'Round Midnight

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by Laura McBride


  24

  “Everyone plays soccer! Ashley, Brittany, Divya. They all get to play, Ina.”

  “Why do you want to play this game? It’s a boy’s game.”

  “It’s not for boys! It’s for girls.”

  “You’ll get very dirty. And kicked. People will kick you.”

  “I like to be dirty.”

  This was true, to Honorata’s chagrin.

  “I don’t like you to be dirty, Malaya. And I don’t like soccer. You could take another dance class. You could try ballet again.”

  “No! No, no, no! I hate ballet!”

  “Don’t yell. You didn’t hate it last year. You loved your pink leotard.”

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t want to take ballet. I don’t want to take tap. I don’t want to take any dance class.”

  “You can’t just quit your dance classes because your friends are playing soccer.”

  “Why not?”

  Honorata didn’t know why not. She knew she wanted Malaya to stop arguing. She was only in second grade, but already she fought so hard against her mother. It was these American schools. But Nanay was no help. When Honorata asked her what she thought she should do about Malaya, Nanay said, “Well, she’s an American. She should do American things.”

  What did that mean?

  Why didn’t Malaya like the dance classes Honorata paid for? She had taken ballet and tap, and each year, there were at least four beautiful costumes for the spring show. Last year, Honorata had bought the largest and most expensive photo of Malaya in the package deal. It showed her daughter, right hip jutted out, hair pulled tight across her scalp, a red flower over her ear, and a little red-and-black costume with a short swirl of skirt and a rhinestone belt. Malaya’s lips were red and her cheeks pink and her lashes so full they looked as if they were fake; the teacher had let all the mothers use her theater makeup to get the children ready. What little girl would not love that costume? That photo?

  Honorata had the photo framed at Swisher’s Frame Shop, with a little gold plaque that said “Malaya Age 6,” and it hung over the dresser in her bedroom. When Honorata looked at it each morning, she felt pleased with her daughter, and with herself, for giving that daughter a childhood with dance recitals and lessons and all the things a little girl living in the mountains in the Philippines could not even imagine.

  But soccer? Why did Malaya want to do something like this? The specter of Malaya’s father, the one who was a secret, flickered in Honorata’s mind. She didn’t want Malaya to be anything like this man. At times she asked herself, Who is this little girl? When Malaya wanted to play a boy’s game; when she jumped in the puddles in her brand-new shoes and got mud straight up the back of her pressed white blouse right before she was to go to school; when she sat rigid and screaming in the shopping cart at two years old, furious because Honorata would not buy her a tray of Jell-O chocolate pudding cups (how did she even know what they were?); when the school office called and said Honorata would have to come in, that Malaya had called another child a word the woman could not repeat on the phone; when these things happened, Honorata wondered where Malaya got these qualities. Why did she do these things?

  And this is why it was so good that her mother lived with them, and it was right that Honorata send her daughter to Catholic schools, even if it meant she would have to ride a school bus, and why it was so important that she watch what Malaya did, and the choices her daughter might make without knowing what it was inside her that made her choose them.

  Even when Honorata had betrayed her family and run away to Manila with Kidlat, an act far more horrible than anything she could imagine Malaya ever doing, even then, Honorata had not been like Malaya. She had been in love with Kidlat—madly in love. But Malaya? Malaya was willful when there was no particular reason to be so. Malaya was not submissive as Honorata had been, Malaya did not want to please Honorata the way that Honorata had wanted to please Nanay and Tatay. Malaya had a wildness that came to her from somewhere else—that came to her from the man. That was Honorata’s fault. But she would do what she could, she would protect her as much as she could, and maybe Malaya would change; maybe she would grow up. This did happen. Some wild children became serious adults.

