Treasure of the World Tara Sullivan (inspirational books for women TXT) 📖

make enough extra money that Papi would let Daniel stop working in the mine sooner?”

“Ana!” Abuelita gasps. “You can’t leave school! You’ve only got a few years left and then you can make it to secondary school. Hasn’t that always been your dream? To go off to university and get a fancy degree?”

I look down at the scuffed toes of my sneakers. “Yeah,” I admit, my voice barely above a whisper. “But it seems selfish to chase a dream that may not even happen when Daniel is in the mines. Maybe it would just be for a little bit . . . ?”

Mami runs a hand over my hair. “It’s always a risk to pause your dreams,” she says. “You might not get the chance to restart them.”

I look into her eyes and wonder what her dreams were before she married Papi, but the sadness I see in them keeps me from asking.

“It’s a generous offer,” Mami says, “and it speaks to your kind heart. But if we pull you both out of school, I think it will make it easier for Mauricio to stop thinking about school at all for either of you. We’re trying to get Daniel back into school, not you out of it.”

I nod, grateful that’s her answer and I can let go of a little of the guilt I’ve been carrying. If I’m going to school to protect it for Daniel, instead of stealing it from him, I don’t feel quite as bad.

The afternoon stretches on and we break the rocks in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. It feels like the clink of our rocks against each other is the ticking of a giant clock, counting down the seconds until we see that Daniel is okay. Finally, at dusk, I see two figures in miners’ coveralls walking toward us.

“It’s them,” I say, pointing.

Mami and Abuelita stop immediately. When Papi and Daniel reach us, both equally filthy, twin wads of coca leaves shoved into their cheeks, Mami takes their bags and helmets, fussing over them. Their faces are blackened with rock dust, the whites of their eyes stark against the layer of filth. You can see a straight line across their temples where the helmets rested, keeping the grime off their foreheads. Daniel unzips his coveralls and hangs them on the hook inside the door alongside Papi’s. Then he collapses to the floor, rubbing his chest and wheezing. I’m used to seeing Papi dressed as a miner, coming home from work, but it’s a shock to see Daniel that way. I poke him in the shoulder.

“You’re gross,” I say, even though that’s not what I meant to say at all. “Go wash.”

For a moment, Daniel stares at me, and I want to take my words back and tell him I don’t care how dirty he is, I’m just glad he’s safe. But he stands up and walks outside to the blue plastic barrel where we store our water. A moment later I hear him splashing. I pick up a rag and join him.

“Here,” I say, handing him the rag.

Daniel rubs his face and hands, but we can both see that there is still grime in the lines of his knuckles and caked deeply under his nails. The mark of a working man, Papi always says whenever he shakes hands with someone who has calluses on his palms and black half-moons under his fingernails.

“Are you okay?” I ask when I can’t take it anymore. “How was your day?”

“How do you think?” snaps Daniel. His eyebrows knit and he scrubs harder at his hands, digging the now-filthy cloth into the ridges and running it along the tips of his fingers. When it’s clear that’s worked as much as it ever will, he throws the cloth to one side and tries to scrape out his fingernails using the nails of the other hand. The grime is caked deep. He’s not making much progress.

Daniel struggles with his nails a moment longer, then he stops and leans against the side of the barrel, staring at his hands. His knuckles tighten on the rim and he closes his eyes. When he opens them, he doesn’t look at his hands anymore, but picks up the rag and gives it to me.

“Thanks,” he says, and turns to go inside, his voice flat, his narrow shoulders slumped.

“Daniel!”

He pauses in the doorway.

“Everyone missed you at school today.”

It’s only as the words leave my mouth that I know they’re absolutely the wrong thing to say.

Daniel tenses as if I’d hit him, and he turns away and walks inside without another word.

Dinner is beyond awful.

Mami keeps finding excuses to touch Daniel, her fingers flitting out like butterflies to land on his arm or brush across his hair. Papi thumps Daniel on the back so many times you’d think he were choking, telling him he’s a man of the mines now. Abuelita sits in her corner, wrapped in blankets and silence, glaring daggers at Papi. Daniel doesn’t respond to any of them. Guilt burrows through me like a mine tunnel, leaving me feeling hollow and unstable. I don’t even taste the soup.

After dinner, things don’t improve. Usually, while I cleaned up with Mami and Abuelita, Daniel would do homework. But he doesn’t have any homework today. I was so wrapped up in thinking about our problems I forgot to ask his teachers for his work. I feel like a double failure: once for going to school when he couldn’t, and twice for not remembering to bring school home for him.

The gap in our routine feels like a missing tooth: you know it’s only a small loss, but it’s so close to you it feels huge and you can’t stop probing it. Finally, after an awkward quarter of an hour, Daniel goes outside. I see him as I wash the dishes, perched on a rock up the slope so he’s higher than our roof, wrapped in a blanket to keep off the chill.

When Papi reaches into Mami’s