Eyes Ever to the Sky (A Sci Fi Romance) (The Sky Trilogy) (7 page)

A wreath of smoke bobbed above the couch. Her mother’s narrow face scowled at her over the tattered couch back. With the flickering TV behind, Mama’s matted hair was a wild mane.

“Sorry.” Cece stepped inside. All day long questions had been burning inside her. What had happened with Aunt Bea? Was Ben telling the truth? Her eyes locked on the TV newscast, her family problems momentarily forgotten. Was that the dog park down the street? She watched as the camera panned over a large crater dug into the earth. A giant meteor had crashed at the dog park? She leaned in.

Mama blocked her view, her dry lips pursed into a frown. “Where have you been all day? I been worried sick.” She smashed her Marlboro into the overflowing ashtray as if it had offended her.

“Work, remember?” Cece's eyes stayed locked on the TV screen. Three craters had been found in the ten mile perimeter. Holy crap, three craters? That was news.

Mama shook her head slowly, her mouth open. “You shouldn’t work so hard,
mi
amor
.”

“
Yeah, well I gotta,” she snapped.

Mama stiffened and Cece instantly felt bad. This was not the way to get Mama to open up. She tried again. “It's not that hard, really. I've perfected the soft-serve swirl.” She twirled a finger in the air. Mama lifted a small smile, nodding. Her eyes strayed back to the TV.

“Mama,” Cece said, easing herself down on the couch near Mama's feet. The cushions sagged heavily. Cece picked a candy wrapper out of the crack between the cushions and began folding it, mulling over what she wanted to say. “I got a call today.”

Mama didn't look up. “Nice, honey.”

“From a boy named Ben.” Cece watched Mama carefully.

“
Yeah,” Mama lit another Marlboro with the flick of a gas station lighter. The smell of butane and carcinogens spiked the air.

God, this was getting her nowhere. She decided to go for it. “Beatriz's son, Ben. Aunt Beatriz.” She gripped the couch and waited.

Mama sat bolt upright, her eyes flaring open. “Beatriz? My sister Beatriz?”

Cece nodded, biting her lip.

Mama's face tightened, lines deepening around her smoker's mouth. “What he want? Money?”

“
Just to reconnect,” Cece lied. She pulled at fuzzies on the afghan, a blush heating up her cheeks. “Mama, what happened with Beatriz? Why don't we ever see them or Abuelo?”

Anger flared in Mama's eyes. She swung her legs around to the front and stood. She started pacing and cursing in Spanish.

Cece held her hands up. “Slow down. I can't understand you.”

“
What I said,” she turned, her finger pointed, “is that I don't want you talking to them ever again. They'll infect this
familia
with their lies. They'll tell you things about me that are not true. I won't let them torture me again.” Mama walked to the kitchen counter and slammed her palms down.

“
Relax, relax,” Cece said, sliding up behind her. She was expecting a reaction. She was not expecting this. Agitation could set off mood swings and push Mama into a manic phase. “I won't talk to them. If they call, I'll just hang up.” The lie felt thick in her throat.

Mama walked back to the couch, muttering in Spanish. Cece turned toward the bathroom, rubbing at a smudge of chocolate on her forearm. If that was the reaction she got when she asked Mama about her family, she'd need figure out another way to learn what she needed to know.

Inside the bathroom she pulled off her stained work shirt and looked at the splotches already marring its once pristine surface. She pulled the sink plunger and turned on the faucet. She’d hand-wash the t-shirt here, let it dry on the porch tonight and pray to God that no bird took its morning constitutional on it. 

She pulled open the cabinet door where Mama kept the little bottle of laundry soap. When she stood up, a spot of bright orange drew her eyes to the trash. Her heart began to pound as she reached in.

The orange pill bottle was missing the white child-proof lid, but it didn’t matter. The pills were gone.

With shaking hands she pawed through the crumpled tissues, the toothpaste tube, the maxi pad wrappers. At the bottom of the can, her fear turned into anger. She gripped the pill bottle with white knuckles, threw open the door and stomped out into the living room.

