The Trick

I love Adam. Love the heat of his body. How it chafes and makes my skin peel away into a skein of flesh that hangs over my bottom, like the train of a wedding dress that drags with each step. When we first fell in love, I was young, but not stupid. I knew women were attracted to dresses like mine, borne through my tears and my suffering. I heard their jealous footsteps always behind me, threatening to trample me down.

I was young, but not stupid. In our island town, it never gets cold. When we first fell in love, my limbs were slickened with sweat, my stomach filled with the drinks named to make poor people feel royal: a bit of Chivas Regal, a bit of Corona. Adam was my age, but the way he never seemed to get drunk made him seem so much older.

“What?” he asked, as I sat next to him on the playground. I knew him since our elementary days, when I watched him bite the tips of his pencil erasers, his teeth clamped around the pink flesh. From the fence, Jessica waved the whiskey bottle at me, sweating like another brown arm.

“I like you,” I said. “I’ve liked you since we were kids.”

“Wow,” he said, but he didn’t laugh.

We left the playground to go to his house. Adam kept looking at Jessica—my cousin who always had something witty to say, whose laugh sounded like a windchime. There was a pool behind Adam’s house. Only popular kids had pools. When he called my cousin’s painted toenails sexy, I stripped down to my underwear.

“It’s not treated!” Adam yelled as I lifted the tarp and jumped in.

“Boba!” Jessica shouted.

I was covered in dirt water. But when I looked up at Adam, I saw my plan had worked. My underwear clung, and Adam’s eyes clung, too.

“I’ll stay,” I told Jessica when she asked to take me home.

The bikes in the shed sparkled with rust. I asked if we could ride them to the beach, but Adam said I could become my own ocean right there, on the shed floor. He said what I could do with my body was a superpower, so I became even vaster, a world. We were swimming in liquid, white like saltwater, frothing like seafoam, when I asked him to stop.

“But don’t you like me?” he asked. “You said you liked me.”

We kept going. The water soaked the shed, went everywhere. Finally, Adam rolled over, splashing his knees. I got up and touched my back. A layer of skin dangled from it. Adam told me to close my eyes, and in one strong motion, he pulled it right off. The next day, I went back to the shed, and the day after that, I went again. Each time, more skin hung off my back, until it was scraped raw, and the water ran with blood.

Adam would say all kinds of things, things I never expected. Maybe that’s what compelled me to him—he had such a gift for surprise.

“No one can ever make you feel how I do,” he said.

“I’ll kill anyone who touches you,” he added later.

And sometimes, as the sun fell over the horizon, he pushed back a soaking wet piece of my hair and breathed in my ear: “Te amo, mi reina. You’re all used up, bitch.”

That’s how the summer slipped into the season of suffering, of brimstone and flame. In the interminable heat, Adam appears like a moon. Sometimes his love waxes, sometimes his love wanes. But when you have this much hurt, it’s a rare and precious gift. This hurt doesn’t extinguish. It regenerates. I can share it over and over, and still, I have more hurt to give.

That’s what Adam taught me. What I’ve learned all these years. Adam made me special. He sainted me. He mixed up my love with all of his pain, and I’ve never been able to get them straight since.

Jessica is shocked to hear that Adam dumped me again. But how, she cries. A day before your graduation from college? It isn’t right.

Jessica graduated with her bachelor’s degree years ago, and she says celebrating is important. We packed a suitcase full of tight dresses, and now we’re at the beach, lying on our stomachs, as I show her Adam’s face on the screen.

He has a puppy now, Jessica. A pitbull. Princesa. Look how he kisses Princesa on the lips as if she were a woman. Look how he writes in the caption: I love her so much, My Princesa.

“She’s a beautiful dog,” Jessica says, her voice dreamy. “I haven’t seen such a beautiful dog in a very long time.”

The last time I saw Adam, he didn’t have a dog. I begged him to come over. I always beg. When he zipped up his pants and left the same night, I cried and spent the next week crying. Look at Adam kissing Princesa. I would never punch a dog in the face, even if I thought about it.

