hear the two-fingered whistle, coming from one of the Murillo boys. My face feels hot and tight like it’s sun burned, and all I can think to do is pretend they’re not following my every move.
In order to scare off the mice, I kick the door a couple times, then pull off two pre-sliced flakes and balance them, one on each arm. I’m allergic to alfalfa, and if I’m not quick I’ll wheeze like an asthmatic and my arms will rash up and itch. Just as I’m hoisting the flake into Boo Boo’s feeder, something rustles in the alfalfa, something alive. At the first sight of gray fur, I drop the flake between the pipes, piercing the air with my squeal. The mouse scurries off into a puff of dirt.
Behind me, a Murillo boy laughs. I toss the other flake at a hungry Lou, and make a bee line for the house.
“Shut the hell up,” Cheech shouts at his little brother.
I’m on the phone telling Tomoko what happened with the Murillo brothers when our call gets cut short, an emergency breakthrough from the Orange County prison. Whenever it’s a collect call, I know to accept the charges. The client in jail will pay for it later, getting double-billed for calling collect, let alone our home number.
I’ve never spoken to a murderer before, and although my father slept with a hunting rifle by his side when Cooper had escaped, this killer is different. He’s my father’s front page client and I’ll get into trouble if I’m not polite.
“May I speak with your father?” The precise way in which he forms each syllable makes him sound successful, like one of my father’s business clients. Even murderers have phone manners.
“Just a second, please,” I say.
My father is in the living room, the TV on, tuning out the ten o’clock news with the aid of a Walkman. He wears headphones, listening again no doubt to Bared’s confession.
Scattered across the table are black and whites of the crime scene. One shot is of the victim’s head thrown back against the chair, his eyes bulging. On the front of his shirt is a small hole where the bullet had entered, and I am shocked at how little blood there is.
I mouth Bared’s name as I hand over the phone.
My father slides the headphones back a little to make room for the receiver. From his end I’m able to put together half the story. Bared has been roughed up at the jail. A broken nose and finger. It’s race related. While being struck and kicked he heard somebody call him a sand nigger. At twelve I’d heard “nigger” used solely as an insult to a black person. In time I’ll learn the offensive word will do even more damage being used as a root slur against all races.
My father promises that tomorrow he’ll have pictures taken and will use them at the emergency bail hearing.
“The guards beat him up?” I ask after my father is done talking.
He hangs up and shrugs.
“Hard to tell. Usually it’s the arresting cops. He looked fine this morning. Sometimes a client will do it to himself if he thinks an ass kicking will help get him out sooner.”
I hear my sister unlocking the front door. She looks satisfied, refreshed, her lips abloom in bright fuchsia. She takes a long sip of her thirty-two ounce McDonald’s cup, leaving no print.
“Mom finally woke up.”
I wonder if our mother came around on her own or if Rhea helped.
My father removes the headset as if the foam parts impede his hearing.
“How is she?”
“They’re releasing her tomorrow morning.”
My father tosses the rest of the Walkman onto the coffee table.
“Goddamn it.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.” My sister passes us in a burst of Poison, her favorite scent, getting his reaction all wrong.
My father shakes his head at the circumstances he can’t change, at the toxic relationship the two of them share and how what just happened with Bared has ruined his chances of being the good husband. No matter how fast he is at the bail hearing, all my mother will see is that she’s just given birth to his son and he’s late in picking her up from the hospital.
The next morning I’m pouring a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios when my father knocks on Rhea’s door, open handed. In his other hand is a cup of coffee.
“Time to get up,” he calls at the closed door.
Though I should be going to school, my father has decided that I’m to go with him. He doesn’t want to have to worry about picking me up after school. An emergency bail hearing has been granted. I’m not sure how my father is able to pull this off so soon, but he did and we’re already late for it.
By the time I’ve finished the Cheerios and have bussed my bowl in the dishwasher, he’s dressed in a suit and tie.
Dabs of toilet paper stick to the red nicks on his face where he cut himself shaving. He reeks of my mother’s last Christmas present, Drakkar Noir. His open hand on my sister’s door has turned into a fist.
“Get up now,” he says. “I’m not paying nearly a grand a month for you to sleep away the semester.”
My chest tightens at the beginnings of an argument, so I break in with the white flag.
“Okay, Dad,” I say. “I think she heard you.”
A couple of minutes later my sister emerges on her way to the bathroom. Her short hair is smashed along the side of her head where she’s been sleeping, her face cracked in places with dried Calamine. From her skeletal shoulders, her nightgown hangs as if being held up by a wire hanger. She doesn’t look herself and hasn’t for some time. The pills her L.A. shrink prescribed aren’t working.
Before she shuts the bathroom door, she faces our father dead on, calling up energy from down deep.
“Mom told me what you did to her.”
Whatever Rhea claims he’s done to our mother, it must be true because my father backs off. He snaps at me to get in the goddamn car and as we leave, it’s anyone’s guess if she’ll make it to school or simply head back to bed.
Although my father is over forty and a good fifty pounds overweight, I have trouble keeping up with him in the courthouse halls. My Van slip-ons squeak at every turn on the shiny floors, grabbing the attention of a few men in suits who look a little puzzled at seeing me, a seventh grader, tagging along with her father to court. It’s impossible to tell which of the men are attorneys and which are cleaned up drug dealers, murderers and thieves.
Inside the gallery, my father seats me in the last row. The Drakkar Noir he sprayed can’t mask
