Yo!

by Julia Alvarez

  Now I don’t go in for hocus pocus one bit, but next thing I know, I hear the pickup up front, and there’s Clair minus the girlfriend asking can he come inside and have a cup of coffee. Of course, I want him back, but I stand with my hand on the door like I’m not sure I’m going to let him in. Well, he’s grinning, hands at his hips, looking things over. I can see what he sees: the overgrown lawn I need him to mow, the broken rail at the steps I need him to fix. Finally his eyes come to rest on the upstairs windows now hung with a wild purple fabric with half-moons on it. “I hear you got you a couple of lesbian foreigner tenants,” he says.

  And I don’t know if it’s the magic powders or just having those girls around two weeks now, but I find I have a mouth. “Well, I hear I got me a tail-chasing husband.” And I turn to go in like I’m too busy to be talking to him and giving my neighbors something to talk about. “You’re welcome to some coffee,” I say over my shoulder, “but them girls is coming down before the one visiting goes home.” I make this up—the part about them coming down, though it’s true Tammy’s leaving today on account of her boys is coming back from their father’s.

  “Well, least let me get this front yard a sec ’fore I come in,” he says, and that’s when I know he’s here to stay. Or I should say the little girlfriend must have dumped him and he hasn’t found a new one yet.

  He’s over at the shed kicking and cussing at the mower because the motor keeps dying on him. I call upstairs and tell the one called Yo that I sure would like it if they came down and had a cup of coffee before Tammy goes. I can hear she’s a little surprised like maybe I done the wrong thing but it’s also the nice wrong thing. “Sure,” she says after a pause. And then she adds, “Marie, there’s some weird guy throwing a fit in your backyard shed. Is he supposed to be here?”

  And before I can stop myself and say it in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m saying it—which is my friend Dottie’s description of what they teach you over at the college—I say to this Yo, “That’s my husband Clair. He wants to say hello.”

  A few weeks of his sorry-eyed, sweet talk, and the trouble starts up again.

  One night his fries isn’t fried through, another night his meat’s pinker than he likes and the kids is arguing over what they’re going to watch on the TV, and he loses it. Thing that’s changed is I’m lipping him back, and so I’m getting pushed around a lot more, and I’m feeling it a lot more as I’ve started to take off the weight. Gets me to thinking maybe I put on those eighty pounds as padding against his fist coming at me. But truth is he’s so drunk, all I got to do is dodge, and being slimmer, I’m quicker on my feet too. He hollers and carries on a while, but then falls in a dead drunk sleep. And seeing him lying on his ma’s old bed, all tangled in the sheets with his hair thinning in back, my heart fills up with a sad sorry love for him I don’t know what to do with but keep to myself.

  Anyways I’m used to it, but upstairs I can hear that typewriter that’s been thumping away suddenly go silent. And then I hear her crossing the room, back and forth, since our bedroom’s right below where she said she was going to put that study of hers. Sometimes when the yelling starts and the kids is crying, I hear her coming down the stairs real slow like she doesn’t know what she’s going to do. Then, a little while later, the car starts up and off she goes. I don’t know where. Sometimes she stays away all night, and I lie awake on the sofa bed or in the rocker in Emily and Dawn’s room just waiting for the sound of that Toyota like my life depended on her coming back home.

  Then, one day I’m out back hanging the wash, and she’s coming up the steps to her place, and she turns back. She walks kind of cautious up to me, her arms carrying two big bookbags she hasn’t had the sense to leave by the door. “Hi, Marie,” she says, and her eyes are still the eyes of someone in a scary movie, but what she’s looking at is my face. It’s gone down some since Clair’s last fit four nights ago, though the bruise on my right cheek looks like I went crazy with the eye shadow.

  “Are you all right?” she says.

  “I’m fine,” I say because what am I suppose to say. I love a man who’s all wrong inside, and I stay because something wrong’s inside me, I guess. So I say, “How’s the new job? Heard from your friend Tammy? Still taking that Chinese exercise class?” A whole bunch of questions thrown at her and all the time I’m hanging up Clair’s socks and drawers and giving her the left side of my face.

