Sherry B removes the cloth, dips a finger in the milk, and licks it. “Don’t worry, I washed my hands.”
“I wasn’t worried.” Pablo never drinks the milk. It makes his chronic upset stomach worse.
“Want to know what you were saying?”
“Don’t you got to feed the chickens or something?” Pablo is now in Magda’s stall. He’d rather not talk to Sherry B. He yanks Magda’s tail to let her know that he does not want to get whacked while he is milking. He sits on the three-legged wooden stool and begins to squirt milk into the tin pail. Vapor rises from the warm milk.
Sherry B leans back against the ledge. “You know what’s so strange about you?”
Pablo shakes his head. He doesn’t want to know. To get a good milking rhythm going requires focus. He doesn’t think he can listen to Sherry B and milk at the same time. Sherry B likes to psychoanalyze people. She is forever offering up her theories as to why people behave this way or that.
Sherry B goes on. “You give this appearance of being in another world and yet you’re aware of all these details. Like right then, you remembered this was my week to feed the chickens.”
“Shhh. I’m trying to milk.”
“You’re pulling too hard. You’re hurting her. Breasts are very sensitive, even in cows.”
Pablo instinctively turns his head and looks first at Sherry B’s face and then at her small breasts. He didn’t mean to be so forward. Sherry B crosses her arms. He remembers at that moment what Breaker-Breaker said about Sherry B one time when they were out in the field cutting alfalfa: “She’s been around the block, that’s for damn sure.” That’s what Breaker-Breaker said.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Sherry B almost shouts.
“Nothing.” Pablo goes back to the milking and tries to recover the rhythm he’s lost.
“Who’s Lupy?” she says to him after a while.
He stops and looks at her, a stunned look on his face.
“That’s what you were talking about last night. Or maybe it was early this morning because you woke me up. You were carrying on this big conversation. I couldn’t make out most of it, but I did hear something about a Lupy.”
“I was just talking in my sleep. It’s nonsense.” But he is suddenly scared. He thought that the conversation happened silently in the dream and now it turns out the conversation was out loud.
“You kept talking to this Lupy and then you were calling her, ‘Lupy! Lupy!’ It was sad, like this Lupy was dying or something. Sounded awful. Who’s Lupy?”
“No one. It was just a dream,” he says, irritated.
“Okay, don’t have a cow.” She starts to laugh. “What you were saying didn’t sound like a regular dream, though. It sounded so real. And anyways, dreams are real. They can help us find out what we really want. I mean, it’s rare that we should take dreams literally. Lupy could stand for something you wish for deep inside. Do you know anyone named Lupy?”
“I gotta finish milking this cow. She’s getting aggravated.”
“Here, let me do it. I can talk and milk at the same time. Women are better at multitasking.” She stands next to him, bumps him with her thigh.
He tries a few more times to get a flow going, but nothing comes out. He’s lost the mental tranquility required for the job. He stands up and lets her have the stool. Quickly, streams of milk start filling the pail. He walks away.
“Don’t go,” she says. “The least you can do is keep me company while I do your job.”
He stops and takes a step toward the ledge that separates the stalls. He leans against it, just like she did. “I don’t feel like talking about dreams,” he tells her.
“You never feel like talking about anything. Do you, Pablito?”
“Don’t call me that.” He hates it when people call him Pablito. His mother calls him that.
She places her head against Magda’s big beige belly. The milk flows effortlessly into the pail. “Gosh, you’re so ornery. Did it ever occur to you that people may want to help you? I mean, I know lots about dreams and not only because I did a six-month stint in a mental hospital. Not that it did me any good.” She pauses and looks at him, hoping for a smile, but there’s no smile on his face. “Anyway, my experience with dreams is that there’re two kinds. You got what I call your basic maintenance dreams that happen every night and no one ever remembers. These dreams are just the mind cleaning itself up. Maintenance. Then you got your fix-it dreams. These are the ones you remember because they’re trying to tell you something. They’re trying to fix something in you that needs fixing. Whatever you had going this morning was a fix-it dream.” She stops milking and looks up at him. “Pablo, it wasn’t the first time you were talking about Lupy.”
