by Tatjana Soli
“That’s mine!” Lucy said. An old doll’s head was jammed atop one of the bottles; a corded, soft pouch was on top of another.
In a flat dish were the dregs of a noxious-looking liquid now dried brownish red, like the muddy bottom of a parched lake bed. On top of it lay a small clump of hair, more like the loose hairs pulled from a hairbrush than a clipping cut with scissors. Claire’s.
A small pink book lay open at the side. Childish writing visible in purple ink. “My diary!” Lucy said. The date fifteen years before: Josh is missing. Please bring him home. Josh is missing. Please bring him home. I promise not to lie anymore and to do my homework. Over and over the same sentences for pages.
“I thought doing this as punishment would bring him back,” Lucy said. “Why is she going through my stuff?”
Written on the wall behind the makeshift altar, because altar it was no matter how murky its intention, were the words OGOU BALANJO.
“She said she missed home,” Claire said.
“She’s not talking about Cambridge either.”
Claire felt overwhelmed and ill, yet kept looking as if some key would explain it all.
Black figures were now on the yellow walls, one a man dressed in red, holding a long chain that ended around the neck of a smaller figure, walking away, head down. In his other hand, the man threatened with a long whip.
Claire stood, rapt, unable to fathom the message, and only wished she could have drunk in the whole impression alone, undisturbed. She felt protective, but of Lucy or of Minna she was not sure.
“This is seriously troubled,” Lucy said at last. “Is this, technically, voodoo?”
It came to Claire like the welling up of an unsuspected, subterranean source—a ready ability for lies, deception. “Minna wants to be an artist. She’s exploring the island’s colonial past. Its history of slavery.”
Lucy’s experience in Santa Fe, working with artists, had habituated her to a certain driven, obsessive quality in the creative life. All manner of bad behavior, past and future, could thus be explained away. It made for such a comforting notion, Claire tried to believe it herself for a moment.
“How come she never mentioned it?” Lucy asked.
“She’s afraid she’s no good.”
“It’s powerful, isn’t it? I could see this hanging in downtown lofts. Should I talk to the gallery owner?”
“Eventually. Right now, officially, we haven’t seen it yet.”
Lucy left the room, singing:
How do you do that voodoo
That you do so well
That morning, Claire’s whole body ached, and when Lucy injected her she screamed, pain shooting all the way to the bone. She refused anything to eat and would only suck ice chips.
When a car rolled into the driveway, Lucy ran to the window. “It’s Minna!”
Don’s car in the driveway now a source of rescue. Minna had ensconced herself, made herself part of the family. Yet who was she? Minna stepped out, wearing a beautiful yellow silk dress, elegant and expensive, but the tightness of it undoing its intended effect. Her gold earrings and bracelets marked her as if with price tags—bought. Don walked in after her, carrying thick, glossy bags from designer boutiques. More clothes in service of creating what effect? What life was Minna preparing herself for? She seemed too far gone to return to the Spartan life of grad school.
When Minna saw Claire in the living room, she kicked off her high heels and hurried to the couch. “Oh, che, not so good? You’re hot.”
Claire shook her head, turned away, embarrassed at the fevered burn of tears.
“I’m glad Lucy called. I’ll fix you right up.”
“What’s that on your finger?” Lucy said, grabbing Minna’s hand and holding it high. “A diamond?”
“Don proposed.” Minna laughed. “I said I’d take the ring and think about it.”
Claire was startled that her earlier lie about a proposal had come true, as if she had conjured it. Minna changed back into her plain housedress, and the pain in Claire’s chest lessened in the security of her being back. Barefoot, Minna walked into the kitchen to mix one of the herbal drinks. Alone with Claire, Don sat on the couch. “I want to apologize about Mexico. I just freaked out when you got sick.”
“What are your intentions?”
“What?”
“Toward Minna?”
He shrugged. “I’m wild about her.”
“But she isn’t one of your Hollywood starlets. One of your waitresses. She’s complicated.”
“That’s what I love—”
Claire held up my hand. “No one mentioned love. Complicated as in depressive. She’s very high-strung. You and I have talked about the little discrepancies.”
Don remained silent.
“I’m trying to look out for her interests since she has no family here.”
Don shook his head. “This job will be over by the end of summer, right?”
“True.”
A tendon in Don’s jaw throbbed. Claire couldn’t take her eyes off it, the gauge of his truthfulness.
He stood up. “The thing I always admired about you is that you minded your own business.”
Had they become enemies so quickly, fighting over Minna? When Lucy came back into the room, he said a curt good-bye and backed his car out of the driveway in such a hurry he ran over a hedge of French lavender.
“You called her?” Claire asked Lucy.
“Yes, and good thing she did,” Minna said, coming back from the kitchen. The elixir stank of rotting and was a thick, unappealing brown.
“I can’t.”
“You will.” But Minna relented and poured sugar into it. “Where did Don go?”
“He’d had enough of our house of women, I guess. He gives his love.” Claire thought she saw a shadow pass across Minna’s eyes for a moment, but then it was gone. She couldn’t possibly love someone like Don. Or was Claire hoping that? What kind of friend, mother, was she, not to look out for the girl’s well-being? His ordinariness didn’t fit Claire’s romance-novel idea of her.
