Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over

by Belinda Acosta

  “Raúl, come help me,” Carlos said, as he walked back to the house. “They want some more beer.” Raúl did what he was told, happy to get away from his angry cousin. When they got to the refrigerator, Carlos didn’t see what he was looking for.

  “Hey, ’Amá, where’s the beer?”

  Beatriz and all the women turned toward Carlos, looked at each other, raised their Shiners, and burst out laughing.

  “I guess we need some more,” Norma said, all red-faced and shiny. She was sitting at the table across from Elaine with Celeste between them. “Who’s good enough to drive?” Norma asked, knowing full well she wasn’t going to budge.

  “Me!” Elaine said. This only made the women laugh harder. The boys didn’t understand what was so funny until Elaine suggested they give her a stick to enable her to drive, since it had been weeks since she could reach the pedals, with her enormous belly full of baby jutting out before her. She softly rubbed her tummy and looked at Celeste.

  “If it was a girl, we were going to name her Celeste, after your grandmother,” Elaine said. “That’s such a pretty name. Isn’t that a pretty name?” she asked the women. They all nodded in agreement.

  “Thank you,” Celeste said politely, picking at a slice of cake someone had served her.

  “I wanted to name her after my mother…” But before Elaine could puncture the air with the P in Perla, everyone, including Beatriz, looked at her with a silent and harsh Cállate! that sucked the air out of the room. Elaine swallowed her tongue and backtracked, acting as if she’d forgotten her own mother’s name.

  “Qué tienes?” Norma shot at Elaine. Celeste was confused. Norma didn’t ask like she was concerned something was wrong with Elaine, but as if she was accusing her of a great offense.

  “Nothing! I’m sorry. I’m sorry, the baby just kicked,” Elaine lied. She shuddered at the unknown penalty she would endure if she’d broken that one, unspoken family rule: Never mention Perla’s name. Even Beatriz didn’t know how that rule came into being or when it was understood that she would not be included in talk of old times or mentioned in the family tree. She knew it was wrong—to have Perla’s name erased from their tongues, even if she was alive in their memories—but she went along. Her silence was her way of hiding her shame. She didn’t know what it meant for the others.

  “Do you know what you’re having?” Ana asked in an attempt to ease the sudden tension in the room.

  “What we all have,” Norma blurted before Elaine could speak. “Boys! The last time we had a girl born in this family was with my Angie.”

  “No! Is that right?” Ana asked.

  “It’s true. We all have boys,” Beatriz said.

  “And I’m going to have two,” Elaine finally broke in. “So you can see why we’re so excited to have another girl in the family.” She gave Celeste’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

  “We love our boys, but I miss having another girl in the house,” Norma said nostalgically. “My Angie is living in the dorms at UT, and oh, our house is so big and empty these days!”

  “Well, we could all go over to your house,” Elaine joked. “With my little ones and two more coming, I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”

  “Don’t you have a sister who’s going to help you?” Norma asked.

  “Well, yes. But that’s just for a little while,” Elaine said. “She has her own family.”

  “What about your mother?” Norma asked.

  “She’s got her hands full.”

  “With what?” Norma challenged. But she didn’t wait for Elaine to answer, turning her full attention toward Celeste.

  “We live on a ranchito, just outside San Antonio. Mi esposo, your uncle, boards a few horses and I raise chickens and sell eggs and have a nice garden. It’s bien pretty. I bet you’d really like it out there, mi’ja,” Norma said sweetly.

  “Well sure, if you like the smell of chicken poop and horse manure,” Elaine cracked.

  “It’s beautiful,” Norma snapped. “A minute ago, you wanted to bring your whole family out there.”

  Elaine tittered nervously and Norma imitated her with a smarmy grin that bared all her teeth. Who does she think she’s dealing with? Norma thought.

  Beatriz looked around the room and saw that Connie and Sara were tight-lipped but watching what was happening very closely.

  “Well,” Beatriz began. “It is a lovely place to visit and the perfect place to let a pack of wild children blow off steam.”

