Rosa paused, and Terri saw her eyes shut. ‘Drink changed him, Teresa – brought out all the demons of his nature. One night he saw me nursing you and imagined you were not his. He waited for me to put you in the crib he had made. Then he slapped my breasts until milk came again and I cried for him to stop. And then, when you began crying, he wept and begged my forgiveness. Just as he had before.’
Terri’s stomach felt tight. But her mother’s words kept coming, flat and steady, like raindrops on a stone: Terri had wished to hear this, and now she would. ‘The next morning,’ Rosa continued, ‘I went to see Father Anaya. You remember him, don’t you?’
Her mother’s eyes had opened again: the question, almost conversational, had a certain lethal quality.
‘Yes,’ Terri said slowly. ‘I was afraid of him, in his black robe and white collar. But he seemed kind enough.’
‘Oh, he was very kind to me. He took my hand and told me that what Ramon had done was a terrible sin. We were in his chapel, where it was cool and quiet, and for a moment I felt better.’ Removing her hand from Terri’s, Rosa swallowed some coffee, wincing as if at its taste. ‘And then he explained to me that the kingdom of heaven was God’s but that in our home, the man must rule. If I obeyed Ramon in all things, took extra care not to anger him, then our home could be peaceful and happy.
‘“I’ve done nothing to anger him,” I answered, “He’s just angry.”’
‘“Then you must be sure never to provoke him,” he told me. “You have a daughter now, a marriage and family, which are sacrosanct in the eyes of God. If you must do a little more than your part, then console yourself that it is for a reason, to strengthen your family and surround your daughter with love. In time, when you have more children, you will know that this is right.”
‘In that moment, I realized that I had ceased to matter. Assuming that I ever had.’
Rosa gazed past her: Terri sensed her remembering, as if it were fresh, the truth of her own insignificance. ‘As I spoke to Father Anaya,’ Rosa told her, ‘you slept in the corner of the chapel. I picked you up and looked into your face. You were very small then, Teresa, a funny little face with a few tufts of black hair. But then you opened your eyes and looked back at me, and I saw your eyes were mine. And I swore to you then that the one thing I’d do was take care of you, always. So that you did not end up like me.’
Terri shook her head. ‘You were nineteen years old, mama.’
‘I was married, Teresa, and a mother. I knew my family would never take me back, even if I had wanted that. There was nothing but to go on with the life I’d made. As Ramon’s wife and your mother.
‘When I came back, I looked around our home, as if to imagine my future. No one else was there. I remember staring for minutes at the crucifix Ramon had glued to the living room wall. Then I took you upstairs and, in the quiet, nursed you until you fell asleep again.
‘When Ramon came home that night, I went to him as a wife.
‘He took me twice. There was no tenderness at all. It was as if he had heard Father Anaya speak to me.
‘As I lay there in the dark, it came to me that I would have more children. I was Catholic, and Ramon’s wife – there was nothing to prevent this except abstinence, and Ramon would have me as he wished. That was when I saw my life as Father Anaya saw it: I would bear children at the whim of my husband’s desire for me, and each one would bind me that much longer to Ramon.
‘I turned my back to him and cried. But softly, so he would not hear me. In the morning, as first light came through our window, I promised myself that I would never cry again.
‘It just went on like that. There were weeks Ramon would not drink at all: he would go to the garage where he worked, come home at five-thirty, eat without complaint the dinner I had cooked for him. And then something would go wrong – a cross word from his boss, an expense we did not plan on – and he would not be home on time. There would be no call from him; I did not need one. I knew where he was.’ Rosa sipped coffee, eyes reflective; the gesture had the eerie normality of a woman musing about a contented past. ‘And then he would come home and beat me for what the world had done to him, until my cries excited him. By the time I was twenty-six, I had five daughters, and the pleasure of knowing that Ramon would never have a son.’
