"Flashflood" - A Novel Excerpt from Drowning Tucson

FLASHFLOOD

This the part where I’m supposed to bash out my window and crawl out on the roof, Rebecca thought when the cab of her car had been underwater for more than two minutes. Her car shook and turned and flipped beneath the fierce water, knocking up against the walls of the arroyo, scraping small boulders and crashing into turns while the floodwater swept it from the city into the bowels of the wilderness. Yes, this is the part we’ve seen a thousand times on the news. I kick out the window with the heel of my foot and don’t worry about cutting myself as I climb onto the roof—because it’s better to get a few small cuts than to drown—and up on top of the car where I hang on for dear life until some good samaritan throws me a rope or a police helicopter shines its spotlight on me and lowers down a man with a safety harness to lift me away from the raging flood.

But Rebecca did not bother lifting her foot to kick her way to safety. She did not try to roll the window down. She did not try to undo her seatbelt. She sat completely still and let her lungs fill with water, feeling purified as it splashed against the back of her throat and down her windpipe until it boiled inside her lungs and they threatened to—aren’t they supposed to burst?—collapse. She could feel each individual water molecule seep into the lining, burrowing, tickling almost, and was almost disappointed because this was supposed to be the most painful way to die—waiting on the little oxygen left in her blood to dissipate and then for her brain to get all mushy and foggy and slowly wink out, and she was supposed to be in complete terror while her hair floated around her head in a seaweed dance and she’d be dead but still able to see. But the oxygen was not dying out even though she knew she had not taken a breath in at least three minutes because the dashboard clock was still blinking time.

It was during these minutes of unbearable waiting that Rebecca saw the last bubble of air float by her head from the backseat and lodge itself between the windshield and the dashboard. She leaned forward to pick it loose. She felt it wedged in the corner of the windshield directly below the Grease Monkey sticker from her last oil change. She remembered the grand opening of the Grease Monkey on Pantano Road and how there was a man in a blown up vinyl monkey suit who sputtered around on the street corner with a plastic monkey wrench and a pair of overalls, beckoning the drivers to stop, and kids peeked over the ledges of the backseat windows or from the rears of station wagons and smiled and waved at the monkey. She lifted the bubble tenderly between her fingers and brought it to her face with the intention of biting into it and sucking out the few air particles it might contain, but instead of placing it in her mouth she raised it up to her ear and pinched it until it burst and a scream escaped and shot into her ear, down the canal like burning wax, reminding her of something that mattered before the flood and the car filling with water and the turning and twisting.

*            *            *

Less than two years into her marriage, Rebecca took up crying as a hobby. Ever since her husband, Rogelio Nuñez, had withdrawn her from the Pima County Community College, Rebecca often found herself weeping at her kitchen window, her forehead resting against the glass. She wanted to write a series of essays on crying. How sometimes scrunching your eyes real tight while the tears poured down your face would keep your eyes from getting red. That was the trick for not getting caught. So people wouldn’t stop and ask you what’s wrong all the time. But there was also something nice about crying. A deep pleasure in being able to release the anger or frustration inside her in a tangible form, the salty liquid drops she could wipe onto her sleeve, leaving a darkness that would lighten after a few minutes. The taste reflected the same dry salty feeling she felt when she was hopelessly disappointed, like the time Rogelio came home to find her studying at the dining room table. He ripped her books from beneath her hands and threw them on the floor, saying you think you can just go around behind my back reading when there’s things that need to be done around here? But she did not cry then. She could not give him that luxury. Instead she got up and took the meatloaf from the oven and set it in front of her husband with pursed lips, making sure to hold back her tears and act like it was nothing when it really felt like he had thrown her to the ground and stomped on her throat, screaming MEATLOAF AGAIN, the fuck do you do with our money, and they ate their dinner in silence while her husband’s chewing practically drove her to madness, the squishy chomping and sucking testing the strength of her resolve and mocking her even when she carried her dirty dish to the sink and thrust her hands beneath the dishwater like she was searching for the washcloth but really clasping, smashing her hands and fingers together as hard as she could and wondering if there was a butcher knife beneath the water would she finally use it on her ungrateful and worthless husband, but then her rage and discontent waned and she felt guilty for questioning him, he was doing the best he could, they only pay Mexican mechanics so much, they’re too easy to come by, and she released her hands and found the washcloth, not watching her husband or letting him see her frustration as she scrubbed food from her plate and it fell into the sink and mixed with the white soap bubbles until they turned orange. When he got up and left his dirty plate at the table, ignoring Rebecca, she knew he had gone to the bathroom to wash his face and sit on the toilet until he read the newspaper from cover to cover. This she used to love about him—the way he’d sit on the toilet every morning, relating the news stories to her that interested him while she brushed her hair or washed off last night’s mascara. But he hadn’t read to her for a while, and now it just annoyed her, his sitting in there, hiding behind the paper. And she knew there was no use in bringing up any of her worries now, because she had lost her window of opportunity. If he was in a better mood she could try to explain to him that she wasn’t being selfish. She simply didn’t want to be another broke mojado family. Didn’t want to give her neighbors a reason to laugh at them and say to each other, see, they’re all the same, living off our dollar and taking our goddam jobs. And while she waited to hear the toilet flush, Rebecca thought maybe if he would let me work too—a paper route, a cashier at Thrifty’s, anything—that would be enough. Instead, I’m wearing a hole in our kitchen window where I lean my forehead every afternoon and watch the birds and the rain and the kids and try to name the cactus—ocotillo, saguaro, prickly pear, jumping, barrel, aloe—while I wait on you to come home mad because you hate your job. Have you seen the groove where my forehead rests? Or are you too busy going into the kitchen and searching for the grilled government cheese sandwiches that we both hate so much? I’d like to buy tamales from the old woman who lives down the road, the one who knocks on our door on Tuesdays and Fridays carrying a steaming pan covered with a hand-woven towel, but I have to turn her away like I’m not interested, like she’s a Jehovah’s Witness, when she knows, can see it in my eyes, that I want nothing more than to taste the warm squishy masa and tender pork on my tongue. And what do we do when the ice cream man comes down the block and our baby comes running inside and I have to say no we can’t afford it when I want to say yes buy a Bulletpop or Lemonheads or a Flintstones push-up or one of those ice cream feet-on-a-stick with a gumball for the big toe? Do I close the door so I can’t see our baby running down the street after the van hoping for a handout he’ll never get?

