Saludos from Segundo, Tales of the Barrio

¡Bienvenido a Segundo!
Gloria Anzaldúa once said that “bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal
symbols of shifting consciousness.” I truly believe that Segundo Barrio has been creating bridges
for years. This is a place that has historically reflected life on the border.
The stories in this collection are also a bridge. The authors have, in their own individual
way, created a threshold to what Segundo Barrio and its people represent. These stories are an
exploration in form, genre, and language; most importantly, though, they embody the unique
transnational, bicultural character of our border community.
The authors included in this collection have researched, discussed, and found creative ways
to address themes such as identity, spirituality, war, immigration, and heritage. In these pages,
kids, teenagers, men, women, even ghosts, feel displaced, but are all willing to shift their
consciousness in the colorful streets that make up Segundo Barrio.
Sylvia Aguilar-Zéleny

Preface
The following short stories were created by the collective imagination of the students at
the University of Texas at El Paso, who took Reading and Writing Fiction. The classroom of
students with different backgrounds, ideas, and lifestyles were instructed to write about Segundo
Barrio, or “Second Ward,” one of the first places in El Paso to be settled.
Despite many of the student authors included in this collection being El Paso natives,
most of them had rarely even visited Segundo Barrio prior to the construction of their stories,
due to the stigma of violence and risk it has come to hold. Others might have known the location
and rumors, with Segundo’s proximity to the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico; however, the history behind this neighborhood is one that contains a vibrant selection of
murals, churches, and culture. Throughout the course of this large-scale project, the class came to
familiarize themselves with Segundo, attending museums, researching about it online, and even
visiting the location in person to gain a better idea of what the Barrio is and what it stands for.
As the semester concluded, so did each of the unique stories. Workshops were able to help
build characters, and ultimately build a neighborhood, through the means of diversified and
eccentric fiction. This class created something of a fantastical magnitude, all flared with the
Segundo muse: a witch, friends, the elderly, a vigilante, a painter, and even a sentient house.
Not only do these stories serve as a reflection of the Barrio, but they also serve as an insight
into the perspectives of the writers themselves. Each narrative designs its unique picture of this
place and of the people who live calling it their home. While the stories range from the hopeful
to the somber, to the downright bizarre, the heart of the neighborhood is present in it all.

We invite you to walk with us through the streets of Segundo Barrio, and experience for
yourself a world built from the blood, sweat, and tears of the immigrants who settled here. Meet
the colorful members of the community. Take a glimpse into the little details of their lives.
While the stories contained within this collection are entirely fictional, the inspiration and
incidental spirit behind each one is as tested and true as the Barrio itself.
From the students at UTEP, we hope you enjoy our stories and the portrayal of our world.
Welcome to Segundo Barrio.

Casa Barrio Sean Ferris
1380 square feet – two floors – three bathrooms – three bedrooms – fifty stairs – fourteen
windows – ten doors – four generations – eight deaths. All of the neighbors were jealous.
Everyone in El Paso’s Second Ward had their own story and, as it went, many of those
stories were beginning to involve the house on the corner of Flores and Fifth. From the outside,
this house was something to make heads turn. It was not camouflaged amongst the worn stucco
siding and brightly colored accents of its peers, but instead boasted a sleek gray paneling along
its exterior, with a floor above all other houses on the block. Its roofing was kept in check
constantly. All accents and decorations were maintained, in accordance with management orders.
Throughout the many years that the Casa Barrio had been standing, many tenants of all
ages had passed through. Some had more distinctly violent tendencies than others, that ranged
from stomping around in frustration, to punching holes in the wall out of rage. In the midst of
younger families, the house quivered for fear of the children. All violence out in the open was
reconciled as it would be anywhere else: police were phoned, dispatched to the scene, and the
crimes were paid for therein. With the house on Flores and Fifth – “Casa Barrio,” as it had come
to be known – it was a completely different story – a quiet one. Rex couldn’t have them talking.
Among the most frequent tenants of the renowned house were the schoolteachers of
Segundo, as they led lives far too full to be meddling in the gossip of a building with its own
folklore. The house was positioned merely three streets from Guillen Middle School, the most
populous school in the Barrio. The slew of bars in the area also provided a grander escape from
the exhaustion caused by days on end spent with children. Convenient or not, the Casa Barrio
came with a risk. As word of incidents spread like wildfire throughout the tight-knit community
circle of Segundo, it was up to realtors like Rosie Carrasco to mask all of it… and to assimilate.

2018
“Angela, the bargain you’re getting here is a marvelous one. If you need to negotiate
with me at all on this, I’m willing to come down on the price. Hear me when I say, though, no
one is going to offer you anything lower than this. After all, this house does have two floors.”
“Thank you so much for your help, Rosie. Is it okay to give you a call tomorrow after I
speak with my husband? He’s my logistical half after all,” Angela said in a sort of bashful and
winded breath, gathering her paperwork together into a purse, lined on the strap with metal studs.
“A-Absolutely,” Rosie replied, “Just please keep in mind what I told you about the stories
going around. I want your husband to know you’ll be safe. These are simply rumors. I can go
over that inspection paperwork with you later on, if you’d like.” Rosie smiled all the while, as
Angela continued to make her way out the door and onto the front walkway, lined with flowers.
As the door creaked on her way out, Angela glanced back, facing the house and scanning
its exterior with wondering eyes. She had come all this way to find a peace promised to hear in
the barrio but wrestled with the cumbersome questions not many teachers had tried to face.
“It really is a beautiful place.” Angela peered down at her feet, before sighing. “Rosie,
I’ll be honest with you. The story with the young boy who died… that’s crazy. I’m not one to
much believe in spirits or ghosts, but I can’t stand the thought of th- …I mean, I work with kids,
you know? Like, it’s just a conscience thing, and I know that, but I hope you can understand.”
“Listen, Angela. I don’t know how it works in Boston, but here in the barrio, people are
going to try and scare you with all their religious saint talk. It’s a culture thing. I mean, you don’t
have to look very far to find a crucifix in a taqueria, for Pete’s sake. It’s all superstition. We will
keep it real with you, Angela. That boy fell. You’ll learn quickly that parents don’t know how to

raise kids around here. That’s what’s going to make you huge as a teacher here. Many of them
don’t even speak enough English to sass! Trust me when I say you have nothing to worry about.”
Angela chuckled. This was less to lighten the mood with Rosie, and moreso to calm all of
the thoughts that now rushed through her mind. What would she do if that were her child? How
would her husband respond to this potential sacrifice, within the simple decision to own a home?
As the two finally parted ways, Angela grew all the more convinced that Rosie was right
– the house was made for her future. Despite an overwhelming culture shock upon first entering
Segundo Barrio, Angela began to drive up and down the streets with a new appreciation for what
she saw. Kids with ruffled, sweaty hair and oversized soccer jerseys perused the streets and
waved kindly. The smells of the Bowie bakery invaded the car and capsized Angela’s concern.
Segundo was a lively place, overflowing with signs that its history had certainly aged it
but that progress was upon its people. For Angela, such a destiny for the city reflected her own.
She had fought her way to become certified in Boston, and ultimately graduated with highest
honors in her class. To her classmates, Segundo was a downgrade, but the faces of the children
here in the barrio promptly comforted Angela and helped her see this as a chance to start big.
Pan back, and there Rex stood, just atop the staircase with its newly refinished balcony.
He was confident that Angela would make the right choice, that she would give up her life. If the
Casa Barrio could smile – if the windows could form shattered grins – believe me, they would.
1980
“Mom, this stuff is so dumb. I just don’t get it! What will I ever need math for?”
A young boy – Rogelio was his name – sat in front of a table, filled with broken pencils
and pages upon pages of elementary algebra homework – all of it dampened over time with tears.

Rogelio and his young mother had moved into the Casa Barrio two years prior, following
his father’s deployment to South Korea. While this new house offered rent on the higher end in
the neighborhood, it was well under what the family had been spending on the west side of El
Paso, and thus made a perfect fit as they transitioned into a new chapter of their lives.
“Mijo, I’ve told you many times that homework doesn’t need a reason to be there. It just
is, and it’s up to you to solve it. Think of it as a mission, like your dad’s! Oye, I need to go stop
by the bakery for our guests tonight. Take a well-deserved break and go get me my keys. They’re
in my bedroom.” The boy threw his head back in frustration, before sliding back in his chair.
“On my dresser, baby. Hurry. I need to be back here by five.”
After rolling his eyes a third time, Rogelio collected himself, before bolting up the staircase, the
nails in each stair creaking eerily with every stomp of the boy’s irritated climb.
Out of breath, he meandered into the bedroom, grabbed the keys out of a small saucer on
the dresser. Immediately, in a bout of great childlike tantrum, he sprinted out, hurling the set of
keys off of the balcony and down in the direction of his mother, who stood, tapping her foot.
“Oh my god,” the woman exclaimed, shaken by the sound of the clamoring metal.
One key on the ring had pierced the hardwood in the fall. The house began to tremble
ever so slightly. The young woman made eye contact with her son, who, in all the guilt he could
feel at such a young age, began to have his imagination run wild. In anguish, he threw his hands
in the air. In one foul swoop, the wooden barrier that separated the boy and the distance to the
first floor snapped, leaving two large panels suspended in the air in front and to either side of the
boy. The young mother watched in awe, as every law of physics was broken before her very
eyes, with her son now positioned so close to a fall that would surely kill him if endured.

