Call Me Esteban by Lejla Kalamujic

Author:Lejla Kalamujic [Kalamujic, Lejla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandorf Passage
Published: 2021-09-28T04:00:00+00:00

For ten years we’ve been coming here. We enter the hollow insides of my childhood. She helps me clean the floors. She runs over here with me when they call me about the flooding, when black water leaks down the neighbor’s walls. She stands beside me while I apologize. She stands beside me when my old neighbors stall me and ask, “Lejla, honey, why don’t you move in?” And I reply, for who knows how many years now, “I can’t. I don’t have the papers. I’m not allowed.” I just have a key and a pile of memories I don’t know where to put. She nods when they curse these times and this government: “Because, darling, you were all they had.” And she removed the splinter that drove itself into my finger once when I tried to fix the holes in the rotted window frames.

I return to the bedroom as quietly as I can. I stand at the window. Down in front of the building, the moon’s reflection creases in a puddle. She jerks awake and sits up in bed, calling for me.

“I’m right here. Sleep,” I say.

She can’t, she’s awake, a little frightened.

“Should I leave?” I ask.

“What’s up with you again?” she asks.

“I was scared, look at the storm. What if the windows don’t hold. The glass could break. Should I put tape around the edges? Who knows what kind of damage the wind could do.”

She calls me by name. I sit at the edge of the bed. She hugs me from behind. “Everything’s all right,” she whispers. She says that in the morning we’ll go outside together, check everything, fix whatever needs fixing. And now I should lie down, I can’t stay up all night. Here’s Kiki, curling back up in her place. I crawl under the blanket. I kiss her. She hugs me in return, and I nestle more tightly against her body, against her image of the world. I inhale her scent and realize that life doesn’t always give you what you deserve. Because I did nothing to deserve her. Outside the lightning flashes and the thunder peals, but I sink into sleep, a little more convinced that I did, in fact, survive.

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