Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,51
didn’t like those kinds of sounds.
“Why do you want to find this hyena so badly?” Walter asked.
“It might need my help.” Rosa was looking out the open window. She’d trained her eyes to see in the dark. She could make out distinctions in black shades and shapes and could tell a possum from a cat from a football field away.
“How can you help it?” Walter asked.
“I don’t know,” Rosa replied. “I’ll know when I find it.”
She’d had Walter drive her up and down the streets closest to her house first, and they’d fanned out from there. Closer to downtown, just a few streets away from hers, things were changing. Where, a few weeks ago, a small house had sat, there was now an empty lot. Where, a few weeks ago, an empty lot had sat, there was now a new, bigger house, or a small row of condos, or a bar with a cute, cursive neon sign above the door. Several of the houses that were still there had For Sale signs out front, even though those houses were occupied and Rosa could see lights on inside.
“I think it has something to do with my sister,” Rosa said. “The hyena, I mean.”
“Which sister?”
“Ana.”
“Oh. As in, her spirit?”
“Yes.” Rosa swiveled in her seat. “You think that makes sense?”
“I know a thing or two about spirits,” Walter replied. “I spend a lot of time in an old church, remember?”
Rosa turned again to face the window. “Father Mendoza spends a lot of time in an old church, too, but he hasn’t been particularly helpful or encouraging.”
“To clarify,” Walter said, “I spend a lot of time in the basements and abandoned rooms of an old church. I have a different perspective.”
Rosa smiled out into the night. Maybe, she thought, this trip wasn’t a mistake after all.
“Let’s try the park again,” she said.
Walter clicked on his turn signal.
For almost an hour, Rosa and Walter walked through Concepcion Park. The night wasn’t hot, but the air was thick. Rosa was sweating inside her rubber boots, and her dress was sticking to her skin. It turned out to be not a very good night for searching. There were too many distractions. People were out late, playing baseball under the harsh lights. Cars took up almost all of the spaces in the lots. Some of those cars had windows that were steamed up—or smoked up, Rosa couldn’t tell. Walter wasn’t a distraction, though. Sometimes he tagged along beside Rosa, and sometimes he went his own way. Whenever she looked, Rosa noticed a firefly flash above Walter’s right shoulder. She was sure this was a sign, a good omen. She needed a good omen.
“Are you scared?” Walter asked. “About your sister?”
“No,” Rosa replied. “I just want to know what she wants. Are you scared? Of the spirits in the church?”
“Oh yeah.” Walter laughed. “But not enough to quit my job, right? It’s funny. I sort of like being scared.”
Rosa didn’t think it was funny at all. She thought it was wonderful.
They were making their way across a field when Walter stopped and went into a crouch. He’d found something. Rosa squinted, but she couldn’t see what it was. Walter straightened, and there, pinched between his fingers, was the tiniest snail shell. It was a perfect coil, and without a single chip. As he turned it, its iridescence gleamed in the moonlight.
“Do you want this?” Walter asked, holding the shell out to Rosa.
“Yes,” Rosa replied.
She knew exactly where she’d keep it.
Iridian
(Saturday, June 15th)
On this night, when Iridian wrote, she was alone in a dark house. The first thing she did was turn the television back on so she could take comfort in the glow of other people’s fake lives, and the second thing she did was grab her new notebook. Using a blue pen Rosa had fetched from upstairs earlier, Iridian filled all the lines of the first page with two words: I’m sorry.
They were, of course, for Ana—for what Iridian had said