Chapter One

          Carmella is born in a house built by her father’s indignation. It’s a ramshackle thing, constructed of scraps taken from the dump across the street and rejected materials from his work. His gatherings are just barely enough for two bedrooms and a kitchen. All five children sleep in the same concaving room, spine to spine on their shared cots. When it storms, the walls tremble and shudder as if choking out their last breath, and raindrops squeeze their way through the slatted planks of the ceiling. The winters get so cold that they can feel the chill in their bones, spreading through the marrow like a disease. There is no electricity, no running water.

          It is a glorified shack, and it is their home.  

          It is where Carmella kneels in the garden and listens as her Ama tells her how to plant seeds and foster them with love so tender, they can’t help but grow into something magnificent. It is where she and her sisters dance and laugh and sing until their eldest brother pretends that his ears are bleeding. It is where she learns what it means to be a woman, to be as silent and resilient as the night. It is their home, built with fragments of Ama and Apa’s hearts, held together with crooked nails and an immeasurable amount of hope.  

          That hope was stirred in Apa long ago, back when he still remembered what it meant to dream. After the Mexican Revolution Michoacán was not the place he had once known, but a tattered resemblance only moments away from crumbling. When Ama fell pregnant with Benny, their first child, Apa knew that he would not be able to care for them in such conditions, and was scrambling to find a way out. Only days after he had made the difficult decision to flee, Apa was approached by the men in the pinstriped suits, as if they had been beckoned by some higher power. They took one look at him—a strong-bodied man with leathered skin from days spent working beneath the blaze of the sun—and offered him an irrefutable deal. Come with us to Iowa, they had said. We’ll pay you to work on the railroads, and we’ll even find a plot of land for you in Cook’s Point.    

          Though Apa had only heard the howl of trains in the distance and did not know what it meant to work on a railroad, the promise of land where he and his growing family could live a quiet, modest life was too good to pass on. With images of a nursery for the baby and a little garden for Ama sparkling in his eyes, Apa accepted.  

          Carmella was not yet born, still dust scattered among the stars, but Ama tells her of those early days in America so vividly that Carmella swears she can remember. Ama’s words are brushstrokes on canvas, cultivating a wondrous image of the journey to their new lives.  

          She tells of the softness in Apa’s gaze as he shook hands with the men in the pinstriped suits, a sort of ease that she had not seen from him before and had not seen since.  Of the long, sleek train they climbed aboard, their lives packed into the sacks slung across their backs. Of the cornfields that stretched into infinity, and how she wished that she could run between the rows of stalks until her legs gave out. Of the lovely women in the barrio who cooked a feast to welcome them, and afterwards offered Ama their unused fabrics so that she could make new clothes to replace what she had to leave behind.  

          It is not until Carmella is much older and with a baby on her hip, living in a house constructed by the hands of her own husband, that Ama will tell her the truth. She will tell her how the folks at the train station with milky skin and hair like cornsilk had clutched their bags a little tighter as they passed by. How they snarled words that she did not yet understand but would come to as they echoed behind her for the rest of her life. How their ‘plot of land’ wasn’t worthy of the name, hardly big enough for the garden they had already begun to plan. How the others working at the railroad—traqueros, they called themselves—had come to Apa with hands blooming red and bent, aching backs to warn him how difficult the work would be, and how little the compensation was. How the women slowly began to distance themselves from her, whispering behind their hands as she passed. How the people outside the barrio were vicious as rabid dogs, barring their teeth and snapping their jaws. How Apa came home each night with a grease-streaked, humiliated face, yet worked on the house well into the darkness. How a chasm cracked between him and Ama, its jaws widening until it consumed her whole. How he took his pain and suffering and molded it into a weapon to use against her.   

          This information will not be groundbreaking to Carmella. She has always known of the violence that threads itself through her family, coiling around their throats like a vengeful snake. The thin, rotting walls never did muffle the sounds of Apa’s fists on Ama’s skin. Never quieted the yelps that broke past her lips as he drove the toe of his boot into her side, like a master punishing his dog. She understood the extent of Apa’s cruelty long before she was seventeen years old and wearing her Sunday best to his trial.  

          But that has not happened just yet.  

          For now, Carmella is a young girl, just shy of sixteen, who was born knowing what it’s like to go without. To go to bed with hunger gnawing at her belly, ravenous and unforgiving. To have only two pairs of heavily darned socks to her name that she must care for meticulously, washing them routinely with the water hauled in a tin bucket from the only pump, all the way across the neighborhood. To tremble beneath the single blanket she possesses as the frost creeps up the windows. She has felt the vicious bite of the cold, the piercing ache of hunger, the grit of dirt on her skin. She has always accepted this, has never begged her God for more than she has already been blessed with.  