“I don’t get it,” Jessica says. “You two should be married, no joda.”

I stare at the horizon. There isn’t a cloud in the sky.

“Oh, baby,” says Jessica. “Don’t cry.”

Jessica always humiliates me. It’s like she smashes a pie in my face, like I can lick the whipped cream with my tongue. Even now I have to try to not focus on Jessica’s body, on the way it spills out of her bikini. Jessica, with all the good genes. There are so many boys who’d throw fists and smash teeth over her body. Boys who would marry her. I bet Adam would. The tears roll down my cheeks.

“I thought we ended this shit,” Jessica says. “I thought we fixed this already.”

“Jessica,” I say, my voice a warning.

She pauses, inhales sharply. We agreed we’d never talk about that, not in the open.

“But he dumped you again! Why don’t you move on?”

“Jessica!” The tears are salty. “Because I love him!”

Jessica draws a circle with her toe in the sand. Then she draws it in the other direction.

“We have to do something so that he never dreams of leaving me again, Jessica. Something even more powerful than last time.”

She slides her sunglasses up her nose, tilts her chin toward the sky.

“Jessica?”

“Uh huh, Angela. I heard you.”

The sky is clear, but it’s getting late. The light at this time of day moves quickly. It flies over us like a bird of prey.

“Text him,” she says. “Add the symbol. The one with two hearts dancing in a circle. Let me see? Yeah, that should work.”

Early on, I asked Adam to come to a concert with me. First, he said he would. Then he said he wouldn’t, so I ended up going alone. I was nervous because the ticket said 16 and over, and I thought I might get caught. I wasn’t, and then I met you.

Because of Adam, I thought that loving someone meant knowing the most precise way to hurt them. But you weren’t interested in learning my fears.

The concert was held by the beach in an old pool that had fallen into disrepair. Beside us, baby blue paint was peeling, and below us, drains crisscrossed like spiderwebs.

With you holding my hand, I told you I had never sat on the bottom of a pool before. I had never held a white man’s hand, either. On the ground, I kept asking you questions.

I asked: Would you ever call a girl a flat, skinny bitch?

I asked: Do you think girls can get used up like pieces of gum?

I asked: Am I ruined?

You told me that you weren’t from around here, as if I didn’t already know. You said you didn’t believe in my archaic ideas. You said a person couldn’t be ruined by anything, you said. You said, “you’re too sad to be 15,” so I didn’t tell you my age again.

You bought me a beer. That was nice. It’s crazy, but sometimes I still dream of you. In one of them, there’s a seal in my tub. I jump in beside it, and the tub becomes an ocean, and now you’re swimming ahead of me. I keep trying to wave you down, to get your attention. I keep trying to ask, are you really not lying?

The pool by the beach was demolished summers ago, but I wonder if you still go to concerts in your country. I wonder if girls like me lean on your shoulder. I wonder if your hand goes up their blouse, while the other holds a big, foaming beer. You didn’t even flinch when I twisted your wedding ring, over and over, wondering what kind of girl gets married to someone like you, and if she really can’t be ruined.

I post the photo Jessica takes of us on the beach. The caption, drafted by Jessica, reads:

Graduated with my bachelor’s degree, pendejxs! Time to party J

Adam likes it.

“See?” Jessica says. “He’s thinking about you.”

“No,” I say. “He’s just always online.”

But then he sends me a message. From the number of capitalized letters congratulating me, it’s like I’ve won a Nobel Prize. I can feel my heart beating in my ears.

“What if you just told him that he’s been hurting you?” Jessica says. “I studied psychology in college. It’s called radical honesty.”

“You know that’s not enough,” I say, waiting with my palm out until Jessica surrenders the phone. Jessica studied psychology in college, but she works at a travel agency now. It has European flags hanging from the walls and girls in hula skirts gyrating in the window. Sometimes, she takes on odd jobs—selling make-up, headbands, dime bags of weed. She says she wants something called radical honesty, but I know my cousin Jessica. She just wants to feel important.

