Excerpt
The White Hot
Noelle received the envelope eight years after her mother’s disappearance. She got home from school and found it propped on the counter, oversize and leaning against the microwave door, clearly placed there by her dad or stepmother to catch her eye. She ran a finger over the uppercase letters: NOELLE SOTO. It wasn’t the handwriting that dinged memory’s bell so much as the pen’s feral indentations. No sender was named above the return address but Noelle recognized those grooves like a gut recognizes a fist. The same ones she’d glimpsed on emergency contact forms—“blue cards”—brought into school in Septembers, on grocery lists carried to the corner store. Why did her mom press so hard for the littlest of nothings? Grooves that attacked the paper, letters like jackhammers.
One corner was ripped and a binder clip peeked through. She folded the torn flap and saw a return address in Pittsburgh. Six hours away. Did that mean her mom had been close all this time, or far? “Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh . . .” the devil laughed in her ear. “Pitts-burgh . . .”
On the back, a note: To my daughter. An explanation. Do not open until your eighteenth birthday.
And so, with rumbling heart and saliva pasting tongue to teeth (fury’s alchemy gave her a mouthful of metal), Noelle plunged a finger into the manila corner and ripped open the fabric of her world. Seven weeks left till graduation, till the long-awaited diploma, but no: adulthood began now, with these loosely stacked pages and whatever “explanation” they might offer, or claim to offer, or fail to offer. Noelle devoured her mother’s words in three hours, standing by the microwave, before meeting her dad, stepmother, and brothers at the Italian restaurant where her birthday tiramisu would arrive with a glittering lit sparkler plunged into its core.
Dear Noelle, (I am tempted to say dear Noe or dear Nolita),
I am not going to send this. It’s an exercise, it should probably say Dear April at the top because it’s for me. I’ve written it a thousand times already, in countless ways—defenses, apologies—the only difference now is I’ve gotten real paper involved.
Your milestone barrels at me. Wishes push up. They don’t care that I’ve forfeited the right to wish them.
That we splurge on Crayolas and a notepad and head to East River Drive.
That we get lemonades and do your homework on the bench outside Target.
That I give you double Dutch braids, the diagonal ones that take at least four episodes of
America’s Got Talent.
That a midnight thunderstorm rouses you, we go downstairs, kneel on the sofa like cats, and watch the sky streak, scared together. You scared of the volume, me of your fear.
I know, I know. Unfair desires. Outdated, too. I ping myself each time.
Deeper down, though, a realer wish rumbles, directed at tangible present-tense you, a wish for Noelle Soto on the cusp of womanhood.
That you lick the winds of freedom.
On this, I have some experience. The knowledge cost me everything and I’ll be damned if it goes to waste. So, imagine this: We meet up at a café. Maybe it’s the Dominican bakery on my corner, where I crammed for my GED and spent a year wrestling Beloved. First, I marvel at your changed appearance, eight years has transformed you. Oh, mija. (May I? What right do I have?) We sit. Place to ourselves. There’s just one table by the window, and a lace curtain blurs the sidewalk beyond. A little privacy, but it still requires of us some public civility. Bachata twanging (Romeo Santos?) so I gotta lean in to tell you why I left . . . the when and how of it . . . Maybe at an angle so close I can’t even see your face as I speak, cuz certainly I’d have a change of heart . . .
•
That awful day began with your classroom art show. Do you remember? Our Family Homes. In a roomful of parents and fourth-graders—some sweeter than you, others more assured—you were a vexing blend of devious and brilliant. During the presentation, you bombed on vocal projection and eye contact, but no one cared because what you captured in pencil, crayon, and Oprah magazine cutout was uncanny for a ten-year-old. It wasn’t the first time your smarts were borderline embarrassing.