The boy’s hands fell back to his side, as the sense of shock at what had transpired came
over him as well. The two panels of wood fell back, before quickly swinging towards Rogelio’s
legs, bringing them out from under him, and sending him clear off the ledge and onto his neck.
The young woman rushed to the body, still in total disbelief at what it was she had just
witnessed. Her son, her everything – gone in a way that would only incriminate her on account
of great suspicion if she were to present it to the police. There he lay, his limbs disfigured, but
his face still seemingly just as full of life as before. In shock, the young mother ran for the phone
and dialed 9-1-1, her hand trembling from both the house, which still shook, and her intense fear.
“9-1-1, can I have the address of the emergency?”
“El-eleven-hund…eleven-hundred Flores Avenue. It’s the Casa Barrio.” The woman’s
voice weakened as she looked over in the direction of her son, who appeared entirely paralyzed.
“Okay, ma’am, explain to me the emergency as best you can. What’s wrong?”
“It’s my son. He… the house. My son might be dying. And my house is shaking. I don’t
know why. I don’t know what’s going on. My son might die. I need you to…”
“Ma’am, what do you mean your house is shaking? What happened to your son?”
“Can you just please send your people over here? I need someone to save my son.”
“We’ll be ri-…” Just as the operator began to console the mother, the call signal failed,
leaving a piercing static on the phone, and causing the phone’s long cord to spark at the outlet.
2017
Many years had passed with Rogelio, or Rex as he was known as by his peers, had been
living live as a paraplegic and real estate mogul. What he was not able to muster in strength, he
made up for in his incredible intellect and ability to entice with speech. Rex’s understanding of
the metaphysical manifested itself in ways that allowed him to manipulate relationships with

those in academia and advance him beyond what was normal. This very knowledge and ability is
also what allowed Rex to built such a strong clientele base in the real estate industry, so quickly.
On that fateful day when he had lost nearly all of his physical capacity, Rex discovered
something new… something he couldn’t speak of… something of insurmountable value.
While not much could be said of Segundo, the day that a young boy would be sent off a
balcony and survive to tell the tale would live on in the minds of the people of the barrio. They
would go on to turn the Casa Barrio into a sort of exhibit, making something of their legacy as an
otherwise stale and uninteresting section of the dynamic and historically-captivating El Paso.
Rex visited the exhibit numerous times and would present in front of tourists an account
of what happened that day, being met each time with a new set of skeptics and those truly
fascinated by how he had survived the fall. He recounted that the house had bent against physics
but was sure to never mention that it was his own actions that enacted the unbelievable scene. At
one such exhibition in the Casa Barrio, Rex was set to present to fifty very curious El Pasoans.
Rosie, Rex’s loyal assistant, stood by his side as he prepared to speak. Eyes widened.
“Folks, I come to you today with news of the future of the long-renowned Casa Barrio.
As an establishment that was long known for standing out for its beauty here in Segundo Barrio,
this place quickly began to be known for something completely different…something out of my
control. You all know the story.” The crowd laughed, as Rogelio looked himself up and down, as
if to gesture that his state of paralysis spoke for itself. “But today is a new day, friends – for the
city of Segundo, and for the house that you all stand in now. Rosie here is my new assistant, and
we will be venturing to turn this house back into a home. We’ll work to maintain and even
improve upon its beauty, before turning it back over to you, the people, to live in for yourselves.”
“What will you do for work, Rogelio?” one man from the crowd called out, curiously.

“Rex. Please, call me Rex. I’m half the man I was. Now, I’ll have half the name.”
The crowd interrupted Rex’s theatrics once more with a response of sympathetic laughter.
“No, but in seriousness, though, I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. With Rosie by my side, we’ll actually
be pursuing realty. Before this house finds its permanent residents, we’ll work on our efforts
elsewhere, and hopefully be the experts we want to be when that time comes. Thank you for your
concern, though, sir. I know it may seem as if I don’t have many options at this time.”
After some time, the crowd dispersed, leaving Rosie and Rex in the middle of the floor,
only to stand in the wake of their genesis – a maelstrom of mystery and madness to be birthed
out of a truth only they were conscious of. Rex peered over to the balcony at the second floor.
The truth was and is: Rex is the god of this house. For better or worse – for what can be
explained and what cannot – for every sliver of doubt aimed at his life lived beyond tangible
reality, he has dominion.
The house is all mapped in his mind, the machinations of which are akin to a voodoo
doll. Should he become sorrowful, each pipe that carried water throughout the house would
burst. Should Rex become delighted, all shall be well with its inhabitants. Should he become
angry, at any point, and for any reason… only the inhabitant may know such consequences.
What good could come from a mind full of mayhem, a body devoid of any conscious
control, and a power that no man before him had possessed… Quickly, Rex’s intent went grim.
It is often thought that those who are paralyzed must desire more than any other soul to
accomplish whatever it is they wish to accomplish. They itch at the thought of having control of
their arms and legs once more – to grasp, to swing, to dance, to lift, to stab, to fire…

The machinations of Rex’s mind corroded. He stood within a vessel which would be his
new self. He would give these people something to talk about. As they had raved of him and the
tale that would follow him to his grave, so would he continue to be that man for them.
Exactly one year would pass. Rex and Rosie would not be contacted by a single tenant.
The desire that already existed within Rex built. The urge to fulfill his destiny only grew.
2018
The phone rang. “Rosie speaking....”
“Hi, Rosie, this is Angela.”
“Angela, it’s so good to hear from you! How have you been?”
“I’ve been well, thank you. Hey, I talked it over with my husband, and I’d like to take
you up on your offer. I’m all in. Sorry it took so long. You must know what this process is like.”
“Of course, Angela. It’s no problem at all. I’ll get right to my higher-ups, and we can
work out a day to settle all of the paperwork. Thank you so much for calling.”
“No problem. Thanks again.”
As Rosie hung up the phone, Rex grew a smirk, then a smile, cheek to cheek.
“We’ve got to be nice, Rex. She is going to be teaching children, after all.”
“God, don’t tell me she’s a math teacher.” His smirk persisted. “I really hate math.”

Pineapple Easy Anthony Quezada
It’s 2019 and the earth has been destroyed. All that’s left is the Second Ward in El Paso,
Texas. It was the Yips. They’re aliens. They came to Earth for a reason that historians, scholars
and other surviving intellectuals are currently dubbing: The Most Batshit Insane Reason Ever.
See, the Yips only wanted one thing. It wasn’t natural resources, global domination, the
internet, Will Smith, or the usual tropey stuff. It was Santa Claus. That’s right, somehow across
the fabric of space, they got wind of a being that could give them anything they wanted. The
news said something about Voyager broadcasting Christmas carols and coordinates, but that’s
then, this is now. And now that the world's been goomba stomped, refugees from all over the
world are queueing up on a sidewalk in front of some bakery.
It’s not that the food is great there or anything, it's just that it’s literally the only place to
get anything to eat. All Segundo really has left is: fifty feet of sidewalk, a wall with a mural, the
Yip Tavern, and that damn bakery. The rest is gone. Nada. Just a tumbleweed wasteland to stare
at and play the harmonica- though this is more of a requirement than an option. We’ll get to that.
So, on this strip of pavement is our multicultural cast of refugees and locals. Standing in
line they shuffle like mass, onward and forward for some holy conchas and marranitas.
Across from them was a homeless man shouting in front of the mural. Looking like the
design was ripped straight out of a spaghetti western, it depicted ol’ Santa Claus with reward
money underneath. The bum in front was making a ruckus, but it wasn’t the shouting that caught
people’s attention. He was wearing a leopard print Santa hat bare naked.
“Why won’t anyone listen to me?!” yelled the homeless man, “I keep telling you I’m
Santa. Why won’t you believe me?!”

The crowd avoided eye contact and hobbled sideways as the bum strode towards
them. His bits and bobs flapped against his thighs, making the women squeal and kids laugh.
“¿Cuántas veces tenemos que enseñarte Viejo?” a tough voice called out.
The crowd gasped at the voice.
“¡Hay!” someone exclaimed, “¡Es El Toro Guapo!”
People began cheering.
“¡EL TORO!”
“Miran todos es el Guapo mas guapísimo, ¡EL PINCHE TORO GUAPO!”
Everyone lost their shit as this suave looking guy with a wifebeater and slicked back hair
walks through the crowd with his arms spread out like he was carrying invisible barrels. He
waltzed through like they were the red sea and he was leading a pack of Israelites behind him.
“¿Cuántas veces tenemos que enseñarte Viejo?” repeated El Toro Guapo, placing his
hand on the hobo’s bare shoulder.
“So-soy Santa Claus,” the homeless man stammered, “I’m Santa Clau-”
“No existe el Santa Claus,” El Toro Guapo said, “¡Y NO QUEREMOS VER SU-SU-
ESO!”
El Toro Guapo pointed at the bums frightened turtle and shook his head, “Todos los días
y siempre lo mismo. Pero hoy, hoy va ser diferente.”
At the word diferente, El Toro snapped his fingers and shook his hips. “Si, bastante.
Como creen?”
The crowd whooped like an Old El Paso commercial. All that was missing was a little
Mexican kid to put on their shoulders and some hard taco shells to throw in the air. Some of the

foreigners were into it too, the speccy British kid was pumping his broom in the air and the token
black guy nodded.
“Bueno,” El Toro said, placing his hands at his belt,“Parece que estas jodido.”
The bum’s eyes widened and he looked at El Toro Guapo’s belt. Tucked into it was a
ping pong paddle with a sticker of a blue bull.
“Wh-what are you going to-?”
El Toro pulled his ping pong paddle free and flipped it between his hands.
“Algo… especial.”
The bum gulped. El Toro put a hand on the back of the bum’s neck and stepped closer.
Their foreheads touched and they locked eyes. Sweat from El Toro’s skin dotted onto the bum’s
cheeks. El Toro blinked as a bead tickled his eyelash. Their noses touched and they kissed.
El Toro gave a peck that the bum responded with more enthusiasm. They locked into
each other's arms. Smooching. Gripping. Biting. Their clothes came off and they began to have
sex. Some real vulgar shit in the middle of the street.
Or did they?
Not really.
El Toro beat the hell out of him with his ping pong paddle. It was a whirlwind of smacks
and figure eight twists, with the bum swaying in his spot. El Toro spun ‘round and bopped him
into the fucking Twilight Zone with a backhand swing. The bum Wilhelm screamed and flew
back ten feet.
“Dayum!” said the token black guy.
“DIOS MIO!” shouted the crowd.
“Is he dead?!” asked the speccy British kid.

El Toro flicked the blue bull on his paddle before tucking it into his belt. Everyone left
their place in line and circled around the bum’s limp body. The Mexicans pulled out their Jesus
candles and started lighting them.
“I don’t know,” said the token black guy, “I didn’t see his shoes fly off.”
Before the speccy British kid could say anything back, a siren went off. A blaring whistle
that made everyone clutch their ears. A stampede of boots and yee-haws came from the Yip
Tavern. The crowd looked towards each other, then ran back in line.
The old-timey saloon doors swung open. Out came the Yips- little Yoda looking mother
fuckers, wearing oversized cowboy hats and sombreros. A herd of bobbing brims and flailing
maracas swarmed around the bum. Several Yips at the back were riding hobby horses and
whirling their weapons in the air. They were like lassos, but instead of ropes they used yoyos.
One Yip pulled crumpled notes out of his chaps and started speaking.
“Say, partner,” he said, not looking up from the paper, “What in tarnation do ya think
happened?”
“Gee whiz…” another replied, taking out his own wad, “I by golly don’t rightly know.”
“Errr,” the first Yip said, thumbing through his pages, “Sh-sherrr-”
“Sheriff?”
“Ah- yup, ahem, SHERIFF!”
The biggest dick at the back tugged at his reigns, making his way over to the bum. He
rode a black broomstick horse and had a gold star stickered to his vest. He trotted over and
nestled close to the body.
“Woah there,” the Sheriff said, patting the hobby horse’s head, “Easy girl.”