“Playing these games won’t work,” she says. “I’m telling you, Angela. He needs to know that he hurt you.”

“It worked once,” I say, sending the double-heart emoji. “And it’s going to work again.”

The last time Adam tried to leave me, he bought himself a car. A red pick-up truck with a white race-car stripe. He liked giving people rides. He kept the bed waxed and clean. He blasted the radio and told anyone to hop in. Old men smoked cigars in the bed of his truck. Old women sat huddled with groceries. The same songs played over and over, and nobody argued. Adam only played the classics.

I would cling to Adam’s skin like a summer sweat, but nobody ever noticed me in the center console, my skin hanging off my back. Nobody ever got into the bed of his pick-up truck and asked, y la Angela? Jessica got in the bed one time, and they discussed the stock market, talking nonsense. Then Jessica got up and waved goodbye. Goodbye Adam.

One morning, the center seat in the console smelled like perfume.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” I screamed. “You can have sex with whoever. But my hymen is gone forever!”

Whoever. Forever. I hadn’t meant to rhyme. Even then, I was able to hear myself, and I heard that I sounded ridiculous. I was screaming so loud, I was waking the whole neighborhood up.

“I’ll return it,” Adam said. “There’s a surgery to return it.”

To Adam, my love was a big joke.

But I kept screaming, crying, thinking someone would defend me. La pobre Angela. I thought that’s what they’d say. Instead, they said I shouldn’t try to change a man, and a girl like me shouldn’t try to change the music, either. Adam played the classics. What else could I want? A man like Adam—I couldn’t have him. He was young. In his prime. My love, it meant nothing. They told me I was a fool. That Adam had to be shared.

My hand fell away from the radio dial. They had their eyes trained on me like a blade. But after so many times, they got lazy. They thought I’d be the helpless Angelita forever. And one day, when my hand drew back, they weren’t watching to see where it landed, so I kept it in a fist, dreaming of self-defense.

Jessica has commandeered my phone. She’s been writing to Adam for half an hour, convincing him to come. In the sky are big, dark red clouds. Clouds that look like live coals.

“He won’t come to see me, Jessica.”

“Let me work my magic,” she says.

I look over Jessica’s shoulder, glance at the screen.

Make sure to bring Princesa :)

“The pitbull!” I shout. “What for?”

“Calmate, Angela. It’s part of my plan. So that this madness between you can finally end.”

“Jessica,” I say, suddenly afraid. “We can’t hurt that dog.”

“Estas loca! I would never hurt a dog.”

We’re walking back to the hotel. A car cuts us off at the curb, coming so close to our legs, I can feel the hot motor. I can see molten skin in slabs on the pavement, bright orange like slices of mango.

“Asshole!” Jessica turns to me with her fists balled. “I wish I had tomatoes in my pockets all the time. I would’ve pelted that asshole’s car. Do you ever think about that?”

“No.”

“But if I had tomatoes, would you throw them with me? Come on, Angela! You have to!”

When Jessica and I are at bars, she always invites me to the bathroom with her. Come on, she says, grabbing my arm, as if we were still little kids. Jessica’s not a little kid anymore, but she loves in all the old ways. Jessica and I will be cousins forever, and I can’t do anything to change that. No matter where I go or what I wish for, Jessica will always be my older cousin.

“Jessica,” I tell her. “I’ll throw tomatoes with you.”

Outside the hotel, palm trees sway in the wind. The clouds have changed from red to black. We run up the iron staircase and throw open the door, hiding from the storm.

“He won’t come,” I say, watching the rain beat the window. “The weather’s too ugly.”

“It’s not the weather you should worry about being ugly, Angela. Put some make-up on.”

My phone rings.

Adam’s downstairs. I tell him to wait in the car. Jessica says she needs time to get things ready, so in the parking lot, I let him run his hands over my body. The new car is tiny, nothing like the truck. It doesn’t smell like perfume; it smells like dog slobber. My bra gets caught on the stick shift. The dog cries, and I shiver. The clouds hang close to the ground like black, wilting flowers. I say we should finish upstairs. He carries Princesa in his arms like a baby.

