by Jenny Torres Sanchez
The Matchbook
The unintentional collection started the night Lucia’s mother died.
The small matchbook was on the floor, in the hallway just outside of the hospital room from where nine-year-old Lucia had just been rushed out by a nurse.
“Wait here, my dear,” the nurse said. She’d been calling them that for weeks—Lucia’s mother, father, and Lucia herself. My dear. Lucia loved and hated it. It was nice. But also Lucia didn’t feel dear to anyone, especially not a stranger.
She watched as the nurse rushed back into her mother’s room. Lucia could hear the commotion clearly, and she wished she’d made herself small enough to go unnoticed, shrunk into the corner of that room so she could stay close to Mamá. She hurried to the small window looking into the room before another nurse in the hallway noticed and quickly ushered her away.
“Don’t watch, my dear,” this nurse said gently before turning into another patient’s room. Lucia sank down onto the floor in the hallway and waited.
That’s when she saw the matchbook—black and crisp, with words that read Diamond Club—in the opposite corner. Lucia stared at the shimmering silver letters as machines beeped louder and voices rose and spoke more urgently from the other side of the door. Something called a rapid response team was called over the intercom. Then a Code Blue. More medical staff appeared, sneakers squeaking, running down the hallway and into her mother’s room.
Lucia focused on the matchbook. She thought of the sound each letter made. Saw them in her mind as they had been on the walls of her first-grade classroom. She conjured up the glossy posters of a D—dog, an I—iguana, an A—apple . . .
There were beeps and buzzes and rings and intercom static and then . . . then there was deep silence. Lucia knew what it meant but could not look away from those matches. She felt the weighty stare of each nurse and doctor as they filed out of her mother’s room. One of them knelt down next to her, patted her arm. I’m sorry, my dear, he said.
When they were all gone, Lucia reached for the matchbook and shoved it into the small pocket of her jeans. Only then could she look toward the room. Slowly, she made her way to the door, peered through the window, and saw her father standing over her mother’s body. She waited. For him to turn to her, to gesture for her to enter, to make room there for her too, next to her mother’s bed to say her final goodbye.
Finally, he turned and walked toward Lucia. Then out of the room and down the hall toward the elevators without so much as a backward glance. Lucia knew she was expected to follow. So she did.
A week later, Lucia’s bedroom caught fire.
The Candle
“Is your birthday not coming up soon, Lucia?” Ms. Janie peeked over the fence that divided their yards one summer day before Lucia’s eleventh birthday. Their neighbor was older and had been friendly with her mother, but Lucia had never spoken much to her. This year, though, Ms. Janie was intensely interested in gardening and was always out in the yard.
“How are you celebrating?” Ms. Janie asked, clipping a weeping bougainvillea that was hanging slightly over the fence into their yard. Lucia shrugged as she watched the papery flowers fall.
She didn’t tell Ms. Janie how she’d missed her tenth birthday because it was just a few weeks after her mother’s death. Lucia didn’t know if her father had forgotten, or if it was his way of punishing her for the fire. Either way, she was somehow sure her birthday would go unmarked again this year. And she was glad.
Lucia had never had many friends, but after her mother died, the few she’d had didn’t know how to treat her anymore. They faded into the background of life. She would see them at school, of course, and sometimes they even spoke to her, but mostly they were ghosts who just floated around here and there. Besides, she couldn’t imagine anyone coming to her house. It was small and dark and her father’s presence filled every space. God, no, she could not imagine any of them inside there singing “Happy Birthday” to her and eating cake.
Though she wondered if maybe Leo and Cleo would show up again. Her imaginary friends from years ago had shown up the night of her tenth birthday. They were still small, six, the age they’d been when they had visited Lucia every day. The night of her tenth birthday as she lay in bed, they opened the door to her closet and came out, set up their old table for tea parties, and brought the biggest sprinkled cake she could imagine. She’d been touched they still remembered her years after she’d forgotten them. But she could tell they were a little uneasy around her now, so much older, different. And after the cake and nervous smiles, they’d slipped back into her closet and never come out again.
“Wait here, I’ll be right back,” Ms. Janie said. A moment later, Ms. Janie was lowering a small gift bag over the fence to her. The bag was a bit crumpled, and Lucia could tell it was reused, maybe the gift inside too, but she didn’t care. It was still pretty, and the heftiness of it sent a shiver of anticipation through her.
“Go ahead, open it,” Ms. Janie said. Lucia reached into the bag and retrieved a candle. She lifted it to her nose and took a whiff. It smelled sweet, like cookies.
“Thank you,” she told Ms. Janie. She did not tell her she was not allowed to have candles since the fire. Or that she loved the way it smelled. Or that it made her miss her mom. Or that it made her want to ask Ms. Janie if maybe she could live with her until she turned eighteen.
“Of course,” Ms. Janie said, and went back to clipping her plants.