Mama sat smoking. Cece stood in front of her, blocking the TV and held up the pill bottle.

“
Where?!” she asked, realizing now how any second she’d burst into tears. “Where are they?”

Mama leaned forward and peered at the bottle. “What you screaming at? Lower your voice!”

“No, Mama!” She never yelled at Mama. She couldn't stop. “Where are your pills? What did you do with them?”

Mama crossed her arms over her small chest. “I know what you did this morning to my cereal. I’m not taking that poison. I flushed them all. Over. Gone.”

“No!” Tears streamed down her face. “Why? You need these!”

Mama jutted her chin like a petulant child. “They make me feel like a dead thing. I won't take them. I’d rather die.”

“Oh God!” Cece swiped angrily at her tears with the back of her hand.  Her eyes floated over the garbage heap they called home. Help. She needed help. “We should call Abuelo. I won't mention Beatriz. I could try to call and tell him—”

“
Don’t you dare.” Mama sat up, the afghan falling off her lap. “I don't want you talking to anyone in that family. Got that? We take care of ourselves.” 

“
Someone has to help us.” Tears streaked down Cece’s cheeks.

Mama stood up and threw her arms around her daughter. “Shh, shh,
mi amor
. I’ll get better with that poison out of my system. I’ll get a job. I'll start looking tomorrow.”

Cece shook her head and pulled away. She’d heard those promises before. She dried her eyes and shuffled to her room. God, why hadn’t she locked up the pills in the first place? This was all her fault. She pinched her hands together and forced herself to stop crying. Crying wouldn’t get the money she needed. No, she’d just have to work harder. Somehow. 

“Cecelia?  My love?” Mama called.

Cece kept walking. She didn’t slam her door when she entered her room. She didn’t have the energy to be angry any more.

***

A knock sounded: knuckles on her window pane. Cece stirred and blinked into the darkness of her bedroom. Then she heard a voice through the glass.

“Open up, penis. The mosquitoes are eating my ass.”

Cece moaned. Her body felt like a giant knot. Her feet ached. Her head pounded. She wanted to sleep nine or ten hours and then drag herself to work in the morning. Fer would pull her into something
fun
. Cece didn’t feel like having fun.

“
Seriously, dude.” Fer's eyes blinked at her through the three inch crack between the A.C. unit and the glass. “The mosquitoes are eating my
whole
ass. See?” A bare butt pressed against the window pane.

Cece pulled herself up. “Seriously, Fer?” she whispered. “Mama is sleeping down the hall.”

The butt disappeared and the face reappeared. “Then hurry up or she’ll hear my screams of agony as I die a mosquito-y death.”

Cece tromped toward the window and wrapped her arms around the A.C. unit. “Lift the window up on three,” she said to Fer through the glass. “One. Two—”

Fer lifted the window from her side. Cece gripped the heavy A.C. unit and staggered back with the weight of it, nearly dropping it as she slid it to the ground.

“
Fer!” she hissed through her teeth.

Fer hoisted her body over the window sill and rolled onto Cece’s floor. She lay there and looked up at Cece with her sardonic smirk. “Countin’s not ma strong suit,” she said in a mock hill-billy accent.

Cece went to the window and pulled the pane down to keep out the ass-eating mosquitoes. Then she flopped back on her bed and threw her arm over her eyes. The bed dipped as Fer sank onto it beside her. Cece felt something wet and cold press into the flesh of her arm.

“
What the—?” She jerked her arm back and looked at Fer.

Fer held up a beer bottle and danced it merrily in the air. Moisture slid in rivulets down the brown glass. “Looky what Santa Fer has brought all the good little boys and girls.”

Cece flipped her head away. “Can’t. Have to work tomorrow.”

“
So do I, dummy.” Fer leaned closer, pressing her face into Cece’s shoulder. “There’s a
par-ty
.” Fer sing-songed in Cece’s ear.

“
Don’t care.”

