Free Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes Page B

yellow curls circling her face. She pulled her knees into her chest, her small arms wrapped around Frida, and soon gave in to sleep. Her pale face appeared ghostly in the afternoon’s gray light.
    I stood at the back window watching the cottonwoods sway to the pulse of the wind. Steel-gray clouds loomed above the village and the scent of rain and earth floated into the house.
    When Nana finally got home, her shoulders slumped, making her seem smaller than usual. My heart twisted like
yerba
roots plowing into the ground to see her face so limp and long.
    “How is she, Nana?” I whispered as we walked past Maggie.
    Nana took me out back and we sat under the long portal. Silence filled the space between us. Even the cicada bugs settled into a hush, saving their song for a sunnier day.
    Nana gazed across the yard as though the words she needed hung at the edge of the approaching storm, close enough to taste but too far to touch. “Each of us comes into this life with only a thread of time to live our essence. Some threads are shorter than others.
    “Like your father. His thread was short, his journey interrupted. Gip’s has been long and it is time for her to leave this world.”
    Nana patted my leg. “We must help Maggie now, so that her journey is one of joy. We are all she has.”
    “I don’t understand. Can’t you heal her?”
    “Gip has been sick a long time,
mija
. We knew this day was coming. She has an illness in her brain that cannot be cured, and sometimes she loses her eyesight and falls, like today. And it has only gotten worse.” Tears eased down Nana’s worn face. “You see,
mija
, when it is your time to leave, nothing can stop that. Even the brightest star in our universe will burn out someday.”
    “How long does she have?”
    “I prayed for another day so that Maggie could say good-bye. I will take her tomorrow. And you too, if you’d like.”
    We sat hand in hand in the worn leather chairs that, just weeks before, had held the joy and laughter of a birthday celebration. I could almost hear the echoes of that memory on the tips of the breeze, but within minutes rain plunged from the sky and washed them away.

14
Becoming a Big Sister
    The next morning, Nana sat silently in the front passenger seat as Mr. Castillo trailed the long line of cars on the highway. Maggie slumped against the window, staring out at the humming traffic.
    The city of Albuquerque hurried all around me. There was no whispering wind, no safe cocoon, only black asphalt and concrete buildings. The buildings and bridges had no roots; they just sat on the surface of Earth, temporary tenants of the desert.
    I turned my baseball over in my hand, staring at the words. In the afternoon sun, the blue ink appeared even brighter as I traced my finger over the two humps of the letter
M
.
    Suddenly M Street seemed a million miles away. And right then, I knew it would never be home.
    When we arrived at the hospital, the smell of bad things pushed up my nose. I wondered how long we would have to be here.
    Gip lay so still that I thought we were too late. Maggie crawled up into the bed and laid her head on Gip’s chest. I had never seen anyone die and I didn’t want to. Nana followed me into the hallway.
    “It’s not right,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “How can this happen—and in a hospital?”
    “What do you mean?” Nana asked.
    “Gip should die at home, in the village. It’s so lonely here, and white. There’s no color at all.”
    Nana wrapped her arms around me, and I wanted so much to let out the hot stinging tears welling up inside of me, but they refused to come.
    “You are right,
mija
. We need to take her home.”
    The smell of death had silently crawled into every crevice of Gip’s house. In the distance a dog barked and Frida’s ears perked up. Then she blinked her shiny green eyes at me and crawled into my lap. The world grew silent again except for a ticking clock hanging on the wall. I was sitting