Midnight at the Electric

  Beezie had fallen asleep against me, her warm red cheek against my chest, with long troubled breaths. I know it sounds strange, but in those difficult days, I wrapped myself up in the tiniest things about her, because I felt always on the verge of losing her: the complexity and intricacy of her fingers in my own hands, the beautiful length of her lashes, her rattly laugh. It hypnotized me, listening to her and knowing that for those moments, she was okay.

  Sofia told us her story: her family had farmed sheep in Texas, on the prairie—they hadn’t ripped up their prairie grass but the dust, indiscriminate, had buried them all the same, and their sheep had died.

  “And then people started saying we should go back to Mexico. My father was born in Texas. It made no sense.” Her eyes were big, remembering. “Things fell apart. We lost the farm to the bank and we lost . . . other things you can never get back. My mom and my two brothers went to south Texas to look for work. I chose east.”

  “You’re a strong person,” I said. “Much stronger than me.”

  Sofia shook her head. “You become as strong as you have to be, don’t you think? When you’re trying to protect someone you love, you’ll do anything. Try any little trick that could possibly work, even if it’s just garlic soup. Walk your feet right off your legs. It’s just what people do.”

  She studied Beezie on my lap and ran a hand gently across the top of Beezie’s head. “I know all the home remedies because I know about dust,” she finally said. “I know about willing someone to breathe and wishing you could breathe for them. And saying anything to try to make their fear smaller, even though you can’t.”

  The room stretched around us in silence. Sofia looked suddenly lost. It was as if, in a moment, a heaviness in her posture pulled the air out of the room.

  She pulled back, straightening up. “My dad. He was an older dad; I was the youngest. He worked too hard. I think that’s why the dust hit him hard, too.”

  I waited for her to go on.

  Sofia smiled sadly. “He was the kind of person who never sat back. He was always eager to learn the next thing, he was always tinkering with something, always something in his hands—a book or a piece of machinery or an animal he was tending to—he wanted to figure it out. He told me, ‘If I waste time I might as well be dead.’ He believed hard work always paid off, and that if you were good to people, they’d be good back to you. The dust . . .” she said, shrugging, “changed that.”

  She tapped her fingertips against one another, looking at her hands. “Growing up, he pushed me more than he did my brothers . . . with school, with business, and everything. He saw something in me, I think, similar to him. He wanted me to leave town, to make something big of myself. He didn’t care what, just as long as it was more than being a farmer or a farmer’s wife.

  “When he . . .” Sofia blinked up at the ceiling. I touched her hand to let her know she didn’t have to say the words, that I knew she was saying she had lost him. I tried not to think about what that meant about Beezie.

  “After he was gone, I didn’t know what I wanted; it just fell into a shadow. So I followed what was inside him instead. I made my plans to come here. That was about a year ago, now, that I decided. I think that’s what he would have wanted.”

  “But it isn’t what you want,” I said.

  Sofia tilted her head back and forth to indicate she didn’t know.

  “All my dad wanted was for me to have the things we didn’t. But all I want is what I had. I loved watching over our farm; I loved that it was physical and mental all at once. You have to know which seeds go where, when, and which plants complement one another, and the animals; it’s like a constant equation you are working out. But then, it’s also something you do with your body. Something where you touch the ground. It takes all of you. I love that.” She smiled. “And I like the idea of my own realm. I don’t want to look at bricks.” She leaned back on her hands. “But what of it? Someone else owns our farm now.”

  I knew this feeling, from my mom, my neighbors. You could love a place as if it were a living thing.

  “I was never a very spiritual person,” Sofia said. “But I pray to him. I keep asking him to lead me and help me. I don’t know. Maybe it’s foolish, but I feel he’s here.”

  She studied Beezie, then me. “I’ll make you a pact, okay? I like you, and I think you like me. I saw Beezie and . . . it just makes me feel close to my father, to help, or at least to try. And we’ve got no one else. So we’ll be there for each other. If you think I’m so strong, you can rely on me. And I’ll do the same. We are homeless now, our families are far away. Why not have each other?”