“My,” the first Yip said, reading his notes, “What a wild beast. Only the Sheriff could
handle such a… fiend?”
The other Yips shrugged.
The Sheriff, still on his horse, picked off the bum’s leopard print Santa hat and looked
over the body. Aside from looking like a crab without a shell, he didn’t look too bad. There were
only a few noticeable red patches despite El Toro’s ass-whoopin’. The Sheriff smirked then tilted
his green nose to the air and sniffed. A deep long inhale that rustled the fake handlebar mustache
glued to his face. The other Yips took it as a queue and shook their maracas.
The Sheriff pointed at the black guy and called out, “Barack, could you come ‘ere?”
Oh yeah, plot twist, the black guy is Obama.
“What seems to be the problem here, Mr. The Sheriff?” asked Obama.
“Do you smell that?” the Sheriff asked, gesturing around him.
“Empanadas, sir?”
“Empanadas? You think I’m talking about empanadas. Okay, then you- yeah you, come
‘ere!” the Sheriff said, waving over the speccy British kid.
The kid dragged his broom along with him and huffed, “Look I don’t think I can help you
here-”
“Name?”
“Hairy,” he replied curtly, “Hairy Cooter.”
“Is that right?” Mr. The Sheriff asked, raising an eyebrow, “Hairy Cooter?”
“Yes!” Hairy snapped.
“Excuse me?”

“I’m starving here!“ Hairy said flailing his arms around, “I was waiting in line for hours
and you pulled me out. What the hell do you want?”
“Hey, you watch that tone, you sunny bologna bitch,” the Sheriff says recoiling, “It was
just a question.”
“Who cares?! It’s all bullshit! You’re not even a real sheriff!”
The Yips gasped and stopped shaking their maracas. Sheriff sucked his lips in as if he
was sucking on a Warhead.
“Hairy,” Mr. The Sheriff began slowly, “It ain’t been too hard, this job. Most days it’s
just a few fellers cutting in line or maybe somebody took an extra marranita that they wasn’t
supposed to. Pineapple easy days, but today… I don’ think today will be too sweet, will it?”
“How do you put up with him?!” Hairy exclaimed to the Yips.
“Well,” one said, shuffling his feet, “ It’s fun…”
“Somedays…” another muttered, “Not all the time.”
“To be honest, I can’t remember the last time this was really fun. Like it’s not bad, but
it’s kind of ...,” another one sighed, “You know? Like why bother anymore?”
The Yips muttered in agreement.
“What do you mean?” the Sheriff asked.
“¡No te gustan!” yelled El Toro, before hiding behind an old lady.
“Who said that?!” the Sheriff said, “You watch you them lips boy. I’ll come round there
an’ give ‘em a good ol brushin’ with this here mustachio!”
“Mr. The Sheriff!” exclaimed Obama, “That is inappropriate!”
“He can’t even play his role right,” laughed Hairy, “Can he?”

The Sheriff stamped a spurred boot on the ground. “That’s it! I’m taking you in, Mr.
Cooter.”
“For what?”
“Prime suspect,” Sheriff stated with a grin, “For murder.”
“I’m not dead though.” the bum said, excitedly from the ground.
“ES UN MILAGRO!”
Several Mexican women fainted.
“Th-then assault, Mr. Cooter.”
“Yeah, sure thing dude.”
The Sheriff reached into his holster. “Resisting, eh?”
Hairy b-boy stanced with his broomstick tucked between his arms and stuck his chin up
like a boxer. The Sheriff chuckled and pulled out a tiny pink yoyo. The size of a Skittle, he held
it like a magician it so that everyone could see. The Yips gasped.
“Boss, what are you gunna do?”
“Mr. The Sheriff, please,” Obama pleads, “He’s just a boy.”
Hairy’s broom began to hum in his arms. A dust devil picked up in the space between
them, scattering sand and making everyone squint. The line for the bakery stopped moving and
everyone huddled close to each other whispering. A Yip in the crowd started playing a
harmonica and the others joined with a steady maraca shake.
“Just a boy?” the Sheriff asked, winding up his tiny yoyo, “Sum thirty years back, near
the edge of the Kuiper Belt, I met a junior just like this one here. He was a rascal! A tiger! If
you’d seen ‘em you’d think he was a regular clean ol salt n’ pepper steak. But that boy, he was a
mean coffee n’ chile rub. He had the kinda spice tamales wish they had.”

The Sheriff shivered and walked the dog with his yoyo. “Shoot, just starin’ into the beads
of his eyes, you’d spur a sweat. But a day came when I couldn’t take the heat. He was sat on a
cruiser just lookin’ out a starfield rainin’ down on a valley, a meteor shower past the Oort Cloud.
I sneaky sneaked up behind him with this here gadget, ready to pounce, when he looked back at
me. Caught in his headlights I--”
“Oh my god, how long are you gonna take?” Hairy exclaimed, “Just throw your damn
yoyo at me.”
Hairy’s broom vibrated even more strongly. The Sheriff almost dropped his tiny pink
weapon, causing the Yips to catch their breath. The string tangled.
Obama crept up behind Hairy while the Sheriff unraveled the cord.
“Hairy? I have an idea,” Obama whispered, “I think I might know how to deal with
him. Just keep antagonizing him and wait for my mark. Okay?”
Before Hairy could respond Obama scurried off into the crowd of locals. The Sheriff
bounced his yoyo up and down, free of knots. Hairy gulped and held on to his broomstick which
started to faintly glow.
“Chief,” a Yip said, “Are you sure you wanna use that thing?”
“Isn’t it a bit… much?” Another said.
The Sheriff whipped ‘round, facing his subordinates. “Hey! I ask the questions. I don’t
see a badge on anyone else here--”
“Come at me you Pizza Planet plush toy! I bet you won’t do shit.”
The Sheriff scrunched his mustache and slowly turned around. The Yips shook their
maracas like cans of whipped cream, while one tossed a homemade tumbleweed down the

street. Hairy held up his broom with both hands like a sword. It pulsed light. Both sides of the
spectators ooh’ed at it.
Queue John Williams’ “Duel of the Fates.”
The sky rolled over black while the Sheriff spun his yoyo. Whistling, it cut circles in the
air above him like a halo. The clouds growled and lighting forked in between the two.
“Hairy, now!” Obama shouted.
Thunderstruck when the Sheriff hurled his tiny yoyo at Hairy. That plastic piece of
bullshit bulldozed through raindrops and left trails of steam behind it as it stormed at Hairy’s
speccy face. Hairy could only stare at it open-mouthed and through foggy glasses, holding his
stupid-light-stick-broomstick-thing, as it bore through the space-time continuum at him. Hairy
closed his eyes, grimacing.
Boom! Tok! THWAK!
“What the hell?” exclaimed the Sheriff.
Hairy opened his eyes to behold a man in a wife beater standing in front of him. Glazed
with rain, the ping pong paddle he sliced through downpour shone like a disco ball. He cut figure
eights in the air, keeping the Sheriff’s zigzag barrage at bay. El Toro Guapo’s shirt stuck to his
chest and sweat tickled his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Pupils jumped around; they tracked the
yoyo, lassoing at him. Tongue sticking out- he knew he had’em and with a twirl, he backhanded
it back at the Yip.
The Sheriff shouted before exploding into a thousand tiny pink yoyos.
El Toro Guapo walked away from the blast. Flipping his ping pong paddle, he said, “No
existe El Santa Claus.”

The Yips cheered and joined the locals to surround El Toro and put him on their
shoulders. They celebrated by chanting and throwing handfuls of the little yoyos in the air.
Hairy started fist pumping, when a shriek pierced through the happiness.
A little Mexican lady ran away to reveal, a pack of yoyo’s winding themselves up. They
coiled themselves into a ball and started to reform the shape of the Sheriff.
Hairy’s broomstick shone like a lightning bolt in his hands and Obama nodded at
him. With a running start, Hairy dug his feet into the ground and unleashed the fury of the
world into the air. Spinning, it created a vortex of wind and water. A tornado. A drill. A
drillnado.
It tore apart the pink puppet Sheriff with an almighty boom. He turned to ribbons and the
clouds scattered. The Sheriff’s distorted voice rang out, “Nooo!”
His voice faded away and sunbeams lit up the puddles underneath everyone’s feet. A
speckled gold earth the crowd started to sing on and pass out conchas and the last of their milk
with the now leaderless Yips.
“Was that your plan?” Hairy asked as everyone started hugging.
“No,” Obama said, “Everything went completely wrong.”
“What was supposed to happen?” Hairy asked, picking up his broom.
“Well, I was pretty sure that his special yoyo was going to collide with your broomstick
and El Toro’s paddle and it would create a plot hole where you could pull Santa out of the bum’s
ass. That didn’t happen though.”
“Why the hell would that happen?”
“I don’t know it was like page nine.”
They saved the world, hurray!

Well, not really. It’s fucked. Everyone’s dead and all they can eat is a dwindling supply
of Mexican pastries, but they do have Hairy’s bullshit broomstick now. Maybe they’ll start a
cult around him, or maybe Hairy will restore the world, or maybe they’ll get some presents from
Santa one day and Obama will sky drop them in with some drones, along with some styrofoam
cups of cold menudo and stale churros or something. At the end of all this you’re probably
wondering what happened to the bum. Well, after the bizzare adventure, he woke up and
everyone there started calling him Yoyo.

La Guerra Sin Fin Kamille Montoya
For the first time in fourteen months, Valentín woke up in his own bed. He slept for what
seemed like two days, and when he rose on the third, he cried. He cried for hours. For days. For
five days. When he couldn’t fall asleep on the fourth night, he cried harder. He thought he was
never going to be able to stop. He thought he was going to have to cry for the rest of his life.
Then, he laughed. He remembered that he would cry for the rest of his life no matter what.
That’s how it goes.
Valentín’s room flooded. His younger brother Rafael came in every thirty minutes to
change Valentín’s pillowcases. But the sun wouldn’t dry the pillowcases fast enough. He was
crying too hard, and the pillowcases ran out.
Valentín thought of his mother’s cigarette smoke slow dancing in front of the kitchen
window, the sun revealing her silhouette. Valentín thought about never seeing that again. He
thought about the pack of cigarettes he put in her casket, and how he always encouraged her to
quit. He thought of her never-ending embrace when he told her about the letter that was sending
him away from her and to the front lines. She kept crying mi corazon, and Valentín cried with
her. He felt so little.
Valentín was born when his mother was seventeen and his father was twenty-seven, and
they were born when there were no cars or borders. Their parents were born when there were
more ranchos than factories. Their grandparents were born when god whispered a lie into the
ears of thousands. Then, their great-grandparents were born in different countries. Different
lands. Valentin’s ancestors were born before the first human extinction when the jaguars came
and ate everyone. Nobody knows anything before that.
But they were there.

