As the Sun Rises

"Miguel, I want to go home."

I clutch the camcorder in my hands as we near the ranch. I cling to it like a lifeline as I attempt to keep myself afloat despite the storm raging within me. My heart is thrumming in my ears, and the world seems all too bright in the face of the morning sun. My tears are too much, falling like fat droplets of shame down my cheeks.

I clutch the camcorder in my hands as we near the ranch. I cling to it like a lifeline as I attempt to keep myself afloat despite the storm raging within me. My heart is thrumming in my ears, and the world seems all too bright in the face of the morning sun. My tears are too much, falling like fat droplets of shame down my cheeks.

I hadn’t wanted to admit that being in Spain made me feel like I was living for the first time in my life. I didn’t want to admit that, back home, I didn’t fit in. Losing Kevin, your father, tore me to bits from the inside out. Relearning who I was and rebuilding who I am without the people that made me who I was in America…

It scared me. I didn’t want to be alone in a world where I had to have you, a type of anchor, and then give you up, too.

I wouldn’t.

I won’t.

As Miguel speeds past the bulls, with their barely-there patterns and heads dipped low towards the grass, one of my hands comes to cradle the curve you create at the top of my stomach. I don’t feel sick or restless. I am inexplicably tired, an exhaustion that I feel in my very being. Leaning against Luis, I find myself steadily rocking with the car and its inhabitants. You, swaying with all of us, without a care in the world.

Because you aren’t a part of it, yet. But you are a part of me.

When we arrive at the tall, leaning house, Estela comes out of the front door with her hands buried in her apron. I know she expects the back of the car to be empty, for me and Luis to be long gone. But Miguel has come back far too quickly for either of us to have left. I’m not in the city or heading to the airport, and Luis is not back in Seville with his friends. Esteban is in front of the barn with one of the horses, brushing and cleaning its mane with soapy water. He’s in the same dirt spot where he taught me to do the same. I can see his head turn, and the sunlight strikes his dark hair and high cheeks in slanting kisses. He, too, knows that Miguel has come home too soon.

Miguel parks his truck and kills the engine and gives Estela a voice, the flurry of Spanish coming from her no longer drowned out. Estela is yelling, getting closer and closer to the car. Esteban is worlds away, brush forgotten in his still hand. I follow the conversation just enough to understand that Estela is asking about me.

"Where is Kenzie? The baby? Miguel, you fool, did you let her run away again?!"

After that, her voice is too high pitched, too filled with emotion for me to understand. Her words come out quavering, as she fights back angry, boiling tears. She's thrown her hands high, and they're reaching for the sky as she scolds Miguel with all the words I've never heard her say. She's going on and on until he extends his arm to hold his hand up to her, palm-out.

"Testy," he mutters to me in English. He's trying to calm my nerves, I know. But even just being back at Los Nietos has put us at ease. The sleepy-eyed cattle meandering about the fields, the low-hanging orange trees that threaten to brush my head as I pass, and the whisper of a breeze through my hair have put us at ease. You stir lazily, turning over inside me, and I feel your little feet push up against my tummy. My fingers finally start to loosen their grip on the camcorder when Miguel goes to open the squealing door to the rusted vehicle. His leg swings out first, then his torso and head before his other leg follows. I don't notice that Luis has also opened his door and is stepping out. I can only see Esteban, with his dark eyes and wavering smile.

"Testy," he mutters to me in English. He's trying to calm my nerves, I know. But even just being back at Los Nietos has put us at ease. The sleepy-eyed cattle meandering about the fields, the low-hanging orange trees that threaten to brush my head as I pass, and the whisper of a breeze through my hair have put us at ease. You stir lazily, turning over inside me, and I feel your little feet push up against my tummy. My fingers finally start to loosen their grip on the camcorder when Miguel goes to open the squealing door to the rusted vehicle. His leg swings out first, then his torso and head before his other leg follows. I don't notice that Luis has also opened his door and is stepping out. I can only see Esteban, with his dark eyes and wavering smile.

"I'll be waiting for your letter."

Like he knew I wouldn't be sending a letter. Seeing his serene face on the little screen, the way his eyes had seemed like they would well over with the hot tears he was forcing himself to hold back, made my heart pitter-patter like I imagine your little feet will. I see this boy—this man—and think, When did I realize I was lost? Because the turn of his head and the crooked little smile made me feel like I had found what I was looking for. What I hadn't known I was looking for all along.

Home.

It isn't a place or even a thing I can hold. It's the way his fingers comb expertly through my hair beneath the hot afternoon sun. How he helps me onto the saddle when we ride into the forest and cradles our fragile bodies with his own. How he gives me time to know what I want to say and lets me take it back. It's how Estela scolds me if I don't take the seeds from the peppers correctly or how Miguel takes me with him when he goes to talk with the other bull-raisers.

Luis helps me from the truck, then helps me unhook my dress when it catches on the door. I wobble from the backseat, and Esteban is moving. I see him leading the horse towards us, but Estela is quicker. She's taken me in her arms and hugged me so close to her heavy chest that I feel I may burst. She is sure not to press too hard on you, and when she pulls away, she looks between the two of us in shock.

"Why have you come back?!"

I place my hand over you, where one of your little limbs is making a smaller bump, and I feel sorry. I can't give you home, can't let you hold it in your tiny, curious hands and watch as you turn it over in infantile amazement. I can't point it out with you on my hip when you're beyond the point of too heavy to be held and say, "That's it. That's our home."

But I think I can show you, by staying here. I can stay where I feel home, raise you in the place where I finally felt all put together and broken at the same time. I can tell you how it all happened, how I came to love you and refused to give you away. I can teach you to feed the horses and play with Esteban's tiny birds, to clip the laundry on the clothesline right before the sun is high in the sky. I can teach you the dishes Estela taught me to cook.

And I can only hope that, one day, you will know home as I do.

"Because I don't want to see my mom. Or Kevin."

Her eyebrows furrow in confusion as she looks down at you again. Esteban has reached us, and I can feel the smile growing on his face. I can't help but look to him when I speak again.

"I wanted to come home."