It’s freezing in the basement, and Nina’s heart churns with hatred.
She sweeps the glass off the concrete floor. Picks up the pieces of the broken table from beneath the window. Tucks the sledgehammer into a corner. Stands in front of the boiler and frowns. She knows it is busted, even though she doesn’t know how these things work. But the pipes shouldn’t be bent like that, and the temperature in the house … that’s the other sign. It’s the middle of winter in Brooklyn, precisely the worst time for their heat to go out.
But she does the best she can, all while her head throbs and the pain radiates. She glances down at her hand, at the makeshift bandage she’s wrapped around it, at the red that’s slowly leaking through.
She did the best she could.
But it’s still so cold down here.
She is so damned tired of this.
When the front door creaks open, Nina shivers and curls up further into the large cobija, wishing her headache would go away—along with the dread that’s as thick and heavy as her cobija. She has to tell Mami about the basement, but she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want Mami to bear any more of this burden. The anger beneath Nina’s skin flares again.
Mami curses loudly. “Ay, mija, ¿que pasó?” she asks, hugging herself, her breath spilling out like smoke. “Why is it so cold?”
The throbbing in Nina’s hand gets worse. “The boiler is busted,” she says, emerging from her cocoon of denial.
Her head spins as her mami curses again. She can’t just leave it at that, even though she wants to.
“And … someone got into the basement. Broke the window and everything.”
Mami stills. Then closes her eyes, tilts her head back, and utters a prayer in Spanish. She drops the black duffel she takes to the hospital for every shift and leans against the wall. “Did Hopkins already see it?”
Nina knew this was what Mami would ask first. Not what was damaged. Not if anything was stolen. Not even the barest acknowledgment of the misery they have to experience over the coming days as they live without heat until the boiler can be repaired.
Him. Again. Hopkins.
The very name sends another bout of rage boiling through Nina.
Hopkins, the man who wants to steal their home from them.
“He hasn’t,” says Nina, brushing aside the cobija and standing. “I took care of it already.”
Mami glances at the door to the basement.
“Well … not all of it,” Nina adds, her heart fluttering. “The boiler is still busted. But there’s nothing else you need to worry about right now.”
She stuffs her hands in the big pocket of her hoodie and crosses to Mami.
Her mami pulls her in tight. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” she says. “Ugh, why is there always something happening here?”
Nina can’t help but groan. “You know why.”
Mami rears back slightly. “Don’t talk about tu abuela como así.”
“Not her,” Nina says, scowling. “Hopkins!”
Mami deflates. “Oh. You think it was him?”
The pain spikes. “No, I don’t. I think it was Tim.”
Mami is silent for a moment, and Nina watches the ire grow on her face.
“If it’s not one,” Mami says, “it’s the other.”
“I know,” says Nina.
She isn’t sure if she hates Hopkins or his son, Tim, more. Despite being over twice her age, Tim doesn’t seem to have much of a life aside from harassing women in the neighborhood or being his father’s attack dog. His most recent favorite pastime was getting drunk outside the Ortiz home and singing loudly at their front stoop. Didn’t matter how many times the police were called; he was always only issued a warning. Or his father bought or swindled him out of whatever mess he’d gotten in.
“Do you have any proof it was Tim?”
“No,” she says. “But I know it was him.”
“Nina, this will be over soon,” Mami says, her face falling. “In the meantime, we just have to keep our heads down. Follow the rules. We can’t give that man any more ammunition.”
“But this isn’t fair,” Nina groans. “None of it is.”
“I know, mi amor.” Mami brushes a strand of hair out of Nina’s face. “You doing okay? You look exhausted.”
There is a burst of nervous energy in her chest, but she just smiles after tucking her hand deeper into the front pocket of her hoodie. “Yes, Mami. Just a headache. Please go rest. I’ll patch up the window.”
Mami tries to argue, but Nina guides her toward the stairs. Insists she has it all handled. Assures Mami they’ll eat dinner together and discuss what to do next once she’s awake. Nina watches Mami ascend the stairs and disappear into her bedroom, the one above Nina’s. It still has the complicated moldings along the edges. The original bay windows. The wooden tile floors.
Nina runs her hand up and down on the banister made of iron and curled in delicate patterns along the support beams. She can hear her mami settling into bed upstairs, but as silence falls, she strains to listen.
The home around her creaks a few times. Probably just from the growing cold or Mami’s footsteps upstairs. But Nina wonders if this is an acknowledgment, a thankful home desperate to let its occupants know that it is safe. Safe because of her.
