by Naima Coster
Mirella called Ralph at the store and told him to come home. It was snowing outside, and it took him a long time to reach them. When he arrived, Penelope was still sitting on the floor, beating her thighs, making animal sounds while she cried.
Ramona’s neighbors called again, and Ralph took Penelope into the living room to listen to a record he said might calm her down, while Mirella handled the logistics. She wired money for the burial and decided against paying for a doctor to come up from the valley for an autopsy. It didn’t matter whether it had been cancer or an aneurysm or a parasite she had caught from neglecting to use the water filter—Ramona was dead.
Mirella could hardly think about the fact that her mother was dead. It was too terrible watching Penelope, wild and inconsolable. Penelope’s face turned red, she struggled to breathe, and she clutched at her chest, as if something burned there, and Mirella imagined that Penelope might die, right there in front of her, screaming. How did hearts work? Could someone die from grief? Mirella wasn’t sure. Her father had died mysteriously, and then, her mother. Maybe it was something in their genes—death by too much feeling. She tried to help Ralph, who sat beside Penelope while she moaned, and patted her hand every few minutes. “Calm down, Penelope,” she said, but the girl didn’t listen, and Mirella left the room, her mother’s death revolving in her mind. She had never been attached to Ramona, and she wouldn’t miss her. She felt sad not that she had lost something but rather that her mother had—Ramona had loved her life, her pipe and her blue casita and her mountain. Mirella was sorry the old woman wouldn’t live any more of the days she had loved so much. She was sorry for Penelope, too, afraid she would be unable to stop crying, the way Mirella had been after her father died. She had cried every day for a year, and then only once in a while, abruptly and for no reason at all, at times that seemed to have nothing to do with her father. And then Mirella learned to put away her sadness, to store it in her body, somewhere out of the way, higher than her stomach, below her throat.
Ralph bought Penelope’s ticket to DR, and he had offered to buy one for Mirella as well. What’s the use? she had said. She’s in the ground. Penelope shouldn’t be going either. Mirella had asked Ralph to tell Penelope not to go—her second semester at RISD was starting up soon—but he said Penelope was eighteen and old enough to travel on her own. On the morning of her flight, Penelope was still crying, shuddering at the table and neglecting the toast Ralph had burned for her. “I can’t believe you’re not coming,” Penelope had said, and Mirella had answered her, “Why are you? She’s dead. She won’t be able to tell who’s there and who isn’t.” Penelope had gone on crying.
Penelope didn’t call when she landed, and Mirella spent the days wondering whether the plane had crashed, whether there had been an accident while Fernando drove her up the mountain. She wondered whether Penelope collapsed onto the floor of the chapel during the funeral service, whether she made those same low moans, so terrible and primitive. Aguas Frescas was colder in the winter, wetter, and the sky converted to an eerie, foggy blue. Penelope had never been there during the wet season, and Mirella dreamed of her daughter in the empty casita, brewing coffee in Ramona’s cafetera, combing her hair with Ramona’s comb, going for walks to las cascadas in the rain with Lulú, both of them whimpering.
When Penelope returned from DR, she cut off all her hair and glared at Mirella when she saw her in the hall. She was home for only a few days before returning to RISD, but she hardly spoke. She didn’t call Mirella anything, not Mami, Ma, or even her name. Mirella asked her once about the funeral, and Penelope said something about communion and a lot of yellow candles, a big sancocho and habichuelas con dulce afterward at Angelina’s house. Lulú ran off that night, after they buried Ramona. No one found her before Penelope had to leave the mountain for her flight. Mirella wanted to say to her, Your father didn’t go with you either, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, to step into the ever-deepening gulf between them. Penelope hadn’t brought Mirella anything from the casita where she had grown up; for herself, she had taken Ramona’s collection of candles, her old radio, and favorite blue housedress. Before she left for Providence, Mirella overheard her listening to that old radio; she smelled the candles burning in her room.
