distance, and then a closer crack. Esteban looks up and beyond me, reaches a hand to Tierra’s neck.
Better get her in, he says, working his hand into the halter beside mine. Tierra hates a good storm. We lead the horse back toward the stall—the two of us. We pull her in, close the door behind us. A zipper of lightning rips through, and then another and another—big, yellow chunks that scissor the sky and burn the edges off the clouds.
Steady, Esteban tells Tierra. Steady, girl. She shakes her head and tips back onto her hind legs. Esteban talks her down, strokes her neck, shows me how to calm her.
In the next stall over, Antonio complains. From the tree of twigs in Esteban’s room, the birds call. Beside me Esteban doesn’t move. The sky keeps breaking up into its pieces, and I feel myself breaking too—jagged and not me but still me. Kenzie, the American girl. The bitchy one who has been nothing but trouble since she landed here. As if her problems were the only problems. As if she was doing the rest of them some kind of favor just by being here.
“I suck,” I say in English, and Esteban doesn’t understand, and I don’t mean him to, I don’t mean for anyone to see me as I see myself.
Adair showed me the bullring, I say, after a while.
Esteban doesn’t answer.
From the tower. We saw the bullring from the tower.
The bullring
is
Seville, he says. You see it from everywhere.
Why do they call it the cathedral?
The gates, he says. The entrance gates. They took them from a convent. He doesn’t want to talk about it—makes that clear. Doesn’t want me to ask any more questions.
I’m sorry, I say, about what happened.
He leans against me. That’s his answer. He says nothing, just lets time pass and the rain puddle the courtyard, rinse the tree house, saturate the bulls, who will never find much shelter beneath the spindly arms of the olive trees and who have no clue—no ounce of clue—what is happening to them next. Nothing goes away, Esteban says, after a long time passes. Not the things you remember, and not the things you still want.
The rain falls harder. There are lakes out in the courtyard—sudden silver lakes that keep growing wider, getting deeper.
Estela never let me forget, Esteban says now.
What do you mean?
That my mother loved me. That my father did. She told me every single day. Lunch and dinner.
Your parents loved you, Esteban.
You can’t cook like Estela cooks, he says, unless your heart is huge.
I guess, I say. But the fact is, I know.
I don’t want him to move, don’t want the rain to end, don’t want to lose this edge against me, don’t want another day of sun—no place to hide, no time for shadows. But a patch of sky blue is floating in with the gray, and now a last clap of thunder knocks, but lightning doesn’t follow.
Storm’s gone, Esteban says. The fallen rain slides off the roof. It rises like steam. It grows hazy.
Take me into the forest with you? I ask him. Please?
Maybe, he says, and now I hear Estela calling.
TWENTY-SIX
I find her in her brown dress in the kitchen, a plate of headless anchovies to one side and onions and peppers frying up on the stove. She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t scold me, she doesn’t warn me away from Esteban. She is Estela, the teacher, showing off her English.
“You see,” she says. “You watch.”
The onions are going transparent in the pan. The red and green peppers look like Christmas. When the frying is done, Estela takes a wide wooden spoon and scoops the fried things over half of the anchovies, then fits a second anchovy on top of each first, like she is making a sandwich. Onto a flat tray she pours out a little hill of flour, then drags each sandwich through, and now each sandwich is dipped into a bowl of beaten egg and put back into the pan.
“
Anchoas rellenas
,” she says, turning at last. “Were you watching?”
I nod.
“You will make them yourself. A few weeks, and you will make them.”
“For
Better get her in, he says, working his hand into the halter beside mine. Tierra hates a good storm. We lead the horse back toward the stall—the two of us. We pull her in, close the door behind us. A zipper of lightning rips through, and then another and another—big, yellow chunks that scissor the sky and burn the edges off the clouds.
Steady, Esteban tells Tierra. Steady, girl. She shakes her head and tips back onto her hind legs. Esteban talks her down, strokes her neck, shows me how to calm her.
In the next stall over, Antonio complains. From the tree of twigs in Esteban’s room, the birds call. Beside me Esteban doesn’t move. The sky keeps breaking up into its pieces, and I feel myself breaking too—jagged and not me but still me. Kenzie, the American girl. The bitchy one who has been nothing but trouble since she landed here. As if her problems were the only problems. As if she was doing the rest of them some kind of favor just by being here.
“I suck,” I say in English, and Esteban doesn’t understand, and I don’t mean him to, I don’t mean for anyone to see me as I see myself.
Adair showed me the bullring, I say, after a while.
Esteban doesn’t answer.
From the tower. We saw the bullring from the tower.
The bullring
is
Seville, he says. You see it from everywhere.
Why do they call it the cathedral?
The gates, he says. The entrance gates. They took them from a convent. He doesn’t want to talk about it—makes that clear. Doesn’t want me to ask any more questions.
I’m sorry, I say, about what happened.
He leans against me. That’s his answer. He says nothing, just lets time pass and the rain puddle the courtyard, rinse the tree house, saturate the bulls, who will never find much shelter beneath the spindly arms of the olive trees and who have no clue—no ounce of clue—what is happening to them next. Nothing goes away, Esteban says, after a long time passes. Not the things you remember, and not the things you still want.
The rain falls harder. There are lakes out in the courtyard—sudden silver lakes that keep growing wider, getting deeper.
Estela never let me forget, Esteban says now.
What do you mean?
That my mother loved me. That my father did. She told me every single day. Lunch and dinner.
Your parents loved you, Esteban.
You can’t cook like Estela cooks, he says, unless your heart is huge.
I guess, I say. But the fact is, I know.
I don’t want him to move, don’t want the rain to end, don’t want to lose this edge against me, don’t want another day of sun—no place to hide, no time for shadows. But a patch of sky blue is floating in with the gray, and now a last clap of thunder knocks, but lightning doesn’t follow.
Storm’s gone, Esteban says. The fallen rain slides off the roof. It rises like steam. It grows hazy.
Take me into the forest with you? I ask him. Please?
Maybe, he says, and now I hear Estela calling.
TWENTY-SIX
I find her in her brown dress in the kitchen, a plate of headless anchovies to one side and onions and peppers frying up on the stove. She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t scold me, she doesn’t warn me away from Esteban. She is Estela, the teacher, showing off her English.
“You see,” she says. “You watch.”
The onions are going transparent in the pan. The red and green peppers look like Christmas. When the frying is done, Estela takes a wide wooden spoon and scoops the fried things over half of the anchovies, then fits a second anchovy on top of each first, like she is making a sandwich. Onto a flat tray she pours out a little hill of flour, then drags each sandwich through, and now each sandwich is dipped into a bowl of beaten egg and put back into the pan.
“
Anchoas rellenas
,” she says, turning at last. “Were you watching?”
I nod.
“You will make them yourself. A few weeks, and you will make them.”
“For
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