Regis, the barn’s resident cat, peers in the stall. He comes up to Pablo and rubs his side against his leg. Pablo reaches down and picks him up, strokes him. “So?”
“I guess what I want to tell you is that you shouldn’t ignore this ... dream.”
Regis squirms out of his arms and jumps down. He goes to the pail under Magda, meows, and looks up at Sherry B. “He wants some milk,” Pablo says. Sherry B absentmindedly dips her finger in the pail and lets Regis lick it.
“It’s the same dream you keep having, isn’t it?”
He looks away.
She starts milking again and then stops. The pail is almost full. She stands up and looks straight at him. “Pablo, you need to talk to someone about it.”
“About what?” He edges away from her.
“About the dream. It’s not normal to keep having the same scary dream.”
“You’re not an expert on normal.”
“That’s for sure. But I know something about mental states. I’ve had a few myself. The mental hospital I was in ... there were kids there who ... kids who were afraid to go to sleep at night because of what waited for them there.”
“Are you saying I’m crazy?” Anger rises in his voice.
“Crazy? I’d never use that word. That’s a word people use to scare other people into being the same. I just think that the brain is like this delicate egg that can crack. Things can happen to a person. A person can see things and feel things that are too strong that crack the egg.”
He is silent. An image that he doesn’t want to see begins to form inside of him. He shakes his head to brush the image away. He closes his eyes and when he opens them, he feels her hand on his shoulder. “Leave me alone.” He doesn’t say this with force. He says it as if he were saying the exact opposite.
“Okay.”
“And who told you to write my mother?”
“I didn’t ...”
“Yes you did.”
“I mean I didn’t write to her first. She wrote to me asking about you. ’Cause you never write to her.”
She looks at him briefly, brushes Magda’s back with her hand. Blood rushes to his face and then drains slowly. He stammers, “She doesn’t know you. How does she know you?”
“It could be Mrs. Garret told her, I don’t know. I got a letter from your mom, that’s all.”
Mrs. Garret, otherwise known as the State Lady, comes to the farm every month. She also visits his mother now and then. He stares at Sherry B. Bites his lip. “You shoulda told me!”
She ignores his outburst. “She says she’s never once gotten a single letter from you.”
“It’s none of your business!” he shouts. He sees her eyes redden. He’s hurt her. Good. Maybe she’ll stay out of his life. He expects her to turn around and leave, but she stays right where she stands.
“Why is your mom in prison?”
“Don’t go there,” he warns.
“Okay.” She backs off. “Can I say just one thing?”
“No.”
“Whatever she did, she deserves to be forgiven.”
He clenches his jaw, stares at her.
“You should talk about it,” she adds.
“No I shouldn’t.”
“Pablo, here’s
the thing. You’re gonna fall apart. I’ve seen it all before. I’ve been there.”
She’s been around the block. He remembers Breaker-Breaker’s words. “Are you finished milking?”
“That’s all she gave.” Regis is sticking his head in the pail, trying to get at the milk. Sherry B picks up the pail and puts it on the ledge. Regis meows, disappointed. She lowers her head briefly and then speaks. “Okay, I’ll let it be. But let me just say this. Everything that happens to us is connected. You not writing to your mom for whatever reason, those terrible nightmares you’re having, it’s all connected. If you run away from something over here, it will come up someplace else and usually in a worse way.”
Pablo can’t help grinning. Sometimes Sherry B sounds older than Mrs. W.
“What?” Sherry B asks.
“You learn all this stuff at that mental hospital you were in?”
“Some.”
“I better take the milk in and boil it.” He goes to grab the pail and she moves out of his way. He’s almost out of the barn, the pail dangling in his arm, when she asks again.