Nina smiles. “You’re welcome,” she says softly.
She feels the throbbing pain again.
And she heads down into the basement to clean up the last of the mess.
The basement is always kept pristine. It is, like the rest of their home, a place of reverence. Comfort. And—normally—one of warmth, especially in the brutal Brooklyn winters. Nina cleaned the basement as best she could, but the boiler pipes are still warped like broken limbs. She grabs a broom to sweep up the debris from the broken table, and the light catches more bits of glass she missed earlier.
The dam in her mind nearly breaks.
All this is so unfair. She just wants Hopkins and Tim to leave her family and their home alone. What could Nina and Mami have possibly done to deserve this?
Nina’s anger is still there, just beneath her skin, simmering.
She’s piled the broken table in one corner, knowing she’ll have to take it out tomorrow night after the snowfall so that it can be picked up Monday morning. The window … that one is harder. She thinks to break down the ruined table to barricade the busted window and prevent all the cold air from rushing into the basement, but then she realizes they don’t have the tools for that, nor is it going to be easy for her to hoist something so heavy up there. She tucks her injured hand against her body. She hadn’t thought this part through.
It’s getting colder. Snowfall is imminent. Damn it, she thinks. It’s going to get in the basement, isn’t it?
Nina hears him before she sees him.
His boots scuff on the cement outside in the alleyway. It’s absurd to her that she can recognize a specific person’s footfall, but this is what Hopkins does. He drags his feet as he shuffles around outside their home. He’s inspecting. Looking for things to report. Loopholes to exploit.
He’s done this every day since he tricked abuela. Abuela Carmen, who is laid up in a hospital in downtown Brooklyn while the doctors try to save her body from itself. The same hospital that can’t explain how Hopkins was allowed access to her room, where he shoved papers in front of her and swore her mortgage problems would be over if she just signed them, and now? Now he’s claiming the property deed is in his name. It’s why Mami is always gone; she’s torn between visiting Abuela and overtime at her nursing gig to fund the legal nightmare Hopkins has thrust upon them.
He says their home is his.
It’s not. It won’t ever be.
It can’t be.
She backs away from the window as his shadow extends toward it. She doesn’t want to talk to him today; she isn’t sure she can be who her mami needs her to be. Polite. Law-abiding. Small. But the stairs are too far, so she hides behind the shelf and the altar, then peeks around them.
His shadow grows. His feet shuffle against the ground.
She sees one of his boots through the opening. Then, to her horror, he kneels, pressing his face against the cement, and peers into the basement. She catches a glimpse of his reddened face, beady eyes, and rounded nose before she ducks out of view.
“Tim?” he calls out. “Tim, are you down there?”
Nina clamps a hand over her mouth.
“Tim … just answer me,” he hisses through the shattered window. “Please.”
She inches backward, and her shoe scrapes against the cement flooring.
Shit, shit, shit.
“I can see you, little girl.”
Her heart drops to her feet. She doesn’t move an inch.
“You took him, didn’t you?” He grunts loudly. “You have my boy.”
Nina rises, and his body is blocking nearly all the sunlight from the opening. He reaches in through it and points a gnarled finger her way.
“I know what you did!” he screams. “Where’s my boy?”
“Nowhere!” she shouts back. “What are you even talking about?”
“He came over here this morning and never came back!” Hopkins growls. “You did something to him!”
“Please, just go away,” Nina cries.
The man reaches in through the window, then waves his arm about as if he’s trying to snatch her up.
The anger pushes her forward, and she grabs one of the legs from the smashed table with her working hand and bats Hopkins’s hand away with it. “Get out of our house!”
He yanks his arm back. Twists his face in rage. “How dare you!” he screams. “That’s assault! You assaulted me!”
“Do you really wanna call the cops when you stuck your arm into my basement?”
He pauses. Then he pushes himself up. He kicks at the ground, and something flies through the window and lands on the basement floor. A crumpled-up fast-food bag. Trash.
“This is my home,” he growls. “You people will see soon enough.”
She listens to him shuffle away.
Her head pounds. The pain throbs.
She did the best she could.
Nina leaves the basement door open while she does homework.
It’s a beautiful door. It’s a deep-colored oak with vines etched into the surface, growing up toward the top of the frame. The Ortiz family has never considered changing it. All the homes around them, they’re always being updated and renovated and modernized. Not theirs, though. They repair what is broken, but they leave what remains. It is an act of respect for this place and what it means to them.
Nina starts her history report from the couch, covered in her cobija and within sight of the basement. She stops to listen every so often, certain Hopkins will start shuffling around their property, but he doesn’t make another appearance. She then moves to her bedroom to do assigned reading for biology, dragging the blanket behind her.
