'Round Midnight

by Laura McBride

  Engracia flicked a feather duster across these surfaces. She thought about Diego’s room, for the short time they had lived in Las Vegas together. It was a closet, really, but there was a small window and room for his bed. Apart from that, there had been almost nothing in it: just an old jacket of Juan’s spread on a stool and a small pile of books from the school book fair.

  When Juan was detained, Engracia knew she would have to leave Pomona. She told Diego that it would be better if they were far away; that her papers might also be inspected, that they would have to lay low for a while. Her friend Pilar had suggested Las Vegas. It was cheaper than California, especially now, because the economy was so bad. And there were still jobs in the casinos, if you knew someone, and Pilar did: Engracia could work as a maid in one of the old hotels. Engracia didn’t want to move because Diego was happy with his friends, and this was the only world he’d ever known.

  But she couldn’t reach Juan. The only reason she knew he was still in jail, just sitting there, was because Ramón had told her. Ramón knew things, knew people everywhere. Engracia had asked him when Juan would be back, but Ramón had not replied. He had shaken his head, said times were tough, and that Juan had been caught already twice before. Engracia did not tell Diego that Juan was still in jail, that he was waiting to be deported, or that she was running out of money and could not afford their apartment.

  That night, Engracia tossed and turned, and then finally threw up in the toilet. This was why Pilar had talked about Las Vegas. She had known that Engracia would be on her own, would need someplace easier than Pomona—cheaper, with steadier work. Engracia resisted, but only for a few days. This was not the hardest thing she had done. It was easy to do hard things for her son.

  She had crossed the border when she was sixteen, with a friend of a friend of Juan’s. Engracia had found out she was pregnant, and she had known she didn’t have much time. If she was ever going to leave, going to follow Juan, she would have to do it now, before the baby was born. And so she had. She had done this enormous thing on her own, without telling her mama or her papa, without kissing her little brothers good-bye. She’d given birth in a hospital filled with women like herself, and the nurse had not concealed the anger she felt at what Engracia was doing, and Engracia had had to force herself not to care about the nurse, not to need her, as her body twisted and gripped. In her mind, she thought that this pain could not be right, could not be normal, but of course it was normal, and she gave birth to a perfect Diego, who waited to cry until the doctor rubbed his feet, and then stopped crying the moment that Engracia took him in her arms.

  Afterward, Engracia asked for a piece of paper and a pen. She wanted to write it all down, everything that had happened, so that she could send it to her mother. This is how tired she was: she knew her mother didn’t have a phone, but somehow forgot that she didn’t know how to read. Engracia could not send the letter. If she sent a letter, someone would have to read it to Mama. Her brothers were still too young yet, so it would be someone from the village. It would embarrass her mother to hear someone read aloud Engracia’s words: about what it had been like to give birth to Diego.

  Juan had not been there. He was working, moving farther and farther north, but he had made it back in time to take her and their son out of the hospital, to bring them, carefully and solemnly, to the little apartment in Pomona. She had been so proud of Juan, who had gotten them a place to live, just one big room, but all theirs. They had not shared it with another family. And this is where they had lived for nine years. She and Juan and Diego. By the time that Engracia left, the apartment was unrecognizable from the room they had first taken. Juan had painted the walls yellow, and Engracia had made everything herself: the curtains and the bedding and the flowered cover on the couch where Diego had slept with his thumb in his mouth, and the sound of his suck, suck, suck like an ocean lapping.

  They had been happy. She had known Juan since before her quinceañera—they had met at the parade for Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe—and as soon as she turned fifteen, he had made the long walk from Jerez to her village to find her. Juan was older, and he had already been to the United States, already worked a few seasons in a raisin plant. He was full of ideas for what they could do, for how they would live, for the lives their children would have. In the meantime, they could send money back to her family.

  And this was what they had done.

  Engracia was proud to help her parents, proud that her brothers could go to school, proud that her papa, who had hated working in the States, could stay and grow peppers on the land on which he had always lived. These were not hardships: she and Juan enjoyed the life they had made. They liked being in a city—in an American city. They liked taking Diego to the park, and watching people on the streets, and buying ice cream on Fridays when they got paid. Diego was a funny little boy, and he made them laugh. They would play on the floor with him for hours. Juan used to invent silly songs, and Engracia was not too shy to dance in the park, or to run wildly down the beach with her arms above her head on the days when they took the bus to the ocean.

  There were all those good years to shore her up, and if she had been capable of crossing a border and having a child and making a home when she was sixteen, then she could certainly find a way for her and Diego to live until Juan got out of jail. This was not even hard, it was just life. She still had the rent in the box they kept hidden. Engracia had ignored the landlord pounding on the door, ripped the sheet of paper from the door without reading it. She would have to go quickly, and she was sorry that there would be no time to let Diego get used to it. She picked him up at school on Friday, after getting his records from the office, and told him they would be moving to Las Vegas on Sunday. Even though Diego was already nine, he cried, and begged to stay a little longer. But because he would be afraid if he knew how little money they had, she did not explain why she refused.

