“I’m not connected with the Department of Health,” Pinata said. “I’m looking for a man who may be calling himself Foster.”
“Calling himself? What is this business, calling himself?”
“Your daughter knows him as Foster, let’s put it that way.”
Mrs. Rosario took a tuck in her mouth, like a sailor reefing a mainsail at the approach of a storm. “My daughter, Juanita, lives down south.”
“But she’s here now for a visit, isn’t she?”
“Whose concern is it if she comes here for a visit? She has done no harm. I keep a sharp eye on her, she stays out of trouble. Who are you anyway to come asking questions about my Juanita?”
“My name is Stevens Pinata.”
“So? What does that tell me? Nothing. It tells me nothing. I don’t care about names, only people.”
“I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Rosario. My job right now is to keep track of Foster.”
The woman clapped one hand to her left breast as if something had suddenly broken under her dress, a heart or perhaps merely the strap of a slip. “He’s a bad man, is that what you’re saying? He’s going to cause trouble for my Juanita?”
“I don’t think he’s a bad man. I can’t guarantee there won’t be trouble, though. He can be a little impulsive at times. Did he come here with your daughter, Mrs. Rosario?”
“Yes.”
“And they went off together?”
“Yes. Half an hour ago.”
A thin, red-cheeked girl about ten came out on the porch of the house next door and started rotating a hula hoop around her hips and chewing a wad of gum in matching rhythm. She appeared to be completely oblivious to what was taking place on the adjoining porch, but Mrs. Rosario said in a hurried whisper, “We can’t talk out here. That Querida Lopez, she hears everything and tells more.”
Still not looking in their direction, Querida announced to the world in a loud, bright voice, “I am going to the hospital. None of you can come and see me either, because I’ve got spots on my lungs. I don’t care. I don’t like any of you anyway. I’m going to the hospital like Grandpa and have lots of toys to play with and ice cream to eat, and I don’t have to do any more dishes forever and ever. And don’t any of you come and see me, because you can’t, ha ha.”
“Querida Lopez,” Mrs. Rosario said sharply, “is this true?”
The only sign that the girl had heard was the increased speed of the hula hoop.
Mrs. Rosario’s dark skin had taken on a yellowish tinge, and when she stepped back into her front room, it was as if Querida had pushed her in the stomach. “The girl lies sometimes. Perhaps it isn’t true. If she is so sick as to go to a hospital, how could she be out playing like this? She coughs, yes, but all children cough. And you see for yourself what a fine, healthy color she has in her cheeks.”
Pinata thought that the color might be caused by fever rather than health, but he didn’t say so. He followed Mrs. Rosario into the house. Even after he closed the door behind him, he could hear Querida’s rhythmic chanting: “Going to the hospital — I don’t care. Can’t come and see me — I don’t care. Going in an ambulance...”
The rays of sun coming in through the lace curtains scarcely lightened the gloom of the small square parlor. All four walls were covered with religious ornaments and pictures, crucifixes and rosaries, Madonna’s with and without child, heads of Christ, a little shrine presided over by the Holy Mother, haloed angels and blessed virgins. Many of these objects, which were intended to give hope and comfort to the living, had the effect of glorifying death while at the same time making it seem repulsive.
In this room, or another one just like it, Juanita had grown up, and this first glimpse of it did more to explain her to Pinata than all the words Alston had used. Here she had spent her childhood, surrounded by constant reminders that life was cruel and short, and the gates to heaven bristled with thorns, nails, and barbed wire. She must have looked a thousand times at the haloed mothers with their plump little babies, and unconsciously or deliberately, she had chosen this role for herself because it represented aliveness and creativity as well as sanctity.
Mrs. Rosario crossed herself in front of the little shrine and asked the Holy Mother for assurance that Querida Lopez, with her fine, healthy color, was lying. Then she tucked her thin body neatly into a chair, taking up as little space as possible because in this house there was hardly any room left for the living.
“Sit down,” she said with a stiff nod. “I don’t expect strangers to come into my house asking personal questions, but now you are here, it is only polite to ask you to sit down.”
“Thanks.”
The chairs all looked uncomfortable, as if they had been selected to discourage people from sitting. Pinata chose a small, wooden-backed, petit-point couch, which gave off a faint odor of cleaning fluid. From the couch he could look directly into what appeared to be Mrs. Rosario’s bedroom. Here, too, the walls were crowded with religious paintings and ornaments, and on the night-stand beside the big carved double bed a candle was burning in front of the photograph of a smiling young man. Obviously, the young man had died, and the candle was burning for his soul. He wondered whether the young man had been Juanita’s father and how many candles ago he had died.
Mrs. Rosario saw him staring at the photograph and immediately got up and crossed the room. “You must excuse me. It is not polite to display the sleeping quarters to strangers.”
She pulled the bedroom door shut, and Pinata could see at once why she had left it open in the first place. The door looked as if it had been attacked by someone with a hammer. The wood was gouged and splintered, and one whole panel was missing. Through the jagged aperture, the young man continued to smile at Pinata. The flickering light of the candle made his face appear very lively; the eyes twinkled, the cheek muscles moved, the lips expanded and contracted, the black curls stirred in the wind behind the broken door.
“One of the children did it,” Mrs. Rosario explained in a quiet voice. “I don’t know which one. I was at the grocery store when it happened. I suspect Pedro, being the oldest. He’s eleven, a boy, but the devil gets into him sometimes, and he plays rough.”
Very rough, indeed, Pinata thought. And playing isn’t quite the word.
“Pedro’s down at the lumber mill now, seeing about a new door. For punishment, I made him take the other children with him. Then he’s got to paint and hang the new door by himself. I’m a poor woman. I can’t afford painters and carpenters with such prices they charge.”
It was obvious to Pinata that she wasn’t rich. But he could see no signs in the house of extreme poverty, and the religious items alone had cost quite a bit of money. Mrs. Rosario’s former employer on the ranch must have been generous in his will, or else she earned extra money doing odd jobs.
He glanced at the door again. Some of the hammer marks were at the very top; if an eleven-year-old boy did the damage, he must be a giant for his age. And what would be his motive for such an act? Revenge? Destruction for its own sake? Or maybe, Pinata thought, the boy had been trying to break down a door locked against him.
It didn’t occur to him that Mrs. Rosario was lying...
She’d seen them coming up Granada Street, Juanita in her green uniform and an older man. Mrs. Rosario didn’t recognize the man, but the two of them were laughing and talking, and that was enough: they were up to no good.
She called the children in from the backyard. They were old enough now to notice things, to wonder, yes, and to talk, too. Pedro had the eyes and ears of a fox and a mouth like a hippopotamus. Even in church he talked out loud sometimes and had to be punished afterward with adhesive tape.