by Lucia Berlin
I squeezed into a spot at the end of a table crowded with families. Nobody was talking politics, it seemed that these were just country people who had come to a free barbeque. Everyone was very, very drunk. I could see Miss Dawson, chattering away in line, she was drinking wine too, gesticulating and talking very loud so people would understand her.
“Isn’t this great?” she asked, bringing two huge plates of food. “Let’s introduce ourselves. Try to talk to the people more, that’s how you learn, and help.”
The two farm workers we sat by decided with gales of laughter that we were from another planet. As I had feared, they were amazed by her bare shoulders and visible nipples, couldn’t figure out what she was. I realized that not only did she not speak Spanish, she was nearly blind. She would squint through her inch-thick glasses, smiling, but she couldn’t see that these men were laughing at us, didn’t like us, whatever we were. What were we doing here? She tried to explain that she was in the communist party, but instead of partido she kept toasting the “Fiesta,” which is a festive party, so they kept toasting her back, “La Fiesta!”
“We’ve got to leave,” I said, but she only looked at me, slack-jawed and drunk. The man next to me was half-heartedly flirting with me, but I was more worried about the big drunk man next to Miss Dawson. He was stroking her shoulders with one hand while he ate a rib with the other. She was laughing away until he started grabbing her and kissing her, then she began to scream.
Miss Dawson ended up on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone had rushed over at first, but they soon left, muttering “Nothing but some drunken gringa.” The men we had sat by now ignored us totally. She got up and began to run toward the road; I followed her. When she got to the stream she tried to wash herself off, her mouth and her chest. She just got muddy and wet. She sat on the bank, crying, her nose running. I gave her my handkerchief.
“Miss Perfect! An ironed linen handkerchief!” she sneered.
“Yes.” I said, fed up with her and only concerned now with getting home. Still crying, she staggered down the path toward the main road, where she started to hail down cars. I pulled her back into the trees.
“Look, Miss Dawson. You can’t hitchhike here. They don’t understand…it could get us in trouble, two women hitchhiking. Listen to me!”
But a farmer in an old truck had stopped, the engine ticking on the dusty road. I offered him money to take us to the outskirts of town. He was going all the way to downtown, could take us all the way to her house easy for 20 pesos. We climbed into the bed of the truck.
She put her arms around me in the wind. I could feel her wet dress, her sticky armpit hairs as she clung to me.
“You can’t go back to your frivolous life! Don’t leave! Don’t leave me,” she kept saying until at last we got to her block.
“Goodbye,” I said. “Thanks for everything,” or something dumb like that. I left her on the curb, blinking at my cab until it turned the corner.
The maids were leaning on the gate talking to the neighborhood carabinero, so I didn’t think anyone was home. But my father was there, changing to go play golf.
“You’re back early. Where have you been?” he asked.
“To a picnic, with my history teacher.”
“Oh, yes. What is she like?”
“OK. She’s a communist.”
I just blurted that out. It had been a miserable day; I was fed up with Miss Dawson. But that’s all it took. Three words to my father. She was fired sometime that weekend and we never saw her again.
No one else knew what had happened. The other girls were happy she was gone. We had a free period now, even though we would have to make up American history when we got to college. There was nobody to speak to. To say I was sorry.
Grief
“Whatever can those two be talking about all the time?” Mrs. Wacher asked her husband at breakfast.
Across the open-air, thatched-roof dining room by the sea the sisters forgot their papaya, their huevos rancheros, talking, talking. Later, as they walked by the edge of the sea, their heads were bent toward one another. Talking, talking. Waves would catch them unawares, soaking them, and they would laugh. The younger one often cried…When she cried the older one waited, comforting her, passing her a tissue. When the tears stopped they began talking again. She didn’t look hard, the older one, but she never cried.
