Free B0061QB04W EBOK by Reyna Grande Page A

watching, sad that my little shack was being destroyed. Mago put an arm around me and said, “Just think about what is going to be built right there on that spot.”
    The workers returned the next day and the day after and the day after and began to lay the foundation, and after that, the walls. As soon as school let out, Mago, Carlos, and I would run down the hill to help out as much as we could. Abuelo Augurio handed each of us a bucket, and we carried bucketfuls of gravel and mortar. Carlos worked especially hard. He liked working side by side with Abuelo Augurio. He wanted our grandfather to be proud of him for being quick and steady, not like us girls who were too slow and clumsy with the bricks and the buckets of mortar. But Abuelo Augurio didn’t pay much attention to Carlos.
    We scraped our fingers carrying bricks. At night we couldn’t sleep from being so sore, but every day we put all of our energy into building our house, and when our fingers hurt too much, or our knees wanted to buckle under the weight of the buckets of wet mortar we carried to the bricklayers, we would tell ourselves that the faster we worked, the faster we would have a family again. That thought gave us strength.
    But it wasn’t long before the workers stopped coming. By the time February came to an end, and Carlos turned nine, the workers were nowhere in sight. Abuela Evila said our parents had no more money, so the house had to wait. We stood by the door every morning before going to school, hoping to see the truck that brought the construction workers bumping and jerking its way down the dirt road. Then we headed to school, where all we did was look out the window and sigh the hours away, leaning our sorrow on our elbows.
    By the end of the week, Mago stopped looking down the dirt road. She pushed Carlos and me up the hill and told us that it didn’t matter anyway. She said that no matter how many bricks and buckets of mortar we helped carry to the bricklayers, the house would never be done because it was just a foolish dream, just as silly as our dream of having a real family again.
    “It will get finished!” Carlos said. “They will come back!” He took off running up the hill, and by the time we got to the gate of our school, he was nowhere in sight.
    When we got back from school, I went inside my grandfather’s room to look at the Man Behind the Glass. “How much longer?” I asked him. “How much longer will you be gone?” As always, there was no answer.

9
    Tía Emperatriz
    S CORPIONS HAD ALWAYS been a part of our lives. We were taught by Mami to check our shoes before putting them on in the morning and to search our bedcovers at night to make sure there were no scorpions in the folds. We had to shake our clothes before putting them on. We couldn’t lean against walls. We couldn’t reach into the wardrobe or drawers without fear of being stung by a scorpion hiding in the dark.
    But at night, while you’re sleeping, there’s nothing you can do to keep a scorpion from crawling up onto the bed or, as in Abuelita Chinta’s case when she died in 2002, you can’t keep a scorpion from falling from the ceiling and stinging you.
    So the night I woke up screaming for Mami, I recognized the pain right away from the two previous times I’d gotten stung. My right butt cheek burned as if I’d been branded by a red hot poker likethe cows at the dairy farm down the road from my grandmother’s house.
    “Mami! Mami!” I yelled.
    “Nena, what’s wrong?” Mago asked.
    “Scorpion,” I said.
    Mago ran out of the room to get help. Carlos jumped out of bed and stayed by my side but didn’t touch me, as if he were afraid the scorpion would sting him, too. My grandfather kept on snoring and didn’t wake up to help.
    “Mami!” I cried out again. My mother didn’t come to my side. Instead, it was my aunt who came running into the room, asking me where it hurt.
    The scorpion was hidden on the collar of my dress, and when Tía