Your father counts out loud. Eight days. Eight days without popping any pills. He is reading the Bible, again. You think of the cycle of cicadas and their incessant noise every seventeen years. Their skin shed four times over and their new bodies an electric humming in palm fronds and desert willows. You’re sure that if you shake the trees dark bodies with red eyes will erupt onto your skin and you, too, will become the incessant humming. Your body will finally become electric, attracting both human and reptilian tongues; easy and plentiful prey. Your father’s cyclical existence is also all-at-once and frenzied. His eyes frantic, his mind funneling time, an hourglass flipping; his body sags with the weight of seconds. The humming does not last forever.
***
The empty pill bottles stay shut on his bathroom sink. The letters on the labels become anagrams for “father.” They are notes to self. A reminder. Now, it is fifteen days is a benediction said out loud and directed both at you and at God, because at least one of you is always listening. For months, his body had begun to eat itself, and so now there was less of him. You have seen this before. You have photographs of a thinning man who looks very much like your father. This man appeared at your quinceañera and picked a fight with the band who never played but in- stead went home. He reappeared on holidays in parked cars. You decide, finally, that, yes, it is your father, in the photographs, but he is simply shedding one of his skins. You are careful not to shake the stale sand in the fragile glass that reminds you that time exists.
***
Late at night you wonder if your father is back to zero days. You grind your teeth while you sleep. Wake to a sore jaw. Rub to soothe. You try to talk about it with your new lover. He asks you to name the good things that happened in your day. So you do. You mention that you wrote some things. You say you ate some cake. You fling things from the same slingshot as your father, just as desperate. You humor him because he’s trying to make you feel better. But your father is flipping time, and now you are, too, and you don’t know how much more is left. Your lover leaves. You are too emotional for loneliness. You weren’t in love anyway. Say it. But still you ache. You ache because this is how you’ll scare lovers away. Your now old lover doesn’t admit that you scared him, but he is not very good at lying, and you’re content that at least he still wants your body. In the mornings, you see ghosts getting up to get water or to take a piss. It’s the little things that remind you the hourglass needs flipping.
***
You are ten years old, and your father is asking you for money. You remember your mother handing him money the night before, but he is your father, and you have never been able to say no. You reach inside your furry, red, rabbit purse, fish for the folded dollar bills that your grandmother gives you each Saturday. Now, you’re thirty-four, and things are just the same; last month he asked you for money again, and, like when you were ten, you know exactly where this is going. You wonder if he doesn’t remember how painful having his nose scraped was, as you hand him folded bills. And like when you were ten, your mother is growing the same flowers she did back then. You haven’t seen purple mirasoles growing this lush in her garden in a long time. You get close to their bright-yellow centers and remember how the ants would crawl on your skin when your mother would have you pull the weeds. Does addiction feed them? You wonder. No. These are not real connections. You are flailing to make sense of things. The flowers’ bloom does not depend on anything but water and sun. And you cannot move time, but try to anyway.
***
The hourglass begins to hum. You look at it closely and realize it is not sand at all. It is a cluster of wings and red legs, ribs and abdomens, popping desperately against each other, trying to escape a lizard that’s been trapped inside with them. You realize you’ve been looking in a mirror.
***
Look, see how you father’s teeth are gone? First there was a smile, now there isn’t. Magic. Always, a slight of hand. Where did they go? You’re sure that they are not behind your ear, but you put your hand there anyway, feeling for outlines of a stray canine or incisor, hoping no one sees that you still believe. No teeth. Of course. He’s had them all pulled. You laugh your mouthful of seconds and hours. You do not know which way time moves anymore. Maybe you’ve been examining the same slice in the space-time continuum and you’re really ten years old and haven’t moved at all. So you look in the mirror. Still thirty-four. Your breasts have shifted downward, and your bed is half empty. Time has not stopped.
***
Your mother is afraid of lizards. This is a constant. In the present or the past, she is always afraid of lizards. When you were a child, one crept in the house when your father was out, probably getting high––though you cannot blame everything on addiction. He might have been working. The lizard ran into the bathroom, and your mother screamed for you to get help. By the time the neighbor made it over, the lizard was gone. You flip time. Two days ago, a lizard got in your parents’ house, and your mother screamed for your father. A tail longer than the length of the body squirmed beneath the vacuum cleaner. Your father did the only thing expected of him and killed it. It was a baby. You remember how your mother always told you that, like a man, if you weren’t careful to keep your legs shut tight, a lizard would crawl into you and lay eggs that would hatch and scaly tails and torsos would stream down your thighs. Or worse, your fate would be like that of the girl who worked the fields with her. That poor-girl-who-didn’t-keep-her-legs-shut suddenly had a pain in her stomach. No one knew where the pain came from, until footed serpents spilled out of her. Her womb ranneth over. Lizards always get their way. This is a parable. Your mother’s way of trying to keep you safe. So now, when you walk through the hills at sundown, when bushes shake and things scamper, you instinctively clench, making sure not to let in an intruder.