For the most part the other hotel guests in the dining room and in beach chairs on the sand all sat quietly together, occasionally commenting upon the perfection of the day, the turquoise blue of the sea, telling their children to sit up straight. The honeymoon couple whispered and teased each other, fed one another bites of melon, but most of the time they were silent, gazing into the other’s eyes, looking at the other’s hands. The older couples drank coffee and read or did crossword puzzles. Their conversations were brief, monosyllabic. The people who were content with each other spoke as little as those who bristled with resentment or boredom; it was the rhythm of their speech that differed, like a lazy tennis ball batted back and forth or the quick swattings of a fly.
In the evening, by lantern light, the German couple, the Wachers, played bridge with another retired couple from Canada, the Lewises. They were all serious players so there was a minimum of conversation. Snap snap of dealt cards, Mr. Wacher’s “hmms.” Two no trump. The sizzle of the surf, ice cubes in their glasses. The women spoke, occasionally, about plans for shopping the next day, a trip to La Isla, the mysterious talking sisters. The older one so elegant and cool. In her fifties but still attractive, vain. The younger one, in her forties, was pretty, but frumpy, self-effacing. There she goes, crying again!
Mrs. Wacher decided to tackle the older sister during her morning swim. Mrs. Lewis would speak to the younger one, who never swam or sat in the sun, but waited for the other, sipping tea, holding an unopened book.
That evening, while Mr. Wacher fetched the score pad and cards and Mr. Lewis ordered drinks and snacks from the bar, the two women pooled their information.
“They talk so much because they haven’t seen each other in twenty years! Can you imagine? Sisters? Mine is named Sally, she lives in Mexico City, is married to a Mexican and has three children. We spoke in Spanish, she seems Mexican really. She recently had a mastectomy, which explains why she doesn’t swim. She starts cancer therapy next month. That’s probably why she’s crying all the time. That’s all I got, before the sister came up and they went to change.”
“No! That’s not why she’s crying! Their mother has just died! Two weeks ago! Can you imagine … they have come to a resort?”
“What else did she say? What is her name?”
“Dolores. She is a nurse from California, with four grown sons. She said that their mother recently died, that she and her sister had a lot to talk about.”
The women figured it all out. Sally, the sweet one, must have been taking care of the invalid mother all these years. When the old mother finally died Dolores felt guilty, because of her sister caring for her mother, and she never went to visit them. And then her sister’s cancer. Dolores was the one paying for everything, the cabs, the waiters. They saw her buying Sally clothes in the boutiques downtown. That must be it. Guilt. She’s sorry she didn’t see her mother before she died, wants to be good to her sister before she dies too.
“Or before she dies herself,” Mrs. Lewis said. “When your parents are dead your own death faces you.”
“Oh, I know what you mean… there is no one to protect you against death anymore.”
The two women were silent then, pleased with their harmless gossip, their analysis. Thinking of their own deaths to come. Their husbands’ deaths to come. But just briefly. Although in their seventies both couples were healthy, active. They lived fully, enjoying each day. When their husbands pulled out their chairs and sat down for the game they entered it with pleasure, forgetting all about the two sisters, who were sitting side by side now on the beach, under the stars.
Sally wasn’
t crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband Alfonso had left her, after twenty years, for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no she wouldn’t ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her.
“They can just wait until I die. I’ll be dead soon, probably next year…” Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound.
“You’re not dying. They said the cancer was gone. The radiation therapy is routine, a precaution. I heard the doctor say that, that they got all the cancer.”
“But it will come back. It always does.”
“That’s not true. Cut it out, Sally.”
“You are so cold. Sometimes you are as cruel as Mama.” Dolores said nothing. Her greatest fear, that she was like her mother. Cruel, a drunkard.
“Look, Sally. Just give him a divorce and start taking care of yourself.”
“You don’t understand! How can you understand how I feel after living with him for twenty years? You’ve been alone almost that long! For me it has only been Alfonso, since I was seventeen! I love him!”