  “Whose wild children?” Elaine asked. “Esos?” She pointed with her chin out the window to Seamus and Wally. Celeste looked around at the women, who, except for Beatriz and Ana, were new to her. She was unsure if the ricocheting tension she felt was real or imagined.

  “When are you due?” Ana asked, trying to steer the conversation back to something cheery and light.

  “July twelfth, but the sooner the better, if you ask me. You want to feel?” Elaine asked Celeste, motioning to the huge moon in her lap.

  “Really?” Beatriz said. “The twelfth?”

  “Why would I make that up?”

  “Nobody said you were making anything up. It’s just that’s the same day as Celeste’s birthday, isn’t it, mi’ja?”

  “Sí,” the girl said timidly, unsure of what this news would unleash.

  “Verdad?” Norma said, as if Celeste’s being born in July was the most amazing thing she’d heard. “And how old will you be, mi’jita?”

  “Quince.”

  “Quince! Quince! Oh! Well, you know what this means?” Norma said grandly. “We need to throw you the biggest, brightest quinceañera we can pull together—in what? A couple of months? Híjole! That’s not much time, but we can do it! We pulled my Angie’s quinceañera together in about that time, once she finally agreed to have one.”

  “Not that she had much choice,” Raúl heard his aunt Connie whisper to his aunt Sara.

  “We had it at the ranchito, and Angie rode in on a white horse. Bien hermosa!” Norma continued.

  “Well, that’s not necessary,” Beatriz broke in.

  “Why don’t you want her to have a quinceañera?”

  “That’s not what I said,” Beatriz said. “I actually think that’s a nice idea, but—”

  “Pos, sí!” Norma interrupted. “I think we need to do something more than this last-minute picnic to welcome Celeste to the family, verdad?!” Norma looked around the room. “Verdad?”

  “That does sound like fun!” Elaine said, struggling to sit up in her chair against the weight of her incubating babies.

  “Wouldn’t you like that?” Norma asked Celeste. “Well of course you would,” she said before Celeste could consider the question. “Oh, we could plan the whole thing, you and I,” Norma said to the girl as if no one else were in the room. “There’s a beautiful church not far from our ranchito, and we could have the party at our house—”

  “Outside?” Elaine scoffed. “An outdoor party in July will be miserable, and your house is too small for a party.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Well, for a nice party,” Elaine said as sweetly as she could. Norma ignored her.

  “Oh, mi’ja! I would be so honored. And everyone can help—well, except for you,” she said to Elaine. “You’re going to be too busy with your brand-new babies. But we’ll help. All of us! Right?” Norma looked around the room at the other women, who all smiled and nodded as if they knew what was good for them, except for Elaine. She was darting mal de ojos at Norma so hard, you could practically see lightning shooting from her eyes. Norma pretended she was oblivious.

  Beatriz couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She had brokered deals on behalf of the university with arrogant academics, demanding donors, powerful politicians, and snarky staff members all the time. But witnessing the dueling movidas between Norma and Elaine—in her own house? First Larry and now this? She had no idea the mujeres could be this sneaky, but more important, she couldn’t believe she had been blindsided on her ow
n turf. Carlos took the icy silence as his chance to break in.

  “ ’Amá? The beer?”

  “Go tell whoever wants beer to go get it themselves,” Beatriz said steadily. “I’m not finished here.”

  By the time Larry left for the beer run, Norma had scrawled some preliminary plans for a quinceañera on a pad she found in Beatriz’s kitchen.

  “You know,” Norma said, very pleased with herself, “Celeste could come stay with us tonight—or even the whole week! Then she can get used to the house and see how the quinceañera would happen.”

  “Well, she could, except I should enroll her in school tomorrow,” Beatriz said.

  “We have schools,” Elaine offered.

  “You don’t have room,” Norma said.

  “Yes we do. In the nursery.”

