Hit List by Sarah Cortez & LIZ MARTÍNEZ

Author:Sarah Cortez & LIZ MARTÍNEZ [SARAH CORTEZ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558855434
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

R. NARVAEZ

In the Kitchen with Johnny Albino

It was dark when Iris woke up. She rubbed her belly where it hurt, then got up, put on her slippers and waddled to the kitchen. She was a brunette, petite, pretty and six months pregnant—with a big baby she knew was a boy because of the way her belly came to a point, and because she just knew. She went straight for the kitchen and to the dream book.

She got the book out and put it on the table, face down. She tried to remember the dream but couldn’t. She lit a cigarette and went to the kitchen window. She looked outside at the clotheslines radiating from the big elm in the backyard to each building. The windows of the apartment buildings on the other side of the yard were dark, like eyes on faces before they wake up. She stared at nothing in particular. She felt that if she kept staring she could somehow reach back to the dream.

The cigarette smoke twirled around her fingers. Tree. Outside. Río—river. And there it was—the dream she had been having before the baby inside her kicked her awake. First it came in pieces, then it played like a movie. A woman. Standing with her feet in a river. Drowning. Iris did not recognize the woman, but she knew the river. It was back in Puerto Rico, near her hometown, Guayama, and the water was shallow. The woman could walk across to save herself. Iris told her so, but then a wave came, dark and red as blood, decapitating the woman, just as Iris found a knife in her hand, and . . .

Then a pigeon flew into her field of vision, and Iris was back in Brooklyn.

She went back to the table quickly. The dream book was mimeographed on cheap blue paper. The listings were crooked, on some pages, clear, on others, blurry. Iris had bought the book when she first came to New York City in the sixties, ten years ago. She folded the cover back—it showed a crazy gypsy lady with a crazy smile that always spooked Iris.

In the books, dreams were listed alphabetically, with a three-digit number next to each:

ANIMAL, 369

AUNT, 261

AUTOMOBILE, 522

AUTOMOBILE CRASH, 673

If you dreamed about an animal one night, you were supposed to play 369 the next day and the next few days, because that number was going to hit. Iris searched the Ds and found “DROWNING, 419.” She wrote the number down in a little red notebook. She got up and turned on the radio, finding her favorite Spanish station. A song by Trio Los Panchos came on, one of Iris’ favorites. She began to sway to its tinny rhythm.

“Mami.” Her four-year old daughter, Nancy, stood in the doorway of the kitchen in her pajamas. The girl had the same jet-black hair and sad eyes of her father. Every time Iris looked at her, she was reminded of him.

“Go back to bed.”

“I’m awake.”

“It’s too early. Go back to bed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.