there were two of them

Juanita had forgotten Alex’s jacket. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She’d taken it into the restroom with her but had left it hanging over the stall door. Pinching herself, she wondered if they had time to go back and get it but, no, they would miss the bus. 

As she realized her mistake, Juanita made sure to keep her face calm and collected. Alex was watching her. These days, he was always watching her. She pretended not to see. 

Alas, there was nothing she could do about it right now. Forcing herself to think of something else, she looked over to Alex as he tried to sell a self-made bracelet to another woman waiting at the stop. 

They were thoughtfully designed pieces that did not tend to sell well to Alex’s disappointment. Juanita had considered suggesting that Alex create something more appealing to a general consumer but she didn’t have the heart to discourage his only form of creative expression. 

When Juanita spotted lights at the end of the street, she whistled, catching her brother’s attention. This bus would take them from Detroit to Chicago where a distant relative had agreed to house the pair of them until they could get back on their feet. 

If they were lucky, she’d quickly be able to find better than a minimum-wage job and Alex wouldn’t need to work himself. He hadn’t been in school for almost half a year and she was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get his diploma at this rate. A GED was always an option but she disliked the idea of forcing that decision upon her brother who had always excelled in school. 

A few weeks later, Juanita found herself and Alex settled in an aunt’s house. Before their mother’s death, they’d never been introduced to Leticia but the older woman had nevertheless kindly invited them into her home when she’d heard of their situation. 

It was a small house with a running stream of people coming in and out. Most of the visitors were Leticia’s children, their aunt’s adult children, who often brought along their own children as well. 

Because Juanita spent as much time as she could working, she hadn’t gotten the chance to know them well. However, with Alex back in school and following more normal hours, it seemed he had gotten quite attached to a few of the younger children, a gaggle of children often being found following him around like ducklings. 

Over the past year, Juanita and Alex had intimately learned how to deal with change. Since their mother’s death, they’d been uprooted from their lives and forced to move with the winds, their plans for the future changing at a second’s notice to accommodate their survival. 

In the comfort of their aunt’s home where they had been promised the safety of staying as long as they needed, Juanita wondered if they had adapted enough for long enough that they no longer needed to fear the universe’s whims. 

One weekend, Juanita agreed to bring her brother along for a job. It was just a few hours of cleaning the house of one of the wealthier individuals in the city. Usually, she preferred to leave him behind for these types of jobs, not wanting him to feel pressured to make money, but she was confident enough in their current finances that she allowed him to come. 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he brother had said when she explained herself. 

She merely stuck out her tongue in response. “Leave me alone. Let’s go.” 

The pair of them worked well together, long accustomed to moving in each other’s space. Soon enough, they were wrapping up, polishing the larger windows of the property. 

Focused in her work, Juanita hadn’t noticed when someone walked in and Alex was equally as unaware with earbuds securely tucked into his ears. Not involved with securing her own clients, Juanita had minimal information about who the owner of the house was. She would later learn that the house belonged to an older, divorced man who shared custody of his only son with his ex-wife who had gotten remarried soon after their split more than a decade ago. 

At the moment, all Juanita knew was that suddenly an angry man was in front of their faces, demanding to know what they were doing in his house. Trying to portray as much confidence as she could, Juanita explained that they had been hired to clean this home and asked if her brother and her had done something not to his liking. If so, what could they do to remedy the situation. 

As she continued, Juanita was not oblivious to the growing confusion and incredulity on the man’s face. “Jovanni?” The man directed to her brother. “Javier?” The man asked when Alex stared at him blankly. 

Alex turned to look at her in bewilderment before he turned back to the man. “No, sir. My name is Alejandro and this is my sister Juanita.” 

From there, things moved very quickly as the man excused himself from their company. Not daring to upset the man further, Juanita and Alex hastily packed up their things and left. 

It was the next day that Juanita received a strange call from a woman wanting to meet with her and her brother. Juanita’s mind went to strange places when she connected the woman’s call to the man’s reaction from the day before. Somehow, Juanita felt that she knew what was happening. She didn’t know how she would know but she suddenly felt that she did. She agreed to meet the woman and her sons the following week. 

Seven days later, her suspicions were confirmed as she stared at two carbon copies of her little brother. Lean-faced, curly-haired, dark-eyed, the three boys were all identical. 

Silently, Juanita and Alex listened as the woman explained their story. The woman had been married before to the man whose house they visited that time. When the couple divorced, the woman remarried and adopted twins who at the time were no older than four with her new husband. She hadn’t known that they were actually triplets, she said. With large hand gestures, the woman apologized for her ex-husband’s behavior. The man must’ve believed they were playing a trick on him, the woman explained. 

The twins hadn’t said anything as their mother talked but Juanita heard as one now softly muttered, “Everything is changing.”