South Central Noir

The way she said it, with her eyes all red and puffy like she’d been crying, though she said it was allergies, made my guts flip inside out. Ms. Cifuentes put her hand on my shoulder, which panicked me even more as she’d never touched me before, and said, “Abigail, we’re gonna get through this. Just hang on. One day at a time. And when you feel upset, write about it.”

By then everybody knew about this virus, and Italy, and China. But those countries seem so far away. When Carmela told us her family was going back to Oaxaca I was sad and jealous and mad and I just turned away to go pick up Caro.

Right now we are on lockdown, which means nobody’s supposed to leave their homes except for essentials and essential workers. Ma’s an essential worker, but she can’t leave her bed. Her breathing is terrible. She won’t let us in the room, so I put her food just outside the door. I made her fideo like she told me, and she didn’t eat any of it. She’s big and warm, so she’s not gonna starve to death, she’s got plenty of fat cells to get through first, but still, I’m worried.

On Tuesday she told me to go to the store and buy things. I left Caro to watch TV (that’s her second-favorite thing to do — coloring in front of the TV is probably a peak experience for her. I wish that was all it took to make me happy I’m pretty sure even in third grade I wasn’t like that).

La Market was crazy! It was terrible! But I didn’t realize as I passed all these people, some with blue face masks, some with scarves around their heads like me, that everyone was waiting in line. For La Market! It wasn’t until I walked to the front of the line and did a double take. What was I gonna do?

The owner, Brenda, who wore a mask that looked like she made it out of paper clips and paper towels, recognized my wild frizzy hair from behind my glasses and scarf. She walked over to me and said, “Your mother called. We got a box of stuff for her already. I’m gonna drop it off later. I told her you didn’t need to come here!”

A coupla hours later, sure enough there was Brenda, with a huge cardboard box at her feet, knocking at our security screen door. “Tell your mother to get better soon,” she said. “Tell her it’s from everyone at work.”

My mom wouldn’t let me into her room, so I talked to her through the bedroom door. I told her there was pinto beans, black beans, rice, oatmeal, canned tuna, noodles, two dozen eggs, bacon pieces, packages of chicken thighs, apple sauce, canned tomatoes, Mexican chocolate, canned spaghetti, canned ravioli, canned tamales, and pudding cups. I put things away; there was so much chicken I put it in different packages, like I’d watched Ma do, and froze them. Caro ate half of the pudding cups that night, nothing I said would stop her; she ate the rest of them Sunday for breakfast and looked kinda green the rest of the day. I heated up the canned ravioli for dinner but it was straight-up disgusting, so that’s when I tried to cook some beans.

My mom laughed through the door when I told her, and said if I’da been hungry enough the ravioli would’ve tasted just fine.

My mom’s got her phone inside the room with her; it’s not like I can text my friends. I got two people in this whole world to talk to, one is eight and one is sick and maybe that’s why my guts keep going inside out.

I don’t think I can spend my whole day here writing about everything that’s worrying me. As much as I appreciate her ideas, I don’t think Ms. Cifuentes is right about this. Writing down what I’m worried about, putting it into words, almost makes me feel worse, fills me with a kind of dread, like those stories in English class we read last October by Edgar Allan Poe. All heavy and dark, like there’s this mist around me, despite the sun shining out there, despite Caro listening to Taylor Swift. Or maybe like that Stephen King film I watched. It feels like that: like parts of my world are disappearing.

I wonder if she’s gonna call Dad.

When it was all of us, we lived in a house with a yard. Until we got evicted, which apparently was when my mom found out there was a problem. Caro was crying and my mom was crying and my stomach was tumbling over and over again — I couldn’t cry, I could only glare.

My dad had a pretty decent job. For all I know he still has that job, a paralegal with a pretty snazzy law office downtown. Before we moved here there were pictures of my mom and dad from the holiday party. Imagine a law firm so fancy they pay for a photographer, and then they print them out and frame them, right there for you! Okay, so the frames were paper, but still.

My mom looked beautiful. She’d bought her dress in the garment district, it was green and shimmery and she moved in it like she was dancing. In the photograph she looks so happy.

My dad looks like he looks in every photo I’ve seen of him with my mom. Hey, I’m with her? How’d I get so lucky? He does. I told that to Ma once and she just snorted.