And now here she stands in the middle of the night, wide awake in Josefina Reyes’ bright kitchen. Zoe let into the home of a stranger, a stranger’s child in her care—the child of a woman whose life Zoe can’t let herself feel. She picks up the list, to see what is next: all these enormous small tasks.
Number two on the list: iron the yellow dress Luz will wear to Mass. There it is, hanging on the back door of the kitchen, waiting. Only Zoe doesn’t know the first thing about ironing. Michael irons. He has been ironing since he was twelve. He irons. She watches. It charms her. Though Michael has never ironed a little girl’s dress. There is no little dress in their Cold Spring house. No little girl. No Michael. No her. Okay, thinks Zoe, this is bad. If she lets herself go there, she will never sleep at all.
At this point if she were home, she would go straight to the shower. In the first days when Michael left she would shower two or sometimes three times a day, and one awful Sunday she stopped counting after six. But the campground where she has been for nearly a week has no showers, only a couple of outdoor faucets with long lines of strangers, the disarmingly frank talk of half-naked climbers. She drives to the faucets at night and washes in the dark when she is certain to be alone. Several times on the road, in various motel shower stalls, Michael’s heartbeat had come to her, the powerful thrum of it insisting itself through her own. Now she waits for it to come back, but it has not found her. Not in the campgrounds. She waits, too, for his touch, some living sense of him. She can hardly feel herself, her body halved without the hands that have touched it into pleasure. Her skin seems papery even under water. Her nipples harden obediently but the small softness of her breasts, the forthright shoulders feel as if they belong to a strange other. The answering voice of herself is gone, her body a thing apart. Even the soft zones of the flesh, her inner thighs, the sweet envelope of her vulva, the tensile petals of her vagina have become like little independent isles. Recognizable, familiar beauties of her woman-ness, distant and stilled.
Zoe puts her empty mug in the sink, rinses it. The yellow dress can wait until morning. She takes one final look around the kitchen, then reaches to turn off the lamp. Nothing, she thinks, I would change nothing in this room. I would not even sand down the walls.
Three hours later, Zoe is awakened by Luz looming over her, a curtain of thick black hair, solemn black eyes. Zoe’s heart races ahead. She picks up her watch from the floor beside Luz’s bare brown foot. It is only 6:30. Luz steps back.
“Do you remember why I’m here?” Zoe asks, undoing the sheet and struggling to sit up.
“Tell me,” says Luz.
“Because your mother is in the hospital.”
“Let’s call her right now.”
“It’s too early. We’ll do it as soon as you get home from school.” Breakfast, eight o’clock Mass, then Luz goes on the nine o’clock summer school bus. She will return home at two-forty-five, Zoe thinks.
Luz regards her silently, a staring presence in pale blue summer pajamas. “Why else?” Luz asks hoarsely.
“Why else what?” Zoe replies.
“. . . are you here?”
“I don’t know.” Zoe pauses, wonders herself. “Because you asked for me?”
Luz looks at Zoe appraisingly. “And from Our Lady,” she says.
“What lady?”
“You can say it.”
“Luz, what do you mean?”
Luz bends in close once again, putting her hand on the couch near Zoe’s thigh, her dark hair brushing Zoe’s cheek, her breath metallic. “Our Lady that sent you for the window.”
“What lady? No lady sent me. Walt gave me a job. He paid me money.”
Luz looks into Zoe’s eyes to make sure she is telling the truth. She reaches for Zoe’s arm. But right away Zoe is on her feet, a long white body in tiny underpants and the tee shirt she wore when she came to Luz in the night.
“Where are your pajamas?” asks Luz.
“In the campgrounds with the rest of my stuff,” says Zoe, and slips on her cotton slacks. “At some point I’ll have to go get them.”
