CW: homophobia, sexual harassment There are some references to my other backstory fic
The phone hangs on the wall, silent as the dead.
Normally Maggie wouldn't bother waiting. But somebody must think of her, today of all days.
Not her Dad. Maybe not her grandparents. But her mother. Eddy. Surely.
Anyone.
She can't stare at it any longer, her blood too warm under her skin as she turns and heads to the yard. Out past the neighbours' tornado shelter, over the corn fields, a breaking of thunder runs out of the sky and into the ground. The chickens are nervous. "Come here, you little shit," she mutters, shoes flinging mud as she closes in on one, drops to her knees, corners it. It's heavy in her arms, a skittish heart drumming into her palm.
Her father always said she was too soft for this kind of work. As a little girl she would hug the chickens first, whisper apologies into their feathers. One time, she panicked and dropped one before she could slit its throat all the way. It jerked on the ground, eyes wide, dying far too slowly for her to bear. Her father had lifted his boot without a word. Stomped down on its head, once, hard.
At the time, she'd mistaken his violence for mercy.
She hates that her eyes still water as she carries the wriggling thing to a table out back. By the time her aunt comes home, Maggie has already brought it to the kitchen counter, drained, plucked, gutted. When Tia squeezes her shoulder in a greeting, Maggie continues in silence, one bloody hand on the carcass, the other splaying open a cookbook.
Immediately, the woman can tell what's wrong. "Nobody called yet?"
Maggie's only answer is the scrape of a heavy knife between bone and sinew.
She hears her aunt sigh behind her, grabbing some vegetables from the fridge. "This is hard on them too, amorzinho. You have to give them time."
Maggie swallows hard. She sets the knife down, braces an unsteady hand on the counter, closes her eyes. It's such a belittling request. Such a patronising lie. "Give them…" she starts to echo, but her voice trails off, and she leaves it like that.
"I got your favourite for tomorrow. I have an early shift so I'll have your dinner and presents ready when you come home, OK?"
"Tia," Maggie snaps, trying not to explode. "I asked you to forget it. I asked you."
"I know, princesa, but it's a special day. You're only a quinceañera once, and -"
"God, you never just listen to me," she cries, the tears coming freely now as she turns from the counter. "I don't want to be a quinceañera. I don't want presents, and I don't want a nice dinner and I don't want to fucking be here."
The girl startles even herself with the bite in her words. Because normally her aunt would scold her for her attitude, but she only nods slowly against the fridge. "I know you're upset,' she says sternly, voice low. "But in this house we're grateful for everything we have. Understand?"
Or what? Maggie wants to scream. You'll get rid of me too?
But she lets her heart slow, eyes to the floor. Her limbs feel weak, as if she's run all the way home and back in the moment they've been standing there, and the hand holding the knife shakes as she gets back to work. When they sit to eat, Maggie can only stare at the steaming corpse on the table. She wants none of it.
"I'll clean up," Tia says, only after Maggie's managed to eat some beans at least, kissing her hair and pulling back with a soft, teasing smile. "Now go shower and let me wash those clothes. You smell like dirt."
Maggie scoffs, stands quickly. "This whole fucking town smells li-"
"Magdalena."
She ignores her. Makes sure to slam the door.
In a way, it's almost a relief that she won't be celebrating the next day.
She remembers the two hour drive with Mama and Tia and Vovó and Abuelita to the nearest Latina-owned dress store three towns over, a trip she'd dreaded since she turned 14. Her family had never let her forget it was coming - that soon she'd be quince. That meant ridiculous gowns, her parents spending money they didn't have, Mama curling her hair so tight it burned. It meant dances with boys, her whole family watching.
Maggie would squirm in every dress they picked, composing herself to fake her smiles. She didn't dare not to, after Tia had pulled her aside when she'd questioned if she really had to wear a dress at all, and scolded her, Do this for your mother. She didn't come all this way so you could forget your culture. To be a quinceañera is an honour. We've all been saving for months for this, the least you can do is be grateful…
And it had been worth it, at the time, to see her mother so happy. The way her eyes glistened as she took Maggie's face in her hands, kissed her forehead and passed her around to the women of her family, who all kissed her a hundred times over and called her their princesa. She'd fought not to cringe. Her family always called her that, being the oldest girl in a clan of almost all male cousins – now the first quinceañera since they moved to America.
