LITMIR.BIZ

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by a lighter hand on the pencil, so that each line seemed a strand of gray. If she let herself finish the drawing in her mind, Belén’s form would soon be enclosed in a box, trapping her forever in a gray, animated space. These were her thoughts, without much distraction. Her father had called her un zombi at dinner, and made a monster noise deep in the back of his throat to pull her out of her reverie. “Leave her alone,” Magda Elena had said at once, and then, dropping a few soggy platanitos on her plate, said, “Stop daydreaming. Eat.” But Magda Elena’s voice had been strained, lacking its usual forcefulness. That same night, thoughts of zombies kept Daysy awake.

      Just a few months ago, Daysy knew, she would have asked her mother again and again about Belén, but she couldn’t now. If Abuelo was right, if she had a sister and had been allowed to forget, Daysy was afraid she would never forgive her mother or her father, certain if Magda Elena had lied to her that she wouldn’t ever feel the same way about her again, so she did not take the risk. The weird fog that had surrounded mother and daughter, not so strangely, given Daysy’s age, had thickened considerably. A part of her wished that things were the way they used to be, when Magda Elena would come home after work and Daysy would rush to her, crushing her nose in her mother’s shirts and smelling the oil they used to keep the sewing machines running. But now such an act seemed impossible. It would embarrass them both, Daysy thought, and she could feel herself physically recoiling at the thought.

      She tried another tack and asked her father about Belén that weekend while she rode with him out to the west coast of Florida in search of a part for their van. A brush fire along Alligator Alley reached the edges of the street and had been licking at cars all day. Angel and Daysy had missed the news about the fire in their rush out of the house. They only knew that it was suddenly dark along the highway. Now, curtains of gray smoke had dropped over the desolate road. Angel turned a knob and the car’s fog lights came on. The Everglades lay burning along the road, the sawgrass frying and sizzling. Ash rained onto the car, and the smell of smoke began to come through the air vents. Still, Angel drove on, racing down the darkening path toward the junkyard. The man on the phone had said they had what Angel had been looking for—the joint for a rear window wiper that cost too much money new.

      In the hazy distance, Daysy saw the spinning red-and-blue lights of the Florida Highway Patrol. The lights multiplied as Angel’s car approached until it was clear that the road had been blocked. Angel came to a stop and lowered a window. The smoke poured in. A patrolman approached. “Road’s closed, folks,” he said, his hand on the brim of his wide hat. Angel’s eyes looked off to the distance. Daysy leaned out of the window to see what he was looking at. Sitting in the bed of a pickup truck was a group of people. Two Miccosukee men and a little boy sat and stared out at the burning glades. They were wrapped in woolen blankets despite the heat of the fire. Daysy wondered if they had been caught in the burning grass, wondered if their home was out there in the flames, or if they hunted alligators in the swamp.

      “I hope no one was hurt,” Angel said, shifting the car into reverse.

      Daysy got a good look at the boy’s face. It was contorted with grief and fear, which, strangely, made Daysy feel brave. She leaned closer to her father. “Abuelo told me about Belén,” she said quietly, watching him for some sort of telling sign, one that would indicate that Abuelo’s story was true.

      Angel adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “What did he say about her?” he said.

      Daysy felt suddenly sick at heart. So it was true. She had been deceived. Outside, the wind was stirring the ashes from the fire, and flakes were coming in through the air conditioning. Angel waved his hand through them, and they dissolved in the air. A fleck of charred Everglades landed on Daysy’s palm. She observed it for a beat then asked, “So I had a sister?”

      “I thought your mother already cleared things up.”

      “No. No, she didn’t really answer anything. I never get the full story about anything from…”

      Angel reached out to tap her knee. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, and flipped on the radio to a talk show.

      “So there is no Belén,” she said, but Angel did not echo her assertion. Instead, he raised the volume of the radio, doing so again a few seconds later, then again, so that the windows shook with the boom of the bass and Daysy felt utterly drowned out. Her father’s face was tense, and there was, she thought, dampness in his eyes. Daysy’s sense of the general wrongness of things strengthened. She looked out toward the light of fires here and there, formulating her next move.

      She had to shout over the sound of the radio. “Papi, I—”

      “This discussion is over,” Angel said.

      “Papi—”

      “I’m warning you,” Angel added. He lowered the volume at last. Daysy would not fight back. They both knew it.

      It was clear now—no one would help Daysy unravel the story of the girl named Belén. So she came up with her own plan. If a baby had been lost at sea in 1980, surely some newspaper reporter, somewhere, would have picked up the story. And that story was hidden in the library across town.

      The next morning, Daysy entered Abuelo’s room and the smell of Vick’s VapoRub made her eyes water. Abuelo slathered the ointment on his chest and neck every night, and no amount of washing ever took the scent out of his pillowcases.

      “Abuelo,” Daysy whispered on the side of his bed. Abuelo opened his eyes.

      “¿Qué? ¿Qué?” he mumbled. Radio Martí, the Miami-based Cuban radio station that attempted broadcasts to the island, played in the background.

      “Listen, I’m going out. I’ll be okay. Don’t worry. And don’t get in trouble,” Daysy said in Spanish.

      Abuelo smiled and patted her cheek. His hands were calloused, rough and warm. “Bueno, preciosa,” he said, closing his eyes again.

      Daysy left his room feeling a twinge of guilt. That familiar fear, that Abuelo would get himself run over in the street, that he would make good on his promise to swim back to Cuba someday, that he would again sell off a good chunk of Magda Elena’s jewelry, as he had a few months ago, trading a diamond anniversary ring for ten dollars and a cafecito to a pawnbroker on Okeechobee Avenue, almost made Daysy stay home that day. But her summer vacation was waning, and the chance to use the library just a few blocks away would soon be over.

      She couldn’t shake the picture of Belén from her thoughts, except now, under the glow of the library’s fluorescent light, the baby had taken on the pale blue of death. Daysy shook the thoughts away, thankful that she had never felt an unnaturally cold breeze or the light touch of an invisible hand on her shoulder, or any indication whatsoever that she was trailed by an infant ghost.

      The smell of paper, mold, and carpet cleaner energized her. It was a smell Daysy loved, a smell she had explained to her mother as one of her favorites, and Magda Elena had laughed and called her strange. “Better to love the smell of my frijolitos cooking, and maybe you’ll get some curves on you,” she had said. The librarian sat on a high stool behind a wooden counter. She picked at a bowl of stew and was slurping loudly when Daysy asked her about the microfilm machines. “Mm,” the librarian said, her mouth glistening, her lips pursed, and pointed her fork toward the stacks.

      Daysy looked through the drawer full of film rolls and found the Miami Herald. Then she searched for the date—May 13, 1980. That was the day the del Pozos had arrived in Key West, had come off a stranger’s yacht and started a new life. At least that was what her mother had always told her. Magda Elena’s story was always the same—vague, rosy, short. She’d explain the crowded boat, the sun, the dreams of a house and a job. The details Daysy asked for were always countered with the same phrase—”Ay, se me olvidó,” I forgot.

      The tiny, brown roll of film with the date on it felt light in Daysy’s hand. She balanced it on her palm and watched it shake along with her arm, her body. For a moment, she considered throwing the roll into the

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