“You look different,” Adam says, from behind me.

“It’s only been a few months.”

“Still, you look different. Skinny. Too skinny. Ew.”

With his eyes fixed on my ass, my legs start to feel weak. Jessica is right. Why do I try to make him love me? It would be better if Adam were washed from my mind, if all the tarnished brain circuitry that endlessly loops thoughts of him finally ran clear. On the other side of the door, Jessica sits at the center of the mattress, freshly showered and stupidly pretty. Adam stares at Jessica. I stare, too. Every day she has more of a beautiful body. You have him, Jessica, I want to tell her. Please take him. You have him. You do.

“I graduated with a major in Psychology,” she says, as Adam and I walk into the room.

“Jessica,” I say. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

But it’s as if Jessica doesn’t hear me.

“We are going to have radical honesty! We are going to resolve this once and for all!”

“Jessica,” I say, my voice trembling. If Jessica keeps talking, I fear I might die.

“Come on, Adam,” Jessica says. “Sit.”

Adam doesn’t sit.

“Adam,” she yells. “Sit!”

But he doesn’t sit. He just looks at Jessica, dumbstruck. He looks like he’s lost all his words. Jessica goes up to him until she’s right in his face, her nose against his like she’s going to kiss him. They’ve waited so long. Their lips brush each other’s. Yes, I say, staring up at the ceiling, knowing no one will hear me, knowing no one ever has. Yes, I am ready to die. But then Princesa, who he carries near his chest like a baby, suddenly squeals. She leaps out of his arms, into the doorway. We stare as she bolts into the rain, and finally, Jessica steps away from my Adam.

I tell Adam I will staple posters to poles to find her. I tell Adam I will offer a 500-dollar reward. I tell him I didn’t mean for her to get lost forever, that Princesa was really a beautiful dog.

But we search for hours. There’s nowhere left to look. We go back to the room and drink the bottle of vodka, and as we lie on the bed soaked in moonlight, a tear forms in Adam’s eye.

In the morning, when Jessica asks if we want to go to the mall, I think I mishear him when Adam says yes. On the way there, he says he should have never gotten the dog. In line to buy ice cream, he says the dog pissed on the floor. He says having a dog is a pain in the ass.

The next week, he comes over my mom’s house. At the table, he announces that having a dog is worse than having a wife. My mom laughs and winks. Adam winks. They wink at each other. My mom tries to feed me, but I can’t eat. Outside, everyone sees us together.

Angelita! they call. Adam’s girl!

Just yesterday, Adam said one of those things that shocked me so much, I could no longer see the ground. “Marry me,” he said. My legs went limp, so he swept me into his arms. “Angela,” he scolds. “You’ve always been too dramatic.”

I called Jessica.

“What if she’s dead?”

“No,” Jessica said. “They steal dogs to breed them. She’s fine. She’s probably pregnant.”

“But Jessica.” I looked over my shoulder, but Adam was still in the shower. “He asked me to marry him!”

Jessica’s voice was a roar. “You really are stupid, Angela! You’re so used to suffering, you don’t know how to stop! Stupid woman!”

I am stupid—that must be it. So stupid I can’t stop searching for Princesa. At night, I go to the streets. And just as dawn breaks, I find her. She’s behind Adam’s house, under the tarp of the pool, sitting on her haunches.

I lower myself in and pull Princesa’s corpse out. But it’s not Princesa. It’s just a stone lion, bleached and smooth. I drop it back in the water and watch it sink. I’m wet and cold under the fast-waning moon when your shadow appears beside me.

You hold out a big, foaming beer.

“I thought you didn’t live here,” I say. “I thought you lived far away with your wife.”

You smile, hold the beer.

“Listen,” I say. “You’re the only one who can love me. Take me with you! I’ll cook! I’ll clean! I’ll be a better woman than she is!”

