The Shrine at Altamira

by John L'Heureux

  In other ways, of course, she was not old-fashioned. She liked to dance and she liked men. Her ankles were getting thick, and her waist too, but her breasts were still fine and she was still young enough and good-looking enough to go dancing Saturdays and pick up her share of men. She could have another husband anytime she wanted one, but who would want one? Men were good for only one thing, and that was the truth. She thought of her Paco and how proud he was of his big cosa, down to his knees almost. It was the only thing about him that she missed.

  She blessed herself; she was a weak woman. She would rather die than have Maria know some of the thoughts she had, let alone the things she did on those Saturday nights. She should make a pilgrimage, filthy sinner that she was, no better than a whore. Well, a little better. A lot. She should go back to the shrine at Altamira.

  She had gone there once, right after the fire, and in many ways she dated the beginning of her life from that time. Paco had died in the fire—half the trailer camp had died—but she and Maria had survived. For no reason. It was a miracle. She had thanked the Virgin, leaving at the shrine a little silver crucifix she’d worn as a necklace, and then she set about building herself a new life.

  Her picture had been on the television: her dress torn, the baby in her arms, she stood dazed and beautiful among the ashes of the trailer camp. When she returned from Altamira and went to City Hall for aid, she found a packet of letters from people who had seen her on TV. There were offers of money and blankets and—best of all—the offer of a job with Your Third Hand Housecleaners. She took the job at once, and all the overtime she could get. In a year she left the agency and went to work for herself.

  She had done well. She had a big Chevy, a junker, that she drove back and forth to work, and she had a nice little house, cement blocks painted a good grayish-purple color, with petunias in the front yard and an old tree in the back, and a low fence that kept dogs from running through her flowers. The neighborhood was bad, people said, but it seemed okay to her. There were a lot of drunks around, and those teenage kids in the summer, but you could expect drunks and wild kids anywhere, and if drugs were sold on her street, she didn’t know about it. So she figured she had done well for herself. And for Maria.

  Maria had her own room and big ideas, too big maybe, but she was going to get out of here and go to college and have a better life. Maria was different from her; she wanted other things, Anglo things, and she was afraid of nothing.

  For Ana Luisa the thought of going away to college—just being with all those rich kids and the way they did things always right and never having fun—it was enough to make her thankful that she herself was just a cleaning woman. She scrubbed toilets and tiles and vacuumed thick rugs in their houses, but she did not have to be with them or live like them and she thanked God for that, and the Virgin. She was lucky to be just herself.

  In this way, too, she was old-fashioned: she knew it was the Virgin who was responsible for her good luck. She had always been lucky. And pretty too. In her living room, and never mind what Maria said about it, she kept a little shrine to the Virgin. Her statue stood in a plaster grotto made to look like stone, with a sort of altar in front of her where Ana Luisa placed a vigil candle at special times, and around the sides were family pictures and some postcards and three mementos Ana Luisa never talked about: a shell and two small stones.

  She smiled to herself as she pulled into the circular drive at the Jacobsons’. When Maria graduated in June, they would go back to Altamira, and together they would thank the Virgin for their good luck.

  She parked the car and sat for a moment, gathering her strength for the morning ahead. Three toilets, two bedrooms, the family room, the kitchen floor and counters, a little dusting, and she would be done. The house was new. If Mrs. Jacobson left her alone, she’d be out of there by eleven. Then she could go to the shopping mall and get something nice, something pretty, for Maria.

  Maria had followed directions with great care, and there was no doubt about it, she was pregnant. She stood, staring at the tiny dish as the stuff in it turned from white to pink, and for just a second she felt thrilled, powerful. She was going to be a mother, she was going to give birth to a son. She knew it was a boy. She could feel it. But a second later her excitement gave way to something else, a vague dread, a kind of guiltiness. She should have an abortion; that’s what her friends would do. They’d get rid of the baby, and then cry about it, and after a while they’d joke about it in the girls’ room, and pretty soon it would all be over. They’d go on to college and never think of it again. But her mother would kill her if she had an abortion. And besides, who cared what her friends thought? They weren’t her. They weren’t living her life. She was. And she’d live it her way.

  The next day, in English class, she tried to call back those first feelings of excitement and power, but they escaped her now. Nonetheless, she told herself, she was glad she was having a baby. She would marry Russell. She would be a mother. A mom.

  “Maria?” the teacher said.

  Maria looked up and saw that the other kids were all staring at her. This was the second time her name had been called, and everybody was ready for the big laugh.

  “I’m sorry,” Maria said, “I wasn’t listening.”

  The teacher, for once, had nothing sarcastic to say. He raised his hand to his forehead as if he had a headache, and then he lowered it, saying softly, “What is the use? Why even bother?”

  Maria ignored him. She wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of humiliation ever again. She was choosing her own life. She was choosing what she wanted.

  It was an hour since Maria had kissed Russell goodbye. She aired her room as soon as he left, but it still smelled of lovemaking, and so she lit an incense candle they kept for the living room shrine, and set the candle on her bureau. She had not told Russell about the baby. But she would have to tell her mother. Now.

