Excerpt of Jubilee by Jennifer Givhan

Bianca pressed chanclas to cement; a shockwave of cramping curled her over. Knees buckling, she hunched, hands to thighs. She could’ve been a leaf in an electrical storm, crinkled and burning.

Once the painful jolts released her to the dull, steady drum that had replaced her body, she pulled the handle, and the front seat swung forward. She reached back to unbuckle Jubilee, pink and fuzzy in a bunny-eared romper. Kanga cocked her unclipped ears and wagged her stump of a tail. Earlier that morning, back in the Valley, Bianca had balanced atop a lawn chair on the backyard porch of her empty girlhood house, then wrapped a cord around her neck and hung the slack around a patio post. She’d stared at her dog. She’d willed herself to kick the chair. To do something besides stand there, wobbly in bare feet, with the cord dangling down her chest. She’d closed her eyes and prepared herself to fall. But Kanga had barked and barked until Bianca climbed down and knelt on the slab of unfinished patio cement, still bleeding between her legs.

She hugged Kanga’s brown neck and cried into her fur. Then she remembered Jubilee.

She’d broken herself into pieces, for Jubilee.

“Come on, girl,” she said to Kanga. To Jubilee, “We’re at uncles’ house.” Jubilee didn’t blink or cry, but Bianca soothed her anyway. “Shhh, shhh, sana, sana,” she whispered, patting the pink romper and resting the soft body against her shoulder. Bianca padded up Matty’s porch steps and rang the bell.

Kanga barked. No one came.

She rang again.

This time, heavy footsteps across the wooden floor; Matty had woken up. Handro nearly floated when he walked, his petite frame almost hovering, a slender ghost gliding on the tip of his own long white beard in a Remedios Varo painting. But Matty was solid as sculpture.

The curtain rustled; Matty peeked out the door’s glass window.

Bianca tried smiling, but her face wouldn’t oblige.

Locks unchained, unclicked, and the doorway flooded with warm yellow light, revealing Matty, her massive older brother, his black hair sleep-rumpled, his dark eyes tired and confused. He was technically her half-brother through Mama, but Bianca would’ve punched anyone who said so, like she’d punched that bitch Vanessa at the Catholic school who’d called Mama a whore (she’d said “ho”) for having kids with two different dads. Matty was her full brother.

“Bianca?” Barefooted and gym-shorted, Matty stared at her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, tears landing on Jubilee’s fuzzy hood.

His eyes narrowed into a frown. “Is that . . . a baby?”

Bianca nodded again, unsure whether he’d be loving or judgmental.

“Oh my God. Come in.” He reached for her arm and led her into the house. “What happened?” He pulled her into his wide body for a hug. “Jesus, you’re burning up.”

She tried to speak. Couldn’t.

“Here,” he said, leading her to the couch, “let me hold your baby.” He reached for Jubilee, but Bianca couldn’t let go. She hadn’t slept for days. She must’ve looked crazed. A La Llorona out of the waters, stealing dreams. “Bee, I’ll hold your baby so you can rest.”

She choked out a sob, letting him take Jubilee as she wobbled backward, landing on a couch that reminded her of the borrowed one she’d been bleeding on for two days, in the empty house-for-sale two hundred miles away. But soft and beige and beckoning, this one whispered safe. Whispered let go.

Her eyes fluttered. Matty said, “Wait, what the hell?” His voice reminded her of a flashing siren. It sounded an alarm. Something cold and blacktop and ugly. She squinted, willing herself not to fall asleep. Was something wrong with Jubilee? She tried opening her mouth to speak, but her tongue scraped sand. She’d become a noiseless womb. Mami’s here, she thought of saying. But she couldn’t recognize her own thoughts.

“Shit, Bianca. What’s going on?” He seemed repulsed by Jubilee, holding her away from his body unnaturally. Was he angry Bianca had stayed in the Valley with Gabe, then come back with Gabe’s baby? Matty had always hated Gabe. A childhood of abuse had given Matty a sixth sense that Bianca hadn’t developed. Where she trusted everyone, he trusted no one. Yet surely Matty would forgive her mistakes, now that she was here, that she’d come home. Accept her for what she’d become. That’s why she’d gone to him instead of Mama.

