I shook my head.
“That was before I got smart, before I realized what a hole I was living in and where I could go if I made an effort. Your parents, their parents, the whole lot of them, were content to wallow in their poverty, in their hand-to-mouth existence, blaming everything bad on the devil and giving every extra peso to the church. The church, the church, the church…cooking for the church, working to rebuild and repaint the church, cleaning the church.
“Your father was always upset with me because I complained so much about the way we all lived, and he didn’t like my looking at any other men. He would go to complain to your mother, and she was smart. She was his shoulder on which to rest his poor, troubled head. I knew what she was doing. She didn’t fool me.
“‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Isabela. I didn’t mean to steal your lover. It just happened.’”
She laughed.
“It just happened? Like a bolt of lightning hit them both? One day, he couldn’t live without me, couldn’t breathe if I didn’t love him, and the next day, he was in love with your mother? And they accused me of being the flirt, the loose one? Oh, yes, your mother, my sister, was always the good girl, and I was always the bad, but she was the one who slept with your father before they were married, not me. I didn’t give it away that easily, no matter what people said or thought.
“Don’t look so shocked, Delia. Your mother was far from the sainted woman she pretended to be. She wanted the same things I did, but she was more hypocritical about it. I saw no reason to be a phony.
“Yes, I enjoyed twisting young men around my finger, leading them along, giving them hope, but I was not stupid, Delia. I don’t know if you are or have been, but let me tell you one thing, once you give away your mystery, you are forever at their mercy.
“Forget all this talk about equality of the sexes. Men still lord it over women, even here where they are supposed to be so liberated, and these women, like dumb burros, put up with it. Believe me, I made my husband beg and give me everything before he enjoyed himself with me.
“In her own way, your mother was just as conniving. I know you don’t want to believe it, but she was. After she and your father came to me and confessed their love for each other, I laughed in their faces and went off to find and marry a man who would take me so far away and so high above them they wouldn’t be able to see the soles of my feet.”
She paused and studied me.
“You remind me more of myself than you do your mother, even though your mother was as sneaky as could be.”
I started to shake my head. “It’s not true,” I said. “That was not my mother. She was not sneaky and conniving.”
“Believe what you want,” she said, waving the air as if my words were like flies to chase off. “I certainly would have given your father more children. Maybe I was lucky, after all. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
She focused on me again.
“Just know that I know you inside and out. All right,” she said. “What’s done is done. You won over Edward quickly.”
“He knows I’m not lying. He knows Señor Baker is lying.”
“I don’t care. I don’t know what happened between you and Mr. Baker, and I don’t want to know. I’ll see to it that you are admitted to the public school. I certainly won’t pay for you to be in the private school, no matter what Edward wants.
“You can stay in this room for now,” she continued. “I guess I’ll have to admit who you are if my son insists on blabbing it all over the community. I’ll provide you with your basic necessities, but you’ll look after yourself, and you’ll still help with the housework. You’ll have to earn your keep. That’s as far as I’ll give in,” she said.
She started for the door and turned.
“I’ll make the arrangements for you to attend school. The first time you embarrass me, I’ll send you back. You have to remain here under my guardianship before you can be considered a citizen, and if I don’t perform that role, you will be sent back on a donkey wearing rags.”
She smiled.
“We’ll soon know whether you belong here with us or back there with…them. Don’t expect me to speak to you in Spanish unless I find it absolutely unavoidable,” she concluded. “If you want to ask me anything, do it in English. Learn the words. I was willing to spend the money for private lessons. You couldn’t handle Mr. Baker, fine. Now you’re on your own.
“Sink or swim,” she said, and walked out.
Maybe you’re not as high above us as you think you are, Tía Isabela, I thought. Maybe you sank a long time ago and drowned in your own unhappiness, and all your riches can’t save you.
Maybe you brought me here to satisfy yourself that you were so much better, and maybe for now, I give you that feeling and help you believe it, but I swear on my dead parents’ souls, you will come begging me for forgiveness someday.
You will cry in church for yourself, and you will beg for mercy.
You will beg to come back to your family.
I know this is true as I know the sun will rise tomorrow.
And then I thought, Perhaps this is why, perhaps this is the reason I was brought here.
9
School
Although my aunt wanted as little to do with me as possible, she had to accompany me to the public school to enroll me. She made me sit up front with Señor Garman while she sat in the rear as usual. This would be the first time she openly revealed that she was declaring herself my legal guardian. She had some official-looking documents with official government stamps her attorney had provided.
There was no doubt she wanted to get this over with quicker than a dentist appointment. As soon as we entered the school, I practically had to run to keep up with her. She had said nothing to me the whole time except for “Don’t you dare embarrass me by doing something stupid at school, something you might do in Mexico. This is not Mexico.” She told me this just before we left the house and had Señora Rosario translate it. It wasn’t necessary. From the face she wore and the way she waved her forefinger at me, I understood what she was saying. How many threats would she whip at me before saying one nice thing? And what did she think went on in Mexico? Not everyone was the young girl she had been.