Luz’s heart beats fast. She has been waiting for the way to be shown. Here it is—and through pajamas. She walks to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Her heart races so hard it hurts. Luz brushes her teeth—very hard, until white tiny bubbles cover her mouth. She looks very hard into her own dark eyes, the eyes of her father, Dr. Raphael Reyes, her mother says. Sometimes she can see things when she does this. Sometimes she sees people, other eyes, faces, her own face changing. But always Mami is in the blue house knocking on the door of the bathroom saying, Hurry I’ll be late for my work. The knocking that makes everything stop.
Now Zoe waits outside the bathroom trying to remain calm. Is it Luz? Is it her? She had that falling sensation again, and just as Luz touched her. A spawn of silver fish in her blood. Zoe listens to the sound of water running in the sink, then the flush of the toilet. She counts the Madonnas scotch-taped to the wall where she leans, waiting for Luz, one Madonna for each month. Quite an array. She recognizes a couple of famous paintings in the line-up: Michelangelo’s Holy Family, Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks. This vivid one near her she has never seen. She peers down to read its title: Estoy Contigo by an artist named Rosa M, bright blues and reds, a strong simple figure, Rosa M’s Madonna (if she is a Madonna), the yellow sun like a child’s. From their height, from the way they are taped, Zoe knows who put these Madonnas on the wall. Oh, thinks Zoe, Not a lady, Our Lady. Our Lady that sent you for the window? Is that what Luz thinks—Our Lady brought Zoe? And brought her to put in Walt’s window? Why would Luz believe such a thing? The answer is not on her list.
It has grown quiet in the bathroom. Zoe wonders what could possibly be going on. She knocks on the door. She calls out Luz’s name. Luz does not respond. Where on her list does it tell her how long Luz can stay in the bathroom?
“Honey,” she says, “I’d like to shower.”
The door opens; Luz comes out, white toothpaste marks around her mouth. “You can,” Luz says. “Do you know how to work it?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Luz goes into her room and closes the door, turning the lock so it clicks. Not on the list: can or can’t Luz lock her door?
All through breakfast or what passes for it, while Zoe wrestles with the iron, trying not to mangle the yellow dress—or at least not to burn it—Luz sits in her summer pajamas caught in the net of her thoughts, her blueberry waffle hardly eaten, her orange juice undrunk.
“Three days and Mami will be home. Do you have a calendar? We can mark them off,” Zoe says.
“We have The Madonnas of the Centuries, but not the right years. We are waiting for a new calendar from my school.”
“Maybe we can make our own three-day calendar when you come back from summer school. That’s how fast those days are going to go. One. Two. Three.”
Luz does not look convinced.
When Zoe hands Luz the yellow dress, Luz says nothing about the creases, the splotches of water the size of Rosa M’s sun. She goes into her room and comes out in the dress, hairbrush in hand.
“Mami does the braids in my room.”
* * *
Zoe sits on the edge of the bed the better to brush Luz’s hair. Under the filmy white canopy with the winking gold shapes, each sewn by Josefina to keep in the good dreams and send away bad.
First Zoe brushes Luz’s hair to get out all the knots, her left hand on Luz’s head to keep it still. Zoe brushes so slowly that pictures come into Luz’s mind.
“What beautiful shining hair,” Zoe says.
In her mind Luz can see the white hand resting on her head like a flower with one broken petal.
Now Luz takes the rosary from her sock drawer where she keeps it to be safe, holding it out for Zoe to touch, Zoe’s long finger caressing one of the pale green beads. The broken finger from the other hand stays in her lap, holding the brush. “Look carefully,” says Luz as she shows Zoe the faces carved on t
he beads, a man’s then a woman’s, a woman’s then a man’s. They are looking into each other’s eyes.
“Oh,” says Zoe, who wonders if they are the faces of lovers. “How soft the stones are. Where did it come from?”
“Esperanza.”
“Who is that?”
“The little sister of my mother.” Happiness comes to Luz by surprise because she could say it out loud. “Esperanza Guerra.” Happiness comes again. Already this morning Our Lady is giving many surprises to her heart. “Mi tia. You know what that means?”
