Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over

by Belinda Acosta

  The neglected DVD player clicked loudly before turning itself off, reminding the kids of what they were originally going to do.

  “You still wanna watch the movie?” Raúl asked.

  “I’d rather go out there,” she said, turning around to look out the window, where she had been gazing at the jacaranda tree. “I need some fresh air.”

  “Okay.” A new idea came to Raúl. “Wait here and I’ll be right back.”

  Raúl was excited as he ran out and up to his room. For once, he didn’t have to beg and whine or plead with someone about watching his favorite movies. What is Seamus worried about? he thought. Celeste is pretty cool, for a girl.

  Josie opened her last pack of cigarettes as she passed Comfort, Texas. Although she was exhausted, dying to lie down, and smothered with guilt about not seeing her daughter, she was determined to get to San Antonio. She had to. And besides, if she understood what was said while cleaning Perla’s house in El Paso, she had no choice.

  She knew it was crazy—driving with no idea where she was going, or any notion of how to find Celeste. That was not how she usually worked, but her desire to make things right was so compelling, she knew she had to follow her hunches and hope that everything else fell into place. If only she could remember where had she put those notes about Perla and her family. She knew she had them somewhere. Perla shared very little about her personal life, and the few things Josie knew, she’d gathered surreptitiously—small clues dropped along the way when they were discussing something else. Josie tucked those tiny bits of information into the margins of her memory, scrawling them down or tapping them wildly into her laptop. When she couldn’t locate the notes on her computer, she looked through her handwritten notes but couldn’t find them there, either. She was beginning to worry that her exhaustion was affecting her ability to keep things straight, and if she couldn’t do that, she couldn’t work, and if she couldn’t work…

  Josie began to panic. Relax, she told herself. She concentrated on the whir of her car flying down the highway, hoping the sound would calm her and help clear the clutter from her sleep-deprived mind long enough to help the information that she knew was lurking in the background come into the light.

  Instead, she found herself remembering when she helped clear Perla’s house. The women who’d gathered to do that sad work only allowed her in reluctantly. She was considered an outsider. Perla apparently hadn’t told anyone that she and Josie had become friends, and learning that had hurt Josie more than she would admit. The mujeres—Perla’s coworkers, other community organizers, and women who had known Perla much longer than Josie—were polite enough. When Josie showed up, they offered her coffee and pan dulce and let her listen to their memories of Perla, shared as they swept the last of her things into three drab garbage bags: one for the St. Vincent De Paul, one for the trash, and one for the few remaining items to be divided among those assembled at the house. The items of value were things that would mean something only to the person who claimed them: a nearly new broom, a calendar from a local Mexican restaurant, a children’s coloring book, a lavender pen. When Josie asked where Celeste had been sent, the women merely shrugged or muttered, “No sé,” and carried on with their work. But Josie knew they were lying. Someone must know where Perla’s girl was. She tried to press for an answer, asking one of the younger women in the house. The woman consulted the eldest woman in the room, who looked at Josie over her shoulder and shook her head, making a slight wave of her hand in the air that simply but pointedly said, Ya, mujer. This does not involve you. The young woman smiled meekly at Josie and stayed near the old woman so Josie would not ask her again.

  It was Josie who had found the quinceañera book among Perla’s things. No one had argued with her when she refused to put it into the trash bag. No one had fought her for it; no one had even comforted her when she began to weep, her hands lightly grazing the cover. When Josie had collected herself, she announced to the assembled women that she was going to make sure the book was returned to Celeste, whether they helped her or not. The young woman began to say something, but the elder sharply shushed her, making the woman’s head collapse into her neck like a turtle as she looked furtively among the others, then turned to go back to work. No one spoke when Josie left the house with the book. But as soon as she passed the threshold, Josie could hear the hissing back and forth in Spanish. They thought she wouldn’t understand them:

  “Was that a good idea?”

  “N’ombre! We should go after her!”