  “And after the baby is born, then what?” Norma demanded. Elaine bit her tongue. Norma was calling her hand, and she was not ready to reveal it. She was not ready to let Norma win and give up on her idea of having Celeste live with her and Tony to help care for her babies. Her needs were more important than Norma’s, Elaine thought. She needed some real help. Norma just wanted company.

  “Why don’t we ask Celeste what she wants?” Beatriz said. But when the women looked around the room, Celeste was gone.

  “She went to change. She’s okay,” Ana said to the startled faces staring at her. “Just a little too much excitement.”

  “Yes, well, it’s been a long day. Next time, we’ll have to show you the plans we have for redecorating the guest room into Celeste’s bedroom,” Beatriz said, adding with a sharpened point, “but it’s getting late, and you have a long drive, don’t you, out to the country?”

  Connie and Sara decided they had had enough and went to fetch their husbands. They were happy not to be involved in the fray, and their husbands were more than willing to let Erasmo, Beatriz, and Tony work out whatever was going to happen with Celeste.

  When the uncles had finished eating they wandered over to Erasmo’s truck, each taking up a spot like men at a boardroom table, their forearms resting on the walls of the truck bed, waiting for the beer and a decision. Carlos went with his father for the beer, and Larry ordered Seamus and Wally to join them so they could be dropped off at their house on the way. Raúl managed to stay behind, escaping to his bedroom to do his homework. Beatriz was in the kitchen wrapping up leftover cake. Norma and Elaine sat at the kitchen table, their arms crossed, each refusing to leave before the other.

  “Ya, me voy,” Ana whispered to Beatriz at the counter.

  “Why? It’s still early!”

  “I need to get home, ’manita. I’ve been out all day.”

  “No! No! I need you! See how they are?” Beatriz hissed. “Like vultures. And she’s not talking to me. I need you.”

  “Who? Celeste?” Ana asked. “She’s not saying much to anyone right now. Remember what I said? I think if you can be quiet long enough, you’ll hear what she has to say.”

  “But she likes you. And what if—what if she hates me?”

  “Why would she hate you?” Ana asked.

  “I don’t know what my sister told her about me,” Beatriz finally admitted, avoiding Ana’s eyes. Ana couldn’t imagine what Beatriz could have possibly done to instill this much fear and remorse.

  “You know what,” Ana began. “I know this is easy to say now, but I bet whatever you think you did, it probably didn’t mean anything to Perla. It was probably a speck. Probably nothing she would even remember, if she were alive.”

  Beatriz snickered. “Yeah, but those specks have a way of taking on a life of their own, like that one piece of lint on a black cloth. You just got to—”

  “Stop driving yourself crazy. Just remember this: Perla sent her daughter here to be with you—not to them. Remember that.” Ana looked at her watch. “Ay, mujer. Descúlpame, pero I really got to go. It’ll be okay, really. Calm down. You’re already doing much better now than you were earlier. Really.”

  But Beatriz could not calm down, wondering what Celeste knew about her, what she must think, and if she could even hope to make right what she did, those many years ago, when she turned Perla away.

  NINE

  Raúl finished his homework quickly and decided he would relax with one of his old movies. Since no one was around to argue with him, he had his choice: Destroy All Monsters, The White Zombie, or The Wolf Man. He plucked them from the stash in his room and went downstairs to watch them in his father’s office, where the big screen and DVD player were hidden in a large cabinet. He entered the room without knocking, not noticing Celeste’s things, even as he stepped over her small backpack. As he opened the cabinet, he kneeled in front of the DVD player, reading the backs of the crystal cases before finally loading in the movie he liked the best: The Wolf Man. He’d seen it dozens of times, but he never got tired of it. He looked for the remote under and around the DVD player where it was supposed to be, and when he couldn’t find it, he sat back on his haunches, wondering if Seamus had played one of his stupid tricks by hiding it.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  Raúl turned around and saw Celeste. She was standing behind the couch, holding out the remote toward him. She had changed back into her familiar jeans, T-shirt, and bright white hoodie zipped up to her neck. Raúl jumped up.

