“Do you remember that black soldier we picked up on the road? Do you suppose he’s still alive? Will he be coming home too?” Gregory asked his mother before they left to watch the fireworks display.
Nora did not answer. They were in a city like many other cities, and while her family danced in the crowd, Nora sat alone in the cab of the truck. In recent months the news from Europe had strained her nerves, and the devastation of the atom bomb had been the last straw, plunging her into doubt. There was nothing else on the radio, and the newspapers and movies featured Dantesque images of concentration camps. Step by step, she followed every detail of the atrocities and accumulated suffering, obsessed by trains in Europe that made no stops but carried their cargo straight to the ovens, and by the hundreds of thousands cremated in Japan in the name of a different ideology. I should never have brought children into this world, she murmured in her horror. When a euphoric Charles Reeves brought home the news of the bomb, she had thought it obscene to rejoice over a massacre of such dimensions; her husband seemed to have lost his sanity along with everyone else.
“Nothing will ever be the same again, Charles. Humanity has committed something worse than original sin. This is the end of the world,” she lamented, terribly distraught but maintaining the facade of her customary good manners.
“Don’t be silly. We should applaud the progress of science. It’s a good thing the bomb is in our hands, not the enemy’s. No one can stand up to us now.”
“They will use them again and wipe out life on this earth!”
“The war is over, and we’ve been spared even worse. Many more would have died if we hadn’t dropped the bombs.”
“But, Charles, hundreds of thousands did die.”
“They don’t count; they were all Japs.” He laughed.
For the first time, Nora had doubts about the quality of her husband’s soul and asked herself whether he was a true Master, as he claimed. It was late at night when her family returned. Gregory was asleep in his father’s arms, and Judy held a balloon painted with stars and stripes.
“The war is over at last. Now we’ll have butter and meat and gasoline,” Olga announced, radiant, waving a tattered paper flag.
Although nearly a year passed between the time of his mother’s depression over the inhumanity of war and his father’s death, Gregory remembered the events as one; in his memory, they would forever be related: it was the beginning of the end of the happy days of his childhood. A short time later, when Nora seemed to have recovered and was no longer talking about concentration camps and bombs, Charles Reeves fell ill. From the very first, his symptoms were alarming, but he was proud of his strength and refused to believe that his body could betray him. He felt young; he could still change a truck tire in a couple of minutes or spend hours on a ladder painting a mural without getting a cramp in his shoulder. When his mouth filled with blood he attributed it to a fishbone stuck in his throat; the second time it happened he said nothing to anyone but bought a bottle of Milk of Magnesia and took a spoonful whenever he felt his stomach in flames. Soon he lost his appetite and survived on milk toast, broths, and baby food. He lost weight, and his eyes clouded over; he could not see the road clearly, and Olga had to take over the wheel. She realized when he was too tired to travel any farther, and stopped so they could set up camp. As the hours dragged by, the children entertained themselves running around the campsite, because their mother had packed away their books and was not giving them lessons. Nora had not accepted the fact that Charles Reeves might be mortal; she could not understand why his strength was flagging—his energy was hers as well. For years her husband had controlled every aspect of her life and that of her children; the detailed rules of The Infinite Plan, which he administered as he pleased, left no room for doubts. With him she had no freedom, but neither was she besieged by uneasiness or apprehension. There was no reason to be alarmed, she told herself; after all, Charles has never had much hair, and those deep wrinkles aren’t new, they were carved by the sun long ago; he’s thinner, that’s true, but he’ll snap back in a few days, just as soon as he begins to eat like he used to; this is nothing but indigestion. “Don’t you think he’s much better today?” she would say to no one in particular. Olga watched without comment. She did not attempt to treat Reeves with her potions and poultices but limited her care to holding wet cloths to his forehead to lower the fever. As the invalid declined, fear inexorably infected the rest of the family; for the first time they felt they were drifting and realized the extent of their poverty and vulnerability. Nora retreated like a whipped dog, unable to put her mind to finding solutions; she sought consolation in her Bahai faith and left all problems to Olga—including her husband’s care. She could not bring herself to touch that sick old man; he was a stranger: how could she possibly recognize him as the man who had charmed her with his vitality? Her admiration and reliance, the bases for her love, disintegrated, and as she did not know how to construct new ones, respect turned to repugnance. As soon as she found a good excuse, she moved into the children’s tent, and Olga went to sleep with Charles Reeves—to nurse him through the night, she said. Gregory and Judy became accustomed to seeing her half naked in their father’s bed; Nora ignored the situation, preferring to pretend that nothing had changed.
