Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📗

premature but early enough that you looked frail and tiny, smaller than all the other babies in the hospital. To me, you were a speck, a feather, and I was afraid you would die. It’s a horrible thought, I know. But probably the first thought in every mother’s mind: So many ways I could fail at this. I was afraid to hold you, even. I was alone in the hospital and the nurse must have thought me tragic because she prayed a rosary over me. Out of politeness I didn’t ask her to stop. But I remember I thought, for the first time, My God. Nobody asked you either, Mary. Nobody asked if God could build a temple out of you, if you wanted to turn your life into an offering.

They killed your uncle six months later, you still latched to my chest, you still sleeping in a bundle by my side. I will spare you the details and say only this: I made a choice again, for you. And I am sorry I had nothing else to offer, Ana. That there are no real rules that govern why some are born in turmoil and others never know a single day in which the next seems an ill-considered bet. It’s all lottery, Ana, all chance. It’s the flick of a coin, and we are born.

6PREY

Carmen

Miami, 2016

Carmen was setting a bird-of-paradise centerpiece among the linen place mats when she heard the guttural growl, a persistent rumble that sharpened into an alarm. It sounded almost like Linda—her blue Siamese—when a bird in flight mocked the cat’s predatory wiggles from the safer side of the sliding glass door. But this shriek went far beyond a pitch Linda could emit. This shriek had the unmistakable texture of wildness.

Not that Carmen would have known. In Coral Gables, the wildest residents were peacocks, lazy pageant queens traversing between parked Aston Martins on hedge-hidden driveways. Carmen had been to a zoo exactly once, some twenty years ago, as a chaperone for one of Jeanette’s elementary school classes. As far as she could remember, none of the lions had growled. Neither had the cheetahs or the white tigers. She’d found, on a whole, the zoo an entirely forgettable experience. But she must have seen a nature show at least once in her sixty-odd years (who could even remember their own age anymore?) because somewhere in her mind’s gathered archives an immediate connection formed: the noise came from a wild beast, a beast that didn’t belong in the civilized world.

She’d told guests to arrive at 7 p.m. It was three o’clock. The turkey glowed beneath the oven’s lights, crisping. She’d set all fifteen places. Carmen had chosen a hybrid décor, the usual Thanksgiving stand-ins with some tropical flourishes: a cornucopia filled with cascading autumn vegetables nestled among marble figurines on a hallway table, single lipstick-red hibiscus blooms in crystal vases throughout the living room.

Still clutching a few stray petals that had drifted from the centerpiece, she left the house in yoga pants and house slippers to investigate. Carmen looked up and down the street and the scene was as always—the street empty and quiet and grandiose, the banyan trees arched in a canopy like kissing lovers, her neighbors tucked safely in their own houses or out already for early dinners. Ever since her husband’s death—she felt ill even thinking of him, the pervert—she’d thought Coral Gables the loveliest and loneliest neighborhood in the whole world. Its faux-Spanish street markers, its vine-laden fences and stone gateways: all flourish, all enamel, hiding nothing, just persistent nothing beneath.

She was about to turn back when she heard it again, another growl. It came, definitively, from the house across the street. How strange, she thought. Perhaps the single woman who lived in the house watched a loud movie. But not likely. She couldn’t shake the weirdness as she showered, as she dressed in her dark blue Ralph Lauren suit (a suit she hadn’t worn since retirement). And after she’d placed seltzer in an ice bucket to chill, after she’d laid out chips and cornichons beside her homemade paté, she crossed the street.

She had meant only to knock. But Carmen startled at drops of what looked like blood, a trail from the center of the driveway to the door, a sprinkling of dark crimson she’d missed from the safety of her own driveway. She was so taken aback she crouched to the ground and looked closer, as if blood could speak its truth if only she leaned into it. But she gathered herself and stood, forced her wild thoughts to heel. This wasn’t a movie. She wasn’t a heroic amateur detective, much as she loved those shows.

Every window was curtained, and there were no cars in the driveway. She braced herself and knocked but nobody opened the door. She knew little about the occupant other than she was a single woman like herself, a woman with a grown child just like her, though this child was far more functional than Jeanette: a man who sometimes stopped by with kids and a wife in tow. The woman was like Carmen but far less put-together. And she talked too much. The woman let her gray roots sprawl, she wore pilled knit shirts and was often clacking about her garden in plastic flip-flops, waving to Carmen with garden shears in her hand, swiping her forehead with a rag. She’d talk about her son, about how her daughter-in-law was lazy and clearly taking advantage of him, about how menopause was killing her for God’s sake. It was like the woman had no filter, no sense that some thoughts belonged in the hidden parts of herself.

Carmen was about to turn back when she thought she heard footsteps. But no lights came on. The door remained shut. She put her ear to the wood and heard the slow hum of an empty house and then, almost imperceptibly, a long sigh, like a dog curling into sleep. No, not a