Read Night at the Fiestas: Stories for Free Online

and pry one open, a new gust assaulted them. Beatrice arched her back and screamed in outraged pain. “We’re going home,” said Monica, defeated.
    “I’m going to be in deep trouble for missing school,” said Cordelia. She stomped along behind, her thick black hair tangled, lips shading violet.
    “You won’t be in trouble. It’s my fault.”
    “I know,” said Cordelia.
    As Monica collapsed the stroller, she glanced at the RV across the way, where the overweight family lived, and for a brief alarming moment thought she saw a pale face in the dim window, watching her. She blinked and looked again: nothing.
    Cordelia hauled herself up the metal steps. “So?” she accused. “What about the heater?”
    There was nothing frightening about a face in a window, Monica thought, jiggling Beatrice in her arms. Didn’t Monica look out her own windows? Still, Monica missed Elliot, with his electrical know-how, his logic and warm, male bulk.
    “Well?” asked Cordelia.
    “Today we’re going to be pioneers.” Monica held open the door for her, and the grit gusted through, chattering on the linoleum.
    I MAGINING THEIR LIFE in a trailer from the comfort of their rental in Santa Fe (a ten-minute walk from her mother’s house and where she’d grown up), Monica had thought of Mr. Toad with his gypsy caravan. Before Elliot and Monica had married last year, Elliot’s mother had bought Cordelia a beautiful illustrated copy of The Wind in the Willows . Monica had never read it as a child, and she, with Cordelia, loved the picture of Toad’s caravan, the bright paint (“canary yellow picked out in green”), snug curtained bed, patterned dishes lined up on shelves. The promise of both comfort and adventure.
    Their eighteen-foot aluminum Travel Lite, however, delivered neither. Brown stripes outside, dingy brick-patterned linoleum inside, hideous orange plaid curtains that snapped shut. The trailer smelled of particleboard and dust.
    Monica turned the oven on high and bundled herself and the girls into the sleeping loft. This might have been a nice way to spend the morning, cozy and giggling in the nest of sleeping bags with their books. When she wanted to be, Cordelia was excellent company, a watchful performer, making droll observations for her mother’s benefit. Instead, they were all sluggish and irritable. Beatrice whimpered with discomfort while Monica and Cordelia took turns wiping her chapped nose.
    “ Toad has a heater,” Cordelia observed pointedly. She clawed through the book and indicated the cozy potbellied woodstove on their favorite page.
    “Yes,” Monica agreed and sighed, exhausted by the relentless optimism motherhood demanded. “But Toad didn’t have lots of things we have. Radio. Indoor plumbing.”
    “Not here. Not here we don’t have indoor plumbing.” Her tone was injured. “Look at Beatrice,” she demanded, pointing to the baby’s unsightly muzzle. “You should take her to a doctor. She isn’t even cute anymore.”
    Monica dabbed at the baby’s nose, which certainly did look worse than it was. “It’s dry skin. We live in a very dry place. The doctor will just tell us to put Vaseline on her, Cordelia. Which I’m doing.”
    Monica was no fool: she could read the signs of a child in survival mode. Even as a baby, Cordelia had known to fall silent when her parents fought; to this day, if Elliot was curt, she stiffened, wary. Cordelia’s watchfulness made Monica uneasy. Now, with the arrival of Beatrice, her personality had developed into something sterner still. She guarded her sister vigilantly, turned a fierce eye on her mother and stepfather, evaluating their every move. “Too rough ,” she’d scold Elliot when he swung the gleeful baby. “Her arms could fall off.”
    Beatrice showed no such complexity. The baby laughed often and loudly, and when she was tired or hungry, she wailed with the entire force of her strong little being. The world revolved around Beatrice, and Beatrice