The porch was relatively small and felt crowded with all the potted plants on it. How had they not withered and died in the excruciating heat? Then again, I had seen an orange tree in the small courtyard, and it didn’t look dead. The plants bloomed in varying shades of green and yellow, and some even sported small clusters of flowers.
During my overview of the plants, I noticed a glass bowl with water sitting next to the door. Three limes floated on the surface.
“What’s with the limes?” I asked my mother.
She looked down to where I pointed and pursed her lips. “That’s not good.”
“What’s not good?”
The knob on the front door turned and I forgot about the heat, the plants, the limes. The door opened a few inches, an old woman’s head appeared behind the screen. I peered around my mother to get a better look, but the screen door obscured the woman’s face. She muttered something in Spanish that I didn’t understand.
“Mamá!” My mother said before she released a rampant flow of foreign words.
The woman opened the door a little more and peered around my mother. She nodded toward me with her head and then turned to my mother and said something in Spanish. My mother replied with more alien words, but somewhere in the flow I caught my name. The woman shook her head back and forth and turned slowly away. She left the door wide open as she walked into the house. My mother opened the screen door, picked up my suitcase and entered. She turned to see if I followed.
“Goodness, Martha, stop standing there. Get inside.”
“Since when do you speak Spanish?”
I had never heard my mother utter one word in Spanish my whole life, not even to the Puerto Rican and Cuban staff she used to work with at diners. And here she was, speaking as if it had been a daily practice. How could she have kept this secret from me? Instead of answering, she ignored me and disappeared into the house. I caught the screen door before it closed, released a huff of anger and followed her in.
As soon as I stepped through the door, I was overcome by a variety of odors. A mixture of something spicy and hot and a hint of musk, like the house hadn’t been aired out in years. It took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the dim lighting. I found myself standing in a small living room. On the opposite wall sat an old yellow couch with a brown coffee table in front of it. A shag carpet covered the floor. It might have been brown or a light brown and had darkened over the years with dirt and wear.
Next to the couch sat a blue, oscillating fan that pushed the hot air around the room. Another one sat in the far right corner. Tiny figurines, plates with pictures of angels, God, Jesus and Mary littered every shelf and table, even the floor. I stood in a small, Christian shrine. I looked around trying to take in every little object—a three-foot wooden statue of Mary holding a baby Jesus in the corner, the quilted blanket that lay folded on the corner of the couch, the many-colored candles halfway melted in their decorative holders.
My mother’s voice interrupted my inspection of the house. “Martha, come into the kitchen. I want you to meet your grandmother. And close the door, you’re letting the heat in!”
The heat was already in the house. I expected to be hit by the cold from an air conditioner as soon as I stepped in, but found ten-year-old fans instead, and they didn’t do much to cool the house down. Regardless, I turned and pulled the door closed. I would have locked it, but there wasn’t anything to lock.
My focus went to the doorway that my mother had disappeared through. Sunlight streamed into the dimly lit living room, causing the miniature, crystal statues on a table to sparkle. I couldn’t walk through. My grandmother was in the kitchen. My grandmother, a woman I had never met. My doubts had returned and had frozen my feet. My mother spoke on the other side. If my grandmother responded, I didn’t hear.
I took a deep breath and the ice that froze my feet melted a little. You got this, Martha. My heart beat faster and faster as I walked through the doorway and into the kitchen. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t the burning smell of chilies. My eyes watered a bit, and through the tears I had my first look at the kitchen.
It had been painted a sunny yellow—a yellow kitchen in a Pepto-Bismol house. Everything in it had been painted varying shades of yellow: the walls, the chairs, the table, the cabinets—even the little hand towels were white and yellow. The only non-yellow things in the kitchen were the worn-out tan, floor tiles, the white linoleum counters and a large, square-shaped, white fan that sat on the table and blew a warm breeze.