  Maria showered and put on a Sunday dress—a Mexican blouse with ruffles and a full skirt—and though she usually wore lipstick, she made sure there was no trace of it on her mouth this afternoon. She examined herself in the mirror, trying to see what her mother would see. She fluffed her hair out in curls. “God,” she said, but left it that way. Her mother would like it.

  “I’m getting married,” she said into the mirror. “I’m pregnant.” She shook her head.

  Pinned to the wall above her bureau were snapshots of girls in her class, and a school pennant, and the joke glasses she had hung there on the night of the Halloween Hop. The glasses had a false nose attached, and wild furry eyebrows, and for no reason at all she put them on and looked into the mirror. “I’m getting married,” she said. “I’m pregnant.” She reached behind her ears and made the glasses waggle up and down. She felt a queasiness in her stomach, a momentary nausea spasm, and then everything was fine again. “I’m very happy,” she said.

  She was still standing at the mirror when she heard the car pull up in front of the house. She took off the glasses. She went to the living room and looked around quickly to make sure it was tidy. She sniffed at the doorway to her bedroom. The air seemed all right now—that sourish smell of sex was gone—and so she brought the incense candle into the living room and set it down before the shrine.

  She looked out the window. Her mother was getting out of the car, gathering up her string bag and a sack of groceries, and God knows what else. Why was she so slow? Maria wanted it all to be over, the shouting and the fighting and the tearful reconciliation, the whole ethnic mess.

  “Mama,” she said, holding open the door for her mother.

  “Qué bonita,” Ana Luisa said, “Qué adorable te ves,” but she saw Maria’s look and said, “Okay, no Spanish, querida, not tonight. I’ve got the nicest chicken for our dinner. Plump, but not a lot of fat. Like me. Take this, Maria,” and she put the grocery bag into Maria’s arms. She turned to make the sign of the cross before the shrine, and at once she saw the burning candle.

  “What is this?” she sai
d. She stepped over to the kitchen door. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing’s happened,” Maria said. She continued to take things from the bag and put them in the cupboard. “I just thought you’d like to see the candle lit in front of the shrine.”

  Ana Luisa said nothing.

  Maria folded the bag and stooped to put it in the cabinet under the sink. She was determined to control this situation, so she stood up slowly and turned toward her mother with a defiant look.

  “What, Maria?” Ana Luisa whispered, taking Maria by surprise.

  Her mother was helpless, Maria saw. Her mother was completely at her mercy. At once all the hardness in Maria melted and she threw herself into Ana Luisa’s arms, sobbing.

  Ana Luisa held her close. She knew. Maria was pregnant.

  “Oh, Mama, I’m so scared.”

  “It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  They held each other, hard. After a moment, Maria pulled away from her and said, “I’m going to get married.”

  Ana Luisa nodded, but she said, “No, Maria. No, querida”

  “Sí, Mama,” Maria said. And then she edged past her and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Ana Luisa stood in the doorway, her face hard, expressionless. The baby would have to go, that much was certain. Maria had her whole life ahead of her, and she would not let her throw it away because of one mistake. She heard Maria throw up, she heard the toilet flush, but she was not listening. She was thinking, Here it is, my life all over again. A little fun, a dance maybe, kissing in the car, his hand on your breasts or the inside of your thigh, a few minutes letting him have his way, and then you’re pregnant and married and your life is over. After that, it’s all fighting and drunkenness, with a few sweaty nights of love. That’s it. You spend the next forty years scrubbing gringo toilets so your daughter can have a better life. You pretend you don’t even speak English, you put up with their shit and their shitty wages and their contempt, and what’s it all for?

  Sometimes she felt she could curse God.

  Instead, she poured herself a tumbler of red wine and stood at the sink drinking it. She heard Maria go to her bedroom and shut the door behind her and she thought of going in after her and telling her a thing or two. Laying down the law. As long as you are in my house, you’ll do as I say. You’re not getting married, niña, and you’re not going to have that baby. Who is the father anyway? I don’t know him. No boys ever come here. Then a thought struck her like a fist at her heart. Maybe Maria didn’t know who the father was. Her daughter playing the whore? She pressed her hand against her breast and drained the glass of wine.

  She must be very calm. She must be reasonable. She poured herself another tumbler of wine. No screaming and swearing. No wild threats. No giving in to the temptation to beat her senseless, the little fool, the little whore. Whore of a whore, it was always the same.

  When she’d drained half the tumbler, Ana Luisa pulled herself up straight and, ready for business, went over to the shrine and knelt down, heavily. She said an Ave kneeling upright and had started in on a second one, when suddenly it all seemed hopeless, and she sat back on her heels and groaned. She looked up into the pink face of the Virgin and said, “Help me.” She let her bosom slump forward comfortably. “It’s my Maria,” she said. “Socórrame.”

  She knelt there for quite a while, her heels grinding into her buttocks and her knees killing her, while she let her mind wander back to Paco, how handsome he was when they first met, and how they had made love in the bushes and in his mother’s house—that terrible old bruja—and once even in broad daylight down by the railroad tracks. A train had gone by, but they’d kept right on and Paco never missed a stroke. When you were young … She made the sign of the cross and asked the Virgin to forgive her, she was such a whore, and help her daughter Maria because it was not too late yet. Maybe she could have a miscarriage. Maybe she could be crossing the street and get hit by a truck, only gently, gently, so that she wouldn’t have even a bad bruise, but she would lose the baby. These things happened sometimes. Was it too much to ask?