  And perhaps it was these fears, these unknown possibilities, that tipped Honorata over some days. Perhaps this was why she would occasionally wake up, after a year—or even longer—of perfectly normal mornings, and the light would shine in acidly, and the sound of a cup rattling on the tile would grate, and she would feel it about to happen, an instant before it did, and then it would be there, full on top of her, and unbearable, and no way to lift herself back up. There was nothing to do but wait, and take one leaden step after another, until one day, just as inexplicably, the light would shine clear again, and she would hear the three-toned trill of a bird out her window. Honorata would stand up, startled at how easy it was, at how gravity had somehow shifted, and how she did not have to press against nothingness, but instead almost lifted, almost elevated, with each step she took.

  On those dark days, everything would stretch out impossibly. She would pick up her toothbrush, and the puddle of whitish gel at the bottom of the cup would accuse her: you can’t even keep this clean. She would step out the door, her fingers gripped a little too tightly on Malaya’s, and her daughter would protest: “Ina, stop touching me!” She would make herself a cup of strong, sweet coffee and allow herself to sit in the thickly padded wrought iron chairs she had bought for the patio, and she would not be able to push the chair into any position at which the sun did not shine too brightly, or in which she was not looking at something left undone, or from which the pool did not beckon like a siren: come in, come here, give up, give in, sink, forget, sink. So she would not sit down but would go to her desk and finally call about the outside sprinkler that still did not have the correct water pressure, even though she had paid a garden service twice. And when she talked to the receptionist, her voice would quiver, and then she would bark angrily at the young man who was not sure which house she meant, and then she would hang up the phone and feel mortified at what they must be thinking, what they must be saying, about the crazy Pilipina with all the houses on Cabrillo Court.

  And day after day, it would go on like this. After awhile, her mother would start making Malaya suman for breakfast, and she would hear Malaya say, “Lola, I don’t want tuyo in my lunch,” and she would hear the murmur of her mother’s voice, “Ang pagkain na ito ay mabuti.” Then Malaya would call, “Mommy, get out of bed!” But Honorata would not. She would lie there, tight like a stick, and she would hear the door open and close, and then awhile later, hear her mother return, and Honorata would not answer when her mother called to her. Only when the house was completely quiet—when she had counted dully to a thousand and then two hundred more—would she get up and dress and follow the to-do list she had made for herself the night before, exactly.

  And then one day she would get out of bed when Malaya called to her, and she would thank her mother for helping, and she would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Malaya’s lunch, with an apple and two pieces of candy. And when they walked out the door to the bus, her fingers would rest lightly in her daughter’s hand, and Malaya would tell her about the boy at school who could do a backflip, and about the teacher who had been to Rome and seen the Vatican, and about how she might grow up and sing onstage like Madonna. “Isn’t Madonna a pretty name? And her dresses are beautiful, Ina.”

  And that night after dinner, when Malaya would wrap one of Nanay’s scarves around her middle like a sari and totter into the kitchen in Honorata’s heels, singing, “Nothing like a good spanky”—and Nanay, her English suddenly much better than it had ever been in the supermarket, would ask, “What? What is she saying?”—that night, Honorata would laugh. She would laugh until the tears leaked down her cheeks, and Malaya, delighted that she could make her mother laugh, would sing louder and louder, “I just wanna hanky panky!” And Nanay would look more and
more dismayed, and Honorata would think that probably she should not be laughing, and that this might be one of Malaya’s bad choices, but she would not be able to help herself. The laugh would boil up from somewhere far below reason, and it would bellow out of her, unstoppable and cleansing and bringing with it a joy she had so recently believed she would never feel again.

  And what was this? How was it that she could not predict these feelings? Or direct them? And what did it matter, if right this minute she could feel this elation, she could look at her perfect, improbable, irrepressible child, and know suddenly that if she had not been so irrepressible, she would not have existed at all? It was all part and parcel of one thing: the fear and the horror inextricable from the beauty and the joy, at least for her, at least for this family. And really, if she had been given the choice—the whole choice, the good and the bad, the pain and the glory—she would have taken it. She would have said yes. Who knows, maybe she had been given that choice; maybe there was a reality in which she had chosen this life, somehow, someway, in that realm in which the truth was grander than anything one could know with the mind, but which did not, for Honorata, have anything to do with religion or a church or the way in which people spoke of these things.