During my overview of the kitchen, I spotted a few green peppers on a cutting board on the counter. A knife lay beside the board, just used and dotted with the seeds of the peppers. Strings of red and orange chili peppers hung on the opposite wall. Next to the chilies stood a door with a window from which the evening light shone. More pots filled with odd-looking shrubs and trees crowded around the door, making the kitchen appear smaller than it already was.
My mother, who leaned against one of the kitchen counters, broke the silence. “Honey, this is your abuela, María.” She gestured to the tiny brown woman sitting in a yellow chair in front of me. Her hands were clasped in her lap and her lips were pursed as she watched my mother with suspicious eyes.
“My what?” I asked.
My mother laughed nervously. “Your grandmother, honey. Abuela means grandmother. Your first Spanish word.” She gave me the Big Fake and gestured once more to the lady in front of me.
Even though my mother said it slowly, I couldn’t have repeated it back if someone had asked me to. My brain clouded out the Spanish, leaving me without a word to grasp onto.
As I turned from my mother to my grandmother, my palms began to sweat at my sides. The woman in front of me stood up and appeared to be studying me. I didn’t know whether to say hello or to give her a hug, although I didn’t really want to do that. She was a stranger. She walked toward me, stopping a foot away.
My grandmother didn’t reach my shoulders. I had to be more than a foot taller than her and her stocky figure made her appear even shorter. Her large breasts stretched against her thin, white blouse, and her large thighs stretched her orange pants tight. She tilted her head to study my face, and as she studied mine, I studied hers.
Her dark brown skin stood in stark contrast to her long, white hair, twined into a single French braid down her back. Her bushy eyebrows were the same color, and went every which way. As she studied me, she sucked on her teeth, and as she did this, her wrinkles moved up and down, revealing pale, crisscrossed lines between her wrinkles where the sun hadn’t tanned.
My mother had a small, button nose. I had always wondered if I had inherited my father’s nose, but looking at my grandmother now, I discovered the truth: she and I both had the same long, slender nose with a round tip and a small hook on the end. She even had a few age spots covering the bridge of her nose—the same place my freckles covered. She and my mother shared the same lips: small in width and slightly pointed at the peaks. Unlike my grandmother, my mother smeared hers with cheap, red lipstick. My grandmother’s eyes were the only pretty thing about her. The irises, honey brown, shone with youth and knowledge.
I guess she had finished studying my face, because she began to waddle around me, looking me up and down. I felt like a prized pig on display for a purchaser. I turned to my mother behind me and mouthed: What is she doing? Luckily my grandmother’s height kept her from seeing. My mother batted her hand at me as if to say, “Don’t worry.” I rolled my eyes and turned around to find that my grandmother had finished. She gave me one last look, her right eye squinting as if she could see me better that way, and then she mumbled something in Spanish under her breath. She shuffled over to the peppers, picked up the knife and began chopping.
I turned around, confused at my grandmother’s behavior. My mother whispered to sit down. I let out a sigh and walked to one of the chairs. A hollow feeling grew in my gut.
My grandmother didn’t even speak to me. I felt like something to b
e measured or studied. Did she not like what she saw? And why didn’t she speak to me or hug me or something? I didn’t think grandmothers behaved this way the first time they met their granddaughters.
My mother, without noticing my hurt feelings, spoke to my grandmother in Spanish. While she continued to chop her peppers. She never once looked at my mother. When my grandmother replied, her tone suggested that she didn’t care one way or another about whatever my mother said. My mother’s voice rose and she began to speak faster. She sounded like an angry woodpecker compared to my soft spoken, nonchalant grandmother. At one point my grandmother even put down her knife and flicked her wrist backwards at my mother making a psht sound. I almost dropped dead. My mother had inherited that gesture from her own mother. I held onto my hand in fear that I would begin to do the same.
My mother actually grew quiet when my grandmother made that sound. I watched as she took a deep breath and controlled her anger. She looked once more at the old woman and pleaded for something in Spanish. I assumed she begged my grandmother to let us stay. My grandmother replied tersely. I grew impatient and a little bored with the exchange. I wanted a shower, a bed to fall asleep in and something to eat. My stomach growled at the thought of food.