But it was hopeless. Rogelio had already gone to bed. She couldn’t talk to him the rest of the night. The only thing remaining then was for her to lean against her kitchen windowsill in their apartment, her elbows on the ledge and her forehead pressed against the pane of glass, and teach imaginary math lessons to the birds or the cactus or the paloverde trees—wishing they were real children—so they could better themselves, so that not a single one of them would ever have to lean against the windowsill crying, cringing at the embarrassment they’d feel if they ever had to stand in line at the mission for government cheese and peanut butter and powdered milk, wondering what could have been in their lives, because tomorrow Rebecca would be here again, resting her forehead against the window, crying and wishing, soaking up all the pain in the world so they wouldn’t have to bear any themselves.

But what she could not understand, what had eluded her since the first date she had ever gone on with Rogelio, was how he could slap her sometimes and other times weep in front of her. How sometimes he needed her and she meant everything to him. Like the night at Mama Inez’s Cocinera when he had cried while telling her how he had witnessed the beating of his brother behind a liquor store in his old neighborhood and how his mother, upon hearing of her son’s death, never left her rocking chair again, not even to eat or sleep or bathe, and he and his two remaining brothers brought her badly cooked food and blankets and washed her off with sponges, turning their heads out of respect, and clothing her in freshly cleaned robes of mourning. Sometimes when it rained she gazed out her kitchen window and wondered where did the man go who used to write me poems, even though they were often stolen or, at best, badly written? Do you remember going to the Tanque Verde Swap Meet, even though we knew we couldn’t buy anything, and looking at all the booths and pointing and laughing, wondering who would buy chinese stars or get a tattoo in front of all those people? Or the time we went out to Gate’s Pass up in the Tucson Mountains and were amazed at how far we could see, and you held me tight because I didn’t want to go up there where the cops found dead bodies all the time tossed over the side of the cliff like dirty diapers or empty coffee cups. Rogelio could change from sensitive to numb so quickly it wouldn’t have even surprised Rebecca if he came to her one night to make love and, in the middle of that beautiful act, pointed out each flaw in her body and personality, yelling, you disgusting woman, look at this fat boiling out from your stomach and your tits sagging like a pair of deflated balloons and you’re only twenty-two, while he still made love to her, his face buried in her neck, his hands pulling her hair so hard that she wondered if her scalp would tear. Rogelio was capable of such sweetness and yet so much ugliness that Rebecca wished she could return to the moment when he had asked her to marry him, right after he had lauded her attempts at education and promised her with every part of his body that he was the one who would be blessed if she accepted his offer.  If she could only go back, she would turn him down. She would tell him please leave me alone to go about my business. She would give him back the ring that he had saved an entire year to buy, fling it at his feet in a dramatic fashion, like something they did in the movies, so it would be all symbolic.

She longed for the time when Rogelio came home after work with a smile on his face and scooped her into his arms, twirling her around, and thanked her for being his wife. How he used to sing her to sleep with boleros and tell her of his plan to save up enough money for them to drive down to Zacatecas on their anniversary and make love under the magical Mexican stars. Even though they had always been poor, there had been a time when he would do side jobs at restaurants in exchange for free meals for the two of them. He even helped with some minor plumbing at Breakers, the new water park, and got free passes and they pumped five dollars gas into their car and drove to the water park one Saturday and slid down the slides together and flirted in the wave pool like a couple of teenagers and made plans to bring their child when he was big enough so they could teach him how to swim. 

But that was the past.

[Continued in Drowning Tucson]

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