“We got two bedrooms, two beds, four people,” you said, pointing out various corners of your drawing. “Me and Mom sleep head to foot here, Abuela Omara and Mamá Suset sleep head to foot here. This is the hallway, with a rhinestone baby Jesus. We redid the bathroom to be a Zen sanctuary with a plastic bamboo on the toilet,” you said. Not only had you drawn the Evening Buddha aromatherapy candle, but also its half-ripped price tag from Ross Dress for Less. “There’s a Do Not Disturb sign on the bathroom door. And a lock, too.” You spoke the word lock as if it were salvation. “My mom be loving that lock. That’s her favorite part of the whole house.”
I began to feel caustic and unsound.
There it was: Our handsomely appointed Section 8 row home. The crystal knickknacks and faux greenery. The warped dollar store plaque with its cursive “I am the light of the world.” Floor plan as prelude to exposé.
And of course, you had drawn us. Mamá Suset stood at the doorway, shopping bags in hand with their optimistic logos. Abuela Omara guarded the stove with a lemon-print pot holder and a can of Pledge. You had framed yourself in the front window, pondering the pyramid of tires at the garage across the street. (Remember those? Learning to count to a hundred on old Goodyears?)
And me? I was seated at the foot of our bed, back to the viewer—faceless—with headphones cupping my ears. This part of your drawing required a special inset box, a pencil-and-glitter close-up that captured my blue wired Beats in detail: iridescent, the color of a mermaid’s tail. I could practically hear the Ocean Sounds app coming through your drawing.
“When Mom busts out the Beats,” you said, “that’s her ‘me’ time. Don’t tap her shoulder or say her name.”
“I hear that,” one of the dads chuckled. “Gon’ get me some Beats!”
Your audience was primed. “Sometimes she got the Beats, the Do Not Disturb, and the bathroom lock going all at once. A trifecta.”
Much parental hooting. “Girl said trifecta!” Laughter volume eleven.
Talk about being pinned. You knew me, hija, unlike any ever will. It was gold-star work. Four generations of Soto women sardined into HGTV prettiness, not a speck of dust—or man—in sight.
During the next kid’s talk you didn’t turn around to wave or to ask me with your eyes, Did you like it, Mom? Which is how I knew I’d received your artwork as intended. A provocation. Your phone pinged and the teacher mouthed “Algebra?” then waved that you could go. Without glancing my way, you wove through the parents and out into the hall. More parental voices: “Algebra? Dayum.” “Go get ’em, Doogie Howser!” I stood in the back of the class, breathless. That you were smarter than me was no surprise. That you were more honest? Trouble lay ahead.
•
Did I walk to work from there? Hop the bus or El? I only remember the blocks whooshing by, my mind roaring its own narration of Our Family Homes:
Once upon a time there was an abuela whose pot of café did overflow. With a grain of rice and droplet of water she fed four generations of Soto women, letting love dry the tear at the corner of her eye—from cataracts, not regret.
See her daughter (Mamá Suset): the first-gen airport bartender with a penchant for bargains, ever lighting church candles. See who’s next in the lineup: the teen mom (me) making sure her kid Just Said No and Stayed in School. See the final link in the chain: you, Noelle, seeing Las Mujeres Soto for what they were.
Though the Sotos wanted gold earrings, they bought textbooks and multivitamins. Though they craved a spa day, they took lukewarm dribble showers after night shifts. O, urban foursome who know not of greenery—whose very Christmas tree is plastic! Just as fake pine needles forever cling to metal branches, so is their loyalty evergreen.
The OG loyalty: Abuela hunched that they might stand. Abuela stretched every teaspoon of harina that they might taste a Number Four with Fries. Abuela migrated that they might Netflix and chill.
And all the while the dads disappeared, off to find the meaning of life or a new sink to put a dirty dish into. (Apart from their pin-toothed chihuahua, Soda Crackers, no male had ever stayed long among them.)
Now here we find ourselves at present, dear reader, after another dutiful day in the land of Soto. April dons her blue Beats headphones, inwardly reciting: Dead inside, dead inside, dead inside. Ah, it works every time!