“Tell me.”
“My aunt.”
“You have an aunt in El Salvador?” Zoe asks.
Don’t talk about it. Luz shrugs then looks up at Zoe. “In El Salvador we don’t have anyone.”
“Where did they go?”
“We lost all the family there.”
Luz has said what she should not.
“I’m so sorry,” says Zoe, but Luz has walked away.
How is such a thing possible, Zoe wonders, as she stands up, to lose all the family? Does this mean they have no one at all? Then Zoe remembers Father Bill’s words: No living relative but Luz.
Now Zoe looks at her watch. Where has the time gone? They must hurry or they will be late for Mass. No time for items five through nine on the list. Zoe hurries Luz to the door. Zoe has forgotten the sunscreen. The lunch. The summer school clothes so Luz can change in the car before she gets on the bus. And Luz has forgotten her backpack, her books. But Luz does not care. She will not go to summer school today. She will stay all day with Zoe and then later, because of Zoe’s pajamas, Our Lady will show them the way to the campgrounds.
* * *
To get ready for Mass Luz must try not to notice the Mariposa Lane houses or think who lives in them. Luz must not think of the world, must not wonder about what happens to the people in the houses or how the Felangela has come to walk beside her with Mami taken to the hospital by ambulance, Mami down on the floor with her eyes closed not hearing, and then with that bad smell. Must say the name of her church, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Of the man Juan Diego who gave Our Lady of Guadalupe the roses that are red and can bloom in the winter, even in snow. Luz must not tell the story of Juan Diego. Must not think of Our Lady with roses under her robe. Must not think must not feel. Not the heat of the sun, which already is hot and shines on her everywhere, even on her feet through the cut out parts of her sandals. Must not remember how it has burned her once and can burn her again, or how the Felangela has forgotten the sunscreen and balm. Must not think too much of the Felangela and her finger, so close Luz could touch it, so close Luz can smell the soap on her skin from the shower. Luz must not lick her lips, must not worry that they will once again burn. Must not count the splits on the tar of the road, must not count the cars or say whose they are. Must not see her mother on the floor of the kitchen. Must not hear the ambulance. Must not remember Mami’s bad smell.
Must count the steps of the church.
“We made it,” says Zoe.
Luz looks up through the strong rays of the sun. She can hardly see the Felangela’s face.
“Did you have a first holy communion?” Luz asks.
“No.”
“That’s all right. He doesn’t care. Everyone can stay.”
CHAPTER 8
It’s a church, Zoe thinks, as she follows Luz up the blistered front steps through the heavy wood door. A church, as if she were expecting something else. The outside is modest to say the least, with a simple spire and a pea-green wood frame—wrong material for this climate, and it is not doing well. But inside the entry it is cool and soothing, a plain vaulted ceiling, a floor of dark slate, the old mahogany pews with their sweet rich smell, the rows of red votives where Luz goes and lights her own candle. Zoe watches, afraid Luz will burn herself, but Luz knows exactly what to do, candle to candle, hers is lit. Then she says a prayer, a soft murmuring sound, quickly finished. “Will you sit with me?” Luz asks.
“Go ahead. I’ll find a seat in the back,” Zoe says. Luz goes quickly down the center aisle in her creased yellow dress and her crooked braids to the first row. The only child present, Zoe observes. Zoe looks down at her clothes, suddenly embarrassed by her filmy white slacks wrinkled and spotted with tamale sauce, the white tee shirt, which she had slept in.
There are only a dozen people this morning for Father Bill’s eight o’clock Mass, in the pews close to the altar, some on their knees, some seated, all women, casually dressed, though their heads are covered and bowed. Zoe sits down in a back pew and breathes in the silence and the rich smell of old wood, runs her hand over the worn mahogany of the bench, comforting, smooth. She wonders briefly at its history then takes another deep breath. She closes her eyes.
