Starlight
LIA SINA
Abuelo’s obsession with Our Lady of Guadalupe started after Abuela died. First, he moved her small collection of plastic and plaster statues and dollar store portraits from the bedroom to the dining room. Soon his shrine spread across the living room. He started every day by dusting each frame, figure, and crucifix in the house, then spent hours on the computer in search of more. When shopping for divinidades, as he called them, it was like Abuelo was in a trance. His glazy eyes never left the glow of the screen. If I needed to communicate with him during that time, it was easiest to send him an email.
This fixation confused me at first, because Abuela wasn’t particularly religious or Virgen-like. We only went to church on holidays, with Abuela being an avid cusser, smoker, and regular at the casino the rest of the year. Most days involved a petty-turned- paramount argument between her and Abuelo, ending in her leaned out the kitchen window smoking furiously, and him tight-lipped in the front yard aimlessly chewing up the dirt with a tool. Still, after she slipped away in her sleep, lungs battered by cancer, Abuelo let out an eerie, primal roar that shook the walls of the house. He started his shrine on the dinner table the next day, appearing in her spot at the head of the table and spreading quickly across the heat-stained cherrywood. A few months later, as I helped him to bed, I finally asked him why.
“She sent me a message from the beyond,” he whispered, the weight of his creaky body on my shoulder. “An email! She said she was on her way. I saw her out the window one night, floatin’ in the sky. The stars on her shawl shined so bright I could hardly see her face. Her blue shawl.” His dark, droopy eyes fluttered as he laid back down on his pillow. “Pero, pensé que me llevaba con Ella.” Gently, his voice trailed off. “Why didn’t she take me with her ...?”
Abuela wore tank tops and blue eyeshadow, not shawls. “Just cause I’m an old lady don’t mean I gotta look like one,” she’d cackle as she executed expert flicks of the wrist, forming her perfectly arched eyebrows every morning. The flick I still couldn’t get right.
I checked Abuelo’s email as soon as he was snoring. I didn’t find a message from my abuela or Our Lady in his inbox, only one from my baby sister Miranda’s school.
Dear Mr. Garcia, This is our third email to you regarding your granddaughter Miranda’s behavior. She has once again taken to biting other students and staff. Please respond with your availability for a meeting if you care about Miranda’s future! We do not want her to one day become a violent criminal, Mr. Garcia! And please also consider donating to this year’s jog-a-thon through the link below.
Miranda grew fangs a few weeks after Abuela died. My unsuspecting wrist was her first victim, left open and exposed to her angry mouth as I attempted to brush her hair. It was thick and tangly like our abuela’s. After that, she dug her sharp little teeth into anyone and anything that displeased her. I knew I should have a talk with her, but Miranda didn’t listen to me any more than she listened to her teachers, or Abuelo. How would Abuela have handled the situation? She would’ve known what to do, what to say and how to say it. I didn’t. So, I deleted the email with a hard click.
I slipped outside and climbed up onto the top of the house, stepping first from the hose holder to the shed and then lugging my body onto the flat roof with my weak arms. Sucking on my vape until its magic chemicals made me float, I squinted hard out at the endless desert, a slight glow to the night from the bright, white stars. But I saw no dazzling lady out there, only dim silhouettes of cacti and coyotes. In a nicotine-laced haze I tried out Abuelo’s new before-bed ritual of a ridiculous amount of Hail Marys, overheated vape squeezed between my palms. That didn’t cut through the darkness either. I considered flinging myself off the roof and letting the chilly breeze glide me down to the dirt, but decided I needed the pitiful exercise of the climb. Then I watched TV until the sun filled the screen with an orangey glare, cradling one of Abuela’s hollow, plastic statues.
I loved energy drinks, sipped them all day long. They made me feel real, alive. The more sugary the better. I liked to suck on the sweet, nauseating film the chemicals left on my teeth during work. I chose one flavor in the morning and stuck with it for the day so my tongue would be one color. I hated when it turned into a brown-green, sludgy mess. Abuela used to tell me they would melt my teeth and give me diabetes, and maybe they would, but I didn’t care. The same way she didn’t care what her cigarettes did to her lungs.
