The little sleep I had gotten the night before did nothing to alleviate my numbness and shock. I still felt as if I were floating in some limbo, caught in another sticky nightmare. Sophia’s words were stunning. I stared at her in amazement. If there was any sign of real worry and real remorse, it was well hidden beneath the electricity in her eyes and the enthusiasm in her voice. Why wasn’t she as terrified as I was? How could she still see this as something exciting, something fun, even after it resulted in Bradley’s death?
“She won’t be here for an hour or so, so let’s both get up and have our breakfast and act as if nothing is wrong. Nada, get it?”
“Nothing? How can we pretend there is nothing wrong?”
“Well, you know what I mean.” She grimaced. “Don’t start that. Don’t start acting guilty. You didn’t do anything, anyway. You certainly didn’t throw him out the window, and we didn’t tell them to go kill him, did we? It’s not our fault they went too far. You can feel sorry for him and his family if you want, but you can’t blame yourself or us, understand?”
I didn’t respond. I just closed my eyes and turned my head. She really believed she had done nothing wrong. I wondered if people who lied a lot to others were good at lying to themselves.
“Don’t just lie there moping. Get dressed,” she ordered. “I’m starving this morning. Just stick close to me, and you’ll be all right. Delia! Are you listening to me?”
“Sí,” I said. “I’m getting up.”
I sat up in bed to satisfy her, and she left.
No matter how long I remained in the shower or how much soap I used, I couldn’t wash off the layers and layers of guilt I felt. There must have been something more I could have done to stop Ignacio and his friends. I should have shouted, pleaded, run after them.
Of course, she was right. I shouldn’t feel so terrible for Bradley Whitfield. Look at what he had done to me and what sort of young man he was. But I couldn’t just forget all of the sorrow his death would cause in his family. He should have been punished, but this was too much. I wondered just how much Ignacio actually had to do with it, too. When he and his friends faced judgment, would they use me as their justification? How I wished Father Martinez was close by, so I could confess to him and hear his words of advice and comfort.
And what if somehow my grandmother Anabela heard about this? What if Tía Isabela was so angry she wrote or called to tell her? It brought tears to my eyes just thinking about her hearing such things. All of her hope, all of her prayers, would have seemed to have gone to waste.
Sophia was dressed and waiting impatiently for me when I came out of the bathroom.
“Hurry up,” she said. “Get dressed. You’re taking too long. I want us to be eating and looking totally relaxed when my mother comes home.” She checked her watch. “Move it.”
I dressed quickly and followed her out. Jesse was just leaving the house when we descended the stairway. He paused at the door.
“Edward and I know you’re lying about all of this, Sophia,” he said, looking up at us. “This time, not even your mother will be able to help you,” he added, and walked out.
“That’s what you think, Mr. Nurse. Good riddance!” she shouted after him.
Everyone in the house and on the grounds apparently had heard about the terrible events. I could see it immediately in the faces of Señora Rosario and Inez. Both were looking at me as if I were a different person entirely, as if I had shed my skin like some snake and was now truly who I was. I was dying inside to tell them everything, to explain so they would understand, but Sophia was practically attached to me this morning.
I watched her eat everything ravenously, even with all of the tension and turmoil, and I thought to myself that where most people had feelings, emotions, nerves, she must be made of steel. Despite what Bradley had done, was he not once her boyfriend? Didn’t she describe to me how she had wanted to be intimate with him? She had feelings for him once. How could she not shed a tear, or did she do so in private so she could keep up this tough appearance in front of me? For her sake, I hoped so. I hoped she had at least a small piece of heart and was capable of caring for someone else besides herself. Otherwise, she would grow up to be as lonely and as bitter as her mother.
Tía Isabela came charging into the house so fiercely I thought she was going to find and beat on us both. I cringed at the sound of her voice, hearing her shout, “Where are they?” the moment she entered. We heard Señora Rosario talking to her in a low murmur, and then we heard her slam something and start for the dining room. Her footsteps were like nails being driven into my very soul.