There was bitter satisfaction in Rosa’s voice. She turned to Terri now. ‘You were to have been his son, Teresa. He wanted one so desperately that, in the depths of his drinking, he beat me for not giving him one. When Maria was born, and then Eva, the beatings grew worse. For me to then have twin girls was the final insult: after Ynez and Elizabeth were born, he would look at me with hatred in his eyes. But only I knew that he would have to beat me forever.’ Her mouth formed a smile that seemed like a curse. ‘On Mission Street, in a room above a furniture store, was a woman who read palms. But her real business, people whispered, was abortion. I went to her when Ramon was visiting Guatemala and told her that I wished to have no more children. Only when she realized that I was not pregnant did she understand what I wished for. But she had made enough mistakes aborting babies to do what I asked. . . .’
‘Oh, Mama.’
Rosa’s smile faded; the grasp of her worn hand grew tighter. ‘I bled for days. But I was very sure that I would never give Ramon Peralta a son he could make like him.’ She sat back, staring into her daughter’s face. ‘Now you know, Teresa, why I never wept when he hit me. It was the price I paid for defeating him.’
There was nothing, Terri realized, that she could say. Through her horror, a kind of calm overtook her: she was old enough to face the buried secrets that had bound her family and, in the end, to feel compassion for her mother. ‘Do my sisters know this?’ she asked.
‘No. And they never will.’
As if by some instinct, mother and daughter turned to watch Elena, Rosa’s hand still clasped in Tern’s. Elena seemed to gaze at a homeless man pushing a shopping cart across the grass. It struck Terri that, alone in her perch above the park, Elena did not wish to rejoin the world. ‘At least,’ Rosa said at length, ‘you and your sisters had a place to come and go, clothes to wear and food to eat, some sort of structure to your lives. Sometimes, Teresa, I cling to that. As I clung to you.’
Terri understood this: of her few memories, the best were of her mother. Rosa showing Terri the things she knew, like cooking and sewing. Helping with Tern’s homework. Crawling into Terri’s bed at night and holding her close until she fell asleep. With the simplicity of a child, Terri had thought her mother perfect; when Rosa’s face was unmarked, it was Terri’s deepest wish to look like her mother. This wish had been granted, and perhaps more; to the depths of her soul, Terri suspected, she had become her mother’s daughter.
‘But how did you live?’ she asked.
Rosa turned to her in surprise. ‘You truly wish to hear more?’
Terri looked at her steadily. ‘Yes, Mama. All of it.’
Rosa’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. But she did not argue; Terri watched her steel herself. ‘It grew worse,’ she said simply. ‘Much worse. Although I tried to hide that from you.’
‘You couldn’t, Mama. It was like all of us lived in a prison. Except that we got out for school.’
‘A prison – yes. Do you remember that, after the twins were finally in school, I worked for a time?’
‘Not really.’
Rosa shrugged. ‘It didn’t last for long. We needed the money, and even then I was good enough with figures to be a bookkeeper for a truck rental company. But Ramon was insulted by it. I had never asked him, you see. The night before I was to start, he struck me so hard that my eye was swollen. I went anyway.’
Her voice took on a hopeless quality. ‘Within two weeks, Ramon believed that I was sleeping with my boss. He began calling me at work, dropping in without notice. The beatings, when they came, seemed intended to disfigure me. When still I did not leave, Ramon entered the office one day, knocked all the papers off my desk, and accused me of “fucking�
�� Joe Menendez – the man I worked for. There were no walls around my desk, only a partition. Everyone heard him.’ Rosa gazed at the grass in front of her. ‘The next day, Joe – a nice man with two children – explained that having me there had become too disruptive. He could barely look at me: he had seen Ramon and knew what was happening. But he had an office to run.’
Terri touched her eyes. ‘Wasn’t there anyone to help you?’
‘The police, you mean?’ Rosa gave a mirthless smile and then leaned back against the park bench; it would have seemed the posture of reminiscence, except for her eyes. ‘A few nights after I was fired, after you were in bed, Ramon tore apart the house. Do you know what he was looking for, Teresa? My birth-control pills. The ones that I must be using to deny him a son.
