Chapters (41)
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART TWO
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
On the dirt driveway again, she implored, “Susana, can you talk to me now? Can you tell me what you know?” No response. Calliope wondered if shaking Susana’s shoulders would do any good. “Do you have any bottled water? Supplies? I need to get to my tía’s hacienda. Andres might be there waiting. Susana? Come on, amiga. Talk to me. What happened to Reina? Why are you in the dirt?” She pulled Susana’s arm, trying to lift her from the ground. Her uterine muscles ached with the strain, her back shrilled in pain. “We can’t stay out here on the driveway. It’s dark, it’s not safe. I can’t leave you.”
Susana sang again, absently. Calliope walked back to the car and strapped Eunjoo into her booster seat so she could pull closer up the driveway to force Susana from the mud. But when she’d pulled up, the mud woman was gone. “Dammit, Susana. What are you doing?” She flipped on the headlights and told Eunjoo, “Stay here.” Where would Susana have gone? Into the house to pack? Into the barn with the animals? This wasn’t normal behavior by any stretch of the imagination, and Calliope was so confused and frustrated she wanted to cry. “Susana?” How many silent, dead houses would Calliope scour tonight? “Susana?” How many surreal and twisted games of hide-and-seek? “Susana.” Her voice a command now, loud and urgent. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m trying to help.” She’d thought she was the one who needed help. Chickens screeched and flapped. Corn rustled.
“I’m not going into the cornfields to find you,” she yelled. “Where are you?”
An owl hooted in the distance. Then, a gunshot. Calliope jolted toward the barn, holding her stomach. No horses in their stalls, just those damn chickens. “Susana?”
Her friend lay on the ground in a pile of straw, soaked red.
“No. No-no-no-no. Oh god, please no. Susana?” She covered her mouth, everything inside her shattering. “Why? Why would you do this?”
She hunched over Susana’s body, lifted her friend’s head, cradling the dark mass of hair falling across her lap. Calliope pressed her fingers to Susana’s neck and waited for a throbbing to press back, but nothing came. Calliope couldn’t cry. Couldn’t scream. Could do nothing but cradle her friend’s lifeless body on the floor of the empty barn. The chickens were relentless in their squawking, feathers flying. In one lifeless hand, Susana’s gun. In the other, a clump of mud and rock, pressed to her heart. The place that should have been beating.
Calliope imagined Susana as a queen bee of colony collapse.