You look at my chest, and I look, too. Had I always been shrinking, or did that just happen now? I look the same way when you first met me. Back when you were so nice, and I was only fifteen. You were so nice and so much older than me, I didn’t notice your hand crawling up my blouse.

“I don’t believe in those archaic ideas,” you say, and then you get on a plane to go far away.

I wake up to the sun rising outside the house. I need to get up and go back inside, before everyone in the neighborhood sees me cold and defenseless, with hallucinations of anguish, like someone at the very last stage of their life.

My clothes are dripping as I tiptoe next to Adam’s bed. Asleep, Adam looks so vulnerable. I could go to the kitchen and drive a knife through his heart. I could do that, if he wanted me to. I would do anything he wants, my poor, sleeping baby, how he’s suffered so much—too much.

In the kitchen, I pick up the phone.

“What the hell, Angela? It’s early.”

“Jessica,” I cry, slumping to the floor.

“She’s alive, Angela. I told you—the girls don’t fight!”

“You’re lying!”

“Angela.” Jessica’s voice is a warning.

“Admit it,” I shout. “She’s dead because of us!”

There’s silence on the phone. Six months ago, when Jessica came over with the toy pick-up truck, I gasped—the resemblance was so striking. I have to show Adam, Jessica said, but I snatched it out of her hand. There was a bottle of white-out in the kitchen drawer. I kept my hand steady and drew the stripe on. There was a notepad on the dining room table. Emilia, I wrote, because by then I knew her name. I shoved the scrap into the window of the toy car and rammed it against the wall. Over and over, scratch after scratch, until the paint chipped off. Jessica laughed, then she took the paper. With her lighter, she set it aflame. The name blew away in a trail of white smoke, wafting away like perfume, the perfume that I smelled from the truck’s center console.

When Adam’s truck flipped over on highway 52 and the woman by his side was dead on impact, we were at the bar. Jessica led me to the bathroom, where we cried and asked God to forgive us, for we did not know how powerful we could be.

“We killed her, Jessica. And now we killed Princesa, too.”

“You must never seek happiness from another woman’s heartbreak and misery! Any woman who does that deserves to die!”

Jessica’s voice burns like a fire, like brimstone it makes the air foul and acrid. “You have him now, Angela. Don’t call me again.”

In bed, I press my body against Adam’s, trying to keep from shivering. With my mouth in his ear, I whisper. Yes, I say, not sure if anyone will hear me. Yes, mi Adán, I’ll be your wife.

He grunts in approval. He’s on top of me. I start to expand, gasping as if it were my last breath. But he wants even more. He wants me to talk. I open my mouth to say:

“Adam, stop.”

“There’s too much hurt still inside me.”

“Adam? Listen! It’s my fault!”

“Angelita,” he groans. “My damned perfect angel.”

The bed becomes molten. The windows fly open. I’m in hell, murderess, drowning under my sins. In this home borne of suffering, love engulfs me completely. The skin peels off my back, a scorched skein of flesh. Look at it, piling up on the floor, so fragile and beautiful. Any woman would want it. To pin to their wrist like a corsage. To lace over their faces like a fine veil. But they’ll never have it because it belongs to me. I worked hard to earn it, and I’ll work even harder to defend it. La pobre Angelita. This man that I love. Every woman on earth will learn to stay back, or else I’ll devour her, too.

Stephanie Jimenez is is based in Queens, New York. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Guardian, O! the Oprah Magazine, Joyland Magazine, The New York Times, and more. She is a former Fulbright recipient and a graduate of Scripps College in Claremont, California. Her debut novel, THEY COULD HAVE NAMED HER ANYTHING, was published on August 1, 2019 (Little A). She is working on a second novel. THEY COULD HAVE NAMED HER ANYTHING was one of BookRiot’s Top 50 Books for the Summer; one of Electric Literature’s Books to Read by Women of Color in 2019; one of Hypable’s Books to Read this Summer; and one of Remezcla’s Books to Read in 2019! You can read more of Stephanie’s work here.