At the end of my lunch break, I would always suckle on my vape and wash the artificial blueberry aftertaste out of my mouth with my energy drink. Usually, I did this leaned up against the back of the restaurant, staring out across the parking lot at the jagged, tawny plateaus that loomed in the distance. The echo of the banda music that the cooks blasted and my puffing and gulping were the only sounds. My mind was almost always on Abuela then. We used to spend our lunch breaks together, she smoking her cigarettes and me slurping my energy drinks. I owed my first job as a host at the restaurant she waitressed at to her. After she died, I got promoted to waitress. The tips made me stay, but I hated it. I missed being just a host. There was so much more time to think, and so much less need to smile.
Sometimes Lou would slink out with a trash bag or a bucket of scraps for the dumpster. Long, coarse hair tied behind his head, he kept his eyes low and rarely gave me more than a nod or a gruff “hey.” We were fucking actually, but hardly talked in person and especially not at work. Mostly we texted, as Lou seemed more comfortable conversing from behind a screen. That was fine with me. I hated guys who were too damn chatty, too sappy or nosey. Abuela used to joke that men should be seen and not heard.
Lou was a founding member of the Interstellar Repatriation Collective, a group who believed that humans were not actually native to Earth, but banished here millions of years ago by another alien race for our violent transgressions against them. The IRC’s mission was to reconnect and reconcile with these aliens so they would take us back to our native planet, which was, apparently, a paradise. This doctrine seemed solely based around blurry photos and lengthy blog posts Lou published almost daily on their website, which always made my computer sputter and heat up when I opened it. After reading dozens of his articles and “scouting” for ships on the roof at night a few times, I still felt indifferent about Lou’s aliens. His elaborate drawings of our supposed paradise homeworld never made me feel a homesick pang in my heart like they were apparently supposed to. No glowing or godly intergalactic vessels ever materialized in the black expanse above the house and sucked me up into them. Not even Mars or a shooting star seemed to want to wink at me.
The link to Lou’s newest publication, “What’s the Deal with UFO Food? Interstellar Cuisine and Cooking,” still sat unopened in my text messages when Lou leaned up next to me at the end of my lunch ritual one day. He had never done that before, and we fermented in uncomfortable silence for a while.
“How’s night school going?” he finally mumbled.
“I switched to an online thing,” I said, without mentioning that I had yet to complete a single assignment. Finishing school was starting to seem increasingly impossible, and unimportant. The circumference of circles, the conquest of the Americas, the molecular makeup of oxygen, what did it all matter really? It took all my willpower to wake up in the morning. Even all my energy drinks didn’t give me enough strength for homework after that. Abuela would be disappointed in my academic disinterest. “You wanna sling burritos your whole life like me?” she’d scold if she ever caught me faking a fever or throwing out my homework growing up. As if being like her was a bad thing.
Partly out of courtesy but mostly awkwardness, I held out my vape. Immediately I regretted the gesture though, because he actually took it. He wrapped his chapped lips around it, and I turned to stare at the dumpster until I smelled his burnt chemical exhale. My stomach churned with the sugary heaviness of M&M’s marinating in energy drink.
Lou nodded, for too long. Then, after scratching his chin for a moment, he said, “If you’re not doin’ nothin’ tonight, maybe you could stop by our meeting. Eight. One of ’em conference rooms in the casino.”
I blinked at him. We’d never spent time together outside of work, one of our bedrooms, or my roof, which Lou found fantastic for scouting. He said you could see the whole universe from up there, everything that ever was, is, or would be. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, he tended to say lofty shit like that. Though I’d never admit it, I found him charming. His philosophizing transported my mind somewhere else, somewhere far away.
“I’ll check my schedule,” I said, as if I had a schedule to check. As if all I was ever up to after work wasn’t waiting for Miranda to tire herself out so I could slurp and smoke the night away in front of the TV.
Lou nodded, and I detected the ghost of a smile on his face as he slipped back into the restaurant.
Across the parking lot, a big, ugly truck revved its engine. Then its fat front tire rolled right over a squirrel, flattening it into a furry, bloody pancake. I shut my eyes and tried to will myself into the squirrel, but it didn’t work. So I chugged the rest of my drink, which was now flat and sour. The tingle in my teeth and buzz in my brain waning, I followed Lou inside.