“I think I can manage to understand,” Dolores said, dryly. “Come on, let’s go in, it’s getting cold.”
In the room Dolores’ light was on inside her white mosquito net; she was reading before she fell asleep.
“Dolores?”
Sally was crying, again. Christ. Now what.
“Sally, I go crazy if I can’t read when I first wake up and before I go to sleep. It’s a dumb habit, but there it is. What is it?”
“I have a splinter in my foot.”
Dolores got up, went for a needle, some antiseptic and a band-aid, removed the splinter from her sister’s foot. Sally cried again, and embraced Dolores.
“Let’s always be close now. It’s so good to have a sister who takes care of me!”
Dolores smoothed the band-aid on Sally’s foot, as she had done a dozen times when they were children. “All better,” she said, automatically.
“All better!” Sally sighed. She fell asleep soon after. Dolores read for several hours more. Finally she turned out the light, wishing she had a drink.
How could she talk to Sally about her alcoholism? It was not like talking about a death, or losing a husband, losing a breast. People said it was a disease, but nobody made her pick up the drink. I’ve got a fatal disease. I am terrified, Dolores wanted to say, but she didn’t.
The Wachers and the Lewises were always the first people up for breakfast, seated at adjoining tables. The husbands read the paper, the wives chatted with the waiters and one another. After breakfast the four were going out deep-sea fishing.
“Where are the sisters today, I wonder?” Mrs. Lewis said.
“Hollering! When I passed their room they were arguing away. Herman has no compassion, he wouldn’t let me eavesdrop. Sally said, No! She didn’t want a penny of the old witch’s blood money! That when she had been desperate her mother had refused her, cussing away, that meek little thing! Puta! Desgraciada! Dolores was hollering at her, ‘Can’t you understand anything about madness? You are the really crazy one … because you refuse to see! Mama was crazy!’ And then she began yelling at her, ‘Take it off! Take it off!’”
“Shh. Here they come now.”
Sally was disheveled; she looked, as usual, as if she had been weeping; as usual Dolores was calm and perfectly groomed. She ordered breakfast for the two of them and when it came you could hear her say to her sister,
“Eat. You’ll feel better. Drink all the orange juice. It is sweet, delicious.”
“Take it off!”
Sally cowered, clutching her huipil to her body. Dolores tore it away from her, made her stand there, naked, the scars where her breast had been livid red and blue.
Sally cried. “I am hideous! I’m not a woman now! Don’t look!”
Dolores gripped her shoulders, shook her. “You want me to be your sister? Let me look! Yes, it is hideous. The scars look brutal, awful. But they are you now. And you’re a woman, you silly fool! Without your Alfonso, without your breast, you can be more of a woman than ever, your own woman! For starters you’re going swimming today, with that $150 falsie I brought to pin in your suit.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. Come on, get dressed for breakfast.”
“Good morning, ladies!” Mrs. Lewis called to the sisters. “Another splendid day. We’re going fishing. What are your plans for the day?”
“We’re going for a swim, and then shopping and to the hairdresser.”
“Poor Sally,” Mrs. Lewis said, “She obviously doesn’t want to do any of those things. She’s sick, and grieving. That sister of hers is forcing her to be on vacation. Just like my sister Iris. Bossy, bossy! Did you have a big sister?”
“No,” Mrs. Wacher laughed. “I was the big sister. Believe me, little sisters have their drawbacks too.”
Dolores spread out their towels on the sand.
“Take it off.”
She meant the robe her sister had clutched over her bathing suit.
“Take it off,” she insisted again. “You look wonderful. Your breast looks real. Your waist is tiny. You have great legs. But then you never, ever, realized how lovely you were.”
“No. You were the pretty one. I was the good one.”
“That label was hard on me too. Take the hat off. We only have a few days left. You’re going back to the city with a tan.”
“Pero …”
“Callate. Keep your mouth shut, so you don’t tan with wrinkles.”
“The sun feels wonderful,” Sally sighed after a while.
