Red Glass (24 page)
Authors: Laura Resau
I smiled at Ñola. “You made me strong. Thank you.”
Abuelita translated, and Ñola giggled.
“Heeheehee…”
I’m happy. And all the stars laugh sweetly.
—T
HE
L
ITTLE
P
RINCE
Laughing Stars
The wedding was extravagant—Dika spent eight months planning it down to the last detail. It was in our backyard at eleven o’clock a.m. Dika looked just how I’d imagined: a dress covered with opalescent beads, a plunging sweetheart neckline, a strand of red glass beads dipping between her breasts, a ten-foot-long train, a veil to her ankles, a rhinestone crown, and transparent shoes straight from
Cinderella.
I was her maid of honor. She’d tried to convince me to wear a bright blue dress studded with fake sapphires the size of grapes, but in the end she let me wear my white sundress.
As we stood together at the altar—between the mesquite tree and the chicken coop—she whispered, “Sophie. I don’t have daughter. But if one day, much years ago, I have daughter, I want her exactly like you. Beautiful and brave.” She pinched my cheek.
Mr. Lorenzo winked at us. He wore a tux with electric blue trimmings, Dika’s choice. She’d put her foot down and made him ditch the flannel shirt for the wedding. He’d lovingly complied.
Ángel stood at his side, decked out in a tux too, and without sunglasses. He’d bought a new pair when we’d gotten back, but his eyes had already gotten used to bright light. These days, he only used shades when we went to the pool. He had replenished his supply of gold chains, though, and now they glinted in the sunlight. He smiled at me and I smiled back, plain old simple smiles that said,
Hey, life is good.
After the ceremony and a big meal and a three-level fruitcake at the reception, Dika and Mr. Lorenzo left in a limo for their honeymoon in Vegas. Since there was still daylight left, Ángel and I drove to the desert to watch the sunset.
We parked the van and followed a dried streambed. It was April, the end of dry season, when the air is scorching and the earth parched, every last bit of moisture evaporated.
I felt a drop of water on my arm. And another. And another. “It’s raining, Ángel!”
When it rains in the desert after months of nothing, when you can’t even remember what rain smells like, a raindrop feels miraculous. Soon the wet season would begin, and the wildflowers would come out—brilliant orange poppies and yellow yarrow. Silvery sage and the mustard grass would fill the air with a bitter sweetness. It is in the harshest places where you appreciate beauty the most. Unexpected beauty, tiny succulents pushing through dried, cracked earth, and spilling out tiny pink blooms.
The rain grew harder and lightning flashed in the sky. We ran under a rock overhang to wait out the storm. I wondered if somewhere in the desert a band of migrants were tilting their heads back and praising the raindrops.
Ángel touched the glass beads around my neck. He’d given me a strand, which I wore on special occasions. And when I did, he liked to roll the beads between his fingers, feel the warmth they absorbed from my skin, listen to them click against one another, trace the circle of red light around my neck.
The sun set through drops of water, a fiery crimson lighting up half the sky under an ocean of orange. Soon the rain stopped, and the sky cleared, and after a while, the first star came out, and then another, and another, and soon stars filled the whole sky, like scattered handfuls of tiny white flowers.
About the Author
Laura Resau lived in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, Mexico, for two years as an English teacher and anthropologist. She now lives with her husband and her dog in Colorado, where she teaches ESL (English as a Second Language). Her first novel,
What the Moon Saw
, is available from Delacorte Press. Laura will donate a portion of the royalties from this book to indigenous rights organizations in Latin America. Visit Laura’s Web site at
www.lauraresau.com.
ALSO BY LAURA RESAU
What the Moon Saw
Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2007 by Laura Resau
Excerpts from
The Little Prince
, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, copyright © 1943 by Harcourt, Inc., and renewed 1971 by Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry. English translation copyright © 2000 by Richard Howard, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
The lines from “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in” copyright 1952, © 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from
Complete Poems: 1904–1962
by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
All rights reserved.
Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Resau, Laura.
Red glass / by Laura Resau.—1st ed. p. cm.
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Sophie has been frail and delicate since her premature birth, but discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain.
[1. Self-confidence—Fiction. 2. Automobile travel—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction. 5. Illegal aliens—Fiction. 6. Mexico—Fiction. 7. Guatemala—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R2978Red 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2007002408
eISBN: 978-0-375-89059-8
v3.0