Light cut in through the blinds, which made the room too painfully bright. Iris closed her eyes again, and saw orange-yellow and red-yellow. She opened them. She was six years old now, but it felt the same as five. There were birds outside, and the sun and trees just outside her window, which were visible through the blinds, appeared the same as they always had.
Iris lived on an island. There were cabbage palms and schefflera trees and hibiscus all around, with birds in them sometimes, and a pool in the back with a tiled mermaid at the bottom. The house sat on an isolated plot of land that ran along the Intracostal, that thin waterway that cut the land just before it reached the Atlantic. The island was the shape of a comma and was connected to the street outside by a short bridge wide enough for one car. The bus stop was over the bridge and halfway down the street.
Iris put on her favorite striped pink shirt and orange shorts. She didn’t change her underwear because she didn’t feel like it. No one was in the kitchen. She ate her cereal in silence. When she moved the box aside, she saw a tray of cupcakes. There were 20 of them, all silly looking, with lopsided pink frosting like frowsy caps. There were 23 students in Iris’s class.
Her parents’ bedroom door was closed. She looked out and saw that her father’s car was gone. A bird made a shrill caw, caw, caw. Iris pulled a package of bread off the counter, then turned the wrapper upside down, dumping the bread on the floor. She moved all 20 cupcakes into the bag and put them in her backpack. She did not lock the door behind her because she did not have a key. The cupcakes were ugly.

Snack time was after recess. There were 20 ugly cupcakes for 23 students. All day, she could feel their chortling, sugary heat coming from her backpack. On the playground, Iris knew what she had to do. She sat on the steps of the P.E. portable and closed her eyes. She thought about the sun, about its hot yellowness. About the cupcakes bleeding melty sweet pink inside the plastic wrapper in her backpack. With her eyes still closed, she focused on a hot white point in the middle of her forehead in front of her brain.
When she opened her eyes, the ground lurched. Her stomach clenched tight like a fist, mouth filling with warm saliva. With her next gasp of breath, her food came up, hot and stinging, making her eyes water, her nose burn. Her head was lighter now. She raised her eyes to see Dominique, the girl who always had bruises on her knees, standing in front of her. Dominique smiled like she knew something. Then she ran across the playground screaming that Iris had barfed by the P.E. portable.
The driver’s side window was open, and Kay rested her elbow on the frame, holding a cigarette between two fingers. She steered the car with the other hand. Iris looked out the window.
“106?” Kay said. “Very nice.”
“I’m feeling better now.” Iris shifted her gaze to her hands, which were cupped in her lap.
“But 106? I thought the school nurse was going to have a heart attack. You’re lucky I was home and she didn’t call an ambulance.” Kay took a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. She looked at her daughter’s flushed face. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.” Iris’s mother knew all about squinting hard to push the mercury up the thermometer. She had been the one to teach Iris to switch off a light from the other end of the room. Her mother could make a glass shimmy to the end of the table, then tip over and plunge to the floor. And sometimes she could make people fall in love with her.

Kay’s hair was frosted now, but nearly a decade ago it was the color of strong coffee, and she kept it wavy and feathered back. Iris loved to look at the old pictures, and she never got tired of hearing the story. Her mother had met Oscar at a discothèque on Las Olas—it was closed down now, of course. He was on a business trip and Kay took one look at him and said, That’s the kind of guy I want. His cheek was cool and clean-shaven, and there was a shadow just beneath the surface of the ghostly white skin, dark hint of a beard. Yes, his eyes were a bit too close together, but somehow it made him look more intellectual, more innocent. His voice was surprisingly deep. He had come to the bar with other businessmen, but Kay watched as he stayed just outside their circle of conversation. He drank Cokes all night. Neither of them danced. Kay watched him and loved him immediately, and didn’t even care when, as she pulled him closer to her, pulled him by the necktie, he told her that he had a wife and son.
That was seven years ago. Iris knew the story by heart. And those pictures. They were like secret windows. She would trace her mother’s face with her finger. Kay’s lipstick was a dark red and her hair was blown out. She wore loose-fitting blouses that looked like crepe paper and full gypsy skirts and espadrilles. The tongue in Iris’s mind would roll over the word like something sugary: Espadrilles. She traced her mother’s shoes. Kay could have been a movie star.
That night, Oscar had returned with Kay to her house on the island—the house with the cabbage palms and scheffleras and the pool with the tiled mermaid at the bottom. Never once did he return to his wife and son in Massachusetts. Or Maine. Or wherever it was that they lived. But with each passing year it got harder for Kay to keep him. Iris knew this from what her mother said. But also from what she didn’t.