  “That book doesn’t belong to her! What’s she going to do with it?”

  “Shh! She’s going to hear you! She’s right there.”

  “Ay, qué no! She won’t understand. No one understands what’s going on here.”

  “Ya! Let her take it!” the elder barked, making the other voices fall silent. “If she does what she says she’s going to do and returns the book to la muchacha, then God bless her. If not, then may all the angels and the saints, and la Virgencita herself hound her until she loses her mind. Bueno, I need a new comal. Anyone mind if I take this one?”

  The memory brought the pain back fresh for Josie, and she wiped the tears from her eyes before they had a chance to escape down her cheeks. She had tried not to let the women hurt her feelings—tried not to let anyone hurt her—but they had. No one seemed to remember that Josie was at the morgue to witness the grim business of identifying Perla’s remains. No one seemed to appreciate how hard she was working to keep it together, to be brave, to do her job, to stay out of the way, observe at a respectful distance. She remembered seeing many of the women in the house hovering over Celeste at the morgue, keeping her away from all unnecessary people, including Josie. She remembered looking at Celeste, sitting there like a flower growing in the fissures of broken concrete, looking small and alone. It was the most heart-wrenching thing she’d witnessed, among many, many, many heart-wrenching things. But Josie steeled herself, walked over to Celeste, and offered her hand and her condolences to the girl. Celeste took Josie’s hand numbly. She thanked her politely, but mechanically, not really seeing her. Josie couldn’t believe how brave the girl seemed until she remembered whose child she was. Afterward, Josie walked stiffly out of the building and into her car, where the tears overtook her and she sobbed inconsolably.

  Josie always told herself that her job was to gather the facts, tell the story. If she did her job well, then the crying would be left to someone else as they drank their morning coffee or took the train to their safe jobs with pensions—or at least health and dental—which was much more than women like Perla could ever hope for. But since Perla’s death, maintaining such stoicism had been impossible.

  Josie gripped the steering wheel tighter. Think! Think! she screamed at herself. What did she know? She knew Perla’s last name was Sánchez. But there must be thousands of Sánchezes in San Antonio. Where would she start? She remembered something about King William’s Columns—a family stone-making business? She knew there was another name, and it was… Josie tried to summon the name to her lips, but it wouldn’t come. Frustrated, she pulled off the highway and into a Dairy Queen, driving to the far end of the parking lot. She jumped out of her car without turning off the ignition and got into the backseat, where she began digging though her boxes, sifting through clippings, maps, notes, all the research material she’d collected for her book. When she came up with nothing, she unpacked her laptop, fired it up, and launched a search. Still nothing. She slapped the laptop shut and returned to the front seat, slamming the door loudly. She turned off the ignition and sat there a moment, frustrated. She needed a cigarette, but only the crumpled remains of the empty packs were left. She began to pick through her ashtray until she found a cigarette extinguished too soon, lit it, and began to think.

  King William’s Columns… King William’s Columns. Nothing else came to her. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She tried to relax when the other worry came lurking back to her: You have a girl here who needs her
mother. I’m doing what I can to help you, but if she stops asking about you…

  Her mother’s words still stung her. But it wasn’t the first time she’d heard them. Paz was five when Josie made a deal with Rita to take her little girl, when she was accepted to an exclusive, yearlong writing fellowship in Boston. Josie knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but didn’t know how it would be possible with a child to raise. She was resigned to turning down the fellowship when Rita stepped in. Her mother had sat her down at the rinsing station of her beauty shop after closing one night and handed Josie a Shiner from the kitchen. She spoke while standing in the door frame.

