“Juanita might be there. And the child.”
A spasm of pain twisted her mouth, but she said, “It may be a necessary part of my growing up, to meet them both.”
19
Memories — how she cried before you were born, day in, day out, until I wished there were a way of using all those tears to irrigate the dry, dusty rangeland...
She had taken the children to the Brewsters’ house and left them without explanation, and Mr. Brewster, who was crippled and liked to have company while he watched television, had demanded none. On her return trip she avoided the lighted streets, using shortcuts across backyards and driveways, hunched under her umbrella like a gnome on night business. She was not afraid, either of the dark or its contents. She knew most of the people in the neighborhood stood in awe of her because of the candles she burned and the number of times she went to church.
The thin walls of poverty hold few secrets. Even before she reached the porch, she could hear Juanita slamming around inside the house as if she were looking for something. Mrs. Rosario shook the water off her umbrella and removed her dripping coat, thinking, Maybe she’s got it in her head that I am spying on her again, and she is looking for me all over the house, even in places I couldn’t possibly be if I were a midget. I must hurry...
But she couldn’t hurry. Weariness dragged at her legs and arms, and ever since the scene with Juanita in the afternoon, there’d been a sickness in her stomach that didn’t get worse but wouldn’t go away. When she’d fed the children their supper, she had eaten nothing, just sipped a little lemon and anise tea.
She let herself quietly into the house and went to the bedroom to hang up her coat. With Pedro’s help she had taken the broken door off its hinges and carried it out to the backyard, where it would lie, with other damaged pieces of her life, to warp in the rain and bleach in the sun. Next week she and Pedro would go to the junkyard and hunt for another door until they found one almost the right size. They would fix it up with sandpaper and a little paint...
“Next week,” she said aloud, as if making a promise of improvement to someone who’d accused her of being slovenly. But the thought of the long trip to the junkyard, the grating of sandpaper, the smell of paint, increased her nausea. “Or the week after, when I am feeling stronger.”
Even without the door, the bedroom was her sanctuary, the only place where she could be alone with her grief and guilt. The candle in front of Camilla’s picture had burned low. She put a fresh one in its place and lit it, addressing the dead man in the language they had used as children.
“I am sorry, Carlos, little brother. I yearned to see justice done, out in the open, but I had my Juanita to think of. Just that very week you came here, she had been arrested again, and I knew wherever she went in this town from then on, she’d be watched; they’d never let her alone — the police, the Probation Department, and the Clinic. I had to get her away where she could start over and live in peace. I am a woman, a mother. No one else would look after my Juanita, who was cursed at birth by the evil eye of the curandera masquerading as a nurse at the hospital. Not a penny did I touch for myself, Carlos.”
Every night she explained to Carlos what had happened, and every night his static smile seemed to indicate disbelief, and she was forced to go on, to convince him she had meant no wrong.
“I know you did not kill yourself, little brother. When you came to see me that night, I heard you telephoning the woman, telling her to meet you. I heard you ask for money, and I knew this was a bad thing, asking money from rich people; better to beg from the poor. I was afraid for you, Carlos. You acted so queer, and you would tell me nothing, only to be quiet and to pray for your soul.
“When the time came that you were to meet her, I went down to the jungle by the railroad tracks. I lost my way. I couldn’t find you at first. But then I saw a car, a big new car, and I knew it must be hers. A moment later she came out from the bushes and began running towards the car, very fast, as if she was trying to escape. When I reached the bushes, you were lying there dead with a knife in you, and I knew she had put it there. I knelt over you and begged you to be alive again, Carlos, but you would not hear me. I went home and lit a candle for you. It is still burning, God rest your soul.”
She remembered kneeling in the dark in front of the little shrine, praying for guidance. She couldn’t confide in Juanita or Mrs. Brewster, because neither of them could be trusted with a secret, and she couldn’t call in the police, who were Juanita’s enemies and hence her own. They might even suspect she was lying about the woman in the green car in order to protect Juanita.
She’d prayed, and as she prayed, one thought grew in her mind and expanded until it pushed aside all others: Juanita and her unborn child must be taken care of, and there was no one else to do it but herself. She’d called the woman on the telephone, knowing only her name and the shape of her shadow and the color of her car...
“It is a bad and dangerous thing, Carlos, asking money from the rich, and I was afraid for my life knowing what she’d done to you. But she was more afraid because she had more to lose than I. I did not tell her my name or where I lived, only what I had come across in the bushes and her running away to the car. I said I wanted no trouble, I was a poor woman, but I would never seek money for myself, only for my daughter, Juanita, with her unborn child that had no father. She asked me whether I’d told anyone else about you, Carlos, and I said no, with truth. Then she said if I gave her my telephone number, she would call me back; there was someone she had to consult. When she called back a little later, she told me she wanted to take care of my daughter and her child. She didn’t even mention you, Carlos, or argue about the money, or accuse me of blackmail. Just ‘I would like to take care of your daughter and her child.’ She gave me the address of an office I was to go to the next day at 12:30. When I went in, I thought at first it was a trap for me — she wasn’t there, only a tall blond man, and then later the lawyer. No one talked about you, no one spoke your name, Carlos. It was as if you had never lived...”
She turned away from the picture with a groan as another spasm of nausea seized her stomach. The lemon and anise tea had failed to ease her, although it was made from a recipe handed down by her grandmother and had never failed in the past. Clutching her stomach with both hands, she hurried out to the kitchen, with the idea of trying some of the medicine the school doctor had sent home to cure Rita’s boils. The medicine had not been opened; Mrs. Rosario was treating the boils herself with a poultice of ivy leaves and salt pork.
She was so intent on her errand, and her pain, that she didn’t notice Juanita standing at the stove until she spoke. “Well, are you all through talking to yourself?”
“I was not...”
“I got ears. I heard you mumbling and moaning in there like a crazy woman.”
Mrs. Rosario sat down, hunched over the kitchen table. In spite of the pain crawling around inside her like a live thing with cruel legs, merciless arms, she knew she must talk to Juanita now. Mr. Harker had warned her; he’d been very angry that she had permitted Juanita to come back to town.
The room felt hot and airless. Juanita had turned the oven up high to cook herself some supper, and she hadn’t opened the window as she was supposed to. Mrs. Rosario dragged herself over to the window and opened it, gasping in the cold fresh air.
“Where are my kids?” Juanita said. “What have you done with them?”
“They’re at the Brewsters’.”
“Why aren’t they home in bed?”