My Heart Underwater by Laurel Flores Fantauzzo

Author:Laurel Flores Fantauzzo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Junior

I sway, sick, between sleep and waking, talking to them in my head.

Ma, how did you survive such an asshole?

Dad, please come back . . .

Ms. Holden—

We’re at a Jollibee.

In California my parents would drive over an hour to Jollibee in Cerritos when they wanted to celebrate and In-N-Out wasn’t enough. My dad always insisted on a picture of us with the statue of the bright-red Jollibee. He must have seven years’ worth of photos with us and Jollibee.

At this Jollibee there’s no parking lot, so the driver teeters the van on a tiny ledge of sidewalk. Cars from the street swerve to avoid hitting him. Little motorbikes with sidecars veer around us. More little barefoot kids come up to the window. They dart away when a shotgun-clad security guard hisses at them. Everyone seems to know how to hiss, how to shoo, and who deserves dismissing.

There is a bee statue, but he’s standing alone right now.

“Stay here.” Tita Baby growls at me now, like she thinks I’ll go into Jollibee and set it on fire.

The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror. Then he ignores me and texts on his own little Nokia.

I close my eyes against the window until Tita Baby returns with an enormous paper sack. The oily, meaty smell of fried chicken fills the car. Something sweet, too: maybe some pocket pies, maybe spaghetti.

Then we’re moving again. I feel hungry and sick. My parents should be here; the three of us should have been doing this together. But I don’t think my parents ever wanted to come back. Our future together was never here. Just their past.

We pause near a sandstone-red statue of mother Mary. It looks huge and handmade, and her face is peaceful, but her garments are filled with lumps. I look closer. The lumps are dead little limbs. Fetuses. I don’t realize I’ve groaned out loud until Tita Baby turns fully around to glare at me and says in Tagalog, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare make more of a mess in your lolo’s car.” She shoves an empty plastic bag at me.

We go uphill a little, and then right. The streets here are quieter. There are actual sidewalks, more trees. Every house has a gate. But there are no security guards, none that I can see.

We stop at a three-story building with a giant, pastel ocean mural on its three garage doors. A pastel mermaid and a few dolphins smile at me. We stop at a small black gate to the right of the mural, lined with barbed wire.

“Get down na,” Tita Baby orders me. She commands the driver to get the cardboard boxes out of the trunk for us. I get my own duffel bag and keep the plastic would-be puke bag gripped in my right hand. I step out onto cracked concrete. I feel like I have sea legs, like I’ll wobble for the rest of my life.

A gray box hangs near the gate from some frayed wires. To

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