In the house, Kay told her daughter to “hands up,” and she pulled Iris’s spoiled shirt over her head. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her daughter’s chest and belly with a warm soapy washcloth, she scrubbed her face, and behind her ears. “Brush your teeth,” she said.
“I just brushed them last night.”
“Brush them again.”
Iris did, and her mother said, “How you feeling now?”
“Tired.”
“You can lay down in the big bed if you like.”
Iris nodded. She loved the big bed. She put on the nightgown with the roller skates and crawled into her parents’ bed. The sheets were white and cool. They smelled not of bodies but of vague things like the inside of the dryer and the color beige and of the cool air that was kept moving by the air-conditioning and the ceiling fan. Kay crawled in too, and she held her daughter to her. Her smell was of smoke and pretty dying flowers. She said, “Don’t make me worry about you.” She said, “From now on, you have to tell me what you’re thinking. I don’t want to give the school nurse another scare.”
“Your door was closed this morning.”
“You could have opened it. It wasn’t locked.”
“Did you really sleep outside again?”
“It can be very beautiful by the pool when the weather’s nice.”
“I want my hair to look like the mermaid’s.”
“It will.”
“And I want espadrilles.”
“I promise to get you a pair when you’re old enough.”
The fan turned slowly and made a slight creaking with each revolution. Iris’s mother held her tightly, and sweat formed where their bodies touched. Outside, through the sliding glass door, the afternoon came in white like an over-exposed photograph. The pool was turquoise and light shimmered over the surface like a dazzling fishing net. 

It sounded first like someone hitting the keys of a toy piano far away or from inside a bottle. But by the third ring, it was obvious. The doorbell. It rang out in chimes: ding, dong, dong, ding—ding, ding, ding, dong.
Through half-open eyes, Iris could see Kay quickly running a comb through her coarse hair. She had slipped on her pink house kimono with the Pall Malls in the pocket. Iris pretended to sleep. After Kay had been gone several minutes, Iris slid out of bed and made her way down the hall. She crouched on her hands and knees in the deep beige carpet and crawled to the spot where the hallway opened up, where she had a clear view of the front door.
Kay was in the doorway. She was talking to a stranger in a sober suit, businessman-like, but with a panama hat and sandals. The stranger produced papers and folders. Kay looked at them briefly, pushed them away. She pulled out the pack of cigarettes and began hitting it against her open palm, extracting one, placing it in the corner of her mouth. She lit it with her hand cupping the end. She blew her smoke back into the house, away from the man in the suit and sandals. When she spoke, she left the cigarette dangling at the corner of her mouth.
The man finally left, taking the papers and folders with him. Kay held her head as she walked back towards the hallway. When she noticed Iris crouched in the corner, she put out her hand. “Come on, kiddo,” she said. “Want to play cards?”