“
With
bo-oys,
” she sang.

“
So?”

“
Travis
will be there.”

Cece lifted her head. Why did Fer think she cared if Travis was there? Travis was cool. They’d talked about music and movies on one of the picnic tables just before he'd left. He'd seen
Empire Records
, a 1990s cult hit that no one else had seen. They'd rattled off movie lines for fifteen minutes. Cece thought about how the twilight crouched around them like velvet arms. How Travis’s winking cigarette looked like a red firefly in the dark. But, she didn’t like him
like that
, did she?

Cece rolled over and looked at Fer. Her best friend slathered on a toothy grin and batted her non-existent eyelashes. Her purple hair hung in sweaty strips along the sides of her round face. She had put on a clean shirt with some band Cece had never heard of on the front, a trio of boys with spiky hair and eyeliner scowling for the camera.

“Come on,” Fer said in the first serious tone she’d used. “You can't sit around reading brain magazines all night,” she said, pointing to Cece's collection of psychology magazines stacked beside her mattress. “It’ll make you feel better. You’re too damn depressed. Don't those things say something about distraction being a cure for depression? That sitting on your ass feeling sorry for yourself causes butt cancer or something?” Fer reached for a
Psychology Today
and pretended to flip through it. Then she rolled it up and smacked Cece's butt. “Yep, definitely butt cancer.”

Cece nearly laughed before she stopped herself. God, but Fer was right. She'd just read an article about downward spirals and depression before bed. She was surrounded by sadness and her best friend was trying to cheer her up.

Cece rolled over and sighed. “Fine. What do I wear?”

***

The abandoned field at the back of the trailer park echoed with the low murmur of voices. Two dozen teenagers clustered around a fire pit in the grassy abandoned lot. In the orange firelight their silhouettes bobbed and danced. Heavy metal pumped from a stereo off in the distance, the hallmark of one of Shaun's parties. Shaun was Fer's older brother. She should've guessed.

As they walked closer, Cece noted the usual suspects. The Harvey twins were sitting side-by-side in two tattered lawn chairs. Their outfits, though never identical, were nearly interchangeable— one wore a t-shirt that read
Wine 'em, dine 'em, sixty-nine 'em
, and the other,
I'm not a gynecologist, but I'll take a look
. Across the fire sat Shaun. His buzzed hair, wife-beater and sagging athletic shorts solidified his status as resident badass. It was his eyes that always frightened Cece when they fell on her—black, sharp and unforgiving.

Shaun killed one beer fast, crumpled the can and chucked it at the fire.

“Hey!” Miranda, his girlfriend in itty-bitty shorts and a cropped tank, said, “you can get ten cents for that.”

“
Shut up,” he muttered without looking at her.

Miranda stuck out her tongue, flashing a piercing.

Fer pressed a wet can to Cece’s chest. “Here.”

Cece eyed the Bud Light. “Like I said, one and I’m outta here. I’m really beat, Fer.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fer said, waving her away.

Cece cracked the can and took a drink. At least it was cold, but she never got used to the taste of Bud Light. She imagined it was what chilled dog pee tasted like. How Shaun and his homies chugged can after can most nights of the week was beyond her.

“Over here,” Fer said, tugging on Cece’s elbow.

Cece followed, the long grass swaying under her feet. The phosphorescent lights of winking fireflies danced around them in the grass. Her abuelo had called them
luciérnagas
on that night long ago when he’d taken a seven-year-old Cece back to his
hacienda
in Bolivia. The house smelled like fresh baked bread and ripe fruit. Abuelo had tucked her into a big bed with silken sheets and sang a song about the
luciérnagas
dancing in the night sky.

Fer’s hand on her elbow brought her out of the memory. “Travis, good of you to show, man.”

Travis turned, an easy smile spreading. His black Bob Marley t-shirt read
One Love
. Cece followed the smell of pot to the joint in Travis’s hand. She would smell like pot now, too. God, if Mama weren't so oblivious Cece would be dead when she got home.