by Unknown
She shows him the texts. “What if she tries to take him? Can she do that?”
Her dad bites his lip. “I don’t think so.” He looks uncertain, though, and rubs his scalp. “What do you know about this lady? Has Ryan said what she’s like?”
Angel shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s a nurse in Los Alamos. And she’s, like, a feminist, maybe? She hates the word bitch.”
“Aw, shit. You think I should call Valerie?”
On the floor, Connor tries to jam the sheep into the wooden frame of his farm puzzle.
Angel hesitates. “No. My mom. I want my mom here.”
“Good. We’ll deal with it together.” He pats Angel’s hand. “Hey. It’ll be fine. No one’s gonna take that baby from us.”
That night, Angel, Amadeo, and Marissa await the arrival of Ryan and his mother. They sit in the living room, showered and dressed. Earlier, Angel and her father made an insanely detailed list of chores—bleach the grout in the shower, scrub cupboard doors, sweep cobweb from hall ceiling—then divvied them up and set to. Cushions are plumped, baseboards dusted, the crocheted afghan folded neatly over the arm of the couch. Her mother brought a selection of Easter-rabbit sugar cookies, which she arranged on a platter.
“Wish my mom could see this.” Her dad reaches to brush a piece of lint from the glass on the doll cabinet. “She once told me her dream was to have every dish clean and put away, but there was always someone there to dirty a glass. Me, usually.”
“Well,” says Angel. “It’s not gonna be perfect for long. That fool will make sure of it.” She jerks her thumb at Connor.
Connor is in his nicest polo shirt and pants, but then at the last minute takes a giant dump, so has to be changed into his second-best outfit, which is just denim overalls.
“Why’m I trying to make you maximum cute, anyway?” Angel asks as she buttons him in. “I should make you less cute, so they leave us alone. I should leave you in your stinky diaper so they run away. No way, they’ll say, get that baby away from me!” Connor’s eyes are huge and dark and sparkling. “I’m not going to let no one take you. If they come after you, we’ll hit the road, baby. You can support us with your modeling.” She smooths a black curl and he laughs at her, showing off his teeth.
Her dad leans over Angel’s shoulder, peering at Connor, frowning, and gently touches a thin scratch on his cheek from when he swiped at himself with a stick. “I hope they don’t think that’s child abuse.”
Angel whips around. “Are you for serious?”
“Nah, course not.”
“She’s raised a baby, Amadeo,” says Marissa. “Plus she’s a nurse. She’ll know babies scratch themselves all the time.”
But her dad’s expression remains troubled. They’re all thinking of the accident, thinking of the horrible thing they can’t bear to think about.
The second Amadeo lets them in, Ryan’s mother hugs Angel. “Angel? You’re Angel. Oh my god, the baby! Oh, what a beauty! I can’t believe you’ve been doing this all alone. I’ve never been so mad at Ryan in my whole life.”
Ryan stands behind her, pulling at his sideburn, his forehead splotched red. “It’s true. She was so mad she cried.”
Ryan’s mother laughs and sticks her hand out to Angel. “I’m Mary Ann, Ryan’s mom.” She turns to Marissa. “Your daughter is lovely,” she says, then flushes.
Marissa hugs Angel to her awkwardly. “Inside and out.”
Mary Ann wears jeans and a baggy black sweater. Her hair is pulled back in a gray-blond bun stabbed through with a painted wooden stick. Ryan looms over his mother.
She’s brought a gift bag full of toys and outfits sized for a much smaller baby, as if she can’t believe it’s possible that Connor, this grandchild of hers, has been around for nearly eleven months without her knowing. “Oh god,” she says, realizing her mistake as soon as Angel pulls the first miniature blue sweater from the gift bag. “I can exchange it all.”
Angel holds the sweater against Connor’s round belly. “Hard to believe he ever fit into stuff this tiny. But you did, baby. You did, before you grew so big.”