  Her son was subdued on the ride up I-15. They stopped at McDonald’s, and she bought him everything he liked: the double cheeseburger with bacon and a Dr Pepper and a hot fudge sundae. They sang “Hay un hoyo en el fondo de la mar” for miles, and she made sure Diego beat her each time. For a while, it was fun, but as they got farther from Pomona, after they crossed the Cajon Pass and drifted down and past Victorville, even Engracia felt daunted. She pointed out the giant thermometer in Baker, which didn’t seem to be working, and Diego looked out the window, at the desert stretched brown and barren and relentless as far as the eye could see. Cars were strung along the freeway like seeds on the backside of a fern, and the sun beat down even though it was January. They finally saw what they thought was Las Vegas in the distance, but it was merely a collection of overeager casinos at the state line, with a huge roller coaster in the parking lot, and just after that, a low concrete building, ringed with barbed wire, in the middle of nowhere.

  The drive was sad, and the move was harder.

  Diego was not happy in their new home, and he did not like his new school. Pilar’s friend had gotten Engracia a job at a casino called the El Capitan, and she had told her about the apartments near Maryland Parkway, where everyone spoke Spanish and she would not need a deposit. But the neighborhood was rough, much rougher than where they had lived in Pomona. All night long, Engracia heard loud talk and fighting, sudden shouts, and the undulating whine of police sirens. She did not let Diego outside after dark, and she worried about the kids he walked home from school with, even while she was grateful that another mother had invited Diego to have breakfast at her house when he woke up alone, hours after Engracia had left for work.

  Engracia did not think the school was so bad. She had gone to a meeting for Hispanic parents, where a man in a suit and tie talked with them about college. His Spanish was very good, and he told them there was a lot of money for Hispanic children who wanted to go to college. They could go to the best schools in the United States. And then a woman, a mexicana, spoke. She explained that the children who got this money had to go to school every
day, had to take AP classes when they got to high school, had to join the debate team or the math club, and stay after school when they could be home taking care of younger children. Engracia heard one father say that he did not want his child to leave home, and he did not understand a college that preferred math club to a child who helped his family, but Engracia did not feel this way. This is what she wanted for Diego. This is why she had left her family, so that Diego could live differently.

  It had been Juan who had first felt this way about America, who had given her these ideas about their children. But when he finally called, the day he arrived back in Jerez, he said that maybe they should all go back to Mexico. Life was so much easier there; one didn’t need very much money to live in the village. Engracia was shocked. They had never considered returning to Zacatecas.

  After the meeting, she wandered the school, looking at the walls filled with children’s art: watercolor paintings and origami sculptures and brightly colored maps that showed small children in different cities around the world. Peering in the windows of a classroom, Engracia saw a row of computers and three bookshelves stacked with books—even though the school had its own library where the meeting had just been held—and plastic cups filled with markers and paintbrushes and rulers.

  Engracia had gone to school. It was a long walk, very hot, to the next village, and the school had been just two rooms: one for the younger children and the other for the older ones. There was a little building in the back, with three pit toilets, and in between there was a dusty field where the children played at recess. The teacher, Senorita Consuela, was from Mexico City. She had been to the national museum filled with stone figures too heavy for fifty men to lift and also to the house painted blue where the artists had lived. Engracia had liked school.

  Weeks went by, and still Diego did not thrive. He gained weight. He pretended to be sick in the mornings. He would call her at work and beg not to go to school, saying his stomach hurt, he had a fever, he could not get out of bed. And she would make him go to school, not listen to his pleas, and wonder at how long that would last. How long would he relent and do as she asked, and when would he figure out that there was nothing she could do if he did not go?

  One night at dinner, Diego was animated. A scientist had visited the fourth grade. He had dipped a rose in nitrogen and made it freeze. He had showed slides of Death Valley and told about the Indians who had lived there, and the giant boulders that rolled mysteriously, leaving tracks in the dry earth, even though no one ever saw them move and they were too big for any living thing to push.

  “Can we go see them, Mama?”

  “The boulders?”

  “Yes. They’re sailing stones. And where the Indians lived. And the castle.”

  “Maybe, papí. Maybe in the summer, if you get good grades.”

  “Could Papa come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She regretted telling him that they might go to Death Valley. She was afraid of this place. She didn’t want to go there without Juan. “Do you still like to skateboard? Maybe we can get a skateboard for summer.”

  Diego’s face dimmed.

  “Sí, Mama,” he said slowly.

  At this thought, Engracia dropped Ms. Navarro’s laundry basket to the floor.

  The clothes at the top rolled onto the floor, and she heard Ms. Navarro walk to the bottom of the stairs to see if something had happened. Engracia did not call down to her. A tight band stretched across the bottom of her rib cage, and squeezed. She doubled over, trying to breathe. Padre Burns had said that it was good to remember, that she had to let her feelings out, but she couldn’t bear to remember; it took her breath away. But then, what difference did it make if she could breathe? And as soon as that thought came, her body relaxed, the cinch around her middle eased, and air filled her lungs.

  She picked up the clothes that had fallen, and the basket, and started down the stairs carefully. Ms. Navarro wasn’t standing there anymore—Engracia could hear her in the kitchen—so when the bell rang, she set the basket carefully on the bottom step and hurried to open the door.

