Gina and her father took Gina’s mother down past the girls’ rooms and into the master bedroom. Gina’s father kicked the door closed behind them. Sandra and I waited outside and after a few minutes, Gina emerged. She looked badly shaken as she walked past us, not looking at either of us.
     I waited, watching as Gina walked toward the living room, then returned a few seconds later with a glass of water she’d retrieved from the kitchen.
     She disappeared back into the room and a few minutes after that, reemerged.
     "Is she okay?" I whispered, unsure if her mother was asleep.
     "I don’t know," Gina said. "She’s awake, but weak. She’s on medication, so she’s really groggy.
     We walked back to the living room where outside we could see that the night had overtaken the backyard. From this vantage, I couldn’t see any neighboring houses nearby – light was scarce.
     Gina spoke, directing her words to Sandra, who sat slumped on a recliner. "Dad says the surgery went okay but they won’t know how well she’s going to do until they see her again. She’s still sick, but maybe she’ll be better," Gina said.
     "Will she be able to walk and move around and stuff?" Sandra asked.
     "Yes, but she might still be weak. She just needs to stay in bed for a whlie."
     "Does she have to go back to the hospital?" I asked.
     "Next week for an exam if she’s okay between now and then," Gina said.
     "Is Daddy okay?" Sandra asked, her high-pitched voice sounding tiny.
     "Not really," Gina said. "We need to help him out."
     We waited for a while for Gina’s father, Miguel, to come back from the bedroom. When he didn’t come out for a half hour, Gina went into the kitchen and started preparing a dinner. I wondered if anyone would be able to eat, but it didn’t matter. Sandra and I helped and it kept us busy.
     We set the table and eventually, Gina’s father joined us. His face was drawn and he looked tired and defeated.
     Gina introduced me and he smiled warmly as he sat down in front of a plate of arroz con pollo.
     "Gina says you are a writer," he said in a heavier, deeper accent then Gina’s, but with the same melodic quality.
     "That’s what I want to do," I said. "If I can make a living at it."
     "Gina’s mother wrote poemas and estorias when she was younger. She would tell stories to all the kids in her neighborhood in Chiapas. Where are you from, Heather?"
     "My parents used to live in Houston, but my dad took a job in California and they’ve been there for a few years. I only lived in California for two years in high school, then I came to UT for school."
     "How often do you see them?" Miguel asked.
     "Maybe two or three times a year," I said. "Christmas, summer and I guess part of Spring Break depending on my plans."
     "It’s hard even with Gina just a few hours a way," he said, poking distractedly at his rice platter. "She can’t always be here when we need her."
     "I’m here now," Gina said suddenly. "I would have come earlier if I didn’t have tests."
     "Y la otra," Miguel continued, poking his fork toward Sandra. "She wants to go to school out of Texas. We’ll see her two or three times a year and then, ba! Ya se va, se casa and our grandkids will be across the country."
     "Dad," Sandra said, whining. "I don’t even know where I want to go yet."
     "Gina could have gone to school here at Pan Am, but she had to go to Austin," he said. "Now we never see her."
     Gina didn’t say anything, but the way she held her head down and watched her food as if checking it for movement meant she was hurt or angry. Maybe both.
     The rest of dinner was idle chatter as Miguel asked about my family and about Austin. No, I’d never been this far south. No, I’d never seen Mexico. Yes, I though the University of Texas Pan Am was a fine college.
     The doorbell rang as we were putting up the dinner plates and a small woman with jet black hair and dark wrinkled skin was at the door when Gina answered it. She smiled, her eyes crinkling with delight.
     "Mija!" she exclaimed and hugged Gina tightly. "Esta es tu amiga?" she asked, pointing to me.
     "Se llama Heather," Gina said. "Es de la misma escuela."
     "Hello, Heather," she said, her pronunciation deliberate and languid. "My name is Mari. I’m her grandmother."
     Gina led Mari to the room where her mother was sleeping. After a few minutes the two of them came back to the living room where Gina’s father and Sandra were watching television.
     Mari sat next to Gina’s father and slapped her hand on his thigh. "Está muy mala, Miguel. Que van a ser mañana?"
     "Para comer?" Miguel asked.
     "Si para comer. No saben?"
     I caught enough to figure out she was asking what everyone was going to eat for Thanksgiving. Gina’s father was telling her he didn’t know.
     "Te preparo algo," Mari said. "Como a las once, regreso."
     Mari kissed Gina, Miguel and Sandra on the cheek, holding their faces in her hands, chin and head between them, as she got ready to leave. She hugged me and said, "It was good to meet you, Heather. Tomorrow, I cook for you."

* * *

     Gina and her dad went outside for a while and talked while he smoked a cigarette. Sandra and I sat in front of the console television, but my eyes kept straying through the picture windows at them as Gina held her arms folded over her chest and her father puffed absently, speaking, then looking off into the dark green of the yard that seemed to end in nothingness.
     Gina said something and her father extended the cigarette. Gina took a drag from it and handed it back. Her father said something and they were laughing together. I felt a little sad at that, wondering how much laughter there might be in this home and, depending on the health of Gina’s mother, how much there’d be in the weeks to come.
     They came back when the cigarette had burned to its end. Miguel walked past us to the bedroom. Gina plopped down between us on the couch and put her head on my shoulder.
     "I’m sleepy, Heather," she said. "I’m gonna go to sleep."
     She dragged herself up, stomp-stomping toward the bedroom we were to share. I looked to Sandra, who was making an art and science out of ignoring me, and followed Gina.
     I fell asleep that night amid a quiet that was the opposite of peaceful – an unsettled restlessness that came with expectancy. When life throws you a curveball, when you don’t know which way the wind will blow, when you build a home made out of straw of your heard and don’t know what will knock it down next… these were the expectancies that followed Gina and her family into slumber as I pulled the covers to my chest in the twin-sized bed.