Hug her, she tried saying. The words wouldn’t form. Hold her tight. It’s calming.

“Bianca? What is this?”

She closed her eyes. Matty’s living room swelled and shrank, a lung, breathing her in, breathing her out.

“Handro,” Matty yelled. “Come help me. Something’s wrong with my sister.”

Jubilee was safe. The flashflood was gone. The arroyo was dry. Bianca was a lungfish. Drowning.

“Handro? Get my phone. I need help . . .”

Hail Mary, full of grace. Switch off the light and grant me peace.

And the light switched off.

Before Bianca’s father had left for good the year she’d floundered at Holy Cross, he’d gotten sober. He’d changed. He wasn’t the drunken asshole who called her brother a faggot and her mother a fat slob, but a man whose whole life could be summed up with one word: regret.

That night at Matty’s house, Dad was there with her, she was sure of it, telling Mama he’d called the family and they were praying. Maybe he was there. When Bianca had nearly died, her dad, her red-bearded gringo, her mad scientist of a father, soft-spoken-with-the-alcohol-gone, had finally come to pray.

Mama was there. That was verifiable. As in, others would agree that she was in the room and not just a part of Bianca’s imagination or . . . the other things they would say about her. Still, though she was flesh and blood, Mama’s voice floated specterlike above Bianca’s head. “Sana, baby girl. Sana.” She meant sana, sana colita de rana. Heal, heal little frog’s tail. The rhyme Mama had recited to her from girlhood, and she’d never outgrown. Translated literally it hadn’t made sense. She’d asked Abuela why they prayed for a frog’s tail to heal. Bianca hadn’t understood the difference between dichos and prayers, or maybe there was no difference since Abuela hadn’t corrected her. She’d only replied that the frog grows a new tail, a type of healing. Then she’d handed Bianca an empanada filled with mashed sweet potato.

Now Mama stroked Bianca’s hair as if she were a child again, home sick from school. Bianca had sometimes stayed home even when she wasn’t sick so Mama would take care of her, so she’d pay attention.

Mama lifted Bianca’s arm, turned her palm over, held two fingers against her wrist. Did she have a heart? Was it beating?

Am I alive, Mama?

Mama’s lips pressed against her forehead. But the dead couldn’t feel, could they?

Mama smelled like rosewater. Could the dead smell rosewater?

“Has she said anything? Has she woken up at all?” Mama’s voice was thorned with worry.

“No, she’s been like that for an hour.” Matty sounded thick and heavy. It reminded Bianca of the sourdough bread he loved to bake, yeasty and pungent in her memories. “I called you as soon as she got here. She was crying and rocking that . . . doll.”

Jubilee. He meant Jubilee.

Mama was crying, and Bianca pictured rosewater. No, not rose. Holy. The kind she had sprinkled around their house. Tinged with alcohol. Waters breaking, no taking. Yes. Waters taking.

“Can you drink this, baby girl?” Mama put water to Bianca’s mouth, and she drank.

Handro’s polka-dotted socks poked at the couch’s edge. He said, “I’ll get a washcloth.”

Mama peeled off Bianca’s sweater, fingertips pressing the wet stains across her breasts, below each nipple. “Why didn’t I drag you away from there, mijita? He hurt you, didn’t he?” Mama gave guilt a voice. It hurt Bianca to hear.

She wanted to tell Mama to stop pressing into her stomach, stop prodding her; she tried moaning, but Mama only kept pressing her backbone, her abdomen, her thighs. Each kneading of Mama’s hands into her skin throbbed, but not in the healing way of a sobradora giving a massage to get the blood flowing or cupping at the lungs to break up a phlegmy cough. No, Mama’s hands were like knives now. Everything hurt. When Mama reached Bianca’s buttocks, Mama called to God in Spanish. And Bianca knew. Mama had found the blood.

“Pick your sister up, mijo. We need to take her to the hospital.”

“Mom, we shouldn’t have left her there . . .” Matty’s voice shook as he lifted Bianca off the couch. It scared her.