  ENGRACIA

  The one whose heart was broken

  MAY 8, 2010

  In the Midnight Cafe

  There was a bill on the floor of the almost empty Midnight Cafe. Arturo could see it through the bars of his cashier cage, and since it was slow, he watched it flutter in the slight breeze from the air-conditioning, and wondered who would find it. His guess was that whoever picked it up would immediately put it into a slot machine, probably Megabucks, since there was one nearby. To a gambler, found money was lucky money.

  It was one of the maids. She looked tired, coming off the night shift. She had stopped to get a fifty-cent cup of coffee, and the old man watched as she lifted her eyes from the Styrofoam cup, spotted the fluttering bill, and then leaned over to pick it up. It was more than a dollar; he could see it in the way she straightened. But she didn’t play the money. She tucked it into a pocket of her pale-blue dress.

  She leaned against a pony wall that separated casino cardholders from the regular line when the cafe was busy, which wasn’t often anymore, and finished her coffee. Then she shifted her purse, large and cracked, with an oddly bright buckle at the center, and dug around in it for her ID and an envelope. She approached the cashier cage.

  “Cash check?”

  “Small bills? ¿En billetes pequeños?”

  “Sí.”

  “Una noche difícil, ¿eh?”

  She looked startled that he had spoken about something other than her check. She must have worked alone all night. The hotel was even slower than the casino.

  Her eyes caught his, but she did not speak.

  She was young. She hadn’t looked young, stooping for that bill, but she was. Arturo wished he could say something to her. He was an old man now, and he knew what it was like to work in a hotel, to work all night, to move from room to room with a heavy cart—and here was a room trashed by someone on a Vegas binge and there was a guest, weaving down the hall, drunk and unpredictable. And all night long, she would have worked silently; she would have observed and been mute. Perhaps she had felt nervous, perhaps she had felt irritated, perhaps she had simply moved through it all, leaden, as she looked right now.

  Why did his eyes water as he stamped her check and opened the till to count her cash? Getting old had made him foolish. She was lucky to have a job, and there was nothing wrong with working as a maid.

  “Gracias,” she said, taking the small stack of twenties.

  “De nada, Engracia. Gástalo sabiamente.”

  Spend it wisely. Why did he say things like this?

  “Voy a comprar un patín para mi hijo.”

  A skateboard. For her son. She was old enough to have a child with a skateboard.

  “He’ll be happy.”

  “Sí. Eso espero.”

  She had a wide face and when she smiled, her eyes narrowed into deep-set black ribbons. Arturo smiled back, pleased to think that she had a son, that she could buy him a gift, that the boy would be happy.

  He had worked at the El Capitan for forty-three years. Had known Odell Dibb, and worked for June when she doubled the size of the place, and then for their son, Marshall. Now the Dibbs had all left, and the El Capitan should have been gone too. Marshall had sold to a Chinese investor who immediately announced that the casino would be torn down. But the economy fell apart, and everything in Vegas just stopped: overnight it seemed. There was a huge empty lot down the street where the Stardust had been imploded, but the El Capitan hadn’t closed and hadn’t disappeared; it just sat, and nobody, not even the rich people, had the money to get rid of it. Most of his carnales had gotten out while they could, but Arturo figured he’d just ride the ship down. There weren’t any jobs anywhere, and who would want an old Mexican guy with bad lungs?

  Of course, they all had bad lungs after a lifetime inside casinos. The word now was that it was best not to go to a doctor, not to do anything; the doctors wanted to operate, wanted to confirm cancer. But of course it was cancer. All that smoke, all those nights. Surgery just stirred things up, made you die quicker. Marge said that she’d had black spots on her lungs for nine years, and she would not let a doctor touch them. Just leave those spots sit, and if you were lucky, your own tissue would encase them—that was Marge’s idea. She was a tough old broad, and she’d been right about a lot of things. She could be right about the lungs too.

