“What do you think?” Juan challenged. “You’re not so damn innocent.”
“It’s a sin! Our church and God forbid it!”
“Jesuschrist! What the hell do they teach about divorce?” Gloria demanded.
Amalia frowned. God understood that!
“Dammit, do you ever face anything?” Gloria’s words rushed out with renewed rage. “Nothing at all?”
“I don’t face lies!” Amalia shouted back.
Gloria shook her head. “You don’t even see what’s happening right under your eyes with Raynaldo—” She stopped.
Juan looked in surprise at his sister. “What—?”
What had she been about to say?… That elusive memory again! It had touched Amalia briefly—that memory of hope. Why now, in these terrible moments? Why did she remember herself as a girl, Gloria’s age, a time when there was another girl, the same age, dressed in white …? “You’re going to lie to me, Gloria, you’ve been wanting to do that for some time,” Amalia said. She scanned the house Raynaldo had made possible.
“What were you going to say, Gloria?” Juan asked his sister tensely.
Gloria pressed her lips.
“Gloria?” Juan prodded.
“I wasn’t going to say nothing,” Gloria said.
The evasive memory soothed Amalia during these taut moments: She had been standing by the door in the house she worked in, for rich Mexicans in El Paso, and the girl, her age, dressed in white, held a bouquet; she was a quinceanera, a fifteen year old, making her coming-out. But Amalia often remembered that. What else did the memory contain? Oh, yes, the girl’s mother had been there, and she said—
Juan’s voice had become steely: “What about Raynaldo, Gloria?”
Why is Juan staring at me? Amalia wondered.… Then the insistent memory mixed with the darkness of a filthy corridor, where Salvador thrust her onto the floor and—How did that connect to the memory of the quinceanera?—and to even a tinge of hope!
“I told you. Nothing,” Gloria answered Juan. She adjusted her tiny blouse over the bared middle. She returned the knife to her boot.
“What the hell were you about to say, Gloria!” Juan demanded.
Gloria’s head snapped back. “Raynaldo’s been coming on to me—! Just touching me,” she added quickly.
“I’ll kill that motherfucker!” Juan said.
“You won’t have to, ‘cause if he ever again—” Gloria looked at her hand as if she still held the penknife.
Amalia felt her heart had been stifled. At the same time that she wanted to hold her daughter, to protect her—from everything, everything!—she wanted to slap her, for lying, for begrudging her … some peace…. Then, out of the still-wafting memory, she remembered that the quinceanera’s bouquet had been white-and-pink carnations. Then a dark memory inundated that one, and she remembered the rancid flowers in the garbage near the door of the dank corridor where Salvador had pushed himself into her…. “I don’t believe you, Gloria,” Amalia said. How could she believe that—about the man who was going to marry her, lighten her worries permanently?—a man who cared for her, yes, loved her, was kind to her, the only one who had never even threatened to strike her, a good provider—and who loved her children…. The rent would be overdue, the bills unpaid, she would lie awake trying to figure out what to do—and they needed a father! … “He probably just tried to hug you, didn’t he?—and you misunderstood, didn’t you? He’s an affectionate man, I know that. He loves you like a father.” She felt a sudden resurgence of the nausea she had felt earlier, with the brujos. “He just tried to hug you, like a father, didn’t he, Gloria?”
Gloria said, “Yeah, that’s all. That’s how it was.”
Juan held his eyes on Amalia.
Puzzled, Amalia looked at her two children. She must force herself to stay in control. She had to thwart their stares at her. “I’ve tried to make the house pretty,” she said. “I’ve tried to make a good life for you.”
“Yeah,” Gloria said, “it’s fucking beautiful here.”
Juan laughed harshly.
Could all the closeness have evaporated, just like that? Had it even existed? Amalia’s brief composure broke. “Maybe it’s not beautiful, but it’s a homel—and Raynaldo made it possible. My husband has made it possible, remember that!”
“Your lover!” Juan yelled at her. “And what do your church and God think of that?”
