for Sister and 2020
You’ve been making this trip more than 25 years. Christmas before last, though, it wasn’t like always. You drove out alone despite protests from your kids. Had to reduce risk for aging parents. You didn’t pack a suitcase.
You slowed down at Broadway so you can make the turn onto Easy Street. It’s a gravel road not a real street. The post at the corner says, “not as easy as it used to be.” Now you know this to be true.
As you slowed, the mules trotted over to the fence and stretched their necks to check if you belong. When someone didn’t, the peacocks screeched like a child being tortured with bedtime or bath.
You drove slower. Didn’t wanna dust-out Neighbor’s trailer. He kept the windows open for fresh air even on cold winter nights and sometimes pesticide fumes wafted over on a hot desert breeze, mixed with his breakfast, choked his breath.
After the heavy rains, you knew not to park in the empty lot because the mud would suck the tires off your little city car. You got in trouble when that one boyfriend drove his four-wheel-drive truck across the muddy lot. He left deep tracks and when the sun dried the earth, Daddy had to borrow Mr. Brown’s laser machine to level out that mess. He’d cussed and hollered and that boy wasn’t welcome on Easy Street anymore.
So you parked inside the gate. When strangers did, Freckles would growl a soft warning, her blue-black hackles on end, before she leaped into the air and tried to chew their faces off. She only allowed family and kids with sticky hands. Since she died, Mamá had to lock the doors whenever they went out of town.
You couldn’t stay long. Just a quick gift exchange on the front porch. A bag for Daddy, a box for Mamá, and your handmade ornaments to put on their tree. You saw it through the living room window as you cruised down the road. Framed by poinsettia curtains Mamá had made that matched the ones she’d sent you last year. All the twinkly lights on in the middle of the day. Knew Daddy did that just for you.
No sleeping in the sewing room, giant television watching you, reflecting your tosses and turns. No squishing on the bottom bunk with your husband and youngest who is too tall now. No hip bone wedged in the crack between mattress and wall, face smashed into the wood paneling. No bougainvillea vines scratching the window in a haphazard rhythm. No rooster crowing as you’re about to doze off—it doesn’t know how to tell time. No heavy metal lyrics blasting when Neighbor’s son cruised home after the Horny Toad had kicked him out.
You couldn’t be on Easy Street when the sun came up Christmas Day 2020. Couldn’t turn the couch around to face the tree, open one gift at a time and pose for pictures. Instead, you blew Daddy and Mamá goodbye kisses through your mask and took the kids’ empty Christmas stockings home to fill yourself for the first time ever. You wanted to stay on Easy Street, but you had to go back to your kids and your job, back to undusty roads and different night sounds.
Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop Festival. Her flash fiction has been included in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her debut young adult novel, Breaking Pattern, is forthcoming with Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit. You can read her other stories and essays at http://tishareichle.com/
(Photo credit: Rachael Warecki @camerarawphotography)
Lost Balloon 