  Arturo didn’t know. He didn’t like doctors much, and he didn’t know anything about his lungs. The world was for young people, like this maid, anyway.

  25

  Engracia struggled to unhook the head of the vacuum cleaner from its notch on the canister. Cleaning Ms. Navarro’s house was different from cleaning a hotel room, and she got tired of doing everything a different way in each house. It was strange how trivial things could bother her, when, in fact, she cared nothing at all about what she was doing, or how her day went, or whether something got done. Even now, if the plastic bit of this vacuum snapped off, she would feel bad to have done it.

  Sweating, struggling to wrench the pieces apart without making a sound that might draw Ms. Navarro near, she cracked her elbow against the washing machine.

  “Mierda.”

  Ms. Navarro appeared in the door.

  “Do you need help?”

  “No. I’m fine. I—I fix it.”

  Ms. Navarro had followed her around the first two times she had come. She wasn’t used to having a maid, and had given Engracia the job only because one of the priests had asked her to do it. This made Engracia nervous. She wondered what she sounded like to Honorata. An idiot, probably. Her English was fine but not when she was rattled. Diego had chattered away in English, and she had understood perfectly. She hadn’t even told him to speak in Spanish, as most of the other mothers did, because it pleased her that he could speak so well.

  Diego.

  “I’m making something for Malaya. She’ll be home in a while. Can I fix you a plate?”

  “No. Thank you. I’m not hungry.”

  Ms. Navarro’s daughter had purple and green stripes in her hair and a tattoo that looked like a serpent winding up her neck from somewhere inside her shirt. Engracia rarely saw her but found her a bit alarming. She could not imagine letting one’s child look like that.

  “I make the beds now.”

  “Don’t worry about my mother’s room. She’s staying with a friend who had surgery this week.”

  Engracia nodded and started up the stairs with two sets of sheets, thinking that she could be done with Malaya’s room before she got home. Sometimes the girl would skip school, and when she did, she would stay in bed until well past noon. Her room got the morning sun, and Engracia was amazed that she could stay asleep, swaddled in blankets, with the sun beating in and the second floor so warm that Engracia wou
ld feel slightly nauseous as she scrubbed out the shower.

  Someday she would return to the El Capitan to work. They had told her she could have her job back any time she wanted, at least if the El Capitan was still open. Engracia was thinking about it. She didn’t like working in homes, and while she appreciated that the padre had gotten her these jobs—that he understood she needed something to do every day—eventually she would go back to the El Capitan. It was just hard going back, as if her life were still the same.

  Malaya’s room had a deep-orange wall and a poster of Manny Pacquiao on it. Diego had been wild for boxing too; it was something he shared with his dad. Juan was in Las Vegas twenty years ago when Chavez fought Taylor—it was the first time he had crossed the border—and he and Diego had spent hours watching old fights on YouTube and hashing out why Chavez was the greatest Mexican fighter of all time.

  This is how it was for Engracia, day after day, alone with these memories, these thoughts. She supposed it would be like this until she died—until finally she died—because she agreed with the padre: she did not have the choice about how long she lived.

  Engracia snapped Malaya’s sheet expertly under the mattress. She tugged the comforter up straight, and placed the girl’s collection of pillows and teddy bears back on the bed. The room was a sort of archeology of girlhood: a row of puppets on one bookshelf, a doll-sized American Girl dresser and bed in the corner, a pile of CDs with titles scribbled in blue and green marker: Aimee’s Mix, Road Trip 1987, Don’t Listen to This Sober. There were photos of little girls on soccer teams and at Fern Adair dance recitals; there was a dried-up corsage, a Homecoming Court banner, a collection of flip-flops, tangled necklaces hanging from a metal stand, and a leopard-print padded bra on top of the bureau.

 

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