  “They say women can’t have it all, but you’re sure as hell going to try,” Rita began. “If you were my son, no one would say nothing. They might talk about you leaving your little girl behind, but not to your face, and not to me, so y qué? I don’t understand everything about your work, but if they pay and it’s honest work, I’ll help you. What I do know is that children need stability, and if you have to run around to get your life going, I would rather you leave her with me than with strangers.” Her mother paused and took a swig of her beer before continuing. “Your aunt Chata said she would help. I’ll do it for a year. One year. You hear me?” Rita finished off the rest of her beer in one long gulp before she pointed the bottle toward her daughter’s astonished face and said, “But if she stops asking about you, you can’t blame me. Entiendes?”

  Josie nodded numbly, realizing the gift her mother was offering her and the risk she might be taking.

  “Now, let me do something with that hair,” Rita had said, dropping the empty beer bottle with a clank into a bin near her. “You can’t go out into the world looking like that!”

  It had been seven years since they had that talk. Josie was feeling the distressing push-pull of wanting to be a good mother while not wanting to let all the opportunities that had come her way pass her by. If she could get her career going, she and Paz could have a good life. If things went really, really well, she might even be able to take care of her mother and her aunt Chata, too. Rita could end her twelve-hour days in the shop and retire. She was only doing what she had to do, to make a better life for her and her child, wasn’t she? Josie wasn’t always so sure anymore.

  A sudden tapping on the window startled Josie so much, she dropped her cigarette. Frantically she searched for it between the seats as the tapping continued.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am!”

  When Josie finally found her cigarette and made sure it hadn’t set her upholstery on fire, she looked out the window. The manager from the Dairy Queen was standing outside the car looking in at Josie through the windshield.

  “Ma’am!” the woman said again, motioning for Josie to roll down her window. The stale cigarette smoke that billowed from Josie’s car made the woman wrinkle her nose. “Are you waiting on an order?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you high?”

  “What?”

  “I’m telling you straight up, I’m fixin’ to call the police if you’re high.”

  “No, I just pulled off to look for something,” Josie explained.

  “Well, we reserve these spots for people who are waitin’ on drive-thru orders.”

  “I’m sorry. I just needed to look—”

  “Well, you might-could find a rest stop up the road a piece, and I think there’s a couple of hotels east of here. But I can’t have y’all sittin’ out here. People get the wrong idea when they see someone like you out here, and we run a family business.”

  “Well, so much for Southern hospitality,” Josie sneered under her breath, but the woman heard her.

  “Oh, honey. You’re not in the South. You’re in Texas. Now, how ’bout I bring y’all a cup a coffee for the road?”

  Josie turned the key in her ignition, then looked at the manager’s name tag. “Oh, that’s okay, Miss Miller…” Josie felt as if she’d been hit with a giant cartoon mallet. “Milligan! Milligan! It’s Milligan! Oh, my gato!” Josie screamed then broke into wild laughter. The manager jumped back from the car.

  “Oh! I could kiss you, Miss Milligan!”

  “Miller!”

  “Whatever! I’ll be getting along, now! Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!” Josie crowed. She was elated as she pulled back then squealed off and away onto the frontage road.

  “Y’all don’t come back,” the manager said, watching Josie’s car merge onto the interstate. She couldn’t be sure, but the manager thought the last thing she heard from Josie was a piercing, gleefully sustained “Ajua!”

  TEN

  The phone was ringing when Larry and his nephews entered Lucy’s apartment. Seamus went to answer the phone but his uncle got to it first.

  “Hello?” Larry said, and then, in a more exasperated tone, “Where the hell are you?… I’ve been calling you on your cell phone for the last hour… Didn’t I just get you a new charger?… I don’t care what Beatriz told you, you told me you were picking up the boys at three-thirty. Three-thirty, Lucy!… That’s not the point!”

  Seamus ushered his brother to their bedroom to unpack their things.

  “Don’t say anything,” Seamus said to his brother.

  “But—”

  “I mean it!”

  The two of them listened to their uncle’s side of the conversation from their bedroom.

  “Well, where the hell are you?… I said, where the hell are you?! We’re already here… At your place, where else?… Okay… okay… Okay, Lucy!… Good!” Larry slammed down the receiver. “Jesus!” he said, before he turned around to look for his nephews. They had been slyly watching him from the door frame of their room and scurried back to unpacking when their uncle turned to find them.