For a while the unveiling of The Infinite Plan was suspended, because the Doctor in Divine Sciences lacked the fortitude to instill hope in others when he was beginning to lose his own and secretly wonder whether the spirit truly transcends or whether it can be dashed to smithereens by a bellyache. He did not even feel like painting. Their travels continued, with tightened purse strings and with no perceptible purpose, as if they were looking for something that was always a little farther down the road. It seemed quite natural for Olga to assume the place of the father, and the others never questioned whether that was the best solution; she set the itinerary, drove the truck, hoisted the heaviest bundles, repaired the engine when it wouldn’t start, hunted rabbits and birds, and with the same note of authority issued orders to Nora and paddled the children when they got out of hand. She avoided large cities because of the merciless competition and the eagle eye of the police, except when they could camp in industrial zones or near the docks, where she could always find a client. She would leave the Reeveses installed in the tents, gather up her necromancer’s trappings, and go out to sell her arts. For traveling she wore rough workman’s pants, an undershirt, and a cap, but to ply her trade as fortune-teller she pulled a gaudy flower-printed skirt from her trunk, a low-cut blouse, jangling necklaces, and yellow boots. She brushed on makeup with a free hand—cheeks like a clown, red mouth, blue eyelids—and the effect of that mask, her clothes, and the fiery hair was so intimidating that few dared turn her away for fear that with a flourish she would turn them into a pillar of salt. When they opened the door and found a grotesque apparition standing before them with a crystal ball in one hand, their jaws dropped, a moment of hesitation that Olga seized upon to get into the house. She could be very charming when the occasion demanded, and often returned to the camp with a piece of pie or some meat, gifts from clients satisfied not only with the future promised in the magical cards but even more with the spark of good humor she had injected into the uninterrupted boredom of their lives. During that period of great uncertainty, the sibyl fine-tuned her talents and, spurred on by circumstances, developed unknown strengths, ripening into the larger-than-life woman who was such an influence in Gregory’s childhood. When she walked into a house she had only to sniff the air for a few seconds to absorb the climate, feel the invisible presences, capture the signs of misfortune, divine the dreams, hear the whispers of the dead, and comprehend the needs of the living. She soon learned that life stories repeat themselves over and over, with very few variations; people are all very much alike, they experience love, hatred, greed, suffering, happiness, and fear in the same ways. Black, white, yellow, as Nora Reeves used to say, we are all the same under the skin; the crystal ball is blind to color,
but not to pain. Everyone wanted to hear the same good fortune, not because they thought it was possible but because by merely imagining it they felt better. Olga also discovered that there are only two kinds of illness: those that are fatal and those that heal themselves in their proper time. She would pull out her vials of many-colored sugar pills, her bag of herbs, and her box of amulets to sell health to those who could be cured, convinced that if the patient set his mind to getting well, most likely that was what would happen. People had more confidence in her than in the impersonal surgeons in the hospitals. She was not legally qualified for most of the operations she performed—abortions, tooth extractions, stitching up wounds—but she had a good eye and good hand, so that she never got in serious trouble. One glance was all she needed to see the signs of death, and in that case she never prescribed a treatment, partly because of scruples and partly not to damage her reputation as a healer. Her experience in treating the infirm did not help in the case of Charles Reeves; she was too close to him, and if she saw fatal symptoms, she did not want to admit it.
Whether out of pride or fear, the preacher refused to see a doctor, prepared to overcome his suffering by pure obstinacy; after the day he fainted, however, what little authority he could claim passed into Olga’s hands. They were on the eastern edge of Los Angeles, where there was a large Latin population, and Olga made the decision to drive Reeves to the hospital. In those days the atmosphere of the city already radiated a certain Mexican flavor despite its uniquely American obsession with living in perfect health, beauty, and happiness. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants were putting their stamp on the place: their scorn for pain and death, their poverty, fatalism, and distrust, their violent passions, but also their music, highly spiced food, and exuberant sense of color. Hispanics were banished to a ghetto, but their influence was borne on the air; they did not belong to the country and, superficially at least, seemed not to want to belong, but secretly they hoped their sons and daughters would be integrated. They half-learned English and transformed it into a Spanglish so deeply rooted that with time it became accepted as the Chicano tongue. Bound to their Catholic tradition and cult of the soul, to a musty patriotism and machismo, they did not assimilate; they were doomed for two or three generations to the most humble service jobs. North Americans thought of them as undesirable people, unpredictable and dangerous, and many protested—Why the hell can’t they stop them from crossing the border? What are the damn police for?—but they hired them as cheap labor and kept a sharp eye on them. The immigrants assumed their marginal role in the society with a measure of pride: bowed, yes, but never broken, hermano. Olga had visited the barrio more than once and felt at home there. Brazenly she rattled off Spanish, scarcely aware that half her vocabulary was formed of invented words. She felt the barrio was a place where she could earn a living from her art.
They drove the truck to the door of the hospital, and while Nora and Olga helped the sick man from the cab, the terrified children met the curious gaze of people peering out to observe the bizarre conveyance with all its brightly painted esoteric symbols.
“What in the world is that?” one inquired.
“The Infinite Plan, can’t you see?” Judy replied, pointing to the letters on the top of the truck. That was the end of the questions.
