High Heat - Teresa Tumminello Brader

How could she have forgotten her shirt? The question nagged as she surveyed the desert-like expanse. In the wasteland of her nightmares, resembling the landscape of the old Westerns Jay fell asleep to, she anticipated her uncovered skin boiling, her skeleton picked clean by buzzards. The pain would be protracted and horrific. 

She plucked at the lightweight fabric covering her sweaty legs. Wearing shorts was no longer an option. A blast of wind rattled the rickety stall. Her skin creeped, as she envisioned her shelter collapsing and the bumps spreading over her bare arms. Evilly, the sun found any spot sunscreen missed. 

She scooted her chair farther back, could barely make out the words of her book, and removed her sunglasses. If only she could find the underground sorority of vampires described in its pages. She must’ve dozed then awoke when a head popped up at the edge of the table and just as quickly was gone. She’d had a distinct impression of white cloth atop a head as small as a child’s. 

Maybe the turbaned being had the bumps too. Rumors about children having sun-sickness were new and she’d noticed mothers carrying swaddled infants, their tiny faces shielded with visors. When her own mother had forced her outside to roam their unshaded back yard, she’d taken a book with her, playacting she was the poor Little Match Girl, or Little Nell fleeing her hideous predator. Whomever she pretended to be, it was someone small and death was in the air.

The face she’d glimpsed was the color and texture of a shelled pecan. Her own olive-toned face, protected under yellow-tinted foundation for years, had escaped the itchy eruptions that plagued the rest of her. The skin clinic said the bumps had developed because she—and her mother, she accused silently—had never screened the rest of her.

She picked up her water bottle. Across the wide span of concrete, where a few customers shimmered in the heat and moved as slowly as the sun, was the restroom. Reluctantly she lowered the bottle. The IBS clinic told her walking and drinking lots of water was the best remedy for the syndromes they treated. By the time she got home from post-sunset walks and rehydrated, it was bedtime. Kept awake by irritation throughout her pelvic organs, she warred with the sheets between bathroom trips. When the pale sun peeked through the blinds, she fell asleep from exhaustion, dreaming of the frigid streets the Little Match Girl died in.

Now she daydreamed of dark clouds covering the sun, a burst of rain, making it home safely before the clouds parted and the sun beat down again. It hadn’t rained during the day in a long time. Dangerous rainfall occurred at night, thwarting many of her planned walks. Summer was difficult and it seemed to be summer all the time. When it was technically still winter, a meteorologist on another edge of the country wondered if the people on her edge lived on Jupiter. His joke sounded like blame. 

Shifting her chair again, she glimpsed a hazy movement and looked toward the table: nothing except the sunlit emptiness. Her heart beat fast. Had the sun-sickness affected her eyes? She’d not heard of that being a symptom, or a consequence. But the government, pushing for permanent DST, suppressed information, dismissing the bumps as a fairy tale, saying the condition didn’t formerly exist, so how could it now. Doctors who championed the cause were no longer practicing. 

She sprinkled water on the eggplant, as if that would perk up its wrinkly hide. This season their garden hadn’t yielded the coveted tomatoes and she wondered if it would again. Satsumas came like a blessing every third year and this was not the year. When Jay was home, he weeded the plants in the back yard. He cut the grass in the front, trimmed the trees, and painted the exterior of the house for the absentee landlord. When he could no longer see a hand in front of his face, he showered and went to bed, sleeping the sleep of the well-exercised.

If the cloth-topped creature was a child, maybe it would play with her. She reprimanded herself for calling a person an it; that was a government trick. She ripped a page from her receipts book, drew a tic-tac-toe grid on the back and an X in one of the squares. She pushed the page to the far corner of the table, the pen on top. She took up her book and waited. The relentless sun pounded the flimsy roof covering. 

Her head snapped up. The piece of paper had moved. Not wanting to scare them away, she froze. An O wobbled in the center of the grid. She slid her fingers to the edge of the table, pulled the paper and pen toward her, marked another X, shuffled it all back. 

She sipped her water without averting her eyes. They felt heavy and her mind was overwhelmed with snow and ice. In the space of a blink, a ball rolled across the table and into her lap. It shone like a gemstone, though it wasn’t hard or rough to her touch but smooth as silk. She twirled the ball and it changed colors, blue in the shade, pink in the light. 

An infectious giggle rang out. Smiling, she ventured into the sunlight, shaded her eyes with her hand, shouted to the nearest table. “Did you see someone?” The vendor, sitting in a quiet daze, a flask in his hand, glanced her way and said nothing. She retreated. 

Forget them, she thought; her more pressing concern was walking home without long sleeves. Other hawkers were packing up. Facilitators had arrived to break down the stalls. Even if she could convince them to leave hers intact, it was dangerous to wait for sunset alone. She bit into a banana pepper; it tasted of nothing.

She scrutinized the ball. It wasn’t shimmering; it was a dull, ugly purple. Made of rubber, it likely had been rolled and bounced by the wind. And the wobbly O in the center of the tic-tac-toe grid must be a condensation ring from her water bottle. Gloom descended upon her, like a black cloud blocking the sun, though that would’ve made her happy. 