One more semester, and Penelope would return. Mirella had never wanted her to go to art school, but she hadn’t wanted her to quit either. She started at the college, and they began to skirt around each other as best they could, although it wasn’t easy. Penelope almost a woman now, the two of them living on the same floor of the house. Mirella would walk into the bathroom to wash her face just as Penelope was rinsing charcoal from under her fingernails at the sink; she would wander into the kitchen to make toast to find Penelope at the counter, waiting for her crust to brown; she would wash her underwear by hand and then hang it to dry only to find Penelope’s bright, stringy panties already dangling from the showerhead. The most they said to one another was, “Where is your father?” or “Where’s Pop?” unless they found a reason to fight—a misplaced sponge, a failure to hand over the mail—then they could yell at each other for a good long while.
The dark came, and insects materialized in the garden. They circled her, but still she didn’t move, except to bring the cigarette to her mouth, to tap off the ash.
Habla con ella. A voice rose in Mirella as if transmitted from the dead. Mothers don’t live forever. Talk to her.
Mirella put out her cigarette, the bugs finally enough of a nuisance for her to leave. She opened the shed and put away her tools, walked out of the garden into the basement and back up into the house, taking nothing with her.
Inside, she heard running water and dishes. A faint light spilled onto the second-floor landing. Mirella made her way up the stairs by that light. The first novela in her nightly lineup was starting in a few minutes, but she didn’t turn into her bedroom. The hardwood floors gave way to peachy tile, and Mirella stepped into the narrow kitchen.
Penelope didn’t look up from the sink. She cleaned the dishes roughly, a few swipes with a sponge, and a short rinse. Suds pooled in the dish rack. She was in shorts and a tank top, her hair pinned in a messy bun of curls at the top of her head. Mirella marveled at her daughter’s hairless limbs, their smooth amber glow. How did she get her skin to gleam? Penelope was all muscle and skin, but she was broader than Mirella, too broad, her shoulders solid, thighs dense.
Penelope lowered a dish into the rack; it clanged against another, as if both were made of metal. She didn’t look up from her scrubbing.
Mirella opened the refrigerator and pretended to search for something inside. It was empty aside from bottles of ketchup and old cartons of Chinese food. She inched past Penelope toward the sink to fill a glass of water instead. A pot of water simmered on the stove. They skimmed elbows, and finally she spoke.
“Are you cooking something?”
“Mhm.” Penelope dried her hands and reached under the sink. She swung a bag of groceries onto the counter: onions, still whole in their orange-gold skins, and the starchy scent of rice filled the kitchen. They blotted out the smell of the garden, of dirt and flowers and smoke.
Mirella drank her water and watched Penelope arrange spices on the counter. Oregano, thyme, and garlic: all dry. Mirella thought to offer some of the fresh herbs from the yard, although she wasn’t sure Penelope would know how to use them. She hardly cooked, and now she seemed determined to make a full meal. She unpacked ears of corn and cans of pink beans, bone-in pork chops glistening in their Styrofoam-and-Saran-Wrap packages. ¿Qué te dió ganas de cocinar? Mirella would have asked, but she couldn’t think of an adequate translation in English.
She refilled her glass.
Penelope began chopping onions on a board, nearly catching her fingers with the end of the knife. She cut vertically into the onion, then lengthwise, then sideways across the top. She remembered the way Ramona had taught her.
“Did your father tell you I quit my jobs?”
“I overheard,” Penelope said, the sound of the blade striking wood. “Is it all right with you if we eat in the garden? Pop’s having another slow day at the store.”
“Of course,” Mirella said, and she wondered who we were, whether she was invited to dinner in her own yard.
“I think it will cheer him up,” Penelope said, scraping onions into a clean bowl.
