The Franklin Avenue Rookery for Wayward Babies by Laura Newman

Author:Laura Newman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Little Ice Girl

A reimagined faerie tale based on The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen

On the morning of the summer equinox the sun rose over San Diego as if drawn with a child’s crayon, flat and waxy. A low and roaming fog caught on harbor masts and drew ghost sails across the sky. The city was cool and preparing to sparkle. But just south, at the San Ysidro border crossing, the sun was in a different mood, the sky already blanched by rising heat. As the people of Tijuana came out of their homes, few bothered to look up, for the poor come to believe that they deserve less, even when it comes to weather. There has always been Auntie America with her pockets of poppies in her green hills and Tia Juana with her dust and dirt. Oh, there is color. The giant flag of Mexico flapping over Tijuana like a bullfighter’s cape. The strings of filigreed papel picado flags crisscrossing the tourist streets. Rainbows of Chiclets in a little girl’s hand. On this equinox, San Diego would slip in and out of air-conditioned homes, cars, restaurants. Tijuana would sweat.

There is a little house in the Los Laureles Canyon, assembled from garage doors discarded in San Diego, patched together with plywood and gumption. One of the doors that is part of the roof has three oblong windows over the kitchen, and a feral cat that Ana Maria Bianca Aguilera is forbidden to feed sleeps in one of the early morning sunbeams from the skylights. Ana calls him Pedro, but not in front of her father. She pets his rakish ears as she gets her ice chest together, then steps outside.

Her house is not so different from the others in the slum. The worst are made of cardboard, the thick kind used to box appliances that tend to blow away, come winter. The best are made of brick; even Mexican kids know the wolf can’t blow a brick house down.

Ana caught the dusty bus down to the San Ysidro border crossing. Luckily Juan was the bus driver today; he waved Ana on. With other drivers she fiddles with her cloth satchel, pretending to dig for pesos until an impatient line forms behind her and the driver lets her on. Or kicks her off. But generally no one much minds when a wisp of girl, she barely takes up a seat, rides for free.

On this day Ana wore the dress her grandmother hand-stitched out of flour sacks; she looked like a faded, walking billboard for tortillas. A triangle of calico pulled her black hair back from her churro-brown face, and freckles daisy-chain across her nose. She has a pretty face; she doesn’t know it, because it’s been a long time since anyone told her so. Ana always wears a humble tin cross from her first communion and a small medallion stamped with the raised image of Our Lady of Guadalupe with her star-covered cloak covering her hair and flowing over her gown.

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