“She’s starting to sag a little,” she said. And she was right. But Graciela didn’t seem to care. She’d practically stopped wearing makeup. Gone were the long, extravagant eyebrows and eyeliner, the garish lipstick. Without the overdone cosmetics she seemed at once more delicate and even more defiant. At first we couldn’t believe it, but she had also stopped wearing a sostén.
“Por el amor de Dios Santísimo en las Alturas,” I said. “She bounces around the factory like it’s nothing. It’s indecent, the mother of two boys behaving like that.”
“What did she do with her brassiere? Burn it?” Caridad asked me. “Did she throw it in with the flag?”
“She’s been in this country two years and thinks she’s an American,” I said.
Our concern was not just about how Graciela’s recklessness affected us, but also how it affected her boys. Her boys! She was so busy with her crazy romance that she didn’t see what was happening in her own house. Every Monday morning she got into the van and didn’t say a word. Not a word. We asked her, “How was your weekend?” and she always said, “Divino.”
Of course, divino! While visiting one day, Leticia found overwhelming evidence against her: a man’s razor in her bathroom, and shaving cream, and Brut aftershave lotion. Mr. O’Reilly was spending his nights there. Leticia saw it.
“Niñas, I came out of that bathroom shaking,” Leticia said. “It was like discovering a penis in her medicine chest.”
“Maybe it’s for her legs,” Raquel said.
“Raquel, wake up and smell the aftershave lotion,” I said.
“But Mr. O’Reilly wears a beard,” she said. “I don’t know . . .”
But her wispy voice was no match for me. I jumped on her like a detective. “He shaves his throat, and his cheeks. Look at him again.”
“She’s right,” Caridad said. “It’s a very handsome beard.”
“Chá,” Raquel said, and for the moment the subject was closed.
Dios Santo, Graciela was entertaining a lover on that sofa bed while the boys were sleeping right in the next room. The thought was too horrible. Mr. O’Reilly’s bearded face between her legs, the moans, the groans, words of passion wildly mispronounced. I was sure the boys could hear every little thing, the walls in this country are so thin. And yet Graciela continued her pantomime. She continued to get into the van day after day, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Truth is, we didn’t know what to do about it, but no one wanted her in that van anymore. From what I saw, it wouldn’t be a problem for long.
Clearly Mr. O’Reilly was shamelessly spending the nights at her apartment, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he was also teaching her to drive! I was on my way to the hospital with Mario, to see Berta, who was not getting any better. A car passed us by, and I thought the driver looked familiar. Well, at the next red light, there I was, face- to- face with Graciela of all people. She was behind the wheel of Mr. O’Reilly’s car. He was in the passenger seat and her two boys were in the backseat jumping around like they were on a carnival ride.
I’m sure my mouth was hanging wide open. Wide open!
Well, Graciela just looked at me, smiled, and waved as she drove by.
Mario said I went absolutely white. I was furious with Mario for smiling and waving like a fool, only to be humiliated when the light turned green and she took off like a rocket. With the kids in the backseat making faces at me and showing me their middle finger. Graciela did nothing to stop them. How could they know the proper way to behave when their own mother was running around all over town like a disgrace? I couldn’t blame the boys.
Of course by the time we arrived at the hospital, Graciela was already there. I did not comment on her driving because I knew she wanted me to. She kept jiggling the car keys. But I said absolutely nothing. Nothing!
Mr. O’Reilly said hello very seriously, which was exactly what he should have done. I was glad that he had come to see how sick Berta had become. That way there would be no questions about why she hadn’t come to work and why she needed her disability insurance payments.
Meanwhile Ernestico and Manolito were kicking the vending machine. Those two could wake anyone out of a coma. I hoped they would wake Berta. Her time- outs were lasting longer and longer.
“Did I tell you both of her kids were in the backseat?” I said to Caridad later. “Ernestico is starting to imitate Mr. O’Reilly. His hair is long, his clothes are sloppy. Of all the examples to bring home. An earring isn’t far behind. Por Dios, won’t Graciela ever do anything right? I don’t know about you, but I’ve just about hit my limit.”
“Well, you know she’s going to buy a car,” Caridad said with a sigh. “Imagínate, taking food out of her children’s mouths. Well, at least we won’t have to go through the trouble of asking Leticia to tell Graciela that she really shouldn’t ride with us anymore. All we have to do now is be patient and she’ll be gone soon enough.”
“Those poor niños,” I said. “Manolito seems nice enough. I think he has his father’s sense and dignity. But in her hands, and now with that gringo in the house, they will ruin him too. I just know it.”
“Should we call Ernesto?” Caridad asked. “I hear he sent her the divorce papers.”
“Ernesto has suffered enough,” I replied.
Caridad made a gesture as if she was swatting away a fly with the back of her hand, as if dismissing Graciela from thought.
chapter fourteen
Caridad
Imagínate! Graciela came for work one Friday wearing a big plaid hunting jacket and blue jeans and carrying a rolled- up sleeping bag and a backpack that could hardly fit in the van. I was in the front seat, but I watched as Imperio and Raquel scrunched over to make room. After Graciela had tossed the sleeping bag in the back, she sat down as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if Berta wasn’t wasting away in a hospital. We were halfway to work before she simply said, “My boyfriend is taking me camping.”
