by Alisa Valdes
I have to wait until this latest wave of nausea subsides before I go downstairs to breakfast with my husband. I sit down on the chaise lounge chair in the corner of the master bath by the sunken Jacuzzi and try to focus on the latest issue of Ella. I try to keep my mind off the way the room has started to spin. I’ve tried everything, even wearing those “sea bands” on my wrists, but nothing helps. I’m a little surprised Roberto hasn’t noticed I’m not feeling well. He seems occupied with this big case he’s on. It’s probably going to drag on until March, he says. The stress is killing him. I hope he wins. If he loses, ay, chica.
I try to read an article about adding romance to one’s love life. I’m not sure what’s happened to our love life, honestly. No enthusiasm, you know what I’m saying? Roberto used to be able to keep going for an hour or more when we were younger, but it’s gotten fast and faster with us, until now it’s like we might as well be doing it alone or something, because it’s so automatic and functional, trying to make this baby. I’d like more romance, some candles and smooth music. The article in Ella suggests a few tricks involving love notes and red rose petals. Roberto would laugh if I tried any of them.
Another pregnancy probably won’t spice things up in that department. Roberto is already disappointed in the weight I gained with the last pregnancy—five permanent pounds for each boy, and now this new weight. He lets me know his lack of desire is related to my size so often that now I won’t do it unless I can keep a T-shirt over me so he can think of Salma Hayek. I wasn’t big to begin with, though, and my doctor says my weight is fine. I am five-foot-five and weigh 145 pounds. Dr. Fisk says this is actually a perfect weight for my size. I tell her Roberto would like to see me drop a few pounds, and she frowns. She asked about the bruises on my back once, and I told her that I’d fallen on the ice. She looked at me for a long time behind her eyeglasses and asked if there were human hands on the ice. I didn’t answer and she didn’t push.
I stare at the same photograph of Benjamin Bratt with that scraggly goatee in the “men” section of Ella and wait to feel better. Why is everybody always talking about how handsome this guy is? I don’t see it. Me, I prefer Russell Crowe, a real man, a tough guy. Benjamin Bratt looks like he’d snap in two if you hugged him too tight. I get up, but then I have to sit back down. I feel like I’ve been riding my sons’ Sit ‘n Spin. I’ve had to learn to act, chica, with this pregnancy. Maybe I should just tell everyone and get it over with. It’s so hard to seem like I feel fine with the boys, to hold them and carry them around the way five-year-olds like, to ferry them around on my back, neighing like a caballo. I get so tired at times I feel like I’m going to die. When you have nausea like this all the time, you can’t think straight.
I’m scared out of my mind, chica. I’m remembering labor and delivery and it isn’t pretty. I had the twins naturally and they sliced an episiotomy in me that I thought would kill me; the pain of that thing healing all red and raw down there was worse than the labor itself. I swore I’d never do that again, and now here I am, with no way out. I manage to get up and go to my closet and open the floral storage box I have set aside for all my pregnancy things. I’ve also got some books in there: What to Expect When You’re Expecting; Diet for a Fit Pregnancy; Funding Your Kid’s College 101; Best Jewish Baby Names; things like that. I never threw them out, just in case there would be more. The sea bands are in here, too, though I should just throw the useless things away.
Roberto won’t find all this because there are so many dainty boxes in here, and he’s not the kind of man to take much interest in things with flowered paper on them. He’s the kind of man who leaves his clothes on the floor wherever he has removed them, knowing someone else will pick them up.
I undress and examine my belly in the mirrors all around the large bathroom; it’s essentially the same size as always. I didn’t really “show” with the boys until the fourth or fifth month—and that was with twins. I watch what I eat. But Roberto’s right. I could stand to exercise. I’m a little soft, especially my upper arms. I don’t like exercise, though. It makes me feel sick. I honestly feel better when I don’t exercise. Now that I’m pregnant, though, I think I’ll have to start working out. It’s good for the baby. That’s what all the books say. And I’m not sure the marriage can stand for me to gain another permanent five pounds. He has come close to strangling me for wearing the wrong thing. He can get that stupid. There’s no telling what Roberto might do.
I step into the shower and stand in the middle, letting all five heads strike me. I wonder if I’ll have to stop showering in here now that I’m pregnant. We didn’t have this shower with the other pregnancy. It’s new. The whole bathroom is remodeled. That was my payment for the time he got mad about the scratch on the side of the Land Rover. I don’t know where the scratch came from. I took the boys to see a movie at the Chestnut Hill cinema, and when we came back out, it was there. Roberto was very mad. It’s a nice bathroom.
These side jets are pretty strong, intended to help massage tension out of your muscles. I don’t want to hurt the baby. I’ll have to use another shower, I guess. I’ll ask Dr. Fisk. I put a hand over my lower belly and finish the shower, then get out and get dressed in the khaki pants and oversized white button-down shirt I picked out last night, fix my hair and makeup, tie a pink sweater around my shoulders, and head downstairs.
