her in, and save enough money to live on until she could go back to her old job and have enough saved up that she could rent a better apartment and not have to work double shifts to survive.
If it’s all that simple, then why am I so damned emotional? she asked herself as she wiped away another tear making a streak down her cheek as she headed back to her room.
When she got there, she sat down on the floor and opened the last two of the three boxes. The third one held her keepsakes from the past eleven years, and it was already on the closet shelf. When she left to go to college, she’d emptied four dresser drawers. Now she only needed one, for her underwear and nightshirts, which had been packed in the second box. The last box held a coat, a hoodie, and a couple of pairs of sweatpants that wouldn’t fit into her suitcase. Other than two pairs of jeans, a couple of secondhand-store dresses, and a few T-shirts already hanging in her closet, that was it. She’d lived in scrubs for the most part since she started working at the nursing home right after she and Luis married.
Her unpacking done, she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the bed. The ceiling became a screen for memories that played out in slow motion. There was one of her mother coming out of the only bedroom in the trailer and stumbling into the kitchen. She flipped the cap off a bottle of beer onto the floor and told Teresa to get up off her lazy ass and pick it up. The next vision was of the police and the Social Services lady who took her from the house. Her mother stood in the door with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and she didn’t even wave with the other one. She learned later that one of her teachers had seen bruises on her and called the police.
Teresa remembered keeping her eyes straight ahead and not even looking back at the ratty trailer. Living in the group home the lady was telling her about as they rode into town couldn’t be any worse than living there, where her mother couldn’t even make a decent taco or tamale without burning the meat.
Another vision made its way to the ceiling. This time it was Noah at fourteen. He’d come to visit Miss Janie that summer, along with his parents, and he’d kissed her. They were sitting on the porch swing when it happened, and he’d told her that she was pretty. She’d never forgotten that kiss and the way it made her feel—all gushy inside and flushed on the outside. Maybe that was just a typical first kiss, but she’d never captured that kind of excitement or feeling again, not even with Luis.
In the same sense, she’d never felt as dirty as when he told her afterward that she shouldn’t tell anyone about the kisses. When she’d asked him why, he’d said, “You know why.” But she hadn’t known—not until he had explained it to her when he came to the nursing home. She had jumped to conclusions and look where it got her. Her mother hadn’t given a damn about her. To have one that would think it disrespectful to kiss a girl on the porch was still a little foreign to Teresa.
Chapter Three
Teresa had finished putting a pot of black beans in a slow cooker to go with the enchiladas she planned to make for supper when she heard voices outside on the porch. Even though the thermometer said it was already past ninety degrees, Miss Janie had insisted on sitting on the porch swing that afternoon.
Teresa strained her ears until they hurt, then finally went to see who Miss Janie was talking to. She found eighty-year-old Sam, Miss Janie’s neighbor, sitting on the porch step and fanning himself with his sweaty old cowboy hat.
“Well, hello, Mr. Sam. How are you doin’ today?” she asked. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Well, hello to you, too, Teresa. I’d love a beer,” he said, “but if you ain’t got one, tea would be fine. And, honey, it’s just Sam, not Mr. Sam. That makes me feel like I’m older than I am. Us old guys don’t have no business out in the afternoon heat. As the crow flies, it’s less than a quarter of a mile from my place to here, but that’s across