  She continued to kneel, praying, and then her mind wandered again, and she found herself thinking that the greatest miracle would be if Maria wasn’t pregnant at all. She tried to remember what Maria had said. She had said she was scared. She had said she was getting married. But she hadn’t said she was pregnant, had she? Ana Luisa felt her heart lift for a moment. Could it be? Another miracle? Girls knew things these days. It wasn’t like in her day, when all you had were those rubber safeties that no real man would even buy. Maybe marriage was just a crazy idea Maria had picked up after she did badly in those college exams. “Ay, Virgen Santísima …” she began, and almost at once she was on her feet and tapping at Maria’s door.

  “Querida?” she said. “It’s Mama.”

  Maria was lying on her bed, but she sat up as her mother opened the door and came in. She got up and stood on the far side of the bed next to the bureau.

  “It’s Mamacita,” Ana Luisa said. She could see Maria was expecting the worst. “No fights, querida, no screaming or anything. Listen, how low I’m keeping my voice. You can’t even hear me. Sí?”

  “I’m getting married,” Maria said.

  “Sí, sí, my little one, but not now. Later, when you’re older and you’ve graduated from high school, and maybe college, and you meet some nice boy, one of our own kind but with a good job and very handsome and—”

  “I’m pregnant,” Maria said.

  Ana Luisa’s heart stopped. Her breath stopped. She expected any minute to drop dead.

  She watched as Maria turned away from her to the bureau and picked up those glasses with the false nose and the fuzzy eyebrows. She watched, stupid, as Maria put them on and looked at herself in the mirror and then turned back to her and said again, “I’m pregnant. I’m getting married.”

  She took a step toward Maria and, numb with anger, she felt her hand rise from her side and crack down hard against the girl’s face, catching her on the left cheek and sending the glasses spinning into the air and across the room. It happened so quickly that neither of them moved. Maria stood there—her face raised to her mother’s hand, and the hand suspended in the air—as if what had just been done could never be undone, and they would hold these positions for all eternity.

  It was Ana Luisa who cried out, a sharp piercing wail, half fury and half despair, as she grabbed Maria’s shoulders and shook her and shook her. “Puta! Puta!” she screamed as Maria fought against her, and suddenly she had Maria by the hair and was pushing her and then dragging her from the bedroom to the living room, where she threw her to her knees before the shrine. Ana Luisa’s screaming gave way to tears finally and she looked around, confused, and then fell to her knees beside her sobbing daughter. “Dear Virgin in heaven,” she said, “forgive me,” and she threw her arms around Maria and wept.

  Maria collapsed against her, grateful, because she knew how these things went. The scene was nearly done, and in a while they could be reconciled, and in the end, after all the screaming and crying and making up, nothing at all would be changed.

  “It was pure ethnic,” Maria said, “you should have seen it. She’d had some wine, of course, to get her energy up, and she was screaming ‘Whore’ at me, and slapping me around, and then she dragged me out to the shrine—can you believe it?—she dragged me, like by the hair, like this was some kind of movie or something? Then she collapsed and started hugging me, and saying, ‘Holy Virgin, forgive me,’ and stuff like that, because she was getting tired, I suppose, and she figured she’d better make up with me while she still had the strength left to do it. God, that woman!”

  Russell listened and said nothing. He had picked Maria up after work and they’d driven to San Gregorio Beach, where they were parked now, sitting in the car, facing out over the ocean. Rain beat hard against the windshield, making it impossible for them to see, but they could hear the crash of the waves below them. The place seemed right fo
r their mood. They huddled together against all the noise.

  “It was an incredible scene,” Maria said. “Pure ethnic.”

  “She loves you, I guess.”

  “Well, of course she loves me. But what a way to show it. What a way to, you know, carry on. Other families don’t live like that. It’s something in their culture, Mexicans; it makes me ashamed to be one. They have to scream and yell about everything. They’re insane. They’re simply insane. I wish I had blue eyes, like yours.”

  He moved his hand higher and could feel the swell of her breast. He touched it gently with one finger, caressing it. He was not aroused. He was hollowed out, empty of everything except this ache, this need for her. To be with her. To hold her.

  “If we have a baby, I hope he has your eyes.”

  “We won’t have a baby.”

  “Everybody has babies,” she said.

  He felt a knot tighten in his stomach, or maybe it was in his heart.

  “What?” she said. “Don’t you want babies at all?”

  “I want you,” he said, pulling her close, holding her so hard that she could barely breathe. “I don’t want anything or anybody else. Just you.” He pressed his mouth down upon hers, his teeth cutting into her lip, her tongue, and he seemed to be gasping for air, as if he could draw her breath into his lungs and thus possess her. She shifted her body so that they could make love, and she reached down to touch him. But he brushed her hand away. It was not sex he was after. It was something else, beyond sex.

  “What?” she said, whispering. “Russell, what?”