Read Online Let Their Spirits Dance by Stella Pope Duarte - Free Book Online Page A

dream.
    Â 
    â€¢ T HE NEXT MORNING I call Lisa and Lilly, my fourteen-year-old twins. They’re just getting up and don’t know their Dad and I split up.
    â€œI’m over at Nana’s. Start packing your stuff. We’ll talk about it later.”
    â€œWhy?” Lilly asks.
    â€œI’ll tell you later.”
    â€œTell me now.” She’s as stubborn as Mom.
    â€œLet me talk to Lisa.” The girls are fraternal twins, alike in so many ways, except personality. Lisa is easier to talk to, more open to reason.
    â€œHold on. I’ve got a call on the other line.”
    Finally, I talk to Lisa and halfway explain they’ll be staying with me at Mom’s.
    â€œThere’s lots of reasons. Nana’s sick, too.”
    â€œYou and Dad are splitting. We’ve known it all along. Is Cisco coming, too?”
    â€œThere’s no room. He can stay with Dad until I get us a place.”
    â€œElsa’s gonna get mad.”
    â€œElsa doesn’t control me. She’ll have to get over it.”
    Lisa sighs. “Are you all right?”
    â€œNo, but I’ll get better. Don’t be surprised when you see me either. You might say I’ve been in a little accident.”
    Two days after Christmas, a deputy sheriff dropped by to serve a subpoena on me for assault charges.
    â€œI should be charging her! Look at my face, does this look like I fought by myself?”
    â€œI don’t know anything about it, ma’am,” he said, uninterested. “All I do is serve subpoenas.”
    â€œI’m a schoolteacher. I’ve never had any trouble with the law.”
    â€œNobody’s a criminal until proven guilty, if that’s any comfort. If I were you, I’d get pictures…of your face…you know, before and after. You got any witnesses?”
    â€œI can’t think of any.”
    â€œIf it’s your word against hers, it’ll be hard to prove,” he said, handing me the papers.

Miniature Islands ·
    M y mother doesn’t hear the voices again, unless she does but doesn’t tell me. She tells Priscilla and Paul about it and Irene, who believes in everything, including rumors of sightings of La Llorona. Who knows if her son, Faustino, wasn’t one of the men talking to Jesse that night, Irene says. My mother agrees, yes, of course, Faustino and Aurelio Dominguez, the boy who lived two streets from us. His folks moved back to Mexico after his death. Actually it could have been more, Mom says, there were so many! My mother’s mind is closed to anything Paul, Priscilla, or I tell her that doesn’t fit in with what she has decided to believe.
    There’s no way I can hide my face from anybody. Paul says I’ve joined his ranks…the ranks of street fighters who aren’t afraid to take on an enemy in public. I look at my face in the mirror and apply the cream the doctor prescribed, three times a day. The welts are now purple scabs. I feel powerful and ashamed at the same time. What am I teaching my children? What example am I setting for my daughters, especially Elsa, her husband Julio, and my three-year-old granddaughter, Marisol? Elsa will be mad, Lisa says. Of course she’ll be mad, she’s daddy’s girl. Now I’m wondering if I would have gotten mad at Mom if she had ever left Dad, and I wasn’t even daddy’s girl, maybe Priscilla was. It must hurt to see your parents separated, no matter how hard life is between them.
    Paul says I was right to jump Sandra, but I’m not so sure. Is there evera time when violence is the only way to deal with a situation? Then again, isn’t that what war is about? Nations forget common sense, common interests, and make public enemies of each other.
    Â 
    â€¢ I RENE CHECKS UP ON Mom daily by phone and walks over at least every other day, but she’s got her own health problems, varicose veins that run like purple cords down each leg. She wears