“Let’s get you in a cool bath,” Minna said.
* * *
Lucy helped Claire undress, seeing for the first time the scar across Claire’s chest. Lucy grimaced. “Can I touch it? Does it hurt?”
Claire felt embarrassed, but Minna was blind to the amputation as if it were as commonplace as her own body and said, “Course you can. It doesn’t bite.”
Minna ran the bath, and they both helped Claire into the tub, full of greenish water on top of which floated large, crumpled green leaves, resembling a lily pond. Down at eye level, Claire saw that they were lettuce leaves.
“Takes the heat away,” Minna explained.
“I feel like I’m in a salad.”
“Which is better—butter or romaine?” Lucy joked.
Claire lay back, and the cool water did soothe her. Her insides felt settled for the first time since Minna had left, as if her very presence healed.
“Don’t leave again,” Claire said, then, sensing the desperation in her request, added, “Until I’m better.”
“She needs you.” Puzzlement was in Lucy’s eyes. “She’s never needed anyone before.”
“How about a smoke? For the appetite?” Minna asked.
“How about just for fun?” Lucy said. She looked at Claire and clapped her hand over her mouth.
“It’s fine this once. A little pot for medicinal purposes.”
* * *
Minna went to her room, and Claire worried about their trespassing. Would she notice, and if she did, would there be tantrums? But she returned with no sign of having seen anything changed, a joint pinched between her elegant, long fingers. The two girls sat cross-legged on the floor on either side of the tub and passed the joint back and forth. Ashes floated on top of the water and stuck to the lettuce leaves, now giving the impression more of a rain-sodden, muddy pond. Claire wasn’t above using her scar, her illness, to coerce Lucy into staying. In a way,
wouldn’t it be healthy to force an adult-size responsibility on her? Both of her girls seemed to have kept a certain childishness. Had she spoiled them, protected them too well? She felt remorse for her behavior with Don—had it really been interest for Minna’s welfare, or had it been possessiveness?
Lucy whispered to Minna the new protocol after the emergency-room visits. Claire heard white blood cells, impaired organ function, toxicity. Instead, Claire would simply take the daily injections. During this time, she would have to be kept isolated, with a minimum of people.
“I wish I could stay,” Lucy said. “But Javier promised to take me to Tampa. We planned it forever.”
“Who’s Javier? Who goes to Tampa?” Claire asked.
Lucy looked hurt. “You never listen.”
Minna smiled and took a puff of the joint.
“Of course I want you to go.” The words did not sound convincing, even to Claire herself.
“I’ll come back and visit.”
“Tampa in the summer should be nice,” Minna said, and started to giggle.
Lucy burst out in a laugh. “Okay, okay. It’s a business trip, but you never know.”
“Maybe you could come stay longer next time?”
“I promise,” Lucy said.
Claire fantasized about cool, white foods—milk shakes and ice cream, creamy French Brie cheese with water crackers. “Can someone make me a grilled cheese?”
But neither girl heard her as they sat on the tile floor, leaning back against the wall.
“Donald seems taken with you,” Lucy said.
“Oh, Don. That’s nothing. I just magicked him.”
“Why don’t you teach me how to magic a man,” Lucy said, laughing but serious. Claire understood with a pang that her baby girl was lonely.
“That’s easy,” Minna said. “Problem is, it doesn’t get you what you want. In fact, it almost guarantees the opposite.”
“I want lunch,” Claire said, and both girls laughed.
“She hasn’t kept anything down in two days,” Lucy said. “And now she has the munchies.”
“Let’s go cook you something.”
They sat in the kitchen watching Minna cook.
“I’m so hungry,” Claire wailed. “Hurry.”
Lucy reached up to the cabinet above the refrigerator and pulled down a chocolate bar. Claire had forgotten all about that hiding place when the kids were small. When Josh had discovered it, he used a chair to reach it, then stole the whole supply and ate it in the orchard so he wouldn’t have to share with his sisters.
“I didn’t know chocolate was still stashed up there. Please, my dear baby girl, bring that here.”
* * *
Lucy packed to leave. She hugged them both good-bye. Minna had become indispensable, and not the paintings on the walls of her room, nor the nights spent out with Don, dissuaded them from the belief that they had come across someone true and genuine, to be treasured and held on to.
Claire didn’t know what the words on Minna’s walls meant, didn’t understand if her relationship with Don was about love or money, didn’t have a clear idea of her past, but Minna fed her, sometimes bite by bite, when needed. Although she did not love Claire, had not known her long enough except for a superficial affection, was not her daughter, Claire received more understanding at Minna’s hands than she dared ask for from her own children, more kindness than she could ever have hoped for from a stranger, perhaps more than she deserved. If that disinterested tenderness was not some kind of love, she didn’t know by what other name to call it.