  “I forgot you were in here!”

  “It’s okay,” she said. She laid the remote on the couch and returned to the big chair behind the desk where she was curled up, looking out the window, when Raúl came in. The chair was huge. Raúl remembered that even when his father sat in it, if he were turned, facing the window, you couldn’t see him, either. Celeste sat in the chair, pulled her knees up to her chin, and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her abdomen wasn’t throbbing as much as before, but with all the new people and the excitement, she was happy to nest in the huge chair, away from it all.

  “I can go,” he said. “I have a portable DVD player in my room, if you want to rest, or whatever.”

  “I don’t care,” she said quietly.

  “You like scary movies?” Raúl asked after a moment. He was waiting for her to screw up her face and say no.

  “I like the old ones,” Celeste said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really,” she said. “They’re the best.”

  “You can watch this one with me, if you want.”

  She left the chair and moved to the couch, sitting at one end while Raúl sat at the other. The blank screen glowed in silent anticipation until Raúl said what had been on his mind ever since he learned about Celeste.

  “So, your mom is dead, huh?” If adults were in the room, they would have scolded Raúl for being blunt, but after what she experienced in the kitchen, the warped tension and unspoken words, Celeste welcomed his directness.

  “Yeah.”

  “Was she sick?”

  “She was killed.”

  “Killed! Wow! That sucks.”

  “Yeah,” Celeste said quietly. “It sucks.”

  “So, was she, like, in a car accident?”

  “Someone killed her,” Celeste said.

  Raúl’s eyes widened. “Do you know who did it?”

  “I hope not,” she said.

  Raúl looked around the room and noticed the small backpack he’d stepped over earlier. “Is that yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s all your stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not very big.”

  Celeste shrugged. She stood up to get the pack, opened one of the pockets, and pulled out a framed photo. It was a picture of Celeste and Perla.

  “Is that your mom?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Just last year.”

  “She looks nice,” he said.

  “She was nice.” She wiped the glass with the sleeve of her hoodie and held the photo on her lap, facing Raúl.

  “You look like her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, she was
my mom’s sister, huh,” Raúl said. “We didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t know about you, either. Not until a few months ago when she started telling me about your mom and growing up here.”

  “What was she like?” he asked. “Your mom.”

  Celeste thought a moment.

  “She liked pan dulce on Sunday and popcorn at the movies. She loved to dance, and she worked too much. She liked parties. And cooking. She made the best tortillas, but I could never make them as good as her. Maybe I will, someday.” She paused. “What is she like, La Señora Beatriz?”

  “My mom? She’s cool,” Raúl said, nodding his head. “She’s good. She works at the university, where she can boss a lot of people around. Her favorite color is green. She likes parties, and dancing, too. She likes to cook, but we like it when she doesn’t.”

  “How do you eat?”

  “Oh, we eat. My dad cooks or takes us someplace, but Carlos is the one who cooks the best around here.”

  “Quién?”

  “Carlos, my brother. The tall one. The oldest of all the boys you saw. He’s nineteen. He’s going to go to cooking school out East, except my mom and dad don’t know yet.” Raúl said the last part like it was a juicy piece of gossip.

  “How come you know?”

  “I’m not supposed to know,” Raúl said. “I found out by accident. But don’t tell anyone. You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

  “Who am I going to tell?” Even though she’d just met a roomful of relatives, she couldn’t think of a single person she would tell this secret to, even if she wanted to. “Cooking school,” she repeated. “They’ll teach him how to run a restaurant?”

  “I guess, but mostly how to cook fancy dinners. And his girlfriend, she wants to be a pastry chef. I don’t think my dad is going to like it,” Raúl said, shaking his head.

  Celeste turned the photo so she could look at it.

  “So, you’re going to live here?” Raúl asked. “Once Carlos leaves there will be an extra room.”

  “I live in El Paso,” Celeste said, slipping the photo back into her backpack.