Saints of the Household: Parts I–III

She was the one to smooth-talk all the adults, the one with the coolest clothes, wearing designer brands she’d revamp from the steals she’d find at thrift stores or save up for at the mall.

We know our people aren’t beach people no matter what our counselor might assume about Costa Rica.

With Ms. Hannan, we try cognitive therapy, re-scaping our minds with warmer thoughts so we can prepare to talk to Luca for “reconciliation.”

We find Mom cutting potatoes in the kitchen. Hard-bodied tubers, first sliced in half—the way she plants them in the spring—their white exposed and then placed in the ground, a white face to a brown one.

We are back to our after-school routine, but now with a tighter turnaround on counseling days. Somehow we all managed to hide our suspension from Dad.

I call the dog’s name again when she sniffs back at an egress window, and she snaps out of the cycle for a moment, warm lab eyes at me, before she looks back again for another beetle.

In some of her Instagram posts, she’s wearing a jingle dress at powwows.

Shelly is a socialite. Always on top of things. The busiest person. She’s on signs all around town for her booming realty business.

For our first meeting with Luca, Max is leaning back in his chair, and I know he has little remorse. We are not our father, he told me in all surety when I couldn’t sleep last night. We didn’t know what was happening. We did what we could for what we saw.

You see, Sibökma was imaginative—he foresaw a new plane, one made of stars, one for the moon, another for lush green land and even animals.

Almost four years ago, on Max’s fourteenth birthday, Dad lost his job at the Ford plant. A small recession had hit Minnesota. No one was buying new cars.

She’s wearing her sister’s designer jean jacket that has an American flag upside down. Indigenous is stitched above the flag, and resistance below.

The girl pulls her hand back sheepishly. “Sorry, that’s so rude. You’re right,” the girl says.

Luca looks up just a second later, his eyes widening for half a second, but then casually takes his arm off his friend, then the freshman, and waves at Nicole.

The freshman was clearly swooning under his cozy friendship.

A little plaque with his name on it is knocked into the wall.

UNTITLED NO. 19. MAX ORTIZ.
“It’s abstract,” Max says.

Max drives, and I open one of the Cokes I snagged from Dad’s fridge downstairs, where he keeps all his lemons, limes, Cokes, and Sprites.

My face warms for a second, and then I bite my cheek because it’s ridiculous our father would pine for someone else when he harms Mom under our roof.

“I’ve got two months to prep. Thank goodness for MCAD’s deadlines. They are pretty lax.”

The mystical eagles were the dragons of Talamanca. Large beaks, black inky wings, and machete talons. They’d come down from the mountains, tearing children from their mothers’ arms, snatching those who went out in the day from the pathways. The mystical eagles had become so terrifying that our people didn’t leave home in fear of never returning.

He wavers for a moment, steadies himself with his back to the living room wall.

Well, I’ve screwed up relationships before. I’ve been the irrational, unforgiving one in a relationship.

I set up my easel,
lean a canvas to my leg, a cheap one
from a set Jay bought for me
over Christmas. I already
know he’d wonder why
I’d make time to paint a girl
I hardly know.

Dad is sitting in the precinct for unpaid parking tickets.

He never admits that Mom found him the job. After he got it, he’d gloat to people at church about providing for our family.

The scientist who studied it said all the Western scientists didn’t think the hypothesis was even worth testing. But then she came back with her findings, and it was true.

A large housing development where each house was built at the same time will, in ten years and six months, become a cul-de-sac squalling with needs.

A large housing development where each house was built at the same time will, in ten years and six months, become a cul-de-sac squalling with needs.

We bustled below at fifteen, picking up items for him and watching him rain down torn-up, mossy shingles onto a black tarp below.

Ms. Hannan had us write about our extended family and their responses to the difficulties they went through. What is she going to know about kinship, about our distance from our family?

I’m coming here to show we’ve done reconciliation after we beat up Luca.

I try to be a little empathetic. I think of Nicole and how we all have our pieces of who we are.

It sounds like a threat. But I am composed.

Then Luca’s counselor says something that sounds practical but still cuts me. “Let’s meet again when Max is ready.”