Águila

Abstract

Águila Kirsten Vail Aguilar (bio) My brother Aaron returned home from his final stay with our grandparents in San Antonio only long enough to help my dad tear down the wooden play structure in our backyard. We were suffering through a Northern California heatwave (the third of the summer), so they waited until evening when the sun wouldn't blister their skin, and then they worked carefully, dismantling each board intact. With them, my dad planned to build the raised garden beds my mom had been pestering him about for nearly a decade. She had instigated a no-AC-after-five-pm rule to save on electricity and because I preferred enduring near-heatstroke outdoors rather than in, I sat on the porch and watched their progress. Despite the setting sun and the shadows that fell across our parched and dying lawn, the heat was still stifling. I was slow with it, lazy, could barely lift my head. It was for this reason, I believe, this unbearable and suffocating heat, that my brother, sweating through the fabric, removed his shirt and revealed a tattoo that none of us knew he had. It was a large, black-lined eagle, intricately detailed, wings stretched across the width of his back. It moved as he moved, animated by his shoulder blades, and in that moment seemed very much alive, watching me, its feathers ruffled by wind. My dad caught sight of it and paused in his work, brought the back of his hand to his forehead, wiped a slug of sweat from his brow. He was calculating his next move, I could tell. A breeze picked up and made the leaves of our apple tree shake, sigh together. Next door, the neighbor's windchimes tinkled, and the half of our fence that was choked with ivy shuddered. "How much you pay for that?" my dad said, finally. Money was tight for us back then and anything we bought was practical, second-hand, purchased at discount. "I saved for it," Aaron said, sliding his hand along the back of a beam, searching, I guessed, for a hidden nail. My dad shook his head. "We don't get tattoos, Aaron. We're not that type of people. Put your shirt back on before your mother sees." But it was too late. My mother—thin frame swimming in the old t-shirt and boxer shorts she immediately donned when she came home from work—was pushing open the squeaking screen door to bring us iced lemon water. She froze, three sweating glasses balanced between her fingers. The door whined and then slammed shut behind her. Her mouth fell open and her gasp was as loud as the chimes next door. She had seen. "The fuck is that, Aaron?" she said. I had never heard her swear and that word, so fecund, so raw, made me want to cry and giggle at once. I shrank into myself, away from her, hoped I wasn't in her line of vision. Alas, even without seeing me, she knew I was there, and she hissed, "Take these," thrusting the glasses toward me. I scrambled up, received them. Water sloshed over their sides, slapped onto the porch. My hands were too small, and one of the glasses slipped from my grip, smashed at my feet. This [End Page 27] error paled in the umbra of my brother's and my mother paid no notice, was away already, striding across the patchy lawn, brittle grass crunching beneath her bare feet. "What the hell is this," she said when she arrived at his side. My brother, I recall, went on methodically using the hooked end of his hammer to extract nails from the underbelly of the play structure. "An eagle," he said, matter-of-fact. Like me, my dad shrank away, afraid of my mother's face, burning with anger, all red from her forehead to her neck. I was afraid, watching her, that she might implode or explode, flare up in a sudden flash of flames, burn us and what remained of the play structure and the apple tree and our house and the ivied fence all down. My hands were slick...