My grandmother’s response silenced my mother. She nodded her head Okay and then pushed herself off the counter. I stood up immediately.
Great, we were going to have to sleep in our car in Little Mexico. I couldn’t wash my hair in another gross gas station bathroom! I never cried, but I felt like crying then. Earlier I had thought this small house unsafe in a scary neighborhood, it now appeared to me as a four-star hotel.
My mother plastered the Big Fake across her face, but it faltered when she looked at me. “Honey, you look scared.” She rubbed the top of my arm.
“What are you doing?”
She drew her hand back and crossed her arms beneath her chest.
“We’re leaving, right?” I asked.
“No, of course not. Your grandmother is excited to get to know her granddaughter. And she’s making a special dinner just for you!” The corner of her lips rose, as if she thought smiling bigger helped.
“I doubt that,” I muttered.
“Well, believe it, honey. You and your grandmother are going to become so close. Now, you sit down. I’m going to go use the ladies room.”
“You didn’t need to announce that.”
I sat back down in the chair. With a smirk still on her face, she backed up toward a doorway I assumed opened to a hallway to the rest of the house. I had to do a double take, because she wasn’t giving me the Big Fake anymore. Her smile almost looked genuine. Which freaked me out.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing, honey. Love you.” She winked and disappeared through the doorway.
It always made me uncomfortable to hear my mother say the ‘L’ word to me. I glanced over at my grandmother, who still stood with her back to me. Something had changed: she had stopped chopping. She still clutched the knife, but her head hung down and her body had stilled. Then after a moment, she took a deep breath. Her back rose and, when she released the breath, she began to chop the peppers again.
I watched my grandmother as she continued to cook, suppressing all the uneasy feelings that assaulted me. I sat quietly in my chair, unsure if my grandmother even knew I sat behind her.
When she finished chopping the peppers, my grandmother stood on her tiptoes, opened a cabinet and pulled out a jar of white rice. She shuffled to the stove, which already had a large pot sitting on it. She sat the rice down and turned one of the knobs. From a pocket, she pulled out a match, lit it and placed it by the burner, allowing it to catch fire. I had never seen a stove that wasn’t electrical. My mother never cooked anyway, and at an early age, I became a protégé of the microwave. My grandmother’s kitchen lacked that magical food cooker, which made me a little uneasy. Regardless, I continued to watch my grandmother with something like fascination, since no one had ever really cooked for me or in front of me. She poured some rice into the pot, pulled a wooden spoon from a drawer and moved the rice around with it.
After watching her tend to the rice my attention wandered around the kitchen. Bright sunlight poured in through a window. It almost made me forget the stark, scary neighborhood that surrounded the house. For a moment, I felt safe with this stout woman, until the silence was broken by some shouts in Spanish, the slamming of a car door and the screech of tires on the road.
I jumped in my chair as my heart sped up. Yeah . . . safe my ass. If I didn’t get attacked by a creepy Mexican guy, I’d sure as hell get run over. My grandmother didn’t look up or hesitate at the sound, just continued to brown the rice.
It took my grandmother pouring the tomato sauce, water and spices into the pot for the realization to hit me. I wanted to stand up and march around demanding answers. I watched my grandmother pull out a bowl of already cooked chicken from the fridge, tear it into pieces and throw the pieces into the boiling pot. Her calm movements only infuriated the storm within me.
It had been long enough already. I knew this day would come sometime in my life, I just never expected it to be then. I thought it would be my decision, not my mother’s. The too-many times the thought had entered my mind before, I had locked it away. Things might have been easier for me if I hadn’t been in denial, but perhaps they weren’t meant to be easier.
It wasn’t until my grandmother sat a plate of rice and chicken and a mug of white milk in front of me, that everything came together, that I allowed the truth to hit me, gave it permission to cut right through me. The slammed door, the car, the screech, the yell, the Big Fakes, the “Love you,” her suitcases.
