“How old’s your brother?” Angel asks, slowing her pace to match Lizette’s.
“Twenty-one.”
“Cool,” says Angel. “So he can buy for you.” She wants Lizette to think she has a wild side.
Lizette shrugs.
It’s a windy afternoon, and the sky is pale and dusty, but with heavy monsoon clouds banked at the horizon. Although Mercedes has been fussing the twenty minutes or so from Smart Starts!, Lizette moves without urgency, with her rolling fat-girl walk. Angel left her father’s truck in the lot because they only had the one car seat, and now she is impatient and neck-sore and sweaty, regretting she didn’t bring the stroller, antsy to put down Connor and her bags. Also, for some reason, she’s tongue-tied and nervous.
“I’m just up here.” Lizette lifts two fingers from Mercedes’s back to gesture.
Before them is a junkyard of car parts. Engines lurk in the weeds, dark and greasy, and tools and bolts and other choking hazards scatter across the surface of a bent Formica table. The garage gapes, spilling still more automotive bounty, as well as a massive unfurling roll of plastic garbage bags, the end of which flaps taut and threatening in the wind. In the driveway, a rusting motorcycle lists to the side on its frail kickstand.
Angel imagines Connor pinned by the bike, his fragile skull crushed and his face ground into the dirt. Somehow, when she was pregnant, it had never occurred to her that Connor would be born mortal, vulnerable to the forces of the world. It hadn’t occurred to her that it was within the realm of possibility that she might outlive him. She squeezes the image from her mind, afraid—as always—that she is inviting the universe to visit upon her son this very brutality. She smiles down at him bravely, and he offers his drool-soaked fist. She can’t forget that she told him she hated him. “I’ll be good,” she murmurs into his scalp. “I promise you I’ll be good. I promise so much, baby.”
To Angel’s relief, Lizette passes the junky house and turns up the walk at the last house, where a prim blue wicker wreath hangs on the door. Here the weeds are almost pretty, high and green, some dotted with tiny yellow flowers. Angel is ashamed that she expected the worst of Lizette. Someone has cleared a small plot, slightly off-center, and planted tomatoes. They droop against their wire cages like adolescents. “That’s nice,” says Angel. “Your brother’s girlfriend do that?”
“My brother. Me and her hate tomatoes.” Tilting back so Mercedes rests on her chest and both hands are free, Lizette rummages through her diaper bag. “I can never find my fucking keys.”
In the front window is posted a handwritten Beware of Dog sign, though there is not, as far as Angel knows, a dog. At least she hopes there isn’t. Dogs have always scared her, ever since she was eight and Priscilla’s stepdad’s Rottweiler lunged at her. Again she tightens her hold on Connor. She heard once about a pit bull that ate a baby right out of its crib.
If the dog shows any sign of aggression, any whatsoever, even just mild exuberance, she’ll take Connor and leave, never mind if Lizette thinks she’s uncool. Angel carries Connor to the plants, shading his patchy scalp with her palm. “See? Tomatoes.” They dangle as shriveled and tender as testicles. Connor humors her, frowning seriously for a moment at her finger, before shifting his gaze to the fascinating chaos next door that threatens to breach the property line.
On the porch, Mercedes starts wailing in earnest. Lizette has set her on the concrete, and she kicks vigorously, her eyes cinched against the sun.
“Are you sure the ground’s not hot? I can hold her.”
“Found ’em.” Lizette swoops down and deposits the squalling infant back on her shoulder. Her upper arms are splotched pink.
“You got a dog?”
“Nah. That’s to scare thieves. I told my brother it wouldn’t work.”