She was tempted to throw the ball, to see what would happen. Perhaps they would jump out from their hiding place to claim it. But she knew she wouldn’t. She’d be reported and the proof would be on someone’s phone. She packed her withered produce into the wagon Jay had freshened with red paint. The vegetables would make a lonely dinner; they wouldn’t keep.

Dust swirled in the intensifying gale. Her sunhat was ripped from her head. The hat ran away, somersaulting like tumbleweed. She dashed through the sun’s destructive rays and, during a lapse in the wind’s fury, pounced. She slapped the hat back on her head, kept her hand atop as the wind picked up again. The sun beat down on the exposed hand. Before she could swap hands or return to her stand, the wind blew off its roof. She stood in the middle of the market square: a target.

She ran to her stall and finished packing. After donning her sun-gloves and glasses, she took up the wagon’s handle. It’d be quicker to go straight across, but she decided to skirt the perimeter, hoping for bits of shade, sporadic relief. She stopped in the shadow of the neighboring stall to secure her possessions. 

“What are you doing?” The man glared at her. His words were slurred and suspicious, as if she were a thief, or a spy. 

“Staying out of the sun.” 

He turned to dismantle the temporary edifice and the shade was gone. He was probably one of those who believed the sun-sickness wasn’t real. Jay must’ve thought that, too, when she was first given her diagnosis. Unspoken words had floated in Jay’s silence, echoing the ones blasted on the government-friendly news programs on his phone. She walked as fast as she could, but each structure fell as she approached, as if a godlike finger had launched a colossal domino line. 

The pavement sizzled upward, waves of heat hitting the backs of her arms, her elbows. Even through her glove, the wagon handle was hot. Her skin wouldn’t erupt into clustered fiery pinpoints until hours later, but she thought she already felt an intense itch on her forearms. She removed her gloves and slathered more sunscreen on her arms and upper chest, knowing the sun would melt it before she could apply more. It was impossible to keep in the race; the sun always won. She tugged the short sleeves of her t-shirt downward, slipped her gloves back on, and resettled her hat. She threw her rucksack on top of the wagon and took the fastest route, across the unshaded concrete.

The sun showed no mercy, beating down and reflecting up. She could last ten minutes without acquiring any bad effects and it took that long to maneuver around the other departing vendors and their makeshift carts. She glimpsed a man putting away a sign touting Creole tomatoes. She longed to stop and ask if he had any to barter, but time was of the essence. The longer she stayed out, the worse it would be and the longer the healing. Once, during her first bewilderment, oozing blisters had materialized; if they reoccurred, the clinic insisted she return for a biopsy. She was determined to not let that happen.

Away from the market, sprawling oak trees lined the sidewalks, but she couldn’t get her wagon over the buckles and slopes created by their snaky roots. She stayed in the street. 

“Hey, chickee,” shouted a voice from the opposite sidewalk. She waved with her free hand and kept walking. Jerry, the neighborhood chatterbox, was ready at any moment to indulge in whatever gossip he could find. He was as harmless as a house spider, but once he entrapped her it’d be hard to get away. “Slow down, chickee, where’s the fire?” Jerry used the endearment, stretching the word to its utmost, on everyone.

She halted as he drew near. “Me. I’m on fire.”

“Sure, sure, I know your deal.” A finger tapping his upper lip, he appraised her. “Your skin’s a little red, but it’s so clear. You got great skin. Come to Molly’s. Have a beer.”

That meant buy him a beer. “I can’t. I made nothing today. Absolutely nothing.” Now go away, she thought.

“That’s okay, chickee. Come anyway, at least it’s cooler inside.”

“Is Max working? You know he doesn’t allow that.”

“C’mon,” The last syllable was stressed as if it were two, the O elongated, the N a mere breath. “Someone’ll buy you a drink.”

Too tired to disagree, she followed Jerry as he swayed across the street. She removed her dark glasses and nodded to the regulars who’d turned at the sun’s brief passage through the opened door. Jerry tucked her wagon in a corner, next to a huge backpack and a child’s bike. The place smelled of mold and mildew; the floors were slick. But it was dim and cool, a balm to her body if not her soul. Her hot skin relaxed.

The patrons returned to their drinks and, behind Max’s back, she slunk to the restroom. She splashed water on her face, gave up trying to see it in the glazed mirror high above the sink, and patted it dry with the bottom of her sweaty shirt. All the paper towels lay trampled on the floor. She yearned for home, the shower Jay had tiled and to nurse her wounds in front of a streaming baseball game.

Jerry spotted her before she could regain her possessions and sneak out. “Hey, chickee, come meet Bruce.” Sitting sideways at the bar, an empty mug in front of him, Jerry tossed a ball back and forth between his cupped hands. As the ball swung under the neon light, its color shifted from blue to pink and back again. 

She grabbed Jerry’s wrist. “Where’d you get that?” She glanced toward her wagon. 

“From chickee, I mean, Bruce.” He nodded to the man sitting next to him. “Chickee got it from a little old lady. Isn’t it beautiful?”