When she opens them, there is Father Bill making his way to the altar, everything about him a surprise: the robe, his stride, weighted and slow. She has seen the man in his other life. She has not seen the man as this. He looks out at his congregation, at his brave Luz. If she were closer, Zoe would see his eyes.
He can’t say the words. He can’t lift the cup. He is ambushed by the enormity of an undeserved grace. How does such grace persist? He tends it so carelessly, and its fruits are given anyway, so abundant, so sweet. The souls of his congregants beckoning him toward them, even in his time of despair.
When the vision appears—when they’re all struck crazy by the bizarre visitations they think they can see in that car wash window—Zoe will remember the feeling that had come to her when she first saw Father Bill at the altar, a sweetness so great she had wanted to get up and run out of the church. And only for Luz’s sake, in case Luz had turned to make sure Zoe was there, had she stayed.
CHAPTER 9
It is decided on the steps of Our Lady of Guadalupe before Father Bill returns to the hospital and the two pots of marigolds that Zoe had not even noticed shrivel to a powder in the heat that Luz Reyes can stay home from summer school. Who could put a child on the summer school bus without lunch, without her books, a child who is crying such tears?
“And what will you do all day?” asks Father Bill.
Luz wipes her eyes, looks at Zoe.
“Don’t worry about us,” Zoe says. “We’ll be fine.”
“When can we go to the campgrounds?” Luz asks, as soon as they are back at the house.
“In two hours,” Zoe says, already drained by the heat.
Luz goes to her room and closes the door. The house grows quiet. Zoe sits down on the brown couch. The heat of the day walks through the walls and takes over. She gets up and tries to force open the windows. Six inches is all she can manage. The windows are held shut by guards. Bars and guards. Not one air conditioner. She does the few breakfast dishes, picks up a magazine written in Spanish, flops on the couch unable to keep her eyes open, feels herself drifting off. She wakes with a start, the house still, the air weighted with heat, looks at her watch. An hour has passed. When she goes to the door of Luz’s room and listens, she hears nothing. “Luz?” Zoe calls. There is no reply. She feels the panic rising within. Luz has escaped! Zoe calls out again, turns the knob, but the door is locked. “Luz!” A long pause and then she hears footsteps. Luz opens the door.
“Is it time to go to the campgrounds?”
Luz has changed into shorts and a tee shirt, her face lightly glazed with sweat. The bare wooden floor is strewn with little figurines, coloring books and crayons spread out on the unmade bed. “Not yet. Promise me, Luz,” says Zoe, stepping into the room, “You won’t lock the door again.”
“Okay.”
“Can I come in? You were going to read me your tortoise facts.”
“You read,” says Luz. “I already know it.”
Zoe steps past the toys on the floor and goes to the wall. “Facts about the Mojave Tortoise.” Luz sits down on the floor. “Number one. Never pick up a tortoise. It could pee. That’s a fact, really?”
“Yes,” says Luz, looking up. “It would get scared. Then it would pee.�
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“I see,” says Zoe, noting the red check next to the fact, noting all twenty-seven red checks.
“If it pees it will die,” says Luz. “Read.”
“Fact number two, the tortoise walks slow. Interesting.” By the time she has come to the twenty-seventh fact, Zoe’s mouth is dry as cardboard, but she is definitely enlightened. The Mojave tortoise is quite a little creature. It can hug, chat, knock over other tortoises, though only the boy tortoises do that, and somehow in a way that Luz does not remember, it can also save water.
“Did you see one in the campgrounds?” Luz asks, as Zoe settles down on the floor next to Luz and stretches out her long legs. “Fact number three,” Zoe quotes, “the tortoise spends almost all of its life in its burrow. So no, I have not seen one yet.”
“You will,” says Luz. “When you take me. You will see many. They always come to me. I don’t know why. Here.”
She has handed Zoe a figurine.
“What is this?” asks Zoe.
“This is Our Lady of Fatima,” says Luz, then hands Zoe another. “This is Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”
Our Lady of Infidelity Page 7