The Boy by Lara Santoro Page A

square her soul to the stars, no time to locate the exit onto the other side. There would be the sudden, irreparable opacity of things, a single unforgiving instant in which every borrowed day would be weighed against not the purity of her soul but against the work of her hands. After Eva’s imperial entrance, Anna’s beliefs had changed. She would be judged not by the work of her hands but by the quality of sap running up and down her lengthening weed well after she was gone.
    “Let me speak to your father again.”
    “Oh hello, Anna. Still unshackled?”
    “Get her Little House on the Prairie .”
    “Which one is that? The one with a whole load of Yanks dressed like Heidi?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “Eva, your mother wants you to watch people jumping rope and picking apples. Do you want to watch people jumping rope and picking apples?”
    Had the man ever been serious? Had he taken anything remotely seriously in his life? He had come into effortless being with few of the weaknesses, the standard failings of the human heart. Untainted by fear, unconstrained by circumstance, he moved through life as if through a game of something on green grass. While she stood mutely at the foot of her own inadequacies, he soared above the world’s open wounds without a single thought of God. There was no stealing his lunch, no getting his goat. She’d seen him cry only once in their history together, at the airport, right before her flight, and even those tears had seemed calculated, manufactured for the occasion.
    “Anna, I beg you, don’t leave me.”
    “Fuck you.”
    “I’ll do anything.”
    “Let go of my arm.”
    “Anna.”
    “Eva, it’s time to go.”
    “Daddy.”
    “Please don’t take her away.”
    “Eva, give me your hand.”
    “Please.”
    “Let’s go.”
    “Bye, Daddy.”
    “I beg you.”
    “Bye, Daddy.”
    Anna slid the knife into an onion’s flank and dropped it on the board with a sharp intake of breath, blood pooling fast and hard around her fingernail and falling—thick, red, ruby-red—onto the counter.
    “Fuck,” she said.
    “For God’s sake, Anna, will you please stop this truck driver business? Eva says you swear all the time.”
    Anna closed her hand into a fist.
    “Will I stop this truck driver business? Will you stop behaving like a fucking two-year-old all the time? Your daughter is coming back to a classroom full of poor, angry kids with crew cuts and a million axes to grind. They will dismember her on arrival.”
    “Anna, you really must watch the way—”
    “I must watch nothing. You get her Little House on the Prairie .”
    And she hung up.
    Silence lapped at her in slow, low waves. She walked into the pantry. Putting out her bloodied hand, she let her fingertips describe the curve of an apple first, an onion next. She lifted an egg. She had forgotten the existence of eggs, the implausible humility of eggs. She had forgotten so much since the boy, let go of so much.
    “Hey.”
    She turned and there was the boy, motorcycle jacket still on despite the heat.
    “You’re bleeding,” he said.
    She shrugged.
    He didn’t provide first aid. He didn’t take her by the hand and lead her into the bathroom, search the cabinet, seal the wound. He pressed his thumbs lightly against her lips and brought his mouth to hers.

Chapter Eight
    S ummer has its own music. It’s slow and soft and, more often than not, slightly swollen between notes. Even Esperanza, whose scrubbing had the adrenaline-pumped edge of a full cardiovascular routine, mellowed her game. The boy procured a device through which movies and television shows could be plucked out of the ether and watched online. Anna and Esperanza stood staring at the small black box.
    “It’s messed up,” Anna said.
    “It’s like witchcraft,” Esperanza said. “Where did he get it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Who paid for it?”
    “Who do you think paid for it.”
    “Eee,” said Esperanza. “This is starting to be too