When Valentín finished crying, he had two days left in El Paso. He woke up at 6 a.m.,
sweating, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. He got out of bed to shower to wash off his war.
Nothing ever helped. Nothing ever washed away the blood-stained memories. The tears never
stopped there.
He got out the clothes from his suitcase, his uniform packed neatly at the bottom,
untouched. He got dressed doubling his layers - Segundo had never looked so gray.
Valentín made his way through his house, it whispered to him with every step.
Reminding him of the way his mother’s untamable hair bounced when she danced through these
hallways, dusting the porcelain elephants and angels - he wondered if the house whispered the
same things to her when she walked across it.
He walked by Rafael’s room. Perfectly neat. Valentín was always envious of Rafael and
his soft skin. Valentín’s was rough and scarred. He blamed it on his parents. He said he wasn’t
supposed to feel the pains his parents felt, but it wasn’t their fault, they didn’t know any better.
They had Rafa eight years after him when they were patient and gentle. He forgave them for his
ugly skin. He forgave them for the time that they forgot him at the swap meet and he had to walk
all the way home alone when he wasn’t even old enough heat up a tortilla. And for all the other
times that their patience for him, and each other, wore thin. He didn’t know how to forgive his
father for much of anything else. He saw that his father had always preferred Rafael over him -
he got better grades, he was in football, he knew what was going on in the world. Valentín didn’t
finish high school, hated working with anyone but himself, and didn’t give a shit about
shit.
Except for his mom.

Valentín made it to the kitchen, his father at the table with a book in his hand. He
remembered his mother telling him the story of how she and his father met. She was a volunteer
tutor at the farmworkers center on 9th Street. She taught him to read. He would take her chile he
stole. She would defend him against no one: Pos he picked them with his bare hands. He
should’ve taken more.
“Valentín ve compra menudo,” His father said with warmth, looking up from his
translated Earle Stanley Gardner. He agreed with no hesitation. It was almost instinct to do what
he was told. He took a medium sized pot that would fit enough menudo for not four, but three
people. He secured it to the back of his bike. He was on his way by 7 a.m. but was anticipating a
line for the menudo. He sped by the border fence that lined his neighborhood, and the
neighborhood of the neighboring country. He noticed semi-trucks riding along the border,
carrying poles of iron. The biggest things he had ever seen. The biggest things anyone in
Segundo has ever seen. They made you dizzy just looking at them. Valentín got in the back of
the line and waited to get his menudo.
In line, men and women whispered about the poles. Nothing too serious, mostly jokes.
Though, they moved in line with precaution and fear, very slowly, taking half steps, not wanting
to go back home. Not wanting to take their eyes off the poles. Who knows what would happen if
they did. Valentín knew the air in Segundo was heavier because of the poles.
After Valentin got his menudo, he rode back home. The wet air cooled his face, but the
double layers kept him warm. Valentín noticed that he wasn’t shivering. He was at peace. He
realized that he had been shivering ever since he landed on the never-ending green island of
Okinawa. He was happy to see the abundance of brown at home. The beautiful cornucopia that
housed brown earth and brown bodies.

He fled past the fence, past the walls painted with culture, past the houses painted to
stand out, past the church.
The church.
8 a.m. rang in and sent vibrating needles through Valentín’s ears. He rode faster. The
vibrations sent him back to three weeks ago when a grenade went off and took so many body
parts. It was new to see such broken, literally broken people, he thought. He went faster and
faster to escape the loud. He wanted to be anywhere but there. He did not want the war back at
home. He never rode so fast. He wished. He prayed and he commanded to be set free from those
bells, from the loud. He rode faster, he was riding for his life.
Then he lifted.
Valentín and his bike with the menudo lifted a few feet off the ground.
Valentín lifted and flew towards his home.
All the neighborhood kids in front of Guillen cheered.
Valentín was breathing so hard he thought his chest was going to pop. He stood over his
bike and tried catching his breath. He looked at his white-painted-over-brick house with maroon,
then baby-blue trimmings. The windows seemed cracked, but they weren’t.
His thoughts were safe and at home - away from the war.
He walked into the house and was greeted by his Tia Rosa and the smell of tortillas,
beans, chile, just about everything except the menudo Valentín came with. She hugged him
tightly and he hugged her tight back. Valentín never minded affection, it was just never given to
him.
“Buenos días Valen, sit here and I'll serve you,” she sat Valentín down at the table with
his dad and brother. Rafa had a book and his dad had the newspaper, both drinking coffee,

neither looked up. Valentín drank only water and couldn't really read. “What for?” he’d tell his
mom.
At the table, Valentín wanted nothing more but to read something too. Maybe they could
talk about what they all read after.
Tia Rosa puts their plates in front of them, and this was the first meal Valentín has had in
fourteen months. He was at home for five days already and was going to be there for two more.
Seven days of mourning.
But he didn’t eat when he landed because it was already late, and everybody cried.
Together when Valentín hugged his father and brother for the first time their whole lives. They
never had a reason to before. Then they wept separately in their beds. There was no time for
food. Then the next two days were for the rosary and the funeral. Valentín can’t remember
anything but the way his mom looked in the casket. He liked the lipstick they used better than the
one she usually wore. Valentín shook at that thought, feeling guilty. Again, there was no time for
food.
The day that Valentín’s mother was buried nobody was allowed outside. There was a
storm of sand the night before. The clouds traveled that night slow and looked dull. The sand that
first came down was very sparse, but it hurt when it got into your eyes. Then when the last
person in Segundo said their last prayer for the night, the sand poured out of the sky. In the
morning Segundo was completely covered. Nobody could even think about food. Valentín, Rafa
and their father stayed in their Sunday clothes until they had to go to sleep.
The day after there was no sign that a storm and sand ever passed.
It came and it went.

Valentín, Rafa, and their father headed to Concordia cemetery. Their already buried
mother and wife didn’t get a proper funeral. Their father prayed by himself. Rafa bowed his
head. Valentín started to curse the ground he walked upon.
Nobody else was there but them. Everyone was afraid of another storm.
They did not hug. They did not think they could be hungry ever again.
They stood there for what seemed like days, and they wanted to stay longer, but Rafa said
they should leave in case another storm was coming. Though they knew one wouldn’t come,
they walked home. They all fell asleep as soon as their heads hit their pillows.
Valentín ate everything that his Tia Rosa served him, and even got a second serving of
menudo. The house was silent besides Tia Rosa’s humming, the sarten filled with sizzling
grease, and the noises their mouths made eating. Valentín wanted to talk but didn’t know about
what. His father never spoke much. Ever. Rafa always knew what to say, just like their mother.
But Rafa was reading and he wouldn’t look up. No matter how much Valentín looked at him, at
his baby soft skin. Valentín felt like howling but got up to smoke a cigarette outside instead.
“Y tú? Tú no fumas,” His father said, following Valentín.
Valentín had only ever taken one puff of his mother’s cigarettes before when she went to
the restroom and left it in the ashtray in the kitchen with Valentín. He was eight and he
remembered his mom making Mole and tortillas. He had to mash the frijoles. Not too much,
though. He took one puff and immediately started to cough. He ran outside to drink from the
outside faucet because he was afraid of his mother hearing him cough. He nearly drowned
himself in the water. When Valentín went back inside to keep smashing beans his mother was
already back.
“You smoked my cigarette?”

“How did you know?” Valentín was shocked. He was more scared about how she found
out that her finding out.
She whispered, “The house told me.”
She hit Valentín on the butt with a wooden spoon from the kitchen. He silently sobbed
while he smashed beans. Valentín was never afraid to show his emotions through his tears. His
father hated it.
The house started to whisper to Valen too after that. It was like a gift his mother passed
down on him. Or a secret club and his mother allowed Valen to be a part of it with her. Valentín
doesn’t know how. He just knows the language of the house. Since he came back, he hears its
hum at night. A sad hum. He knows it’s mourning too. Praying for his mother’s dancing and
singing.
Valentín coughed, and his father laughed.
“Vamonos,” His father told him, “And throw out that cigarette.”
“Donde?” His father didn’t answer Valentín’s question, but Valentín climbed on the back
of his father’s motorcycle and held on to the sides of the bike because his father never let him
hold onto him.
Valentín already knew where they were headed. They only left Segundo to go to Juarez
or to go get azadero cheese at a house in San Elizario.
Valentín thought the vibrations from the bike would have sent him back to bullets. He
thought the vibrations that traveled from his inner thigh, through the innermost depths of his
spine, to the very crook of his neck, and in the caves of his ears would send him into the wet hot
mountains where most of him was abandoned. He thought it would have sent him to the epitome
of his hell - where villages are torn up, where there is murder, rape, houses taken over. He

thought the vibrations would send him back to the vibrations of the grenades going off a mile
away from him. Or a mile and a half, he never could tell. Instead, the vibrations sent him back
into his childhood on the old bike that did not have the tattered up, sun-ate, desert floor seat - it
had no seat.
“I’ll put a cardboard,” his dad would assure him.
He would place a sheet of cardboard used to separate the eggs from crashing into each
other when you carried more than half a dozen home. Hardly separating his skin from the
scorching hot fender.
Valentín thanked God for the new bike that his dad had bought from a coworker who
owned a yonke and fixed it there. The vibrations sent him back to burns on his thighs and his
mother rubbing aloe vera on them. He would cry from the burns and his dad would shake his
head. Valentín missed his mom more than ever, and his father couldn’t tell because the sound
was too loud and the wind dried his tears.
There were cracks in the road heading out of Segundo that Valentín swore weren’t there
before he left. The deeper out of Segundo they got, the cracks got bigger, and bigger and were
filled with weeds, and soon the cracks were flooded with maravillas. Orange. Yellow. The
maravillas braved out of the cracks in dense bunches, leaving very little room to drive through.
Valentín wanted to lay in the crack-filled roads forever. He felt his mom there. He felt everything
that wasn’t war there. He opened his mouth trying to taste the scent of the bloomed flowers. Or
to taste the cigarette smoke his mother perfumed herself with. He felt her hands on the back of
his neck, there to support him. He let go of the bike and spread his arms out wide.
After thirty minutes of driving through golden roads, they reached the little house in San
Eli. Valentín and his father went inside and waited in line to buy some azaderos. The house

