she had to see what was going on, so she opened the door to the living room but pushed it too hard, bringing forth a moment of unintended theatricality in which the yelling instantly stopped and both Scott and Maureen turned to face her, their foreheads and cheeks burning with an identical angry hue. No, Araceli hadn’t intended to do that; she wanted to hear more clearly what they were saying, not to stop the fight altogether. One glance at her jefe and jefa told her that this argument was significantly more serious than any that had come before, that the words passed between them were dangerously close to finding a physical expression in the exercise of limbs and muscles. Scott was standing in the center of the living room with his arms tensed at his sides, and as he turned to look at Araceli she saw a man with an expression she barely recognized: here was a man who felt his power slipping from him, who strained to open his eyes wide to take in the room and the woman before him, as if he had never really seen her before this moment. A few feet away, Maureen sat on the couch, before the coffee table and its plane of blown glass, legs crossed and arms folded, in that tenuous state of mind that exists between being amused and being afraid. Araceli sensed she was trying very hard to convince herself that her husband’s yelling was nothing more dangerous than the grumbling of an eight-year-old.
Araceli raised her eyebrows and prepared to turn away, but then something happened that had never happened before: they resumed their argument, without caring that Araceli was still in the room. Scott raised his finger and declared, “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare say another fucking thing.” I didn’t think he could do that. He screams while I watch. Maureen rose to her feet and began to walk toward Scott, causing Araceli to immediately turn around and close the door with the same speed and sense of repulsion that one uses to change the television channel upon encountering a gory, tasteless scene from a horror movie.
Inside the kitchen Araceli removed her apron: she would leave the dinner ready, in covered bowls on the marble counter, and then leave the kitchen and seek shelter in her room for the time being. When men raised their voices in imitation of carnivorous mammals, smart women made for the exits; that’s how it was in her home, in many other homes, in too many homes to count in the stacked cubes of the Nezahualcóyotl neighborhood where women conspired during the day to undo the tangles men made with their words at night. Sometimes you just have to run away. You have to close the window, close the door, and seal off your ears from the sounds people make when the dogs inside them decide to come out and snarl. Araceli made a conscious effort not to listen to the back-and-forth coming from behind the pine door, not to hear what words were being said as she finished putting clear plastic wrap over the bowls filled with pasta and fish sticks.
Araceli was reaching for the back door when she heard a half-grunted “Be quiet!” followed by an unmistakably female scream and a high-pitched crash that sounded like fifty porcelain plates striking the floor and shattering all at once. Instinctively she ran back across the kitchen, pushed open the swinging door, and found Maureen on the floor, half sitting and half prone upon the ruins of the coffee table, raising her arms in an attempt to steady herself without getting cut on the pool of shattered glass around her. She looked to Araceli like a woman who had been dropped from an airplane, or who had fallen from a cloud, landing on a spot of the earth she did not recognize, and who was surprised to see she had survived. Scott stood above her, raising his hands to his temples as he looked down at his wife.
“Oh, my God, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it,” he said, and he reached out to help her.
“Get away from me!” Maureen shouted, and he instantly stepped back. “Araceli, help me. Please.”
The Mexican woman froze. What have they done to each other, these people? Araceli felt the need to restore order and understood that the violence in this room might spin into something unspeakable were it not for her presence. Today I am