“Cubans don’t go camping,” Imperio said, and in a very nonchalant voice Graciela replied:
“Cubans should mind their own business.”
She said it as cool as spring rain. Even with all that was going on, Graciela decided to flaunt her new boyfriend, as she now called Mr. O’Reilly, in our faces.
I looked at Imperio, and Imperio looked at me, and then we just stared straight ahead. Is she taking the boys? I wondered. I prayed she wasn’t leaving them alone in that apartment for the whole weekend! But I kept quiet, because I knew that if the conversation went any further, Imperio was going to turn ugly and strangle the life out of her.
You’d think she would have learned her lesson. You’d think Graciela would remember how much she owed us. It was so sad to watch her trying to reinvent herself in this country, but making no real effort to change. Maybe she could fool Mr. O’Reilly. But we remembered. We remembered only too well Pepe and Ernesto and all the trouble she caused. We remembered her poor parents, hiding in that house, afraid to show their faces. Ashamed. Disgraced. Imagínate! A woman with two growing boys carrying on like she was a schoolgirl.
“How could she be so thoughtless?” Imperio asked me during our coffee break—those ten precious minutes they granted us when we had to gulp down a cup of café while it was still scalding hot and run back—and heaven help us if we were just one minute late getting back to the assembly line. Not that Mr. O’Reilly ever said anything to us, but we could just feel it. Who knew what sort of ideas about us Graciela was putting in his mind.
Graciela, of course, was always the first one back from break. Always on time, always prompt. She no longer drank her coffee with us. Instead she went off somewhere, “to read,” she said.
We followed her to find out just exactly where she was going “to read.”
“I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if we find her in a broom closet with Mr. O’Reilly,” Imperio said.
She was in the back of the factory, near the shipping dock. First we saw her legs sticking out from behind a low wall, nylon
stockings and the high- heeled shoes she now wore to work. The rest of us wore flat, comfortable shoes. But Graciela had started to dress for the factory the way others dressed for an office job. At first just once a week or so, then more frequently. Now every day, except to go “camping.” She looked nice, but I wondered how much she was spending on clothes and shoes. I never asked, because even if others didn’t, I still had manners.
That afternoon we slowed down as we approached, almost tiptoeing past her.
“Pretend you’re looking for empty boxes,” Imperio whispered.
Graciela was hidden behind an open newspaper. Newspapers, that’s what she read. Why on earth would a woman like Graciela need to read the New York Times?
“To impress her American boyfriend, of course,” Imperio said.
Graciela didn’t see us. We watched her for a moment. She held the folded paper right up to her face because she needed glasses but was too vain to wear them. There she was, her fingers grimy from the ink. She probably couldn’t understand one word she read. It was just an act. Some sort of attempt to look smarter than she actually was.
“With her it was always just a great big show,” Imperio said. “Like when she was little and used to recite those José Martí poems during assemblies. It was cute at first, but as she got older, it wasn’t so cute anymore. It was just obscene. She’d stand there, with an air of schoolgirl eagerness, her hands clasped behind her, looking innocent, but even then I knew she was doing it just to show off her chest.”
I remembered all too well. All eyes, both male and female, wandered up and down her body as she recited that poem. I remembered with a little bit of envy her narrow, circular waist, straight shoulders, long neck, slender legs firmly planted, her feet arched. I often thought her recitals had little to do with the poetry.
So Graciela had not changed at all. None of the women in the factory read during breaks, and certainly none of us read the New York Times. But there she was, in her gray skirt, pale pink sweater, and high heels, looking like a secretary, poring over the newspaper, her lips hardly moving. All the men who walked by either glanced at her or, worse, they stopped and asked her questions.
“What do you think of Stalin’s daughter defecting to America?” they asked. “She turned her back on the commies, that one. How do you like that?”
Instead of answering, Graciela just looked up, still holding the paper in place, and shrugged her shoulders.
“I could answer that damn question,” Imperio whispered to me. “I can talk Russian politics and I don’t even read the paper.”
“Poor Graciela,” I said, “has no idea what’s going on in the world.”
“Poor Graciela?” Imperio said. “Poor Graciela is planning her next move. A woman like that is never just sitting, she’s never just reading the newspaper. She always has something going on below the surface.”
Imperio had been asking about Mr. O’Reilly, and rumor had it that he smoked marijuana and probably used other drugs. She found out he had a five- year- old daughter but was never married to the mother, and had been taken to court for child support violations more than once. That was the kind of man Graciela was getting herself tangled up with. I thought we should try to talk some sense into her, but Imperio said it would be a waste of our time.
“Just sit back and watch it unravel,” Imperio said. “It has happened before, and it will happen again.”
I tended to listen to Imperio, she was the practical one. But in spite of everything, I was sick with worry.
*
GRACIELA WAS AWAY CAMPING on the day that poor Berta died, so it was left to us to take care of everything. We had to contend with the ugly side of death.