  I felt like she was rescuing me, because I couldn’t imagine she could need me half as much as I needed her. I could only nod, too overcome to speak.

  We didn’t say good night until close to dawn. But by the time Sofia and I were done talking that morning, I believed I could survive another week in New York.

  NEXT DAY—

  One week turned into two, and two into three. Sofia made good on her promise to get me a job—this time at a garment factory along the river. But we didn’t flourish like she did. People at the stables began to request her by name. She had more work than she knew what to do with. She sometimes worked all night, out on an emergency or a birth at the stables, and would tiptoe in at dawn, nearly falling over with exhaustion. But every time she walked into the apartment she lit the rest of us up.

  She was unlike anyone I’d ever met—or ever would have if I hadn’t left Canaan. And having her with us helped me miss home a little less.

  We found a mattress and dragged it up the stairs for me and Beezie to sleep on. We started to feel a little more at home, and to let ourselves enjoy things a little.

  One afternoon all three of us went to Coney Island and ate until we wanted to burst and then rode a Ferris wheel. Beezie threw up all over me, but it was worth it. We put our feet in the ocean even though it was frigid, just to say we’d done it. Beezie screamed and ran in and out of the water, and Sofia stood beside me, shivering. We stared at the waves for ages—coming in, going out.

  “She’s getting better?” Sofia asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems about the same.”

  “Do you think you’ll go home, Cathy?” she asked. “When she is?”

  She looked nervous, waiting for my answer. I could tell she didn’t want me to go.

  “I hope so.” But, Ellis, at that moment the thought of going home made me shrink a bit inside. Like it was somewhere safer, but smaller than where I was.

  Sofia nodded. She looked like she was trying to sort out a difficult thought. “I wonder if sometimes you can miss something so much it breaks you, and still be happy you left.”

  “If anything ever happened to Beezie, I don’t think I’d ever want to see Canaan again,” I said. “Mama would never forgive me.”

  “But nothing’s going to happen,” Sofia said. It was the one time I’ve ever known her to be wrong.

  It wasn’t long after that that things turned for Beezie. One morning, she couldn’t get out of bed, and I stayed home trying all of our remedies at once. Nothing made a difference. By that night she was gasping instead of wheezing. Chest pains were making her cry. By midnight, she was delirious and sweating.

  Sofia happened to be away that night for a birth. We had no one else. I hoisted Beezie onto my back, left a frantic note, and ran twenty blocks—all the way to Mercy Hospital, stumbling several times along the way.

  As we walked in the doors, Beezie started to shake.

  The hospital was crowded and chaotic, but I pushed my way to the front of a group at the front desk. When the receptionist saw Beezie convulsing in my arms, she called a nurse.

  Beezie was terrified at that point, and flailing. She screamed for me as they tried to separate us, so I followed, my legs shaking with fear, as they rushed her down the hall. No one stopped me. They moved her to a bed and began rubbing hot cloths over her chest. When they tried to
inject her with something to stop the shaking, she fought them like a wild animal.

  The nurses were trying to hold her down when someone pushed into the room behind me, and I looked up to see Sofia sweeping past me, as if she’d been in the room a million times.

  Beezie was too delirious to notice her, she was too busy fighting, but Sofia grabbed her hands, trying to keep her from thrashing the nurses so they could do what they needed to do.

  “Beezie, how old are you?” Sofia asked, shooting me a terrified glance. “Tell me how old you are.”

  Beezie blinked up at her, choking for breath, angry tears streaming down her flushed cheeks.

  “It’s important,” Sofia said, though I couldn’t fathom why.

  “Six,” Beezie finally choked. “It hurts, Cathy!”

  “I know it hurts, Beezie, but pay attention. How many fingers?” Sofia asked, holding up three and staring at Beezie evenly, massaging her hands as one of the nurses finally managed to stick a needle in her arm.