“Four?” Kay said.
“Go fish. Do you have any jacks?”
“No. Go fish. Sevens?”
Iris handed over her seven, and when Kay was arranging her cards and laying down a pair, Iris tried turning down the edges for a peek. She was concentrating hard, but the cards were bending in instead of out. Kay held her cigarette between her fingers and looked up. “You little shit,” she said, laughing, and Iris’s cards slipped out of her hands one by one and slid down the table and onto the floor.
“Mom!”
“You’re going to have to be less obvious.” The cards moved slowly, pooling in a pile near Kay’s bare feet. When they had assembled themselves into a neat stack, she picked them up and handed them back to her daughter. “Don’t let me catch you trying any of that with your father around.”
“Who was at the door?”
Kay pulled another Pall Mall from the pack, the first one not yet finished. “It was a man from a real estate company.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked if we were selling the house.”
“We’re not moving, are we?”
“Never.” Kay smiled, but Iris could see pain playing at the corners of her mother’s pink mouth. “He said that houses on islands are very special.”
Iris watched her mother’s heavy eyebrows. She could feel her unhappiness. She said, “Did he want to buy the house because he fell in love with our mermaid?”
Kay tried to smile wider. “He said if the mermaid wouldn’t marry him, he’d settle for the tiles on the side of the pool.”
“And if they don’t want him, he’ll turn into a chlorine tablet. Just sitting at the bottom. Keeping it clean until he disappears.”
Kay leaned over the table and blew a raspberry into her daughter’s neck. Iris giggled with delight. 

The sky grew darker like an eye slowly closing. The sun burned a deep orange as it sank into pink. Kay allowed Iris to eat strawberry ice cream for dinner on the condition that she be in bed before her father got home.
From her bedroom, with the nightlight on, she could hear her parents’ voices, and even though she couldn’t make out what they were saying, she knew what they were saying. The man who had come to the door earlier—the man in the business suit and sandals—he had something to do with her father’s other family. He was trying to take him away. She could feel it in the ache in her chest. She could see it in the way her mother’s mouth curled, hear it in her voice, that flat morose music of every word she spoke. When her mother had said “strawberry ice cream,” Iris had heard, “We are losing your father.”

At school, when they were cutting up construction paper to make letters, Dominique said, “I could even see the corn you ate at lunch. It was grody.”
“Shut up.” Iris turned her chair to face away from Dominique.
“And it was pink too. I think that was the fruit punch.”
“Shut up!”
“Girls,” the teacher looked up from helping another student halfway across the room. “I would appreciate it if you would use your inside voices. And your inside language.”
Iris glanced over and watched Dominique laboring with the stubby scissors. Her fingernails were dirty and bitten down and the letter she was cutting looked lumpy and artless. Iris looked down at her own work. She had imagined the “U” would look precise and professional, but it was childish looking, far from the neatly rounded, straight-at-the-edges, construction paper letter she had seen in her mind. She put down the scissors and paper. She was disgusted with herself. Things like this were always happening. Iris would see something and understand it perfectly, a dance step, the notes of a song, a construction paper “U”—she would see it in her mind and understand its true nature—but when she attempted to do it herself, the dance step, the song, the cutting of the paper, it would come out completely different. Frustration made her eyes hot. Her nose burned on the inside and she could feel hot tears coming on. She squeezed her eyes shut to hold them back. Tight, tight. But then she heard a zip and a ping.
“How did you do that?” Dominique’s eyes were wide as plates. Iris was shocked too. The safety scissors lay on the floor on the other side of the room. Dominique pushed herself out of her chair, went over to pick up the scissors. She handled them cautiously, like they might be spooked. “I saw that,” she said, almost a question. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Girls,” said the teacher.
“I saw it. You closed your eyes and the scissors flew across the room and hit the wall. You’re a witch.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re weird.”
“You’re a little shit.”
“Girls!” The teacher strode over and motioned for them to rise. She was inches away from pulling them up by their shirt collars. “Put down your scissors. You two are going to sit in the corner by the mats. I will not tolerate that kind of language in my classroom.”
In the corner by the mats, Dominique said, “I don’t have a daddy anymore.”
Iris said, “I have a daddy, but he isn’t married to my mommy.”
“My daddy got hit by a car.”
“My daddy has a whole nother family in Maine. Or Massachusetts.”
Dominique picked at a scab on her knee. “After my daddy died, my mommy cried so hard, they sent her to a special hospital for crazy people.”
“A man came to my house yesterday to take my daddy back, but my mommy lied and said he just wanted to marry our pool tiles.”
“You’re a witch.”
“Fucker.” Iris said this under her breath, then turned to face the wall.

