Free Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano Page A

and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. I couldn’t tell whether she was about to cry or laugh, or both, but she sat there and covered her mouth like if a word was about to come out and she wanted to keep it to herself.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Nowhere,” she said.
    I handed her the cup. Even with the kitchen towel underneath, it was burning my hand. “I made you some coffee.”
    “Is there something you need?” she said, then set the cup down on the ground and covered her mouth.
    “No,” I said. “Just made you some coffee. But why did you make peanut butter sandwiches?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Did you make them for breakfast?”
    “Can’t I make peanut butter sandwiches?”
    “Mom?”
    “What?” She stood up and turned around, lifting the duffel bag to the top shelf against the wall.
    “You want some ice?”
    She said she was reorganizing things. She pushed a box toward me and said, “Here, open this and see what’s inside.” It was a box filled with clothes from when we were younger.
    “What am I looking for?”
    “Just clean it! Okay? Can you do that, Luz?”
    I shrugged like if I didn’t know.
    We didn’t say anything after that. She drank her coffee little by little, in between stacking boxes on shelves, then pulled out two peanut butter sandwiches from the duffel bag she was filling. She gave one to me and I stopped looking for whatever I was supposed to be looking for. Then, right when I needed something to drink to wash down the peanut butter, I heard Papi at the back door. “¿Que chingao están haciendo?”
    And I ran inside.

LAS JARAS

    Y ou know that feeling when you fall on your back and the wind is knocked out of you? Or when you’re underwater and you can’t hold your breath so you swim to the top? Or when you wake up sweating from a dream and can’t figure out what’s real and what’s make-believe? That feeling in your stomach when you’re caught doing something you’re not supposed to? Or when you discover something for the very first time? That feeling when you got on a roller coaster and you were only eight years old but you felt like a grown-up because finally you got on? Or when you’re in a car and it’s going so fast it feels like it’s going to flip at any moment? That feeling five minutes before you open your Christmas presents? That feeling like if snakes are inside your stomach and they’re trying to get out? Or that feeling after you’ve hurt someone? When you go over it again and again in your head, what you did and how it happened, how you hit her so hard the bruises proved how bad you were? Even if she didn’t bleed you knew she was hurting. Or that feeling when you’re on the road and your stomach drops because you drove over a bump? When you’re looking at the clouds and out of nowhere it feels like something creeps up on you like a spider? That feeling when you walk up to a convenience store and see someone holding up the register with a gun? You back away and run to the nearest corner, or behind a fence, or a tree, or a mailbox, and wait to see what happens. That feeling when you’re holding a gun and it crosses your mind that you can kill someone? This thing in your hand can take someone? It comes and goes like a passing car in the middle of the night and you don’t even know where it came from. That feeling when you’re underwater and you start to wonder what it would be like if you stayed there and held your breath? You could stay there and deal with the panic and the not knowing whether or not you’ll shoot up like an arrow or stay where you are like a stone. That feeling when your body is not even yours anymore? You tell it to stop shaking, but it doesn’t. It keeps trembling like if you’re in some cold place and you don’t even have any clothes to cover yourself with. But it’s not the cold. It’s something else, something different. And you don’t even know where it’s coming from.

LA MANO

    M y fingernails would