She seemed to explode in the doorway. Maybe it was because of my own fear, but she loomed larger than ever, her eyes as hot and as bright as molten lava. She was in a pair of tight-fitting red leather pants, a white blouse, and a red leather jacket. With her face flushed, she looked as if she had been formed out of blood. For a long moment, she just stood there gaping at us, and then she focused on Sophia. I lowered my gaze to the table and held my breath.
“You went to the Mexican fiesta? You followed her there?” she demanded.
Sophia shrugged to make it seem like nothing, but I could see that even her cold, confident heart was finally cringing. Mine was as tight as a fist in my chest.
“We just thought we should check on her, Mother. She’s still a little stupid when it comes to boys.”
“She’s stupid when it comes to boys? Her?” She pointed to me as though she wanted to be certain Sophia was talking about the same girl.
“Well, I just thought since she…I mean, look what happened to her with Mr. Baker, and then Bradley took advantage of her so quickly, and…”
“You idiot. When it comes to men, she’s twice as sly and as conniving as you’ll ever be. She’s my sister’s daughter!”
“Well, I didn’t even know she was your sister’s daughter until after she was here,” Sophia fired back. “How would I know anything about your sister, anyway? Why are you so full of secrets about your own family?” she added, turning to the offensive.
Tía Isabela nibbled on her lower lip a moment and then stepped forward to the table. She put her hands on the back of her chair and glared first at me and then at Sophia.
“You’re not going to change the subject on me like you do so often, Sophia. This is very serious. I want to know exactly what your part was in all this. I have Web Rudin coming here to see you and Delia and me in an hour, but before you speak to our attorney, I want to know every detail about your involvement in all this.”
She stood up straight and folded her arms under her breasts.
“Well? Go on,” she commanded. “And there had better not be a single lie in your story, or believe me, I’ll toss you to the wolves.”
Sophia started to cry. Her ability to turn her tears on and off like a faucet was astonishing.
“No one loves me in this family since Daddy died,” she said through her tears.
“Oh, please.”
“Right away, you assume everything is my fault!” Sophia moaned.
Tía Isabela smirked. “That’s because it usually is, Sophia. And don’t try to play me like you play your teachers and your friends. Unlike most mothers, I never doted on my children, and I never made excuses for their weaknesses and failings.”
“Well, maybe you should have,” Sophia replied. “Maybe then we wouldn’t be in so much trouble.”
“Don’t you dare try to find a way to blame any of this on me,” Tía Isabela told her. “Now, exactly what happened? I want to know what you did. Don’t skip a single detail.”
“All right, I’ll tell you,” Sophia said, as if she was going to make her mother sorry she demanded it. She wiped away her artificial tears and took a deep, exaggerated breath. “First, I helped her get ready,” she said, nodding at me. “I showed her how to do her makeup, and I loaned her a pair of earrings and helped her with her hair. She wears it so plainly, and…”
“I’m not talking about any o
f that!”
“Well, you just said don’t leave out a detail.”
Tía Isabela sighed. “And then?”
“Ignacio, her Mexican boyfriend, drove up in his filthy old pickup truck. It was so gross I was hoping it wasn’t as dirty inside as it was outside. After all, she was wearing an expensive dress. He was wearing this costume like a mariachi or something. I didn’t think he liked the way she was dressed, and I thought she might not enjoy herself, because those Mexicans would make her feel out of place or something.”
“Oh, so all of a sudden, you were worried about how she would be accepted by Mexicans? You were that concerned about her happiness?”
“Well, she’s my cousin. You told us she was going to be part of the family, Mother. You said…”
“Just go on with the story,” Tía Isabela said.
“Later, I met up with Alisha, Delores, and Trudy. We were going to go to a movie, but I told them about Delia and the way Ignacio looked at her. They thought it would be a good idea to drop in on the fiesta to see if she was having a bad time. They thought if she was, we’d take her with us.”
“They thought? It’s always someone else who comes up with these ideas.”
