I turned when he returned to my bedroom door. He just stood there looking in at me strangely.
“You,” he said, pointing at me, “es mi prima?”
“Sí,” I said, smiling, happy he finally understood. But why hadn’t mi tía Isabela at least told him and his sister? She implied that if and when I learned English well enough to go to school, she would let people know, or was that just another lie, an empty promise? How did she explain my appearing here to the other help? Maybe she didn’t feel she had to explain anything to anyone, except Señor Baker.
He shook his head.
“Cómo?” he asked, stepping into the room.
“Cómo? Mi madre es la hermana más joven que su madre.”
“Más joven? Oh, but I thought…we thought…” He pointed to his temple. “Su madre ha muerto.”
“Sí, muerto,” I said, and he shook his head, now looking even more confused. Again, he put up his hand and went out. I returned to the window. I saw him get the worker and start back with him. The two returned to my doorway.
“Mr. Edward is confused about you,” the worker said in Spanish. “You told him you were his cousin, daughter of his mother’s younger sister, but he was told she died when she was a child.”
Now I was more frightened. Maybe I would be forgiven for telling my cousin who I really was, but here I was telling one of the workers. Maybe my aunt wouldn’t send me back to Mexico. Maybe she would do something worse. How should I balance the truth with my own safety?
“Lies multiply like rabbits,” my grandmother used to say. “No matter how small they seem.”
I hadn’t been here a day, but I was already tired of living a lie.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This is not true. My mother and my father were just recently killed in a car accident with a truck. This is why I’ve come here to live.”
He translated for me, and Edward’s eyes grew wider. He wanted to know if his sister knew who I was.
“No. If she does, she pretended not to know,” I added.
He told the worker to tell me he would return, and he left. The worker, who introduced himself as Casto Flores, wanted me to know that this family, the Dallas family, was loco. He had been an employee of the Dallas family for nearly twenty-five years and had liked Señor Dallas, but, he said, Señor Dallas took ill not too long after he married my aunt Isabela. The other workers thought she was too much for him, he added.
I understood that he meant too much woman. He said she made him age quicker, and soon an illness took him over and turned him into an invalid. He said there were long periods of time when he didn’t see Señor Dallas at all. He was a prisoner of his illness.
“Señora Dallas did not let that stop her from living a full life,” he added. I was not too young to hear what he was saying between the lines.
He wanted to know what exactly had happened to my family in Mexico and why I was there. I told him everything. I could see he felt very sorry for me. Before he left to return to work, he asked when was my day off, and I realized I had never been told I had a day off. He said he would speak to Señora Rosario about it, and when I had a day off, perhaps he would introduce me to his daughter Nina, who was about my age.
“You’re not going to school here?” he asked.
I told him what I had been told. First, I had to learn enough English, or I couldn’t be admitted to the school.
He shook his head.
“Not so,” he said, but I could see he didn’t want to say too much more.
It wasn’t until he had left and Edward had left that I remembered I hadn’t eaten anything. The tension and the disaster at the dinner table had taken my mind off my own pangs of hunger, but now that I was more relaxed, they returned with a clamor. I was very thirsty, too.
I wasn’t sure what I could do about it now. I was afraid to return to the main house kitchen. The only solution, I thought, was to try to sleep, so I prepared myself for bed. There was no sign of Señor Garman in the building. When I went to the bathroom to take a shower, I realized there was no lock on the bathroom door. Consequently, I showered and got into my one nightgown faster than ever.
However, when I returned to my bedroom, I was surprised to discover Edward had returned again. This time, he had brought me a plate of food. In what he had obviously just learned and memorized from one of the other Mexican employees, he recited the following: “Sabía que usted tendría hambre y hice que el cocinero preparar este plato para usted.”
He knew I’d be hungry and had the chef prepare the plate for me.
I thought he had pretty good pronunciation. I wanted to tell him that no matter what his mother wanted, he couldn’t disguise his Latino heritage, but I knew he wouldn’t understand, so I just thanked him and took the plate. He stood up and watched me eating.
“How old are you?” he asked. “Años?”
I flashed my hand three times.
“Fifteen? You’re Sophia’s age.”
I nodded. I remembered my mother once telling me I was about the same age as my cousin Sophia.
“I heard Mr. Baker is helping you learn English…hablar inglés…Baker?”
“Sí.”
My smile faded.
“You don’t like him? Er…no le gusta?”
“No,” I said emphatically, and he laughed.
“Me, neither,” he said, shaking his head and pointing to himself.
I didn’t realize I had been gobbling my food until I looked down and saw it was nearly all gone.
“You were definitely hungry,” he said.
He just stood there staring down at me. It wasn’t until then that I realized I was just in my nightgown. Although it wasn’t sheer, it was slight enough to bring a flush of red heat into my neck and face, especially when I traced his gaze to my breasts. I put down the plate when I finished and folded my arms over myself.
He smiled. “Enough? Más?”
“No más, gracias.”
“Okay, I’m going,” he said. “I’m sorry about all this. Mi hermana is an idiot, and mi madre…” He shrugged and shook his head. “I will talk to her. I will habla mi madre.”
