Later, me and Ernesto both swore we heard a car drive up, and a woman's voice--she was screaming and crying--then a crash like glass was breaking and then more screaming and crying and then a whoosh.
But I think we both just said that because Mom expected us to. I think we must have heard something.
We had to have. But now I can't really say.
We practiced our roping out back with the new braided nylon ropes Daddy gave us if we promised to build and throw a hundred loops a day at the set of plastic horns he'd attached to a bale of straw.
Daddy told us he wanted us to be "big time" rodeo stars when we got to be teens. And we wanted it too. We wanted to please Daddy.
The first thing I really remember that moment is Lindy's scream. Lindy's our big sister. She's two years older than me and I'm two years older than Ernesto and he's two years older than Alicia and she'stwo years older than Jacob.
Lindy screams a lot--she’s in her terrible teens as Mom calls it--so at first we didn't pay any attention to her until she ran out into the back yard waving her arms and yelling, "Fire. Fire." She shrieked, "She threw a Molotov Cocktail."
Ernesto said, "What's that?"
I said, "A fire bomb."
I was in the middle of throwing my loop at those horns and tried not to lose my concentration. I was on a winning streak.
"Did you call the cops?" Ernesto is practical for a nine-year-old.
By then my loop had missed and I turned to cuss Lindy but one look at her mug changed my mind.
Her face glowed bright red and tears trailed down her cheeks and she was breathing hard and looking at the house, at us, at the house.
The faint wail of fire truck sirens cut through the afternoon and then I smelled fire. A trail of black smoke snaked up between the palm trees in the front yard.
Me and Ernesto started at the same time, him for the back door and me for the front yard.
When I got around to the front, flames shot out the picture window and I saw Mom's new drapes on fire and black smoke and white smoke and it got in my eyes and a strange car sat in the front with a woman inside. Her hands covered her face and she looked like she was sobbing. I started towards her car to ask if I could help when a cop car pulled up in the middle of the street and the cop jumped out and put his hand up for me to stop. I knew him because he came to the house to break up Mom and Daddy when they fought. I wasn't supposed to know about their fights but I did. And I knew it was because Daddy had him a "woman" and he told Mom he didn't and she threw a cast iron skillet at him and he slapped her and then he choked her and Lindy called the cops. That was the first time. The second time they went outside the house and yelled but Lindy still called the cops. Daddy said he didn't have a "woman."
Me and Ernesto believed him. Or should I say I believed him. Lindy was on Mom's side so she didn't have much to say to me about it and Ernesto and Alicia and Jacob and Mom cried so we all tried to keep a lid on it because we couldn't agree.
The fire truck showed up and then they sprayed water through the front window and ruined everything and more cops showed up and then Mom came home and sagged to the concrete driveway. Alicia and Jacobsat in the back seat of the B uick and put their hands over their faces. The cop who always comes to the house helped Mom to her feet and the next door neighbor lady came and helped M om, too, and Lindy gesticulatedwith her arms and fingers at the house, at the strange lady in the car and at the sky and the grass by the sidewalk.
She kept saying, "Molotov Cocktail, Molotov Cocktail."
There were cops swarming the front and the back and the firemen kicked in the front door and went inwith axes and a big yellow hose.
Mom bawled, "My new drapes. My carpet. My antiques."
Lindy screamed, "It was a Molotov Cocktail."
I had stepped into the street and watched it all. Ernesto had his rope and kept building a loop, then snakingit out at nothing in particular, building a
loop, snaking it out.
The woman in the strange car still sat there crying. Again, I walked over to ask her if I could help her, but the cop who always came and broke up the fights grabbed me and barked, "Please step aside."
Then him and two other lawmen opened the doors and helped her out of the car. She was tall and wore high heels. She wore sleek sunglasses and a red dress with a short skirt that showed off her long legs.
Later, when the cops and Mom accosted Daddy when he came to see what all the hubbub was about, he stood there with his Stetson in his hand like he was out in front of the church begging. Daddy never begs. He said, "I told her that I was leaving her. For you." When he said that he looked straight at Mom. She looked down at her feet.