Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,34

if God has willed you and your family to bear witness, you must be accepting and receptive to her and whatever that message might be.”

Father Mendoza then cleared his throat and glanced up at his clock. Rosa knew there were other people out in the hall who had come after her and were waiting to speak to the priest, but still, she’d been in his office for barely ten minutes.

“Do you have any idea what your sister’s message might be?” the priest asked.

“Not yet,” Rosa replied. “But I’ll figure it out.”

On her way out of the church, she came across Walter Mata blocking one of the hallways. He was up on a ladder, changing a light that had burned out. The sight of him caused Rosa to stop short. Her breath came out in a single, strange pop. She knew that, in addition to being both a grade ahead of her in school and her ride to church every Sunday, Walter worked at the church a few days a week, doing odd jobs. He’d fix leaky toilets, change air filters, sweep, mop, empty trashcans, whatever anyone needed him to do. In order to change the light, Walter’s right hand was raised toward the ceiling, and the muscles in his arm were twitching as he screwed in the new bulb. Rosa liked the look of that arm. She thought, Huh.

“Hey,” Walter said, noticing Rosa.

“Hi,” Rosa replied. Then she scooted past the ladder legs and went on her way. There were other things to think about right then aside from the unexpected shock-delight of Walter Mata with his arm raised, changing a light.

Rosa’s own room wasn’t a very good place for thinking. It wasn’t wide open like the yard or good and clean like Father Mendoza’s office. Her room was a mess, but she’d never dream of going into Jessica’s room, which was an even bigger mess and where she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find a cleared-off space to sit.

So, for a while, Rosa sat on the floor of her mess of a bedroom. She sat and waited. She listened. She sniffed at the musty air, hoping to pick up on Ana’s cottony scent. She sat through several cycles of the air conditioner clicking off and on. Downstairs, she heard voices coming from the television. Iridian was down there. She was on the couch, burrowed under a blanket and watching soap operas. The volume on the television was turned almost all the way down. The voices of the characters were just murmurs rising up through the floor, but the sound of them still tugged on Rosa’s nerves.

She relented, and went down the hall to Jessica’s room, but just to pass through to get to the window, and then to the oak tree outside the window. After shoving up the sash and sticking her head into the humid night, Rosa saw a spot on the trunk of the tree, a fresh blond oval that stood out against the darker strips of bark. It was a scar. A year later and the tree was still healing from the night when Ana had put her trust in a branch that couldn’t hold her weight. Rosa could relate to the tree. She knew what it felt like to have a part of her snapped off, leaving her with a big, raw hole that might heal but would never heal right.

Rosa was careful with her footing. The recent rains had made the bark soft and slick. First she climbed out, and then she climbed up, hooking a leg over a branch above, pulling and twisting until she was on top of that branch, belly down. She shimmied forward, knocking loose leaves and small branches, until she could latch on to the gutter in front of her and pull herself onto the roof. She’d only gone up to the roof a few times before, and every time she’d ended up with oak leaves in her hair and scrapes along her forearms from pulling herself along the gritty tiles. It was always a fight.

Rosa much preferred being on the ground to being in the sky. She liked having a connection to the earth, and was comforted by the thought of miles and miles of life beneath her feet. But the sky reminded Rosa of