Later, her mother would blame everything on this circumstance – that she'd foolishly let Maggie spend too much of her childhood playing football (soccer, her kids would remind her) in the mud with the other children, when she should have been curbing her energies into something more suitable for a girl her age.
But at the time, Maggie still felt unworthy of the title, even with an embellished white dress and jewels in her hair. It all felt too pure for her - her skin too dark, her manner too bold, her heart too… queer. Too wrong.
Briefly, shamefully, she'd imagined how Eliza would be like in such a dress. How she would look like a princess – a real one. In the fitting room, Maggie closed her eyes, her fingers walking with tiny steps over the beaded lacing of her bodice, imagining dancing with her, feeling her.
They decided on the white one in the end. Her grandmothers agreed it was more traditional, but it was Maggie who had insisted the hardest. It was the only white dress she could ever hope to wear. And while she'd originally been jealous that Abuelita was making gorgeous navy suits for her cousins, she couldn't help that in this dress, beneath her discomfort, she really did feel beautiful. Precious. Lucky.
That dress will be worn by some other girl now. Some more normal girl in another town, as she danced with her father and made her family proud.
She wonders what lie her mother would have come up with to save face when she returned it, too desperate for the money to be proud. Maybe that she was sick. Maybe that she was dead.
Maggie shakes her head to clear it, rolling over on the couch to turn off the SVU re-runs so she doesn't wake Tia in the next room. Even with the extra blankets, she's too cold, too restless, to sleep, grabbing an extra sweater from the Wal-Mart bags bunched at the foot of the couch. Her father hadn't let her take anything, when it happened.
Overcome with loneliness, she foolishly, childishly imagines that she's spending the night before her birthday on a different couch, in the Wilkes' basement. Her chest releases a shaky, painful breath at thought, her whole body trembling from wanting her, missing her. She tangles her fingers through her own hair, wishing it belonged to Eliza. Holds herself a little tighter. Closes her eyes, presses a chaste kiss to the back of her hand.
But the shame wraps itself tight around her chest, familiar as a sister, muscular as a snake, and it's all she can do not to pound her fists into her thighs as tears seep out of her eyelids, to try and make this strange warmth in her blood go away, to kill it dead.
Once she calms, her eyes find the phone on the wall in the kitchen. She could call, she supposes, sobbing out a desperate plea of Lo siento, Papi, te extraño, quiero volver a casa… But as much as she wants to believe she's nothing like her father, pride is something they've always had in common.
The thought almost makes her want to open herself up and drain the bastard's cursed blood from her veins.
She imagines him at this very moment, just arriving home from a late shift, her mother waiting in the kitchen. Eddy kicking a ball against a wall outside, inconsiderate of the noise he was making, like he always did when he couldn't sleep.
Unless he was asleep, completely unperturbed by the fact that she wasn't there. Maybe they all slept better now, without the burden of a dyke under their roof to pray for.
It's like a kick in the spine, to realise that the house she'd grown up in, this whole time, had been made of sand.
The clock on the wall reads 12:05. It's official. She's quince.
If her family had bothered to call, they'd tell her that she's a woman now. They'd be half-right, Maggie thinks. She's never felt less like a child. And the tug in her chest, between missing them and hating them, wanting to call and wanting to break the phone in half, makes her feel like she's in the middle of a lake, desperately treading water, not sure which shore is closer.
It's truly unbelievable, how one event can make the entire world unrecognisable. She's walked this hallway a thousand times, but these days Maggie has an overwhelming sense of being watched, each classroom window blazing with reflected light.
There are no birthday cards in her locker, and she refuses to believe that her old friends, especially Eliza, have just forgotten. Not two months ago, they would have been crowding around with her, swapping notes for a test, laughing about something a teacher said. Now, Maggie hears footfalls down the corridor, and grips her heaviest book, prepared to swing.
Nothing is the same. She'd lost her job at the diner, only managing to find work cleaning stables on the edge of town, where the white kids comment on how she's suited for shovelling shit, how she probably liked horses as much as she liked girls. The soccer club won't let her coach anymore, parents tugging their little girls away by their wrists when they passed her in the street. Every Sunday when Tia makes her go to church, Maggie sits way up the back, wanting to cry each time the rest of her family sit in the farthest pew away from her without a word, and no one ever shakes her hand and wishes her peace.
