existed. Granted you haven't gotten to that second part yet, but he's stupider than he thinks you are if he assumes you ain't going to wake up one morning wondering why the hell there's blood on his pillowcase.
The sleep leaves you immediately, like it was never there to begin with. You sleep in nice sheets, silky soft to the touch and good for the summer heat. Not as good now, end of January and winter having long-settled over the city, but you have expensive tastes and see no reason to hide them. The ladies at department stores seem shocked to see you pay for the pretty things you pick up, their expressions giving you a sick sense of superiority.
You can hear the sink running in the bathroom attached to your bedroom, and the door is open just a sliver, light cutting through the darkness of the room. The clock reads after five in the morning; normally you sleep through his late night arrivals. Perhaps if you were still married to your first husband you'd suspect a mistress, but Joey's come home tonight smelling like gunmetal, not perfume, and the difference is nearly comforting.
You get up, grab for your robe, and the door doesn't even squeak when you push it open. Joey looks up at you for a split second before ducking his head back down, one hand pinching at his nose. There's a faint scrape down the side of his face, and the sight of it—of blood on his face, specifically—makes something fearful catch in your throat. You can remember the other times you've felt this way too easily: Tim with his broken nose, Curly's busted arm, your mother after a bottle thrown at her. It's familiar but it's new, too, the first time you've ever feared for your husband, this man you tied yourself to in front of every living and celestial being you could call upon just a few short months ago.
When you step into the bathroom Joey says, voice garbled, "Go back to bed."
"You woke me up," you say. Beneath the sink is gauze, bandages, mercurocromo for wounds. You put your hand against his side and move him gently, reemerge with everything you need and then make him take a heavy seat upon the toilet lid, no matter that he's crushing the decorative flowers on the cover. He tilts his head up, eyes closed while you pinch his nose shut again, your fingers curling over his when he reaches up to take over.
He's vulnerable like this. You can't make sense of it: the only time yours eyes are closed are in sleep. The soft throat, the stubble from a few days' worth of skipping shaving. His eyebrows curl, and you imagine your children will come out with hair as bad as Curly's. Maybe he'll be a namesake, or maybe you can keep these imaginary babies free from any connection to their mother's bloodline.
You say, "You got blood on my good pillows."
"Sorry, baby," he says. His voice is nasally. "Thought it'd stopped. I'll buy new ones."
You hum. "Thought you wasn't gonna be doing this, once we got married."
"Jax just needed a li'l backup," he says. You're about to clean the scrape when he continues: "They got him."
You stop. Turning your gaze back to him, his eyes—hazel, a kaleidoscope of color but not nearly as light as your ma's—still show traces of fear. Like the adrenaline ain't quite faded yet. Joey doesn't tell you work things. He does Jax's bidding and gets a better paycheck than the rest. He's decent at numbers, you know. Otherwise things just wouldn't add up anywhere.
"Tim got hauled in," he says, and that's around the time you drop the good wife act.
After, he tries to stop you from leaving. You're about ten seconds from ruining this marriage and cracking a bottle over his head in the foyer.
"Get the fuck outta my way," you say. It's nearly eight o'clock and he has dried blood in his stubble. You probably don't look much better, no makeup on, hair uncombed. You're in real clothes but your winter coat is unzipped over it, looking like the mess you've always been.
"You gotta calm down," he says, trying to come close, and you twist out of his reach.
"Don't touch me," you hiss. Your car keys are clutched between your fingers. You wonder how much trouble you'd be if you slashed at him. You've always been good with Joey—not the yelling from your childhood home or the first husband, just the good times you secretly knew would eventually come to an end. Figures it ends on a Saturday, early enough that you should still be in bed, or at the very most barely waking up. Panic crawls up your throat. "Where's Curly, huh? He with you tonight?"
"He wasn't with me—"
"A ver," you say, r's rolling worse than a rattler, "so you let them grab Tim, huh? You gave him up like nothing? Qué tal tu lealtad, hijo de tu—"
He catches your arm, brings you close to him. You don't like it, no matter that his grip isn't tight—just firm enough to bring you close, his face serious no matter the bruising that's already settling over one side of his face. He wouldn't put your hands on you like that, he said once. Things have been said about your dead daddy before. Your in-laws weren't any better.
He says, "Listen to me. He gave himself up."
"Bullshit," you say, even if it sounds like the truth. Tim would have sacrificed his own life if it meant keeping you and Curly alive. Now that you've both grown, it seems asinine to think Tim would still do that. But Tim went to both your weddings, the first at the courthouse and the second at Our Lady, and he always asks if Joey treats you right. You've always said yes. Tim used to check for monsters under the bed and drag you back to your room every time you tried leaving the house with too much makeup on. He would do this.