When I got home, Abuelo was scrolling through eBay, a dozen prayer candles blazing around him, making the house stink like nutty, oily wax. In the kitchen, Miranda was spilling soda and ice cream all over the place. She stood on a chair dragged from the table to the counter, plopping scoop after scoop of chocolate ice cream into an already overflowing cup of root beer. The ends of her tangly hair, only one pigtail still standing, clung to sticky brown spots that stained her lips and chin.
“Miranda ...” I was going to tell her to stop, remind her she couldn’t have dessert before dinner, a rule Abuela never let us break. “Nada de dulces hasta después de la cena.” But she glared at me with so much spite burning in her little black eyes that I just went to my room. I didn’t feel like getting bitten.
After I closed the door, I realized Miranda had ransacked my makeup again, all my eyeshadows opened and smeared across the carpet. I considered scrubbing at the powdery stains with a wet rag, but flopped onto my bed and sucked on my vape until my limbs felt like Miranda’s Silly Putty instead.
This was a usual evening now. As I peered down at the eyeshadows, my stomach stirred sourly. I thought back to the evenings when the smells of salty beans and spiced meat warmed the whole house, when our walls and throats buzzed with golden oldies bumping from Abuela’s silver stereo. I was her dutiful pinche, boiling the water and chopping the vegetables and warming the tortillas with as much precision as possible. If I diced an onion unevenly or browned a tortilla too dark, Abuela would screw her lips to the side and furrow her brows, her silent way of saying, “Try again, mija.” When I did it right, she’d shoot me a wink that made my chest swell with tingly pride. Miranda, always hungry for inclusion in our dinner-making ritual, would perch on a chair pulled to the counter so she could see too. Sometimes I’d let her pick the rocks out of the beans or wash the tomatoes, and while she worked, she belted “Angel Baby” or “Misty Mountain Hop” the loudest of any of us. The silence of our evenings now made my ears ache and my chest throb.
Abuela taught me all her recipes, cigarette dangling from the corner of her red lips. Their ingredients and measurements were scribbled onto the pages of my heart. I could peel myself off the bed and get to chefing fideo or enchiladas or huaraches right that second. I could teach Miranda how to mash avocados or stir beans or press masa just right. I could blow the dust off the stereo and slip in a Chente or Smiths or Santana CD. I could finally cut through the suffocating silence.
But I couldn’t. My back became soaked with sweat, the cheap-ass fabric of my uniform clawing at my skin. The ceiling spun faster and faster the longer I stared up at it, but when I shut my eyes I plummeted into an icy blackness. Even my vape wasn’t helping. Its tart, blueberry goodness had devolved into a burnt, chemical bitterness. I flung it onto the eyeshadow-stained carpet with a huff. Burying my face in my pillow, I dug my nails into my stomach, but no matter how deep they went I just couldn’t reach the painful pit swirling inside it.
So I decided to wrestle on my tightest jeans and go to Lou’s meeting. Maybe hearing about alien food and fashion trends and whatever else the IRC talked about would help. Memories of the past and realities of the present were making me sick. Why couldn’t I just unplug my brain? Why wouldn’t my heart’s battery run out already? I couldn’t ferment in the darkness of my room any longer. Shining saviors from beyond the earthly atmosphere seemed like a good enough distraction as any for my aching soul.
I smeared some eyeshadow from the carpet across my eyelids on the way out, then left some cash and a coupon for pizza on the counter, which now had a dried, sticky layer of sugary sludge across it. Last, I emailed Abuelo.
Be back in a little while. Money for pizza in kitchen. Use coupon! Remember, you DON’T want thin crust. Miranda should probably take a bath. Te amo.
I hadn’t been to the casino since Abuela died. Square and twenty-storied with shiny, silver windows, it hovered over the dusty highway that snaked through the endless, clay-colored desert.
