Fiction

Death draws a veil over the living. Like a somber version of the game, my sister Zoya and I played as kids. We’d get under the bed sheet when Mom was spreading it over the mattress. We’d bounce the sheet and catch fleeting glimpses of each other as the soft cotton rose and fell over our bodies. We’d try to escape half-heartedly, but our little bodies continued to move around in circles playing peekaboo. 

“We’re not lost,” mom said. She took a deep breath and yelled, “Desgraciado! Imprudente! Chingón!” Each insult was like the click from a bat. She located where she was by putting insults into the air and listening to the dark city echo and holler back. Eulogio was by the taxis.

In the south the orange juice is so thick the pulp catches between my teeth. Every night my dogs chase the bunny who refuses his backyard eviction; they’re pouncing and weaving, always missing. Theirs is a dumb violence—a giddiness for the baby bird perplexed by flight, and rooted in the garden bed.

The idea had been beautiful in its simplicity: Make Guardian Angels literal by building androids for children. Train the Angels to recognize the pitch and tenor of the children’s voices, to notice the slightest changes in tension or elation. Equip them with motion sensors to monitor the children’s location and the ability to measure the space between their bodies and dangerous objects—still-hot stovetops, second-story windows, abandoned Legos poised upright on the carpet, shattered green glass in alleys. Embed the Angels with GPS and cameras to deter kidnappers. Program the Angels to never leave the children’s side.

Someone looking at the large photograph hanging on the spacious sitting room wall would imagine that there was something anomalous about it. An anomaly impossible to define at first glance, and perhaps not at second glance, yet there was no shame in continuing to look. After all, these large photographs in their carefully chosen frames hung there for everyone to look at in contemplation of their static details.