  “Boys!” he called. He went to their room when they didn’t answer. The boys were folding their clothes, neatly placing them in their hamper, when their uncle found them. “What are you doing?”

  “Putting stuff away,” Seamus said.

  “You’re folding your dirty clothes?” Larry asked, running his hand through his hair, trying to calm down. “Your mom said she’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Okay,” Seamus said.

  Larry stood in the door watching the boys.

  “You don’t need to fold your dirty clothes,” Larry said, noticing a pair of the boys’ briefs that had obviously been washed with something red.

  “Told you,” Wally said.

  “Let me show you how to sort clothes so you don’t turn your underwear pink again.” Larry began pulling out the clothes and throwing them into piles while the boys watched.

  “Look, I don’t want you to think we don’t want you at the house. It’s just that things are different right now. We have to work things out.”

  “I know,” Seamus said. He was focused on the “things are different” comment, thinking about Celeste, and that because of her, things were worse than different. They were turned upside down and inside out like his brother’s pants.

  “When is she leaving?” Seamus asked.

  “I don’t know,” Larry said, throwing a navy blue T-shirt onto a pair of jeans. “I don’t know. But until we figure out what’s going to happen, you’re going to be spending more time here, okay?” The boys nodded. “There!” Larry said, satisfied with his work. “Now you know how to do this. Like goes with like. See? Things like this help your mother, so remember, okay?”

  “Okay,” the boys said in unison. Larry walked back into the living room and looked around. The apartment was neat, the dishes were washed, and he even saw marks on the carpet from a recent vacuuming. Maybe his sister was doing her best.

  “You don’t have to wait,” Seamus said. Wally pulled at his brother’s arm and Seamus batted his hand away, but Larry didn’t notice. He was still looking around the apartment. The house was neat but covered with a thick layer of dust.

  Okay. Maybe she’s not the best housekeeper, but the place is presentable, he thought.

  “Well,” L
arry began, “you sure you’re going to be okay if I take off now?”

  “We’re not babies,” Seamus insisted.

  “No roughhousing or acting stupid, okay?” Larry was moving into the kitchen, and Seamus was willing his uncle not to open the refrigerator or cupboards. Unlike the cupboards at his aunt and uncle’s house, theirs were filled with random things like minced ham, dry pasta, a bottle of capers, and a small tin of cat food their mother bought when she found a stray cat in the parking lot. Seamus set the cat free when he got tired of it peeing in his shoes. Larry stopped checking out the apartment when his cell phone chirped.

  “Yeah, son. I’m coming right out,” Larry said as he slapped his phone closed and looked at his nephews. “I can trust you not to set the place on fire?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Seamus said, retrieving his math book and setting it on the table as if he were going to study.

  “Do you need help?” Larry asked.

  “No, I’m almost done.”

  “I need some help,” Wally said.

  “No, you don’t,” Seamus snapped, and then to his uncle: “I can help him. His math is easy.”

  “No, it’s not!”

  When they heard the sound of keys jangling outside the door, they all turned their attention to it. Lucy came into the apartment with a pizza box and a bottle of soda. She dumped her huge purse on the floor, and Seamus noticed that it was deflated. Not a good sign.

  “Pizza!” Wally exclaimed, as he ran to his mother.

  “Hi, baby. Put this on the table and get some plates and napkins. Seamus, go get some cups with ice.” She and Larry exchanged icy glances.

  “And forks!” she called to the boys in the kitchen. She took a deep breath, dropped onto the couch, and put her feet up on the coffee table.

  “The boys just ate,” Larry reported.

  “Well, good. The pizza will keep,” Lucy said. She dropped her head over the back of the couch.

  “I’ll see you guys later,” Larry called to the boys. “Bye,” he said stiffly to his sister.