We went directly to the main office. I could see that the administrators and the secretaries knew who she was or, rather, how rich she was. They jumped to attention when we entered, and they were very accommodating. To me, it seemed they were treating her as if she were royalty. In America, the rich are coronated, I thought, but maybe it was the same everywhere. The wealthy people were always treated with more respect in and around my village.
“I’m in a hurry,” she told them, and a secretary brought us quickly to the guidance counselor’s office.
The guidance counselor, Mr. Diaz, a tall, dark-haired man with a gentle smile, spoke to me in Spanish. I saw immediately that my aunt was annoyed.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she told him. “If everyone speaks Spanish to her, she won’t learn English.”
“Oh, she’ll learn, Mrs. Dallas. I promise you. We have a wonderful ESL teacher here.”
He explained in Spanish that my aunt thought I might be lazy about learning to speak English well if he continued to speak to me in Spanish. I wanted to warn him that she understood Spanish. Because she had such airs about her and did not use a word of Spanish, he assumed she didn’t. I saw her bristle.
“She might very well be lazy,” she told him sharply in Spanish. “I don’t know much about her. She lived in Mexico all her life, where the main word for everything is mañana, and she has just arrived after the death of my sister and brother-in-law. I haven’t had all that much time with her, but I’m sure her schooling was nothing compared to what it is here.”
She didn’t mention that she had come from my village, too.
He stiffened quickly, looking as if she had just slapped his face.
“Oh, yes, of course,” he said, fumbling with h
is papers. “I’ll take a personal interest in her and keep in constant touch with you.”
“Do whatever you have to do,” my aunt told him, speaking in English again. “I’m not asking for any special favors, and I don’t intend to treat a girl this age like some sort of baby. I won’t nursemaid her. She’ll sink or swim on her own, and she knows it.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, still shuffling papers to keep from looking at those furious eyes.
He walked out of the office with her and spoke to her for a while in the hallway. When he returned, he looked brow-beaten and happy she was gone.
“I’ll take you to your classroom and your teacher now,” he said.
I rose with trepidation. The school was bigger than any I had seen, and there were so many students in the hallways and classrooms. Surely, I thought, I will get lost here.
“Your aunt is quite a woman,” Señor Diaz told me as we walked out of his office. I saw from the way his eyes twinkled that he wasn’t giving her a compliment. “We’d better not disappoint her, eh, Delia?”
I nodded. I was afraid to utter a word in Spanish or in English.
He brought me to a classroom to be with ten other boys and girls who had recently come from Mexico. The teacher, Señorita Holt, reminded me a little of Señora Cuevas. She was far prettier, with shoulder-length auburn hair, and she was much younger than Señora Cuevas. However, I saw immediately that she was just as serious and had little patience for inattentiveness or disruption.
As part of the day’s lesson, I was introduced in English to each student. Señorita Holt had provided each student with a sheet of questions in English we were to ask to learn about one another. While we were in this classroom, Señorita Holt insisted we speak only English. If we didn’t know a word, we were to ask and then use it. I found out quickly that the other students ranged from ages twelve to seventeen, the oldest being a boy named Ignacio Davila, whose father now owned his own gardening business.
I learned Ignacio’s father had come to America to work and eventually developed his own company. Afterward, he sent for his wife and four children. Ignacio was the oldest. I was placed next to him in the classroom. I thought Ignacio was a sullen, unhappy boy, not very interested in learning how to speak English well. Except for attending the ESL class, he had little to do with the school, because he had to work in his father’s business most of he time.
All but one of the other students’ parents worked as gardeners or maids. The one whose didn’t was the daughter of a man who sang and played guitar with a group of mariachis in a big Mexican restaurant. She was twelve, and her name was Amata, but the others simply called her Mata. She had black hair down to her wing bones and had a face like a small doll’s face, with diminutive features and ebony button eyes, lighting her smile with innocence and happiness. Her tiny voice and little hands made you feel like hugging her.
Señorita Holt broke us into three work groups to practice what we were learning in the textbook and on the tapes she had us play, all of us listening on earphones. Before the class ended, we watched a television program in which important English words were spelled and sounded out. With the words I had known before coming to the United States and the words I did pick up from my lessons with Señor Baker, I managed to do well enough to get a compliment from my teacher my first day.
After she had enrolled me in the public school, my aunt had given me money to take a bus, which would drop me off almost a mile and a half from the estate. She provided me with the address, but she didn’t take the time to explain any directions. Anyone would think she was hoping I would not find my way back.
Ignacio, who had said little to me in the classroom, rode the same bus. He would ride it much farther. At the bus stop where we boarded, he asked me why I had come to live with my aunt. He had heard of my village in Mexico and knew it was populated by farmers and small tradesmen with almost no tourism, but he had never been there. When he learned what had happened to my parents, he became less indifferent.