Son of a bitch, but he would do this.
"Someone called the cops—"
"Who," you snap, and break free of his grasp. "What happened to your goddamn brother's good planning, huh? I thought everything was good on his end, everyone paid off."
Joey stares at you for a long minute. When he speaks it's nearly a sigh, "You been listening in, huh."
"You have a goddamn conversation in my house you're goddamn right I'm gonna be listening," you shout, but the fight's gone out of him. Sometimes, when you were married the first time, the arguments would be fun, at least for a little while. Something to wake you up again, to distract you from the bottle. Now it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
He steps away from the archway, leaves you more than enough space to slip out of the house. "Get, then," he says. "You wanna know everything? Go ask your brother what happened."
"You're a real sonuvabitch," you say, and he doesn't flinch.
"Same one you married, Angel," he says, and you storm out, not half as dramatic as you had hoped.
Curly's not home when you get there. You shout while you march through the house, kitchen as filthy as it was when you came by less than two weeks ago. The living room ain't any better, empty beer cans on a coffee table that looks worse than the already questionable state it was in when you were still living here. You pound on the bedroom doors and risk peeking inside—find nothing but dirty clothes and unmade beds, the bathroom in need of a good scrub, too.
You rack your brain, trying to figure out the name of the last girl Curly was knocking boots with. You're pretty sure she used to run with Brumly, Ester something or another. Someone who'd probably get pissed that you were trying to track him down, no matter that Shepard blood runs deeper than whatever bullshit covenant the girl must be fixing to build with your idiot brother.
Lucky for you tracking someone down isn't all that hard, no matter that it's still morning time. The viejitas at the market out near Brumly are chismosas, no matter that you've just met them and have had hate a time or two for the ones who'd sell you out, when you were still running wild. You ask after Ester, la de Hale, and they send you straight to the little apartment smack in the middle of King territory. You're going to kill Curly once you get ahold of him.
You're not polite about knocking, no matter that it's probably just barely reaching nine o'clock. A girl with bleach blonde hair opens the door, the shade too light for her skin-tone. Curly's got terrible taste in women.
"Is Curly here?" you demand.
Her expression is displeased. "Yeah," she says, and then calls over her shoulder, voice peaking loud enough that you have to work to keep your face straight, "Curly!"
When she turns back to you she still has a cara de fuchis on, reminding you of how your mother used to smack your hands with a wooden spoon when you'd make the same face at her. Your mother tried hard to make sure you were all polite. Took you to catechism classes and taught you your prayers in Spanish and the history of the valley, no matter that you never went. Doesn't mean much, considering who you married and where both your brothers are fixing to end up. Just the thought makes your breath catch.
"He'll be right out," she says, and as good as slams the door shut rather than invite you inside.
You can't help but roll your eyes, feeling closer to fifteen again and dealing with in-laws who hated you. You hated them just as fiercely, a teenage bride with a husband who didn't know what the hell he was doing either. Your mother should have just paid for the abortion, you think, but then Mother Nature or maybe even God cut you a break before it was too late.
You're a good Catholic woman now. God won't give you more than you can handle.
You've almost convinced yourself it's true when Curly opens the door, eye nearly swollen shut. You stare. It's not the first time you've seen him like this—worse for wear, hair a mess, exhausted beyond all else. You just don't like the reminder.
You say, "Where's Tim."
"Goddamn it, Angel," Curly says, and steps back. "Come inside."
"No."
"I ain't talking to you out here."
"Hijo de tu—"
"We got the same ma," he says, and opens the door. His voice is pitched low. "What'd your husband say, huh?"
"Why, so you can lie like he tried?"
Curly shakes his head. This kind of life gets under the skin, makes you bone-tired. You see it every time you look at either of your brothers, like maybe they aren't really cut out for this the way everyone seems to always claim they were. As if they know anything about any of you beyond the obvious. You've never felt trapped like this before; you're so angry you can't make the words.
Curly says, "Someone called the—"
"Someone lied," you say. You don't recognize yourself. "Either about making the right calls or who did in the first place. No way Jax coulda forgot about someone."
"The man ain't a god."
"No," you say, and lean in very close to him, your voice a hiss between you two, "but he's a man with a lotta money. No such thing as an accident when Milagro is around."
"Ain't you a milagro?" he drawls, "Married good and got your happy ending. Shit happens, Angel. Tim'll be fine."
"How much is bail gonna be?"
"It's Saturday," Curly says. He scratches his chest, and his knuckles are scraped up. "Judge won't be in 'til Monday morning."
"How much?"
"You gotta think about it, Angel," Curly says. His face is splotchy, too, discolored from the bruise. He seems unfazed, and it's driving you crazy, worse than the clear scent of mota that's wafting out of the apartment you refuse to enter. "Ain't his first time getting hauled in."
