Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,36

made Iridian mad thinking about how much she once loved being outside. It made her particularly mad on a night like this one, when she was on the couch in the living room, covered up by a crocheted blanket and pretending to be asleep. She had been clamping her jaw shut for so long that a headache had taken root and bloomed behind her right eye. She was angry, but she was also scared—angry at herself for being so scared. She couldn’t help it. The house had been making sounds all night. Windowpanes in the kitchen were shifting in their sashes. The refrigerator kept clicking. Ice cubes were falling from the door to the floor and shattering, one every half hour or so. The sounds then got closer. The ceiling fan above her head creaked. Something—a fly maybe—buzzed around her head, but then it stayed in one place, and the buzzing got louder and more persistent. Maybe she was making that up. Maybe it was just a symptom of her headache.

Then, Iridian heard the click and fizz of a soda can being opened. She tossed the blanket aside and sat up, knowing exactly what she was going to see: Jessica holding a Diet Coke. She didn’t have any makeup on—not even the faintest flick of mascara—and she was wearing red plaid pajama bottoms and a blue-striped tank top. Her socks didn’t match. There was a ragged hole in one, at the big toe. It was jarring—the clashing patterns, the bare face. Iridian hadn’t seen Jessica look so un-put-together in a long time.

“Hey,” Jessica said. “Do you know where Dad is?”

“What are you lurking around for?” Iridian demanded. “What time is it, anyway?”

“After three.” Jessica slurped her soda. “Dad should be home by now.”

“Why don’t you just call him?” Iridian asked.

“He’s not answering his phone.”

Didn’t they just have this conversation?

Iridian waited, then waited some more, but Jessica just kept standing there. Finally, Iridian rolled onto her side, burrowing her face into the cushions of the couch.

“You can’t stay down here forever, you know,” Jessica said.

“I can try!” Iridian shouted.

If she closed her eyes and thought about it really, really hard, she could feel the fibers of the cheap, scratchy couch and those of the cheap, scratchy crocheted blanket weaving together with the hairs of her arms and unshaved legs. Those fibers poked into the skin of Iridian’s face, trapping her there, pincushion-style. She would become the furniture. The furniture would become her.

Iridian had been downstairs for two days now, camped out on the couch. This was her haunted life. She slept whenever—it didn’t necessarily have to be night. When the seemingly never-ending storms weren’t causing the power to blink out, she’d watch the channel on satellite that showed only soap operas, one episode after the other after the other. She was vaguely aware of her dad and her sisters coming and going, passing behind the couch on their way to and from the front door and the kitchen. Jessica was going to work or to John’s. Rosa was going to church or to look for her hyena. Rafe was maybe going to work, maybe going to the bar, maybe going to sad Norma Galván’s house a couple of blocks away.

Iridian hadn’t changed her clothes. She hadn’t taken a shower. Eventually, Rosa had warmed Iridian a can of tomato soup and brought down a toothbrush and some toothpaste from upstairs.

Iridian mourned the absence of her books. She’d find herself reaching for them, involuntarily. She missed the feeling of paper against her fingers. The loss was painful. The pain wasn’t in her heart, but in her throat, where words come from.

“I keep waiting for something else to happen,” Iridian said. “Every little sound makes me want to jump out of my skin.” She paused. “Have you seen anything?”

“What are you watching?” Jessica asked, sitting on the edge of the couch. She yanked on the corner of the blanket to try to gather enough to cover her legs. “Anything good?”

“Go away.” Iridian swatted at her sister’s arm. “There’s no room.”

Jessica took another noisy slurp of soda, and the sound caused Iridian’s headache to pulse.

“That lady has a