It's true, what people say about her. That she's no good. That she ruins everything she touches.
Maybe it's a good thing she'll never touch Eliza Wilke ever again.
Still, the innermost part of her had hoped for a single card in her locker, to make some of the hurt of the last card she left in a locker go away. But there is only the usual weekly note, this time saying, Save us the trouble and kill yourself, faggot.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Maggie scoffs under her breath, scrunching the note tight in her fist. She puts it in the inner pocket of her backpack where she keeps the others. Keeps them so that one day, she'll remember all the times the world tried to destroy her and failed.
The day passes, for the most part, uneventfully, until gym. When she enters the change-room, every girl stops what she's doing, covers herself, glares in her direction. Rolling her eyes, Maggie throws an "I do have standards, bitches" over her shoulder as she turns on her heels to find another place to change. It only takes 20 minutes before one of the boys slams a basketball into the side of her face, hard, and when she touches her lip, her fingers come back wet.
None of this is what makes her run. What makes her run is the way the coach invites her into his office and closes the door, how he leans too close and stares too long and tucks her hair behind her ear as he pretends to inspect her bruise, barely holding himself back from tracing a thumb over her bleeding lip. How he only gives her an ice pack after she asks three times, but offers for her to change in his office from now on if the girls are giving her too much trouble. How he says she can talk to him anytime, but the words are hollow in his mouth.
There's only just enough room to brush past him, and Maggie uses it.
She doesn't realise she's running to the stables, hands aching to calm themselves against fur, until Michele's already there waiting, and Maggie still has to fight the chill that snaps over her lungs at the sight of the police car. Her jaw tightens, and she can see, already, how the conversation will spin itself out.
The cop smiles tightly, uncrosses her arms. "Hey kiddo. I spoke to your boss, got you the afternoon off work."
"You know you can hardly call me that anymore," Maggie calls as she walks over. "This shithole's aged me."
"And today's the big day, huh?"
Maggie rolls her eyes, as if to say don't remind me.
Michelle narrows her eyes a little as Maggie comes closer. "What happened to your face?"
"Relax. It was just basketball."
They both feel the lie in their guts, but Michelle backs off for now. "Come on, I've got someone who wants to meet you." When she opens the back door of the car, a beagle bounds out, running circles around her feet, and she can't help but laugh at the smile that blooms on the young girl's face without permission.
"Oh my god," Maggie laughs, dropping straight to her knees to run her hands over its ears, giggling as it licks her face, lighting up with an innocence that would be deceiving to anyone who didn't know her. "What's its name?"
"Otis. He's retiring from the force."
"Will they put him down?"
"You kidding? I'm taking this baby home. Which means you can visit him anytime you like," Michelle assures her, her hand joining Maggie's to scratch his ears. "I did get you a proper present, but it's with your Tia, OK sweetie?"
Maggie fights not to groan, forcing out a quick word of thanks.
They drive out to a truck stop diner to pick up some pizza before finding an open field, sitting on the hood of the car while Otis runs around in the dying light, snapping at fireflies. It's a relief to be out of the car. Even though she trusts Michelle, Maggie can't help but feel the doors close in on her like a vice grip, remembering how the first time she ever rode in one of these, she was in handcuffs, trying to hold her sobbing brother, covered in his blood.
The radio's playing the usual country music as they eat in silence, Maggie's chest tightening at the songs about lying under the stars with a pretty girl in the back of a pickup. She can only dream of such a life.
"He's such a doofus," Michelle finally says, laughing at Otis. "Always too distracted. Miracle he stayed on the force this long."
Maggie nods, smiles, wipes her pizza grease on her jeans.
Beside her, Michelle leans back on the car again, watching her closely. "You gonna tell me what happened today?"
Maggie shakes her head, keeps her eyes on the dog.
"Your Tia called me this week. Said you've been really angry about your birthday."
"What, you two talking behind my back now?" Maggie scoffs.
"We just care about you, honey."
The young girl looks up at her with hard eyes, almost wanting to cry, because Michelle doesn't yell. Michelle doesn't think she's a bad person. The thought makes her lip tremble, her eyes sting.
"I don't mean to be bad, I just…" she whispers, and her hands shake with her voice, and she can't go on.
