Caridaylis stood alone, frozen to the spot where the uncle had left her. She was not looking at anyone, not even at the reporters snapping photos and spearing her with questions. She stared at the ground a few feet ahead of her. One reporter—sunglasses atop a perfect helmet of hair—yelled, Cari, what will you do now? What are you going to do now? I pushed closer to him, the crowd having turned more liquid in everyone’s rush to find a neighbor and spread the horrible news, and as soon as my arm could reach it, I raised my palm and covered the lens of his station’s camera, blocking his shot of Caridaylis. The cameraman was used to this, though, and quickly pressed something that raised the machine out of my reach. I looked back at Caridaylis just as she covered her face with her hands. She must’ve watched the concrete path leading back to the house through the spaces between her fingers, because she ran the length of it with her hands still shielding her.
At Cari’s sudden exit, my mom a few feet behind me yelled, No no no no! I turned around but couldn’t see her. She yelled, This can’t happen! We’re her voice! You hear me? We are her voice!
A few seconds later, Myra was at the fence diving after someone who’d just collapsed, yelling, Lourdes! Lourdes!
I yelled, Mom, and lowered my shoulder, used it as a wedge to move sideways through the mass of people flooding against the fence to chase Caridaylis with their words of support, throwing them at the house like rocks. I ducked down, making myself as small as I could, and through the spaces between torsos, I caught flashes of my mother near the ground, limbs trampling limbs, her arms flopping around Myra and another woman’s neck as they struggled to lift her.
Myra fanned my mother’s face, yelled, Help! Somebody help!
The other woman said, Lourdes, stand up, please! These people are gonna crush you!
She was maybe seven or eight feet away. From my ducked-down place, I pressed against stomachs, squeezed my shoulders past the butt pockets of people’s pants. An elbow flew back and crashed into my ear, sending a blast of pain so bright and loud that, as spots tracked across my vision, I thought I’d been punched on purpose, thought I’d never hear again. I fell from the searing of it, almost all the way to the ground, lurching forward, my hands stopping my fall when they landed on and clutched someone’s sneakers—my mom’s shoes, her ankles turned and rubbery at the ends of her legs.
—Mom! I yelled, but her head lolled forward like she’d decided right then to take a nap. I climbed her, used her knee and then her hip to pull myself upright, and I scrambled to my feet, pressing a hand to the new pulse at my ear the whole time. The pain was so bad that when I looked at my fingers, I was shocked not to see blood.
I grabbed my mom’s face the way she’d grabbed mine the last time we found ourselves in front of this house with these people. I shook her whole head and yelled, Mami! Mami! Wake up! Say something!
Myra grabbed my wrist and flung it away.
—Stop that! she hissed. Her name is Lourdes.
I blinked at her, the whole side of my head burning hot; blood had to be pooling somewhere in my ear. Myra didn’t know who I was, had no idea, and so I couldn’t ignore it anymore: my mother had never talked about a version of her daughter that could be me.
—You’re making it worse, she said. You’re not helping, just get out of the way.
Myra and the other woman began pulling my mom’s body in the direction of the street, leaving the fence behind and yelling, Get away get away, as they charged against people whose faces glowed as red as some of their shirts. They pushed past people clasped in hugs, people still turned toward the house and vowing, in the form of various slogans, to fight this, to stop this from happening, to do whatever it took to keep their new family together.
—I’m her daughter, I said to my mother’s back as the others dragged her away. Protestors filled in their wake. ?Soy su hija! I’m her daughter!
But they didn’t hear me. They didn’t know who I was, and as I tried and failed to push through to them, they never even turned around.
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