Delia's Crossing

  He translated every move we made and everything we touched in the kitchen and at the table. He made me recite repeatedly until he was satisfied with my pronunciations.

  “Every day, I will test you on the things I have taught you the day and the night before,” he said. “When I think you are ready, I will ask you not to speak in español, only in inglés, understand? If you make a mistake, you will have to pay for it.”

  “Pay for it? I have no money.”

  He laughed. “There are other ways to pay for things, Delia. Everyone knows that. Especially women,” he added, and laughed.

  I was afraid to ask him any more questions about it.

  “Look what I bought you, Señora Baker,” he said after we had eaten our dinner and I was cleaning up the kitchen. He showed me a video. “It’s one of my own movies, from my own collection. There are many good words to learn in English, words you will have to know when you are out there in the world meeting boys and men. If you don’t understand these words, you will be at a big disadvantage, and you don’t want to be at any disadvantage when it comes to young men, Delia.”

  I stared at the video box. There was a picture of a man wearing the skimpiest pair of underwear and a woman with her back to him leaning against him. She was obviously naked. I did not understand the title, Bubbles, Bangles, and Bedsheets, even after he translated each word.

  “You’ll figure it out after a while,” he told me. “Finish up here, and we’ll watch our movie.”

  It all made me very nervous, especially his calling me Señora Baker. My fingers trembled around the dishes, and I dropped one. It shattered on the floor, sending shards everywhere. He came rushing back.

  “What’s going on? Damn it,” he said. “We can’t break things here. Your aunt will not be pleased.”

  I started to cry. Were these dishes expensive?

  “Get it all cleaned up,” he said. “And you’d better not break another thing,” he warned. When he spoke, I smelled whiskey on his breath.

  I hurried to get the broom. He kept calling to me from the living room, telling me he was getting tired of waiting for me. He wanted to start his movie. I moved slowly, hesitant, my instincts telling me that I was falling deeper and deeper into some sort of danger. Finally, I had nothing more to do and had to go to the living room.

  “It’s about time. Do you people always work so slowly?” he asked me. “Everything’s left for mañana, mañana. Well, there is no more mañana. You understand?” Before I could answer, he smiled and said, “Of course, there are some things you should do slowly.” His smile confused me. “Sit,” he said, patting the place beside him on the sofa. I saw he had a bottle of whiskey on the table and a glass with some in it.

  I sat, and he turned on the television and then the video player. His movie began, and almost immediately, a man and a woman undressed each other. He sipped his whiskey and began to translate what they were saying to each other, but it didn’t make sense to me. Clothes were “peeled off.” She wanted him to “raise her temperature.” He wanted her to “pump him up.”

  Soon they weren’t talking. They were just moaning and groaning, and what they were doing shocked and embarrassed me. He stopped the video and told me he was rewinding it to teach me the words again. This was why a video was good for learning language.

  “You can go over and over it until you learn the words perfectly,” he said, but he spent more time on the sections where they were doing nothing but moaning and groaning.

  “You ever do that?” he asked me. He finished his whiskey and poured himself some more.

  I shook my head, my eyes wide. He laughed.

  “Nothing’s wrong with doing that,” he said. “It’s how we get to know each other better.”

  The man in the movie was soon with another woman, doing the same things and saying the same things. I became more and more uncomfortable. I saw that Señor Baker was getting more and more agitated. His face reddened, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. If he was so uncomfortable watching this with me, too, why didn’t he stop it?

  “I know you like watching this,” he told me instead. He sneered. “All girls your age love watching these movies.”

  I hadn’t seen many movies, but none of them was anything like this.

  “No,” I told him. “I don’t like it.”

  “Sure you do. You’re just being coy,” he said, and went into a long explanation about the word coy. He said it was a natural part of being a woman. Women pretended they didn’t want the same things a man wanted, but they do, he insisted. “It’s all right. You can be coy,” he said.

  I shook my head. Now that I understood what it meant, I wanted him to know I wasn’t being coy, but he wouldn’t believe me.

  Suddenly, he grew angry and shut off the television.

  “It’s time you took your bath,” he told me. “I want you to take a bath every night. I like my girls to be clean and smell sweet, fresh, and innocent. Go on,” he urged.

  He jumped from one mood to another the way a little girl would jump from one square to another in a game of hopscotch. I hurried away from him. I took out my nightgown and my slippers and went to the bathroom with my things. I heard him turn on the television set again and start watching something else.

  I locked the bathroom door and ran my bath. He had bought some bath oils and soaps and new towels and washcloths. While the water flowed into the tub, I sat on the toilet seat and wondered what would happen to me next and what I should do. I had learned a lot of new words, stuffed many new things into my head, but I was so frightened and confused now that everything was jumbled. I would probably not do well on any test he gave me, and then what would he do? What did he mean by saying I would pay for things without money?

  When the tub was filled enough, I got undressed and stepped into the water. I was barely in it a minute before I heard him try the door.

  “Why did you lock the door?” he screamed. He rattled it hard. “You never lock a door in this house. I lock the doors in this house! Open this door now,” he demanded.

  “I am in the bathtub,” I cried.