  “Fine, fine,” she keeps saying like her heart’s not in the conversation.

  “How’s the book you’re writing for your tenure going?” I ask. She explained to me about it, which got Clair all riled up on account of me teasing him one night that I bet he didn’t know what a tenure was. He didn’t, and he especially didn’t like being shown up. “I hear you typing away upstairs,” I add cause now she’s looking at those bookbags instead of right at my face like she always does.

  “I’m not writing a whole lot,” she says. “I can’t concentrate much,” she adds, and she sets them bookbags down and looks me in the face. “Marie,” she says, “I hear what’s going on downstairs. I think you need to get some help.”

  I don’t know why this burns me up. Maybe I’m just waiting to yell at someone who’s not going to punch me out. “I don’t think it’s any business of yours,” I tell her, and now I’m giving her my full face which is more than my full face since it’s all swole up. “I didn’t say nothing when you and Tammy was carrying on.”

  I can tell right after I say it that I just about hit the wrong bull’s-eye. She looks like somebody slapped her—all surprised and unbelieving. “What are you talking about, Marie? If you mean Tammy and I are lovers, we’re not. And even if we were, that’s not the same as someone beating you up.”

  “It’s not beating,” I yell back at her like I’m trying to drown out the thought. It’s that he’s trying to kill something inside himself and I get in his way. Course I don’t say that part. “We’re having a little bit of a rocky road, that’s all,” is what I say.

  “Marie, he’s hurting you. Look at your face.” She touches my shoulder, and for a second time with her, I feel like I’m going to cry. So, I put a stop to this softness I can’t afford to get used to inside.

  “Listen here, Yolander, you just remember, you’re renting this place, that’s all, and what you do is your business ’cepting it’s legal and what I do is mine, you hear me.”

  Well, her eyes get kind of dewy and her cheeks a shade darker. She picks up her bookbags, and starts to go, but then she turns back. “Marie, I’m sorry, but I just can’t keep living here. I’m going to have to move.”

  “You signed a lease,” I say, sterner than I mean to sound. Cause what I feel in my heart is this swallowed-up feeling like when Clair moved out. “You can’t just break a lease,” I tell her—like this is America and she better play by the rules.

  “I’m going to have to,” she says, and I see something in her eyes I overlooked before. I must have been distracted by her little-girl size and foreigner politeness. Those eyes of hers see clear through me to where she’s going—that’s why they’re so intent—and nothing, not Clair Beaudry, not Marie either, not a lease or a security deposit, not God Himself with His eternal tenure to hold over her head is going to stop her. I never seen a woman look like that before, though I seen plenty of men with them surefire eyes, including my Clair when he knows just how he wants his fries.

  “I hope you understand it’s not you,” she is saying in a softer voice, like maybe she scared her own self being so strong. “I need to get writing done, and I can’t work here. It’s not a . . .” She sets those bookbags down and makes a shape with her hands about the size of a baby or a womb with a baby inside it. “Not a safe space. . . . And you’re not willing to get help, so it’s not going to change.”

  “I can’t change him,” I blurt out. “Ever since his ma died, he just about lost himself or something. I’ve tried.” And this time the tears is dripping right down to the ground along with Clair’s underw
ear I just hung out.

  She puts her arms around me. “Then leave him, Marie,” she whispers real fierce, “leave him!”

  I’m about to wipe my eyes to try to see clear through if it’s something I can do. But first I want to stand here a moment and hear myself sobbing, just a sweet moment, Jesus. Then over her shoulder, I see that pickup pulling up alongside the shed, and there’s Clair Beaudry glaring at his wife hugging the lesbian foreigner tenant in plain sight. He comes down hard on that horn of his, and that poor gal just about jumps out of her skin and right out of my arms.

  A new kind of trouble starts, and that’s Clair fighting with a pretty woman instead of trying to get in her pants.

  She writes me a letter saying she is moving out on account of the place is not conducive to her working. Could she have her security deposit back? She needs it in order to move to a new place. She used up her first couple of paychecks just paying back bills and she’s got nothing extra in the bank.