“My husband,” Amalia asserted.
“You honestly think we believe that crap about you and Raynaldo suddenly getting married, don’t you?” Juan said.
“We did get married!”
“Jesuschrist! You think we’ve never heard you talk about when his divorce is final?—it’s a small house, remember?” Gloria said.
“You defended me when Teresa said I wasn’t married,” Amalia reminded them of their loyalty then. And just minutes earlier? Had she misinterpreted that?
“We grew up!” Gloria thrust at her.
“Goddamn it, Mother, can’t you face anything? Nothing?” Juan seemed to plead. “Can’t you see you were trying to force me to lie about myself?—and that you did force Gloria to lie?”
“She did lie.” Amalia stood very straight.
“Jesuschrist, Jesuschrist,” Juan shook his head.
“And I want you to tell me that you lied, too, when you said you were a—”
“Fuck off!”
“How dare you speak that language to me?” She raised her hand before her son. She had never slapped her children, never.
His own hand shot up.
She stared at it in shock.
Juan looked startled at his raised hand. “I was just going to stop you from hitting me,” he said softly.
“I have never hit you.”
His face darkened. He turned his hand over, palm up, toward her. “You want to burn my hand, Mom, like you did Manny’s?”
Amalia did not know whether she would ever be able to breathe normally again. “It was an accident,” she said.
“You held his hand over the burner.” Juan’s eyes seemed black. “Manny told me and Gloria.”
“Never! My son never said one word against me!”
“Just once, ‘Amá.” Juan’s voice was subdued now. “After he ran away, the morning he came back.”
Amalia remembered that morning, barely morning, dawn. Manny had sat in the kitchen, his words a dazed whisper, telling her those strange stories. Now, for several moments, an eternity of despair, she could not speak. When she did, her voice was hushed, strange even to her. She faced Juan. “He was on drugs that morning,” she said in an even tone. “He didn’t know what he was saying.” Automatically she had reached for her purse, had already brought out the letter in which Manny expressed his love. “Listen to what your brother wrote to me in his last letter: ‘My dearest mamacita—I love you with all my heart—”
“Why don’t you read the whole damn letter, why do you just read words from it?” Juan said.
“I’ve read it all to you.” She could hardly hear her own words.
“No, you haven’t.” Gloria stood with her brother.
Amalia looked at her son and daughter accusing her. “You went through my purse.”
“Yes,” Juan said.
“To steal from me.” That was preferable to believing they had wanted to verify the words she had read.
“No. To read Manny’s letter.”
“And we did,” Gloria said quietly.
Amalia sighed, just sighed.
Then Juan said softly, almost as if he were pleading now, “’Amá … ‘Amita … are you ever going to face that Manny—?” He stopped, as if waiting for her reaction.
Amalia’s body had turned rigid. Juan was about to make a monstrous accusation. She knew it, even knew what it would be. She had to stop it, no matter how. “Puto!” she shouted at her son.
He reeled back.
“What the hell did you call him?” Gloria demanded.
Amalia could not repeat
the despised word. She had never used it before, never even thought it, a word even more demeaning than “queer,” much harsher.
“You’re the puta, mother!” Gloria shouted at her. “You’re the fucking bitch-whore.”
Amalia lashed her hand ferociously across her daughter’s face.
Gloria almost fell back. Quickly she recovered. She slapped Amalia with all her force—and then again.
Juan grabbed his sister. “Gloria!”
Stunned, Amalia touched her face in surprise. But why did the palm of her hand hurt much more than her cheek? She looked at Gloria and Juan as if they would answer that question.
Gloria pulled away from her brother. She screamed at Amalia: “You left our father and you were with one of your men when you burned Manny’s hand!”
Teresa had told them that, discovered it somehow, somehow—it couldn’t have been her son, not her beloved Manny, Amalia knew that. And should she tell Gloria that her father had walked out because her brother was about to be born and that he didn’t even know she existed? No, she would never speak that. “I’ve been a good mother,” she heard herself say.
