Love and Other Poisons by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Author:Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Innsmouth Free Press
Published: 2014-09-02T05:00:00+00:00

My mother arrived from her late shift a little before midnight. I was still up, reading my textbook in the kitchen.

“Big test tomorrow, huh?” she said.

“Yep.”

“Did you finish the spaghetti?”

“Yeah, Marilu warmed it up for me.”

My mother took off her shoes and rummaged through the refrigerator. The phone rang. I picked it up at the first ring thinking it was La Bola. I was feeling kind of lousy about our fight and I wanted to apologize.

I held the receiver next to my ear. It was one of those yellow Western Electronic Princess Telephones that my mom had owned forever and sometimes the damn thing did not work right.

“Hello,” I said very loudly. “Hello.”

There was no answer. Just a crackling, which was not unusual. What was unusual was the other sound I heard. Only it was not really a sound. More like a vibration which went up and down my arm.

“Bola?” I whispered.

I didn’t think it was him. Or it was not only Bola.

There was something else trying to get through the line.

The receiver, as I held it between my fingers, felt rubbery and pulsated.

I dropped it. It dangled from the cord, brushing the linoleum floor.

“Is that Marilu’s boyfriend again?” my mother asked. She picked up the receiver quick as lightning and yelled into it with a loud, stern voice. “You stop calling here! You hear me?!”

She slammed the receiver down, grumbled about Marilu and made herself a sandwich.

I went to bed.

I did well in my exam the next day. La Bola missed it, but that was his tactic. He tried to miss as many exams as he could so I could tell him what the test had been all about, and he could get a decent grade when he took it the next week.

I was not too concerned about his absence. And I was not too worried when he did not go to school the day after that. He was probably still sore at me, nursing his wounds by staying in bed and watching TV all day long.

But he did not go back to class. We heard he had been expelled for drug use. Someone had found him dealing pot or coke or some shit inside the pantyhose factory and he was kicked out of school. Other folks said he went nuts and killed his whole family, then microwaved the cat. I did not think that was very likely because it would have made the front page of La Alarma and I did not see La Bola’s wide eyes staring at me from the newspaper stand.

One lady who was a friend on my mom said it was a mental breakdown and she mentioned the pantyhose factory, and the guy there and there was … maybe she said pederast. Maybe she said nothing. I like to believe she said nothing.

And then my mom, she asked me pointed questions about La Bola and I didn’t have the answers, so I shook my head no.

No.

Somebody called a few days later. Heavy metal music played in the background.

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