Michelle nods, squeezes her shoulder. "I know, honey. But you've got to give her a chance. She doesn't know how to look after a kid, this is all new for both of you. And your parents… Look, what do I know, maybe they'll change their minds and come get you. But until then, you've got to make peace with your Tia. She's doing her best, and you've got to let her try, OK?"
The young girl's eyes burn with a storm's weight behind them, and she fights not to cry as she curls into the officer's arms with a reluctant desperation. "I just want to go back to before."
"I wish you could, honey," Michelle sighs, holding her close as the sky turns red. Somewhere far, Otis is still yapping in the thicket.
Maggie breathes, lets her chest open. Tonight, there isn't a cloud in sight, the world looking the same in every direction. Before her, the rolling hills of wheat and corn and grass are going grey, falling away into a bloody sky.
Way out here, she can almost forget how much she hates the place.
"Come on," Michelle tells the girl. "I should take you home."
Normally she's more careful which place she calls 'home'. But today, Maggie doesn't correct her, pushing herself off the car to go chase the dog.
Michelle politely declines the offer to stay for dinner, and Maggie desperately wishes that she hadn't. Tia's house is too warm, too bright for her to stomach, with hand-picked flowers on the table and Selena playing on the radio. The song reminds her too much of home, too much of how soon enough she'll likely end up like the singer, another dead young Latina girl in America.
Tia's still in scrubs, her hands sticky from rolling brigadeiros as she takes the young girl's face and kisses her twice on each cheek with a sweet murmur of "Parabéns, princesa."
Maggie wants to feel anything but rage. But tears burn bright in her eyes before she can stop them, and she holds her aunt tightly, hoping the woman mistakes her fervour for gratitude. "Obrigada, Tia," she replies, but behind her aunt's back, Maggie's hands have closed painfully into fists.
Her Aunt pulls her back, weeping as she brushes the girl's hair. Maggie's breath catches at the sight of the woman's eyes, all big and wet, realising it's the first time she's ever seen her cry. "I know I can't give you what you wanted. But I've tried to make this a home for you."
Unable to speak, Maggie only nods into her aunt's hands, not fighting the shaky breath that escapes her. Tia takes her hand, leading her to her bedroom, and Maggie is only now noticing that her blankets aren't on the couch anymore, knowing with painful certainty what she's done.
Her Aunt's bedroom is split down the middle, makeshift curtains hanging loosely from the ceiling. On the left side, all of Tia's belongings crammed into the smaller space - on the right, a small set of drawers and a mattress on the floor.
Maggie stills. Tia's made her a bedroom.
The decorations have clearly come from Michelle. There's a Bend it like Beckham poster on the wall, fairy lights draped against her side of the curtain, Wonder Woman comics on the dresser. A pair of boxing gloves hanging from a hook on the wall, with a note saying, You get this week off, kiddo, but then we start training. Xo Michelle.
Her Tia sighs, waiting for her to say something. "I know it's not much…"
"It's everything," Maggie chokes.
She feels Tia's arm around her shoulders. "Sinto muito, amorzinho, I could only afford a mattress for now. I tried to pick up some things from your old room, but…"
But they got rid of everything.
They were never going to change their minds. They were never coming to get her.
The realisation carves through Maggie's gut like a switchblade, and her face crumples into her hands.
"Princesa…" her Tia breathes, pulling the now sobbing girl straight into her arms, tight against her chest. She may be quince now, but Maggie still barely reaches her shoulders. Still so small, her Tia thinks. Too small for any of this.
Somewhere off, Selena keeps singing softly on the radio, and Tia begins to rock her slowly, presses kisses into the inconsolable girl's hair, murmurs the words along while Maggie's body breaks, all fury and grief.
No lloras más, corazón
No sufras más por amor
Yo sé que alguien te amara
Tan mucha fe por favor
Espera un poco más
y llegara, y llegara
It isn't how they thought she would be spending her quinceañera, swaying crying with her Aunt instead of waltzing with her father in her first pair of heels, but it seems this is as close as she'll ever get. In the arms of the only family she has left, Maggie lets it all go, finally admitting that her old home, her old life, has burned to the ground.
Thanks for reading, sorry it wasn't my best. I'm jiemba on tumblr, come say hi : )