“I know who your aunt is,” he said. “We don’t have her property to service, but we have one nearby. She’s very rich. Why doesn’t she have someone take you to school and pick you up? If you miss the bus, you sometimes have to wait an hour for the next one. And when you get off at the closest station, you’ll have a good long walk.”
“I like to walk,” I told him.
“Wait until it’s very hot. You won’t be happy. Your aunt knows that.”
How was I to explain my aunt?
“It’s the way she wants it,” I said. “It’s not so bad. I have never been on such a long bus with such comfortable seats and air conditioning.”
The truth was, I had never been on a bus at all.
He shrugged. “My father promised me that next year, I could get a car. I have to save at least half the cost from working myself. I had my grandfather’s truck in Mexico,” he told me. “I drove it when I was only ten.”
“I never drove,” I told him. “We had only a truck, and my father rarely used it for anything other than going to work and back. You will be very fortunate to have your own car.”
“It’s not for sure. It’s hard to save money here,” he said.
I was happy he was talking to me. He had very beautiful black eyes, a shade of ebony I had not seen. Sometimes they had a green glint. His hair was as short as a soldier’s. He saw I noticed and explained that his father insisted his employees look clean and respectable. He would never permit drinking alcoholic beverages on the job, not even a bottle of beer. A man he knew who worked for someone else was drunk on the job and nearly cut off his foot. Now he had a very bad limp and hardly worked.
“He sends very little back to his family in Mexico. He’s illegal, undocumented, you know. He doesn’t have any insurance and is afraid to complain about anything, or he’ll get sent back, and he won’t even be able to get them the little he does.”
“That’s very sad.”
“Yes. Sometimes he has nothing and begs on the streets. My father says he’s an embarrassment to our people. You know men don’t beg like that in Mexico. They’ll try to sell anything first, trinkets, souvenirs, anything,” he said, sounding bitter, as if this man embarrassed all of the Mexican men living here.
“Sí,” I said, afraid even to suggest I disagreed.
“My father has five other men working for him,” he said proudly. “And they all have a legal right to work here. He won’t hire any undocumented Mexicans, and he pays all his taxes, including payroll taxes. I wish he didn’t sometimes. I’d make more and get my car for sure.”
“Why is it hard to save money?”
“There’s so much to buy and so much to do,” he said. “Too many temptations. There’s even a movie theater that shows films in Spanish. Lucky for me, my father makes me work all the time, but on Sunday, when I go to the mall, I have to keep my hands in my pockets.”
I laughed.
“I do!” he emphasized. “My friends call me a miser, but I don’t care. I want my car.”
“I hope you get it,” I said. “I feel confident that you will.”
He liked that.
“You know how to go from the bus station to your aunt’s hacienda?”
“I think so, but I’m not sure,” I said.
He explained very carefully.
“If I had my car,” he said, “I’d drive you home every day.”
That brought a smile to my face, but my smile seemed to frighten him. He turned away quickly.
A shy boy from Mexico, I thought. He’s the first I’ve met. It brought a laugh inside me.
When the bus pulled up to my station, he followed me down the aisle and repeated the directions until I was nearly out the door. I thanked him and stepped off the bus. He looked out the window at me, and I waved, but he didn’t wave back. He turned to look forward quickly, as if he was afraid someone would notice a girl was waving to him. I watched the bus go off and started for my aunt’s hacienda.
Actual
ly, speaking with Ignacio and spending my school day with other students recently from Mexico helped me feel better about being here.
“When you’re with your own people, people who share your traditions, your language, and even your memories, you are not far from home,” my grandmother had told me the night before I left for America, “no matter how long it would take you to get back.” I thought she was telling me all this to keep me from being afraid, but now I thought she was right.
As if it was meant to happen on my walk just to emphasize what my grandmother had said, music from Mexico could be heard coming from a radio two men were listening to as they painted a garage. I knew the song, and for a moment, I just stood there with a half-smile on my face, listening, too. If I closed my eyes, I could easily imagine I was standing back in our village square. Everyone was dressed in their nicest clothes and feeling happy, some because they were drinking tequila. In the coolness of the early evening, with the dancing and the food, everyone seemed younger. It was all so simple and yet so magical. Would I ever feel that magic here?
“Delia, Delia,” I heard, and turned to see Edward in a red convertible sports car. It had only two seats. How many cars did he have? The car he had driven when he came looking for me was a sedan. “C’mon, get in. I’ll drive you home,” he shouted.
I approached the car, still hesitant.
“Get in,” he said. He beckoned, and I opened the car door and slipped into the seat. “I was afraid I had missed you,” he told me. I shook my head, not understanding. He pointed to his head. “I thought you no aquí, too late.”
“Oh. Yes.”
He smiled. “Between my sign language and broken Spanish and your broken English, we’ll do just fine,” he said, and started away. “Did you like escuela?”
“Yes. I like mi profesora.”
“Great,” he said, smiling. “Learn English quickly so you can tell me more, más about you,” he said, pointing.
“Yo?”
“Yes, you. Yo? You sound like Rocky,” he said, laughing. “Yo!”