* * *

     When I woke, Gina’s bed was empty and the door was open. I heard the clanging and chatter of unmistakable ethnic cooking – the early preparation, the gossip, the laughter that, under different linguistic circumstances, might be a close mirror of a Yi holiday cooking session. I woke up stretching my limbs to wakefulness and smiling.
     I took a shower and got dressed and as soon as I hit the kitchen, Gina spotted me and grabbed her purse. "Come with me, Heather," Gina said. "We’re gonna get some things at H.E.B."
     Gina and I drove and before we’d even left the driveway, Gina told me it wouldn’t be our only stop. "I wanted to show you a little bit of Harlingen. You didn’t get to see much of it on our way in."
     "What’s there to see?" I asked.
     "Honestly? Not a lot," Gina said, and laughed. "We have a mall and a bowling alley and… not a lot else."
     "Is that why you left?" I asked, unwilling to imagine a Gina who couldn’t turn heads at Miguel’s or find a scenic spot to share her latest observations and secrets.
     "No," Gina said. "If you were to take all the pueblitos in the Valley and add them up, you’d have a pretty good-sized town," Gina said. "It’s like San Antonio, but without all the big buildings or the Alamo or downtown."
     "Gina, what the hell are you talking about?" I asked. "It doesn’t sound anything like San Antonio."
     Gina laughed. "The attitude. Like how people act. There’s crime, but people are a lot more respectful and nicer than a lot of places."
     "Really?" I asked, skeptical as punk rocker at a John Tesh autograph party.
     "Austin’s great, but don’t you get tired of how pretentious it is?"
     "Pretentious?" I asked. "You mean Fourth Street and all the yuppie martini bars?"
     "It goes was beyond that," Gina said. "Just the attitude in general. The whole granola, hippie vibe. It was cool, but now everybody things just because they live in Austin, they fall into that category. That they’re hip and environmental and cool just because they live there."
     "How are you any different?" I asked.
     "I didn’t say I was," Gina said. "But people think living somewhere entitled you to be perceived a certain way. And it has nothing to do with how they really live their life."
     "Interesting," I said. "How do you want to be perceived?"
     "I’m my own person. That would be a good start," Gina said.
     We passed by a mall that Gina said was one of two large ones in the area, but looking at it I was unimpressed. After the Galleria in Dallas, Rivercenter mall in San Antonio and even some of the malls in Austin like Highland and Barton Creek, this one was none-too-impressive. Plus, I’m of the opinion that malls are dying a quick death, replaced by factory outlets, shopping online (yay, Amazon!) and increasingly large multi-purpose stores like Best Buy and the ever-expanding behemoth that is Wal-Mart. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. I just think people are tired of finding parking in these multi-mile lots and are even more tired of dealing with all the walking and store-to-store effort that goes into visiting a mall. The rat-in-the-maze thing has got to stop and I for one say it’s about time.
     Then the more I thought about this, piloting my train of thought in the car as we drove past the mall in silence, the more it sounded like an Andy Rooney rant. The end of the mall era? What the hell was I thinking?
     Gina showed me the high school where she said she first learned of sex, where she made enemies more often than she made friends and where she first discovered that adults could be terrible, even to the children they were supposed to nurture and teach.
     We stopped at a wide, flat park, parking next to a small beat-up white Volkswagen Beetle. On one of two swings nearby, a young man was sitting, his long hair waving in a cool breeze.
     Gina cut the engine and ran out before I knew what was happening. She ran to him as he stood and they were kissing, their hands searching each others’ backs with abandon as I walked meekly toward them.
     Gina broke their kiss, but not the embrace and turned toward me. "Se llama Heather. Viene conmigo de Austin."
     The picture of the two of them was one that I could have published and sold in empty picture frames. It wasn’t that he was remarkable physically – he had a long, lean body that, holding any other face might seem boyish. But his face and his long hair made him look aboriginal – he had deep-set eyes the color of moonless night. His eyebrows were thick and angular and his skin was brown and flawless, reflecting even the dim light of the day. He was wearing plain jeans and a short black T-shirt that accented his long back and graceful neck.
     Here was a beautiful man and the proof was that the aesthetics of him could eclipse Gina.
     "Soy Juan," he said, his voice husky but fragile, as if the instrument of his words was seldom used.
     "Hi," I said, hearing shyness in my voice and annoying myself by it. Juan took my hand and kissed it. It was a dumb, dorky thing to do, under most modern circumstances. But I didn’t mind. Not a bit.
     "Heather, I’m gonna talk to Juan for a minute," Gina said. "Can you stay here?"
     "Sure," I said.
     Gina and Juan walked further down the park, arm in arm. Gina shot me a look as the walked. She saw me and caught my eye as I was watching Juan’s rear. Gina’s faced scrunched and it was an expression I couldn’t recognize because I’d never seen it on Gina’s face before.
     When they were a few hundred yards away, I figured it out. Gina’s face had twisted with jealousy.