Ramona drives into the sun, and when she approaches a hairpin turn in the road, she thinks: I’m dying too; everyone’s dying after all. Maybe her mother is overreacting. But Ramona knows by the sight of her mother that she is sick. Maybe it won’t be fatal, though, maybe she got an STD from that no-good asshole Juan. Who knows? Maybe she should be tested for HIV. But Ramona knows that’s her head talking. In her gut, she knows her mother is very, very sick.
She has a feeling that her mother is leaving her and she can do nothing to stop it. Nothing is a word Ramona rarely uses. She’s always found a way to do something. Even in the worst times of her life, doing nothing was never an option.
The sun feels good on Ramona’s face; it warms her but more than that it gives her energy. She knows she could never live without it. She drives out of town along the winding road to the little adobe house she’s rented. A willow is growing in the roadside ditch. Leafless now, it will soon turn a vibrant red. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk hunts along the acequia, which runs parallel to the road. Generations back, this area was cultivated by Hispanic farmers who used the water from the acequia for irrigation. Now the ditch rarely carries water. The city holds it back for the rich side of town.
Weeks pass and Ramona’s mother does not get better. She gets worse. Ramona decides to move back into the trailer to take care of her.
The first night she sleeps at her mother’s trailer, the old dreams return. She was afraid this would happen, but ignored her fears in the face of her mother’s need.
She dreams of that asshole Juan sucking the life from her mother like a vampire.
Everyone knew Ramona was a dreamer, but she was always too afraid to tell anyone about her premonitions. When she moved out of her mother’s trailer as a teenager, the dreams stopped. Now that she has returned, the dreams have returned too.
She sees red-tailed hawks soaring above the Caja del Rio.
Ramona still needs to find a job, at least part time. So when she sees the Help Wanted sign at Jumbo Wash, she decides to apply.
It’s a busy morning at the Laundromat. All the washers are occupied with the dirty clothes of the neighborhood. The air is thick with the sounds of Spanish and English married out of necessity into Spanglish. As she enters, Ramona notices two women leaning over a newspaper folded on top of a washer. They’re involved in a highly agitated conversation regarding the news.
“That Chavez hombre es loco.” The first woman points to a mug shot of a middle-aged man on the front page of the paper.
“Sí, he thought he could get away with murder. Maybe alla en Mexico but not here en el norte, no way,” the second woman responds.
Ramona wonders if it’s true that it’s harder to get away with murder some places.
“Mira, look at this!” The first woman points to the newspaper. “It says he’s trying to get off because his lawyer says he’s bipolo and he didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Chingado, el Chavez shot his girlfriend in cold blood, sin verguenza.”
“And she was the mother of his son, pobrecita, she didn’t have a chance.”
“Ay, we mujeres don’t ever have a chance. La chota don’t care, especially when it’s a Mexican woman.”
Ramona thinks they are right to feel oppressed. She walks to the back of the Laundromat where the so-called “office” is located. She wants to fill out a job application, but two women block her way in the aisle of washers. Kids are running everywhere and others hang on their mothers’ legs. All eyes watch two other women.
Lola Chavez and Rosa Martinez are fighting over an empty washer. Lola put her hands and her laundry basket on the washer first, but Rosa had been eyeing it. She was wheeling her laundry in one of those wire baskets on wheels when Lola snatched the washer. So Rosa continued wheeling and ran right over Lola’s left foot. The women stand face to face now, and Lola’s foot hurts.
“¡Carajo!” Lola yells. “Are you trying to cripple me?”
Rosa, her dark eyes like poison arrows, looks straight at Lola and laughs. That’s all it takes. Lola’s on Rosa like a hawk on a rabbit. She slaps her hard across the face. She is not a pendeja. She has to fight for what is hers. She grabs Rosa’s long black hair and drags her toward the door.
At that point, Maria Lopez pulls out her cell and dials 911. It takes the cops awhile, and the two women are outside in the parking lot, still fighting and spitting, when the chota get there.
Ramona needs a job, but she decides to look around, find someplace less rowdy. She walks out the door into the parking lot.
“Hey!”
Ramona turns to face the guy with the Guadalupe tattoo who stripped in the Laundromat a couple weeks ago.
He smiles at her. “Why’d you disappear the other night?”
“Disappear? I just did my wash and went home. You look different with your clothes on.” Ramona steps back and eyeballs the guy.
“What’s your name?”
“Ramona. Yours?”
“I’m Tino, as in Valentino.”
Tino is flaco, as Ramona’s mother would say — skinny. She watches him walk toward her and wonders if he does drugs. His long black braid trails him. He sports a thin mustache and a goatee. She might not have recognized him if he hadn’t called out to her. He walks with a slight limp, something she wouldn’t have noticed at the Laundromat, where he just stood in front of his washer and stripped. He wears tight jeans, a black hoodie, and pointed-toe cowboy boots with a high shine.
He steps toward Ramona and extends his hand. “I’m happy to see you again. Can we have lunch?”
Ramona takes a step back. “Not today, gotta get home to my mom, she’s sick.”
“Well, okay, then can I have your phone number?”
“Okay.” Ramona rattles off the digits and Tino enters them into his cell phone.
“Want mine?” he asks.
“Later.” Ramona gets in her car and drives away. En route to her mother’s trailer, Ramona remembers last night’s dream. In it, that slimebag Juan has come back from Mexico. After he was deported, he just spent the night in a motel and the next day walked back across the Arizona border. “Oh shit!” Ramona mutters aloud.
The trailer is warm and smells of beans and tortillas. A note scrawled on a Post-it stuck to the kitchen counter just says, Taking a nap. Mom.
Okay, I’ll be quiet, Ramona thinks as she helps herself to a bowl of beans and pours herself a cup of coffee. Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about Mom. When’s her next doctor’s appointment?
Ramona walks into the living room and checks to see if there’s firewood. She opens the glass doors of the fireplace to build a bed of newspapers and kindling and notices three cigarette butts, no filters, on the bricks of the fireplace floor. My mother doesn’t smoke, she tells herself. She lights the fire and sits quietly as the cedar and piñon warm her.
In a few minutes, Ramona’s mother joins her by the fire. “Feels good, the warmth of the wood.” Her mother sighs.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, Mom. How’re you feeling?”
“Not bad today, just tired, mija. I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“Like, what will happen when I’m gone.” She pulls her chair closer to the fire.
“Don’t think like that, Mom. You aren’t going anyplace, you’re going to get better.” Ramona adds another log to the fire.