I smiled. He was the only member of the family who had been nice to me.
“Buenas noches,” he said.
“Buenas noches.”
He nodded and left. I went to the door and watched him leave the building, and then I looked up through the cloudy pane and stared at the stars. These were the same stars above my house back in Mexico, where mi abuela Anabela was probably preparing for bed. All my life, except for when I slept in a cradle in mi madre’s room, I shared this bedroom with my grandmother. Together, after we had both prepared for sleep, we would recite our prayers, and she would say a prayer for me at my bedside, praying for me to have a long and healthy life. She was the last person I spoke to before I went to sleep and the first one I spoke to when I woke in the morning. She was there for my nightmares and there to nurse me when I was sick, and now, she was sleeping alone in the house. Despite where I was in this two-by-four of a cold, stark room, I felt sorrier for her.
Surely, the house back in Mexico was full of echoes, memories that had begun to haunt her. How much despair could her aged heart withstand? Did she feel betrayed, lost, and alone? What would drive her to care about the next day, about rising to clean the house, wash clothes, prepare food for herself? How many times would she look at my empty bed and think about me?
And what of the son she had lost, his life snuffed out like some small flame that had promised to burn brightly and keep us all safe and warm? How severe her mourning surely had become. The echoes of yesterday weren’t only the echoes of my voice, my footsteps, and my laughter through the house. I was sure she was fixed on her memories of my father as a young boy, fixed on her memories of holding him, protecting him, feeding and clothing him. The little boy fades into the man, and the man fades into his old age, mi abuela Anabela would tell me, but the images remain, lingering like smoke in your mind, bringing sm
iles back, old smiles, old laughs from time past.
When I had first set out for mi tía Isabela’s hacienda, I envisioned her enabling me to keep in contact with my grandmother, perhaps making a phone call that the postmaster would receive, and then, perhaps, she would be able to call me. My letters would go out to her, and her letters would come to me here. Now I wondered what, if anything, my aunt would do for me. I had left Mexico clinging to the belief that I would somehow return to see my grandmother again, clinging to the belief that this wasn’t a final good-bye.
However, I felt more like a prisoner trapped on this estate of my aunt and cousins. Not only was I being treated as if I were just another immigrant worker, but my identity was being taken from me. I was truly turned into an orphan, someone without any familial past. Being forbidden to mention any of it, it was erased. Who was I now? Who would I become?
I couldn’t help but wonder if my cousin Sophia would have treated me any differently if she had known we were related. Would she have been as cruel? Look at how kind my cousin Edward was even before he knew we were cousins. There was hope in all of that, I told myself, wasn’t there? Now that Edward knew the truth, perhaps he would get my aunt to change the way she was treating me, and perhaps Sophia wouldn’t be so antagonistic and mean.
Clinging to that tidbit of optimism, I said my prayers and got into bed. Everything had a starchy machine smell. The sheet and the blanket must surely have been in that closet for a very long time, I thought. And of course, this room, with its one window, was dank and stuffy and still smelled like old fish. I almost decided to sleep outside but then thought that might attract more negative attention to me and make my aunt even angrier.
I closed my eyes, but opened them moments later to listen to the heavy footsteps in the hallway. Who was coming now? I couldn’t lock my bedroom door, either. The footsteps went by my room, so I imagined it was Señor Garman. I heard a door close and then the sound of water running. Other than that, it was very, very quiet. After I heard him go into his room, the stillness felt like a heavy blanket thrown over me.
I folded myself into a fetal position and tried desperately to fall asleep. Minutes after, far more exhausted than I had imagined I was, I did tumble into a twisted tunnel of nightmares, with flashes of my aunt’s angry face and my cousin Sophia’s sneer appearing on the dark walls. I careened into one long, screaming descent and broke out into sunlight when the morning light flowed through the window and snapped me into reality, a reality that wasn’t much better than the nightmares I had just escaped.
I groaned and turned on my narrow bed, grinding the sleep out of my eyes just as my bedroom door opened and Señora Rosario looked in at me.
“Why aren’t you up and dressed already?” she demanded.
“What time is it?”
“It’s six forty-five. I told you to be in the kitchen at six-thirty. There are preparations to be made. Señorita Sophia and Señor Edward go to school at seven-thirty unless Señorita Sophia oversleeps.”
“Señora Dallas still wants me to serve?”
“You are to be given another chance for that, but in the meantime, you are to bring Señorita Sophia her breakfast every morning.”
“You mean to her room?”
“Of course. Where else do you think you’d bring it? There is much to do, and Señor Baker wants you to meet him in the library at eight-thirty, I am told. You have to clean Señorita Sophia’s room as soon as she leaves, change the sheets and pillow cases. They are changed every day.”
“Every day?”
“Don’t keep questioning what I tell you. Just get yourself up and come to the kitchen,” she snapped. “I’m in charge of the domestic help here, and I get blamed for anything stupid someone working under me does. I don’t intend for that to happen. Get up!” she snapped, and closed the door.
I rose quickly, gathered my clothes, and headed for the bathroom, but when I got there, the door was shut. I knocked. Was Señor Garman in there, or was the door just closed? I started to open the door.