“No, you haven’t!” Gloria screamed at her. “You have not been a good mother!”
Amalia’s heart died. My daughter and my son hate me, she thought. They know nothing about me, nothing about the tenements, freezing rooms, garbage, beatings, the rape, more beatings. And they remember nothing, not about how I took them with me when I went looking for work; they don’t remember they were never hungry because I saw to it, and that I was always protecting them. They know nothing about me, she thought in surprise; and she could not tell them anything because it was impossible to speak.
She looked away from her son and her daughter and she stared at a crack in the wall. It looked like a scar, white, jagged. She heard sounds of traffic from outside. There was loud music. She looked back at Juan and Gloria, still facing her. Yes, they hate me. Haven’t they ever understood that I’ve always wanted a father for them?—more than anything else.
The look of rage faded, and Gloria took a step toward her mother. “‘Amá, I’m—” Then she ran crying out of the house.
Juan stood before Amalia. He extended his hand toward her. “‘Amá,” he said softly. “‘Amita,” he started again, and then, pausing for long moments, he walked slowly away after his sister.
Amalia could hear their voices outside. She heard Gloria’s sobs. Then the voices and the sobs faded, moving away.
Amalia sat on the patched couch. The world is coming apart, she thought. I am coming apart.
And then the full memory that had eluded her entered her mind: That distant afternoon, the quinceanera’s mother had said to her, “My daughter is fifteen, your age, Amalia, the most beautiful age for a pure girl, the beginning of adulthood, she’ll be pure for her husband, she’ll wear my own wedding dress.” She put her hand tenderly on Amalia: “You should have a quinceanera celebration, too. Look how pretty you are, tell your mother that I’ll help her out so you can have one.” Amalia exulted: I will be a quinceanera, and then I can have a white wedding, like Teresa’s, I’ll wear the dress she saved for me. It was then that Amalia decided she would pull out of her body the hideous impurity that Salvador had forced into her. She went home and she threw herself on the floor over and over until she felt the terrible moisture flowing from her legs with blood. Even as she moaned with pain, she knew, I’m pure again, now I can have a white wedding. As she passed out, the pain dissolved and she was the happiest that she had ever been.
“Amalia—” Raynaldo had walked into the stucco bungalow.
Amalia looked at him, this heavyset man with a full mustache pricked with white hairs. She stood up.
Raynaldo put his hands on her shoulders, his fingers inching toward her breasts. He kissed her. “I’ve missed you, my beautiful Amalia, I’m sorry about last night, it was nothing. I love my Amalia, my lush Amalia,” he said.
She pulled away from him. “Lárgate, desgraciado,” she said. “Get out of my house, you bastard.”
“Your house? / pay most of the rent.”
“You won’t anymore,” she said. “Get out. Don’t ever even dare to look at my daughter again.” She waited for him to demand an explanation, to protest.
Without a word, he walked past her, into the bedroom. She heard him gathering his clothes.
So it was true. She had wanted it not to be. But it was. Would Gloria have used her knife on him? If she herself had had one in that rancid hallway would she have been able to use it on Salvador—or would she still have frozen with terror?
“Amalia?” Raynaldo paused with his clothes.
There were tears in his eyes—the first time she had seen him cry. “Lárgate, desgraciado. Don’t ever come back,” she ordered.
He sighed a long sigh of loss.
And the only man she was sure had ever loved her was gone.
Amalia sat down again. After she had flushed out the child conceived near garbage in a rotten hallway, she lay in a rumpled bed, and she saw Teresa, who stood before her dressed in black. For a feverish moment Amalia thought she was the Mother of Sorrows.
“I’m clean again, ‘Amita,” Amalia managed to say. “I can wear your wedding dress.”
Teresa shook her head solemnly. “You’re doubly filthy. You allowed that man to enter your body and you killed your own child.” She held a rosary, and her lips quivered.
In her stifling bungalow unit in Hollywood, Amalia remembered Teresa’s next words: “Never ask God for anything. Be grateful that He’s even permitted you to live.”
