Hothouse

I only have one secret. It’s the thing that comes in the night. As I lie flat on my mattress, I expect her. I brace myself for her warm breath, her cool touch, the way she hovers over the ground, footsteps so light they do not seem to exist. I study the grooves in the popcorn ceiling to distract myself, finger the old quilt blanketed over me. To the rhythmic droning of Abuelo’s snoring in the other room, my eyelids flutter shut. 

The shadow beast meets me in the alleyway behind the old arcade, always the same place. She does not have a face. Yet I know she is me, I am her. I’m leaning against a red brick wall that’s damp and warm, like the summer air. The shadow beast moves closer to me beneath the violent gleam of the lone street light. She is me, I am her. I hear Mama’s favorite song playing somewhere far away. I hear the scrape of cars speeding down the highway. She comes closer, closer, closer. Her blackened hand cradles the side of my face, and I can feel it is wet with blood. Her fingers meet my lips, then my neck. I taste the blood in my mouth, the tang of overripe berries and strong perfume overcoming me. 

I know you. 

She doesn’t say it, but I hear it. I know it is meant for me somehow. 

I know you. I say to the shadow. I know you. 

Then I brace myself, squeezing my eyes shut as her grip tightens around my throat, as jolts of pain shoot through my veins. It has to hurt. There is no other way. I understand this now. Then I awake to sunlight teasing my eyelids and the sound of pots clanging in the kitchen. She is gone.

I do not feel at home in myself. Never have. It’s a scary thought, but one that constantly follows me around, follows me to sleep, follows me up to the loft of the barn. We sit in a circle amongst stray hay and mayflies, the Texas heat bringing a suffocating stillness to the air, even in the dead of night. The dull moonlight streaming through the open window paints our skin with a milky, watercolor white. The inside of my cheeks taste of cheap tequila. Alex sits beside me. The boy is made of sharp lines, cigarettes, and deep wells under his eyes. He keeps his hand on the back of my neck, stroking my skin to show some kind of ownership over me. I don’t mind it much when I’m drunk. Lorenzo sits beside him. I see him at school sometimes. All I know about him is that he stole the tequila from his older brother, and we drink it inside his family’s barn. 

My eyes wander across the circle to those cherry lips, always cherry. Ines, Ines, Ines. The curly shape of her name flutters through my mind. Her long hair cascades down her back, dark like a black sea, shiny and wet. I can only look at her like this when I’m drunk. Her skin looks too smooth, her laugh too musical, her eyes too soft when they fall on me. I drink from the bottle. Its fire blooms in my chest. 

I first met Ines in art class last year. She sat next to me once and then stayed there the whole semester. She used to doodle cats with big, cartoonish eyes. We would spend the entire period chatting about our favorite music artists. She liked the punk bands that I always thought were too cool for me. As she spoke, describing the lyrics to her favorite song, I admired her hoop earrings and the one dimple that appeared on her left cheek when she smiled. I see it now as she laughs at whatever stupid thing Lorenzo said. 

He scratches his underdeveloped mustache with yellowed fingernails and gestures for me to hand the bottle over. I do so reluctantly. 

“Gettin’ greedy, I see,” Lorenzo grins.

Greedy. Greedy. Greedy. 

“Where is your church dress, mija?” Mama only looks at the coffee mug she cleans, hunched over the sink. Water streams from the faucet, tumbling over piles of bowls and plates. I grab the crimson washcloth hanging over the oven door and begin drying off the dishes she hands me. 

“I had to wash it,” I say, though I don’t mention why. I don’t mention her, the shadow beast. My hands work mindlessly as I stare out the window above the sink—the old porch swing sways in the wind, covered in amber oak sap and buzzing flies. I don’t think anybody has sat there for years. 

“Go put it on. We’re going to be late.” 

I don’t mind going to church. Sometimes, it makes me feel clean. As I kneel in the pews, sunlight streaming in through a high window, I almost feel holy. I feel like a good girl. I finish drying off a plate, then hang the washcloth back over the oven. When I turn around, tio Carlos is standing by the front door, a cigarette lazily hanging from his lips. “Morning,” I say. 

His sharp eyes rake over my body in an all too familiar way, the crinkle of his crow’s feet, the raise of his overgrown brows. 

I am paralyzed there, barefoot on the cold morning tile. It is my fault that my pajama pants cling to my hips. It is my fault that the shirt I wear exposes the adolescent curve of my bare shoulder. 

“Valeria!” says Mama, “Go!”

