When Joana stepped into the stall, shut it behind her, Lupina took her face and pulled her close.Quickly, the bottom half of the wrestling mask was folded up enough for a cherry-glossed mouth to slide against Joana’s.But Joana soon tilted her face — the movement slow but feeling too quick, fast enough to jostle the burning liquor in her belly — then brought her lips to the warm pulse of her girl’s neck.‘My girl.Maybe I should stop thinking like that, after all.’She shut her eyes, didn’t realize it; the image of Lupina was imprinted in her mind in perfect accuracy, every detail memorized, traced by Joana’s tongue in the past.A past life, it felt like.‘I want to be with you every morning.Should I tell you?My phone is ringing all the time.It’s my father.It’s your father.It’ll be God one day, telling me it’s time to march right to Hell and leave you here.Because you’re His good Christian girl, and I’m a valley of death.’
Lupina slapped a hand over her mouth, like she always did, but her hips began to grind against the other’s knee again as Joana set her foot on the toilet seat, too firm for how weak she felt.
‘If I could talk without slurring, I’d say goodbye.This has to be goodbye, doesn’t it?’Her stomach turned, but Joana bit down, listening to a soft, shaking breath slip past Lupina’s fingers.‘Goodbye.When I arrived at your father’s house years ago, and you came down from your room to ask him something, saw me among all the men, and I saw you, I remember thinking: What a beautiful girl.’Joana had no patience, grappling Lupina’s waist, trying to guide her to put one foot on the toilet as she set her own back on the ground.Then, Joana dragged both her hands up Lupina’s tall body, feeling it tremble, before she began to pepper kisses down her front.Through the top, she squeezed at one of Lupina’s breasts, nuzzled it with her nose, kissed it, then continued downward until she was crouching over the tile.Lupina pulled her own pants down, and Joana yanked them lower to rub her jaw against the lace of Lupina’s underwear, breathing in.
‘I was half-drunk when we met.I slurred my hello.I think you didn’t like me.’Joana tugged the fabric aside, then dipped in her tongue, ignoring the tight throb between her own legs — partly hoping it’d start to hurt.Her heart craved a whip of punishment; she didn’t know why, she never knew why.‘But every time afterwards that I was in the house, you’d come offer me something to drink, some food.Once, you offered me some of your own cooking.You said you felt bad for me because I was just a girl surrounded by horrible men.I told you I’m not much of a girl, and your father and his friends don’t see a girl in me either.What was I then, you asked.I said, I’m a weapon.I’m no girl; I’m a gun.’
Nearby, there were the sudden calls of Lupina’s name, the sound of her friends.And the girl that Joana was drowning in tensed.“Stop,” Lupina whispered, hands going to the top of Joana’s head, clutching the mask.
‘How did you get here?You asked me that constantly, how does a young girl end up at the table of traffickers and killers.Where do I begin?Would you believe me if I said I know how the world ends?’Joana was in such a daze that all she could focus on was the wetness of her lips as hands came over her shoulders, pushed her away.Lupina’s face, crushed in worry, was above, and Joana felt herself tremble.Then, Lupina pulled Joana’s mask down over her mouth as she shouted to answer her friends by the sinks.
‘How do I explain that I thought I was divine once and that I could save my father and save all of us?I was a child.I was naive.I never wanted this.I wanted to help.I really thought, I really believed, I could be good once.’Joana was grabbed, shoved to sit on the toilet seat, and Lupina stared at her for a moment, her face flushed, eyes wide.‘You’re always going to be beautiful, aren’t you?How am I going to live with that?’
Lupina kissed the top of her head.“I love you,” she said.“I’ll call you later,mi vida.”Hastily, she adjusted her clothing, promising a second time to call, before she slipped out of the stall, shutting it behind her, scurrying — from the sound of it — to her friends and telling them she was feeling ill.And that she’d come alone, hadn’t known her friends would drop by.
And Joana listened to them all talk for a minute, as well as all the other women in the bathroom.Alone, in her jeans, her massive shirt, her mask, without anyone to hold her hair back if she were to turn around and empty her stomach into the toilet bowl.Lupina’s voice was fading; the door out of the bathroom creaked.Raw, Joana’s throat was beginning to burn, her eyes itched.Even once Joana was finally able to wobble onto her feet, stagger out to see all the women, some smiled, others looked away instantly.
Whatever it was like to stand among them, to be a normal girl — she didn’t know.What hurt more was that Joana didn’t want to be like them.She wished she did.She wanted to want.
