My brother got up from the table and sat on the floor.
My father said, A son of a gun.
When the filters filled with dust they were trashed. Then the trash was poured into landfills. And landfills were full of rats. My father should have known this. He went to school. He should have known about landfills. And about rats. How these rats had very sharp teeth. How they could find the filters in the landfills. How they could chew straight through the filters.
You're crazy, said my father.
He said to my brother, Your sister's crazy.
My brother laughed.
But I knew dangerous dust was released by rats.
It became a part of the air again.
My brother wasn't retarded. He just couldn't learn right. His brain made things backward. Like his right and left. And telling time. And he couldn't tie shoes. He wore slip-on sneakers. The kind with the Velcro. They always looked crooked, too big for his feet.
It's a phase, said my father.
He's a genius, he said.
But my brother and I knew better. His brain was our secret. Only he and I knew how truly fucked up it was.
My father said, It's because of your mother.
She was sick, then dead.
But that wasn't it.
The masks were sewn in a factory on the island. The factory was small and made only masks. Bigger factories made the filters. These were in Baltimore and I had been to these factories with my brother. They were big and full of workers working big machines. The workers were men who smoked while they worked. No one talked. They didn't like me and my brother running around. We tried to push buttons on the machines when the men weren't looking, and my brother would squeal like a fucking retard and the men would say to my father, Get these kids out, and come walking at us in a slow monster way that made my brother squeal even harder, and I was the one to tell the workers to get back to work, and they laughed at me, like, Who the fuck does she think she is, but they knew who I was.
At some point they would be working for me.
We all liked the island factory better. The workers on the island were ladies who spoke Spanish and played with my brother's hair. My father went to the island over the summers. It used to be he went alone. But now he had to take us.
Weekends we stood in the ocean. We collected snails in a bucket and raced them on the sand. My father slept on a chair. We put snails on my father's feet to make him jump. He said, What the hell. He didn't shave on the weekends. The ladies around him laughed when he jumped.
There were crazy kids who climbed the palms. They picked coconuts and split them up with a knife. They sold them one for a dollar to me and my brother. They told us we were stupid fucks. They said, They're free if you climb the tree. Neither of us could climb a tree with no branches. They said we were rich white fucks. We already knew this. The boys didn't wear shoes or shirts. They're free, they said. But we gave them the dollars.
My father called the kids the Coco Locos.
He said, Keep away from those dirty kids.
We went weekdays to my father's office. It had a glass door. On the other side of the door was the factory. We could see the ladies hunched over their tables, sewing masks. The ladies couldn't see us in the office though. The door was like the limo windows. I liked to be on the unmirrored side. Though sometimes I couldn't help it. Sometimes there were limos with other people in them. And I was with my brother on the mirrored side. We were playing on the hotel sidewalk. And I wanted to look in the mirror. But I knew better than to look too hard. Even my brother knew someone could be giving the finger.
When the ladies used the mirror to fix their lipstick, my father stood on our side and said, Stupid estupidos. Sometimes he opened the door into the ladies. Sometimes he said something funny like, Working hard I see.
The ladies took breaks from sewing masks. There was pan de agua and coffee. They prayed before eating by closing their eyes and moving their lips.
They're devout, said my father. De-vout. Good ones, he said.
I had heard my father ask the ladies to dinners. Lucky you darling, my father would say. Good food darling. Buena comida.
I'm allowed, he would say to me and my brother.
I had seen my father touch the ladies. I had seen him touch their asses.
My father's coffee was the blackest made in his own pot. The ladies spooned him sugar.
Some ladies wore masks after eating their pan de agua. The factory air was dusty.
Once I said, Funny.
My father said, What.
Dust, I said. Here.
He said, You don't know funny.
In Baltimore was the park on the hill where under the sand was wet.
China, I said, if you dig deep enough.
My brother's sneakers never looked right.
There were days I could barely look at him.
In the park were monkey bars. Rusted swing sets.
There was a slide where we slid into sand.
My brother and I went to the park after school. The monkey bars at the park were higher than the ones in the schoolyard. We perched on the monkey bars and watched the sunset. The sky turned orange. Then back to blue. We could see the whole city lighted below. We never talked. We sometimes heard gunshots. We mostly listened to traffic.
There was a time my father would say to me, One day it's yours.
All of it, he would say.
He would gesture to what. A hotel room. A factory. A view. The leather inside of a rented car.
And I would say, I don't want it.
And he would say, You don't know what you want.
And I would say, I know what I don't want.
And he would say, You don't know shit.
And my brother would put his headphones on and turn up the metal and rock his head in a retard way.
And my father would look at me.
And the feeling in my gut.
When my father called England and France he waved us away and mouthed, England, or, France. He said, Go.
Outside goats ate the parking lot weeds. My brother and I threw sticks to the goats. They were so stupid these island goats. Sometimes they ate the sticks. And sometimes they came running at us like dogs.
The ladies' husbands pulled into the lot. They waited in their cars in cotton shirts. They smoked cigarettes down to the filters and flicked their filters to the lot. All of the goats would go after the filters. The husbands never laughed at the goats. Their windows were open even in rain. Fast-speed island music played. When the husbands waved we looked at the ground.
On the low-lit street, the date ran off.
Sure she ran, my father said. She was scared, he said. She's young.
He wore a ski cap, he said. Imagine. A coat.
On an island for God's sake, said my father.
He said, Who wears a coat on an island.
Then pow, said my father.
Sure she ran.
Brass knuckles, he said.
Lousy island, he said.
He pulled my nose.
Eat your eggs, he said.
Maryland. Shaped like a gun. The city not far from the trigger. A house in the city. A bedroom in the house. A bed in the bedroom pushed to the wall. Under the blanket. Morning in winter. A streak of light piercing the curtain. Dust forming in the streak of light. A single dot of dust. Its flight across the room.
On a ride in the sports car, it was me and my father's date in the back.
The best looking one in the factory, he said. Boy look at that body. Out to here.