In Perfect Light

  “Your sister has to get you out of here. Where is she?”

  Andrés shrugged. “She’s out.”

  “Never mind. I know where to find her.” She shook her head. “Lock the door. And don’t ever open it for anyone.”

  The next morning, Andrés told Yolie what had happened. After she was awake and drinking coffee and smoking. “I know,” she said. “Silvia told me everything.”

  Andrés looked at her. “What if he hurts Ileana?”

  “He won’t. You worry too much.”

  But she was as worried as he was. Andrés could see that. But he could also see she didn’t want to talk about it.

  Things went normal for a little while. Normal for them, anyway. Yolie worked almost every night. Sometimes she had a night off, and she would cook a meal and go to bed early. Silvia and Amanda checked in on them every night before they went out. One night, Andrés heard Silvia arguing with a man right outside their door, on the sidewalk.

  The man called her a puta, an hija de la chingada and everything else that was bad in the world, and he told her he was going to kill her. Andrés didn’t like it, that the man was calling her those names. He opened the door and watched them yell at each other. “Te voy a matar!” he yelled.

  “Si puedes,” she yelled back, “Yo soy mas hombre que tú.”

  That’s when he slapped her. She fell against the wall, then slipped on the sidewalk, her heels coming out from under her. Andrés jumped in between them when he saw the man was going to kick her. “Dejala,” Andrés said.

  The man clenched his fists and jaw, deciding whether he should hit Andrés or not. He shook his head in disgust and walked away. He helped Silvia up.

  “Don’t ever let a man touch you like that,” she said. Then she laughed. “Hombrecito,” she said. “Eres mi hombrecito.”

  He didn’t mind, that she called him her little man.

  That night Andrés understood that everyone had troubles. Silvia and Amanda—troubles. People looked at them, hated them. He knew they were transvestites and prostitutes, and he knew that meant trouble. And Yolie, she was a prostitute, too. And that meant trouble—especially because she worked for Homero. He was supposed to protect her. That’s what Silvia said, but no one needed that kind of protection. She called Homero a cabrón and a pinchi and an hijo de la chingada. She hated him. Everyone had troubles. But his mother and father and Mando, they didn’t have troubles anymore. He hadn’t prayed for Mando. He’d prayed for his mom and dad, but he’d forgotten to pray for Mando. Maybe he took the right road. Maybe he found his mom and dad. Maybe they were living in the light now. Maybe people didn’t fight anymore when they spent their days in that perfect light. Maybe Mando and his dad would be happy and talk like men were meant to talk.

  He hoped the dead couldn’t see the living. He hoped his mother couldn’t see what was happening to them. She didn’t deserve to see this.

  A few days later, Homero came to visit again. He talked to Yolie, who was getting ready to go out. They talked on the sidewalk. They argued. But they argued in whispers, so he and Ileana couldn’t hear. When Yolie came back inside, she looked numb and afraid. She was shaking when she lit her cigarette.

  “What’s wrong?” Andrés asked.

  “You ask too many questions.” She kept smoking and smoking. “Ileana’s going with me tonight,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

  “She’s just a little girl,” Andrés yelled.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

  “I won’t let you take her. I won’t let you—” He felt the slap of her hard hand against his face. The force of it made Andrés fly across the room. He didn’t say anything when he looked up at her. He picked himself up and walked into the courtyard. He sat there trying not to think about anything. Before she and Ileana left, Yolie walked into the courtyard. “A man will be coming. Do you understand? Do what he tells you to do. If you don’t, Homero will hurt Ileana. Do you understand?”

  Andrés nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Andrés looked away.

  The man came. He wasn’t old. He was a gringo. He was thin and well dressed and handsome and had a nice voice, and he wasn’t too old—it was hard for Andrés to know how old he was. Older than Mando had been—but not so very old. “Did someone tell you I would be coming?”

  Andrés nodded.

  The man lit a cigarette.

  “I won’t hurt you. I like you. Don’t you know how much I like you? Can’t you see? Come here. Sit by me.”

  He thought of Ileana. He thought of what Homero might to do her. If he didn’t do what the man said. So Andrés sat next to the man.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Andrés Segovia.”

  “Really?”

  Andrés nodded.

  “Andrés Segovia. That’s a beautiful name. You’re named after an artist.” The man placed his hands on him as he talked, “A guitarist from Spain. Did you know that? That doesn’t hurt, now does it?”

  Grace and Morning Mass

  Today, she stared at the light streaming through the stained-glass windows. Saint Monica was wiping her tears as the light of heaven fell on her face. She remembered the story. She had never ceased to pray for the conversion of her son, Augustine. God had come to her in a vision and said, “Do not worry, woman. Your tears have saved your son.” All the light in the window entered through Monica’s radiant face. Her mother had told her that it was because of Monica’s tears, that God made her son a great man. And she remembered one more thing about Monica. When she was dying and she was far from home, she was asked if she was afraid to be buried in a foreign place, a place where she was a stranger. “Nothing is far from God,” she said. “Neither am I afraid that God will not find my body to raise me from my slumber.” It was Sam who had given her that detail about the life of Saint Monica. And so she had decided to name her first child Monica. Because Monica had not been afraid to die. A woman who was not afraid to die was not afraid of anything. But Monica, her first child, was stillborn. Sam had wanted a tribe. The second one, a girl. Another Monica, she’d died a few days after her birth. And Mister, too. Mister had almost died. But Sam swore to God that he’d go to mass every day of his life if God let this boy live. And Mister had lived. Their Mister. And he was all the tribe Sam had needed.