  Well, Clair gets a hold of the letter. He’s now a hawk when it comes to this Yo. After he found us being indecent in broad daylight, as he calls it, he’s forbidden me to have anything to do with her and he’s told Dawn and Emily he’ll bust their little bottoms if they go upstairs to eat rabbit food and talk foreign. You’d think then he’d just let her break the lease and go. But no, he says she’s got to stay or leave and be liable for the whole year’s rent, which is what he really wants. Then he can rent it double, see, and make himself a pretty profit. Maybe even move in the next little girlfriend.

  He goes upstairs to tell her this and I hear voices raised, actually hers more than his. When he comes back down he’s got a list and he’s madder than a hornet you missed with the swatter but got one of its teeny legs. “She’s got the gumption to say she’s going over to the tenant bureau to make a complaint!” He’s swearing up and down our living room, and I hear her upstairs pacing up and down like the one is a reflection of the other. Now I never heard of no tenant bureau, and it turns out Clair never did either. We just rent and keep it under the table. The lease I got from Dottie who secretaried over at Century 21. So I’m starting to get scared that maybe we’ll get in trouble and have to pay back all the money we ever made on the upstairs.

  “Clair, why don’t we just let her go,” I say. “She don’t belong here anyway like you said yourself.”

  He raises the hand with the list on it like he’s going to hit me for standing up for her. So I say, “What you got there?” to distract him, and he shoves that piece of paper in my face. “Lookee that!” he cries, shaking his head, his face all red like maybe he is going to have a heart attack. There on the list is everything that’s been broke down with the place since she rented it. But funny, Yo never complained to me before about any of this.

  “Broken stove fan, missing rod in hall closet, loose step on the stairs, window in bedroom is cracked.” He’s reading it out loud now in that funny voice a man puts on when he’s trying to sound like a woman. “I’ll show her what’s broke and cracked,” he yells up at the ceiling.

  Then he starts collecting his tools, and I’m a few steps behind him wondering what he’s up to. Turns out he told her she had no right to move out as the place is all fair and square, and that’s when she said, “Actually it’s not, and handed him the list of repairs. She was probably thinking it’d be her ticket out. But no, old Clair’s going to fix every goddamn last broke thing, including her, “if it takes me the whole year to do it!” He glowers at me like he’s got the two of us confused.

  So, he’s up there every day after work, fooling with some small job or other. Minute he bangs on her door, she’s out of there and in that car. Lots of nights she just never comes home. Sometimes I hear him wandering around up there like he’s doing more than repairing the busted light in the front bedroom. And I get to feeling sorry for her. I start making this plan in my head that I’m going to get me a job and pay her that security myself and then move out on her tail. But it’s all daydreams for now, cause I won’t even go out of this house till I have enough of this weight off where people aren’t going to stare.

  Which is why I shop at the Safeway late, you see, and that’s where I bump into her one night, pushing her cart with her two big bookbags in there and a bottle of wine, with the front baby part full of jars of things I always wonder who on God’s earth eats them anyhow, artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, coconut milk, stuff like that. My own basket’s heaping, which embarrasses me on account of I can just see people looking at me and looking at it and thinking, Uh-huh, Uh-huh. But I guess I’ve slimmed down considerably because Yo acts kind of startled when she sees me. She comes right up with those powerful eyes of hers and says, “Oh, Marie, I don’t see how you can stand by and let him do this to another woman.”

  That hits right where I’m weakest and so I make myself look strong. “Look here,” I say, “I got nothing to do with it. I told him to let you go.” I look down at all the things in my cart I’m buying for him, his beer and cigarettes, the frozen pizzas he likes when he’s watching the Sunday games, and I feel like throwing them all out. “He don’t listen to me. What can I do?”

  “I suppose nothing,” she says, not harsh or mean, but like someone sizing up the situation and seeing you’re licked. “And I’m trapped, too, until that paycheck comes. . . . Then I’m out of there! He can sue me if he wants,” she adds.

  I lean in towards her like maybe Clair’s coming up behind me and I whisper, “He ain’t going to sue you, so don’t worry about that part.” I want to give her that little peace of mind. Course I don’t tell her why he wouldn’t sue. That we don’t report that upstairs income.