Once Joana finally left the bathroom, escaped the club, she lifted a hand to slither beneath the mask and wipe excessively at her mouth.Her chest hiccuped, and maybe her mouth did, but she couldn’t tell.She knew that she was walking.Every step was both too fast and too slow; grass crunched beneath her sneakers, and the crowd to enter the club had thinned.There was only a moon above now and a streetlamp, illuminating a quiet sidewalk that she moved along.Bushes, flowers, were coming into view, as well as a fountain — a quaint park — and without thinking, she made her way closer.Then, she found herself on the grass, not remembering how she’d lowered herself onto it.The sky above was dark, some specs of light but not many, like she’d fallen into a dreamless sleep.
She blinked once, twice.
A figure was above her.When did they get there?Unable to recall them moving, stepping onto the grass over her head like their armored feet were her halo and she was an angel fallen from Heaven.‘I used to think I was divine too,’ she always wanted to tell Tadeo.‘When he saved me, I thought God sent him to me, and I was going to be a saint who led her people to freedom with St.Michael in my ear, whispering.’She stared at Michael now, in all his silver, reflecting the moonlight so that he was like a ghost.His face hidden by his helmet, his shoulder shrouded by a red cape.
“It’s been a while,” drunken Joana said, “since I’ve hallucinated you, Miguelito.”
Slow, the angel’s hands lifted to his head, and he removed his helmet carefully like it were his skin he was peeling off to reveal whatever horror might lay beneath the flesh of an angel.“Joana.”Only a few curls not tucked into the collar of his chest plate fell over his face, one of earthly eyes and a strong, hilled nose.“You’re drunk.”He, tepid, lowered himself onto a knee, clanking like he were a machine; Joana now perfectly imagined opening the prince to find wires where arteries were meant to be, a time bomb in the cardiac notch.“Sit up.”The archangel’s holy hands touched her arms, gently tugged her body until the top half of it was off the damp green.
“Ugh,” fell from her mouth, and the world twirled around her, around Michael.“Are you real?”
“I’m real, Joana.Believe that I’m here.”
“You're asking me to have faith?”Something, thick and like blood, climbed up Joana’s stomach, to her throat, rattled her body forward, but she didn’t vomit it out, refused to.“I used to have faith in you.And in God.But here we are, and the world is ending.”
“I’ve told you, Joana.”He always said her name so softly, the same as he rubbed at her shoulder blades now.“You’ll rise to Heaven, and paradise is there for you.No matter how difficult the revelation has been and will continue to be, there’s a life waiting for you already in the skies.Earth has become so wicked that all there is left to do is destroy it?—”
“She’s my home, and my mother,” said Joana, voice still slurred, though her body was beginning to slump against the prince.“Earth is beautiful.You may not think so, but I do.I do, I do.”Hiccup.“There are still birds left in the sky, and there is still green.It still rains.And those I love are here.And—” Heavy, her eyelids drooped then fell.“And I love a lot of bad people, Miguelito.I’ve done a lot of bad.I’ve lied, and I’ve stolen.I’ve shot a gun.Jesus won’t come down to take me.Don’t tell me to confess.I want mercy, not forgiveness.”
“Believe me, please, that you will be saved.”
“Saved from who?Can God save me from God?”Joana touched him, feeling warmth through the cold armor, and finally, she realized that her archangel really was here, that he was not a dream.“To go to Heaven isn’t to be saved.Not to me.I want my town saved.I want to return to how it was before the war.”
“We can’t return,” said the saint, “to the time before the war.”
“We can try,” Joana pleaded.“Miguel, let me try.”
“Heaven can— will take you.”
“I don’t want to go to Heaven; I want to go home.I want my mom.I want my dad.”Tears burned at her eyes and in her throat, in her chest, like her very soul cried with her.“Don’t make me leave.This is my river and my people.This is my soil.I’m not me without this place.This is my land.Leave me here to burn.Leave me here, Miguel.I’ll burn with her.”
“Joana,” pained, whispered.
“I told you to leave me here, didn’t I?And I told you never to come back for me.I’d rather be evil.I’d rather suffer with her than live a life, eternal or not, without her.She’s my land.And these are my people.You don’t understand.I can’t make you understand.”Her eyes opened and no longer did she find comfort in the prince.“Heaven is my grandmother’s house, my mother’s kitchen.The park I played in when I was little that they ruined.And you said it — we can’t return to the time before the war.So there is no Heaven for me.”
Michael hugged her tight, wanting to say he’d take her to paradise and show her that there was, indeed, something better than this.But she didn’t want something better and, a minute later, she jerked forward in a wet, guttural cough.He took her hair and waited patiently as she expelled every last drop of liquor.
CHAPTER21