The expansive parking lot wrapped around it like a circle, and STARLIGHT CASINO blazed in blue neon over the towering glass doors. Light from inside spilled through them and illuminated the front walkway in a white strip. Every Friday night, I met Abuela after work for slots. I didn’t mind losing my tip money to mismatched pictures of fruit because I loved watching Abuela laugh and curse at the machines, her eyes twinkling from its blinky, multicolored glow. Galactic Gold Rush was her favorite. She filled one ashtray after another, chattering over the constant clink clink dings about the drama she eavesdropped on at the salon, what price she haggled for at the carniceria, who she bitched out on the drive home. She looked so beautiful in the blinking kaleidoscope of casino light, her hair done up to the heavens with Aqua Net and bobby pins, lips lined and gleaming with shiny gloss. She looked like such a lady, the aroma of roses and smoke enshrouding her. I wished I had some sort of artistic talent so I could paint her portrait, right there at Starlight.
The last time we played slots, Abuela had just finished telling me about whose Facebook posts she hated the most when she suddenly extinguished her unfinished cigarette, something I had never witnessed before. Uneasiness rumbled in my stomach. The reels on my machine came to a creaky halt and I lost another three dollars.
Abuela sighed, scratched her lip, then said, “I got cancer. Lung cancer. A year, maybe.” She flicked her chin at the ashtray. “Qué mensa, huh?”
All the clatter of coins, whirl of spinning slots, and tinny, looped music of the machines ceased. My ears could only pick up on the panicked rush of my own blood. Bile seared my throat, but the rest of my body was deadened by an unbearable cold, like all the warmth in the world had been sucked right up out of it. My tongue throbbed with a thousand questions, but my mouth couldn’t muster up enough moisture to ask any. All I could do was chug the rest of my energy drink and bite my tongue until I tasted copper.
She smiled, but sadness sparkled in her eyes. “Ah, you’ll do fine, mija. I promise.”
I’d repeated those words in my head every day since she first delivered them, so I wouldn’t lose her voice.
Staring up at Starlight for the first time since that night, I rubbed the mist out of my eyes with my fist. The sour burning in my stomach beamed up through my chest and hovered around my heart. My mouth moistened. Then I spun around and spewed blue vomit into an empty parking spot. A foul-tasting mix of lapis and cerulean chunks gushed out of me. As I yacked, I could identify by sight and taste seemingly everything I’d ingested in the near-year since Abuela died. The posole she made for our last Christmas together that I ate leftovers of for months, the pan de muerto from her funeral, the tequila shots I downed crouched behind the bar during my shifts, the frozen pizza I stuffed my face with late at night, the endless post-work half-off enchilada plates, thousands of M&M’s, all marinated in energy drink. I wouldn’t recommend the combination.
Wiping my chin with my hand, I peered up at the hulking building again. So many nights, I had drifted to sleep by floating up that walkway, making my way across the swirly, blue-gold carpet of thelobby, plopping down at Ferengi Fortune Frenzy, the machine next to Galactic Gold Rush. I tried to smell the sharp cigarette air, the stale floral notes of Abuela’s perfume, letting the echo of the one-armed bandits lull me to into dream.
But my abuela wasn’t in Starlight now, and she’d never be again. She wasn’t behind that veil of smoke and multicolored lights waiting to embrace me, the top of her bouffant only to my chin even in her chunky red going-out heels. So motherfuck the place. What was the use in getting sucked through those doors now? Starlight was nothing but a relic. Abuela wasn’t perched in front of Galactic Gold Rush, cigarette squeezed between her long-nailed, golden fingers. She was in the sheeny pine casket I picked out, in the cobalt dress I chose, in the little square of desert dirt I thought she’d like the best.
I threw up one more time, heaving all the bitter blue acid out of my stomach. Then I filled my lungs with the cool, clear evening air. My stomach felt completely and utterly empty, a vacuum. I felt reset, renewed. Alive. All I wanted now was to go home.
A soft hand landed on my shoulder, and my heart jumped into my throat. For a fleeting moment I thought I’d see Abuela, adorned in a blue shawl that sparkled with starlight. But when I turned around, Lou looked down at me with knitted brows.
“You okay?” he asked. “I saw you yackin’ through the window. Meeting starts in a few minutes.”
I wiped the sour slime from my lips with my forearm. “I’m okay.”
“You look nice,” he mumbled.