  He was quiet a moment.

  “You unlock this door as soon as you’re out!” he shouted. “Don’t dry yourself completely first. First, open this door. Understand?”

  “Sí,” I said, holding my breath.

  “Not sí, yes. Yes!” he screamed.

  “Yes.”

  “From this moment on, every time you use a Spanish word instead of the English word I taught you, you will be penalized,” he declared.

  I listened hard and thought he had left, but suddenly, he pounded the door with his fist once.

  “Just wash yourself and get out!” he screamed.

  I unplugged the bathtub and reached for one of the towels. As quickly as I could, I dried myself enough to put on my nightgown.

  He started to pound on the door again, so I unlocked it. He stood there looking in at me.

  “I thought I told you not to dry yourself completely,” he said.

  “I had to so I could put on my nightgown.”

  “I wanted you to wait,” he said. “You don’t listen well. You’re going to be here a lot longer than necessary, because you don’t listen,” he warned me, waving his forefinger in my face. He paused and looked at me. His eyes were glassy, his mouth twisted like someone who had just had a stroke. “Clean up after yourself in here, and get to the bedroom,” he said. Then he left, mumbling to himself.

  I let out a breath that was locked in my chest and began to wipe off the tub. I brushed my teeth, folded the wet towel, and left the bathroom. I could hear the television still going. He didn’t come out of the living room. Perhaps he was going to sleep in there after all, I thought, and went to the bedroom. I got down on my knees and said my prayers. My heart was still thumping. I was eager to get to sleep and end this strange and difficult day, but moments after I had gotten into the bed, he came to the doorway and flipped on the lights.

  “No, no,
no,” he said. “We have work to do yet, Delia. You don’t go to sleep so fast.”

  “What work?”

  “Work. Get up!” he commanded. “Now!”

  I lowered the blanket, sat up, got my feet into my slippers, and stood up. What work was left to do? He entered the bedroom and stood before me.

  “All right. At the end of every day, we test you on what you’ve learned that day. Let’s begin with the parts of the car I taught you before we left your aunt’s home. In English. What did I describe? Go on.”

  I recited every word he had told me, visualizing it all and amazing even myself. Perhaps the fear made my memory stronger and keener. I saw the surprise in his face.

  “Very good,” he said, and then began a very fast list of Spanish words, requiring me to translate. If I hesitated, he screamed the word in my face. I started to cry, and he demanded I stop.

  “You made five mistakes in the last minute,” he said. “You must be penalized.”

  “Penalized?”

  “Remember? You must pay. Turn around,” he ordered. “Go on. Turn around, bend over, and put your hands on the bed. Do it, or I’ll add to the punishment.”

  I felt blood drain down to my feet.

  His breath was all whiskey now, too, and I had seen what whiskey could do to a man.

  I wasn’t forgetting that my parents were killed by an hombre borracho, either. I turned and did what he said. As soon as I did, I felt him lifting my nightgown to my waist. For a moment, he did nothing else. I thought that would be it, and then he slapped me on my rear so hard and sharply that I fell forward, and tears immediately came into my eyes. Before I could cry out, he slapped me again and again. He did it five times.

  “Five for five mistakes,” he said, his hand on my lower back, his weight on me holding me down. I was crying openly now, sobbing and moaning. “You should say thank you. Thank you, not gracias. Go on.”

  “Thank you,” I muttered between sobs.

  “Right, good.”

  He lifted his hand off my lower back, but I was afraid to turn around. I heard him walk around the bed. He sat and began to undress, mumbling to himself. He had drunk too much, I thought. He was actually wobbling.

  Slowly, I slid back and off the bed.

  “Go to sleep,” I heard him order. “I’m better in the morning. In the morning, Señora Baker.” He laughed.

  I raised myself and peered over the bed at him. He was on his back, stark naked. Cautiously, so as not to wake him, I edged toward the bedroom doorway. I was actually crawling on all fours toward the door, praying and crawling. I couldn’t keep my sobbing and gasping subdued. The stinging pain wasn’t as terrible as the terror raging through my body. I was nearly to the door and about to stand up, when I saw him walk to it and slam it closed. He looked down at me.

  “That’s not a very ladylike way to behave, Señora Baker,” he said, smiling. He reached down and grasped my hair, pulling me up. “Get back into bed,” he told me, and shoved me toward it.

  Then he went to his pants, took off his belt, and brought it to the bed.

  “Lie down,” he ordered. “On your back.”

  I gazed at the belt in his hand and at his face. Was he going to beat me? I started to shake my head when he raised his hand, and I cowered.

  “In the bed!” he screamed.

  I did what he said, and then he got into the bed, wrapped the belt around his thigh and around mine, and buckled it. He ran his hand down my shoulder, over my arm, and around and over my breasts. He lingered there, and then he went down to my stomach before lying back himself.

  “Good night, Señora Baker,” he said. “Well? What do you say? Say it!”

  “Good night,” I said through my gasps.

  He closed his eyes and mumbled to himself. I stared into the darkness. The tight belt made it impossible for me to turn away or even think about getting up again. I didn’t want him to wake up. I tried even not to breathe too loudly, but what would happen to me in the morning?