And I do. I walk down the hall at a brisk pace, rush into my bedroom, and close the door tight behind me. 

And I know she is angry at me, not for something I did, but for something I am. Something we both are. 

The burn of the tequila had felt so good in the moment, the rough scrape of it traveling down my throat, ears ringing with the sweet satisfaction of knowing nothing at all. But the mirror scared me later that night. I stumbled quietly through the door, the agile bones in my body now sticky and lethargic. I locked myself in the bathroom, and that’s when I saw her beneath the eerie flickering light, trapped behind the dirty mirror Mama would ask me to clean the next morning. But everything was red: my hands, my clothes, red and slick, the tile floor, red smeared over the mirror. Only my church dress hanging from the towel rack behind me was clean. A pristine white rose blooming from such a hellscape, floating behind me like a wrath. 

My shadow self moved only when I moved. When I approached the mirror, sneakers squeaking over the bloodied floor, she seemed to get closer as well. At first, she didn’t have a face, like always, but the more I blinked, the more her features began to take shape. Soft, doe-like eyes. A strong, wide nose. Elegant, pouty lips. Her skin. Her hair, still the deepest black, the deepest shadow you could think of, but now she was familiar. Ines, Ines, Ines. Yes, she was beautiful. 

It had to have been some compulsive, demonic force inside me that forced me to climb onto the bathroom counter. I straddled the sink basin, blue jeans painted a deep merlot as I scrambled closer, closer, closer through the wild marsh of blood. Ines brought her blackened hand to my throat, her other hand caught in my curls. I’d never kissed a boy like that before. It was deep and dark and hungry, but not a greedy hunger, not one that can be satiated with a hardy meal. This was a yearning, a begging for something sweet, a dessert that’s served, savored. Tongues swiping over and in between lips, silky, sweet. She tasted like overripe berries and a hint of tequila. It felt as if we were on the brink of complete osmosis. We would soon disappear as individual, separate entities, and then it would just be this, forever,

over and over again. 

I don’t remember pulling away, but I remember seeing her face, though it wasn’t her face anymore. I was looking at myself, caressing my own skin somehow, feeling the frizzy texture of my hair between my fingers. 

I felt the fire in my belly arise again, then the burn of the tequila creeping up my chest into my esophagus. I scrambled off of the counter, away from myself, away from her. When I turned around, I came face to face with my church dress, that hanging angel, that ghost. I yearned to reach out and touch it, prayed that it would take me away from here, take me to the clean, pure feet of Mother Mary. Instead, the fire inside me exploded. A thick, black substance dribbled out of my mouth, over my chin, besmirching the crisp white fabric in front of me. It was hot, the rancid tang of rotten berries overcoming my senses. 

I know you. I know you. I know you. 

It was a mercy to wake up in my bed the next morning, a mercy that I did not remember how I got there. The bathroom was not covered in blood, as I had remembered. It was just as before, somewhat clean, mirror blemished by water droplets. But through that mirror, I saw it. The dress hanging behind me was no longer holy, ghost-like, but now cursed with the dark pigment that possessed me the night before. It scared me to death. It scared me because now she was here. She didn’t just occupy my dreams, my darkest fantasies, my mortifying shame. She was now living among me, haunting me. 

Dress shoes clop on cobblestones as we walk out of the church. Mama’s hand snakes beneath my hair, and she adjusts the collar of my dress. I had to wear my old dress. It’s an ugly pastel pink and too tight around my ribcage. Her hands are too cold for summer. They shock me as her fingers graze my warm skin. 

Ines stands on the corner by the streetlight. She’s talking to her older brother. He’s checking his watch. The noon sun shines bright on her silky skin, and I think I may die when she smiles at me when she waves subtly. 

I wave back, but it hurts. My wave is tainted. It’s a sin. She doesn’t know I’ve kissed her all over. She doesn’t know I’m rotten on the inside. 

“Why do you wave at that girl,” Mama’s arm comes down my back, pulling me closer to her. 

I watch Ines, her hair half up, tied with a ribbon. She and her brother walk across the street, out of my line of sight. 

“She’s my friend,” I say, “from school.” 

Mama looks back at her over her shoulder before adding, “I don’t like what I hear about her, mija.” 

I look down at the hem of my dress. 

“She will go to hell for all that, you know,” she whispers. Then she grabs my hand, almost as if she is about to kiss it. Instead, she inspects my fingernails. “You need a bath, mija.”

I look at my hands, and I see it too. Black. Black dirt caked beneath my fingernails. Black dirt coming to the surface.