          She knows what it is like to go without, but she does not know what it is like to want something so deeply that she can feel it thrumming through her veins, her body like a live wire. Not until she learns what it feels like to live for herself.  

⎯⎯⎯⎯ 

          Summer stomps its way into Cook’s Point, bringing with it a thick, sweltering heat that drapes itself over the barrio; a silent oppressor. When their chores are finished, most of the kids in the neighborhood spend their days cooling off in the quarry. They waste hours dunking each other under the surface, or gulping mouthfuls of air before swimming to the gummy bottom, or taking turns on the rope swing one of the Garcia boys hung from a nearby elm tree.  

          Carmella and her siblings are likely the only people in Cook’s Point that never join. It isn’t because they don’t want to, but because they are quietly forbidden from doing so. Apa does not like it when they stray from home, unless under his direction, so they stay inside and ignore the tempting bouts of laughter echoing throughout the neighborhood. 

          Most of the time, it doesn’t bother her. Even if she could wander beyond their property, she would decline the opportunity in favor of the garden. It’s unofficially become her domain, as the little ones are too fidgety and impatient for it, and Benny hasn’t taken much interest in anything since the second world war finally unhooked its claws from him and he was sent home. Before, his assistance consisted of whispering jokes across the leafy tops of carrots, but Carmella can’t remember the last time he seemed to be anything other than apathetic. 

          Lupe, who is sometimes Carmella’s younger sister and sometimes her best friend, avoids the garden as if it emits a toxic gas. She claims that there are too many spirits lingering between the stalks of tomatoes for her to be able to properly think, let alone garden. Ama has always said that Lupe is gifted with a third eye, the ability to see beyond the scope of this natural world. But sometimes Carmella thinks that Lupe uses her gift as an excuse to get out of doing the more unfavorable chores, like cleaning out the chicken coop, which she claims is haunted by the spirit of the chicken they had to eat last year when their only other choice was to starve. Carmella has never accused her sister of this out loud because she knows it would make her seem jealous. And she’s far from jealous. She would hate to be like Lupe; to have grieving families banging down the front door in hopes she’s spotted their loved ones. To be left behind while everyone else attends Sunday mass because the restless spirits roaming the pews leave no room for her. To have the other neighbors call her names like ‘Loopy Lupe’ and make ghoulish howling noises when her back is turned.   

          Carmella is cleaning up the garden, gently plucking weeds from the damp soil, when Ama calls her inside. She drags her dirty hands down the front of her apron—constructed from old curtains and dyed a pale shade of orange with the head of a few marigolds—and pops to her feet, following the steady clamor coming from the kitchen.  

          Ama is bustling around, a frazzled air to her that she only gets when she’s cooking tamales. It’s Carmella’s favorite meal, but they only have it when Apa is away for work. He complains about the mess they make, the time-consuming process, how they don’t taste like his mother’s. So Ama stopped making them all together, unless on days like today, where Apa is to be away for work. 

          Carmella pokes her head through the back door, wiggling her fingers in greeting at Hope, the youngest of her sisters, who is sitting cross-legged in the corner trying to darn her socks. Joey, only old enough to toddle around and stick things in his mouth, is chewing on a rag Ama has dipped in juice while tugging at Hope’s braid. 

          Ama’s head snaps up from the mixing bowl she’s intently staring at, and the wrinkle of worry permeating her forehead smooths out, a fond smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She is enchantingly beautiful, with dark hair that falls in thick curls down her back and eyes as wide and brown as a dairy cow’s. There is something innately soft about her, a proclivity to gentleness. Her hands are small and cautious, always conscious of the things they touch and the actions they are responsible for. If Carmella could someday be half the woman her Ama is, she would be satisfied.  

          Ama dusts her hands off before heading towards the icebox, speaking with a confidence she seems to magically gain the moment Apa walks out the door. Though she knows a passable amount of English, she is most comfortable speaking the language that her mother and her mother’s mother spoke. After leaving Michoacan and everything she has ever known, the language is the only thing Ama has left of them. She holds onto it like it’s something unspeakably precious, tucking it behind her ribcage for safekeeping when she isn’t using it.  

          Can you run to the Nunez’s and get me some lard? She asks. I underestimated how much I’d be using for the masa and I ran out right in the middle of making it.  

          Carmella brightens at the prospect of wandering through the neighborhood alone, something Ama only allows her to do when she knows Apa will not hear of it.  