  8

  Rescue

  My eyelids grew heavier and heavier, but I was too frightened to let myself fall asleep. Soon, I heard Señor Baker snoring. I was happy he had passed out, but all I could think about was what would happen to me the moment he woke. Gathering my courage, I moved in tiny increments until I was just about sitting up. Then I felt for the belt buckle. Twice he stopped snoring, and I froze, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  Our sheer curtained windows did little to keep out the moonlight that streamed through like a giant flashlight. It helped me see what I was doing, but if he opened his eyes, he would see what I was doing, too, I thought. Please keep him asleep, I prayed.

  My fingers trembled around the buckle, but I worked as carefully as I could until I managed to loosen the belt. I paused to see if he had felt it, if it had woken him. He grunted and moved, but he continued to snore. His lips were puffed out with the air he exhaled. I could still smell the whiskey on his breath, now combining with the sweat from his body. The odor nauseated me, and I had to keep swallowing to stop myself from gagging. Even a subdued gasp might wake him.

  With as much care as mi abuela Anabela would take bandaging my small scrapes and cuts, I peeled the belt off my leg and carefully and slowly moved my leg away from his. He snorted again, and I paused and waited until his breathing was regular. Continuing to inch myself away, I finally slipped softly off the bed. I stood and waited to be sure he hadn’t heard or woken, and then I moved with the silent grace of a ghost, scooping up my clothing and my shoes and tiptoeing out of the bedroom.

  I dressed in the dark in the living room as quickly as I could, all the while listening keenly for any sounds of his awakening. In this deep silence, even the creaking in the floor seemed loud enough to alert him. I had no idea where I would go or what I would do. I knew only that I had to get away.

  When I opened the side door, it creaked so loudly I was sure it would wake him. I hesitated, listened, heard nothing, and then stepped out and closed the door behind me softly. The moonlight was now my friend. It lit the road and showed me the way. No longer tiptoeing or trying to be quiet, I shot out of the carport and started to run down the road. I had no idea whether I should go left or right. I just ran to my left, crying and praying as I charged forward. I ran and ran until my side felt as if a giant hand had grabbed me and was squeezing. The pain reached my chest, and I stopped, gasping.

  When I gathered enough breath and strength to continue, I walked on. I saw houses now on both sides of the road. Their windows were lit. It wasn’t terribly late yet. I was sure people in their homes were still watching television or just talking together. I thought about stopping at one and asking for help, but what if they didn’t speak or understand enough Spanish? Did I know enough English to get them to understand? Would the sight of me frighten them so they would slam the door in my face? What would I ask them to do for me, anyway? Send me back to Mexico? Maybe they would call the police, and the police would do that. I was not a citizen here. From what I understood, that could mean I would be deported unless my aunt stepped in to stop it, and why would she now?

  I wanted to return home, of course, but I was also concerned about how mi abuela Anabela would react if I was sent back by police. She might blame herself for my being in this situation. The rosy future I was supposed to begin would be gone and with it her hopes for me. She was happy she was doing what my parents had wanted, providing a better life for me. This was far from being a better life.

  What should I do? What should I want?

  For a few moments, I stood there submerged in so much indecision, confusion, and fear, I felt as if I had gone close to the edge of the world. One more step forward, and I would fall off and sink forever into the darkness below.

  Suddenly, I was awash in light. I turned and saw a car approaching very quickly. The driver slowed down as he drew closer to me.

  It’s surely Señor Baker, I thought. He woke up, saw I had left the house, and has come after me. It wil
l even be worse for me now.

  I started to run. The driver sounded his horn, and I ran harder and faster until my legs weakened and I fell forward, catching myself with the palms of my hands but tumbling over twice and actually falling into a ditch. The car stopped. I moaned with the stinging pain in my palms and knees. As I struggled to stand, I saw the silhouette of the driver approaching. When he loomed over me, I screamed.

  “Easy, easy,” Edward said, reaching toward me. “It’s okay. Bueno, bueno.”

  He took my hand, but I didn’t move. I stared at him in the moonlight. He seemed to have come out of nowhere. Had Señor Baker called my aunt, and had she sent Edward to get me and bring me back to him? Could he have gotten here so quickly? Whom could I trust?

  “C’mon.” He beckoned. “Come into my car. C’mon. I’ve come to help you. You’ll be all right.”

  I stepped out of the ditch and slowly followed him to the car. He opened the door for me. I looked at him, still very confused and afraid.

  “No quiero volver a Señor Baker,” I told him. I’d rather die than return.

  “No Señor Baker,” he said. “No.” He smiled and nodded. “It’s okay,” he said again. “Bueno, bueno.”

  I got into the car. He closed the door and hurried around to the driver’s side. After he got in, he put on the lights inside the car and turned my hands to look at my palms. He shook his head, looked at my knees, and said, “We’ll get you cleaned up.” He made gestures with his hands to explain. I said nothing. I was still feeling too numb and frightened.

  He reached down between us on the seat and picked up a sheet of paper.

  “Casto wrote this en español,” he told me, moving his hand over the paper, and then he began reading. His pronunciation was good enough for me to understand every word.