  Sam had been as good as his word. Every day of his life, he went to daily mass. And when he’d died, Grace had picked up the ritual. Because she felt the world would be poorer and sadder without his prayers. So perhaps she would do her part to carry the load. She knew, of course, that he’d prayed for unorthodox causes—socialists, the demise of capitalism, Leonard Peltier. She’d never had Sam’s penchant for iconoclasm, nor had she shared his commitment for changing the social order. Hers was a more common calling. And, anyway, it was Mister who’d inherited his politics—though he hadn’t inherited his devout Catholicism.

  She smiled. Here she was, in the middle of mass, recounting the history of her family—Mister and Sam. She chastised herself for not making enough room in her heart for Liz. Was it too late for family? For Mister and Liz and Vicente. She stared at the stained-glass window of Saint Monica. She spoke to her. You weren’t afraid to die. Teach me. Today, that was her only prayer.

  All the Hovering Angels

  This is for you. We won’t tell Homero, will we? It will be our secret, eh?” He placed the twenty-dollar bill on the table. He turned around and stared at Andrés, who was sitting on the couch with his head bowed.

  “Now don’t be sad.” He walked over to Andrés and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re a good boy. You’re a very good boy. Now, look at me.”

  Andrés made himself look at the man. Maybe then he would leave.

  The man kissed him again on the forehead. He walked over to the table and kissed the twenty-dollar bill the same way he’d kissed him.

  “I think I could fall in love w
ith you.”

  I won’t ever fall in love—not with you, not with anything. Not ever. Not ever again.

  Andrés stared at the money on the table. He wanted to burn it like he’d burned all the letters he’d written to Mrs. Fernandez. He felt dizzy. He got into a fight once, when he was eight. A boy had hit him in the side of his head and he’d felt numb and dizzy and he’d had to sit down on the ground, and the whole world was spinning—and he’d felt ashamed that everyone had seen that he hadn’t been able to hit the other boy back. Because he hadn’t known how to fight. He felt that way now, like the world was spinning, like he didn’t know how to fight. And somehow, he felt like the whole world knew what he had done. For twenty dollars.

  He stumbled toward the bathroom and vomited. He lay there on the floor for a while. Finally, he took a shower. He couldn’t keep himself from shaking, could barely dry himself, he was shaking so much. Maybe a cigarette would help. He knew where Yolie kept them. He walked to the drawer and opened it, then found a pack. “They’re mine,” he said. “They’re mine now.” He took the pack to the courtyard and lit a cigarette. He inhaled, held the smoke in his lungs, then slowly let it out. He was dizzy again, but he didn’t care. He smoked the whole cigarette. He felt sick. He stumbled to the bathroom again and vomited. He vomited and vomited until there was nothing left, but his stomach was still trying to turn itself inside out.

  He was cold. He put on a coat. It was too small for him now, his coat, but it was okay, he was warmer. He felt the hot tears on his cheeks, and he wondered why he was crying. Why was he crying? That wouldn’t help. Crying never helped. When his mother and father had died, what good were his tears? When Mando died, what good had it done him or Yolie, that they’d cried? He wouldn’t cry anymore after this, that’s what he told himself.

  But he couldn’t stop himself. So he cried.

  And then he stopped. He smoked another cigarette. He didn’t get so dizzy this time. He fell asleep in the courtyard and dreamed his mother was hovering over him. And then his mother became Mrs. Fernandez. And then Mrs. Fernandez became Silvia. And they were all angels.

  Andrés woke in the middle of the night. He was cold. All the hovering angels were gone. He thought maybe there had been a funeral. Someone had died. Everything was black—the sky, the clothes he was wearing, his heart. He made himself get up. He smoked another cigarette. He didn’t want to look up at the stars. He didn’t want to. He finished his cigarette and went to bed.

  Ileana was asleep. She was home. She was safe. He kissed her, then fell into his own bed. Maybe, when he woke, he would discover that it was all a bad dream. But in the morning, he understood that it had all been real. He felt sick and ashamed and he didn’t want to get up, so he didn’t. He fell back asleep. The next time he woke, Yolie was sitting at the foot of his bed. She was just sitting there, watching him. He wanted to tell her he hated her. For everything that had happened—he hated her and Mando, even though Mando was dead, because all of this was his fault, too. But hating them didn’t change anything.

  He turned toward the wall, and stared at it.

  “If we don’t do what he says, he’ll hurt Ileana.”

  Andrés said nothing.

  “Do you understand?”

  The man hurt me. Does it matter? Do you care? “I understand,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. If you were sorry, you’d get us out of here.”

  “If you leave, he’ll hurt Ileana. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t hate me.”

