“Do you like it, darling?” she twirled around in front of the mirror.
“I think you don’t have to try hard to impress Albert,” I muttered.
To my surprise, she laughed. “How true! But perhaps I like to wear this for myself, to feel like a starlet. Everyone at my old high school reunion told me I’ve maintained my girlish figure. You know, it may sound strange to you but inside, I don’t feel a day over twenty-five.”
“Nothing sounds strange to me anymore,” I said. “Do I have to get this?”
Lillian tilted her head, appraising my whalebone corset. “It looks nice on you, dear.” She turned to the salesgirl, “We’ll take both.”
Afterwards, she insisted on gifting me with something special, a memento that I could always have with me to remind me of her, and before I could protest she had whisked me into the chic and ultra-expensive People’s Jewelers store just up the road. She had it in her head that a young lady like me would benefit from an elegant adornment, and when I refused her offer of a seed pearl bracelet she was adamant that I try on different watches until she settled on a Bulova with a silver metal strap. It fit my arm perfectly, she gushed, and she just had to buy it for me. The watch was insanely expensive, nearly seventy-five dollars, but she would hear nothing of it and refused to leave the store without that Bulova strapped to my wrist.
We ended our shopping spree with a high tea at the Windsor Hotel down on Buenaventura Boulevard. “I made this reservation especially for you,” she gushed.
Chirping about how much she loved the place as she poured her Red Rose steaming tea into a delicate porcelain cup, she started to quiz me about my future plans for college.
I stopped her there. “Can I ask you something?”
“Certainly, dear. What would you like to ask?”
I smoothed the crisp white linen napkin embroidered with the Windsor’s monogram over my lap and hesitated. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask her outright, but I just had to know. “Why do you feel the need to control me so much?”
Her face fell. She opened her mouth quickly, as if to change the subject, then stopped herself, sighed, and stared at me with darkening eyes.
“Why is it always about control with you, Diana? Why do you struggle so much to be a rebel?”
“How can you say that, Mother? Haven’t I always been the good girl, always doing as I was told, being the best in class, the best at everything I could be, just to make you happy? But you never were. Nothing ever satisfied you.”
“Because you were always too independent!” she exploded, surprising me. “Forever the defiant child, constantly wanting to do things your way.”
She shook her head. “I know you believe I’m a monster, but have you had the decency to consider my perspective, having to deal with a daughter like you?”
I bit into my lovely, crisp cucumber sandwich and waited for her to go on.
“All my life I fantasized about having my own family, Diana. I played with dolls and dreamed of my prince and my own little house where I could raise my happy children. And then what happened? I married the wrong man. A goddamn faggot. Sure, I’d been in love before, you know the story. I loved Stan deeply but Poppa forbid me to marry him because his old man was a butcher. Then he enlisted for the war and I never saw him again. He wouldn’t have left if we had married, I’m sure of it. And then your father came along, distinguished professor extraordinaire, and my parents desperately wanted me to marry him.”
She took a gulp of tea, her hand shaking. “They said he’d take care of me, that I would want for nothing. They knew the kind of girl I was, my head always in the clouds, always dreaming of being an actress. It was only fair they’d make sure I ended up with someone who could keep me in the lifestyle I’d been accustomed to. Not soon after I married him, I fell pregnant with you. He hardly touched me after that, even after I had the baby. His head was always buried in a book, like you,” she said accusingly, waiting for a reaction. I didn’t give her any.
“Is that good?” she asked, pointing to the sandwich. I nodded and she reached for one, taking a nibble carefully so as not to smudge her lipstick.
“All I ever wanted was to have a little girl. A doll of my own to dress up and go out with...someone just like me, who could understand me.” She sniffed scornfully. “I agonized when I realized that you were nothing like me. You resisted everything I did. You wanted your hair done differently, you didn’t like the clothes I picked out for you – everything was always a fight!”
“I didn’t ask to be born,” I said quietly. “Why didn’t you have more children?”
“With that man?” she scoffed. “If you can call him a man, that is. I saw right through him early on and didn’t want him near me. I was desperate, lonely…and yes, I took a lover. And I never told you this, Diana, but I got pregnant again.”
I didn’t see that coming, and her confession shocked more than I’d imagined. “Are you serious?”
She nodded wistfully. “Indeed. I was pregnant with twins, actually. Of course I couldn’t let your father know about this, so I had to take care of it all by myself.”
“You had an abortion?”
“Shh, keep your voice down!”
”But if you were so unhappy, why didn’t you just go off with your lover?”
She shook her head. “Oh, you are a romantic. That’s always been your problem. Things just don’t work out that way.”
I frowned, glancing down at my crumpets. “I can’t believe this. You had the opportunity to leave him…was he married, your other man?”
She gestured no. “He asked me to marry him.”
“So why didn’t you just leave then?” I burst out. “Why didn’t you get a divorce, and keep the babies? You could’ve had everything you wanted!”
Lillian’s eyes narrowed. She gazed at me with scorn, as if I were a total idiot. “How could I do that – I was a married woman, already had a child! What would people think?”
