Thunder rang through the valley in the afternoon, and she sat with the men around the flimsy card table covered with food. “Do you remember the stories our father and Uncle Emiliano would tell, when we were small and afraid of the kanara thunder?” she said to Rigoberto.
He smiled a little then. “The ñū’ún saví, the saints of the rain?”
She nodded. “They bring rain by climbing the mountaintops and smoking the seven cigars, making the clouds thicker and thicker until the rain people get drunk on the tobacco.”
“Then they shout. Kanara. Like fighting drunks.” He looked at Florencio. “Your grandmother told that one, too?”
He nodded. “But she was always worried about offending some santo, always afraid. Especially of the ñū’ún yuu nu’un.”
Serafina thought about the hearthstones she’d revered all her life, at home, in each camp. The sooty stone that had saved her life in the ravine. The fierce rocks where she’d cooked her food. “You have to make your sacrifices properly,” she said. “That’s all.”
She had tried her best, in Rio Seco, amid the ruins of the bulldozed camp. She’d had only a few minutes. Soko—presenting something to the gods. A sacrifice. Remembering how in San Cristobal people put things in branches, in tree trunks near the corn fields so the santos could better see their offerings, she looked at the tiny wooden shelf nailed to the tree. Itun, iti, itá, Serafina thought. Corn, candles, flowers. She found one dried tortilla under the stove where someone had dropped it, and she cracked it into pieces. At the edge of the trees, she grabbed a stem of wild sunflowers, the only thing still blooming. She lit the veladora.
Speaking slowly, respectfully, she said, “Ka’a maa kao.” Alone. We are speaking alone. To all the gods and saints, all of them in the sky and earth and wind who might be able to see her and see Elvia now, at the same time, she said, “Please. She was my anima. My soul.” She had no photo to prop against the candle, where they could see it, so she found a scrap of paper and pencil in Araceli’s box and wrote carefully, ELVIA ESTRELLA MENDEZ FOLEY. B. 8-20-80. With a piece of red cellophane, she wrapped the tortillas and blue stone and paper, and one barrette. She kissed the bundle and then the image of la Virgen on the candle, and she left the tree without looking back to see how small the flame burned in the dusk.
starla
“We can only tell you what we don’t see. I don’t see a penis.”
Elvia looked up at Dr. Josefa, who was studying the ultrasound photos. “It’s a girl?”
“It says here you wanted to know the sex, right?”
“I really wanted to know if the baby had two arms and two legs. And about the head.”
Dr. Josefa said, “She has all those things. And she looks okay. Normal size for six months. You said April. That makes her set to debut in January. Now lie back.”
She measured from navel to pubic bone again, saying, “Yup. Growing. Good. Legs up.”
Outside, Elvia said to Sandy, “No, I’m not used to it yet. And yeah, I know I have to expect worse. Just let me drive, cause I can’t take all the jerking right now.”
“What a smart-ass. We have to meet Enchantee at the doughnut shop.”
At the plastic table, Elvia listened to the woman behind the counter talking to her son in rapid bursts of throaty language. “She’s Cambodian,” Sandy said, sitting down with buttermilk bars.
Elvia took out the map of Mexico. She’d found Oaxaca, all the way at the southern end of Mexico, but no San Cristobal Yucucui. The town must be so small it was invisible.
“It’s so far,” Sandy said, leaning over the map. “How did she ever make it here? She must have been so afraid.”
Elvia studied her mother’s face on the ID card. She did look afraid, her eyes wide and stunned. Elvia touched the towns, comforting because they didn’t move. “I can’t even say these names. Nochixtlan. Tlaxiaco.” She tried to imagine the houses. Was her mother there, married and happy with kids? Four? Four daughters who looked like her, lived with her, helped her cook?
Or was her mother in Rio Seco, just down the street from where she used to carry Elvia around in the yard and cook cactus, when she lived with Larry Foley and he was wild?
“My dad never called.”