Charles Reeves was admitted to the hospital, where a few days later they removed half his stomach and sutured the holes in the remaining half. While he was there, Nora and Olga, with children, dog, boa, and bundles, moved into temporary quarters in the patio of Pedro Morales, a generous Mexican who years before had completed the entire course of Charles Reeves’s doctrines and to prove it had on his wall a diploma acknowledging him to be a superior soul. Morales was as solid as a brick wall, with strong mestizo features and a proud mask that melted into geniality when he was in a good humor. Several gold teeth sparked from his smile, set in for elegance after his healthy ones had been pulled. He would not think of allowing the family of his Maestro to wander any farther—women need protection, there are bandits everywhere, he said. There was no room in his house for so many guests, because he already had under his roof six children, a slightly mad mother-in-law, and assorted relatives. He helped the women set up the tents and install their kerosene stove in his patio, and set about coming to their rescue without offending their dignity. He always addressed Nora as doña, with great deference, but Olga, whom he considered much closer to his own level, he called señorita. Inmaculada Morales, his wife, was totally impervious to the ways of foreigners and, unlike many of her compatriots in this alien land, who trotted around balancing on stiletto heels, with their faces painted and their hair frizzled by permanents and hydrogen peroxide, was faithful to her native traditions. She was small, slender, and strong, with a placid, unwrinkled face; she wore her hair in a long braid that hung below her waist and dressed in simple aprons and espadrilles, except on days of religious festivals, when she showed off her black dress and gold earrings. Inmaculada was the pillar of the household and the soul of the Morales family. When her patio filled up with guests, she did not blink an eye; she merely stretched the food with the tricks of any hospitable woman—stirring a little more water in the beans, she called it—and then every evening invited the Reeveses to eat with them. “Here, comadre, come, bring the young ones and try these burritos,” she would offer timidly. “We don’t want the chiles to go to waste; just look how much there is, thanks to God’s grace,” and somewhat embarrassed guests would take their seats at the welcoming Morales table.
It took Judy and Gregory several months to learn the rules of a sedentary life. They found themselves surrounded by a warm tribe of dark-skinned children who spoke rapid-fire English and wasted no time teaching the Reeveses their language, beginning with chingada, the most ringing and useful word in their vocabulary, even if not one to say within earshot of Inmaculada. Led by the Morales children, they learned to find their way through the labyrinth of streets, to bargain, to recognize at a glance enemy gangs to be avoided, and to know where to hide and how to escape. With the Moraleses, too, they went to play in the cemetery and observe the prostitutes from afar and victims of fatal accidents at close hand. Juan José, who was the same age as Gregory, had an unfailing nose for tragedy; he always knew where the automobile accidents occurred, the assaults and knife fights and murders. He made it his business to find within a few minutes the exact place where a husband whose wife had run off with a traveling salesman had committed suicide by standing in front of a train because he could not bear the shame of having the world know he wore the horns. Someone saw him smoking calmly, standing between the rails, and shouted at him to jump off the track because the locomotive was coming, but he stood right where he was. Juan José had heard the gossip before the tragedy occurred. The Morales and Reeves children were the first to show up at the death scene, and once they had overcome their initial fear, they helped pick up the pieces—until the police ran them off. Juan José had kept a finger as a souvenir, but when he began to see the dead man everywhere he realized he had to give up his trophy. It was too late to return it to any of the kin, because all the other bits and pieces of the suicide had been buried some days before. The boy, frightened by the soul in pain, did not know how to dispose of the finger: throwing it on the trash heap or feeding it to the Reeveses’ boa did not seem a very respectful way to atone for his affront. Secretly, Gregory consulted Olga, and she suggested the perfect solution: very quietly to leave it on the church altar, a consecrated place where no soul in its right mind could feel offended. Padre Larraguibel, whom everyone simply called “Padre” because of the difficulty of pronouncing his name, found it there. The priest was a Basque with a tormented soul, but he was a practical man and without a word he threw the finger down the toilet. He had too many problems with his numerous parishioners to waste time digging into the origin of a single finger.
Gregory and Judy Reeves attended school for the first time in their lives. They were the only blue-eyed blonds in a popu
lation of Latin immigrants in which the rule of survival was to speak Spanish and to run like a deer. Students were forbidden to speak their native language in school; they were to learn English in order to integrate more quickly. When someone let a Spanish word slip out where the teacher could hear, he rated a couple of whacks to his backside. If English was all Jesus needed to write the Bible, the world had no need of any other languages, was the explanation for such strict measures. Out of defiance, the children spoke Spanish whenever they could, and anyone who did not was regarded as a besa-culo—ass-kisser being the worst epithet in the student repertory. Judy and Gregory had been quick to sense racial antagonism and were afraid that if they made the slightest misstep they would be beaten to a pulp. The first day of classes, Gregory was so frightened he could not get a word out, not even to say his name.
“We have two new students,” said the teacher, smiling, enchanted to have two white children among so many dark skins. “I want you to treat them well and help them study and learn the rules of this institution. What are your names, my dears?”
Gregory was mute, clinging to his sister’s dress. Finally Judy rescued him.
“I am Judy Reeves, and this dunce is my brother,” she announced. All the class, including the teacher, burst out laughing. Gregory felt something warm and sticky in his trousers.
“All right, you may sit down,” she told them.
Two minutes later Judy began to hold her nose and glare at her brother with a fierce expression. Gregory fixed his eyes on the floor and tried to imagine he wasn’t there, that he was riding down the road in the truck in the open air, that his father had never got sick and that the damned school didn’t exist, that it was all only a nightmare. Soon the smell reached the other children, who began stamping and hooting.