Chapter 12
For Claire the time after the girls’ second leaving held a kind of perfection. The awkwardness of new acquaintance past, Minna and she settled into a companionship that was in ways as satisfying as her early days on the farm. All the songs and poems of the world focus exclusively on carnal love, which in many ways is the frailest and most fickle of bonds. Maternal love, familial caring, friendship, are all less overwhelming to the senses, but capable of greater steadiness due to that reticence. But the two relationships had an obvious difference: Forster and she had created an ever-widening circle of people—family, friends, workers, children—while Minna’s and her new world was ever contracting.
* * *
After a few weeks of cheerfulness, Minna promptly sank into one of her dark moods. If Claire had called them blue earlier, now they verged on soul-crushing, funereal black. More dissatisfied with things than ever before, she was lethargic to the point of immobility most of the day, but when Claire asked her what was wrong, she waved her off: “Some of us have to struggle in this life, che.”
“Tell me what it is.”
Minna scowled.
“If not me, can you talk with your family?” Claire prodded.
“The answers aren’t comforting. They use money like bait, see, to get me to do what they want.”
“And what is that?”
“They are disappointed that I didn’t marry the man they had picked out. But he left me.”
“I knew it.” Claire slapped her hands together.
Minna looked at her oddly but did not elaborate. “You think I’m one of those characters in my great-grand-maman’s books. I’m disinherited. That’s why I was working at the coffee shop when I met Lucy.”
* * *
In this brooding mood that continued for days, Minna accused Paz of stealing one of her gold bracelets from her room. Things had been moved around and were out of place. “I warned her to stay out of my room,” Minna said. Claire confessed that Lucy had gone into the room to retrieve her belongings. Perhaps she had moved things.
“Well, she didn’t steal my bracelet, did she?”
“No.”
Paz, confronted, broke down in tears.
“Tell her to empty her purse,” Minna said, her order a tyrant’s.
“Are you sure it’s missing?”
“It’s in her purse,” Minna said.
Claire paused, at an impasse. She knew that if she stood up against Minna, a price would be paid in moodiness and bad temper. “No, I won’t ask,” Claire said. “I know it’s not there. I trust her.”
“She stole from me!”
Paz snatched the purse before Claire could stop her, dumped the contents on the kitchen table. Of course it was filled with only the most innocuous of things, no jewelry to be found.
Claire nodded. Paz quit anyway.
Claire begged her to reconsider, but she refused to listen, waving Claire’s words away as she gathered her belongings. “I can’t stand working here.” As she walked out the door, she whispered, “Be careful. She is a mujer malvada.” Claire felt a sinking guilt but could think of nothing to remedy the situation. Soon Octavio, Forster, and Mrs. Girbaldi would hear of this, and then there would be an even bigger outcry.
Claire went to Octavio to explain, but he refused to discuss it. “I was not happy her working with Minna. It’s time for the next generation to be off the ranch.” He did not wait for a response.
* * *
After Paz was gone, Claire brooded in silence for a few days, angry, and complained about having to call around to find a new cleaning woman.
“Nonsense. We don’t need someone getting you sick. I’ll clean. I could use the extra cash.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Claire said, but it was too late. She knew that no matter whom she hired, Minna would be on the warpath with that woman.
Now Minna scrubbed toilets, mopped floors, talked to Claire less and less. Each time she passed her it was with a heavy sigh. When Mrs. Girbaldi came over with a home-baked pie, the two women sat in the living room while Minna vacuumed the room, pushing the hose under their feet, the sound making conversation impossible.
Mrs. Girbaldi watched and nodded to Claire. “Good job,” she mouthed.
But Claire worried. Minna worked with a kind of fury that made Claire edgy. Minna knelt on all fours and rubbed lemon oil into the wood floor so hard the wood groaned under h
er pressure. When she finished, her hands were raw.
Late at night, Claire heard Minna on the phone, speaking in what she now recognized was French Creole. She never seemed in a better mood afterward. Neither of them mentioned these calls.
When Claire asked her to play cards, she frowned. “Are you going to pay me for my time?”
“I didn’t hire you to clean. It makes me feel guilty. I don’t even care how the house looks.”
Those were the magic words, and the old Minna returned, walking with Claire in the orchards, lolling endless hours over coffee in the morning. The tension in the house was released as if a storm had blown over.
Minna didn’t refuse the extra pay for the work that she now no longer performed, and Claire didn’t want to upset the delicate peace by bringing up money. It was hard to explain even to herself how she came to accept the changes in their relationship. Perhaps it was just habit, the slow, creeping acceptance of the formerly intolerable. She was not an unintelligent woman, nor was she weak, but she supposed if she was honest, she would admit circumstances had revealed in her a hungering for transformation. Minna seemed integral to this.
For instance. A big surprise was the relief she found in no longer having to conform to outside expectations. Until then she had not realized how she’d made a prison of each moment of her day. Where had this compunction come from for sparkling countertops, scoured sinks, bleached sheets, socks and shirts folded neatly in their drawers? Whom was she out to please? Who was grading her? What an unexpected liberation to let dust accumulate, let the grass grow long and verdant, to allow birds to build nests in the eaves, to forget the grocery store and eat stew for three days in a row, or corn on the cob, or strawberries dirt-smudged from the fields. Minna’s laxness revealed that it mattered to no one, and now least of all to Claire.