Of course, I said.
We sat, side by side, with the covers over our legs, smoking the cigarettes.
You know you’re not supposed to smoke in bed, Corazón said.
Yes, I know.
Well, just as long as you know you’re not supposed to, then you can do it. It’s like I know I’m not supposed to eat a lot of sugar. Well, I know I shouldn’t do it and then I do it. Does a doctor really think you’re not going to eat ice cream? That’s so ridiculous, it’s ridiculous.
Corazón, I said. My mother is buried out there in the garden. She’s in a box under the magnolia tree. What do you think?
It’s the perfect place. Your mother would have loved this house.
Yes, I said. But I’m not sure about being buried in a place you don’t know.
Well, it happens all the time because you’re never really in charge of what happens to your body—not even when you’re alive.
Corazón wanted to leave and get on the road as soon as possible. We were going to take the Greyhound bus all the way to Texas. She had it all planned out.
I needed two days to do everything. It was Monday. I told her we’d leave on Thursday. She could spend the afternoons, when Mr. Brodsky was home, in the playhouse. I’d give her some cookies and apples. I promised I would sneak her in at night so she could sleep in my bed with me.
I want you to meet Helen and Leo, I said.
Oh no. They’ll tell. They’ll tell that man that you’re leaving with me.
No, I said. Foster children never rat on anyone. That’s the golden foster-child rule.
Are you sure?
Yes. Leo told me. He said the first thing foster children learn to say is, I didn’t see a thing.
On Monday night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I went downstairs, opened the front door, and ran out into the garden. I walked past my mother’s grave. Around me was the sound of crickets and a soft humming sound of other insects.
When I reached the playhouse, Corazón opened the small door and stepped out. I took her hand and we walked back to the house and up to my room.
We lay in bed in the dark and listened to the sounds outside and inside and the sound of each other breathing.
How do you feel? Are you okay? Corazón asked.
I cannot find the words.
I’m not in a hurry. Look for the words.
I slipped out of the bed and opened the curtains and then the window. A cold night breeze blew into the smoky room. I looked down at the garden and at the place my mother’s ashes were buried. A cloud of fireflies lit up the garden with tiny flashes everywhere.
I left the window open and got back into bed.
After a while Corazón whispered, Do you think this señor here has some money we could take? We could use some more money.
I don’t know, I whispered back. Leave it to me. After Mr. Brodsky and Leo and Helen leave tomorrow morning, I’ll check around.
Okay, buenas noches.
Corazón?
Yes? What is it?
What do you think happened to my mother?
What do you mean?
How did all this happen to us?
What?
My mother never should have let Eli come into our car. She should’ve rolled up the window.
Your mother wanted to be rescued, Corazón said. She had no family, no house, no roof. How can anyone live in a car for all those years? She was a lonely woman. That man just walked into her and sat down.
Yes, I said. I do know what happened. She wanted every day to be a Sunday. That’s a song. She wanted a Sunday kind of love.
30
On Tuesday, while Leo, Helen, and Mr. Brodsky were away and Corazón had gone off to buy our Greyhound bus tickets, I sat on the bed and opened up all my mother’s plastic bags.
There was a bag of hair clips, nail clippers, and nail files. There were two bags filled with bras and underpants. There was a bag with shorts and skirts. One bag was full of nail-polish bottles.
I’d watched my mother organizing these bags over and over again throughout my life. Now I knew that she was trying to create the logic of a closet and a set of drawers out of supermarket bags.
One of the last bags had the pair of white gloves in it. The last time I’d seen them, we’d been at church. I’d watched as, with care, she’d peeled the gloves off her small, childlike hands so she could play the piano and then handed them to me. I could hear F minor as if the music were in the lace.
I rolled up the gloves into a ball as if they were tissues and tossed them into the trash by my bed.
As I looked though her clothes, I checked the pockets, which all contained sharp stones or pieces of glass. Everywhere my mother walked she anticipated that someone might be out walking barefoot so she always picked up those objects and put them in her pockets. She kept people she didn’t even know safe.
The last bag I opened contained the testimony of her childhood and wealthy upbringing. Here were things she’d never used once in our trailer park and she did not have time to sell along with everything else. There was a small black silk clutch with ruby-colored beads sewn all over the outside and a jar containing ten pearl buttons each circled by a trim of tiny rhinestones.
There were no bags with photographs or important documents. There was not a single piece of paper that might have told me who we were. Her teenage-runaway motherhood did not think of those kinds of things.
I picked up all the bags and placed them in a heap right next to the white wastepaper basket by the small desk.
No one else was ever going to remember my mother. It was up to me to keep her alive inside of me. So I closed my eyes and listened and my mother said, I never would have known better because Eli’s hands were soap and I needed a good washing.
Tuesday night Corazón slept in my bed again. She said she had the tickets.
It’s going to be a long trip, she said. We’re going to see parts of the United States we’ve never heard of before. I just pray to God no policeman looks at us and wonders what this Latina is doing with a white girl. You don’t even look fourteen. If I saw you at the bus station, I’d think you were nine or ten. When are you going to start growing some breasts? Do you menstruate yet?