‘When he couldn’t find them, he began to hit me – on the face and arms and stomach. The bedroom was dark; I could barely see his face. All that came to me was the pain, the whiskey smell of his breath, the hatred in his voice as he said he would not stop until I told him where the pills were. And then he wrenched my arm behind my back until I thought that it would break.
‘My face was pressed against the mattress; I could hardly get the words out. “All right,” I managed to cry, “I’ll tell you the truth. Just let me go.”
‘He did that. I waited until my head cleared, and then I reached for the lamp and turned it on.
‘Ramon was on his knees, naked to the waist, staring down at me as I lay on the bed. I looked him in the face and, as clearly as I could, said, “You’re not man enough to have a son, Ramon. You’re just a man who beats up women.”’
Rosa seemed to shiver at the memory of her pain and hatred. ‘And then,’ she said quietly, ‘the man who was your father beat me until I lost consciousness.’
Terri closed her eyes. ‘When I awoke,’ Rosa went on, ‘my vision was blurred. But it was morning; I knew that I should get you to school. And then I heard him downstairs, explaining to you that I was too sick to get up, that he would walk you to Mission Dolores for school. A few minutes later, I saw him crossing the street with you and Maria and Eva, hands linked together and looking both ways for cars. A nun at the crosswalk, waiting for children, smiled at him. The dutiful and loving father.’ Rosa’s voice turned cold. ‘It was very important, you see, that no one know what happened in the privacy of our home. So important that Ramon threatened to kill me if I ever told.
‘Watching him cross the street with you, I decided to call the police. Before he killed me for not telling.’
‘That night, two uniformed police came to our home and asked for Ramon. They took him outside on the steps; I went upstairs, listened through the window. I could barely hear them, but it was enough. They’d had a complaint, they said; they wouldn’t make trouble for him this time, but he should know better than to beat me. And then one cop patted him on the shoulder, and they left.
‘I could hear his footsteps on the stairs. I was so frightened that I found myself counting each step. But then the sound of his steps turned from our bedroom. For a moment, I was relieved, and then I realized that he’d gone to your bedroom. To make sure that you and your sisters were asleep.’
Terri swallowed; she had a fleeting memory of her father leaning over her bed to kiss her good night. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
Her mother looked away, toward Elena. ‘Ramon hit me, of course, and then he turned me over on my stomach. He’d thought of a new way to have me, he said. One that involved no threat of pregnancy.’ Rosa’s voice softened. ‘I never called the police again.’
Terri flinched; all at once, she was at the foot of the stairs again, watching her father take her mother from behind. Only now she understood what she had seen.
‘Oh, Mama . . .’
‘You wanted to know, Teresa.’ Rosa’s voice was clear again. ‘After that night, I never knew how much money we had. Ramon hid his checkbook, gave me just enough for food. No one, not even your friends from school, was to be allowed in the house unless he had consented. And I was to tell you, as I did, that no one was to discuss our family with others.
‘Ramon was very clever. He knew that if I asked this of you, you were certain to obey. Because I was the one you loved, and he was the one you feared. His father, come again.’
‘People knew,’ Terri said. ‘I could feel it.’
Above her ironic smile, Rosa’s eyes were curious. ‘But did you tell them?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Then they could pretend, Teresa. That’s all people want. Because, just as Father Anaya told me, the family is sacrosanct.’
Terri shook her head. ‘I can’t accept that people are like that.’
‘Deep down, we want them to be like that. We want to help them not to know.’ Rosa turned to her. ‘Just as you did with your family, year after year. Helping Richie hide who he was, and others not to see him. You were so determined to marry him, to build the family you thought you’d never had. Only gradually did I see it.’ Her mother’s tone grew softer, and a little sad. ‘I hadn’t given Ramon Peralta a son like him, Teresa. I’d given Ricardo Arias a wife like me.’
‘But I left, Mom.’
‘Yes. You did.’ Now Rosa’s tone became sardonic. ‘It’s an independent woman who can make such choices for her children. But then everything is so different now, isn’t it. And Elena has reaped the benefits.’
The edge in the words was only the surface, Terri knew, of a grief and anger that Rosa found hard to express. It was that knowledge, and the story Rosa had told, that caused Terri to soften her answer. ‘And we were better off,’ she said quietly, ‘because you stayed.’