Sales had been down since the summer, although Ralph had felt untouchable for years because Grand Records stayed open through the boom of the Internet, all the closing of the corporate CD stores. He didn’t know what was causing the slump now, but he’d been coming home each day, defeated. Penelope had never cooked for her on one of her bad days. Mirella decided not to surrender to her envy. She offered Penelope a little advice.
“Make sure you rinse the rice first. There might be bugs in that bag.”
“There aren’t bugs in the bag.”
“Sometimes they’re so tiny you can’t see them with just your eyes. You’re supposed to wash rice—”
Penelope cast down her knife on the counter.
“Don’t insult me. I know how to make rice. Abuela Ramona taught me. Remember her?”
“It was a simple suggestion,” Mirella said. She picked up her empty glass and started for the hall. She had tried to reach her, and now she was through.
Penelope began to yell. “Don’t assume because you didn’t teach me, I didn’t learn! I learned all kinds of things without you!”
Mirella turned back into the kitchen. “What do you want, Penélope—a prize? For me to say ‘CONGRATULATIONS!’ because you’re twenty-two and you know how to boil water all by yourself?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Penelope said. “Why don’t you just go back to your room?”
“So you’re la que manda now? You think you can send me to my room if you don’t want to hear what I have to say? This is my house. I’ll go wherever I want to go. I’ll do whatever I want to do.”
Penelope laughed once—a stiff, phony laugh.
“All you ever do is what you want to do. You don’t care about anyone.”
She dropped the words as if they were stones, and then turned back to her cooking. She turned down the heat and put on the lid; the water inside roiled.
“Am I supposed to still take care of you! Am I supposed to take care of you and your father until I’m dead!”
“I said you don’t care for anyone, not that you don’t take care of anyone.”
Penelope spoke with an overstated precision she reserved for correcting Mirella’s English. These were the small spots in their arguments when it was clear Penelope was winning—that, in a way, she had already won.
“Nobody took care of me! Who are you to talk! I was more of a woman at ten years old than you’ll ever be! You’ve never had to take care of another person. Your father gives you everything. You can’t even take care of yourself! You’re a spoiled, sad little girl,” Mirella said. “Imprudente. Comparona. Consentida! You can’t see how much you have, how much you’ve thrown away. Is this what artists do? Live in their parents’ house? Make eight dollars an hour? Is this what you went to art school for? I made more money cleaning!”
“At least I have a job,” Penelope spat. “You never contributed anything to this house—not even your money.”
“I don’t have to contribute anything! It says MIRELLA JIMÉNEZ SANTOS on the deed. This is my house.”
“Oh, please, Mami,” Penelope said. “You and I both know you didn’t pay ni un centavo for this house.”
“Was I supposed to pay? What else am I supposed to give? You took my whole life.”
“I didn’t take anything from you.”
“Everything you have you took from me.”
“Pop gave me things. Pop and Abuela Ramona.”
Mirella smacked the stove with her open hand, and the pot of boiling water shifted on the burner. “I gave birth to you. I fed you. I washed your clothes. I took you to the Dominican Republic to see your grandmother. What did ‘Pop’ do, eh? Play you a few records and call you ‘Penny’? Por favor, Penélope, that’s not love. That’s your father doing his best not to feel like an orphan anymore. No seas tan boba.”
“How many names are you going to call me tonight, Ma?”
“You think your father loves you more than I do? He just wants to keep you here! That’s not love!”
“Don’t talk about Pop that way.”
“Oh, right, Pop. El Rey, His Majesty, El Único y Precioso Pop!”
Penelope slit her eyes so that she looked even more like Mirella than usual. It was as if Mirella were looking into the mirror at a darker, more muscular version of herself: a self with tiny eyes and wild hair, a younger, more beautiful self that hated her.
“I don’t give a damn about you,” she said.
“I’m your mother.”
Penelope shook her head, a false smile washing over her face.
“You’re just the cunt my father married.”