You swallow. It hurts. "You don't care."
"What?"
"You don't care," you repeat, and your fists curl at your sides. You're cold, jacket still unzipped, but the shaking you're trying to stop isn't from the January weather.
Last time Tim was arrested for anything besides petty charges, you must've still been in middle school. It had to have been after your daddy had died, else the whole house would have felt the force of his anger, and all you remember is a silence that seemed to swallow you whole. He was supposed to be gone longer than he was, but they let him off on good behavior and crowding besides. That hasn't stopped him from a few smaller charges since, but…everyone knows what makes real money these days.
Tim's as bad as your brother-in-law. All of you seem to reap what you sow.
"You tryna be a big man?" you say, and watch Curly's face screw up as much as it can, painful looking as it is.
"The fuck're you talking about?"
"Tim gone means you get to take over, don't it," you say, and that familiar Shepard spark starts in his eye. It makes you feel alive like how arguing with Joey didn't. You say, "You was just waiting for some bullshit like this to happen. I wouldn't be suprisied if'n it was called you was right there—"
"Shut the fuck up." He sounds like your father when he speaks. You barely keep from flinching. "You think you know what kinda work we do?"
"'Course I do," you snap, "it keeps me fed and warm in a house Joey shouldn't be able to afford. I ain't stupid," and you sneer this, hope he takes it as the insult it is, "I know what y'all've been getting into for ages. You can't hide it."
"Then you should be used to it," he says. He sounds stupidly serious. You hate this change—you've never known him or Joey to be like that. It's always been Tim's job to be responsible, to get things fixed when they inevitably go to hell in a handbasket. You hate that you need him back already, not twelve hours after this bullshit has started…or maybe ended is a better description.
Tim's always there. You hate the handful of times he hasn't been.
"Who fucked up," you say. Maybe you demand it. You can tell from the way Curly shakes his head that your anger isn't going to make a difference this time.
"Go home, Angel," he says. "We'll deal with it on Monday."
"He ain't called—"
"I was there," he says, like he knows everything, like any of you have ever had a chance, "it'll happen like it always does."
Maybe you're a little smug at the look on Curly's face when the judge says two years. Then you remember what that really means and you have to hold your breath to keep from being sick in the middle of court. What were any of you expecting—Tim's the type of man who deserves it, probably. The judge didn't look twice at the three free Shepards waiting for some sort of good news.
Tim doesn't even bother looking at you. You wonder if he blames himself for this. For letting your husband slip away unscathed when the police swarmed. You waver between fury and devastation, no matter that Tim has made a habit of getting arrested. It's different now. You're not a child anymore, not entirely naïve to what your brothers'—and husband's—choices really mean. It was easy, all those years ago: Tim took care of you and that was that. Your mother couldn't do it, and so he had to. You never thought to question it.
It wasn't until later, soon before you left the first time. New dealings with the Kings, their boys everywhere suddenly and too friendly by half. You remember watching Tim grow more tense, the way his jaw would clench during hushed phone calls. He moved between the house and some apartment away from you all back then, even during your short-lived marriage. You could never figure out whether it was because he was tired of you all or if he was doing more than he needed to, keeping you all safe and fed in the meantime.
He's always done that. And it always seems to blow up in his face, this time no different than all the rest. Your mother is shaking next to you, rosary clutched between her bent fingers, and all you can do is reach for her elbow. There's nothing to be done, this time, no more calls to make or arguments to start with your husband.
Joey's waiting outside, smoking in the driver's seat. He moves to open your door for you but you do it yourself first, Curly splitting to his own car with barely a goodbye, no doubt to track down Ester again. You never find him at the old house anymore, and more than once have had to search through the phonebook for Ester Vergara, prettiest girl out of Hale and hopping between outfits however she pleases. Makes you want to laugh and scream all at once, but that might just be the sentencing hitting you extra hard.
You go to see him as soon as they let you. Your house is quiet in the interim, Joey tiptoeing around you while you pretend nothing's real. You sit in the kitchen and smoke day in and day out, your mother coaxing you with teas and atol and whatever other sweets she knows you like. She used to do this when you were a kid, when your father was around but not really there.
Winter seemed almost bearable, back then. You don't know why two years feels like a death sentence. Perhaps it's the realization of what all of the truths you took for granted really mean in the grand scheme of things. It seems like your future has suddenly gone off course. All the things you knew about but could ignore gone in one fell swoop, your big brother in jail and everyone telling you it's just the way things go.
You think it's bullshit.