The echo of that question filled the room.
I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes. I didn’t know whether to cry or throw the plate of sandwiches at her. What seemed like an eternity passed over our heads. Suddenly, everything was clear – her discontent, the passive-aggression with which she treated me, it all made perfect sense.
“You stayed married to daddy because of me,” I sighed. “And you’ve resented me since then.”
She just stared at me, open-mouthed. After some time, she swallowed hard. “I only wanted a chance to be happy,” she said, almost as an excuse. I noticed she didn’t deny my statement. It reverberated between us as if it had a life of its own.
“Is that why you don’t want me to be happy?” I asked. “Because you blame me for your own unhappiness?”
She didn’t move nor blink. Her wide, blank stare reminded me of a green lizard frozen against a wall when it senses someone has just spotted it. “Is that what you call happiness?” she exploded suddenly, bitterness in her voice. “Being with a…a thing, a he-she!”
“Who are you to judge me, Mother? You lived your life the way you chose to live it, you took your many lovers, but you would deny me a chance to be with someone who makes me feel more loved than anyone in the world? Someone I adore, who takes my breath away?”
“You don’t know what love is, Diana. You’re too young,” she snapped, averting her gaze scornfully.
“Like you didn’t know what love was, when you broke it off with Stan? Or with your other lover, the father of your unborn children? Who knows, they may have ended up the perfect kids you’ve always dreamed of. But I will not sit here and judge you for having an abortion, mother – I’m just sad you chose not to pursue the life you’ve always wanted. Instead, you wrecked your own opportunities for happiness and you’ve hated me ever since.”
“I don’t hate you, Diana,” she said defensively. “I…”
Going by the wetness in her eyes, I knew I’d broken her down. After so long, the unimaginable happened – I cracked through he
r external shell and saw her as she really was – a bitter old woman whose existence was shrouded in regrets, who sought so hard to relive her wasted life through me.
No longer afraid of her, I pushed back my chair. I looked deep into that crumpling face, at her wrinkling hands that had inflicted so much pain upon me for so long, and felt absolutely nothing. Neither hate nor any semblance of affection. This was a stranger sitting in front of me, a stranger I felt sorry for but was not able to help.
“But…she’s a girl, Diana,” she stumbled. “It’s dirty.”
“I love her,” I said. It was as simple as that.
Placing my napkin down on the table, I stood up slowly and leaned forward across the table. Her hand reached up at me and for a moment I thought she was going to hit me. Instinctively, I flinched. But as her hand landed on my cheek, it turned into a caress. She was trying to stroke my face.
Brusquely, I grasped her wrist. “I will walk out of this place, Mother, and after today I will never see you again. You will not know where I am, nor will I write you. There is nothing between us any longer. I’m eighteen now, and free to do as I will. I am, for example, free to forgive you for all that you’ve done to me. I’m not there yet, but someday I will be.”
My eyes met hers steadily. She blinked away a tear. But I wasn’t done yet.
“Someday, I will be strong enough to forgive you for all the beatings, for locking me up, for betraying my father and I. I’m not there yet, but there will come a day when I’ll look back and realize that in all your bitterness, you meant no harm. But that day is not here, nor will it be for as long as you live.”
“Diana, I am your mother – ” she pleaded as I moved her hand away from my face.
“I don’t have a mother,” I said. “When I walk out that door, you’ll never see me again. I will live my life the way you should have lived yours – without guilt, without remorse. And I’ll certainly never regret choosing love instead of shame, or walking away from the only thing that has ever hurt me. You.”
With those last words, I turned away from Lillian and walked out the revolving door of the Windsor Hotel into the first day of the rest of my life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Heart racing, I raced out of the taxi and up the walkway to Rosario’s house in Pacoima and knocked on the door. Anticipation coursed through my veins – at last, I could see her, hold her, and all would be well. I rang the doorbell once, then twice, nervously shifting from foot to foot, my heart bursting, aching for that door to open.
The door finally creaked ajar, and it was Leonora who squinted at me sleepily, as though I’d just woken her from a nap. “Diana?” she asked tentatively, and she broke into a toothy grin and spread out her arms. “Oh, come in, come in!”
I fell into her embrace, whereby she squished me hard against her breasts. Her cobalt-blue apron smelled of lime and coriander leaves, a mouth-watering, lemony goodness that fiercely brought back the memory of my first visit.
“Dios mio, how have you been?” Leonora started. “Where have you been?” With her back hand, she wiped the tears that sprung from my eyes. “Mi chiquita, come tell me everything.” She held my face between her hands. “Ay, how Rosario looked for you!” She shook her head, then touched her chest, pointing to her heart. Her face crumpled into an expression of pain. “She suffer much, but she don’t think I know.”
I looked over her shoulder, overwhelmed with excitement. “Is she here, Leonora? Where is she?”
“Come in, get settled,” Leonora said cheerily. “We have time to talk.”
