Whenever we stumble upon her, my mother makes the sign of the cross and prays under her breath. Always barefoot, our crazy neighbor, her raggedy tunic sticks out of a filthy coat. She smells of raw meat and wanders through the neighborhood guarded by three magnificent cats. They are dark and luscious like fresh blackberries.
One night the moon bathes her in red light. We see her through the window—a dancing bouquet of oranges and golds. The firemen can’t find her bones, but all I care about is her cats. What cats? You are imagining things again, says my mother.
She can’t see them prowling the streets—the moon glinting off their yellow eyes—walking like they own everything in sight. I guess she can’t see them now either, curled up on the edge of my bed, daring me to go out barefoot into the howling night.
Melanie Márquez Adams is a Latina writer and an MFA candidate in Spanish Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. Her short story collection, Mariposas Negras, won third place in the 2018 North Texas Book Festival Spanish Fiction Awards. Her work has appeared in The Laurel Review, Dash, Thrice Fiction, and elsewhere.