“He’s beautiful! He looks just like Ryan.” She swats her son. “You idiot. How could you be such an idiot? Oh, what a little darling!”
Angel examines Connor’s face skeptically. How odd that this is the face she knows best in the world, and yet she has so little perspective on it. She doesn’t see Ryan in him, and she doesn’t see herself, either. From the first moment she laid eyes on Connor, he’s only ever been himself.
“I’m just so sorry,” Mary Ann tells Marissa. “I mean, he knows about protection. He’s a smart kid—who knew he could be such an idiot? Oh, please can I hold him?”
Ryan sits pinching his big red knuckles, but it’s a pleased embarrassment.
Angel hands Connor over. He grabs a hank of Mary Ann’s hair, which has come loose from the bun, and delivers it to his mouth.
“He likes you, Mom,” says Ryan.
Mary Ann feels around Connor’s chest, her brows canted in concern. “Have you been taking him for regular checkups? Did they say if he’s inherited Ryan’s sternum thing?”
“He’s fine.”
“Whew. I wouldn’t wish that on any mother. Imagine if your baby had nothing but skin between the world and his heart! Do you like your pediatrician? I know someone I can recommend.”
Ryan puts a hand on her arm. “Angel’s got him a doctor, Mom.”
Mary Ann turns on her son, admiration lighting her eyes. “You thought to ask?”
Angel can’t stop watching mother and son: Mary Ann’s bullying affection, Ryan’s acceptance of it. Her mother is watching them, too. When their eyes meet, Angel smiles at her mother bravely, and Marissa’s eyes fill, her own smile pained. “Of course I’ll come,” she told Angel when she called earlier that evening. “I’ll be right there.”
“So, how’s the basketball team, Ryan?” her dad asks. He seems ill at ease, but he’s trying to make conversation, for which Angel is grateful.
“We had a pretty decent season.” And then he’s off, talking about the coach and layups and team captains. Three mothers, two fathers, all of them arranged around Connor, who flaps the gift bag around his head. Angel is still tense—her chest aches with tension—but she breathes deeply and counts, the way Brianna taught them. Her own beating heart feels vulnerable and very close to the surface.
As they’re leaving, Mary Ann nudges her son. “Go on. Give it to her.”
Ryan produces an envelope and hands it to Angel. “It’s money. Like, child support.”
“We’re fine,” Amadeo says, his voice hard. “We don’t need your money.”
Mary Ann laughs. “Of course you do. Human beings are expensive to raise. I told Ryan I’d help him out until he graduates from college, but that he has to have a job starting pronto.”
“Right.” Her father nods slowly, wary. “Lowe’s is hiring. I just started there.”
“Really?” says Ryan. “Cool.”
Angel turns the envelope in her hand, flushing. “Well, thanks.”
“I’m not sure thanks is quite right. It’s the least you should expect. This is just the beginning. We’ll talk more about what you guys need. We’re all family now.” Mary Ann hands the baby back to Angel. “Bye, little sweetie. Well, we’ll let you have your evening.” As they head out to the car, Mary Ann reaches up to tousle Ryan’s hair.
“Mary Ann?” Angel calls through the screen door.
She turns. “Yeah, hon?”
“Good to meet you.”
“Oh, hon. I’m so happy to meet you.”
Before Angel shuts the door, Ryan jogs back across the gravel. They regard each other through the screen.
“Thanks for being nicer to me,” he says.
“It’s okay.”
“Well, bye, Angle. Obtuse Angle.”
The moment the door is shut, as if aware of the tension draining from the room, Connor sets to wailing. Angel bounces him quiet.
&
nbsp; “Well,” says Amadeo. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
“I like them,” Marissa says. “They seem like good people.”
“Maybe you and Ryan will, you know . . .” Her dad waggles his head to indicate the range of possibilities.
“Yeah, no. Never gonna happen, Dad.”
“Still.”
Angel kisses Connor’s hair, then sets him down. She hoists the platter. “They didn’t even take a cookie. We forgot to offer them something to drink.”