Lucia put the candle back into the bag and thought about lighting it later that night, secretly, while her father slept.
The Lighter
It was a gift from Felix. Or at least, it was something he provided.
He worked at Vinnie’s Vinyl—the record store Lucia would sneak off to when she couldn’t stand her father’s heavy presence anymore. Felix was two years older and had gone to her school the previous year, but was now, as he put it, out in the real world.
She got a small thrill every time she walked into the store and saw his messy hair somewhere in the aisles or behind the counter. They chatted more each time. And then, one day, they were making out in the backroom, intoxicated by the musky smell of incense and only vaguely aware of the buzzing sound that cut through the music in the store when a customer entered.
During that time with Felix, Lucia had felt free. And oh, how she hated that the feeling came from making out with a guy. She had promised herself she would never be the kind of person who needed a guy. She’d seen her mother need a guy, sacrifice herself for Lucia’s father, and she was not going to do the same. But Lucia also didn’t want to give up this feeling. She spent several nights trying to figure it out, wondering if she should go to the store the next day for that rush she felt, before finally deciding she didn’t feel free because of Felix—she felt free because of herself. She felt free because she was doing what she wanted.
She wanted to make out with a guy in a back room.
She wanted to let him touch her in all those places that electrified her.
She wanted to get lost in the beautiful euphoria of physical attraction.
She wanted him.
And when she felt the lighter in his shirt pocket one day—retrieved it and marveled at its simple beauty—she decided she wanted that too. She ran her finger over the glossy red-pink-and-green exterior and stared at the burning sacred heart in its center.
“For me?” she said.
He laughed. “Sure, keep it. To remember me.”
The words struck her as odd, and only later did she think it was maybe because he had already met the college girl he eventually told Lucia about. She appreciated that he’d wanted to let her down gently, as he put it, and she acted as if she didn’t care. But it stung. Not because she loved him, Lucia decided. But because of the sudden loss of closeness, of being something to someone.
Maybe I did love him, Lucia thought sometimes when she lay in her bed replaying their kisses and the feel of him, the way he looked at her. She couldn’t be sure. Love was something Lucia only vaguely remembered feeling.
At any rate, she avoided Felix and the record store after that. She never wanted to seem like she was looking for a pity make-out session. Or give Felix the notion that she needed him. Instead, Lucia decided she didn’t need anyone.
And she swore never to set foot in Vinnie’s Vinyl again.
Johnny Cash
Mamá loved him.
When Lucia’s father went to work, Mamá watched from the living room window as the car drove away. Then she’d slowly walk over to the record player, slide the record out from the stack, and carefully place it on the turntable. Lucia loved the sacred silence as Mamá carefully set down the needle, the slight crackle just before the opening of the first song. And then his voice.
How it filled the house. And made Lucia’s mother’s eyes light up. She’d look over at Lucia and wink playfully. So Lucia came to love him too—Johnny Cash. She even wondered if maybe Mamá had once known Johnny Cash in real life. When she stared at him on the album cover, she would think of her mother in his arms. When she heard his songs, she imagined he was singing them to her mother. And she wondered if maybe Johnny Cash was her real dad. Lucia thought of this as they danced and laughed as loud as they wanted. It didn’t even bother her that sometimes Mamá’s eyes filled with tears as she sang about shooting a man just to watch him die or walking a line, because even as her mother cried, she seemed happy and . . . alive. It was the only time there was light and sound in that house. It was the only time Lucia remembered breathing easy.
She hadn’t heard that voice since before her mother got sick. But there it was this morning—playing in her head, startling her awake. She couldn’t place it at first. All day, the same frustrating section skipped on loop in her head until finally, as she washed and dried a dish she’d just used for lunch, the first line came to mind and slipped from her mouth: “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine . . .”
So immediate, so vivid and bright, was the memory of her mother that the dish fell from Lucia’s hand and crashed to the kitchen floor as she ran into the living room, certain she would find Mamá there with the younger version of herself. Instead, Lucia stared into empty space. For a moment, several moments, she stood perfectly still, feeling.
Mamá? she whispered.
She didn’t know what she expected. She hadn’t let herself think about Mamá much over the years. When she did, her father’s presence became more unbearable, and she felt abandoned, and the prohibited, unthinkable anger her father had forbidden her to express grew inside her.
But today, Lucia remembered. And she wondered where they were—the record player, Johnny Cash, and her mother.
She began to search the house, and hours later, she found the record player and records, shoved into a black garbage bag in the corner of their crowded garage. She hauled the player upstairs to her room and then went back to sift through the records, finally finding Johnny in the rubble. Like most of them, the vinyl was bent and warped and unplayable.
Lucia felt a hot flash of anger.
She should go clean up the dish she broke. She should go and put everything back in its place from when she tore through the house looking for Mamá’s things. She should start making dinner. She should.