“Who’s Lupy?”
He hesitates for a second, then keeps on walking. She follows behind him. His first impulse is to ignore her, but then he feels this strange need to speak. The words come out of his mouth almost involuntarily. “Her name is María Guadalupe.”
“María Guadalupe,” Sherry B repeats.
“Yeah.” For someone who doesn’t talk much, he has these sudden rushes of verbalization, almost like words have been impatiently waiting years for a chance to come out.
“Who is she?”
He feels suddenly embarrassed and afraid. He has told her way too much. The look of worry on her face tells him this is the case. He hurries away from her and the milk sloshes to the ground.
“Wait, Pablo, wait.” She runs up to him and taps his shoulder. He stops. They’re halfway between the barn and the house. He feels as if the whole world can see him. She moves in front of him. She’s breathing fast. Why is she so interested in him? It’s not that she’s nosy. It’s something else. There’s tenderness in her eyes that he has seen before but never imagined it could be for him. Now that tenderness is enveloping him, pulling him in. It’s like she wants to feel what he’s feeling, even if it’s not all that good.
“Here,” he says, giving her the pail. “I’ll do the chickens if you take this in.” He turns around and heads toward the chicken coop before she can say anything.
He opens the door to the shed that serves as a chicken coop and the chickens spill into the yard, cackling. He takes a few handfuls of feed from a container that was once a garbage can and throws them at the chickens. Then he goes inside to collect the eggs.
He’s digging under the third roost when she comes in and stands at the entrance, the morning light shining behind her. “So who’s Lupy,” she asks.
He shakes his head incredulously. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“No.” She steps into the darkness of the chicken coop.
“Why?”
“Why what?” She picks up a brown egg and places it in the wicker basket hanging on his arm.
“Why are you so interested?”
She looks at him as if that was one of the stupidest questions she’s ever been asked. She’s obviously not going to answer it, but he waits anyway. “Duh,” she finally says. Even in the darkness he can see her face turn red. He turns around, picks up another egg. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he hears her say behind him, “that people may care about you? That they may be concerned about you? Did you ever consider that even people like Rolando or Breaker-Breaker, when he’s sober enough to notice, may be worried about you? Don’t you think most of us have been broken at some point or another or seen kids fall apart and know the signs? This is your first time in a place like this. We’ve all been in a place like this for the first time. It’s not easy. But I’ll tell you this. Nobody ever makes it alone.” She stops as if she suddenly forgot how to speak, as if she used up all the words she had.
The chicken coop is totally silent. He breathes the ammonialike smell and for a second he is filled with fear, a strange fear that she will walk out on him and never talk to him again. He turns quickly. She’s still there.
“Lupy is my sister,” he says. “María Guadalupe. I called her Lupy.”
III
It’s not really a nightmare because there are no monsters or killings and nobody gets hurt. I’ve had nightmares before, plenty of them. Once I dreamt that I was standing in a long line of people of all ages and this lady who was dressed in white and whose face was covered with a veil was walking by the people in the line. Every once in a while the lady would stop and smile at someone and it was clear that the lady was death herself and whoever she smiled at was a goner. That was a nightmare. Feeling her walk slowly up the line to where I’m standing, seeing her weird smile through that thick white veil. It was a horrible smile. Not really a smile but not a grin or a smirk either. And I don’t know how I could see it, the veil was so thick. I always woke up before she got to me.
The dream with Lupy isn’t like that. It’s an ordinary dream. Not even a dream, more like a memory. A memory that comes when I’m asleep.
She was a beautiful light-skinned baby. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mama and Papa so happy as when she was born. Papa even stopped traveling and got a job in construction, right there in Brownsville. He didn’t go out at night either like he usually did. He still drank, but at least he did it at home.