“Espere hasta que me acabo!” I heard Señor Garman shout. He was in there, and he was telling me to wait until he’d finished.
“But I have to get to the kitchen,” I told him in Spanish.
“Get up earlier,” he told me.
Get up earlier? I had no clock to wake me. How was I to know what time to get up?
He didn’t come out. I heard his electric shaver going and decided to dress without washing. I returned to my room, dressed, and ran my brush through my hair. Then I hurried out the door, my heart pounding. I didn’t want to do anything to rile up my aunt today, especially since I was being given a second chance. Perhaps she realized what Sophia had done and how what happened wasn’t really my fault. Perhaps Edward had defended me. Things could now get better, I thought hopefully.
Or perhaps Sophia would be angry that she was blamed and would be only meaner toward me and think of other terrible things to do to me. I could see now why Inez looked as if she were walking on a floor of shattered glass. They must all be paid well to put up with such tension. No one, I gathered from listening to Señor Flores, liked this family or respected it. How different this was from the way Señor Lopez was thought of by my mother and father and his workers.
I was still waiting to see what, besides the wealth, was better in America.
The two Mexican gardeners who had been there yesterday after Sophia had soaked me turned to watch me rushing. They laughed, and one shouted, “What, no falling into the bathtub this morning?”
No, I thought, I’ve fallen into something far worse: my own private hell.
6
English Lesson
Both Señor Herrera and Inez were working frantically in the kitchen when I arrived. They glanced at me, and then Señor Herrera began dictating orders. I was told to make some toast for Señorita Sophia’s tray and warned not to burn it. He was preparing some scrambled eggs and bacon. Inez was working on setting the breakfast table for my aunt, her guest, and my cousin Edward. I was told to pour coffee into a container that would keep it hot, and then Señor Herrera set up the tray for me to bring up to my cousin Sophia. The plate had a silver cover, and the cream, butter, and cheese were all in silver as well. Inez put a fresh rose on the tray before I picked it up.
“If you forget the flower, she’ll send you down for it, even though she just throws it into her garbage can,” Inez told me.
“Careful, don’t spill anything,” Señor Herrera warned me. “She’ll send the tray back if there is even a drop of something out of its container or off its dish.”
“And don’t look like you’re breathing on anything. She hates that,” Inez added.
I waited a moment to see if there were any other warnings.
“Go on, before it gets cold,” Señor Herrera said.
Slowly, I started out and up the stairway. As I ascended, my eyes glued to the tray so I wouldn’t spill anything, Edward came out of his room and paused at the top of the stairway. He was dressed in a jacket and tie and had his hair tied back the same way. He smiled at me.
“Morning,” he said. “Hola.”
“Hola.”
“I’ll see you later,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
I shook my head. I was so involved in carrying the tray carefully that I wasn’t paying attention. He pointed to himself and then to me and said, “Tarde.”
“Oh. Sí, tarde.”
He continued down the stairway, and I went to my cousin’s door. It wasn’t until then that I realized I would have a problem knocking on the door, opening it, and holding on to the tray. I had to put the tray down on the floor and then knock. I heard nothing, so I knocked harder.
The door was jerked open so hard the air nearly sucked me in and over the tray. She was standing there in her bra and panties.
“Jeez,” she cried. “I’m not deaf, you idiot. Put the tray on my desk,” she added, pointing to the desk.
I knelt down, picked up the tr
ay, and went to the desk. She gazed at herself in the mirror and fluffed her hair. I saw that her bra was tight, and the fat around the back of it rolled over and formed folds beneath as well. She had a roll of fat on her hips, and her rear end sagged over her heavy thighs. She spun around on me.
“What are you looking at?” she asked. “You’re not queer, are you?”
I shook my head. She was speaking too fast, and I didn’t understand the question.
“I’m sorry. I do not understand so well yet,” I said.
“Oh, jeez. How am I supposed to deal with someone who can’t speak English?” She smirked. “Edward says you’re our cousin. I think he’s just kidding me, right? You’re not really our cousin, are you?”
“Cousin. Oh, sí, prima, sí,” I said.
“I don’t believe it. My mother hasn’t said anything that stupid to me yet.”
She walked over to the tray, lifted the cover, and inspected the eggs.
“You can go,” she said, waving at the door. “Vamos or whatever you say. Go!”
I started out.
“Wait!” she screamed. I turned back. “This coffee is cold. The coffee,” she said, holding up the cup, “it’s cold…cold…what’s the word? Frío?”
I shook my head. I saw Mr. Herrera pour it into the container steaming hot. It couldn’t be cold.
“Don’t tell me. It’s cold. Get me hot coffee pronto…caliente.”
I went back, took the coffee container, and left her room. When I got back to the kitchen, I explained to Inez, who poured it into a cup and shook her head.
“We’ll teach her,” she said.
She poured the coffee into another container and put it into the microwave oven. The steam flowed up as she poured it into the container again, and I took it back upstairs quickly, practically running up.
Sophia had put a tight thin blouse over herself and was slipping into a skirt. She watched me bring the coffee to the desk, and then she poured it into a cup. The steam rose. She felt the cup and made a face.