But she didn’t.
The Record
She opened the door to Vinnie’s Vinyl, and the familiar buzzing sound sent a small wave of shame through Lucia. Especially when she saw Tony, not Felix, at the register. Tony, who had caught the two of them in the back room and then always made the same joke when he saw Lucia.
“Well, well, well . . . Loosey Lucia,” he said as she entered. He laughed. She ignored Tony and headed straight to the records. Flipping through Brandi Carlile and the Cars, she finally found him.
It wasn’t the same album Mamá had played all those years ago. It was a compilation. The Essential Johnny Cash.
Lucia ran her finger over the word “essential,” turned the album around to scan the song titles on the back, and felt an intense sense of power and remembering. Especially when her eyes fell on one song in particular.
“Hey, I got something I gotta grab in the back room . . .” Tony said, rushing past the narrow aisle, brushing his hand against her thighs. Lucia turned, imagined pushing him to the floor. Imagined him jumping to his feet, staggering backward, his face red with embarrassment as he retreated. But instead, she watched him disappear into the back room, his laugh trailing behind him.
Lucia’s face burned. Why didn’t she say something, kick the ever-living shit out of him? She hated the way she never acted on or said the things that came to her mind. The way she always pushed them down, ate her words and policed her own actions.
She turned back to the album in her hand, studied the price tag. There was no way she could afford it. But Johnny Cash stared back at her, and she thought of how her mother listened to his music in secret.
Go on . . . The words were so clear, Lucia looked around to see who had whispered them. But she was alone.
Go on, Lucia . . . She didn’t know if it was Johnny Cash talking to her, or her mother, or that voice in herself she never listened to. But she did know she had to have this album. No matter what. She deserved this fucking album. So before she lost her nerve, Lucia clutched it to her chest and walked out the door.
Lucia rushed home and began to hurry upstairs, but the thought of the mess she’d left in the garage, in her father’s bedroom while looking for the record player, stopped her. She had to clean it up.
And then she was hungry, so she made herself a grilled cheese sandwich. And then her father was home, so she made one for him too, as was expected. And as they sat in awkward silence, it seemed to her that they had arrived here at the kitchen table together as if by accident and destiny.
Lucia stole looks at her father and thought of her mother. She could not understand how Mamá had fallen in love with him. She could not remember him treating her with much kindness or consideration. Everything always was about him.
She wanted to tell her father then suddenly about how her mother listened to that old Johnny Cash record with only her. How they’d had fun even though he couldn’t stand it. How, just now, she remembered her mother even put on a bright red lipstick for Johnny Cash. And she’d never seen her mother happier than those moments.
Lucia thought of that being the happiest her mother was allowed. Of all the hours, all the times, her father crushed potential happiness out of her mother and Lucia in this house. How he was the only one who had a say in anything, ever, the only one, even, who got to say goodbye to her.
The image of him through the hospital window sparked into Lucia’s mind. And then, she remembered the fire.
“Dad . . .” she started carefully. “Tell me about the time my room caught fire.”
Shortly after the fire, Lucia had asked him to tell her the story. She was fascinated this had ever happened to her but genuinely couldn’t remember it. And anytime she asked her father about it, he met her questions with anger, so she hadn’t broached the subject in years.
He was quiet for a long while. Lucia waited.
“That never happened,” her father answered finally.
Lucia met her father’s gaze; he stared at her defiantly. It’d been a long time since she’d looked him in the eye. And when she did, something in her burned.
Lucia picked up their plates, washed them, and went upstairs to her room.
The Fire
It’d been years since she’d thought of it. She had a sense of that day but could never hold on to the details. There was something about it she wanted to understand. But now her father refused to even admit it had happened.
Maybe it made him feel like a bad father. And Lucia wanted to shout that he had been. Maybe it made him feel like a bad husband. And Lucia wanted to shout that he had been. But after all her father had been and all he had not been, he owed her this at least, didn’t he? She deserved her fire story. Not his absence, not the look he gave her when he was present—lips pinched as if he were physically trying to contain . . . What was it? Resentment? Hate? Jealousy? Disappointment? She’d caved in and cleaned up the mess she’d made searching for the record player, hadn’t she? And for years, years, she’d quieted her thoughts and questions. For years she’d washed dishes and cleaned and lived in service to her father and his anger, which snuffed out the oxygen in this house. She’d been a good girl, damn it, just like her mother had always asked her to be. Just how her father demanded she be.
Lucia picked up the record from her bed. She unwrapped and removed it from its sleeve and breathed in the distinct smell of melted plastic. She’d hidden the record player in her closet, and now she leaned down before it, placed the record on the turntable, and checked that the volume was turned down as low as possible. Just before setting the needle down, she closed her eyes for a moment in anticipation of the sacred silence before the music, and that’s when her mother’s bright red smile flashed briefly in her mind.