Yes, of course I do, I said. I’m not stupid.
What does that have to do with being stupid?
I don’t know.
On Wednesday Corazón spent the whole day in the playhouse because that was the one day of the week the cleaning lady came to the house.
I went to Mr. Brodsky’s studio to look for a pair of scissors. I found a large pair on his desk next to a letter opener and three pencils. I picked up the scissors and took them up to my room.
I untied the yellow ribbon and opened the silk box and took out my grandmother’s wedding dress. I placed it on the bed and pressed it out with the skirt pulled open wide and the sleeves drawn down on each side. The waist was cinched with a white satin ribbon that tied in a bow at the back.
Then I lay down on the dress.
The silk chiffon was soft and a smell seemed to burst out of the fabric. It was a scent of old perfume and of old times. My mother said everything in the past smelled of patchouli.
Near the collar I could see a tiny stain of pale pink makeup. On the hem, on the front of the long skirt, there was a small tear and a little piece of caked, dried mud. It was as if someone had stepped on her dress while she was dancing. The bride was gone but the evidence of the dance was still in the dress.
As Mr. Brodsky had said earlier, I knew what happened after this wedding even if I didn’t have a photograph. When my grandmother wore the dress she didn’t know the car crash with the Pepsi truck was coming. She never knew that her teenage daughter would have to run away from fly swatters and gas-stove dreams with a newborn.
Once
I had measured the length of my body by lying down on top of the dress, I stood and cut up the garment with the scissors. I sliced off at least five inches from the sleeves and twelve inches off the hem.
That night I went to Leo’s room with Helen. I told them both Corazón had come for me and that I was running away with her the next day.
Leo, I want to marry you before I leave, I said.
He said, Yes.
I’d known it for a long time: those three letters were the best letters of the alphabet.
After Mr. Brodsky had gone to sleep Leo, Helen, and I went out to the garden to get Corazón from the playhouse.
Helen thought it was wonderful that Corazón had been living in there.
Really, Helen said, all those tuna cans were yours? Really?
Yes, I had to buy something that wouldn’t spoil and I even hate tuna fish, Corazón said. Who was the idiot who invented that horrible food? It’s really cat food.
Oh yes! Helen said. It’s cat food!
I could see that Helen and Corazón had fallen in love with each other. Corazón was already thinking about combing Helen’s knot-filled Afro and rubbing her dry little-girl skin with lemons.
Helen was just itching to crawl onto Corazón’s lap and fall asleep.
She also kept looking at Corazón’s painted fingernails. Finally, Helen asked, Why, lady, do you have a white dot in the middle of each nail?
Those are stars, little girl, Corazón said. I caught them from the sky and they stuck to my fingernails.
Helen wanted to believe her. She also decided she wanted to run away with us and I could see that Corazón was practically ready to leave me behind and take Helen instead.
No, Corazón said. Not this time. We’ll come back and get you. I promise.
Leave us your phone number, Helen said.
Of course we will, I answered.
We closed the door behind us and left the playhouse.
If my mother were looking down from heaven, she would have seen four strays running across a garden late at night in search of a wedding.
I left Helen, Leo, and Corazón in Leo’s room and went to my room to get ready.
Corazón had agreed to perform the ceremony. She said, Okay, I’ll let you marry him because I’m a Catholic and Catholics accept any kind of thing because you can always confess and get absolved. Thank God. Why would anyone want to be any other religion?
Helen was going to be my bridesmaid.
In my room I put on the wedding dress. The silk chiffon felt soft and cold on my skin. Then I walked across the hall to Leo’s bedroom.
As I stood in the doorway Leo, Helen, and Corazón stared at me. They had not expected me to be wearing a real wedding dress.
Oh, no! I should have baked a cake, Corazón said, and shook her head.
You’re real. You’re really real, Pearl, Helen said. She ran over to me and rubbed her cheek against the cloth. Is this silk? Is this what spiders make?
I don’t have a ring, Leo said.
I have a ring, I said, and pulled my mother’s small opal ring off my finger.
Corazón performed the ceremony in Spanish.
You know, it’s just not born in me to say this in English. So. Like this. Now you say yes.
Leo placed the ring on my finger and he kissed my cheek.
That night Corazón slept alone in my bed, Helen went back to her room, and I stayed with Leo.
The chorus of my life that night was Leo’s heartbeat.
I didn’t know another body could make me feel protected. He was fleece and fur, apple rind and orange peel, eggshell, pod and bark, and bandage.
I’m dreaming you, he said again.
I hoped he was right. I hoped it was all the dream side.
We knew we were too young for our bodies.
31
The next morning I went downstairs to say goodbye to Mr. Brodsky. Of course he didn’t know I was saying goodbye forever. This did not make me feel like a lowdown rat.
I waved to Leo and Helen as they got in the car. They didn’t wave back. Foster children don’t wave goodbye. They forgot to tell me this.