Her room is the smallest in the house, but it’s warmer than the living room. She considers working from Abuela’s upstairs bedroom—after all, heat travels upward, and it’s surely better than this. But it doesn’t feel right. Abuela’s room is meant for her return, and Nina believes she’ll mess up Abuela’s healing if she violates that sanctity. Sometimes, when she lingers at the doorway, she can smell the sweet and earthy scents of Abuela, can imagine her tending to the plants spread around the room that Mami now waters until Abuela returns home from the hospital.
Nina keeps imagining her abuela home, healthy again, and fussing over her plants—and Nina—just like before, because an imagination has power in this family.
In her bedroom, Nina studies invasive species, like cane toads and water hyacinths and vesper mandarina, those terrifying murder hornets in Japan. She knows that these creatures are just trying to survive and that she shouldn’t moralize them, but she can’t help it. Why can’t they just stay where they belong? Why must they always crave more and more?
Her mind drifts, and she gazes up, tracing the patterns in the room’s molding with her eyes. She loves the high ceilings and the light-yellow paint on the walls, the markings in the closet that show how Nina has grown over the years. She remembers the faded smoke stains on the ceiling in the kitchen, from when Mami burned the pork roast on Christmas, that are now behind layers of paint.
Nina grew up here. Mami grew up here. Abuela grew up here, as did her mami before her. This home has belonged to the Ortiz family for a long, long time. It is theirs for a reason.
Hopkins is an invasive species. Yes. But what truly infuriates Nina is the greed.
He lives next door at 250 Tompkins in an ugly modernized brownstone that looks like it was modeled after something in Gentrification Monthly. But he also owns 246 Tompkins on the other side of the Ortiz family home. The Johnsons used to live there. Nina wasn’t ever close to them, but one of the moms—Regina—was Mami’s close friend. They’re out in Canarsie now, which means it takes two trains and a long, unreliable bus ride to see them. Mami has only managed to visit them once since they were forced out.
Two doors down, at 252 Tompkins, was a Haitian family who occupied the top floor. Nina had a crush on the youngest one, Phara, but they also had to move. Nina never even built up the courage to say anything, and now they’re gone. Hopkins pushed them out, too.
Nina’s childhood friend, Victor Cardenas, was in a basement apartment at 276 Tompkins with his papi, at least until that big storm last year flooded lots of New York. They begged their landlord to fix the windows and the ceiling and the sagging walls, but no one listened. And then Hopkins swooped in. Bought the place right out from under the previous landlord and promptly evicted everyone. Claimed the building was a “hazard,” which legally meant no one could fight it. Now Victor and his family live halfway across Brooklyn.
Hopkins has fourteen buildings.
The Ortiz family has one.
Why does he need another? Why isn’t one home good enough for him?
When will he stop?
Why can’t he leave them alone?
Nina hears Mami making noise upstairs and stirs; she nearly dozed off. She puts aside her biology book and rises from her bed. Stretches. Makes a quick stop to the bathroom to change the bandage, then spends too long staring at the bloody mess underneath. She cleans the wound, bandages it again, then heads into the kitchen to make something for Mami to eat. The ache is back behind her eyes, and she wishes it would go away. There’s still a broken window in the basement, and Nina has no solution.
Her heart leaps. She has to tell Mami about everything eventually, but for the moment, she can shove it all away. Hopkins isn’t bothering them, and she’ll figure something out before the snow falls. She did her best.
But then Mami comes rushing down the stairs as Nina is taking out a pot to reheat leftovers, and Nina’s confidence withers. What if she didn’t do her best? What if this is all a mistake? She turns and sets the pot down, then quickly hides her left hand behind her back.
It doesn’t make sense: Mami is grabbing her puffy black coat.
“I’m sorry, mi amor,” Mami says. “I have to head out again.”
“¿Otra vez?” says Nina. “¿Por qué?”
“It’s Abuela.”
Now Nina’s heart sinks to her feet. “What happened?”
Mami’s mouth curls down, and Nina braces for the worst.
“I don’t know,” she says. “She says … she says she needs to come home.”
“What?”
“I don’t get it either,” Mami says, shaking her head. “I just got a frantic call from her, and she says she needs to be here now.”
“So she’s fine?”
Mami gives her a disappointed gaze. “I spoke to her attending,” she says, “and her treatment this week was harder on her than usual.”
Ah. She’s still dying.
Cancer. That rotten poison.