It happened on a Sunday, the day when we always visited Berta at the hospital. Imperio and Mario picked me up at two o’clock that afternoon. It was March, and it felt as if summer had started too soon. Union City was empty and quiet. The air was thick with diesel fumes and the smoke from the refineries. The sun looked big and dark through the haze and cast the sort of ugly, brown light that made me nauseous. Mario stayed out on the sidewalk to finish a cigarette.
Inside the hospital it was air- conditioner cool, but it still felt humid and sticky. Even before we reached Berta’s room, I knew her bed would be empty. And it was.
The first thing I felt was that the ground had gotten soft under my feet. It was like standing on cushions. Then the walls began to stretch and bend and a strange nausea attacked my insides. Then I felt Imperio grip my arm. Her hand dug into my forearm like a claw.
“Por Dios, Caridad, don’t faint,” she said, and she said it sternly, with a tone she’d never used on me before. She talked to many people like that, but never to me.
“Look at me,” she said. I raised my eyes to hers and they were on fire.
“Hold on to me,” she said. “We have a lot to do now. We have to get through this together.”
For the rest of my life I would be amazed at her strength. Her character. Call her what you will—cold, heartless—but to me she was strength. Together we walked to the nurses’ station.
“When did it happen?” Imperio asked the Puerto Rican nurse.
The nurse checked a sheet of paper on her desk.
“Last night, a little after eleven,” she said.
“And no one called?” I asked.
The nurse glanced at the sheet of paper again.
“It says here,” she said, “that the attending nurse placed a call to Graciela Altamira, but there was no answer. Do you know who she is?”
We both nodded.
“I am Graciela Altamira,” Imperio said. “I was out last night.” I was impressed with how quickly Imperio lied, and more than a little disturbed to hear her call herself Graciela. No two people were less alike.
“Can we see Berta?” I asked, hoping to divert the nurse’s attention.
“Miss Altamira can,” the nurse said, her eyes on Imperio.
“It’s okay,” Imperio said. “She’s with me.”
“But first I need to see some ID,” the nurse said.
“Qué?”
“Identification.”
“I left in such a hurry,” Imperio said quickly and without hesitation, “that I forgot my purse.”
“Isn’t that your purse right there?” the nurse said, pointing at the brown leather purse clearly hanging from her arm.
“I meant my wallet,” Imperio said. She was like lightning.
Imperio locked eyes with the nurse. Angry tears were now flowing down her cheeks. But the eyes of the nurse remained unmoved. In all the time I’d known her, which was all my life, I had never seen Imperio even remotely close to tears.
“Vámonos,” I said. Let’s go. I took Imperio by the arm. She let me lead her away, while the nurse looked at us and shook her head as if we’d tried to do something horrible.
We went to Berta’s apartment. We needed to find her son’s telephone number. The super let us in. And even though Berta was miles away, the place already smelled like death, like dead flowers. Her apartment was small and very neat, just one room. She used her bed for a couch, and there were so many little pillows on it that you had to sit on the edge.
“All those pillows are a sure sign of a lonely woman,” Imperio said.
“What ever happened to her husband?” I asked.
Imperio gave me a funny look.
“There never was a husband. Her family sent her to work here when she was a young girl because she got pregnant. They sent her here to live with relatives, who I guess are dead by now. And they never let her go back to Cuba. Not even for a visit.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody. I just figured it out. I mean, look around, it’s obvious.”
“Imperio,” I said, “that is how rumors get started.”
She gave me a funny look and said, “Only if you repeat it. I know you won’t tell anybody.”
“Poor Berta,” I said to change the subject.
“It’s too late
now for laments,” Imperio said. “Berta lived her life the way she wanted to, and she was lucky to have friends like us. Friends who didn’t ask too many questions, or judge her, no matter how crazy and irresponsible she had been in her youth.”
“Claro que no,” I said. Of course not.
Imperio smiled and we continued our search. We were good people doing a good deed for a dear friend.
Before we found the address book, neatly tucked in a drawer by the telephone, we found something that squeezed every drop of blood out of my heart—a cardboard box, filled with doll parts. There were dozens of little mismatched legs, arms and torsos, all the same shiny pink, all waiting for the head that never came. Imperio immediately grabbed it.
“This has to go straight to the incinerator,” she said and stepped outside. I nodded as I frowned over Berta’s address book. We never did know her son’s name, and the thought of calling the wrong person terrified me. Berta had never referred to him by name; it was always “my son” this and “my son” that.
And her address book was not as neat as her apartment would have you believe. There were things listed as just one name, like Bebo, for example, and then several numbers scribbled under it, or addresses on scraps of paper tucked into the pages with no logic whatsoever. Some had numbers that we recognized as Cuban because they were only four digits. But there were several of those—which one was in Formento?
Some were for people here in Union City, or scattered over other parts of the United States. We even saw our own names. Just our first names and our telephone numbers. No address. When we finally located her son’s number, there was no denying it because all it said was Venezuela. It was not under the V’s, it was under the E’s.
His name was Eladio, and he didn’t live in Caracas, as we had always imagined, but in a place called Maracaibo.
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