smelled like a donkey, but there was a sort of comfort in that. If it didn’t smell like a donkey it
wouldn’t be right. Valentín didn’t know why, he just knew that that’s how it goes.
They got three packages and stood outside the house and looked at the donkey that gave
off the donkey smell. Valentín got close enough to look into its eyes and saw black. He saw
himself. Valentín hadn’t looked at himself in over fourteen months. He forgot about the lunar he
had on the side of his left eye. He forgot about the scar on his lip from when his father threw his
fist at him when Valentín forgot to cut the grass on one summer afternoon. That night Valentín
slept on his father’s side of the bed next to his mother, and his dad slept on the couch in the sala.
He touched it, and his father came up next to him and put his hand on his shoulder. Valentín
winced.
“Valentín, your mother asked for you every day that you were gone.” Valen looked at his
father’s tired hands that were resting on his shoulder. They were thick with callus. They were
rough - he hurt everything he touched, and he knew it. Valen’s fingers were scarred and shaky.
“Valen, she missed you so much, her heart ached every day. She held onto old pictures of
you every time she prayed. She prayed at least five times a day for you, for your safety. She
would talk to the house, Valen. She was going crazy,” He shuttered and looked into the eyes of
his father. They were black, and he saw himself in them too. He saw the nose his mother gave
him. Nothing else was from his mother.
“She wasn’t crazy,” He walked to the bike. He knew he couldn’t convince his father
otherwise, so he didn’t try. Valen knew about the house whispers. He knew about his mother’s
secret language.
They rode back home trying to forget all that just happened. Valen held onto the
packages of cheese tight.

When they got closer to Segundo Barrio, closer to Mexico, a curtain of steel was taking
up the whole sky.
“Que es eso?!” His father had yelled loud enough so Valen could hear through the
screams of the motorcycle.
“Es para dividirnos,” Valen replied. He saw the maravillas begin to wilt.
When they got back into the barrio that was painted all over, they saw everyone standing
outside looking at the curtain. The huge wall of steel. Scared. Some crying. Nobody knew that
this was going to happen. It came without warning.
Valen walked inside the house and was alone in it for the first time since he was a child
and his parents had to go to work. The stove in the kitchen lit its flames, and Valentín started to
decipher its code. The wind came and the house took it. It hummed through the vents. It hummed
through the holes and the cracks. The hole in his mother’s bedroom next to her door was the
loudest - that’s where the cucarachas came out from and went home to. The hums came from
underneath the floorboards. It came from within the house. It moaned.
Valentín spoke back.
“I missed you too. I wish she were here… I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Valentín wondered how the house told his mother that he had smoked that cigarette years
ago. Maybe things were clearer back then.
Valentín held onto the door handle at the front door.
He and the house mourned together.
“Valen! Come outside!” His brother Rafa yelled to him. Before Valen left the house, he
touched the stove. He caressed it, lovingly. He felt strange. He thought of the last time he
touched it before he left to war. That’s how he said goodbye.

“Come, we’re going closer to see what’s happening,” Rafa took his hand and Tia Rosa’s
hand. She had just gotten there. The whole neighborhood went to the center of it all. They went
to the border. Everyone was yelling over one another, begging for answers. Their whole lives
were spent between these two countries, some didn’t even know they were ruled by different
people. They just lived their lives. Their lives were in Juarez and in Segundo Barrio. Then a man
came down who looked nothing like anyone from there. He wore a military uniform but not like
Valentín’s. His was decorated and held no sign of any type of blood, tears, or sweat.
He screamed into a megaphone.
“The border is no longer open. You must prove that you are a U.S. citizen to enter into
the U.S. through your Identification card or through a passport. There are two border openings
throughout the city, and this is one of them. The border wall is to protect us all from immigrants
trying to come into the U.S. illegally. This is only for safety measures, and we wanted to do our
darndest to have you all safe.” He smiled. With that everyone in Segundo made the earth shake
with their cries, and questions that will forever go unanswered.
Valentín got closer to the wall. The curtain made of steel touched the sky.
“How can people climb that?” He thought.
Through the one opening of the wall, Valen saw his friends and family on the other side,
staring at the wall with fear. Nobody cried on that side. Everyone just stared and held onto one
another. Valentín got closer and was alone and everyone was too busy trying to get their
questions answered, and the military soldiers were too busy trying to control the crowd to notice
Valen. He got closer and he put his arm out.
The cold touch made him shiver ashe traveled back to Okinawa. He was shivering with
sweat and touched the cold of the only friend he had made over there. Valentín felt the cold

stiffness of his only friend’s body, bloodied and filled with mud and sweat and filled with the
wrath of three bullets and soldiers following orders to protect their homes. Their children.
Valentín screamed in Okinawa. Valentín wanted to scream here at this moment but couldn’t.
Then he heard a yell filled with hate and authority.
“HEY! Don’t touch that!” Valentín threw his hands up and heard the gunshots. He fell to
the ground and quickly started praying to his mother. There were screams. And running.
Valentín traced his hands over his body and to his surprise, there was no blood. No anything. He
looked to the other side of the wall.
Valentin had felt the vibrations of the bullets that sent vibrations through those ten-year-
olds’ soft bellies, and soft legs, brown hearts, and faces. Valentin saw the fifteen-year-olds that
he saw got shot. That he shot. He ran towards Mexico, towards the wall where the soldier who
shot the children was. He reached for a gun that wasn’t there. He started to shoot like he was
ordered to.
Everyone was screaming.
Valentín bellowed.
More bullets invaded.
Valentín felt the softness of his mother’s hands on the back of his bare neck. He smelled
her cigarette smoke perfume.

Being Hungry Serena Clifford
Inocencia had lived several lifetimes by now.
She had been twenty when she murdered the sad creature she once was, leaving the
remains behind in the streets of Segundo Barrio. She had celebrated her sixtieth birthday living it
up as a tourist in France, face still as fresh and young as ever. Her pockets brimmed with enough
cash to send her old self into a stroke, and her body was sturdy enough that she found herself
wandering through slums without a second thought. She was free to go wherever she wished on a
whim, whenever the mood happened to suit her.
The world was her oyster.
And one that she had gotten hopelessly bored with by now.
You could only find so much wonder in wandering the corners of the globe time and time
again. At some point, it became inevitable that you grew a bit sick of watching them all drop like
flies. Afterward, you could always throw yourself off a building and have a grand time feeling
your bones knit themselves together, but even that became stale after a while. Years of living had
not brought a masochistic streak out from somewhere within Ino, and it didn’t take long for her
to go back to taking the stairs like a more rational being.
During her many journeys, Ino had heard of just as many methods of torture. While the
sheer cruelty that had gone into their invention didn’t surprise her- she had witnessed plenty of it
as a girl, after all- it was the sheer creativity that always managed to make her pause. It was
practically a universal trait of mankind, that fascination in inflicting the most terrible things onto
others. But one of these methods, she heard, was called Chinese water torture. The victim was
strapped into a chair, and water was left to drip methodically upon their forehead. Over time, the
repetition would drive the poor soul into madness. Ino couldn’t help but sympathize.

As such, it was almost ironic when she found herself drawn back to her old hometown.
She had spent so long trying to escape it, and somehow the wriggling urge to return would
always appear at the back of her mind, needling at her no matter where she went. It would be
years between her visits- part of it was the fact that staying in one place for too long asked for
trouble- but she could never keep herself from taking the trip. Her hands, the traitorous little
things they were, had gone so far as to turn the wheel of her car during her latest trip to the
states, taking just the right amount of turns to make avoiding a visit more difficult than anything.
Plus, even if she had put in the effort not to drop by, she would have missed out on one of
the few things that hadn’t managed to tire her out over the years.
The rich taste of authentic Bowie sweetbreads.
Ino shut her eyes as she sank her teeth into her latest prize, cracking the warm shell to the
steaming, fall-apart-in-your-mouth softness within. You had to savor the little things in life to
keep yourself going. She took her time in polishing off before standing, turning to the curly
haired boy working at the counter.
“I would like two more of your conchas, please.” She slid the cash for it over the counter,
idly tapping her nails against her wrist as she waited. The boy seemed new. He fumbled with the
money, some of the coins just about falling out from between his fingers before he caught them,
and nearly grabbed the sweet breads with his bare hands before correcting himself. It seemed like
the workers were getting younger and younger these days. They weren’t children in the modern
sense of the word- the acne smattered along their foreheads and cheeks was proof enough of that-
but they always seemed somehow...more youthful. All saucer eyes and curls and cheeks plumped
up with the baby fat they hadn’t quite lost yet.

Ino must have been looking a bit too closely at the boy because he was ducking his head
and staring pointedly away when he spoke up next.
“Uh. Is...that going to be all, ma’am?”
She gave him what might have been a reassuring smile. She tried to, at least. Though
with the extra eighty dollars she pushed over, she imagined the boy thought she was trying to
proposition him. “Actually, I’d like to pay forward for the rest of the customers, if you don’t
mind.”
El Segundo Barrio was a tired place.
It showed in the worn-down, weather-beaten faces Ino passed on the street. It showed in
how the world itself seemed to have been bleached by the sun, the color sucked right out of it to
leave something bleak and barren. A chunk of concrete powdered beneath her heel, leaving a
few-step trail where she walked.
The air itself tasted dry. Of course, Ino didn’t let it linger on her tongue for long. The
conchas took care of that particular problem for her.
She couldn’t remember if it had always seemed this way, or if it was only recent visits
that had made the block look like a faded bit of cloth, a hazy Polaroid left out for too long. Was
the Barrio of her memory truly as vivid as she remembered it? There had been an untamed
rawness about it, a quiet, steady pulse of life humming through the streets. There were occasional
glimpses of it here and there, echoes of life that managed to sneak through the witheredness. The
splashes of color in murals or the swing of gangly limbs in the fenced off schoolyards, or-
Or a hand sneaking its way into her purse.