  “Three,” Beezie said. She was calming, her breath was rattling but also slowing, though she was still writhing in pain.

  “What’s your favorite flower?” Sofia demanded.

  Beezie seemed to take in the room a little. She let a doctor remove her shirt, but her eyes kept coming back to Sofia and her firm, steady gaze.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and struggled for another deep breath.

  “Just think about it,” Sofia said. I could see it didn’t matter what the question was; she was just trying to calm her, to relax her a bit. Like she might do with an animal. I couldn’t comprehend her composure; I could barely breathe myself.

  “A lily,” Beezie said, I think because it’s one of the only flowers she knows. Mama used to grow them, remember? But not anymore.

  “I’ll tell you what, Beezie,” Sofia said, still massaging Beezie’s hands, holding her tight. “If you let the doctors work on you, I promise I’ll name my first child Lily, in honor of you.”

  Tears were still running down Beezie’s cheeks, but she seemed distracted as they pushed more needles into her arm. It was hooked to a tube and the nurse explained it would deliver antibiotics to fight the infection.

  “What if you have a son?” Beezie wheezed, after a few moments of watching the doctors fearfully.

  “He’ll be Mister Lily Ortiz,” Sofia said.

  A weak smile formed on Beezie’s lips, though she kept on shivering.

  “He won’t have your last name though,” she said. “He’ll have your husband’s.”

  Sofia’s face was firm, and she brushed aside her hair. “I’ll never give up my name,” she said.

  I’m back against the radiator again. It’s late. I need to write these last few things, and now I think I’m putting it off, because I feel like if these are the last words I get to say to you, I want to say them right.

  The hospital was full of people as badly off as we were, and so Sofia and I had to do most of the nursing. But it was the medicine that really mattered.

  For the next three days, we stayed together. We rubbed Beezie down constantly, boiled water for steam, and made her practically live under a tent of towels. I knew that I’d lose my job again, but there was no room for anything else.

  And if there is a God, he or she or it had mercy on me, and all of my mistakes, because Beezie lived anyway.

  I’ll never forget that morning. I woke before dawn and padded around her bed, trying not to wake her.

  I was still in a haze because I’d dreamt about home—Galapagos and the dead brown garden and Mama. So I was still half there in my head as I pulled on my clothes and combed my hair.

  It wasn’t until I was dressed that I noticed something wasn’t right. The place where Beezie slept was silent. No wheezing, no coughing, nothing.

  I let out a gasp as I swept across the room toward her. But she wasn’t in her bed.

  I heard her shuffle in behind me. She was holding a piece of cake she’d hornswaggled out of someone down the hall.

  She was blinking at me, and smiled at my look of shock. And then she said, “You look like somebody died.”

  I didn’t dare to write it down at first. Even now, I’m still scared to say it. It’s been seven weeks since then, and every day, little by little, Beezie is getting better.

  There are two things left to tell you, Ellis, and these are the hardest for me to write.

  One is that I’m not coming home.

  I will try to explain this to you as well as I can, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain it well enough.

  Life has moved on since that awful day at the hospital. We’ve been happy and safe and deliriously lucky. We are grateful, but we’ve also stayed unsettled and poor.

  On Sundays, Beezie and I go for walks and imagine we’re as wealthy as the people we sometimes pass on the street. We tell ourselves the city is ours. I found a new job at a factory and I work six days a week, but it’s barely enough to get by. And I think about money a lot. It’s what blew Sofia here looking for work and what blows me every day to the factory. I suppose money is partly what powered the lights Lenore went to see in London and so many of the inventions that came before and after. Money made this city grow and bustle, and it also makes it hard. I suppose money is what turned Kansas to dust.

  Beezie is made of rubber these days—or elastic. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw her—how much she’s recovered. These days she glows brighter than that ball of light I made her touch.

  Part of it is that two weeks ago, she and I got the biggest surprise of our lives. One you must already know of.

