Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties by Felicia Luna Lemus

Author:Felicia Luna Lemus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

I woke up with creases from the sheets on my face and in the skin of my stomach. K was still sleeping, her face turned toward me on her pillow.

I kissed her slow and steady with my stare like Weeping had kissed me the night before. I kissed the scar above K’s brow and kissed twice the one closer to her ear. Illuminated even in the shadows of night, the scars were shooting-star burning streaks of snow white on her skin.

When she rustled out of sleep and her eyes focused up awake, I decided it was time to ask. The answer I had waited months to pursue was given very matter-of-fact.

“The scars are from a car accident back when I was seventeen.” Her eyes turned a shade of pine new to me.

Snap of the fingers, I was painful nervous, chatty nervous.

“Really? I was in a car accident when I was a kid too. That’s where I got this scar on my lip from,” I pointed to the barely noticeable bump on the downside of my upper lip’s cupid bow.

“Lord, I was a monster about it when it happened. Nana Lupe and I, we were coming home from a parent-teacher conference after school one day. We were in the big old Buick. I climbed from the front seat to the back seat, you know, it wasn’t the law to wear seat belts back then and I was just going to hop back forward to my seat real quick once I had what I needed from the back. I was jumping to the back seat to get this natural science report on owls that I’d gotten an A on. My fifth-grade science teacher, Mrs. Doherty, she had told Nana about the report during their conference. I wanted to show Nana the scratch ‘n’ sniff sticker Mrs. Doherty put on the report for getting an A.

“We were coming up to the tracks, about to cross into our neighborhood, and Nana saw real late that the crossbars were coming down. She slammed on the brakes right when I was climbing over the bench seat to the front again. The train rumbled past us and my face flew into the steering wheel.”

I made myself stop talking. I stared at K for a long time but her faraway eyes told me she didn’t want to say anything. K kissed my forehead as I squirmed in under her arm and put my head on her shoulder.

K’s silence. The way I silenced the whispering secret I really should have shared with K right then. Silence. All the silences combined were more than I could handle. I kept talking.

“K, remember those plastic string things people used to wrap their steering wheels with? Well, Papá Estrella had done that to the Buick’s steering wheel. But a real long time before that day. And the plastic was all hard from sun exposure. The pointed tip of one of the strings cut straight through my lip.

“The crossbars went back up but we didn’t move for a long time.

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