Spinning on her heel, Ino swept up the offending wrist, and was met with a cry of alarm.
The culprit was a girl of eight or nine, maybe, eyes dark and- not fearful, no. There was surprise,
but no fear, even as she tried to thrash herself loose and smacked at Ino with her free hand.
“Lemme go! Lemme go, or I’ll scream! I’ll-”
“Calm down.” Ino surprised herself with the sternness of her own voice. “I’m not going
to hurt you. What were you trying to do?” It was a stupid question, admittedly. The answer was
in the girl’s clenched fist, which Ino idly pulled apart to reveal a few stray dollars that she had
managed to snag.
“That’s my money! Lemme go!”
Ino raised a brow. “If it’s your money, why was your hand in my bag, little one? Were
you giving some sort of donation?”
“Lemme go!”
Stubborn thing. Ino pried the rest of the cash loose and waved it. “Would you prefer
heading to the nearest police station? Maybe you’d be more willing to answer their questions
instead.”
The girl froze, then promptly glared up at Ino, shoulders squaring. “You’re not gonna do
that. If you do, I’ll tell ‘em you kidnapped me.”
“If I kidnapped you, then why would I-” She shook her head. “Nevermind. If I agreed to
give you the money, and to let you go without trouble, would you tell me then?”
The girl eyed her skeptically for a moment. Her eyes drifted to the money Ino held,
longingly, then back up again. “I guess.” She dragged the words out under her breath.
True to her word, Ino surrendered the bills, which were quickly snatched up and stuffed
away for safekeeping.

“If you follow up with your side of our deal, little one, then I’ll give you a fifty. How
does that sound?”
None of the tension that had built in the child left at the suggestion. It wasn’t much of a
surprise. Ino had expected her to bolt as soon as the money was gone, after all, so when she
quietly sat down on the curbside, hands left dangling between her knees, Ino tilted her head
before she sat down to join her.
“What’s your name?”
“Clarissa.”
“Just Clarissa?”
“Clarissa Nunya.”
One of the corners of Ino’s lips quirked up. “Well, my name is Inocencia. It’s a pleasure,
Miss ‘Nunya’. Thievery aside.”
The look Clarissa gave Ino was scathing. “S’not like you’re broke. Had enough cash to
buy all that bread n’ all.”
“Ah. That’s why, then.” Ino sat back. Cars ambled along the street in front of them, most
of them covered in various stages of rust. More than a few had a Juarez license plate to boot.
“You aren’t wrong, Miss Nunya. Though you shouldn’t punish someone for wanting to be
generous. What would your parents say, little one?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Clarissa shoved herself to her feet. Her voice, which had been little
more than a murmur, had risen to a shout. “And stop calling me ‘little one.’ I’m not five.”
“You aren’t, no. You must be…” Ino squinted. “At least...fifteen? Twenty, perhaps.”
“I’m ten. You’re really dumb, lady.”

“Oh? My eyesight must be failing me, then. I could have sworn you looked seventeen.”
Ino smiled.
The girl huffed. “Look, I told you what I was doing n’ all that. Can you give me the
money already?”
Once again, Ino handed over a crisp bill, and once again, Clarissa dove on it as if Ino
planned on swiping it away as soon as she grabbed for it. Before Ino could even say another
word, Clarissa had taken off down across the street, not even flinching as a car screeched to a
halt a foot away from her.
“Que niña mas extraña,” Ino murmured, then blinked at herself. She couldn’t remember
the last time she spoke in her native tongue, and yet, the words came as if they had never left.
She watched Clarissa as she darted off, the black of her hair striking against the greys that
surrounded her. It was only when the child had swung around out of sight that Ino stood, and,
brushing off the front of her blouse, made her way down the sidewalk.
Even as she continued her tour of the Barrio, she found her thoughts drifting to the girl
with the sticky fingers often throughout the day.
The next time Ino encountered Clarissa, it was in the midst of an even less favorable
situation than before, as she found the girl pawing through the dumpster behind a local cafe.
It took Ino actually walking up to her and clearing her throat before Clarissa even seemed
to register that she had company. She jolted, banging her head on the lid on the way up, then
scrambled to see who it was.
At the curious look Ino gave her- though she supposed it could have just been the sight of
her as a whole- Clarissa made a face, reaching up with one grimy hand to rub at her head.
“You again,” she grumbled.

“Me again,” Ino replied. “How are you today, Miss Nunya?”
“Miss Nun- how do you think I’m doing?”
“Well.” Ino glanced the girl over. “It isn’t my place to make assumptions.”
Clarissa scoffed, wincing a little before crossing her arms over her head. “You’re really
kind of a pendeja, aren’t you? Also, why’re you talking like that?”
“So I’ve been told.” Ino took a few steps forward. She kept a polite distance between
herself and the girl, watching carefully as she backed away. “Talking like what?”
“Like some sort of TV show or something. You don’t talk normal.”
“Ah. You’ll have to forgive me, then. It’s a force of habit.”
There was a sort of feral look in Clarissa’s eyes: one that Ino hadn’t fully recognized
during their first meeting. It was a hunger that wasn’t restricted to the bones in her face, but the
set of her shoulders, the way her nails pushed into her arms to the point of breaking the skin,
flooding Ino’s nose with the scent of blood.
For a moment, there was something eerily familiar in that young face. Ino could almost
taste that raw determination- not desperation, not quite something like that- in the back of her
own throat. That stubborn whisper of “I cannot surrender- will nots surrender” that was a quiet
echo throughout the Barrio.
“La voluntad de sobrevivir.”
The memory seemed to hit her like a truck. She was, suddenly, a girl of fourteen again,
lying in an alleyway not unlike this one. Everything was hurting, but she didn’t cry. She couldn’t
cry. Even if she could work up the energy for tears, she would just be punished for it. So she
simply lay there, surrounded in filth and bile and sweat, wishing that she could somehow become
the ground itself.

And that was when he had found her.
“Incluso después de todo lo que se te ha hecho, todavía hay una parte de ti que quiere
vivir, ¿verdad?”
“Yo...yo no soy-”
“¿Eso significa que preferirías morir entre la basura, entonces?”
“...No.”
“Entonces nada cambiará. Te levantarás, regresarás a ese hombre y dejarás que te venda
una y otra vez. Dejarás que te utilicen, y luego, dejarás que te desechen cuando hayan terminado.
¿Es eso lo que quieres?”
“Yo no- no quiero…”
“Entonces, ¿qué es lo que quieres en su lugar?”
It was then that Ino had raised her head to see him for the first time. While he had the
same dark features of someone of the Barrio, the resemblance stopped there. It wasn’t the suit he
wore that stood out in Ino’s memory or the smooth agelessness of his face, but his teeth. They
were perfectly even, gleaming white in the dim light of the moon. And long. They weren’t the
tall teeth of a horse, but they somehow seemed just a bit too large for his mouth.
It was to the teeth she whispered, “Quiero ser libre.”
Ino blinked hard. How long had she been standing there? She took a quick second to
ground herself, then abruptly tossed a small bottle at Clarissa.
“Catch.”
Clarissa fumbled for a moment with the item but did manage to catch it, to her credit. She
looked at her prize with obvious bewilderment, then back up at Ino. “Sanitizer?”

“Yes. It isn’t healthy to eat when your hands are dirty. And given that you just finished
going through a dumpster, that’s the best I can do for you on such short notice.”
The look Clarissa held shifted to one of clear suspicion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’d like to buy you something to eat. Something fresh.”
Clarissa’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to pull some sort of sugar mama thing on me?
Are you a pedo?”
A ripple of disgust passed down Ino’s spine. “I have no sympathy for that type.” She
couldn’t help but spit the words out, though she quickly composed herself soon after. Ino cleared
her throat. “My apologies. You can think of it as an...act of sympathy, more or less.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“Sympathy, Miss Nunya.” Ino looked at Clarissa. “You can believe it, or you can not. But
I know what it feels like to be hungry. And I know that when I was, what I wanted more than
anything was for someone to even try to help me.”
“At the very least, let me offer you some company for a time.”
There was a silence.
“You’re weird,” Clarissa said, finally. “But I’m not gonna turn down free food.”
It soon became a routine. Ino would meet Clarissa at the corner of 7th and Virginia, and
the two of them would then walk the rest of the way to the diner or bakery. Sometimes, they
would sit in relative silence together as they ate; “relative” being a keyword, seeing that Clarissa
didn’t seem all too concerned with manners when she ate. If Ino didn’t stop her, she would often
reach for whatever was on her plate with grimed-coated fingers, and stuff as much as her cheeks
would allow into her mouth. Ino would send her home with even more food than usual when that
happened.

Other times, however, they would talk. The more that Ino spent time with the girl, the
more questions she had.
“Where is your family?”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Have things always been this way for you?”
Maybe it was the food that swayed Clarissa. Maybe there was a part of the girl that had
wanted someone to talk to, to listen, and now they're finally was. Ultimately, the only one who
would really know what was going on within her head was Clarissa herself.
“It’s just me and my mom.” She was inspecting a piece of bread between her fingers,
turning it this way and that. “That’s pretty much how it’s always been, y’know? And everything
was fine before. But then she, uhm. She got sick. Like...really sick. She can’t really leave home
anymore.”
“Has she been to a doctor?” Ino asked.
Clarissa laughed. There was no humor in it. “Lady, d’you really think I’d be taking
handouts if we could see a doctor?” She was picking furiously at the bread, now, tearing off
chunks until it was little more than crumbs. “I’ve seen the bills. I’ve seen- but she still doesn’t-”
“Doesn’t what?”
“I don’t know!” A few other customers had begun to stare. Clarissa took a few deep
breaths, then began to push the crumbs around on her plate. “I just...I don’t know. She just...I
don’t think she really wants to do anything. I don’t think she even tries, and I know there’s stuff
out there, but…”
“You feel as if it’s up to you to pick up the slack.”
“Yeah.” Clarissa frowned. “How’d you know?”