  The bell had been ringing for a good three minutes, and I was trying to wrestle Beezie into her clothes. A woman we live with was the one who answered it and came upstairs with someone behind her.

  “You have a visitor,” she said, and Beezie screamed as if it were a monster and not Mama standing on the landing with her suitcase clutched in both hands. She was such an apparition I nearly fainted myself.

  For the first time since she got them, Mama has left her precious Galapagos and her precious farm behind. She’s surprised us by coming after us.

  Beezie stuck herself onto her like a slug and has barely peeled herself off since.

  Of course, we were eager for news of home, and of you, and that’s all we talked about at first.

  I asked about you first, once we’d gotten over the initial shock, and the explanations of her arrival and how she’d come.

  Mama looked reluctant to speak, and I knew afterward she must have read my journal like I meant her to, or maybe she had known how I felt about you all along.

  She said you moved into town. She said you work at Jack’s. And that you promised to take care of Galapagos as long as she’s away. Of course, I knew instantly what you working at Jack’s could mean.

  “I think he’s angry with you, Cathy,” she said. “And Lyla’s a good girl. And he knows that. Her dad gave him a job.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I think he’s waiting to see what you do.”

  I nodded. I tried to let the jealousy settle over me all at once. Still, even right now, I am jealous of so many things. I’m jealous of the things you touch, and the blankets you sleep under, I’m jealous of Jack who gets to see you, and of course so jealous of Lyla.

  “I feel sorry for that girl,” Mama added.

  “Why?”

  Mama gave me a look. “She can’t erase you.”

  I hope this is true, Ellis, and I also don’t.

  We didn’t talk about Lenore at first. But one night after Beezie was in bed, Mama followed me onto the front stoop of the building. We sat side by side and watched people going past. For a while I was too nervous to speak, and my anger, in the reality of Mama’s presence, has dribbled away. Mama broke the silence instead.

  “I didn’t plan for it to be a secret,” she began, as if we were in the middle of a conversation we’ve been having for months. “At first you were so young, and then you lost your dad, and
I didn’t want to add this other loss too. And then I just got scared, the longer it went. There were things I regretted about her and me, that I couldn’t put into words. And I couldn’t tell you about her without them.”

  I rubbed my palms together slowly, back and forth, looking down on the street.

  “What do you want to ask me?” she said. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  I thought for a long time. “Why did you stop writing her?” I said. It was strangely the thing I wanted to know more than anything else. “Didn’t you love her anymore?”

  Mama, as if exhausted, leaned back against the wall, her brown hair falling in wisps around her face, a little disheveled but still tidy.

  “You have to understand,” she began haltingly. “Lenore was brave, and a bit intolerant, and a bit impatient. She didn’t like weakness, especially in herself. But she always stood up for me. She was bold, dazzling. She was a hero to me, larger than life.”

  She sighed, and she seemed to want to stop there. She looked at me for a moment, and then went on. “I looked up to her and idolized her. I think half the reason I got engaged so fast was so she’d think I was having this exciting life in America, when really I was lost without her. All that time I was so homesick, but I’d never tell her that.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why, when we were kids, I had to tell her everything that was wrong with her . . . and always had to act like I had something figured out that she didn’t. It’s like I wanted to pull her back to my level—the level of the small, scared person I could be. I didn’t want her to find out I couldn’t keep up. Even when she was grieving, it felt like she was going through something more important than I could ever grasp. That’s how big she was in my mind.”

  “I understand,” I said bitterly. “You were jealous of her.”

  “No.” Mama shook her head, her mouth tightening. “Not jealous. I didn’t want to be left behind.” She laid her face against her hands for a moment and then pulled back. “It’s strange, isn’t it, how we can push people away because we want to be near them? Isn’t that the silliest thing?” She smiled ruefully. “All these years trying to change it, and I’ve still been a timid person. What I should have done for Beezie . . . and let you do instead . . .”