Nina nods. “Well, let me go get dressed.”
“No.”
Nina stills, and her mouth falls open a bit. “Why not?”
“You need to stay here, Nina.”
“No!” she cries. “It’s Abuela. I have to go, too.”
“We can’t both go,” explains Mami. “Is the window fixed in the basement?”
She wants to crumple to the floor. “No. I was going to tape something over it. Maybe a garbage bag so the snow won’t get in.”
“I’m not worried about snow, mija. Someone has to make sure no one gets in there.”
Nina groans. “It’s only a few hours, Mami!”
“And that’s all he needs,” Mami snaps. “You know how Abuela is, Nina. Every time she goes in for treatment, she tries to find some way to leave. I am gonna do my best to convince her to stay, but I could be there all night if she’s as stubborn as she usually is. We can’t risk leaving this place unoccupied. You know what’s at stake, mija.” She zips up her coat. “Besides, National Grid will be here in the morning. At eight. And someone has to be here to let them in so we don’t freeze our asses off.”
“Mami, please,” Nina says.
Mami pulls Nina into a hug. “Protege nuestro hogar,” she whispers.
“You know I will,” Nina mutters. “I’m just tired of doing this.”
“And what’s with this no-arm hug? Are you too embarrassed to hug your mami now?”
She flinches. Then she removes her hands from her pockets and embraces Mami for a few seconds.
Mami pulls away. “I need you to do your best to make sure nothing happens to this place. No matter what that man does, he cannot have what is ours.”
“I know, Mami.”
“This is ours.”
“I know. So why can’t we—?”
Mami raises a hand. “Don’t even suggest it. I already know what you’re going to say.”
“What good is it protecting this place if we can’t—?”
“By the rules!” Mami shouts.
Nina’s skin prickles. “Okay,” she says, her voice low.
Mami grimaces. “I’m sorry for yelling,” she says. “It’s just … there’s too much to lose here. Not just this home, but you.”
Nina tries to ignore the thrums of pain.
She tries to see things through Mami’s eyes.
But all she feels is an unending, vicious river of rage.
The house that night—quiet and full of shadows—has never felt so empty before. Nina watches dark clouds rolling in over Bed-Stuy from the window in the living room. A ferocious storm’s coming. The wind picks up, and the bones of the house whine from the forceful gusts.
God, she hates the winter.
It will get colder soon. More snow will fall upon what’s left over from the week before, and she dreads all the shoveling they’ll have to do. She already had to suffer in the cold to salt the sidewalks and walkway outside their building for the last half hour, most of it done with one hand. If she hadn’t, Hopkins would have reported them.
That was his new thing: calling up any city agency that would listen to him and reporting the Ortiz home. Mami says the city isn’t going to do anything—they’re not breaking the law. But they still have to keep up with his nonsense because Mami is worried that any slipup can derail the court case for the deed to the home.
So, for these past few weeks, no mistakes have been allowed. Yet it feels like Hopkins finds a new thing to complain about or threaten them with every day: The way they store their recycling bins. How late they put their trash out. Who comes in and out of the building. How much noise they make.
Nina watches from the front window as Hopkins inspects the sidewalk. He gazes up at the house and yells at it. “You missed a spot!”
She does not answer. She only lets her anger grow.
He eventually shakes his head. Putters off back to his house next door.
In the kitchen, she takes out the leftovers she was going to give to Mami before she left. There’s curtido and masa, so she assembles some pupusas with quesillo and frijoles, cleaning up as she goes, doing her best to ignore the mounting thrum in her hand. She eats in silence, thankful that Abuela taught her how to cook like this before she got too sick to stand for long periods of time. Nina pushes the burst of despondency away; her abuela is still alive. There is no sense panicking over what has not happened.
After washing her dishes and silverware, she heads down to the basement. Stretches a cut-up garbage bag over the broken window and tapes it down with duct tape, hoping the seal will stick overnight. Then she checks to make sure the basement door is locked. Once. Twice. Three times.
She brushes her teeth, tries to curl up in bed with her reading for English, but minutes later, she’s standing in front of the entrance to the basement. Her cobija is draped over her shoulders and she’s still as ice. She listens. Doesn’t hear anything.
She raises her left hand and places it against the door. Even in the shadows, the red is obvious, glaring.
She changes the bandage again.
Nina ends up on the couch, the wind howling outside and the naked oak branches scratching on the side of the house. It still groans every so often.
“I know,” she says to it. “We’ll get through this.”
Her eyes don’t leave the basement door until the storm whips against her home, and then she’s staring out the window, watching as snow flurries are flung about in the wind.
