Free Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes Page A

off her pink cheeks. “I knew you’d come.”
    “I’m fine. Just help me up,” Gip said.
    Nana waved me over. “Izzy, help me move her to the sofa.”
    I reached under Gip’s left arm while Nana lifted Gip’s right. “Careful Izzy; we must be gentle. Does it hurt, Gip? Tell us if it hurts.”
    Gip shook her head. “No, no. Just get me to the sofa so I can rest.”
    “Lay her gently,” Nana said.
    “Do you need a pillow or anything?” I asked.
    Gip smiled and closed her eyes, “No, dear. This is fine.”
    The left side of Gip’s thin face had a long gash and her left eye was beginning to swell like a water balloon. I turned away from the blood and saw Maggie sitting on the floor.
    I walked over and knelt down. “Hey, Maggie. I think she’ll be all right.” As soon as I said those words, I wished I could take them back. What if she wasn’t?
    Maggie held up four fingers. “Last time I stayed with your nana for four days.”
    “Last time?”
    She nodded. “Gip has to get help lots.”
    Once we’d settled Gip on the couch with a cool cloth over her eye, Nana walked me out to the porch. Tears collected like little pools in her eyes.
    “Is she going to be okay?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t be a liar to Maggie.
    Despite the tears, Nana’s voice remained steady and calm. “I need you to take care of Maggie while I go with Gip.”
    “Go where?”
    “Back to the hospital. She needs her doctor.”
    My head felt fuzzy. “What do you mean? Can’t you help her?”
    Nana shook her head. “She needs more than I can give. I will explain later. Just take Maggie and Frida home with you.”
    “We’ll go right now.”
    “Good. Give her a snack and try to distract her. I’ll call you in an hour or so.”
    I turned to go inside for Maggie when Nana grabbed hold of my arm. “Please light the Santa Ana and Mary candles when you get back to the house.”

    Nana had said an hour, but that hour grew fat and round until it felt like it would explode. Each second ticked by at the paceof Earth rotating around the sun. Outside, the trees bent to the wind’s command. I wanted to run with it all the way to Costa Rica. Or to anywhere that death and sickness couldn’t climb the walls and come inside.
    “You wanna play a game?” Maggie asked as she stroked Frida gently on her lap.
    “You know how to play Go Fish?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I know where the cards are.” She set Frida down and ran to the kitchen. She returned with a deck of cards with little cherubs’ faces on the backs.
    We sat on the floor around the coffee table in the living room. Maggie scattered the cards on the table and pushed them back into a neat pile.
    “Hey, Maggie, why do you call her Gip?”
    “When I was really little I couldn’t say grandma, so I put grandma and her name, Pauline, together to make ‘Gip.’ Sounds better, don’t you think?”
    I nodded.
    “You deal,” I said.
    Maggie was intent, dealing out the cards one by one, but her shoulders, slumping into her chest, and her arms hanging like limp spaghetti noodles made her look small and hollow, as if there were nothing inside to hold her up.
    I studied her little face. She had a small brown spot on her left cheek.
    “Is that a birthmark?” I pointed at the spot.
    She touched her cheek. “Yeah. Gip says it’s where Jesus kissed me before I left heaven.”
    “I have one too. I stuck out my lower lip to show her the small white dot I’d had since birth. “See?”
    She frowned. “Jesus loves you more.”
    “Why would you say that?”
    “’Cause he kissed you on the lips.”
    I rubbed my bottom lip and wondered if Jesus really had favorites. If he did, I didn’t feel like one of them.
    Maggie won six games of Go Fish before she grew bored and plopped onto the sofa. “Will you tell me a story?”
    “I don’t know any good ones.” I yearned to create a story just for Maggie, to make her feel better, safer. But nothing came to me.
    Maggie rested her head on a pillow,