She turned to Bruce. “What did she look like?” The two men, Jerry in his thrift-store gaudiness and Bruce in his old-fashioned three-piece suit, stared at her. She must’ve sounded desperate. “I have a reason for asking.” And that sounded defensive, she thought.

“Well, she was short, shorter than you even. But older.” Bruce spoke as if he were examining each word before letting it leave his mouth. “Much older. Or at least I think so. Hard to tell. Dark complexion, from the sun, or born that way, not sure, hard to tell.”

“Was she wearing a white something or other on her head?”

“Why, yes. Yes, she was. How did you know that?”

She took the ball from Jerry’s stilled hands. It looked exactly like hers. She handed it back and went to the wagon. She rummaged in her bag, in the wagon bed. She strode back to the men. “I had one just like it. It’s gone.” She wondered if that sounded accusatory; maybe it was.

Jerry cozied up to Bruce and whispered in his ear. Bruce signaled to the bartender and cocked his head at her. “You want something?” She wanted the ball, but she knew how unreasonable that would sound, like a pouting child. She felt bereft, as if that same child had lost her favorite stuffed animal.

“No thanks. I got to go.” She couldn’t buy a round and, even if Max would’ve let her, she had no desire to stay until sunset, still several hours away. She turned to leave.

“Hey,” Bruce called to her. She waited impatiently, wishing for a string to pull the words out of his mouth. “You want it?” He bounced the ball toward her—as slow as he talked was as fast as he’d thrown it. She flailed and missed. It rolled under a high-top table and into a corner. “Sorry.” Bruce laughed. He didn’t sound sorry and she wasn’t going to crawl under the table while he watched.

Retrieving her wagon, she glanced toward the corner. No light penetrated it; the ball had become one with the dust. She exited into the hot street and moved slower this time, what did it matter, what did anything matter.

At a white, green-trimmed house, set back from the avenue and its shade trees, she stowed the wagon under the wide front steps and gathered her belongings. At the door to their flat she juggled her bags and fished the key from her pocket. Inside, on the floor of the threshold, lay a crisp linen shirt, its long sleeves splayed like a drunkard.

She pressed the button on the window unit, relished the initial blast of refrigerated air. She clicked on the TV and found the network. When she passed through the front room again, after stripping off her sweaty clothes, she saw the ominous, joking words on the silent screen stating nothing was wrong, but the network didn’t have permission to broadcast the game. The league wanted her to take a five-hour drive, wasting fuel in a car she didn’t own, to watch a game in the flesh. 

She clicked it off. She’d use the electricity to run the washer. So much for anticipating the start of the season. So much for thinking it shouldn’t be this hot in April. The month of hope and expectation had turned into August, the month of monotony and inertness—a month that’d last through eternity, or at least January. She might as well live on Jupiter. 

As she heaped dirty towels into the machine’s running water, her mind flitted from Jupiter to possible life in other parts of the universe to the little brown-faced woman. If any intelligent life arrived one day, by the time they got here, it would be too hot for them. She wondered where the woman was from: the Sahara; Latin America; Treme—the old Treme. The past. 

Slamming down the lid, she remembered a painting of a young woman in a collection on Royal Street, the stark white of the Creole’s off-the-shoulder blouse in sharp contrast to her brown arms. One dark curl peeked out of her vivid-red headdress and a caption explained the law decreeing free women of color wear tignon. Before her sun issues, when she was much younger, she’d resembled the woman of the painting. 

She finished unpacking, upended her rucksack—one last time, she thought. Out bounced a ball. The ball. On the next bounce she corralled it, tensing her fingers, willing it to not disappear. She looked around the room as if searching for the stranger. 

Sitting in front of the disappointing TV, she closed her eyes. So-called stress balls never worked for her, but this firmer ball was comforting, and cool. With her eyes still closed, she rolled the ball over her arms, across her upper chest. With the ball in her hand, she slumbered. When she awoke, unlike after her usual fitful sleep, she felt refreshed. Her skin had calmed. She opened her eyes.

#

“Hey, chickee, hear about our neighbor? No, not him. Wren. Kinda quiet, snobby even, works in the market. Chickee went outside in a tank top and shorts—c’mon, she has that sun thing no one believes in, she used to talk about it enough. Anyway, she went outside, dressed in practically nothing, to the back of the house, where no one could see her. Her boyfriend, you know him, right, chickee? Jay’s his name. I think she changed hers a long time ago to match his. Creepy, huh? He works offshore or something, he’s hardly around, maybe he’s got another girlfriend, I don’t know. Yeah, him, rides his bike all over, nice-looking chickee, older for sure, but tan and fit. Anyway, he found her in the back yard, who knows how long she’d been there, blistered all over, holding that damned ball Bruce gave her. You know Bruce, chickee, he’s the one—”

END

Originally published in Landlocked (University of Kansas), Summer 2021

Teresa Tumminello Brader, a native New Orleanian, gathers inspiration from the city, Lake Pontchartrain, and its denizens. Her books, Letting in Air and Light (2023), a work of hybrid memoir/fiction, and Secret Keepers (2025), a short-story collection, are from Belle Point Press. The former was honored as one of three nominees for the 2025 One Book One New Orleans citywide read and literary outreach. She has a bachelor of arts in English from Marquette University.