It’s here.
Nina settles in.
She waits.
She doesn’t recall drifting off to sleep.
She opens her eyes to light from the streetlamp pouring in the window across from the couch. She silently curses herself for not drawing the curtains. A lot of the white folks who have moved to this neighborhood—many of them tenants of Hopkins—have no curtains or blinds in their windows. She doesn’t understand this. Why would you want someone on the street to be able to see everything you own?
Abuela once told her that was the whole point.
Nina stares at the streetlamp’s light. Her mind registers the window. The shadows. The dust in the air.
And then …
There’s someone here.
She isn’t sure at first. It looks like the outline of a tree, or maybe it’s the streetlamp itself, but … no. There’s a shape there. In the corner of the window, and it looks like—
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Can’t think.
She is still for an eternity.
And then it moves.
A person’s head. They look in through the window, and Nina stares into the whites of their eyes. They place their hands against the glass.
The frame rattles.
Nina remains unmoving, her body frozen in terror. Do they see her? No. The couch is mostly tucked away in the shadows. But she still feels exposed. It’s only a matter of time.
The person outside moves away from the window suddenly, leaving a painful, chilling silence behind. She realizes the storm died down sometime while she was asleep. Did she imagine all this? Is she dreaming? Her heart thumps in her chest, threatening to break out.
She hears scuffling outside. Then the crunch of boots on a sidewalk lined with salt.
Nina bolts upright and crawls over to the window. She lifts her head slowly until she’s able to see out, hoping desperately she won’t be spotted.
There’s one man at the bottom of the stoop, bundled up in a puffy coat and a large beanie. His mere outline is unmistakable.
Hopkins huffs. Rubs his hands together. Turns back.
She ducks out of sight. What is he doing?
His footsteps on the sidewalk grow quieter. She hopes desperately that he is going home. But then she hears the echo of his steps in the alley between their properties, and it all comes back to her:
The window to the basement is on that side.
Nina curses and tries to find her phone. It’s wrapped up in the cobija, and when she taps the screen, she sees a text from Mami. She’s still at the hospital. Abuela is stable but argumentative. Nina glances at the time. It’s just around midnight.
She tiptoes toward her room at the foot of the stairs. At the doorway, she freezes again.
There’s a shadow over her window.
She moves to the side at first, then gazes up the stairs. Her mami’s room. She can go there. Can film Hopkins if he tries anything. She makes quick work of the stairs, which thankfully do not creak, and then she’s inside Mami’s bedroom. Her scrubs are piled on the floor next to the bed, rather than thrown inside a hamper. Mami must have been too exhausted. Nina makes her way over to the window and peels the curtain aside.
Hopkins’s beanie bobs up and down below her. She raises her phone, opens the camera, and is dismayed when there’s a terrible glare caused by the glass. It makes it impossible to film him.
He gets on his hands and knees at the broken window.
She tries not to panic, tries not to let the unbearable fury push her to do something foolish. She gently places her phone on the windowsill, then grips the small indentations at the bottom of the frame. The window doesn’t budge, and her hand screams at her to stop. Shit. It’s locked. She flips the locks open with aching slowness, terrified she might be making too much noise, but as she inches the window up, she can hear Hopkins grunting below.
The frigid air hits her and washes into the room. Her shiver is instantaneous. But she doesn’t stop. Nina grabs her phone and holds the lens over the edge of the sill while she looks at the screen.
Hopkins lies prone on the cement below, his head out of sight and … damn it. He’s in the basement. She watches as he squirms back slowly, and then she hits RECORD. This is it: evidence that Hopkins is the one breaking the law, not them.
He grunts again. Then he whispers harshly, “Tim? Tim, you in there?”
Nina knows he is not going to find his son down there.
He scoots farther into the Ortiz basement. She sticks her phone out more, grateful for the bright security light at the end of the alley. What she’s capturing on camera … it’s damning. She knows it. Her nerves flutter at the thought of getting to show this to Mami. They aren’t the kind of family who calls the police, but even Nina can’t deny how satisfying it would be to see Hopkins arrested. Maybe they can use this to get the deed challenge dismissed.
There are so many possibilities, and she is drunk on them.
He swears. Lurches back out of the basement and tries to go in feetfirst. Yanks his legs out of the basement, swears again.
Then he looks up.
He sees her.
Hopkins narrows his eyes and sits up, and she frantically pulls the phone back, but her bandaged hand is clumsy, misshapen, and the phone tumbles out the window.
And lands on Hopkins’s chest.