Ino didn’t respond at first. Her eyes drifted to the window, where, outside, a man was
painting the gentle brow of the Virgin.
“You and I are alike in more than a few ways, little one.”
“Oh, yeah? Kinda find that hard to believe. Since, y’know.” Clarissa scooped the crumbs
into her palm, then promptly dumped them into her mouth. “You talk like some sorta TV lady.
And I don’t. Plus I’m a lot cooler.” She paused. “Plus-plus, you’ve got lipstick on your teeth.
S’gross.”
Ino sucked her teeth clean before she smiled. “Of course. You are much more…’hip’ and
‘with it’ than I am.”
“Ohmygod. You don’t talk like a TV lady. You talk like an old lady.” With a groan,
Clarissa stood and reached over the table to snatch a few things from Ino’s plate.
One day, Ino waited for Clarissa, only to find she never came.
This had not happened before. Even in the months that they had come to know one
another, even when Clarissa had caught the flu, horrifying an innocent priest with the world’s
most unpleasant shoe polish, she had come. Ino’s comment seemed to have piqued some
curiosity in Clarissa, for afterward, she had begun to ask questions about Ino herself.
It was the first time in decades that Ino had spoken of her past.
She kept things veiled in half-truths, of course, covered up from innocent eyes, but there
was truth nonetheless. Ino told her about her own parents, poor migrants. She told her that she,
too, was from the Barrio, and about her own lack of childhood education- though not of the fact
that no little girls were able to get a true one when she was young. She told her about her travels,
the money built up surely, but slowly. And when she told her about the people she had met,

about a man who lost a hand but believed himself a prophet, Clarissa laughed and said, “Maybe I
can meet him one day, too.”
So this was strange. Unsettling, really. There was something that curled deep in Ino’s gut
as she strode down the street, searching for her young companion. It was possible that something
was just holding her up, or perhaps she had decided to stay home to attend to her mother, but-
The cry was so muffled, so distant, that even Ino might have missed it.
The discomfort within her shot all the way into her throat. Ino ran, legs moving in that
strange, jelly-like way often found in dreams. She ran past the questioning looks of the passerby,
the murals blurring together in streaks of red and gold and brown.
When she skidded to a halt, it was in front of an alleyway.
There was something hideously fitting in that. It seemed as if Ino’s life was wrapped in
alleyways.
She saw Clarissa first, eyes wide and terrified, and the man grappling her second.
Holding her tight to his body. Saying, “Shh. ¿Quieres que te lastime?” To behave. There was a
pungent smell of sweat and and filth and bile, and nobody else around. They were isolated from
the world.
Good.
Ino was on the man before he even had time to react. She held him as close as he held
Clarissa, even after his shoulders cracked and the girl tumbled out of his arms. Her teeth, sharp
as needle-points, clamped down onto his throat, clicking together before she yanked away and
pulled a chunk of flesh with her. She swallowed, but it wasn’t enough. Throwing him against the
stone wall, she ate him, ate him like she had been eaten up, like creatures like him ate up young
girls until there was nothing left but bone.

She had taken his eye into her mouth, popping it against the roof of her mouth, when she
heard sobbing.
Clarissa.
She was curled up against the side of the alleyway, crying, hands pushed against her face.
She was terrified. Ino took a step forward, letting the man slump to the ground, and she cringed.
“Stay away! Stay-”
Ino blinked. She felt warmth trickle down her chin, down the front of her shirt, and
forced the bones in her face to fold themselves into something a bit more human.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say.
Then she stepped aside, allowing Clarissa to run past her, crying helplessly into the world
she belonged in.

A Life through Pictures Luis Anchondo
Along dark alleys, brick neighborhoods and murals lit by streetlights, a greenhouse has
its lights on. It keeps the air outside, past the metal bars that adorn the entrance and its windows.
Inside, there is an old man who sits in the corner of his bed next to a photo album. His figure
hunches over, almost as if he is embracing the picture he holds. Every breath he takes feels
heavy in his lungs. He is enveloped by photographs, fragments of his life that hang on the walls.
Placing the picture on the bed sheets, he stands, going towards the single window in the room.
With arms that could be confused for twigs, he drags the frame, opening the glass. Through the
metal bars, a soft breeze fills the room and in turn his lungs, enough oxygen to keep him moving.
Reaching for the telephone on the night-table, he starts dialing its worn down keys. Finishes
dialing, presses clear and dials again.
Ring, ring, ring.
A second passes, and he feels a familiar, bitter silence through the other side of the
telephone line.
Then a man's voice is heard. "Hello?"
Clearing his dusty throat, the old man responds. "Hi."
"What do you need, Nacho?"
Pondering this question, Nacho responds. "I wanted to check up on you."
"I was getting into bed."
Nacho looks for the words in his chapped lips. "I don't want to bother you. I just wanted
to let you know that-"
Another second hangs in the air.
"What is it, Dad?"

"I love you, Joseph."
A pause.
"Me too."
The high-pitched beeping of the phone fills Nacho's ears. He hangs up and goes out of his
room into a hallway. Both walls are brimming with portraits of a woman, a child and himself.
Other frames hold newspaper covers. There are doors closed throughout.
Nacho opens one. In the corner of the room, a stove holds a kettle. While a round table
rests in the heart of the room, atop it a ceramic mug, ready to be served. Water fills the platinum
kettle while his fingers turn the knob on the stove, starting a small flame. Suddenly a wave of
light goes through Nacho's brain, he senses his legs giving out, his vision becomes blurry with
bokeh. The sensation makes him take a few steps back. He grabs onto what feels like wood.
Figuring it's one of the many chairs next to the table, he holds it firmly. His vision slowly dims
back to color. He sees the fire sizzling the metal and the photos hanging around him. How
peaceful and uneventful if death visited today, he thinks.
The wave is entirely gone. Feeling once again his frail limbs, Nacho catches the kitchen
phone, dials, and waits, but nothing comes through. Instead, the soft chuckles of a child start to
fill the empty house. Looking towards the hallway, he sees the light shining through the edges of
a door next to his bedroom. Through the walls of the hall, he makes his way past years of
portraits and newspaper covers, the black and white photos gaining color the further he moves
down.
The pitchy chuckle is past the door. Nacho opens it to find light coming under a blanket,
which creates a silhouette of a child. This once-empty room now has balloons on the ceiling, tiny
racing cars on the floor, and some green soldiers by the window. Walking closer, Nacho notices

the silhouette of a boy holding a book, while a flashlight illuminates him. He uncovers the
sheets, and a boy with frizzy hair looks straight at him.
"Sorry, Dad. I swear I will go to sleep."
Nacho looks at his dimples and his freckles. He recognizes this image.
"Joseph?" Nacho's mouth opens trying to find an explanation.
Little Joseph puts his book below the bed. "Dad, can you finish your story?"
He recognizes his voice and notices his missing front tooth that made him say one too
many S's in his words. Nacho had forgotten how much he missed those S's. "Which one?"
"How you became a photographer," little Joseph responds.
A hole in Nacho's heart feels patched, giving him enough strength to place a chair next to
the bed where he sits. "Alright," he says.
Joseph, freckle-faced, smiles and the dimple appears with it.
"I was about your age. My papá woke me up and put me in a cold shower that made me
shiver all around. Hoy es el día, he said. Graduaciones. When we got out of the house, the
streetlights had just gone off, and my Papá and I were carrying equipment through the Barrio. Es
más seguro, he used to tell me. During that time those cheap lights and flimsy tripod seemed
priceless, so I believed him. The streets were quiet at 6 am. Not even the dogs would bark, and
you would only see cats moving around through the alleys. I couldn't feed them though; my
hands were full of lights and a tripod, and we still had a few blocks until we arrived at Guillen
School's gym. My Papá walked next to me, his camera strapped around his neck like it was his
wedding ring. If I took a break, he would let me know that I was carrying everything because I'm
an hombre. That usually followed by a sip from his plastic Coca Cola bottle.”
Little Joseph yawns while asking, “What did grandpa do?”

“My papá’s setup was two lights in the front and a fat one in the back. They were big,
and they would shoot beams alongside the shutter. A line quickly formed past the main entrance
of the gym; it was full of wives, husbands and their children in their Sunday best. One child
would get into the shot and bam! The sizzling hot light hit their skin and they would be captured.
Another family would send their child and the cycle repeated. This went on and on.”
Joseph voice softly whispers, “More.”
“That was until my papá had one too many sips of his coke and went outside to vomit. I
quickly hid behind the camera while he laid on the grass. Soon someone stepped into the lights, a
woman and her daughter. The woman was so pretty that husbands would take off their hats next
to their wives when she passed by. But the daughter was the one that had caught my eye. She had
long velvet hair, with freckles sprinkled over her milky skin, and big eyes. She seemed
otherworldly. The woman asked what had happened to the photographer. Hiding my shivers with
the help of the tripod, I assured her I was his assistant.
I placed the light close enough for her daughter to be perfectly lit, and I noticed her deep
green eyes, then bam! I took her picture. I asked their names to send the developed photos. Mrs.
Dubow and Elena, they said. Elena Dubow. What a pretty name, I thought.
After finishing capturing the line of children that were left, I was left thirsty, so I sipped
from the Cola my papá had forgotten under his things. The way home was sort of fuzzy, the
streets moved and changed palettes from wall to wall. Many vibrant velvets and greens filled
houses and mixed into a stream of blues. When we got home later that day, my papá washed my
mouth with soap, while he kept calling me hijo de tu pinche madre, actually never mind the
ending, forget it."

Nacho's gaze turns towards the bed. There Joseph's eyes are shut, and through his mouth
bits of breath faintly come out. While standing the wave hits Nacho's brain once more, the light
blocks his eyes, nausea fills his body. His knees like gelatin drag him towards the bathroom.
Catching his breath, he looks straight where shapes begin to appear. There are strands of white
hair that shoot out into every direction, eyes that are filled with bags which rest under more bags.
Until finally he sees his wrinkly face that the mirror presents. Holding the shower curtain, he
slowly falls next to the bathtub and turns on the faucet. A stream of water starts filling the tub.
His wrinkly hands reach into the small waterfall, feeling the warmth. He washes his face.
Suddenly a high-pitched whistle shoots off, building in intensity by the second. The yelling of a
kettle, he thinks, and now he remembers the tea left on the stove. Holding the shower curtain, he
pulls himself up, leaving the water running.
Nacho goes past Joseph's bed, which is empty and dark. The whistle is now loud and
penetrating. It makes him rush towards the kitchen. Once there the kettle scream is gone, and
instead of steam, he sees a young lady sitting at the table with a mug in her hands. The girl, with
her red velvet hair, milky skin, and green eyes, smiles at him. She is there, his love, and before
he can say a word, Elena puts her tea down.
"So this is your house,"
Nacho’s breath escapes his mouth, leaving him wordless.
"I've always liked your photos." She points towards Nacho's back, to a wall brimming
with frames. "Especially one."
His eyes begin to water. "Can you wait? I want to grab my camera," Nacho says as his
voice quivers.
Elena starts to giggle.