***
You think about how you waited to let the right man in, only to find that lizards might have been better. Less painful and definitely less critical of how you weren’t woman enough. You are aware that you’ve been thinking in metaphor, and that this is an exaggeration. You loved. You loved until you broke. You are still broken. You were loved back. Mostly. Your mind goes to when you were twenty and the first time you orgasmed. He made sure of it, and, after, he held you in his arms, and, because you were so in love, you didn’t think you’d ever let go. As you rushed out the door, you realized that your brother-in- law, who is now dead, was sitting in the living room watching soccer, and he had heard everything. Every moan and call to God background noise to a game. You want to stay here, but you can’t, and, just like that, you are on your knees in a kitchen, watching ants march across the floor. You are crying because the ants won’t stop coming. You break underneath the weight of your marriage, so you get closer to the floor––the only space that is left. The ants get bigger. The roaches become aware of your weakness, and begin their ascent. Next, the flies and their larvae. The fig-eaters bang their iridescence against the kitchen window. Every insect has begun to move in, and there is nothing you can do about it. You are still on the floor when your husband walks in and asks why you’re crying. You look at his lizard face and lock yourself in the bathroom. You will not let him in and whimper at the sight of his tail under the door. He is trying his best to reach you, but your mother taught you well. Both you and your husband forget what the other is, and suddenly you both disappear.
***
You are now eleven. Your grandmother is still alive. Your grandfather still loves you. He and your father are uprooting a tree on Christmas day, and you are riding the new bicycle that your grandmother gave you. It is the last big present she will ever give you. Your brother wants to ride, but he is too little. Instead, he watches your father and grandfather sweat and saw through thick roots. He chokes on a Jolly Rancher, and your father takes him in the house. Your father does not know how to hold either of you. You think about this when you are thirty-three and your mother has told him about the tumors you need removed. They could be cancerous, but we won’t know until we’re in there, the doctor says. We may have to take everything out, but we won’t know until we’re in there, the doctor says. Your father comes to your door and cries and embraces you for the first time since you were a child. You comfort him. This is the second time he fears for one of his children’s lives. Blood erupts from your brother’s little mouth, and dribbles down his chin onto the floor––you will never forget that. But you can’t remember if it was on the tile floor in the kitchen or on the living room carpet. Your mother looks at you and yells, Dial 911, but your body won’t move. Just like your dad––both of you stuck in place. This you also remember. You watch your brother’s breath leaving. Your mother saves him. She is always saving you. That feeling of your brother choking, while all you do is watch, will never leave you. Like your mother’s fear of lizards, your failure as a sister is a constant. It is part of your chronology. Part of the string that holds time together.
***
You are thirty-four. Your grandmother is now dead. Your grandfather does not love you anymore. You are no longer afraid of lizards. You have realized that if a lizard, like a man, wants to enter your body, it will find a way. You’re constantly looking between your thighs contemplating what goes in and what comes out. Everything takes time, though. Your father is a Christian, again. He holds God responsible for his sobriety. You fear that God might falter and imagine He is a bit nervous. No pressure, God. No pressure. Your mother does not believe in God that way. She believes in God like a never-ending rosary, even though her Catholicism is faint. But this is not about her. This was only about your father. This was about how your father is now twenty-nine days clean. How he is reading the Bible. How the Christian music is on a twenty-four-hour loop and how it frightens you, because he is no longer a young man, and old men tend to break easily. This is only supposed to be about your father. How his collapse collapses you, and you brace yourself for the impact by shutting down in pieces and flipping time. How you didn’t realize this about yourself until you started writing about his addiction. How you really don’t want that weight anymore, because it is not yours to carry. It is his addiction, not yours. His, not yours. You wonder if there is a twelve-step program for daddy issues and try to imagine a higher power. You remember that you are agnostic. You unclench and hope that God slithers in.
Isabel Quintero is an award-winning writer and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She proudly lives and writes in the Inland Empire of Southern California. Isabel has authored: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces (Cinco Puntos Press), her first YA novel, the chapter books, Ugly Cat and Pablo (Scholastic, Inc.) and Ugly Cat and Pablo and the Missing Brother (Scholastic, Inc.), the graphic novel Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide (Getty Publications), and the picture book My Papi Has a Motorcycle (Kokila). Her work has been included in several anthologies including The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat and Fierce and Come On In: 15 Stories About Immigration and Finding Home. Forthcoming from Kokila, Martinez Paranormal Services (MG trilogy), Golden State (YA novel), and Mama’s Panza (Picture Book), as well as a short story in the 2023 Candlewick anthology Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories that Smash Mental Health Stereotypes. In addition to several awards, her books have garnered many starred reviews and have been included in multiple best of lists including NPR’s yearly Book Concierge List, NYPL’s best of list, and the New York Times Best Books list. When she’s not writing she enjoys hiking, laughing, and cooking with her partner and beautiful child.
Photo by Egor Kamelev