Sandy said, “Your father hasn’t called yet. I think he will. He’s just mad because he was so worried.” She put down her Styrofoam coffee cup. “I was mad when Rosalie left. I still get mad at her sometimes, when she calls to say she met some nice family with horses up in New York, and maybe she’ll spend a white Christmas with them. It’s so hard when your kids leave, Elvia. You might as well start getting ready now.”
“Me?”
“For when your daughter leaves.” Sandy moved the doughnut crumbs around. “The process is already set in motion. She’s coming. She has to leave one day.”
“Great.” Elvia saw sugar clinging to Sandy’s fingertips. “Then why do it? If it’s so hard?”
Sandy shrugged. “Few days or years of happiness. Pieces of time.” She watched the woman behind the counter fill a sugar jar. “I don’t know. I’m not sure at all what to do with you. You’ve been through hell in a week. Do I act like everything’s right on schedule, or let you know how scared I was?”
“You were scared?”
“I thought you wouldn’t come back from the desert. I thought your dad might go nuts when he saw you and say you had to stay with him.”
Elvia said, “He was pissed. At me.”
“Well, I was scared you might decide to stay on your own. I thought I’d get one of those phone-booth calls again.”
“I’m staying with you.” She took a bite of the buttermilk bar. In her backpack was another map—one from Hector, showing the room he’d rented in Agua Dulce with two men from Michoacan.
I don’t have a troca, so I hope you come see me. I will cook for you and the baby. Teach you all the sauces. I could be rent-a-dad if you want one.
She would visit Hector and tell him Michael had been calling someone who held up the sky. She would let Hector hold the baby and draw it a map of the world.
“See?” Sandy said. “I’m scared now. Look, I know just what to do with babies. And little kids. I can read their faces. They love structure. Just like you did, so long ago. Even when you first showed up. But you’re a teenager. I haven’t had someone your age in a long time.”
“You had Rosalie.”
“I haven’t said the right thing to Rosalie since she turned twelve. All I did was irritate her. She wanted me to leave her alone so she could read.”
“I don’t want you to leave me alone.” Elvia put her hands over her stomach. The baby—she—liked buttermilk bars. “Long as you don’t act like I’m stupid when I do something wrong.” She looked at Sandy’s bitten lips and wide forehead. “If it’s really a girl, I want to name her Starla. My mother’s middle name is Estrella. I know that’s ‘star’ in Spanish.”
Enchantee came in, and her son, Demetrius Jr., looked at Elvia but then quickly ducked his head. He’s only eight, but he’s already embarrassed like all the other guys, Elvia thought.
“D’Jr. needed a pair of jeans, but he stayed as far from me as possible while he picked them,” Enchantee said, sitting down. “So I went to the baby department for my thrills. Look. Hooded towels, so the baby’s head stays warm. These always make me cry. Booties and onesies and cloth diapers and creepers. I had a good old time.”
“Thanks,” Elvia said, touching the soft yellow towels. “It’s a girl.”
“Oh, break my heart,” Enchantee said. “But I love the hardhead I got.”
D’Jr. brought her a doughnut and rolled his eyes when he said, “I’m outside.”
Enchantee shook her head. “Can’t be seen with me. And look, Sandy. Brought it from his dad’s house. Carrying it around like the Bible.” She took a car magazine from her bag. The cover showed a black, lo
wered truck with yellow flames on the doors, and a blond woman wearing a tiny yellow bikini. “Implants. I gotta tell the boy nobody’s chest looks like that.” They studied the cover, and Enchantee said, “This chick isn’t even aerodynamic. Please.” Enchantee patted Elvia’s shoulder. “See you two tomorrow.”
When they’d left, Sandy said, “Where now?”
Elvia watched the small woman at the cash register, her hair in a bun, her eyes dark and sad when she slid a cup of coffee into a shrine on the counter. A stick of incense released a trail of smoke. Cambodian—but she was tiny, brown skinned, and delicate as the photo. As her mother.