On her way home from the bus stop, Iris chased lizards, trying to step on their tails. When you caught a lizard by its tail, it would break off and the lizard would get away, but the tail would stay and continue to wriggle and thrash in your hand. When you stepped on a lizard’s tail, it would go smushy a bit, but it would move around just the same. Lizard bones were tiny and made a crunching sound under your shoe when you stepped on them with your entire foot.
The front door was locked so Iris walked around to the back. She knew which trees were which. Her father had told her. He would show her pictures in a book; the plant names beside them were long and foreign and sounded like secrets. Sometimes, on the weekends, he would ask her to help him clean up the leaves. She would haul dead palm fronds to the side of the house, and she knew that for the big floppy leaves you needed a rake. They were from the scheffleras, which were also called umbrella trees, because their broad leaves grew out of long stalks and hung down like large tears. There were different kinds of hibiscus plants too, and the red flowers that drooped like a hat with a tongue sticking out were Turk’s Caps. Iris would point at the plants and say their names, and even though he never paused or smiled, Iris knew her father was pleased.
The mermaid was still at the bottom of the pool. She had blonde hair that fanned out and covered her chest where a shirt should be, and she had a dark blue tail and held an orange starfish in one hand. The more Iris looked at her, the less pretty she seemed. Today she looked cheap and simple, lying there, empty-faced and dumb, on the bottom of the pool. Water lapped up and splashed on Iris’s sneakers. There was no wind, but the water was almost burbling with disturbance. She stepped back from the pool, but her sneakers were already soaked. The sliding glass door to her parents’ bedroom was open.
The room was empty and the house was still and quiet, but Iris could feel riot in the air. She walked down the hallway slowly, her wet sneakers making a beige sound against the carpet. The hallway opened up on the living room, which gave her a clear view to the front door, but she could also see the kitchen. Her parents sat together at the table speaking softly to each other and sorting through folders and files and papers.
Where the living room began, the carpet ended and changed to tile. Iris walked carefully towards the kitchen. Her sneakers squeaked once, but her parents didn’t seem to notice. She crouched behind the sofa, which was turquoise and soft leather, but she still couldn’t hear. She could see their faces, though. Her father looked tired. He would occasionally lift his glasses and rub his eyes. He shuffled the papers like her mother shuffled cards, looking up as he did so.
Kay’s face was dry and empty, her chin cradled in her open palm, cigarette in the other hand. Her hair was a frosty blonde and wispy. Iris tried to see in her the younger woman from the pictures, the movie star one with the brown hair and the espadrilles. She tried to imagine both of her parents together, young, smiling, dancing—even though they both said they never ever danced. Iris tried to remember the last time she saw her father smile. Had he laughed and smiled with his other family? What was his son like? Her brother. He would be twelve maybe. Or fifteen. Her brother. Oscar didn’t know that Iris knew. On nights when her mother drank too much lemonade, she would tuck in Iris sometimes, sometimes crawl into bed with her. Then she would talk about how she first met Iris’s father, about the discotheque, where she would never ever dance, about the lights and the music and the spinny mirrored ball, and how she was there with her friend Betsy. When they had first spotted Iris’s father, Betsy had said, Look at them all, look at those stuffed shirts, and her mother had said, No, I like the one on the end. He has nice eyes and nice skin, and Betsy had said, He looks like the dry type, the no-nonsense type, the type who already has a wife and kids, and Kay had said, I don’t care. That’s the one I want.