It bounces. Clatters on the cement next to his body.
She scrambles back. Maybe she imagined that he saw her, but—
“Where is Tim?” he screams. “I saw you, you little rat. Where is he?”
No. No, no, no! She had him! How could she have messed this up so badly?
Mr. Hopkins is still shouting, but she pushes herself up with her right hand, then darts down the stairs, just in time to see the shadow cross over the window in her own room. She slows, then waits. Listens.
She thinks she hears the man’s boots on the salt, but she isn’t sure. Where is that sound coming from?
Another shadow falls over the living room window. “Nina,” croons Hopkins. “I have something of yours.”
Fuck!
He seems to float into view, and all she can see is a dark figure standing there, his outline illuminated by the streetlamp. He’s holding something up.
Her phone.
He remains there, her phone held aloft, and her muscles tense, freezing her in place. She can’t call Mami. Can’t call for help.
He disappears again. Nina takes a few cautious steps forward, but she can’t hear him anymore.
Are the doors locked?
Of course they are, but the thought burrows deeper beneath her skin, and she rushes to the front door to make sure. Then she’s thinking of other windows. What if he finds another one to creep into? He’s clearly not above breaking and entering.
You know what he wants.
She does. The only thing Hopkins wants more than their house. But she can’t give that to him. Not anymore.
She stills. Hopes to hear that familiar scraping sound.
Nothing.
Maybe he went home. Maybe he’ll come back in the morning, and Mami will be home by then, and she—
There’s a rattling.
She spins. Listens again. Creeps back toward the stairs.
It’s coming from the kitchen.
She realizes she forgot about the door that leads to the alley behind the building, out where the trash bins are, and her heart heaves in her chest as she dashes across the cool wooden tiles. She peers around the cabinets and—
He’s there. At the back door. She can see his outline through the pale curtain on the door’s window.
He knocks, softly at first, and then the raps are loud, repetitive, like gunshots.
“Open up!” He presses her phone against the glass. “I know you want this back.”
She does, but she can’t let him in.
Hopkins tries to open the door again. “Just tell me where you’re keeping him,” he says. “I know Tim was here. I sent him over. He never came back.”
Her blood boils.
“Fine,” he says.
He steps back. Holds up her phone. “Then I guess you don’t need this.”
He drops it. Nina hears it hit the ground.
He lurches back, and she rushes to the door, ripping the curtain aside, but it’s too late.
He stomps on it, the phone crunching beneath his chunky snow boot.
“No,” she whispers.
It is a crack in the dam. All that pent-up rage presses against her, begging to be let out.
Then he’s gone.
Nina wonders if she should grab a weapon but then feels silly. That’s what happens in all those slasher flicks; does it ever turn out well for the victim?
She presses her face to the glass. Can’t see him anywhere. Where did he go?
She hears his boots on the cement.
And when Hopkins’s body slams into the door the first time, it shakes the whole house.
Something falls and shatters in the kitchen.
Nina can’t help but scream. “Go away!” she cries. “Leave me alone!”
“I know your mother is gone,” he calls out, and then his shadow grows smaller for a moment.
BANG! He throws himself against the door again, and this time, there’s a loud crack that follows. The frame splinters and splits.
He’s going to get in.
“Give me my son!”
BANG.
“Give me my house!”
BANG.
The frame snaps. It’s going to give way any moment.
Her left hand throbs then, and that’s when she knows what she has to do.
What her mother can’t.
Because she will not let this man have their home. It’s been in the family since her ancestors discovered what lay beneath the foundation. What prompted the home to be built. What necessitated her family’s protection.
She cannot imagine a worse person to lay claim to what is theirs.
Hopkins pants on her rear doorstep. He’s running out of energy, but there’s a long crack running down the wood.
She thinks of everyone else forced out of the neighborhood. Who moved away. Who disappeared from their lives. There must be others. How many have Hopkins and Tim tormented to get what they want?
Nina understands why her mami wants to play it safe, to let this unfold in court so they can get their deed back. Up until now, playing it safe has kept this family alive. Has kept this home under their control.
BANG.
But Hopkins knows he can do whatever he wants. Ultimately, he has the world on his side, doesn’t he? He will smash every phone he needs to. Break down every door. Crush every family’s dream to get what he craves.
He is an invasive species.
Her rage is singular. Focused. Sharp.
So Nina decides to imagine a different ending.
She strides over to the back door. Unlocks it with a single click of the dead bolt. Then steps back.