          Yes, I can. Is Apa gone for the night? Carmella asks, doing very little to conceal the raw hope seeping into her tone.  

          He’ll be gone for a while, until next Tuesday at the earliest. One of the lines broke down in Galesburg and it’s going to take every traquero they’ve got to fix it, Ama says. Though she keeps her back turned, Carmella can see her smiling reflection in the kitchen window.  

          Ama retrieves a few eggs from the ice box and places them in a small basket lined with cloth before handing it to Carmella. She says, Take these, they should be enough for a trade. Be careful not to break them.  

          Carmella presses a kiss to Ama’s cheek before rushing out the back door, shouting a half-hearted promise to hurry over her shoulder. She won’t be too long, of course, as she takes the rules her parents have set very seriously, but this is an opportunity she is seldom granted. She’ll walk the perimeter of the neighborhood, she decides, but only after she finishes with the trade, otherwise the shadow of it looming over her shoulder will obscure the view. She cuts through a few of her neighbor’s backyards, waving hello to the girls bent in the gardens and the women stringing up wet laundry, until she hits the dirt path that leads through the heart of the barrio. 

          She doesn’t leave Cook’s Point unless to attend school because there isn’t much of a need to. Neighbors are always willing to trade, but if one can’t be made, the market sells just about everything. It was built long before Carmella was here to see it, and she assumes it will stand long after that, too. Only a few strides away from the market is the church, one of the only places Apa allows his family to go. It may be a modest building, only big enough to hold about fifty or so people at a time, but the pastor leaves the doors and windows open so that those gathering around the sides can still hear his sermon. It’s meager compared to the church in which she attends school, but she doesn’t think the Lord minds where she worships so long as she does.  

          Adjacent to the church is the boxcar that the Nunezes live out of, which isn’t entirely unusual. Though most families have built homes for themselves, there are some that live out of old boathouses pilfered from the nearby dump or abandoned boxcars. It doesn’t matter what a roof is made of, Apa once said, if you are blessed enough to have one over your head. Years ago, the Nunezes painted their home a brilliant shade of blue not unlike the rippling water of the quarry. It has dulled against the unforgiving pelt of snow and rain, but Carmella is still impressed with the dedication it took. All week, the eldest of the bunch would balance one of his brothers atop his shoulders so that the paintbrush could reach the apex of the boxcar where wall meets roof. They moved so fluidly together, neither of them faltering for a moment, as if always anticipatory of each other’s next breath.

          She hops up the wooden crates placed to resemble a staircase at the opening of the boxcar. Months ago, one of the daughters painted a flower garden complete with little orange butterflies on it. It’s actually quite beautiful, Carmella thinks, even if it only exists to be tromped on. The sliding door is pushed open in an attempt to release some of the stifling air from inside, but it clearly isn’t helping because as Señora Nunez approaches, the sunlight catches on the sweat beading at her brow. 

          Carmella is quiet and respectful during the transaction, answering each question she’s asked but never speaking unprompted. She isn’t stupid—she knows what the people in the barrio think of her, what they think of her family. Carmella knows that she is an oddity simply because her last name is Valdez, and no amount of small talk will rectify that. Señora Nunez makes it anyhow, asking questions in hopes of relaying scandalous bits of information to the other women. She wants to know how Ama is, and if Apa is going to be in Galesburg for long, and if Benny has been settling into his new factory job. Carmella bristles at the mention of her older brother, the politeness she wears like a shroud slipping from her shoulders. She knows that it’s very likely the neighbors have heard his screams seeping through the cracked windows. If his night terrors are loud enough to wake Hope, who sleeps like the dead if they were deaf, then certainly they carry across the entire barrio. 

          She’s quick and stiff with her responses—Ama is well, it’s unclear when Apa will be back, Benny is doing just fine—before exchanging the eggs for lard and waving goodbye. Getting stuck in a conversation with Señora Nunez is like catching a limb in the rusty jaws of an old bear trap; excruciatingly painful and difficult to extract yourself from. 

          Down the crates she goes, jar of lard in hand. With each stride that takes her further from the faded blue boxcar, her breath comes easier. Carmella wouldn’t exactly classify herself as shy, but she doesn’t particularly enjoy conversing with other people. Maybe it’s the fear that seeps into her, the tiny voice whispering that Apa is always watching, or maybe it’s the fact that she craves silence. Living in such close contact with her family means that someone is always making noise—a rattling breath, a phlegmy cough, a nameless tune hummed softly—and any respite from that is entirely welcome. She likes it when the only sound she can hear is the scuffing of her shoes against the earth, or the tittering of the birds above, or the wind whispering lullabies through the trees. It gives her the space to think about anything other than her siblings and the chores that wait for her at home. 