Lou had never complimented me before, and it seemed strange but sweet for him to now after he’d watched me puke my guts out in the parking lot. He looked nice too, turquoise bolo draped over a wrinkly white button-up, his hair slicked back into a tight braid with oily-smelling pomade. A green-and-gold pin shaped like a flying saucer gleamed from the right side of his chest. I wondered then how many people were in the casino conference room, waiting for Lou to click through fuzzy photographs and dubiously sourced documents. I wondered how many people made up the IRC’s congregation, hungry for the fruit of intergalactic fantasy Lou’s collective grew. I didn’t judge anyone, and least of all Lou, for it. But I’d lost my appetite.
I had to be sure, so I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. Lou’s surprise came through in his stiffness at first, but then his mouth softened as he rested his hands on my shoulders. He danced his tongue around mine, but I shoved it out of the way and sucked his bottom lip into my mouth. I bit down. The thin, dry skin was rubbery, and I tasted faint iron on my teeth when he yanked his head away.
“What was that for?” Lou asked, putting his fingers to his lip.
“Sorry.” It hadn’t done any good. I still felt the same sureness in my stomach as I had before he appeared. And I was glad about that. “I can’t stay. I’m sorry.”
Lou’s eyes dimmed a little, but I also saw in them that he understood. “Keep your eyes open on the way home, huh? Clear sky tonight,” was all he said before he kissed me on the forehead and jogged back towards the casino. I watched as he slipped through the doors and was swallowed by the brightness.
Abuelo and Miranda watched TV together, Abuelo in his recliner cuddling one of his plushy Mamita Marías and Miranda cross-legged a few centimeters from the screen. Abuela always told her that would make her go blind, so she stopped doing it for a long time. She needed to stop it again.
“Mirandita, it’s time for mimis,” I murmured, attempting to channel the gentleness Abuela used to sing the same words with.
“I tried to tell her that ...” Abuelo muttered, a line of drool dripping down his cactusy stubble.
Miranda ground her teeth and pointed at the screen.
I shook my head. “You have school tomorrow. It’s bedtime now.”
Her narrowed eyes shone with increasing enragement. Shoulders hunched, she sprung at me, fangs out. But I was ready. I caught her by both wrists and held her little writhing body away from me.
“You want El Cucuy to get you?” I asked, now trying to tap into Abuela’s tone of terror.
Eyes widening and eyebrows elevating, the anger on her face started to melt into concern.
“What, you think he wasn’t around no more? He’s still hungry for little kids who won’t go mimis,” I said in a menacing half-whisper. Squinting, I leaned towards the window. Something faintly cerulean, headlights probably, flickered in the distance. “I ... I think I see him out there now. Hey, Mr. Cucuy! Want me to invite him in to watch some TV with us?”
Pupils round, she shook her head.
Slowly, I put Miranda down. As soon as her feet touched the floor, she bolted to her room. Already in bed when I got there, the blanket pulled up to her eyeballs, she peered up at me with a calmness I hadn’t seen in a long time.
I sank down on the edge of her bed. “You stay in bed all night, and I’ll do your makeup tomorrow, after we make some carne asada. How does that sound?”
Miranda’s lips curled up into a toothy smile, nodding hard. Carne asada was her favorite, as it had been our abuela’s. As I shut the door, I blew her a kiss and, after a moment, she blew one back.
I tiptoed back into the living room to take Abuelo to his room, preparing myself for his ritual of about a hundred Hail Marys before he’d let me help him into bed. But his recliner was empty. I looked out the window. Nothing. He must have put himself to bed.
I plopped my vape down on the counter next to an unopened pack of energy drinks. Leaving my own divinidades in the kitchen, I climbed up onto the roof. The crisp, dry air kissed my cheeks. I laid on my back and let the black, winking sky swallow me up. It was empty, and that was alright.
LIA SINA is a writer, editorial assistant, and weirdo living in San Francisco. Creatively, she explores the complexities of womanhood, family and domestic structures, and the lifelong shadows cast by childhood. Her favorite characters to craft are strange, angry, and emotional young women. Lia’s poetry can be found on Poets.org. When not writing, she enjoys watching movies, dancing badly, and daydreaming about the day aliens finally take her on a tour of the universe. You can stalk her @byliasina on Instagram.