  “I told her I’d hate her till I died.”

  “Why shouldn’t you have hated her?”

  “She was caught.”

  “It’s not your job to defend what she did, Andrés.”

  “What is my job?”

  “Your job is to live.”

  “They didn’t get to live. Why should I?”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “What’s it like to wake up in the morning and be glad?”

  She thought of Sam, how she’d wake next to him, or if he had already risen, how she’d find him in the garden.

  “Do you know what gardenias smell like?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what it’s like to be glad. You wake searching for the smell of gardenias. Or the smell of oranges. Or the smell of agaves. Or the smell of rosemary. And you think, God, I can smell. And you walk out and you see the light falling on everything—on the delicate leaves of a mesquite or the brilliant white of an oleander in bloom that almost blinds you or the bougainvillea that explodes pink like a firecracker. And you think, God, I can see.”

  “You sound like a poet.”

  “I was married to one. He died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He taught me how to look at things. How to smell things. How to understand the miracle of having a body.”

  “I don’t think having a body is such a miracle.”

  “That’s all you’ll ever have in this world, Andrés.”

  “Maybe that’s why I hate everything.”

  “Andrés, what your sister and brother did. We both know they didn’t mean for you and Ileana to get hurt. But they were wrong. And that man, that bastard, Homero, who used you to make money—”

  “He turned me into a prostitute. You can say it.”

  “Twelve-year-olds aren’t prostitutes.”

  “What was I, then?”

  “A boy. A boy who was sexually abused.”

  “And got paid for it. For three years. I worked for three years. I think that qualifies as prostitution.”

  “I think that qualifies as sexual abuse in the extreme. In the fucking extreme—if you don’t mind my language.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” He smiled. Just the same, it was a sad smile. He lit a cigarette.

  “It makes me angry that you hate yourself for something that somebody else made you do. Don’t let them take any more. Don’t you do that, Andrés.”

  “None of this does any good, Grace. All these visits, all this talking, all this strolling down fucking memory lane. It doesn’t help. And you know why it doesn’t help? Because everything that’s happened—it lives so deep inside me that the only way I can ever get rid of it is to die.”

  “That’s not true, Andrés.”

  “It is true. Happiness isn’t in the cards for everyone, Grace.”

  “You know what I’d do? I’d reshuffle the deck. I’d redeal the cards.”

  “You can’t win every hand.”

  “You can’t lose every hand, either, Andrés.”

  “I have, Grace. I fucking have.”

  His sadness was unbearable to watch. Far worse than his rage. He looked so defeated in that sorrow—like he was surrendering, like the battle was too much. But when he was angry, he was at least alive and fighting—even if he wasn’t clear who the hell he was fighting. Or why. His rage was at least a kind of understanding that if he didn’t keep fighting, he just might perish. His life had taught him at least that one lesson.

  God, she wanted him to be angry again. His rage had helped him to survive—and it was possible that his rage was the only intelligent response to what had happened to him. The emotions the body conjured had their own logic. Perhaps the body was vaster, larger, much more complex and mysterious, than psychologists or physicians ever dreamed. Who knew? Who really knew the secrets of the human body? Maybe that was the only reason she had clung to her Catholic God all these years—because a God-made man was the most beautiful thing imaginable. It was the most beautiful thing in the world.

  Be angry, Andrés. Who are we to rob you of your rage?

  Becoming Light

  Grace arrived back home, tired. Every day, a little more tired. She had some medication. Richard had brought it over himself. Paid for it, too.

  “You’re going to go broke doing that for your patients.”

  “What a lovely way to go bankrupt,” he said.

&nbsp
; She’d almost wanted to kiss him for saying such a thing.

  Maybe she’d take her medicine. He said it would help. And if it didn’t, then she didn’t have to take it.

  She stepped out of the car and stared at the palo verde that had grown tall and graceful in the front yard. It needed so little care. So little water—and there it was, blooming in a drought. Why couldn’t people be that way? Why couldn’t they just take what little there was and grow?

  She turned the key to her front door and pushed it open. She saw her dog lying in the middle of the room. “Oh,” she whispered, “so you’ve left us.”

  “She’d stopped begging for food. I knew it was just a matter of time.”

  Mister looked up at Grace as he knelt beside the dog. “I was twelve when you got her. She slept on my bed until I moved out.”

  “To marry Liz.”

  “That dog never liked Liz.”

  “Well, dogs are like people. They’re not always right.”

  Mister smiled at his mother, then kissed the dead dog and took her in his arms.

  “Where do you want me to bury her?”

  He followed his mother into the backyard. “There,” she said. Mister looked at the bare spot in the corner.

  “What happened to the Spanish broom?”

  “Aphids. I couldn’t save it.”

  He nodded and laid the dog down. Dead now, with no hope of heaven. Dogs were lucky—they didn’t need to live forever. They weren’t as greedy as people.

  He hadn’t noticed Grace wasn’t standing next to him anymore.

  “Grace?”

  He saw her walking back into the yard with a shovel. She handed it to him. She wondered if now wasn’t as good a time as any to mention the word cancer.