***

– hangs immobile, indecisive over the western highlands. She loves the rain. Wonders if it will come early today, relieve them all. The sun, the heat pours in, fills up the three rooms to the brim. She lifts the lid on the pot again, a burst of steam in her face, stirs slowly.

“Mamá,” she says, “Jessenia is coming.”

“What? Speak louder, hija.”

And so, Alejandra repeats herself, slowly and loudly into her mother’s good ear.

Her mother, who has been detailing her most recent aches and pains, pushes a hand into the small of her back and sighs deeply.

“Just be nice, okay?” Alejandra says.

“What does that mean? I’m always nice. But this one. She never stops talking. Even as a child. My God, the chatter was endless. I’d have to send her out to the yard when I watched her.” She pulls a couple of spices down from a shelf, unscrews the top to one, and sniffs.  Sprinkles a bit into the pot. “I was looking forward to some peace and quiet around here for once.”

Alejandra shrugs. She never feels anything but lonely in the peace and quiet.

When Alejandra was eighteen on a university scholarship, she arrived in the capital, a city wreathed in slums and sewage. Drugs and violence and poverty tore into it like a rabid dog. Alejandra saw with a modicum of satisfaction that she had been right in her suspicions about other places; it did not quell the extent to which she missed home. Emilio had gone with her, of course.

I can make more money in the city, he said.

We’ll build a nice house when we get home, Alejandra thought.

She went to class during the day, sticking close to the university buildings. He got a job at a construction site, working nights. Opened a bank account. They lived in a dingy one-room apartment. She hung yellow sheets from the window for a curtain. At night, cockroaches scuttled back and forth across the floor, and she tried to sleep as far from the edge of the bed as possible.  Outside the unfamiliar sounds of horns blaring and men yelling and sharp grinding noises assaulted her in the darkness. People stomped and banged on the walls and the ceilings. And she would cradle her phone to her ear and call Jessenia, who would talk and talk and talk, the endless drone of her voice pulsing across the line like blood through an umbilical cord.

Jessenia walks into the kitchen as if it’s her own, doles out a kiss on each cheek for her tia and prima, then drops into the chair like a heavy sack of maíz. The smell of perfume permeates the thick air, liquid candy and roses and chili powder. Alejandra breathes through her mouth. Her mama settles back onto a creaking stool near the stove where she has a good view of the pot. For the first couple of minutes, they talk about the usual everything and nothing –

Pleasantries and

Inquiries and

Complaints about

Ungrateful children and

Useless husbands and

No medicine at the pharmacy

No meat at the market

No paper at the school.

The heat –

***

– which cooks the field, part dirt and part yellowed grass.  Martin is aware of the heat, but only in the peripheral way of a six year old.  He runs faster, kicking the ball out in front of him. Every afternoon he brings his ball down to the dirt patch at the end of the neighborhood and watches the games. Sometimes the bigger boys don’t let him play, but today his cousin Jose is there.

One of the other boys had said, “He can’t play; he’s tiny.”

Jose had said, “Just let him play.  He’s good. Trust me.”

And since Jose was well liked and one of the oldest boys, the rest had acquiesced, albeit grudgingly. The kid had looked down at Martin and said, “Fine.  But no special treatment.”

And Martin had nodded eagerly, grinning.

Mud flecks the back of his tiny calves as he runs.  He dodges, hears someone swear (a word that he is not supposed to know, but does) behind him, imagines his legs like the wings of a hummingbird. Superhuman. A thousand beats a minute. The goal looms, two off-kilter wooden sticks connected by a third across the top. Beyond the goal is the river and the hills, and beyond that the sky, dark clouds gathering, more quickly now, rolling in like waves. Fat Rafa is the goalie for the other team. He puts his hands out. Narrows his eyes and grins.

Across the river, a black SUV makes its way along the steaming black ribbon of road that encircles Santa Rosa like a noose.

It slows, sunlight glancing off of shiny metal hubcaps.

Stops.

One droplet falls from the sky, slips unnoticed down the window of the car –