When Iris finally stepped into the kitchen, the first thing her father did was stare hard at her feet. He put down the papers and said, “Are your sneakers wet? Are you tracking mud all over the floor? Do you want a foot fungus?”
“Listen to your father, doll face. Take off your sneaks.”
When her shoes were off, Iris’s father said, “Come here,” and he pulled her into his lap. He said, “I’m going away soon. I’m leaving on a business trip. It’s an important trip, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be away.” Kay got up and poured a tall drink from the clear glass bottle. Iris wanted to say, Stop lying. I know where you’re going, but instead she thought about her mother’s empty face, of the mermaid at the bottom of the pool, of the dark-haired woman in the gypsy skirt and espadrilles. She hated them all. Kay sat down again at the table and drank her drink and lit another cigarette. Oscar said, “I want you to know that I care about you very much, even if a very long time goes by before we see each other again.”
Iris grew so angry, she wanted to break something, to drive a slick, sharp crack up her mother’s drinking glass, but she knew she’d get a slap for that. Instead, she slid off her father’s lap. She wanted to run away, to slam the door, to run into her bedroom and pull the stuffing out of all the pillows. She wanted to stay and stamp her feet to make a stand. She stamped her bare feet against the cold tile floor. It felt good, powerful, so she did it again. She stamped her foot again, the cold hard slap against the cool, smooth tile. Iris closed her eyes tight, tight and saw orange-yellow and red-yellow. Tighter. And she saw lights flashing. She heard the quick lub-dub of her own heart beating in her ears, her ears hot and ringing. Hot light and stamped foot, heart beat and ears ringing. Iris felt she could hear music. It was hard and ringing and full of energy. She stamped her bare feet again, moved them back and forth. Her limbs were fluid. They were graceful. She heard the pulsing beat of her own heart, and was moved by it, saw a mirrored ball spinning, one like in the movies. It spilled tiny sequins over her and she shimmied her shoulders, waved her arms over her head, moved her feet back and forth—the way her mother never would. Iris pointed up and pointed down, she wiggled her hips, her shoulders, twirled around. Her body was electric, it vibrated with noise and energy and light.
When the music died down, Iris opened her eyes. She saw her parents sitting at the table, dumbfounded, their eyes wide, mouths hanging open. 

Iris’s father left on a Tuesday, which seemed like a stupid day to go. That morning, before she left for school, Oscar had combed his daughter’s hair absently, catching her ears until it hurt, but she didn’t complain. Then, without a word, he kissed her on the top of her head. No goodbye. No anything. He was gone before Iris returned from school. He didn’t even leave a note or a present.
Before bedtime, the wind picked up. It blew the palm trees so their fronds were splayed and waving. There was an enormous crack in the sky, then rain fell in huge full drops, each one big enough to drown a lizard. Dominique had given Iris a stone she said she had taken from the cemetery where her father had been buried. It was smooth and yellow-gray. Dominique had said that if Iris held it tight in her hand, she could speak directly to her father, no matter how far away he was. Maine. Massachusetts. Minnesota. Even if he was in heaven. She had given it to Iris because her father had died when she was too young. She hardly remembered him, so really they didn’t have much to talk about.
The leaves slapped the windows outside Iris’s bedroom. She held the stone tightly and tried to think of something to say. Her mind was blank. The sound of the wind and the rain filled her ears. She moved her lips, searching for the right words to tell her father who was now so far away. She felt angry and hurt and scared. She moved her lips, but no words came out. There was an ache in her chest. So she held on to it with her ribcage, trying to push it up. Up and up. It moved slowly and painfully up to the back of her throat, then passed it, pushing itself out of her eye sockets. Which were wet now. She could feel them burn, hot and gummy. She hated them. And she found her voice again to curse them, but what came out was the word “hibiscus.”
The wind whistled outside, but inside the house was still. Iris ran to the bookshelf, pulled out a book, took it back to her bed. She thumbed through the pages feverishly, desperately, still holding the stone tightly in one hand. Light exploded through the window and seconds later came the crack of thunder. It chased the lightning across the sky, never quite able to catch it. It shook the house as it did so, as it tumbled alone down the corners of the horizon. “Saw grass!” Iris screamed, her eyes burning like lightening, her voice fighting against the thunder. “Sea grape!” In her mouth, she contained all the radiance of the night, her voice full of the music in the storm. Her thin, child’s hair rose as if by a blast of air. It whipped around, tangled, undulating, fanning out around her in the stillness of the house. “Sea oat!” she screamed. “Snapdragon! Spanish moss! Swamp lily!”