Mirella hit her with the heels of her hands. The skin on skin made a low, dense sound. Penelope didn’t flinch, and Mirella hit her again, the same thump in the center of her daughter’s chest. A third shove, and Penelope staggered back toward the window. Mirella raised her hand to strike again, but Penelope caught her. She twisted Mirella’s wrist hard and flung her hand away.
“Touch me again and I’ll break your fucking arm.”
Mirella clapped her hand over her wrist and shut her eyes. Her skin burned where Penelope had held her, but she would not cry in front of her. She should have hit her more when she was a girl, like the other Dominican mothers at the salon who compared stories of triumph over their children—power struggles they had won with telephone receivers, wire hangers, chancletas, hairbrushes, the broom. But Mirella had never needed to beat Penelope to teach her respect. She had been an obedient girl.
This Penelope was wild. And when Mirella tried to rein her in and remind her who was the mother and who was the daughter, Penelope had embarrassed her. She wouldn’t survive if Penelope followed through on her threat, if she twisted her own arm behind her back until the bones came out of place. Was she capable? The thought of Penelope hitting her made her dizzy. Mirella realized she was panting. She felt the moisture under her arms and between her legs, above her lips.
“Do you hear me? Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.”
Mirella opened her eyes. “Get out,” she said. “If you’re so determined to ruin your life, then leave.”
Penelope didn’t speak.
Mirella screamed. “Lárgate!”
Penelope turned off the fire and pushed the handle of the pot hard. The pot skittered across the stove, hot water sloshing on the floor.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine. Hallelujah. Thank God.”
Penelope left the kitchen, twisting past Mirella so gracefully they didn’t brush fingers or shoulders. They didn’t touch at all, but Mirella felt her go.
“Penélope, wait.” Mirella followed the girl into her bedroom. She already had her suitcase up on the bed, the leather one Ralph had bought for her to take to RISD. She was stacking her jeans and fancy underwear, her boxes of charcoal and pastels.
If she left this way, Ralph would never forgive her. Mirella said so.
“He doesn’t even know you’re leaving. You’ll break his heart.”
“I won’t leave tonight,” Penelope said. “I’ll talk to him when he gets home.”
Penelope dragged a heavy chest out from her closet. She undid the lock and the chest yawned with drawings, some loose and crinkling, others stuffed officially in manila sleeves.
“Besides, it’s not a real good-bye for me and Pop. He’ll always be a part of my life.”
Mirella rubbed her wrist and sighed, sat down on Penelope’s bed. She felt color seeping from the room, the bedspread dark, the Polaroids taped around the room faded, the skin of her own hand blanched.
“Don’t pretend to be devastated,” Penelope said softly. “You’
re getting what you always wanted. You don’t have to be my mother anymore.”
They heard keys downstairs. The front door swung open and banged the coat stand against the wall. It clattered to the floor and was set upright again. Mirella was suddenly out of time.
“Anybody home?” Ralph’s voice soared up the stairs. “Smells good in here!”
“At least think about where you’re going. What will you do there?”
Penelope didn’t answer her.
“Think about your life. Don’t go anywhere just to get away.”
“Just be good to Pop, will you?” Penelope said. “We’re all he’s got. Try to think of him, and not just yourself.”
Mirella felt so exposed and misunderstood that she wanted to yell at Penelope again, but she watched her pile socks into the suitcase and then zip it shut. These might be her final moments with her daughter. Like her, Penelope knew how to hold a grudge.
“I know you won’t do anything for me,” Penelope said. “But do it for him. He deserves more than us.”
Mirella could hear Ralph’s heavy footfalls on the stairs. He panted a little with the effort.
“I bought some bean pie, Penny!
“Hello, hello? Where are my girls? Penelope?”
He was nearer now, almost at the landing.
“You were never really mine,” Mirella said, and she turned away from Penelope’s room and walked down the hall, without feeling her feet touch the floor.
“What’s going on?” she heard Ralph say, but she shut the door to her bedroom as soon as she was inside. She sat down at the vanity and didn’t hear the rest.