As soon as you can, you head up out to Big Mac. You want to leave as soon as you get there, but somehow you end up across from Tim with glass separating you. He raises an eyebrow at you, nothing impressed about his expression, and it makes you feel self-conscious like you never are, so used to being in control everywhere you go. Just entering the prison, no matter that you're here for a visit, is a reminder that you're nothing.
"Tim," you say, and he just looks at you. Despite yourself, your eyes get hot. "Are you doing okay?"
He sighs. Says, dry as ever, "Angela. You're visiting me in fucking prison."
You scowl. No matter that you hate to see him like this, you hate being patronized even more. Your temper at nineteen isn't any better than four or five years ago, when you were prone to throwing fits over boys not liking you right back. You say, "I'm here to see you. Least you could do is say hello."
He bares his teeth in a barely there grin. "Aw, Angel, that's real sweet of you. You bring me presents? Maybe a file inside a cake?"
"You're an asshole," you say, all thoughts of being nice to Tim gone in ten seconds flat, "Christ, not one fucking good thing outta your mouth—"
"I'm locked up, chiquilla, you want me sing you a goddamn song?"
"And I'm here to see you," you shoot back, "I'm tryna talk to you and andas de pendejo—"
"Enough," he says, and he's serious like Curly was all those weeks ago, when he sounded like your father. Tim's the nearest thing to that any day. Your fingers curl tightly over the plastic phone, pressed against your ear like it could make you forget how separate you and Tim are today, as separate as you've always been. "Why're you here, huh? You come by just to start arguing like always?"
"We don't argue," you say, and he just snorts.
"Nena, you forget what you was like two years ago?" He shakes his head. "Between you and Curly I'm surprised I ain't lose all my hair already. Couldn't stand neither of you half the time, the way you was always looking for trouble all the time."
"That’s real bold," you say, trying to mask the hurt of couldn't stand you, "considering all the shit you got up to. That you still get up to. Christ’s sake, Tim, where are we right now?"
He leans in like there isn’t glass between you. "This ain’t your business."
"You ain’t my brother, then?" You wonder what you look like. What the guards make of you both, arguing in the middle of McAlester—just another joke of a family to them. "You met my husband. You know his folks. You think this ain’t my business?"
"You ain’t in charge," he says, and you hate what comes out of his mouth next most, "you get to sit pretty in that big house of yours and that’s all you gotta worry about, princess. You come out here to tell me you tired of that? Of not having to live hand to fucking mouth no more?"
"You acting like everything else don’t matter—"
"It shouldn’t," he says, and his voice is sharp. "Why would it, huh? You didn’t care before. Raised hell doing shit I told you not to, used to drive me fucking crazy—"
"You always hated us, then?" you say, and you're embarrassed to hear your own voice break. "Think we shouldn’t care, that I shoulda said good riddance soon as I left?"
Tim looks at you, phone held loosely to his ear. He looks thinner already, no matter that it's not even a month since he got locked up, you his first visitor and perhaps his least wanted. It was your husband who brought you the news, after all, your brother-in-law the man he works with. Maybe he wouldn't be here if it weren't for you inviting him to dinner, or even you marrying into the Milagros. Perhaps he even knows this.
You think of the nights he'd braid your hair and put you to bed and tell you that tomorrow would be a good day. It hurts to think of that childhood—because it's gone, because it will never come back, because it wasn't all that great to start with. All you've ever had is each other: you and Tim and Curly and your mother, all unwilling Shepards desperately trying to claw your way out.
He says, "So what?" and shakes his head when your breath catches painfully in your throat. "What's that got to do with anything, Angel? Who fucking cares if we hate each other sometimes. I love you like nothing else on this goddamn Earth."
When you say nothing he shakes his head. Maybe he can see the hurt on your face. Maybe he's just glad to finally have someone to admit this to.
"You used to tell me you hated me," he says, "when you was fourteen, fifteen, running 'round with malandros like you was gonna die if you didn't act like some piruja. Of course I hated you." He leans in like there isn't glass between you. "That don't mean nothing. We're blood. We're always gonna take care of each other."
You take a deep breath. You say, afraid of the answer as if you don't already know it, "You blame me for this? You being locked up?"
"No," he says, and it's immediate. He looks more like your mother in this light. Maybe she could have taken you down to the valley, all those years ago. Maybe all of you could have gotten out of Tulsa in one piece. "Am I gonna beat the shit outta your husband the second I'm outta here? Yeah. Don't try to stop me."
When you laugh, it surprises you. It's almost like you have nothing to worry about, no matter how long (or not) of a sentence the family will have to wait out. So Tim is all alone until then? Fine. Things are less different than you’d hoped. It's almost a relief.
"Okay," you say, and almost mean it when you tell him, "you know better than me," like perhaps the two of you can pretend to be a normal family. It may not have worked before, but there's no point in stopping now.