The vision was gone quickly, too quickly. But Lucia remembered the lipstick she bought when she dressed like a flapper for Halloween last year and hurried to the top junk drawer of her dresser. There she found the small tube of lipstick and a compact mirror. Carefully, Lucia applied the bright red just as she remembered her mother doing, and she studied her image. She smiled. Playfully winked at herself. And then, there she was, her mother.
Lucia felt something inside her ignite.
She put away her lipstick and mirror and, as she did, noticed the matchbook she hadn’t paid attention to in years. Next to it, the lighter Felix had given her. And there in the corner, the candle Ms. Janie had gifted her. Lucia stared at the three items, which, until that moment, hadn’t seemed to amount to much.
But tonight, her eyes took them all in as one. Lucia reached into the drawer for the matchbook and, at its touch, heard the beeps and buzzes of the hospital. With them came a rush of more memories. She remembered suddenly so clearly how she’d come home the day of her mother’s funeral, how she’d expected and hoped to see Mamá that day to deliver her delayed goodbye, but how Mamá had not been there, not the way Lucia remembered. And in her ear, she heard again her father’s harsh whispered explanation as he sat next to her in the pew. Your mamá was cremated. Burned.
Lucia’s body ached with the memory of wanting, of wanting to find and be with her mother, of wanting to burn. And how she had crawled under her bed in her little black dress and struck match after match, looking for Mamá in each flame, in the smoke, in the phosphorescent glow, until suddenly, one of flames touched the edge of her bedspread.
Lucia crawled out from under her bed and watched as the flames grew higher, as her room became aglow in fire and light. She searched, certain her mother was somewhere in that fire, waiting for her. And then her father came in and extinguished the beautiful flames.
Lucia opened the matchbook and stared. There, still, was a single match.
She reached for the candle she’d been too scared to burn years ago, too scared her father would smell the sweetness of it. She touched the match to the wick and delighted in the flare of it. Not wanting to blow out the match, she let it burn until it reached her fingers, and when it did, she thought of her mother. She tried to remember her voice, her touch, her smell. But all she could think of was how much she’d wanted to say goodbye while Mamá was still somewhere in that hospital room, in the air, before her essence dissipated and disappeared into some unreachable forever.
Lucia reached into the drawer and took out the lighter Felix gave her with the burning sacred heart image in its center. In the flickering glow of the candle, it seemed to gently pump with life. She thought of those paintings that if you stare long enough, you see something else in them and wondered if that was what was happening as she watched the heart pump harder, as the image of her mother appeared around it. And with the image, finally, the memory of her. Her touch, her smell, her singing voice.
Lucia hurried over to the record player and turned the volume knob all the way up. A small movement caught her eye, and when she turned, she noticed the ghost of her nine-year-old self staring back at her. Lucia took in her younger self, that girl without a mother, with an angry father, with no power or understanding of why things were the way they were.
She beckoned her, but the little girl wouldn’t come. Lucia winked playfully at her, just as she remembered her mother doing, and then her small face broke into a smile and she walked over to Lucia. Lucia reached for her hand. Carefully, they both set the needle down on the last track of side B, and together they waited.
The blaring horns filled the room gloriously! Fire blazed in her younger self’s eyes, and Lucia felt her own flash bright. Johnny Cash’s voice filled her room, and the shadows created from the candle danced on her walls. Lucia watched as the flames went higher and felt the burn she’d been carrying within herself for years get hotter.
She took deep, sweet breaths into her body. Then more and more as she thought of fire and oxygen and heat and fuel. With each breath, she fed those years of her anger. She let it flash and flicker and flare. She felt it blaze and roar and, oh God, how good it felt to fuel this anger. To let it live. To let it fill her. To let her heart and body burn with love and rage and memory.
The heat raced through her arms and legs, crawled under her scalp and burst through, into wild flames around her face.
Lucia watched as her room glowed brighter and brighter, as her mother’s voice and her voice and her young self’s voice filled that room, all of them singing along with Johnny Cash. Louder and louder the horns blared. Brighter the room glowed. Hotter Lucia burned.
She reached out and saw flames bursting from her fingertips now, watched as tiny fires dripped to the floor and danced around her. She laughed in the delight and power she felt. In the astonishing happiness that it brought.
And then there he was, her father, at her bedroom door, watching.
The song finished, leaving only the crackle of needle on blank vinyl and fire. Lucia took in her father, the way he cowered by the door. He looked small and sad.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said. Then repeated it, again and again, gathering strength and confidence in each chorus. In her voice she heard theirs too—her mother and her younger self.
Lucia watched as he retreated from her, from her burning room. She reveled in the fear in his eyes and the trembling of his body. Then she watched as, one by one, the flames slowly extinguished themselves, revealing no burns, no scorching or damage.
And for the first time in a long time, Lucia felt love.