“It was my idea, too. I wanted her to spend time with American girls. If she is going to live here and be part of our family…”
“And?”
“And I was glad we went, because when we got there, I could see she was sort of by herself. I could see the Mexicans were looking at her funny, like she was some kind of a traitor or something for not dressing in those costumes. They probably never heard of Valentino. Most of them looked like they dyed some rags and wrapped…”
“Sophia! Get to what I want to hear,” Tía Isabela shouted.
“I’m telling you like it happened. Isn’t that what you want? You said to be exact.”
“Go on,” Tía Isabela said, now looking exhausted.
“Well, almost immediately, her boyfriend Ignacio pulled me aside and asked me if it was true what Bradley Whitfield had done to her. She had apparently told him everything, every nitty-gritty dirty detail about her rape.”
I spun around. I was able to follow most of what she was saying well enough and had no doubt about what she had just said. I started to shake my head, but her eyes burned through mine to singe my brain with another warning.
“What could I do, Mother? I had to say yes. I don’t know or remember even if you knew it, but it was Ignacio who beat Bradley away when he came after her to get her to do it with his friends, right, Delia? Didn’t Ignacio help you before? Well?”
Tía Isabela looked at me to see what I would say. I nodded. She had thrown a tidbit of truth into the pool of lies. I couldn’t deny it.
Tía Isabela turned back to her. “Then what?”
“The next thing I knew, he was off to the side whispering with three of his friends and with her. I think she told them where Bradley had raped her. She must have, in fact. They started to leave the party, cursing Bradley and threatening Mexican justice.”
“Mexican justice?”
“Something like that. I stopped Ignacio and said, ‘You’d better not do anything to Bradley Whitfield. His father’s pretty important around here.’ I guess I shouldn’t have said that. It made him angrier, all of them angrier. He pushed me aside, mumbling about how terrible we treat Mexicans now, and continued out.
“Alisha said we had better follow them to see what they were up to. I told Delia she had to come with us, that this was happening because she had told them too much. We all got into Trudy’s car and tried to follow the Mexican boys.”
“What do you mean, tried?”
“They went so fast we couldn’t keep up. Delia was crying, sorry for what she had done. We were all getting frightened by now, so we went to the Roadhouse to calm down. We came home right afterward. Next thing I knew, Jesse was banging on Delia’s door late at night. I was in her room with her, trying to get her calm enough to go to sleep. She was crying and mumbling all sorts of things in Spanish I couldn’t understand.”
“Jesse came to get you?”
“Yes, he’s been here the whole time, Mother, practically locked up in Edward’s room.”
She looked at me and then back at Sophia. “And that’s all of it?”
“No. Jesse insisted we go down to speak to the police. They were pretty nasty. I told them you wouldn’t want us to talk to them without a lawyer, and they ridiculed me, treating me as if I was the one who threw Bradley through the window. I did tell them how we had gone to the Roadhouse and even gave them the name of the waitress who waited on us. You can go and check on that yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Tía Isabela stared a moment and then relaxed and slipped into her chair.
“Inez!” she shouted.
It was pretty obvious to me that Inez had her ear to the door and had been listening to everything. She was there in a second.
“Yes, Mrs. Dallas?”
“Get me a cup of fresh coffee and a glass of ice-cold water.”
“Yes, Mrs. Dallas.”
“How was your weekend, Mother?” Sophia asked her, as if this was just another morning. She finished her cranberry and orange muffin in a single bite. “Where did you go, anyway? Were you with Travis again?”
“Don’t worry about my weekend, Sophia. I told you not to change the subject.”
“Well, I told you everything! What else do you want?”
“Do you or Delia have any knowledge of the whereabouts of these Mexican boys?”
“How would we? That was the first time I had ever met any of them. I’m not in the habit of hanging around with Mexican boys, Mother.”
“I can’t believe this,” Tía Isabela said after a deep sigh. “I’m already a nervous wreck. Tomorrow, we take Edward to his doctor to see how his eyes are healing.”
