* * *
—
Opal is large. If you want to say bone-structure-wise that’s fine, but she’s big in a bigger sense than big-bodied or bone-structure-wise. She would have to be called overweight in front of medical professionals. But she got big to avoid shrinking. She’d chosen expansion over contraction. Opal is a stone. She’s big and strong but old now and full of aches.
Here she is stepping down from her truck with a package. She leaves the box on the porch and walks back out through the gate of the front yard. There across the street from her is a brown-and-black tiger-striped pit bull baring its teeth and growling a growl so low she can feel it in her chest. The dog is collarless and time seems the same way here, time off its leash, ready to skip so fast she’ll be dead and gone before she knows it. A dog like this one has always been a possibility, just like death can show up anywhere, just like Oakland can bare its teeth suddenly and scare the shit out of you. But it’s not just poor old Opal anymore, it’s what would become of the boys if she were gone.
Opal hears a man’s voice boom from down the street some name she can’t understand. The dog flinches at the sound of its name coming out of this man’s mouth. It cowers and turns around then scurries off toward the voice. The poor dog was probably just trying to spread the weight of its own abuse. There was no mistaking that flinch.
Opal gets into her mail truck, starts it, and heads back to the main office.
Octavio Gomez
BY THE TIME I got back to my grandma Josefina’s house I could barely stand. She had to drag me up the stairs. My grandma’s old and small, and I was pretty big even then, but Fina’s strong. She’s got that crazy strength you can’t see. It felt like she carried me all the way up the stairs to the extra room and put me in bed. I was hot and cold as fuck, with this deep-ass ache like my fucking bones were being squeezed or drained or fucking stepped on.
“It could just be the flu,” my grandma said, like I’d asked her what she thought was wrong with me.
“Or what?” I said.
“I don’t know if your dad ever told you anything about curses.” She came over to my bed and felt my head with the back of her hand.
“He gave me my mouth.”
“Curse words don’t count. They can do what they can do, but a real curse is more like a bullet fired from far off.” She stood over me, folded a wet towel, and put it on my forehead. “There’s someone aiming a bullet meant for you, but with that distance, most of the time it doesn’t hit and even if it hits it usually won’t kill you. It all depends on the aim of the shooter. You said your uncle never gave you anything, you never took anything from him, right?”
“No,” I said.
“We won’t know for now,” she said.
She came back up with a bowl and a carton of milk. She poured milk into the bowl, then slid the bowl under my bed, stood up, and walked over to a votive candle on the other side of the room. As she lit the candle she turned around and looked at me like I shouldn’t have been looking, like I should have my eyes closed. Fina’s eyes could bite. They were green like mine, but darker—alligator green. I looked up at the ceiling. She came back over to me with a glass of water.
“Drink this,” she said. “My own father cursed me when I was eighteen. Some old Indian curse my mom told me wasn’t real. That was how she said it. Like she knew enough to know it was Indian, and enough to know it wasn’t real, but not enough to do anything other than tell me it was an old Indian curse that wasn’t real.” Fina laughed a little.
I handed the glass to her, but she pushed it back toward me like: Finish it.
“I thought I was in love,” Fina said. “I was pregnant. We were engaged. But he left. I didn’t tell my parents at first. But one night my dad came to me to ask if I would name his grandson—he was sure it would be a grandson—if I would name the boy after him. I told him then that I wasn’t getting married, that the guy had left, and that I wasn’t going to have the baby either. My dad came after me with this big spoon he sometimes hit me with—he’d sharpened the handle to threaten me with it when he beat me—but this time he came at me with the sharp end. My mom stopped him. He’d cross anyone, any line, but not through her. The next morning I found a braid of his hair under my bed. That’s where my shoes went, so when I went for them the next morning I found the braid. When I got downstairs my mom told me I had to go.” Fina walked over to the window and opened it. “It’s better if we get some air in here. This room needs to breathe. I can get you more blankets if you get cold.”