“Doesn’t your body feel good?”
“I feel so naked. As if everyone could see the scars.”
“You know one thing I’ve learned? Most people don’t notice anything at all, or care, if they do.”
“You are so cynical.”
“Turn over, let me oil your back.”
After a while Sally talked to Dolores about the library in the barrio where she worked as a volunteer. Heartwarming stories about the children and families who lived in dire poverty. She loved her work there, and they loved her.
“See, Sally, there is so much you can do, that you enjoy.”
Dolores couldn’t think of any heartwarming stories to tell Sally about her job, at a clinic in East Oakland. Crack babies, abused children, children with brain damage, Down’s syndrome, gun-shot wounds, malnutrition, AIDS. But she was good at her job, and liked it. Or had—she had finally been fired for drinking, just last month, before their mother died.
“I like my job, too,” was all she said. “Come on, let’s swim.”
“I can’t. I’ll hurt myself.”
“The wounds are healed, Sally. There are only scars. Terrible scars.”
“I can’t.”
“For Christ’s sake, get in the water.”
Dolores led her sister into the surf and then wrenched her hand away. She watched Sally flounder and fall, swallow water, be knocked down by a wave. Treading water she watched as Sally stood up and dove under the incoming swell, swam on. Dolores swam after her. Oh Lord, she’s crying again, but no, Sally was laughing out loud.
“It’s warm! It’s so warm! I’m light as a baby!”
They swam out in the blue water for a long time. At last they came in to shore. Breathless, laughing, they left the surf. Sally threw her arms around her sister and the two women held each other, the foam swirling around their ankles. “Mariconas!” mocked two passing beach boys.
Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Wacher watched from their beach chairs, quite moved. “She’s not so mean, just firm … she knew the sister would like it once she got in. How happy she looks. Poor thing, she needed this vacation.”
“Yes, it doesn’t seem so shocking now, does it? That they should go on a holiday when their mother died.”
“You know… it’s too bad it isn’t a tradition. A post-funeral holiday, like a honeymoon
, or a baby shower.”
They both laughed. “Herman!” Mrs. Wacher called over to her husband. “After we two women have died, will you two men promise to take a vacation together?”
Herman shook his head. “No. You need four for bridge.”
When Sally and Dolores got back that evening everyone complimented Sally on how lovely she looked. Rosy from the sun, her new haircut curling in soft auburn ringlets around her face.
Sally kept shaking her hair, looking in the mirror. Her green eyes shone like emeralds. She was painting them with Dolores’s makeup.
“Could I borrow your green top?” she asked.
“What? I just bought you three beautiful dresses. Now you want my top? And for that matter you have your own makeup, and your own perfume!”
“See how you resent me! Yes, you give me presents, but you still are selfish, selfish, like her!”
“Selfish!” Dolores took her blouse off. “Here! Take these earrings, too. They go with it.”
The sun set as the diners ate their flan. When their coffee came Dolores reached for her sister’s hand.
“You realize we’re just acting as we did when we were chldren. It’s sort of nice when you think about it. You keep saying that you want us to be real sisters now. We’re acting just like real sisters! Fighting!”
Sally smiled. “You’re right. I guess I never knew how real families acted. We never had a family vacation, or even a picnic.”
“I’m sure that’s why I had so many children, why you married into such a huge Mexican family, we wanted a home so badly.”
“And that’s just why Alfonso leaving me is so hard…”
“Don’t talk about him anymore.”
“What can I talk about then?”
“We need to talk about her. Mama. She’s dead now.”
“I could have killed her! I’m glad she’s dead,” Sally said. “It was too awful when Daddy died. I flew to L.A. and took a bus to San Clemente. She wouldn’t even let me in the door. I banged on the door and said, ‘I need a mother! Let me talk to you!’ but she wouldn’t let me in. It wasn’t fair. I don’t care about the money, but that wasn’t fair either.”