Roberto is still here, with his dark green eyes and shiny brown hair, handsome in his dark blue suit and white shirt and yellow tie, reading the newspaper. He has good taste in clothes all on his own, and rejects my offers to pick things out for him. He wants to do it himself, and that’s understandable. Would you want someone else dressing you? I wouldn’t. Vilma is wearing her powder blue work uniform embroidered with the name we chose for our house, “Windowmere.” Her white hair is pulled back in a tight bun and held in place with a hairnet. She’s busy wiping down the counters, and shows no sign of emotion or thought on her face. She tried to intervene during one of Roberto’s tantrums, right after she first got here, but I had a talk with her afterward and asked her to please just stay out of it and concentrate on her work. My counters gleam.
“Buenos días, mi amor,” Roberto says, standing up to greet me and planting a kiss on my cheek. He is tall, my husband, taller than any other Cuban I’ve ever met, topping six-three. When we’re home, we always speak in Spanish. Vilma doesn’t speak English. Actually, she speaks more than she lets on, just like my dad, but she doesn’t use it unless she absolutely has to. She likes people to think she doesn’t speak English. She learns a lot about people that way.
“Buenos días, señora,” Vilma says with a light bow of her head. I don’t know when she started calling me that, exactly. “Ma’am.” It feels weird, and I’ve asked her before to call me Sarita, like she used to when I was a little girl. I love when she does that. But she says it’s not fitting. So you can see who’s in charge around here—and it isn’t me or Roberto.
Amber and Lauren give me a hard time about Vilma, accuse me of having a slave. It’s a joke, right, but they do it anyway. I’m the only one of the sucias with a live-in maid, but that’s the way we do it in Miami, and it’s the way I like it. Vilma would be lost without us. Her daughter in El Salvador comes to visit now and then, but they don’t seem very close. Vilma loves us like her own family. The sucias don’t understand that, especially the ones that grew up poor. They think I’m running a plantation. They didn’t grow up with Vilma, and they don’t know that she’s la que manda in our house.
“Buenos días,” I say, going out of my way to appear cheerful and healthy and normal.
“What are you so happy about?” Roberto asks as he sits back down. I sit across from him in the breakfast nook and shrug. I hope he can’t hear my thoughts. They’re so loud.
“Nothing, just happy today.”
“Better not be another man,” he jokes with a finger wag. Or half jokes. “I know how certain kinds of women get when laborers come to fix things in the house. You k
eep an eye on this one, Vilma, oíste?”
Vilma remains silent and brings the silver tray with little cups of Cuban coffee. I reach for one of the cups, but she stops me. “That one is for the señor,” she explains. I like my coffee sweet. Roberto likes his straight. Vilma makes it just the way we like it.
Roberto rolls up the newspaper he’s been reading and taps it on the table and sucks his lower lip. He looks at Vilma, and she looks at him, and I know there’s something going on they aren’t telling me. You don’t live in this house with these two and not learn how to read them.
“The usual?” Vilma asks me in Spanish.
“Sí, gracias,” I say. She waddles to the stove to prepare my fried egg with cheese and Cuban toast. Vilma’s legs are swollen, as usual. I’ve tried to get her to go to a doctor. She has diabetes and arthritis, but she says she doesn’t want to be trouble. We can’t put Vilma on our family health insurance, but we always pay for whatever she needs. I’m going to drag her to the doctor myself, before they have to amputate her foot or something. While the egg cooks, she pours a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and brings it to me. The acidic thought of it makes me sick. She stands at my side with her arms crossed and waits for me to drink it.
“I’m glad you’re in a good mood,” Roberto says. He looks at Vilma, and she whistles low and shakes her head to herself, a gesture I have seen many times that usually means something bad is about to happen.
“Why is that?” I ask. “Something going on?”
Roberto unfurls the newspaper, and smooths it out on top of the table, then pounds it with his fist. He is scowling. It’s the Boston Herald, the tabloid. I try to get him to read the Gazette instead, but he says he likes the Herald better because it’s easier to read. He turns the paper toward me, and jabs his finger down on a headline.
“Read this,” he says. Then he lifts the finger and wags it in my face. “But don’t take it out on me. I told you that woman was weird, but you never listen to me.”
Vilma scoops the egg onto a plate, adds the toast, a few mango slices, and a parsley garnish. Vilma knows the value of good presentation. I’ve borrowed a few ideas from her over the years, that’s for sure. The breakfast looks delicious, but she holds off on handing it to me because of the newspaper in front of me. I look at the headline and have to read it three times before it makes sense to me.
LEZ CRUZ? POPULAR MORNING ANCHOR LIKES GIRLS.
“Oh, get rid of this,” I say, sliding it back to him. “I’ve told you a million times this is the worst newspaper; you can’t believe anything you read in it. Remember that time they said your friend Jack was getting kickbacks from local contractors? It was a lie, right? So is this. Poor Elizabeth.”