Corazón made breakfast while I packed my things. I left Leo my objects from the dump and I left Helen my wedding dress.
The manila envelope, with the twenty bullets that had been shot into my mother’s body, was still beside my bed. I packed the envelope in the duffel bag.
Eli’s gun was in the top dresser drawer, where I’d kept it ever since Corazón had arrived.
I took out the weapon and held it in my hands.
The day Eli had given us the gun, my mother said, Listen, Pearl, we’ll just keep it for a while. Think of it as temporary while we’re living in the car. I’ll get rid of it when we’ve got a real address with a zip code and we’re safe.
I wrapped the gun up in two T-shirts and placed it in my bag.
After breakfast, Corazón said she needed to dye my hair black. We went back upstairs to the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the bathtub while Corazón stood at the sink and mixed up the hair color in a bowl with a spoon from the kitchen.
I think you’ll be pretty with black hair, she said. It’s only for a while. We can’t have you recognized and looking strange next to me. Everyone will think I’ve kidnapped you.
Corazón did not stop talking as I leaned over the sink and she painted the dye into my hair with a short brush.
She said, I can’t wait to see Selena’s grave. It’s all I can think about. To think they shot Selena and then it happened to your mother too. That boy who killed your mama had the names of the disciples of Jesus. Did you realize?
Once Corazón had dried my hair, she took my bag down to the hallway and called a taxi. We were out of the house and at the bus station just in time to catch the bus. We almost missed it. When I mentioned this to Corazón she said, Of course we almost missed it. I always almost miss the bus. It’s my way.
As the taxi took us toward the bus station Corazón said, You don’t look too bad with black hair. If you went home right now and walked through the trailer park no one would know it was you.
Because my mother got shot up dead, I got on a Greyhound bus. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was in a vehicle looking out a window.
The Greyhound bus felt just like home.
PART THREE
32
Wedding dresses and shrouds come from heaven, Corazón said. You can’t control when those clothes will wear you.
I didn’t pack the wedding dress, I said. I left it there. I gave it to Helen to play in.
Yes, but you’re not really married.
I’m married.
Not really. One finger does not make a hand.
I know.
You realize, I let you marry him because I’m a Catholic, Corazón said. This means I don’t have judgment. I’m free.
After I’d been on the bus for twenty minutes, I got up and went to the bathroom, which was at the back behind the last row of seats.
In the small compartment there was a sign in bold red letters that said WARNING: DO NOT SMOKE. Above the metal sink there was a plastic smoke-detector alarm. I climbed into the sink and tore the plastic covering off the alarm and pulled out the AAA battery and threw it into the trash.
I got down from the sink, opened the window, and took out a pack of cigarettes and lighter from the back pocket of my jeans. Then I lit up and blew my smoke out the window and had a good look at the highway, which was taking me farther and farther away from myself.
When I left, I threw my cigarette butt out the window. I knew I was going to be starting forest fires all across the country.
Back at my seat, Corazón said, Listen, I’ve been thinking. That house you were living in was beautiful.
Yes, I said.
Did you find
any money lying around to steal? she asked.
No. I looked in all the drawers.
I didn’t tell Corazón that Leo had given me two hundred dollars. It was all the money he’d saved up. When he gave it to me he said, Come back in one year. I’ll have my inheritance by then. We’ll be rich. You can have anything you want.
You smell like a cigarette, Corazón said. Were you smoking in the bathroom?
Yes, I said. Don’t worry. I took the battery out of the smoke alarm.
Good girl.
We can smoke the whole way to Texas now.
I also looked around the house for money, Corazón said. I didn’t find any cash either. That man must have kept some money someplace. I didn’t even see a safe anywhere. I did take some jewelry, though, and a watch. This is all I found in the man’s bedroom.
Corazón opened her purse and took out a diamond ring, a gold wedding band, and a pearl necklace with an antique clasp.
My mother had prepared me for this day.
I placed one of the pearls against my front teeth and gently bit down and rubbed it against my teeth from side to side. The pearl was rough and slightly gritty, which meant it was real. When I held the strand in my hand the pearls were cool before they warmed on my palm, which was another test.
These are real pearls, I said. All these things you took are heirlooms. I’m sure of it. They look old. I bet they came over from Europe.
Heirloom? What’s that? Corazón asked.
I knew that Mr. Brodsky would not be angry with me for stealing the jewels and running away. When he’d taken me into his home, he said he was a Jew and that Jews understood foster kids better than anyone else.
You can keep the pearls because your name is Pearl, okay? I’ll keep the rings and watch. Don’t tell Ray about it. Ray likes us to stay in the shade so no one sees us. He says stealing stuff is standing in the sunlight.
Ray? Ray?
Do not tell Ray. No. No. He hates me stealing. He says he can buy me anything I want.
Ray? I asked again.
Yes. Ray says he can buy me anything l want, but I like to steal once in a while. Who doesn’t? He just doesn’t understand me. He says he loves me, but he just doesn’t understand me. Men don’t listen. That’s a lesson for you.
Gun Love Page 14