Hopkins’s shadow is still for a moment, as if he can’t believe what Nina just did. Then he pushes the door inward slowly. In the dim light, she can see the confusion on his face as he steps into the Ortiz family kitchen, his brows furrowed, his eyes darting from side to side.
“Don’t pull anything funny,” he says.
She doesn’t respond. Only glares at him with contempt.
Hopkins pauses. “You better not have hurt him,” he says, his body heaving as he breathes rapidly. “Just take me to him. I won’t report you to the police, and we’ll forget about your phone, okay?”
She nods, then points toward the door in the living room. “The basement,” she says.
“I knew it,” he says, then removes his beanie. “You savages are all the same.”
Nina doesn’t give Hopkins the reaction he wants. It’s not like she hasn’t heard this before. People like him think they’re being original when they say shit like that.
She knows they’re all the same.
Nina’s keys are on a hook by the front door, so she grabs them, then unlocks the door to the basement. When she swings it open toward her, the house exhales, hits her face with a rush of warm air.
It knows.
It is ready.
“Tim!” Hopkins calls out. “Tim, are you down there?”
They are both met with silence.
He shivers. “Where is he?”
“Come,” she says, her voice radiating calm. She is certain about this, even as her nerves flare up. She flicks on the lights, then holds the door open behind her. “Down.”
He grunts and then follows her, descending the steps cautiously. At the bottom, she looks up at the remains of the garbage bag flapping gently in the breeze.
“Your son did that,” says Nina, pointing to it, and she decides to tell him part of the truth. “I caught him down here this morning. Using a sledgehammer on our boiler.”
Hopkins’s mouth hangs open, and then he tries to sputter some excuse about repairs and ownership and deeds, but Nina no longer cares what this man has to say.
Her blood pumps faster, coursing through her veins like a rushing river. The throbbing rears its head.
The house groans in the wind.
Yes. Her home is speaking to her.
She glances at the mangled boiler and notices something she didn’t clean up that morning.
A lone gym shoe, on its side, spattered with blood.
“Tim?” Hopkins shuffles around the basement. “Tim?”
Wide-eyed, he turns to Nina. “What did you do to him?”
She ignores him. Steps to the far corner, where the sledgehammer sits leaning against the wall. That isn’t what she needs, though.
There’s a door. Black. Mahogany, actually. No etchings or carvings. It is plain, even though what it protects is anything but.
She finds the keys that unlock the dead bolt and the safety locks, and as soon as she is done with the last, she places her right hand on the handle.
Hopkins shoves her out of the way. “Tim!” he cries out, and he wrenches the door open to—
Darkness.
There is nothing but darkness inside.
He’s digging in his pocket. “Tim, can you hear me?”
He produces his own phone, flicking on the flashlight, and it’s the perfect distraction for Nina. She picks at the edge of the bandage, then begins to unravel it, exposing the stump where her pinky finger used to be.
Hopkins waves the phone around, but he isn’t stepping forward. She didn’t either, the first time Mami showed her this. How could anyone?
The darkness devours the light. To Hopkins, it looks like utter nothingness.
But she can see the truth.
She can see possibility.
The bandage falls to the floor. The wound still oozes.
And Nina grabs the cleaver hanging from a hook on the back of the door.
“He’s not in there anymore,” she says, and Hopkins whirls about, his eyes wide as they fall on the cleaver.
“What did you do?” he whispers. He glances over his shoulder. “What is this?”
El ancla. That is what her ancestors named it nearly three hundred years ago when they found the darkness, when they discovered what the sacrifice would do for them. It is a means to an end, a way for her to anchor her thoughts and bring them into reality.
She moves toward Hopkins, and he rears back, right up to the edge of the darkness.
“I’ll show you what happened to your son,” she says.
Then she shoves him inside.
His scream is cut off as the darkness swallows him up, and then she is quick to drop to her knees, to fall forward, and she isn’t sure which hand to use. One finger from each hand? Two from the left? She accepts that she wants at least one hand with all five intact, so she sticks out her ring finger, tucking the others as best she can under her palm, and she breathes in. Out. In. Out.
There is always a price. You cannot conjure something from nothing. You must give it a part of yourself. That’s what her family discovered. They are the only ones who know of this, and they’ve been protecting it ever since.
It is hungry.
Do it.
The house groans.
And she gives it what it wants.
The cleaver comes down fast, and the pain is a flash. Redness spurts forth, and the darkness drinks it. She holds her hand forward so that her blood sprays into el ancla, then uses the other to pick up her finger as she chokes back a cry.
She tosses it beyond the doorway.
Then:
A light. A heat. A breath of relief and satiation.