“Right. Well, that Mary Ann couldn’t stop talking long enough to drink anything. We got through it. You did great, Angel.”
“Really great,” her mom says. She steps closer and says in a low voice, “Listen, Angel, about Mike. I should have listened to you. I’m sorry.”
Angel can’t look at her mother, because her eyes have filled.
Connor is grasping the edge of the couch. He looks up at his family, grinning crazily, swinging his belly to and fro, swaying on his wobbly legs like a drunk. Delighted by their eyes on him, he pushes off and takes a step and another, emits a screech, and then, startled by his own sound, falls on his bottom. His face is blank for a moment, then cracks into a lopsided smile.
“Whoa!” cries Angel. “Keep trying, baby. You’re working hard.”
The hermanos are already making their journey up Calvario in their white pants. Amadeo and his daughter and grandson are late, and they stand at the base, watching Isaiah struggle up the dirt path with his cross. The hermanos form a neat line behind Isaiah, swatting their bare backs, and behind them, a cluster of women bend over their clasped hands. In all, there’s a dozen or so figures. The wind carries the pito’s distant whistle and scraps of the alabados, but they cannot make out the words.
The cool air lifts around them, and the sun is a light shawl across their shoulders. Somewhere down the road, someone starts up a motor. Closer, a family of quail emerges from the chamisa. The parents catch sight of Amadeo and his daughter and stop, and the babies—four identical walnuts—halt, too, bunching up. They swivel their heads back and forth, plumes waving like antennae, then dart back into the brush, feet too fast to see. Everything is alive, going about its business, indifferent to the drama taking place above them on the dusty slope.
“Do you feel left out?” Angel asks. In her arms, Connor shakes his fist, sending out a stream of commanding jabber.
Amadeo considers. He doesn’t. Looking back on his own crucifixion the year before, Amadeo remembers a pureness of feeling that he can’t recapture.
Watching Isaiah’s body bent under the weight of the cross, Amadeo holds in his mind the suffering of that man two thousand years ago, suffering that was new and astonishing, but also just like the suffering of the men crucified beside him, just like the suffering of every person before and after. The tiny form of Isaiah pauses, then continues up the hill.
At their feet, a shiny beetle trundles over the dirt, bottom high. Connor squawks, straining toward the ground. “Here, let me hold him,” Amadeo says.
“Anytime.” Angel hands the baby over and stretches. Connor puts his fat arm around Amadeo’s neck and pats him casually.
“Think he’ll ask for the nails?”
“Nah. Isaiah knows better.”
To feel a little of what Christ felt, Tío Tíve said over a year ago. And what Christ felt was love. Amadeo doesn’t know how he lost track of this. Love: both gift and challenge.
Standing there, the spring air high and dry, the sky a distilled, wincing blue, he wants to explain this to Angel. She pulls her heavy hair back, twirls the length of it until it twists upon itself, then secures the whole thing in a messy bun on her head. It is a simple gesture, assured and graceful. He holds Connor tighter.
“Are there things you wish you’d told Gramma?” Angel asks.
Amadeo is quiet a long moment. “Yeah. I wish I’d thanked her. Hey. You okay?”
“They made it to the top.” She shakes Connor’s foot, nodding toward Calvario. “See those people, baby? See that man up there? He died for our sins. Yours, too. Like your diaper this morning. That was the stinkiest sin I’ve ever seen.”
The hermanos are tiny at this distance, like toys, like distant figures in a painting. The cross rises, tips one way, then another, settles upright. The figures cluster around it.
“Look, baby.” Connor does not follow his mother’s finger. He is transfixed by her expression, his own face awash in wonder.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude is due to my marvelous agent, Denise Shannon, and to my brilliant, insightful editor, Jill Bialosky, who, all those years ago, first asked me if I’d ever considered extending my short story into a novel. Also at Norton, I’m so grateful to Erin Sinesky Lovett, Steve Colca, Drew Weitman, Don Rifkin, Lauren Abbate, and everyone else who helped shepherd this book into being. Many thanks to my copyeditor, Amy Robbins.
