Spain
By Kathryn S. Gardiner

The brown cricket jumped and that’s when Brandy realized she’d been staring at it. The distant blast of car horns filtered cotton-thick to her ears. She blinked and felt like she’d just woken up. Her body was rigid, muscles locked in position. The cigarette between her fingers was burnt half down, all ash.

She flicked it, one tap, and lifted it to her lips. She took a drag and understood. One instant, one tiny moment and she finally, really got it:

She was never going to see Spain.

She blinked at dawn across a parking lot and heard the truth in her mind, felt it in her chest. She would never see Spain, or hear the ocean at night. She would never look up at a thousand-year-old church or see flamenco dancers in the street. She would never look through big bay windows, feel soft carpet beneath her feet and know that she’s home.

She exhaled and felt a burn way down in her chest. A hazy cloud of gray smoke blurred in her vision, yellow morning sun spiked sharp and bright through the water in her eyes. Her fingertips trembled as she ground her cigarette butt into the concrete, leaving a blackened smear by her bare feet. Her body shook and it felt like warning tremors before the earthquake.

She wiped her sweatshirt sleeve across her eyes and breathed slowly in and out.

She’d seen a movie when she was little. It was about a girl from Connecticut who went to live with family in Spain. She learned Spanish and wore bright red dresses. She learned to cook paella and tasted chorizo for the first time. She stood on cliffs and felt ocean wind against her skin.

Somehow, until right now, Brandy thought that someday, someday she’d get to do all of that, too. She imagined it. She dreamt about it at night and let her mind drift there when her days got too long and too hard. When the noise in her head got too loud and her life got too ugly, she pictured herself on a Spanish cliff and tried to feel the wind against her skin.

Brandy coughed, the hacking cough she’d had for months. She knew it was from the smoking; from the smoking and the drinking, and all the shit she put in her body. She felt ill, she felt like she was rotting. Twenty-three years old and she felt like her insides were black.

Wind blew across the parking lot, through the open windows of cars. It smelled of asphalt and gasoline. The only green Brandy could see were the weeds breaking through the concrete.

The TV buzzed on, the squeak and bounce of morning cartoons piercing through the screen door behind her. The kids were awake—one of them was, at least—and Brandy stared down at the black ash by her feet, the bent butt of her cigarette. She had blisters on her feet, but couldn’t remember how she’d gotten them.

“Mama.”

The voice sounded small and scared.

“What?” Brandy growled back. She hated how timid her daughter always was. “Speak the fuck up, Isabel.”

“I’m—I’m hungry,” Isabel said, and her voice only sounded smaller.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Brandy turned around. She looked at Isabel where she stood with skinny, six-year-old fingers pressing against the metal screen. “We don’t have anything. I have to go to the store today.”

“When are you going to go to the store?”

“What!?”

“When—when are you going to go to the store?” Isabel said, louder this time, and her brown eyes stared at her own fingers on the door.

“I don’t know,” Brandy said. “I’ll go when I go. Watch cartoons. Give me a fucking second to myself, okay?”

Brandy turned away, back to the sunny parking lot and the smell of gasoline. She heard her daughter’s footsteps pad quietly away from the door. She imagined she could hear her tiny stomach growling.

Her sweatshirt sleeve was rough against her face and Brandy pressed hard with the heels of her hands against her eyelids. She would never see Spain or hear the ocean at night. She would never look up at a thousand-year-old church or see flamenco dancers on the street. She would never do any of that, ever.

She sighed gruffly until the burning behind her eyes went away. She pulled herself to her feet with creaking muscles and yanked open the screen door to walk inside. They had some cereal left; she knew they had at least a bowl each for the kids. She just needed more pills.

Isabel sat wedged in the corner of the couch with her sleeping blanket wrapped around her so tightly that only her eyes were visible peering out. Her little brothers still slept at the other end of the cushions and on the floor at Isabel’s feet.

Brandy glanced at the television as she passed and saw Bugs Bunny standing beneath the Eiffel Tower, getting his portrait painted by a French artist. She looked at Isabel, at her wide brown eyes watching the screen.

Brandy wondered what dreams her daughter was creating right now. She wondered when Isabel would figure out that she’d never get to do any of them.