The darkness recedes, and Hopkins is curled in the fetal position in that space, sobbing, begging for God to save him. He glances up, his eyes red and puffy.
“Witch!” he spits out. “Is that what you are?”
She stands. “No,” she says.
Hopkins is suspended there. There are no walls, no floor, no anything. And just beyond him … darkness.
El ancla waits for Nina’s imagination.
“What did you do to my son?” Hopkins chokes out.
She is pleased at how easy it was to lure him down here. He has no imagination for people like her. It is their perpetual underestimation.
She opens her mind as she gazes in, and moments later, she feels this house latch on to her, hook into her mind, and a comfort radiates throughout her body. It knows she is part of the family that has protected it for hundreds of years.
It begs her, Tell me what you want.
She stares at Hopkins, who is shakily pushing himself upright, sobbing like a lost child.
He is a thief.
He is an invader.
She knows. She knows exactly what to bring into this world, and she pictures it in her head, borrowing the image from the biology textbook she was reading earlier.
“Vespa mandarinia,” she intones.
There is a low rumble, and it builds into a terrifying pitch. Her ring finger, sitting still at Hopkins’s feet, splits apart, the skin tearing off muscle, the muscle tearing from bone, and the darkness rushes in as Hopkins screams again, falls back, but this time, the darkness catches him, holds him in place as her blood and flesh and bone reform, as they become yellowed wings and legs, become the striped thorax, become the hideous black mandible and the stinger.
It grows and grows and grows and grows until Hopkins is cowering beneath it, blubbering, his hands over his face.
It is angry, buzzing and hissing.
But she is not the object of its ire. It is worshipping her back, thanking her for the summoning.
She nods. “Now,” she utters.
He shrieks as it rears up, and when the stinger pierces his hand, the hornet slams Hopkins’s body down, and pinning his palm to his right shoulder. Something snaps.
It tears itself free.
The next sting is in his thigh. When it removes the stinger, blood sprays from an enormous gaping wound, and then it stings again, and again, and soon there is nothing there but red and yellow and black.
Such beautiful colors together.
He finally stops moving. His face has swollen so much, he no longer looks human, just an inflated mass of flesh, and blood seeps from the many, many entrance points until it slows to an ooze, and the hornet observes. Waits.
She stumbles over to the boiler and picks up Tim’s shoe. She returns and tosses it into the darkness.
She gives el ancla her gratitude.
“Te protegeré,” Nina promises.
The conjuring vanishes. The darkness begins to claim it all, to swim over Hopkins’s body, and—
“Nina, are you down here?”
She spins around as Mami comes down the stairs, and Nina crouches, tries to pick up the cleaver, but the pain rushes back as her elation evaporates.
Mami is there, still in her puffy winter coat, staring. She gasps. “Nina, what have you done?”
Exhaustion weighs Nina’s body down, and she wobbles. The summoning is costly in more ways than one.
“I solved our problem,” she mutters.
When she glances back at el ancla, she sees nothing but darkness.
She thinks Mami is angry at first. Can’t quite read the expression on her face. But then Mami crosses over to Nina and closes the door. When she pushes it shut, Nina looks at the space where there were once two fingers on her mami’s hand.
Now they match.
Mami reaches out for Nina’s bleeding hand, examining it closely.
“I need to know everything that happened,” Mami says softly. “Please.”
Nina nods. Tells her mami about what she found when she heard a banging sound in the basement and discovered Tim. How she ran for the door to el ancla, and she was sloppy, cutting her pinky finger off at an angle, but at least Tim had been so shocked by what she was doing that she was able to threaten him to get inside.
She tells Mami about the reticulated python.
There is a long silence. Mami rubs the pad of her thumb over the back of Nina’s hand.
“What now?” says Nina.
She expects rage. Fury. Nina has done what Mami asked her never to do.
“Abuela is fine,” she finally says. “She’s still with us.”
There is some relief in that, but Nina is still tense.
“We should go see her together. You need to tell her, too.”
“Why?” Nina asks.
The corner of Mami’s lip curls up. “So she knows that you did our family proud tonight.”
Nina sags. Leans into her mami’s body. “I had to,” she says, pressing her face into Mami’s coat.
“You did good, mija. They’re gone now.”
“What about the police?” Nina says. “What about our case?”
“We can deal with complications later. Right now, I think you need to be with your family.”
Mami guides her up the stairs. Around her, Nina feels the house contracting. Maybe it’s in her mind, but she doesn’t think it is.
Her home embraces her.
And Nina smiles because she knows she did the best she could.