          She walks down the path that curves itself around the edges of Cook’s Point, partially hidden behind the towering oak trees and the long shadows casted in their wake. Between the gaps of the trunks she can see the quarry, alight with noise and movement as people jump and laugh and play. For a brief, terrifying moment, Carmella is sick with yearning. She wants to be there, she realizes, splashing about in the cool water and allowing the sun to warm her skin. She wants to have more friends than just her siblings. She wants and wants and wants.  

          She shakes the feeling off as quickly as it comes, unnerved by how sneakily it twined itself around her. Her resolve has never wavered, mostly because she knows that hoping Apa will change his mind won’t lead to anything other than disappointment. She refuses to look at the quarry, even as she passes it and the all-consuming, nearly irresistible noise. Just as she’s about to give in and take a single peek, even though she knows it will only make her feel worse, something ahead catches Carmella’s eye.  

          Standing at the water pump only a few paces from the water, obscured slightly by the treeline, is Lupe. This is not surprising, as she was sent to get water to fill the laundry basin, but what’s unusual is that she isn’t alone. Leaning against the rotting wooden fence, the only thing separating their world from what lies outside, is a boy. Carmella can’t quite place his name—though she’s sure it’s scattered somewhere in the recesses of her mind—but she recognizes him vaguely. He and the other neighborhood kids walk in a pack to school, always a few steps ahead of  Carmella and her siblings.  

          It's a bizarre sight, her sister and this boy. Lupe doesn’t make it a habit to talk to the living, claiming that most people don’t become interesting until after they die. Yet somehow there she is, not only willingly but happily talking to this virtual stranger, which is almost as dangerous as it is odd. If word traveled—and in Cook’s Point, it certainly would—there would be hell to pay. Carmella almost goes up to her and drags her away by the ear, but thinks better of it at the last moment. If she made a scene, it would certainly reach Apa’s ears, and then they’d really be in trouble. He has always demanded that they draw as little attention to themselves as possible, and if Carmella has learned anything in her life, it is that Apa’s demands are not to be taken lightly. 

          She huffs as she stomps further down the curving path, all the while composing the scolding of a lifetime in her head. It consists, mostly, of insulting Lupe’s intelligence and condemning her newfound rebellious streak. Although, to be fair, she has always been uncontainable. Carmella can’t remember a time where Lupe wasn’t a lit match dangling above a puddle of spilled gasoline, drooping closer and closer by the second. 

          Carmella is so busy coming up with her speech that she doesn’t hear someone creeping up behind her, their shoes scuffing softly against the path. With a poorly contained giggle, Lupe launches herself onto an unsuspecting Carmella’s back, sending the pair of them toppling to the ground. Carmella lets out a strangled screech, futilely attempting to buck Lupe off of her. 

          “Lupe, stop it! Get off me, you whale!” She cries, finally wriggling out of her sister’s hold. She lies on her back in the dirt, the sun seeping through the overhanging tree branches to scorch her eyes, until a shadow obscures it. When her sight adjusts, the first thing she sees is Lupe’s maniacal grin and then, her outstretched hand. 

          “I am not a whale,” Lupe protests as she drags Carmella to her feet. 

          “You sure felt like one,” she heaves, though it’s not really true. Lupe is severely underweight for a fourteen year old girl, her bones protruding against her skin as though trying to escape its confines. She is the product of too many nights in which their food has been spread too thin. 

          Carmella brushes off the front of her dress, annoyed to see yet another grass stain near the hem but her hands have fared even worse, streaked with dirt from trying to break her fall. As she wipes them off on Lupe’s back, she realizes that they’re a little too empty. It takes her only a moment to find the remnants of the jar, shards glinting and casting rainbows from the rough edges in the sunlight. The lard is undoubtedly ruined, already swathed in dirt. 

          “You idiot, that was for Ama!” She cries, dropping to her knees to scoop up the shards. She knows that people will be walking barefoot this way, and she can’t bear the thought of someone stepping on a stray piece. 

          “I didn’t see it!” Lupe defends, bending over to assist in the cleanup. She wipes each shard onto her dress, then drops them into her pockets with a satisfied hum. 

          “I don’t even want to know what you’re going to do with those,” Carmella grumbles, “but I do want to know why you thought it was a good idea to linger at the quarry! What happened to the water you were supposed to get?”