12
ALLOWED ONLY NOW into her mind but always there like a dark weight since they had first been spoken, Teresa’s words stagnated in the dull heat of Hollywood as Amalia sat on her couch. They stayed like a curse, those words, and so did the ghostly black-veiled image of Teresa, which had faded, that day, into that of the Mother of Sorrows. Now Amalia did what she had done that distant day, what she had done instinctively throughout the years—but she recognized this only now—whenever a sense of the hopelessness she accepted as part of her life threatened to crush her. She closed her eyes to blot out the dark image and evoke another of the cherished Blessed Mother with hands outstretched, not clenched in grief. That always reassured her that however dismal her life became, she was being watched over.
But on this day she was not soothed. The pain of Teresa’s words stayed, powerful, entrenched, suffocating.
Only a miracle can save us now.
Those words flowed into Amalia’s mind. Where had she heard that? Oh, Ti’ita had said it at the end of this morning’s installment of “Camino al Sueño.” On her couch, Amalia felt the beginning of a new weariness. Had it ever been possible to find a real father for her children? That question remained on the surface of her mind, as if its answer might resolve everything.
Did God understand why she had never asked for anything since she had hoped for the impossible? She had always assumed His total understanding of her. Could it be that He had not understood? The thought shocked her. Even so, the Holy Mother would have explained to Him. Had the Holy Mother mistaken her not asking as a lack of faith? Did she wait to be asked?… What would I ask for? That my children come back so I can hold them, she thought. But something that natural—and the Miraculous Mother would know its naturalness—should not require a miracle.
The shattered day taunted Amalia with its early promise, which continued to stir strange longings. Only a miracle can save us now. From what? From today, she answered herself. From my life.
She ordered her thoughts to halt. But others flowed over them with added sadness. You are not a good mother! Gloria’s words resounded in her mind. In protest, Amalia tried to resurrect the moments when her children had defended her with such passion.… Had she misunderstood all that? Had it all been anger at Mick, not support of her? That added to her sadness—You are not a good mother…. She had slapped her daughter, for the first time. It didn’t diminish her regret
to remember that her daughter had slapped her.
She had to go out! Leave this house echoing with anger. She would go … Just out!
Pausing only to pick up her purse, she left the stucco bungalow.
Darkening shadows would soon surrender to dusk. On this hot day the sun would loiter on the horizon, phosphorescent orange, strange behind the gathering evening.
Amalia walked familiar blocks. Yard sales had ended, unsold items left outside to become new garbage. She walked past walls scarred with graffiti. She passed the playground where the boy had been killed earlier. She tried not to glance at the crumbling, darkened courtyard where the old woman had confronted her this morning among boys lingering in the shadows of rotting trees.
Days ago, in a periodic city ritual, men mounted on mechanical ladders had sawed off shaggy dead under-leaves of palm trees that lined the streets. The trees looked renewed—Amalia searched for signs of resurrection anywhere—but they also looked even more indifferent to her, with their trimmed branches held so high. No trees in the world should appear to be ignoring you.
A slight vibration—
Holding her breath, Amalia stopped abruptly. Was it an—? That was how earthquakes began, with a slight tremor, a smothered rumbling, and then followed eternal sounds during which the muffled roar stopped or exploded. Amalia looked about the street. Nothing was shaking. Perhaps there had been only a small earthquake. It reassured her when she heard that those small stirrings might relieve some of the pressure under the earth, but it frightened her to hear that they might also augur a much greater one soon after.
She wandered back onto Sunset Boulevard, to see life, other lives she didn’t have to worry about. Weekend traffic would soon clog the boulevard. She sat on a bus bench.
Gloria and Juan did not know she had sent Raynaldo away!
That would prove her love to them! The thought acted like a balm on her. Of course, and when they knew that she had sent Raynaldo away, for them, they would realize what a good mother she had been, and was—She was sure they would realize that. And then instantly she wasn’t. Only a miracle could give her the strength to understand all that had occurred today, and to face—What!