Slut Lullabies by Gina Frangello

o—” Beep .
    â€œMiguel? It’s me, Angie. Look, I want to talk to you, OK? You need to meet me in person, I don’t want to talk about this over the phone. So, OK, don’t call me at home ’cause . . . I’m not so much there right now, uh, so, I don’t know, call me on my cell . . .”
    OK , Miguel thinks, Here is where they all start to fall .

    Mami was looking for Miguel’s socks. Why she thought they’d be in Papi’s room, he does not recall. She had to take Miguel to the doctor to have his foot put in a cast; at school, worried about Mami, Miguel had claimed his foot hurt so he could be sent home. When he claimed it again, Mami dragged him to the clinic. None of Miguel’s friends ever went to the doctor; why did he have to be the one with a crazy mother from Chicago? Over his squirming protests, the doctor pried at him with fingers greasy from other people’s sweat, proclaimed the cartilage on the ball of his foot “cracked.” Mami, earnest with doctor-faith that would later become minister-faith, meant to drag Miguel back to have his foot obscured in plaster so the doctor could grow more fat and rich.
    The socks were in Papi’s room, and so was Papi, passed out. He didn’t work anymore, was back from wherever he’d been the past month, still in the shirt worn when he left. Mami tiptoed; Miguel heard the clumsy thud of keys, bottles falling on dirt. He waited, full of hatred for the doctor and Mami, who never saw people for what they were.
    â€œThieving whore—you think you can trap me by hiding my keys?”
    Papi’s voice came out English; Miguel did not know what the words meant. Only the tone, one of chasing, Papi’s heavy feet pounding dirt with hollow echoes; Mami’s, fleeing, too light to be heard. He pursued her to the yard, where the neighbors on both sides were out tending their gardens: watering, weeding, gathering—things his mother, the doctor-believer, did not know how to do. The neighbors turned their lazy eyes to Papi—he was just violent enough to be a bit of novelty, even in their violence-splattered lives. He caught Mami’s hair in a fist. Miguel felt his own head jerk. A yo-yo, her face making contact with Papi’s curled fingers, knuckles as torn and purple as a woman’s hidden parts. Mami’s bones made a louder noise than dirt, but her muffled cry was similar, like an echo inside her own chest. Miguel buried his head in his knees, thought, Let him stop now , God, let him stop now, I want to go to the doctor.
    Girls screaming. Not Mami, but Miriam and Norma, running from the front yard. Mami on her knees, one knee catching the hem of her dress taut and hunching her over, the fabric too stiff to stretch. He held her hair at the scalp, no movement permitted. Mami had grown skinny from saving flour, butter, and sugar for the children: through her skin, sharp bones. The crunching of knuckle on jaw, knuckle on shoulder blade, knuckle on teeth. Blood on Papi’s hand. Was that where the purple came from—dried blood and dirt, never washed from some other beating?
    In the past month, had Papi been at some other lady’s house, as Miriam sometimes said, collecting blood to stain his jagged fingers?
    Or was the discoloration merely an old man’s decay, waiting for Miguel someday, too? Now, Miriam in the yard, a whirlwind in bare feet, shaking the fence. The neighbors stared: the girl was too proud, she and her American mother both. “Ayudenla! Ayuden a mi mami, ayudenla!” Who did the child think she was, asking that they get involved? That man was crazy—they had enough troubles of their own.
    â€œMiriam!” Mami’s voice, weak but rising like a sharp note, stilling the air. “Go in the house!” The neighbors did not comprehend English, Mami’s command an unknown oracle. “Take the niños inside—now!”
    Limbs flew. Miriam, soaring