I was twelve. Old enough to take care of her and so I did. A couple of months after she was born, Mama put her crib in my room. She said it was because their bedroom didn’t get as much ventilation as mine, but I knew that wasn’t the reason. The real reason is that Papa got angry when Lupy cried at night. Lupy was colicky. The first nights Mama came over and picked her up when she cried, but I could hear Papa yell when she went back to their room. Papa believed that you spoiled kids if you picked them up when they cried at night.
I think that Lupy and I became so close that year because I went to her and rocked her at the first sound she made, before she started to cry. It was a way to keep the peace in the house, but I didn’t mind. I gave her the bottle Mama prepared for her and we’d fall asleep together in the rocking chair.
Then one day, just before her first birthday, I was changing her shirt and I saw the bruises on her arms. They were purple, the size of a man’s thumbs. Someone had squeezed her arms as if to shake her. I went to Mama. Papa wasn’t there. He had left the day before on one of his trips. He had started traveling again. I found her crying in her bedroom.
“He hurt Lupy, didn’t he?” I said to her.
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. “You know how he gets sometimes.”
Yeah, I knew how he got sometimes.
That’s about it, really, as far as the dream goes. There’s one more scene that happens a couple of months later. I come home from school and look for Lupy but I can’t find her. I go to my room and she’s not in her bed. We had taken out the crib and put a little bed in there. I go back to the kitchen where Mama’s cooking dinner.
“Where’s Lupy?” I ask. That’s when I see the bottle of tequila next to the refrigerator. Mama didn’t even bother to hide it. “Where’s Lupy?” I shout at her. Now I know something is wrong.
Mama turns around slowly. Her eyes are steady on me and I know she’s been drinking but she’s not drunk. She pulls out a kitchen chair and sits down. “I did what was best for her,” she says.
In the dream, I keep hearing my mother’s words. They come to me garbled like a bad telephone connection: “A nice Anglo couple. She won’t lack for anything. You have to understand. Not a good place for her.”
That’s all. It’s not really a nightmare. More like a memory that comes to me when I sleep.
IV
Mrs. W lent us the truck, and we’re taking Pablo to the Whataburger in San Benito for his birthday. I’m going to drive b
ecause Mrs. W doesn’t trust Breaker-Breaker with the truck. She’s onto him about the drinking and even though he’s been sober for a week, it was still a no go. Breaker-Breaker is eighteen and I have a driver’s permit that lets me drive in the company of an adult, so we’ll be okay. Assuming no one looks into the question of Breaker-Breaker’s supposed adulthood too deeply.
It’s going to be just the three of us. Rolando got into a fight after last Friday’s football game and is doing time in juvie jail. He was on probation, so there was no question of where he was going if he got into trouble again. The sad part is that, according to Breaker-Breaker, it wasn’t his fault. Or at least he didn’t start it this time. Breaker-Breaker says he was protecting the cheerleaders.
The amazing thing, the small miracle, is that Pablo has agreed to go. It took a lot of persuading but he finally said okay, probably just to keep me quiet. I knew it was his birthday today because his mother told me in a letter. I started working on him this morning. I followed him out to the barn and as usual waited for him to start milking Josephine.
“Not you again,” he says as soon as he sees me.
“Yes, me again,” I tell him.
“What now?” He’s pretending like he’s in a bad mood, but by now I can tell that he isn’t. He stops milking. It’s a fact. Pablo cannot milk and talk at the same time.
“Guess what day it is today?” I ask him.
“It’s just another day,” he says, like he doesn’t know. Thing is, knowing Pablo, he probably doesn’t know.
“It’s your birthday!” I say.
“Let me guess. You got another letter from my mother.”
“Correcto mundo, Pablo.” I almost call him Pablito, but I stop myself just in the nick of time.
“What does she say now?” He’s just sitting there, holding on to the cow, not even looking at me.
“You ever going to write to her?”
“You ever going to mind your own beeswax?”
I think about it. “No. Not likely. Why is it that you can’t talk and milk at the same time? It’s not that hard. I’m not exactly taxing your brain with the topic of my conversation.”
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