          Lupe doesn’t seem surprised to have been caught. She laughs and skips down an adjacent path, a different and longer route than Carmella would take if she were by herself, but neither of them mention it. On the more straightforward way is a spirit who lingers at the base of an old elm tree, a man who hanged himself years and years ago. Lupe had told her once, in a rare moment of vulnerability, that the sight of the man pacing back and forth with a rope taut around his neck unnerved her. So they avoid it if they can, if only to spare her a little extra pain in a world that is so hell bent on inflicting it. 

          “I’m in love, Carm,” Lupe says, her voice wispy and dreamlike. 

          If Carmella had not seen the boy moments earlier, she would have thought it was a joke. Lupe has never expressed interest in anyone. She’s too busy for boys; always off on her own confidential adventures, always talking to someone that the rest of the world can’t see. But the way that she flutters like the wings of an uncertain baby bird brings Carmella pause. Never has her sister looked so content, so full of girlish excitement.  

          “With the boy at the water pump?” She presses, a sick sense of dread coiling at the base of her stomach. Lupe is not someone to be dissuaded from pursuing the things she wants, but this is not the kind of thing she can be messing around with. 

          “Henry Castillo,” Lupe confirms, oblivious to Carmella’s silent panic. “He invited me to the neighborhood party tonight.”

          It makes sense that there’s a party in the works, considering this is the only real day of summer. Most of the children will be headed to work in the onion fields tomorrow, so they need to make the most of their one true night of freedom. Though there never really is a quiet night in Cook’s Point. There are gatherings always and everywhere: people drinking together, laughing together, eating together. Always together. Carmella suspects that it brings them closer, that these people rely on each other like family after having to leave their own. She wouldn’t know, though, considering she’s never had an extensive interaction with any of them. . 

          “As if Ama is going to let you go to that,” she rolls her eyes. 

          “No, she’s going to let us go. I’m sure I could convince her, especially if you were with me. Do you think we could get Benny to come, too?” She asks, her pace quickening as she gets more excited. She’s several strides ahead of Carmella, her footsteps so light it seems as though she’s hovering above the earth. 

          Carmella is silent for a long moment, too stunned to form words. There is no doubt in her mind that Lupe has been bewitched by this boy, especially if she’s willing to defy the ironclad rules that have been laid out for them since birth. She’s only able to find her voice when Lupe starts discussing which dress to wear. 

          “Absolutely not! Do you know what Apa would do to us if he found out? What he’d do to Ama?” Carmella is not sure if she can spend another night bent at the hip, tending to her mother’s broken body. 

          “Who would tell him? He doesn’t talk to anyone.” Lupe says. “Come on, Carm. Aren’t you sick of living your life stuck under his thumb?” 

          “Obviously, but not tired enough to directly disobey him. What do you think he’d say if he heard you right now?” She scolds, hands on her hips. 

          “It’s really not that big of a deal,” she argues, “especially since Benny has been.”

          “Yeah, one time, right before he was drafted. And that’s different. He’s Benny. We’re us.” Carmella says. 

          “You mean we’re girls?” 

          She stops so abruptly that Carmella would have ran into her if she weren’t looking. Lupe spins to face her, one eyebrow tugged upwards in defiance. They’ve never really spoken about the differences between themselves and their brothers, how the boys get much more leeway than the girls could ever dream of. How they’re expected to tend to the men in the family without receiving an iota of appreciation, as if that’s simply their duty. But they can both feel it. Carmella knows they can. The two sisters stare at each other for a long moment, an unspoken argument passing between them. Lupe gives a slight tilt of her head, her stare firm, and that’s all it takes to crack Carmella. 

          “Fine, I’ll think about it. But you’re going to have to figure out how to get lard for Ama, or we won’t be going anywhere at all.” She sighs, though she knows immediately that this isn’t right. A fault line cracks inside of her chest, something akin to guilt bubbling at the seam of it, and she thinks—distantly—that she might be at the precipice of something terrifying and life-altering.  

          Lupe squeals, twirling circles around Carmella, gradually drawing in like a predator preparing to strike, and smacks a kiss on the side of her head. She isn’t sure if she’s ever seen Lupe so happy, glowing like there are beams of sunlight spilling from her pores. 

          “Thank you, thank you! Give me twenty minutes to find some lard.” She says before darting off, dust kicking up beneath her shoes. She pauses briefly to call over her shoulder, “Oh, and can you fill the laundry basin for me? I think I left it in the field near the quarry. Or maybe it’s behind the market. Thanks!”

          Carmella rolls her eyes, though the smile tugging at her lips is nothing short of fond. She stands there for a long moment watching Lupe run, her braid smacking against her spine, before she disappears between a row of homes. Carmella tilts her face to the sun, breathing in a mouthful of the searing air, before walking back the way she came from in search of the basin.