“What are you nervous about? You said he’s losing the use of one, didn’t you?”
“We don’t know to what extent yet, but most likely, yes,” she said.
Inez appeared with a glass of ice water for her. “In a minute, the coffee,” she said, and left.
Tía Isabela drank her water, thought a moment, and then turned to me.
“Ella está diciendo la verdad?” she asked me.
“You never speak Spanish, Mother,” Sophia said immediately. “What are you asking her?”
“La verdad?” Tía Isabela asked me, ignoring her.
I knew if I said no, that it wasn’t the truth, Sophia would hate me and try to hurt me in some way. I saw what she was capable of doing, and I feared her almost as much as I feared my aunt, but I remembered that Grandmother Anabela used to say, “Es más fácil de atrapar a un mentiroso que a un cojo.” It’s easier to catch a liar than a cripple.
Besides, I had little faith in the loyalty of Sophia and her friends. One would betray the other if she was in any danger, I thought, and eventually, Tía Isabela would know what was true and what wasn’t. Up until now, I had traveled with them into the dark side, but it was time to go back, or at least try to go back. Tía Isabela was no Father Martinez, and I expected no forgiveness nor wanted any from her, but I would no longer bathe in the same water or breathe the same air as my cousin Sophia. To do so would stain the memory of my parents and move them closer to that third death.
“No lo dije a Ignacio. Estaba ella.”
Tía Isabela nodded, smiling coldly.
“What did she say? Huh? What did she say?”
“She said she didn’t tell Ignacio about Bradley raping her and where he was; you did.”
“What? She’s lying. She’s afraid she’ll get into trouble and be deported or something.”
Inez returned with a cup of fresh coffee for Tía Isabela. No one spoke until she left. Tía Isabela sipped some coffee first, thinking. Then she nodded to herself.
“Actually, it’s more believable that she would tell him,” she said. “It’s better for us. And for her,” she added, looking at me. “People will
sympathize and understand. She was violated. It’s natural for her to turn to Mexicans for help. You tell everyone that you told him about Bradley, not Sophia, Delia. Entiende?”
I understood. I just couldn’t believe that she would rather I lie. My silence annoyed her.
“I’m getting my lawyer to defend you, all of you. I’m paying for all of this, and it’s going to cost a lot of money. I’m not about to have this family dragged into something so ugly. You will do as I say. Entiende?” she shouted at me.
She brought her coffee cup down so hard that it shattered the saucer. I felt myself leap inside my own body.
I nodded quickly.
Inez and Señora Rosario came rushing in to see what had broken.
“Not now!” she shouted at them. They stopped, looked at me, and returned to the kitchen. My aunt sat there drumming her fingers on the table as she thought. Then she turned back to me.
“Until I say otherwise, you are not to leave the house. No salga de la casa. Not even for school. I don’t want to take the chance of your saying something by accident, entiende?”
Again, I nodded quickly. She looked at Sophia and pointed her right forefinger at her.
“This time, you’ve gone too far, Sophia. After this is over, if you just look the wrong way, I’ll have you skinned alive. Now, get ready to meet with Mr. Rudin in my office. Both of you. And be sure your stories coincide. Inez!” she screamed and stood up.
Inez hurried back into the dining room.
“Clean all of this up,” she ordered, pointing to the shattered saucer. Then she turned and left us.
Sophia sat there steaming while Inez worked. The moment Inez carried away the broken pieces of saucer, Sophia turned to me.
“Traitor,” she said. “You’ll be sorry.” She got up and walked out of the dining room.
I looked after her and thought, I’m sorry already.
A little more than a half-hour later, we were both called to Tía Isabela’s office to meet with my aunt’s attorney, Web Rudin. He was a robust man, not quite five-feet-ten, with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. His ears stuck out a little too far, but he had a rich, smooth complexion, with soft facial features and eyelashes that would make any woman envious. He sat across from Tía Isabela at her desk, close enough to write on a long yellow pad he had set there.