Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano

tree. Just the two of us. It was going to be the first Christmas without Mom. It had been awhile since she’d disappeared and it seemed okay to talk about her.
    “Papi.”
    “¿Qué?”
    “Where do you think she went?”
    He looked out the window, cranked the volume up, and pushed down on the accelerator. We were the only ones on the highway. Nothing but billboards of whiskey and Denny’s. Rocío was singing a duet with Juan Gabriel. I rolled the window up and crossed my arms and waited.
    “She went to Mexico and she’s coming back when she’s ready. That’s what I think,” I said, as loud as I could, as loud as Rocío was singing. But he didn’t say anything.
    I looked out the window even though I wanted to tell him what he needed to hear. That he was a drunk, and he’d turn into someone else because he didn’t like her working for Dr. Roberto. The way she used to get dressed before going to work for him. And it wasn’t his fault. It was Don Pedro. When he’d drink, Estrella and I would go to our rooms or go to Tencha’s because we didn’t know who he’d turn into. He needed to snap out of it. Like in that movie when the actress slaps the guy’s face and says, “Snap out of it!” That’s what I wanted to say to him and that’s what I wanted to do.
    “Papi?” He looked straight ahead and then at me.
    “Snap out of it!” I said.
    He veered off the highway onto the feeder, and nothing but tall pines were around us. Gray clouds and an empty road. He stopped at a red light and it turned green but he didn’t move. There were no cars in front or behind us. His eyes were full of water like after a yawn and he opened his arms and motioned to give him a hug. I unbuckled the seatbelt and leaned over and he squeezed me so hard I didn’t know what to do with all the strength he used, holding me like that.
    I reminded him that we were at a traffic light and we had to keep going. The light had turned green. We drove on and didn’t say anything until we got to the nursery. But by then already the air felt easier.
    There were rows of trees right where we parked. The tree we both wanted was right in front of us. I joked that we could get cheeseburgers a lot faster if we got this one, and without answering, Papi went to the man and bought it.
    We got back in the truck and rewound the cassette tape to the beginning and sang loud, most of the time off-key because neither of us have a voice like Rocío. We sang every song until it came to “Amor eterno,” the song Juan Gabriel wrote about when his mom died. We couldn’t go past the first line . Papi looked down at the side-view mirror, at the pine branches sticking out from behind the truck, and every time Rocío raised her voice, singing and screaming at the same time, it felt like if the front seats were flooding with water.

LA ESTRELLA

    T hey were out when they came to get Papi. I remember the officers holding me down outside even though I wasn’t struggling. I could see the stars at the top of the sky and hear Papi yelling as they pushed him inside the car. And the sirens were loud, though far. Estrella was being rushed to the hospital and everyone around me kept saying, “Stop moving! Stop moving!”
    Was I moving?
    Papi was in the kitchen when the officers knocked on the door. I was in the bathroom. We were frying chicken for dinner and later when it’d burn I wouldn’t know if the smell was the burning or something else. They asked Papi if he was José Antonio Castillo, and after he said yes, they asked about Mom, Cristina María Castillo. Before they could finish saying her name, Papi raised his voice and said she’d run off already a year now. They wanted him to go down to the station for questioning and that’s when I heard the door close. I thought that was the end of it, that they’d leave us alone. But they banged on the door and said, “Mr. Castillo, open the door!” They yelled. “Open the door!” He’d been drinking, and I knew from