Latrina’s Little Sister

By Guarina Lopez

Issue 48 • Fall 2023 • Nonfiction

Our neighborhood was populated by Black families, Mexican families, Salvadorian families, a few Native families, and maybe one or two white families. We all went to school together down the street at Drachman Elementary, where every morning, we’d arrive like a tumbleweed of small Black and Brown bodies and loud, boisterous voices. On the way to school, the kids would exit their homes and join one by one. The last two kids to join were Latrina and her little sister. They lived in the middle apartment of a three-apartment home; I remember the front door was often left open, and the screen door, which was painted green, never quite closed either. The screen on the top part of the door hung down and flapped in the breeze each time someone ran out of the house. It looked real dark inside, and we all knew never to ask to go in or visit or spend the night, nothing. We should only see Latrina and her sister at school or while playing in the street. So that’s what we all did.

Latrina and I became partners in P.E. and decided to perform together for the talent show. Latrina did all the dancing while I shuffled about on the school stage, too shy to remember all of the moves we had choreographed together. She wasn’t mad after the talent show since she had basically forced me to sign up with her. She knew I had performance anxiety, but she also knew I was a damn good dancer. I loved to dance with my friends when no one was looking but froze up when on display. Sometime after the talent show, Latrina invited me over to her house. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go, but I did anyway. I made sure not to tell my brother or anyone else.

Latrina and her sister lived in a crack house, that’s what they called it then. Crack was ruining the lives of many poor families in our neighborhood, and though I’d heard about it, I was too naïve to really know what crack was. Their mother was a crack addict, and Latrina and her sister were left to fend for themselves on just about everything: food, school, laundry, everything. Some of the kids made fun of the girls because of the way they smelled or because their hair wasn’t done up properly, but no one in the neighborhood cared enough to help. It was easier to tend to your own troubles than to get caught up with a crackhead. So, I said yes, I’d go to her house since no one else did, and we were friends. Plus, I let her down at the talent show.

There wasn’t much to her place; there was an unpleasant smell, and it was very dark. We didn’t stay too long because her mom was there, passed out on the couch. She was very thin, and her hair was messy; that’s all I remember. The girls must have been used to their mother in this state because they made no apologies or gave no explanations about the state of their family life. It was what it was, just like everyone knew that Arco and I didn’t have a mom, and that was what it was, too. Or that Johnny and Susanna’s mom had a hole in her face, and the dog on the corner, whose real name was Evil, was the fucking devil. It all was what it was.

Latrina and I were basic friends, nothing special, nothing unusual, and because we didn’t have sleepovers or go to each other’s homes regularly, we weren’t close, but we were friends. Latrina was a big girl for her age, and I remember she was already growing breasts in third grade. Her little sister, whose name I cannot remember for the life of me, but there’s a reason for that, was little and thin. She was kind of like Latrina’s shadow. She was quiet but very sweet.

Just a tiny little black girl.

Back then, we could buy cigarettes for our parents, and it was always a field trip for the entire neighborhood when someone’s parents ran out. You never went to 7-11 alone. You just didn’t. There were too many homeless men, drug addicts, rabid dogs, and creeps around, so you always went with at least 3 other friends. That way, if you got jumped, then you’d also have lots of backup. Barrio Viejo was no joke, it was rich in culture but rough, and you never took any chances. Plus, this was the era of the creeper van, the ones you were warned against in school that were driven by perverts who lured you in with candy, and you ended up on the back of a milk carton.

The girls’ mom was out of cigarettes and sent Latrina and her sister to 7-11 to get her a pack. It was an innocent request, nothing out of the ordinary. The girls went into 7-11, and when they came out, a car drove right into them, instantly killing Latrina’s little sister. It may have been a drunk driver or a car chase, but all we heard was that the car came crashing through the gas station and onto the sidewalk, right into the girls, just like that.

Horrible, awful things had happened to a lot of us in the neighborhood, but this was probably the most painful for us kids because of Latrina. On the mornings that she’d walk with us to school we could hear her mother wailing in their dark, sad house. She cried and cried and cried, and no one helped her. Latrina went to school, was very sad, and then went home. It went on like this until it didn’t anymore. I can’t remember what happened to Latrina and her mom because childhood is distracting, and you are told not to stare too long or ask too many questions.

I remember thinking that even though their mother was on drugs, she was in mourning.

In school, we’d been told that drug addicts were losers and were bad people not to be trusted.

But Latrina’s mom did nothing wrong; she did drugs, but she wasn’t a bad person, and she loved her babies like any mother should, and now she was crying because one of them got killed by a car. I remember thinking how unfair it was to be a single Black mom with two young girls and no help. I felt for Latrina and, for a long time, kept that memory of her sliding across the stage doing the cabbage patch while I woefully attempted to keep up. I also remember her little sister, who never had a fucking chance to dance in the talent show. She just didn’t, and just like that, another poor black girl died for nothing. Just like that, and it was what it was.

Guarina Lopez

Guarina Lopez is from the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and grew up the Southwest and San Francisco. She currently resides on Piscataway territory in Washington, D.C. Guarina is a visual artist, storyteller, athlete, mother, and founder of Native Women Ride & The Indigenous Cycling Collective. Guarina’s work explores the intersections of Indigeneity, Environment, Politics and Culture. She is the co-director of Running is Prayer and the recently released Carlisle 200, a short documentary that shares the history of Indian Boarding Schools. Guarina’s writing has been published in magazines, poetry reviews, museum journals and zines. She is currently working on a book of short stories based on her life as an Indigenous woman living in the “white man’s world”.

Claudia Santos

Claudia Santos (@claudiaexcaret) is a Mexican English Major, poet, photographer, and cultural gestor. Her photographs have been published in Azahares Literary Magazine and L’Esprit Literary Review.