“I want to go back to Yukon Street,” Elvia said. “Show somebody the picture. Even if they don’t speak English, maybe they’ll know where she is.” She didn’t need to look at her mother again, the startled eyes, the mouth parted in fear.
The duplex yard was full of Mexican kids playing on old scooters and skateboards, and wet laundry hung from the chainlink fence. Elvia stared at the kids, who stared back when she knocked at 2510. When the plump woman with curly hair answered, Elvia said haltingly, “Es mi madre.” She held up the ID card. “Aquí?” She swept her hand down the street, into the air.
The woman shook her head and closed the door. Elvia went to the sidewalk, staring at the swordlike irises near the steps of the other door.
Sandy said, “One more try?” and went up the steps with her. “Excuse me, ma’am,” Sandy called toward the wrought-iron screen. “Can we ask for your help for a minute?”
A face vague as a cloud finally appeared behind the screen, swaying sideways, and then the old woman said, “Blue eyes. Oh, my Lord, green eyes. The Indian’s little girl. You’re here. Oh, you’re not little anymore.” She opened the door. “I was prayin for you, darling. Come in.”
This lady? Elvia thought, she knows? She felt cold, small fingers pull her inside.
At the small table covered in blue-checked oilcloth, Elvia stared at the old woman’s hands. Brown spots, round as baby pancakes, covered her skin. The woman bustled about, putting water in a kettle, setting out fragile cups with red roses and gold rims. She stopped once and said to Elvia, “She’s just as wee small as me. Your mum.”
Elvia said, “I think so. I’m not sure.” She put the ID card on the table.
“Of course she is, dear. She was just here. Your mum.”
“She was here?” Elvia felt suddenly panicked, looking around the room crowded with dark furniture. What would she really do, if her mother walked up now?
“Just two weeks ago.” She turned to Sandy. “Sit down, dear, sit. I wouldn’t’ve opened the door if I hadn’t heard your voice and seen blue eyes. No one speaks English here. Just brown eyes on the street now. Do you know I haven’t spoken a word for five days? Gas man come five days ago.” She stared at Elvia. “Never forgot this one’s face. Eyes like home.”
“Where is home?” Sandy said, taking the cup of tea in the delicate saucer.
“Ireland, dear. But I’ve been here fifty years. Yank husband brought me here, and I couldn’t get back. That’s what comes of waitin on a man, darlin. Just like your mum used to wait on your dad. Not that I know him, no, but I’m just sayin that’s what I saw.” She picked up the ID card. “That’s her. Oh, so tiny.”
“Where is she?”
The old woman said carefully, “I wondered what become of you, after you were lost.”
Elvia stared at the small bright eyes in the papery drapes of skin. “You knew?”
“Oh, it was a heartbreak,” the woman said, putting her teacup down. “Just a heartbreak, and I felt it was my fault. My husband, see, he was Air Force, went and got killed in the war. Only other person I knew then was Sister Margaret at Saint Catherine’s, and I only seen her on Sundays. There was a few Irish here, but they moved. I rented my place next door, but people was always comin and goin, and they got rough sometimes.”
Sandy said, “It must have been scary to be a woman alone.”
She nodded. “I never answered the door. I’d walk to six o’clock mass at dawn and nobody saw me. And I’d water early, before the sun come up. An old woman is just a bother or a mark to people, I know that.” She touched the ID card. “But your mum, she brought me jelly. Your da, he was never around much. When he was, oh, he got loud with his friends, and I did see plenty of beer cans. They worked on a black car with the loudest motor. And your mum—I’d watch you two from the window. She’d collect cactus, tellin you not to reach for it, let her do it.”
Elvia looked out at the cactus lining the fence. “We ate it?”
“Yes. Fruit, like a red apple, but different. Brought it to me in jars. Cause your da had disappeared and there was no money. I knew that. She was speakin some shushy deep-in-the-throat talk. And she never did once raise her hand or her voice to you.” The woman smiled, her expression distant. “You was like a starfish stuck on a rock. Holdin her braid. Oh, I wanted a girl like you so bad, to hold on to me like that. And that’s why I feel so bad. Responsible.”