"What's so funny?"
"It's just you never change, or did you forget about my favorite photo?"
Nacho looks back among the frames, searching for this photograph on the wall. His eyes
go towards a sepia picture. It is a bird’s-eye view of Segundo: a small bricked city that has
telephone poles for veins that run through the streets, and people moving in and out of buildings,
like blood. In the foreground of the photo, Elena looks towards the lens, trying to keep her hair
still from the wind.
"I could never forget a good moment. It was after we watched Rosemary's Baby at the
Plaza. I was so impressed by it, but you kept holding my arm tightly, wanting to go eat."
"That's right." Elena smiles.
Nacho looks at Elena and sees an image in his mind.
"It was our first anniversary. I had it all planned out. I knew I had permission to shoot
photos because I had done it many times as a photojournalist for the Herald-Post. My camera
was my VIP pass throughout every place in Segundo. You were so confused that I brought you
to Ignatius church; maybe you thought I was going to propose then. After sneaking past the
priest, we went to the top of the right tower, to the small bell room that had just rung.
That became our little paradise for the afternoon. I think it took your breath away to see
Segundo as a bird, or perhaps you were frightened by the height. Either way, you said you had
never seen the green tiles of the church up close. You could see every single one, like individual
paint strokes. I remember I had brought wine and sandwiches, but you refused the wine.
Through the pillars of our little temple, the wind kept caressing your hair. I knew at that
moment I needed to capture you. But I left my camera in the pews, and oblivious of my presence
when I came back I took that photo, while you kept touching your belly."

Elena's brows raise as she looks at Nacho. "You're still so dense."
"Just wait right here,” Nacho said. “I need my camera."
Limping out of the kitchen, Nacho enters the living room, where wooden cabinets and
some sofas hug each other tightly. He opens some drawers and starts throwing boxes left and
right until, finally, he stops. In his hands there is a brown leather casing in the shape of a camera.
He opens it. A crack runs through the front of the lens into the metal back that has caved into
itself, and at the bottom, a screw is missing which makes the camera’s shape uneven. His
heartbeat starts to rise. He doesn't recognize his camera this way.
Nacho turns to find a young man on the other side of the room. He is looking down,
holding his back towards the wall.
"I'm sorry, Dad." As he speaks, Nacho feels the weeping through his voice.
He looks at the camera. "Did you do this, Joseph?"
Joseph trembles as he keeps on weeping.
An image flashes in Nacho's mind. "You did. I had bought a small turkey. You were
finally here, my busy college son. But you left early that night, and I stayed behind, cleaning
after you."
Joseph's gaze leads to the floor. "I just went to the cemetery."
Another flash.
"But you didn't. I saw a single headlight come back at midnight and your breath stank of
alcohol. After I carried you inside, I found the camera in the passenger's seat. It was my camera
and my papá’s camera before mine, but my son utterly broke it. When I asked you about it, you
didn't even care. You told me that you could buy me a new one, a digital one.
"I didn't mean it."

"Then I slammed you into the wall, and you began to cry. I slapped you, and your first
response was to resist. You tried to free yourself. You didn't understand the difference between
us. I worked in the Herald-Post for decades, and for semesters now I had taken graduation photos
like Papá. You didn't understand that my arms carried equipment every day. My legs would
stand for hours. And you? You had the opportunity to study, to write and read. I thought maybe
if I had slapped you before you wouldn't have turned out like this. You cried more. Damn right, I
thought. You should feel something! Your face red from the roughness of my hands, you fell.
Your mouth bled as you started to apologize. It must have been your braces rubbing against your
cheek."
Nacho's image fades from his mind.
"But I wouldn't do that, would I?"
"I'm sorry, Dad."
He sees Joseph shivering on the floor.
"Son, I-"
Slowly, Nacho steps closer to Joseph.
"I'm sorry," Nacho says.
Tears run down Joseph's cheeks. Lips stained by bloody saliva softly say, "I wish, you
were dead."
Joseph crawls up and runs out the living room, into the kitchen. Nacho chases him, but
the kitchen is empty. Nothing alive is in the kitchen. He walks past little Joseph's bedroom,
nothing there.

Once in his bedroom, he sits back on the edge of the bed. The photograph album is next to
him. He picks it up and starts to scroll through its pages, seeing faces and places he doesn't
recognize, page after page, photo after photo. They all seem so strange and distant.
Nacho closes his eyes, trying to look for an image, for a memory. The sound of heavy
breathing fills the room, and the touch of a hand underneath the bed sheets makes him turn
around. Elena lays next to him. Her belly is plump and full; face bright red as she pushes. Tears
stream down Nacho's cheeks.
"I'm sorry, Elena."
She screams. It shakes the plywood in the walls until her breath stops.
She exhales.
Slowly.
Blood pours onto the sheets. It puddles and grows closer to Nacho. He trembles, hiding
behind his camera. While Elena's face loses its color and she starts to close her eyes, a baby's cry
fills the air. But before he can see the baby, Nacho feels the water on his feet.
He stands, follows the stream into the bathroom. Both his breath and heart move with no
rhythm. The wave comes back--his eyes lose focus and his legs twist, slips and falls against the
edge of the tub. Water gushes out.
Tears pour into the faucet’s stream.
He closes his eyes and sees white light under his eyelids. Slowly, while the water runs
down his body, he opens them again and catches his reflection in the ripples of the water.
Staring,
"Who are you?"

"Elena's husband? No, she is dead. Joseph's father? He is better off without you. You are
alone. You are utterly and completely alone."
His hands turn off the faucet and grab the shower curtain to come up. One, two, three,
four hooks give in, but Nacho is back on his feet. He drags his body towards his bed through the
puddles on the rug. Gets in bed and feels in his hand the glossy texture of a photograph. He looks
at it. His body becomes warm, no longer feeling the wetness. Nacho starts to smile.
The light in his eyes slowly fades.
Then he closes them.
The alarm on Joseph's phone goes off. It reads 6 am on the screen. He checks his phone
and notices a missed call. It takes him thirty minutes on the I-10 to get to Segundo from the east
side. Pulling to the porch, he sees the green paint that has cracked throughout the outside,
revealing the brick underneath. Joseph walks past the pots that have died with their dried soil and
starts knocking on the door. No response. He hits the door with his keys, but there is no answer.
He looks below the biggest pot, and past cobwebs there is a key.
"Nacho?" Joseph's voice echoes with no response inside the house.
Except for the quiet sizzling of a slow-burning flame on the stove. Joseph turns it off, which
has now painted the bottom of the once-platinum kettle into charcoal black.
"Dad?" Joseph says as he walks towards the hallway.
Walking closer to his bedroom, he feels the damp wood with every step.
"Dad?"
This time he hears the sound of wind return his call.

Joseph opens the door and sees him, lying in his bed, both of his hands covering his
chest, leaves surrounding him. Some are still flying in through the window. He runs next to him
and moves his chest, wiggling him a little. There is no response.
Sweeping off the leaves from him, he notices a smile on his face and something he holds
in his twig-like arms.
Joseph's heartbeat is rising.
He cannot believe this day has come.
He opens his father's hands. Below them, there is a photograph. He takes is in his own. A
baby smiles back from the picture, his hair thin and straight, his tiny hands trying to reach the
lens. Joseph flips the photo, trying to find answers, but he knows who took it and who this is. His
heartbeat slows as he feels a warmness grow inside him. He puts his arms around his father's
body. Hugging him, three words slip out through his teeth.
"I love you.”

Fragments Jose Angel Uranga
I woke up to a loud, repetitive beeping. I was lying down and saw a ceiling, white and
pearly. My body was covered by warm thin sheets and my right arm had wires sticking out of it.
I looked forward to where I saw a board with my name: Rafa Gonzalez, Age 17. Something
gripped my left hand. It was Mamá, her eyes blood-shot and dressed in her night-time clothes.
She clenched my hand even harder as she started to cry. I tried to get up, but my body felt like a
thousand nails were jabbing all over. I looked around the room; I saw doctors, nurses, and
Mamá. But someone was missing. “Where’s Papá?” No one replied. They turned their heads
away. After what felt like a never-ending silence, it clicked. My Papá was dead.
It was a clear, starry night; Papá and I were driving back home from getting some errands
done. I loved Papá more than anything in the world, especially for what he did for a living. He
would have his tiny shiny golden shield on his uniform and specialized tools around his belt.
Papá had been and will always be my hero. I loved how kind he was, especially when people
would thank him for his service against the gang violence in Segundo Barrio. One thing that
always bugged me was why he didn’t pull the trigger on any gang member? I asked him, and he
said, “Mijo, killing a killer would never change the number of killers; the number remains the
same. Whether you believe me or not, the number won’t change.” I was amazed at what he told
me, a moral he lived and stood by. “When you graduate, what do you want to be?” I didn’t
hesitate, “I want to be just like you, Papá.” He smiled at me, but told me that being what he was
isn’t easy. He told me that I was risking everything. I nodded, and we continued to drive home.
Bright white lights shined right in front of us. The next thing I saw was shattered glass. I
was upside down. There was a puddle of blood, laughter, and an arm reaching towards me. It had
a black spider tattoo. The spider tattoo had eight long pointy legs, four pointing down and four

pointing up, and a red hourglass. After that, I couldn’t remember. It was all a blur. I stared at my
Mamá. She gave me a tight hug. The doctors told me that the crash had traumatized me. I would
suffer memory loss. I gripped the sheet of the bed as a tear followed the path of the fresh scar on
my right cheek.
Two years had passed since that day, and I’d been learning how to defend myself if I
were ever in a dangerous situation. In my room, I looked at the newspaper that was hanging on
the wall, an article of the crash I’d been in. Right next to it was a black spider coming down from
the ceiling. My hand clenched. I threw my fist right at it. There was a crunch, then a stain on the
wall like a paintball splatter. I glanced over at the picture of Papá I had next to my bed. “Papá, I
promise I will find the person who took you away. No matter what.” I put on my black jacket
and as I was about to head to the dining room, I erased any emotion I had in me. After a minute,
I went to the dining room, Mamá was cooking. I turned on the TV to the news channel and once
again it was about the increasing gang violence. The police had yet to minimize the destruction
of the biggest gang in Segundo Barrio; Los Aztecas.
“Mijo, your food is ready” I didn’t respond. I kept watching the news. Mamá patted my
shoulder. “Watching the news again…” she said with concern. I could see the distress she had on
her face, so I decided to change the channel as I made my way to the food, she had prepared for
me. Mamá sat down across me. We ate while listening to TV. She had stopped eating and looked
at me. I knew this because she was completely silent. “What’s wrong Mamá?” I said as I
continued to eat. “I can feel you staring at me.” “It’s just…Mijo are you alright? Earlier I heard a
loud bang from your room, and you always focus so hard on the news whenever it is about those
malandros in the streets.” I stopped eating and looked at her. I could see how worried she was.
“I’m alright, Mamá. The noise from my room was just a book I had dropped, and I focus on the

Saludos from Segundo, Tales of the Barrio

Saludos from Segundo, Tales of the Barrio

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