My gratitude to Willing Davidson, who edited the story that this book grew out of for the pages of The New Yorker.
Thank you to the individuals who spoke with me about their work: Marie Leyba at Española Valley High School; Eric Gallant at the City of Española Police Department; Judy Goldbogen at the office of the Chief Clerk of the New Mexico House of Representatives. Many thanks to Eric Schindler, Lydia Medina, and Joy Leveen at Child and Family Resources for allowing me to visit the classroom at the Maricopa Center for Adolescent Parents. Thank you to my former colleagues at United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona for their commitment to quality early childhood education, and especially to LaVonne Douville, whose work and mentorship continue to inspire me.
For their medical expertise and friendship, my thanks to Megan Mickley and Margaret Allen.
Tíve’s hermandad is a fictional hermandad in a fictional town. There exists, as far as I know, no morada that was once a filling station. Nonetheless, my fictional version is informed by the work of several scholars of the history of penitentes in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. I’m particularly grateful to the following books: Marta Weigle’s Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood: The Penitentes of the Southwest and The Penitentes of the Southwest; Alabados of New Mexico, edited by Thomas J. Steele, S.J.; Ray John de Aragón’s Hermanos de la Luz, Brothers of the Light; and Alice Corbin Henderson’s Brothers of Light: The Penitentes of the Southwest. The text of Amadeo’s entrada is from a translation by Bill Tate, included in Penitente Self-Government: Brotherhoods and Councils, 1797–1947, by Thomas J. Steele, S.J., and Rowena A. Rivera.
Angela Garcia’s The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande is a beautifully observed study of the painful effects of the region’s history of violence and dispossession.
For the time and space to work, I am beyond grateful to the following institutions and their staff who welcomed me so warmly: Yaddo, Willapa Bay AiR, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Civitella Ranieri, the American Academy in Rome, the James Merrill House, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. I am especially grateful to MacDowell, where I started this novel, and the Hermitage Artist Retreat, where I finished it. For opening their homes to me to write, I am grateful to Diana Lett and Susan Rosenberg (and George the tortoise). Thanks also to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the gems at Grace Paley Palooza.
For the support and faith, thank you to the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Elizabeth George Foundation.
To my students and colleagues at Princeton University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and Warren Wilson: how very lucky I am to work among you.
For guidance over the years, many thanks to Deb Allbery, Michael Byers, Peter Ho Davies, Jane Hamilton, A. M. Homes, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Maureen N. McLane, Jim Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Elizabeth Tallent, Susan Wheeler, and Tobias Wolff. I am forever indebted to three dear mentors who have recently passed away: Eavan Boland, Ehud Havazelet, and John L’Heureux.
Thank you to my beloved readers, who made this book infinitely better. Jennifer duBois,
Lara Vapynar, and Sarah Frisch were beyond generous with their critiques. My mother, Barbra Quade, accompanied me on a research trip and gave invaluable feedback on the manuscript. Mary South read this twice and plucked me from despair in those dark, early days of the pandemic. I am eternally grateful to Brittany Perham for the You-Are-Not-Alone chant. And thank you especially to Lydia Conklin, whom I’ve been so lucky to get to write alongside, who reads every word I write, and whose work I am so fortunate to read. I’m grateful for the years.
To the teachers, social workers, activists, nonprofit workers, and community organizers who devote their lives to improving outcomes for vulnerable children, youth, and families: thank you. To those children and youth who fight so hard for their futures and ours: you give me hope.
ALSO BY KIRSTIN VALDEZ QUADE
Night at the Fiestas: Stories
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Kirstin Valdez Quade
All rights reserved
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Quade, Kirstin Valdez, author.
Title: The five wounds : a novel / Kirstin Valdez Quade.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020030288 | ISBN 9780393242836 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780393242843 (epub)