“Why?” Elvia shivered slightly.
“Oh, she was cryin at times, I’d see lights at night, candles and such, and I heard her must’ve been prayin. Then the car—she’d get in that black car and go up and down in the driveway. You were laughin so. One evening she was crying, and she put you in the car, and you dropped your dolly. I never saw you again.”
“That’s when she left me?” Elvia saw it, the hedge and the car. She heard the crickets in the parking lot, saw the moths slant toward the windshield. She left me. It was too much.
“Oh, love, you were in the car. Sister Margaret told me what happened. She felt so bad. She was in the rectory, and your mum wrecked the car. Not hard, but I guess Sister heard a crashin noise, and teenagers had been speedin in the church lot before, so she called the police again. She was watchin out her window. I guess the police saw your mum and she run, screamin in her talk. Sister Margaret told me the story later. The police put her in their car.”
“I was in the car. I went to sleep.”
“She was screamin for you, darlin, she must have been. You were fast asleep, love. Sister called the police back for the car—the church didn’t want the expense of towin it—and she went to meet them. They found you sleepin, love.”
Sleeping under the moths. She tried to run back? For me?
“Two weeks ago,” the woman said quietly. “She brought me food again. But she come here lookin for you. I wanted to tell you the whole story before I give you this. So you’d know what happened.”
Elvia held her breath, touching the paper with the words slanted backwards, printed in capitals, and the picture of a tree with circles of fruit.
He was wrong. My dad was wrong. It was an accident. She loved me. She loved me. She didn’t mean to leave me. She cried for me. She came back, to look for me. Elvia held the steering wheel hard, but the baby was turning and turning, nervous about Elvia’s fast heart.
“Here?” she asked Sandy. “Way out here?” Swerving, trying to find the dirt road, she finally smelled the oranges.
The orange groves were laid out in huge dark squares, and she saw the wide green swath of cane and grapevine and cottonwood below the sloping groves. “I was here,” she said, looking at the canal along the road, the silver stripe of river water in the distance. “We were here.”
“Down there,” Sandy said, peering out the window.
The car bounced slowly over the ruts in the grove road, and Elvia said, “I was this close to her? I don’t see any houses.” Suddenly she remembered Hector saying he’d picked oranges and seen a man living in a cave.
“Elvia . . .” Sandy’s voice trailed away.
But Elvia stopped the car where the road trailed into the wide ravine. Mounds of trash and dirt and ragged piles of clothing were scattered across the sandy bottom, and scrapwood was piled in heaps like matchsticks. On the knoll abov
e, she saw a trailer with metal-shuttered windows. But no one was here, in this place drawn on the piece of paper her mother had held.
Elvia crouched in the dirt, steadying herself with her palms. She cried so hard that the baby kicked in real distress now, alarmed by her shaking, her huge breaths, her ragged sobs. Sandy left her alone. She was here, Elvia said to herself, over and over. She was looking for me. She still loves me. She never forgot me.
When she stood up, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands, she smelled the sand on her palms, and saw the mica clinging to her wrists, glittering in the noon sun. She felt dizzy, and she stumbled to the trees for their shade.
Under the branches, she saw a strange wooden shelf, small as a slice of bread, nailed to the trunk of the cottonwood, and a creamy pool of wax, a few dried flowers. When she looked up to see where the wax had come from, she saw a glint of red above her. A packet, wrapped in clear paper, glowed in the shifting light through the leaves, crimson like a heart, and when she braced her foot on an overturned orange crate, holding her belly carefully with one hand, reaching for the bundle, the wind seemed to push it into her fingers.
glossary
MIXTEC
ENGLISH
SPANISH
Anima
Soul
Alma
Chīhló
Pomegranate
Cuehē cuū-yō
Death
Muerte
Cusū
Sleep
Huipil
Hand-woven blouse
Itā
Highwire Moon Page 32