The house was the same as I remembered it, and for that a rush of gratitude flooded over me. There were the familiar blue walls of the Mexican kitchen, adorned with the same lovely plates hung up in a row above the dining table. Leonora’s colorful embroidered towels hung busily from the stove handle.
With a sigh, I sank into the orange sofa of the living room and gratefully accepted a glass of lemonade from Leonora, who took a seat in the overstuffed armchair across from me. Crossing two very swollen ankles together, she waited expectantly for me to speak first.
“My parents forced me to go away for a while,” I said finally, deciding to spare her the details. “I only just got back.”
She nodded. I got the feeling she sensed my reluctance to go into the details of the last three months. Her eyes probed my face, yet she remained silent.
“I wish Rosario was here,” I added anxiously. “I’ve missed you all so much. Is she running errands for Antonio?”
“Ah, no, many things happen since we last saw you, Diana. Rosa’s off on a singing tour – they’ve been all over the East Coast for the last month. Her manager has arranged a regular gig for her, in a nightclub in New York City after the tour ends next week.”
My body went cold as shock spread through me. Rosario wasn’t coming back? She had moved across the continent from me? A summer had come and gone, yes, but now it felt like a lifetime had passed between us.
Leonora brightened up. “You wait here, you wait,” she said, pulling herself to her feet once again and limping over to the back of the house, from where she proudly reemerged not a minute later with a large chocolate box.
“Here, this is for you,” she said, thrusting the box at me. I was puzzled until I opened it and saw its contents – a stack of envelopes stuffed with letters written in Rosario’s flowing cursive handwriting. “She wrote them for you,” I heard Leonora say. “For when you came back. She told me to let you stay here.”
Emotion rushed through me. “Are you sure?” I asked shakily.
“Si, si,” she replied impatiently, sounding annoyed that I would question the offer. “Rosario say to me, When Diana comes back, give her this box and let her stay with us if she needs a place. And so I did,” she said proudly. “I knew you would come back. You can sleep in her room.”
I wanted to leap across the room and give her a big hug. “Oh, Leonora, how can I ever thank you?”
She waved her hand again, her face melting into a lopsided grin. “Ay, just read your letters in peace and I go make you some food, okay?”
The letters, about twelve of them, were folded in powder-blue envelopes, every one of which was meticulously dated for every week we had been apart. I started with the oldest and, through a blur of tears, made my way slowly through the last few months to the most recent. Reading through her words, it was as though Rosario was sitting there next to me, holding me tightly.
Querida Diana,
I nearly went crazy after they took you away. I imagined you would worry so much about me, but I had no way to reach you and tell you that I was all right.
When I got my wind back in the alleyway, you were gone and so was the car and the men who’d snatched you from me. I hated myself so much for letting them take you; I blamed myself for not having fought harder. And I didn’t understand what those men had said, that you had told them where to find us.
Surely that must have been a mistake, I thought, until I remembered that Sunday afternoon the week prior to that awful night. How you had begged to call your mother even after I told you it wasn’t a good idea. How at first you tried to hide it from me, and only confessed it later, when we were in each other’s arms. You never could keep any secrets from me, Di. You ought to know that by now.
It took me a long time to understand how you could have told your mother about us. Part of me still refuses to believe you could do something like this, or why you never tried to contact me afterwards, to let me know what happened to you. It’s the least you could have done. But I have since forgiven your betrayal and wish for you only the best life has to offer. I love you, Diana, I always have, and only wish you the outmost happiness, even if that happiness is to be realized without me by your side.
Yours,
Rosario
By the end of that letter I was sobbing, my breath escaping from my chest in choking bursts. I felt a nudge and turned my tear-stricken face toward Leonora, who pressed a kerchief into my hand.
“Ay, ninita,” she sighed, her eyes filled with pity. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” I gasped. “No, it won’t be. Tell me where she is, Leonora. You must tell me. Please!”
Her hand darted into her apron and she fished out a folded piece of paper. She hesitated, scanned my face one more time and finally relented, handing the note to me wordlessly.
I rose to my feet shakily, smoothing the pleats from my dress. Leonora grasped me by the shoulders. “You need some money?” she asked softly, staring into my eyes. “For the bus?”
I shook my head. “No, I couldn’t accept. You hardly have enough for yourself. I’ll get there and find her, I promise. And this time, I’m not leaving her again.”
I got forty-five dollars for Mother’s Bulova at the pawn shop two streets down from the house on Rosemont Street. When I got to the Greyhound bus station on 7th and tried to purchase a one-way ticket to New York City, the teller shook his head. “No, miss, this won’t get you much farther than Des Moines, unfortunately.”
I glanced at the impatient people lined up behind me and turned to the young man whose brass nameplate indicated was called Stan. I gulped a deep breath and prayed that I wouldn’t burst out crying in front of all those people.
“What about Chicago? Will it get me that far?”
Stan looked at me as one does a pitiful squashed bug one flicks off one’s shoe and let out a heaving sigh. “Would you like me to modify your ticket for Chicago, then, Miss? We don’t have all day.”
I nodded, licking my dry, splitting lips. “Yes, please.”
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