  She looks at me a minute, surprised, I guess, that I’ve spoke up against Clair even if it is behind his back. Then, as she’s getting ready to push off, she says to me, “Ay, Marie. You deserve better, you know.”

  Them words is like she wrote them in the air, and I can’t help seeing them everywhere: on the label of every bottle and can and box on the Safeway shelves. As I’m driving home, my heart feels the lightest it’s felt since I gained the eighty pounds.

  It’s as I’m unloading and wondering where the hell is Clair’s pickup—that I see that quick zigzag in the sky. My first thought is them words are going to be flashed up there in bright lights, but of course, a minute later there’s that rip of thunder, and then that rain starts coming down.

  Is wear I don’t think once about them leaks on the roof. All I have in mind is the clues I’m starting to put together that Clair’s after new tail. The daily shower, the cologne in his hair, his disappearing most nights after he works on the upstairs repairs. I stand in my kitchen, piecing it together with the needle and thread of those words Yo spoke to me. You deserve better, you know. What I don’t know is what I’m going to do with this new idea when I’m through thinking on it.

  It’s real quiet in the house, just the sound of my two girls fast asleep in their bedroom, the refrigerator kicking in every once in a while, and that rain coming down like it’s trying to tell me something I can’t make out. When I hear the car out front, I turn off the lights and go to the front window. It’s Yo coming home with her bags of books, dodging the rain as she comes up the steps, then back down for the grocery bag. I hear her upstairs putting things away, walking around, and then I hear the cry. Two seconds later she’s pounding on my door, and she don’t say a word when I open it, but grabs me by the arm. “It’s late,” I say. “Can’t it wait till morning?”

  “I want you to see this.” And she’s crying, crying hard.

  I’m all scared that maybe she’s poisoned Clair and he’s dead in her shower stall, though it would serve him right. Upstairs, we quick go through the living room and hall, and then she stands aside while I step into the room she made into her study. That rain’s come down and wet her papers and run the things written in ink and made a soggy mess of all her books.

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” I say.

  “I’m going to kill him,” she says as
she drops down on her knees and starts picking up papers, wrapping them in paper towels. I’m on my knees, too, helping her, both of us crying—like fools—cause really paper is just paper when you come to think of it. Of course, this means a lot more to her than me. But I’m crying over things ruined long before this.

  Then I just got to tell her. “Yo, I knew about them holes in the roof.”

  She’s got a stack of papers in her hands, and she’s looking down at them like they’re going to tell her what to do with me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, real soft. Then, I tell her what I been deciding downstairs. “I’m leaving Clair. I’m getting me a job.”

  Now she’s looking straight at me like she’s trying to figure out if I got it in me. And it scares me half to death to see she believes me.

  “I’ll pay you back your security,” I promise, but she don’t seem satisfied with just that, so I ask her, “What else can I do?”

  She thinks on that while we finish up the job, and I’m getting a little worried on account of she’s a flatlander and a foreigner both, and maybe she’s going to ask for a lot more than the trouble deserves. “Okay,” she says, standing up. “I want to go downstairs now and have you show me what belongs to Clair.”

  “Now wait a minute,” I say. “You’re going to be out of here and I’m going to get killed.”

  “No,” she reminds me, “he’s going to be out of here.” And then, she goes real quiet and looks at me sharp like she’s cutting through something that’s been holding her back. “Marie, you’ve got to wake up. Talk to your Dawn. You can get enough on that guy to put him behind bars.”

  Well, it’s like she’s turned me upside down and shook my heart out of my mouth. “You don’t mean . . . sweet Lord!” And that angry love starts coming up just plain old anger for once.

  “Come on,” I say, and I lead her downstairs through my house to the bedroom. We go through everything in Clair’s closet and drawers, throwing his things in a pile on the floor, me tossing some of my own big sizes that I hope to God I never got to wear again. Then we stuff it all in garbage bags and haul them out to the porch. Every once in a while I get this sinking feeling, wondering how I’m going to keep going, but all I got to do is pass by the girls’ bedroom and I get new gasoline.