Suddenly, my hunger vanished.
Dos
BLACK EYES, pain in my chest, no air. I clawed at my throat to no avail. I couldn’t breathe. Darkness bearing down on me. Skin on fire. I raked my nails across my skin trying to push the flames away. Her finger pointed at me and her black eyes stared me down. Her midnight-colored hair whipped around her head in a fiery wind. Then, through the tornado of flames, she yelled words in a language that made my skin crawl, and with the last foreign sound that slipped from her mouth, I screamed—my body buried in fire.
I jolted awake to the smell of onions and my own sweat. My breath came out in gasps, and I couldn’t get enough air. Those eyes, that girl from the porch; for someone I had only seen for a few moments, she had stuck with me to the point that she showed up in my dreams. After a few minutes I calmed down, and then my real life nightmare hit me. It was dark, early Saturday morning. Only eight or so hours after my mother had abandoned me to my grandmother, a total stranger, in Laredo.
Why the hell would she freaking leave me here? Gave me the Big Fake all day! I should have known she was up to something. I wanted to scream and punch the bed over and over and imagine it was her face with its stupid, red, lipstick and stupid, pale skin and then tear out her fake, blonde hair and show everyone what a real bitch she was. Who leaves their daughter with a stranger? It wasn’t like I was a burden—I took care of her, mostly. I didn’t want to be here with some Mexican lady who didn’t speak English. I’d rather suffer my mother’s fake-bull-shitting self.
Placing both of my hands on my forehead, I squeezed hard trying not to think about what had happened yesterday, but not trying to think about it only made me think about it more. I needed a distraction.
I sat up, looked around the bedroom and almost dropped dead. Easter egg purple walls? Really, Grandma? At the foot of the bed, three candles burned on a small dresser, giving off a faint glow in the tacky-colored room. A blue candle had been placed at the top, a red candle on the left side and a green candle on the lower right corner. Something round sat in front of the candles, but I couldn’t see what it was from the bed.
Small, gold and brown picture frames surrounded the candles. Most of the pictures were of Jesus and Mary, but there were a few black and white photographs of people I didn’t know. Crosses hung abo
ve the doorway and over the closet door to the left of the bed.
I fingered the fringe on the four blankets that covered me. No wonder I had been sweating. My grandmother must have placed these blankets on me after I had fallen asleep. No air-conditioning in this house, and she thought four blankets was a good idea? I shoved them to the foot of the bed but left the sheet covering my legs.
The tendrils of sleep spread through my body again, my bad dream and real-life nightmare mostly gone from my thoughts. I let myself fall backwards toward the pillow, but what I saw on the wall above me made me jump back up.
“Holy shit!” I scrambled to the edge of the bed.
Bloodied feet nailed to wood, and the somber face of a man dripping with blood peered down at me. The pale face and tears shone bright in the dark room. Hanging above the bed was the largest cross I had ever seen. It was porcelain or a hard plastic, something shiny. Jesus hung on a four-and-a-half-foot-tall cross, his pale arms stretched two feet wide. The thick rivulets of blood flowed down his cheeks and over the contours of his angular face. The artist had thought it best to add the gruesome ripping of his flesh around the head of the nails.
Weren’t religious items supposed to be comforting? Jesus Loves You and all? Suddenly, the room felt cold, and I pulled the blankets back over me. I decided to sleep on the far end of the bed for the rest of the morning in case Jesus fell on me. I could see the headlines now: Death by Jesus.
The onion smell grew stronger now that I sat at the end of the bed. I searched for the culprit until I finally found a small, purple onion that had been cut in half and placed against a picture of Mary. A cross had also been carved out of the onion. That nervous feeling that had begun in my stomach grew more and more. Who was this woman my mother had left me with? For that matter, where was my mother?
I laid my head on the crook of my arm as salty tears pooled beneath my eyelids.
Secrets of the Casa Rosada Page 2
