She gave them each an apple and took them all into the bedroom. If they were very good, she promised, if they sat quietly on the bed and said their beads to themselves, later they would all go over to Mrs. Brewster’s to watch the television.
She had just locked the bedroom door when she heard Juanita’s quick, light step on the porch and the sound of laughter. She took the key out of the lock and put her eye to the keyhole. Juanita was coming in the front door with the stranger, looking flushed and restless.
“Well, sit down,” she said. “Take a look around. Some dump, eh?”
“It’s different.”
“I’ll say it’s different. Don’t touch anything. She’ll throw a fit.”
“Where is your mother?”
Juanita raised her eyebrows, the corners of her mouth, and her shoulders in an elaborate combination of shrug and grimace. “How should I know? Maybe she dragged the kids over to church again.”
“That’s too bad.”
“So what’s too bad about it?”
“I was hoping to meet them.” Fielding made his tone casual, as if he were expressing a polite desire instead of a deadly serious purpose. “I like children. I only had one of my own, a girl. She’s about your age now.”
“Yeah? How old do you think I am?”
“If you hadn’t told me about the six children, I’d say about twenty.”
“Sure,” Juanita said. “I bet.”
“I mean it. That goo you put on your eyes makes you look older, though. You should stop using it.”
“It enhances them.”
“They don’t need enhancing.”
“You can sure throw the bull around.” But she began rubbing her eyelids with her two forefingers, as if she had more respect for his opinion than she cared to admit. “Is she pretty? Your kid, I mean.”
“She was. I haven’t seen her for a long time.”
“How come you haven’t seen her for a long time if you like children so much?”
It was a question with a hundred answers. He picked a couple at random. “I’ve been moving around. I’ve got itchy feet.”
“So’ve I. Only I can’t do much about it, saddled with six kids and an old lady that watches me like I got two heads.” She flung herself almost violently on the couch, rolled over, and stared up at the ceiling. “Sometimes I wish a big wind would come along and blow this house away and me in it. I wouldn’t care where I blew to. Even a foreign country would be O.K.”
From the bedroom came the sudden, sharp cry of a child, followed immediately by a noisy babble of voices, as if that first single cry had been the signal for a whole chorus to begin.
Juanita glanced toward the door, looking angry but not surprised. “So she’s in there spying on me again. I should’ve guessed.”
The noise from the bedroom had increased to a roar. Fielding could scarcely hear his own voice above it. “We’d better leave. I don’t want to get mixed up in another brawl.”
“I haven’t changed my clothes.”
“You look fine. Come on, let’s go. I need a drink.”
“You can wait.”
“For Pete’s sake, someone might call the police like last time. Two hundred bucks that cost me.”
“I don’t like being spied on.”
She jumped off the couch and moved swiftly toward the bedroom, yanking a large crucifix off the wall as she passed.
“What are you doing in there?” She banged on the door with the crucifix. “Open this up, you hear me? Open it up!”
There was a sudden silence. Then one of the children began to wail, and another answered in a scared voice, “Grandma won’t let us.”
Finally Mrs. Rosario herself spoke. “The door will be opened when the gentleman leaves.”
“It’ll be opened now.”
“When the gentleman leaves, not before. I will not allow the children to see their mother consorting with a strange man while her husband is away.”
“Listen to me, you old spook!” Juanita screamed. “You know what I got here in my hand? I got Jesus Christ himself. And you know what I’m going to do with him? I’m going to pound him against this door—”
“You will not blaspheme in my house.”
“—and pound him and pound him, until there’s nothing left of him or it. Hear that, you witch? For once, Jesus is going to do me a good turn. He’s going to break down this door.”
“If there is any violence, I will take steps.”
“He’s on my side for a change, see? It’s him and me, not you.” She let out a brief, excited laugh. “Come on, Jesus baby, you’re on my side.”
She began striking the door with the crucifix, as rhythmically as a skilled carpenter driving nails. Fielding sat, his face frozen in a grimace of pain, listening to the sound of splintering wood and sobbing children. Suddenly the crucifix broke at the top, and the metal head flew through the air, narrowly missing Fielding’s, and ricocheted off a table onto the floor.
The same blow that broke the crucifix had shattered one of the panels in the door, so that Mrs. Rosario could see what had happened. The door opened then, and the children scrambled out like cattle from a boxcar, confused and terrified.
With a cry of rage Mrs. Rosario darted across the room and picked up the head of Jesus.
“That’ll teach you to spy on me,” Juanita said triumphantly. “Next time it’ll be more than Jesus; it’ll be every lousy piece of junk in the house.”
“Wicked girl. Blasphemer.”
“I don’t like being spied on. I don’t like doors locked against me.”
Three of the children had run directly out the front door. To the others, one hidden behind the couch and two clinging to Juanita’s skirt, Mrs. Rosario said in a trembling voice, “Come. We must kneel together and ask forgiveness for your mother’s sin.”
“Pray for yourself, you old spook. You need it as bad as anybody.”
“Come, children. To keep your mother’s soul from the torments of eternal hell...”
“Leave my kids alone. If they don’t want to pray, they don’t have to.”
“Marybeth, Paul, Rita...”
None of the children moved or uttered a sound. They seemed suspended in midair like aerialists aware of an imminent fall and not sure which side would be safer to fall on — God and Grandma’s, or Juanita’s. It was the youngest, Paul, who decided first. He pressed his dark, moist face against Juanita’s thigh and began to wail again.
“Stop slobbering,” Juanita said, and gave him a casual push in Fielding’s direction.
Fielding found himself in the position of a spectator at a ball game who sees the ball suddenly coming off the field in his direction and has no choice but to catch it. He picked the child up and carried him into the bedroom to get him away from the screaming women.
“You’ll go to hell, you wicked girl.”
“That’s O.K. by me. I got relatives there.”
“Don’t you dare speak his name. He is not in hell. The priest says by this time he is with the angels.”
“Well, if he can get to be with the angels, so can I.”
“‘Hi diddle diddle,’” Fielding whispered in the boy’s ear. “‘The cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.’ Did you ever see a cow jump over the moon?”
The boy’s black eyes looked grave, as if this were a very important question that deserved something better than a snap answer. “I saw a cow once.”
“Jumping over the moon?”
“No, he was giving milk. Grandma took us to see a big ranch, and there was cows giving milk. Grandma says cows work hard to give milk, so I mustn’t spill mine on the table.”