‘Yes. And because I would threaten to leave.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘You remember, I’m sure, that there were periods of peace in our home, when Ramon did not drink. When he would play with you, even take you places he wanted to go. Perhaps you wondered why, and hoped it would last.’
Slowly, Terri nodded; the thought of Fleet Week came to her again, or watching the stars with her father. ‘I knew why,’ Rosa said. ‘Just as I knew that it would never last.’ She smiled a little. ‘You see, there was one other thing that scared Ramon – being without me. Because deep down inside, just like Ricardo, he was weak. So every few months, when things got too bad, I would tell him I was going away.
‘The tears would come, and the begging. “Please,” he would say, “I’ll change.”’ Rosa’s voice became ironic again. ‘If you think about these periods of peace, Teresa, they always began with roses. A gift from your repentant father, sent with a card promising to love me all his life.’
All at once, Terri remembered. A dinner: Ramon, smiling at Rosa, had placed roses on the table. At that moment, Terri had thought him wonderful.
‘Jesus,’ she murmured.
Rosa looked at her, as if trying to fathom her feelings. ‘But he never harmed you, did he?’
‘No, Mama. Not with his hands.’
‘There are men who do worse. Ramon was jealous of me because he was so frightened. And he was right about one thing: when I married him, I was not a virgin.
‘One drunken night, when I was fourteen, and more terrified that I can ever tell you, your grandfather found me alone. We never spoke of it again.’ Her voice was quiet and bitter. ‘So you see, Teresa, Ramon Peralta was nothing special. My own father taught me that.’
Chapter 13
From her first few moments in the office of McKinley Brooks, Caroline Masters knew there was something wrong.
It started with Brooks himself. His smile was a little tight; his eyes did not smile at all; and his manner – the easy bonhomie of the city’s most successful black politician – for once could not obscure the constant workings of his mind. But what concerned her more was that the assistant D.A. with him was Victor Salinas.
To look at them, Brooks and Salinas were opposites. Brooks was rounding amiably into his mid forties; a decade younger, Salinas had the leanness and intensity of a man who played his daily squash
games not for exercise but to win, and his carefully trimmed mustache and handpainted tie lent him a touch of the dandy that Brooks was careful to avoid. But Salinas burned with an ambition as deep as Brooks’s own and far less well concealed; there were few in the D.A.’s office who did not know that Salinas was waiting restlessly for a chance at Brooks’s job. That Brooks would give this case to Salinas told Caroline that it was something special: either Brooks the lawyer had decided that his need for Salinas’s relentlessness outweighed the risk of giving him exposure, or Brooks the politician had decided that the situation called for an assistant as political as he – in which instance, Caroline reflected, Brooks had indeed begun to imagine some higher and better office. To Caroline, either prospect suggested that Christopher Paget was in trouble.
Brooks passed her a cup of the coffee he brewed fresh in his office. ‘This really is a treat, Caroline. I thought you’d gone to a better place, as my granddaddy the Baptist preacher used to say.’
This was delivered with a touch more satire than usual: Brooks referred to his Southern roots only as a humorous affectation, and his down-home pronunciation of ‘Car-o-line’ somehow suggested that Lady Bountiful had come to visit the plantation. But what it told Caroline was that Brooks was a little on edge, and that her handling of the Carelli case still rankled him.
‘I’m sure your grandfather was referring to the dead, McKinley. I’ve just been resting.’
From the side, Salinas flashed her a quick smile; like many of his gestures, this seemed his idea of what was appropriate rather than something felt. As a trial lawyer Salinas was not a natural, but he made up for this with a ferocious preparation. Caroline found it easy to imagine him in a gym, pumping doggedly on a bicycle with a grimace on his face and a faraway look in his eyes, planning his day in minute detail.
‘Whatever,’ Brooks was saying to Caroline, ‘you certainly look wonderful. After a while, folks here at the Hall of Justice begin to look like a Hogarth painting – grotesque and a little stooped. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lights.’
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