Free Party Girl by Lynne Ewing

said.
    “Yeah, I remember.”
    “I wish I had bought that clown doll for you,” she said, and looked away.
    The puppy shook the pouch and the sweet smell of licorice and thyme filled the air.
    “I’m sorry about a lot,” she said.
    “Forget it,” I said.
    “I thought I heard someone in the house last night.”
    “Probably the puppy,” I said. “I brought you some coffee.”
    “Coffee?” She sat up in bed and placed the pillows behind her like a child on her birthday, playing princess.
    She took the mug in her thin hands and sipped, steam rising to her face and circling around her eyes in a way that reminded me of the morning fog. Her face looked less swollen this morning, but her eyes still had a yellow cast.
    “I hoped maybe Pocho had come home,” she said.
    “Take your vitamins.” My words came out like jealous boots kicking dry cement. She looked at me curiously.
    “Just try to swallow them,” I said, my tone more gentle.“If you can’t, you can spit them out.”
    “In my coffee?”
    I gave her the pills. One had stained the palm of my hand red. “If you can’t swallow them, you can spit them back in my hand.”
    She put the vitamins in her mouth and swallowed them with the hot coffee, then looked up at me with a big smile. She had a beautiful smile but never seemed to use it, as if she had decided to put it away with the opals and save it for good.
    “When you were born,” she started, and looked away. Tears ran silently down her cheeks. When she saw me looking, she said, “My eyes are watering. It must be the hot coffee.” I knew she was only trying to save me the embarrassment of her tears.
    “What were you going to say about when I was born?” I asked.
    “Nothing. Just a thought. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    “I’d like to hear.”
    She stared off, and I followed her gaze, hoping to get a glimpse of what she saw the night I was born.
    “I had different dreams of what our lives could be, but I lost them in the bottle. Then you came home all covered with blood and it felt like the night you were born. Like you could be reborn, and we could start again. I never meant to hurt you, Kata. Now I’m so weak I can’t do much for you.When I drink, I don’t feel. Now I feel and I know I’m dying.”
    “Maybe the doctors can give you a new liver,” I said.
    “I’m no movie star.” She laughed. “Sometimes I get a feeling that Nando’s old Santería gods must have gotten so upset with me that they crossed the ocean from Africa and put a curse on me when I wouldn’t marry him. That’s when things turned from bad to worse, wasn’t it? Sometimes I think I can hear those old gods dancing to the batá drums.”
    “Nando said the powers of the orishas can never be used to harm others,” I said.
    “I know what he said, but things weren’t this bad then, were they? Even before Nando, it wasn’t this bad.”
    “Things are fine,” I lied. “Now that you’ve stopped drinking, you’ll start feeling better.”
    She sipped her coffee and spoke into the cup like a child afraid of her mother. “I’m not supposed to have coffee either, am I?”
    “I don’t know,” I lied.
    She shrugged. “It’ll be better for you when I go,” she said.
    “No, it won’t,” I said. “It won’t.”
    “I’m going to an AA meeting,” she said. “They got them at the church.”
    I had heard her say that before.
    “Nando’s taking me,” she said as if that would give her words the force of truth.
    “Nando?”
    “I called him last night.” She set the cup of coffee on the nightstand.
    “What about that bruja he lives with?”
    “She didn’t answer, so I didn’t hang up.”
    “She doesn’t care if Nando sees you?”
    “I didn’t ask. He’s going to take me out to County General, too. Let the doctor check my liver again.”
    “Good,” I said, but we both knew it was too late even if she did stop drinking now.
    She smiled, closed her eyes, and started to fall asleep. I took her hand