  The man was large, and older. His face was quite red, as if it were always that color, and at first, he seemed nervous.

  “I’m looking for Honorata Navarro. Is she here?”

  Engracia hesitated. Perhaps she shouldn’t have opened the door. She struggled to find the right words.

  “Just a minute.”

  She started to close the door to look for Ms. Navarro, but he put his foot in the jamb and then said calmly, “I’d like to speak with her if I could.”

  Engracia looked from his foot to the door to the empty hallway behind her. “Ms. Navarro!” she called.

  As soon as she spoke, the man entered the doorway. He didn’t move farther into the house, but stood on the entryway floor, waiting.

  Engracia’s heart beat faster. Why had she answered the door?

  “She’s not here,” Engracia tried. “I’m sorry, she’s not home right now.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “No. You can’t stay here. You have to leave.”

  Her voice was weak, but at least she was finding the words she wanted.

  Just then, Ms. Navarro rounded the corner. Engracia was looking at her, past the man, and the shock on her face, it actually went white, made it clear that she should not have opened the door.

  “I’m sorry. I try to tell him to leave . . .”

  “Rita,” said the man.

  “Honorata,” said the trembling Ms. Navarro.

  26

  Life perfects us, if we let it.

  I have reached a moment in which I might be almost pure. I don’t wish for things. I think I finally see life: how nature is, what it means to live and die, how there is nothing at all, nothing, except in what one might do for someone else.

  I’ve reached this place at a time when I am something like an old dog. My fur is pocked with bald spots, my skin spotted with twisty disturbing growths, my teeth smell of rot; there is always a whiff of urine or feces about me. In short, I live to do something for others, and the people around me are busy steeling themselves, summoning the courage, to do for me. Marshall tries so hard to be loving, and I know the effort it costs him, now that I am slow and dribbly and unreliable and more or less mute. It’s ironic, of course. A divine sort of joke. Almost, but not quite, I even see the reason why it should be so.

  “I thought you ought to know my heart’s on fire.”

  “Singing again? You sound happy.”

  “The flame it just leaps higher.”

  “Oh, June, you’re wet. You know where the bathroom is. Why’d you do that?”

  “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.”

  “You have to try to keep up. It’s not nice.”

  Helen is a lovely person, very competent. Del would have hired her in an instant. She’s not as much fun as Jessy, though. Jessy will put on a record and dance with me, or bring me a bit of the dessert she made the night before. When we walk, she doesn’t seem to care that I am slow, and she brings along a little vase, with water, and collects a nosegay as we go. I can’t tell you how this pleases me. (Actually, I really can’t tell you. Isn’t that funny?) I sing and sing as we walk along, I can’t stop myself; it makes me so happy when she finds a flower, especially if I have spotted it first and am hoping she will see it.

  “Today’s physical therapy. Matt will be here in ten minutes, and now you have to change your clothes. Come on.”

  “I can’t give you anything but love, baby.”

  “All right. I’ll just bring your clothes in here. And then you change, okay? You have to hurry, June.”

  “Scheme awhile, dream awhile.”

  I’m not trying to frustrate Helen, though she thinks I am. If I wanted to make her mad, I couldn’t. I can’t seem to make things work the way I intend. Words are the worst, and eating is hard, but even getting dressed. I’m thinking about putting my pants on. Fifteen minutes ago, I was thinking about gett
ing up and going to the bathroom. There’s nothing wrong with my legs. I’m slow, but I can get up, I can move. It’s just that if I try to do one thing, something else happens. And then when I feel something about that, a different feeling comes out.

  It’s caused a lot of misunderstandings.

  Marshall comes to dinner when he is in town, and begs me to eat. He cuts my food smaller, and talks about how tasty it is, how it came from this restaurant or that chef, what the ingredients are, and I sit and look at him with a silly grin on my face, but my hand doesn’t go to the fork, my mouth doesn’t open. When he tries to feed me, I tighten my lips and shake my chin, and the food falls on to my lap.

  “Mom,” he says. “Please try. Just eat one bite.”

  And I remember saying the same words to him when he was too small to talk, and I wonder if he was thinking something other than what I thought he was. Probably he just wanted to play, probably peas tasted bitter to him, but now I see everything differently. I see all the moments of my life differently now that I am actually trying to open my mouth, trying to neatly take the food my son offers, trying not to make him feel mocked by my mysterious grin. And purse go my lips, and shake goes my chin, and twinkle go my eyes, as if I have annoyed him for fun.

  “That’s good,” says Helen. “Thank you for getting dressed. And you wrapped up your wet clothes. I’ll take them.”

  That’s how it works. If my mind is distracted, if I’m thinking about Marshall, then I am also putting on clean pants and neatly wrapping up the dirty ones. Only I didn’t know I was doing it. I’m more surprised than Helen to see that I’m ready for Matt.

  “Howdy, Mrs. Dibb. How are you today?”

  Matt always says howdy, but he doesn’t look like a cowboy. More like a dancer. I smile at him, and apparently I really do, because he smiles back.

  “Ready to work hard?”

  “Nine little miles from ten-ten-Tennessee.”