Roberto takes the paper and turns the page. He points out a grainy, dark photograph of what appears to be my best friend Elizabeth—kissing a woman. Suddenly, I’m not feeling so happy anymore. How could Elizabeth be a lesbian? She has been my best friend for ten years, and the possibility never even occurred to me.
“She dates men,” I remind Roberto. “We’ve set her up with some of your friends, for crying out loud.”
“That was years ago,” Roberto says. “Think about it, Sara. When’s the last time you saw her with a man?”
It’s true. It has been years. I ask her about it, and she always says she’s seeing a guy but that it’s nothing serious. She always tells me she’s too busy, or her hours are too weird, or men are too intimidated by her for anything to ever work out. Why would she lie to me like that? Every time there’s a problem with anything in my life, she’s the one I call. I’ve even told her about Roberto roughing me up a couple of times, and she, true to her word, never told a soul. She’s been my co-conspirator in life. If she is a lesbian, if it’s true, then I will feel as betrayed as I would if I’d found Roberto cheating on me. Or worse. Yes, worse.
“She’s disgusting,” Roberto says, slapping the back of his hand against the paper. “This picture! I can’t believe they would print such a picture in a family newspaper.”
“It can’t be true,” I say. “She would have told me.”
“She knows we don’t approve of homosexuality. She’d never tell you.”
“We? You. I don’t care. She’s my best friend.”
“She was. Not anymore.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little extreme?”
“I’m protecting my family.”
Oh, God. I think of all the times I’ve said homophobic things to Elizabeth, all the times I’ve pointed out gay or lesbian couples to her at the movies or the mall and laughed. That must have been hard on her. So why didn’t she tell me? Does she think I’m so close-minded I would reject her completely? Does she think so little of me?
“A total, complete waste of a beautiful woman,” Roberto says, examining the photo again, up close. Then, lifting one eyebrow suggestively, he adds, “She just never met the right man.”
Vilma grabs the newspaper, clicks her tongue at Roberto, and places my breakfast in front of me. “Why do you want to upset her right now?” she asks in Spanish. “Let her eat her breakfast.” Then, to me she says, “Eat. You need your strength.”
“Whose side are you on, Vilma?” he asks. Then, looking at me and the egg, he says, “You don’t need to eat all that. You’re getting too fat. I told you already.”
Vilma resumes her counter wiping, and I pick at the egg.
“It can’t be true,” I say. “If it were true I would have known a long time ago. I’ve known Liz for ten years. That paper is so sleazy. They doctor pictures. They must have something against her.”
Roberto shrugs and holds the newspaper out in front of him. He begins to read it in his booming voice, with his slight Spanish accent. “I Spy caught up with the lovely and talented WRUT morning anchor Elizabeth Cruz last night, at a poetry reading at Davios bar in Central Square. For those of you not in the know, Davios on Wednesday night is for ‘womyn’ only. Liz, who is up for a prime anchor slot at a national network, was there the week before, too, and both times left with celebrated butch lesbian poet Selwyn Womyngold. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that this anchor has her boat docked near the isle of Lesbos.”
“Oh, God. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say. “Listen to that writing, would you? It’s horrible. How can you trust someone who writes that badly?”
“The Colombian beauty queen and former model has been fingered as one of the most eligible single women in Beantown by Boston magazine for the past three years, since her appearance on the WRUT morning program spiked station ratings and catapulted the show to the number one spot. It was the first time any station in Boston had hired an anchor with an accent, a risky move that proved profitable because Liz was so darn peppy and cute everybody seemed to find her exotic pronunciation and looks exciting. Question is, now that we know the willowy Latina is playing for the other team, will Bostonians still love lovely Liz? Or maybe we should call her Lovely Lez?”
I listen to the rest of the article, all written as poorly as the first part, and feel sick.
“They must have something out for her,” I say.
“I don’t know, this picture looks pretty real.”
“They must be trying to ruin her for some reason.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ll call her. Vilma, please hand me the phone.”
“No, you won’t,” Roberto says, pointing his finger in my face. “I don’t want you talking to her anymore, you understand?” Vilma leaves the room with a loud sigh.
“Why not?”
He gives me that look, the same look he gives me when he thinks I’m screwing the ticket boy at the opera or the elderly lawyer seated next to me at a “Holiday” (read: Christmas) banquet for Roberto’s firm.
“Oh, please,” I say. “What is wrong with you? You think I want to sleep with my best friend? Are you crazy?”
“I’m not the one with the problem,” he says. “You know that. Y
ou’re the one with the problem. Normal women, decent women, don’t have that kind of problem, and you know what I’m talking about. Your clitoris and all of that.”
“I don’t believe this. You think I’m going to get it on with Elizabeth now? Is that what you’re trying to say to me?”
“You said it, not me.”
“Just because you’ve wanted her for years, don’t accuse me of the same thing. You’re sick in the head. Sick and twisted.”
“Who, her? She’s black, Sara. I don’t like black women.”
“Come on. Admit it. I see the way you look at her. You think I don’t see it?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t look at her. I never look at anyone but you.” He laughs.
“Whatever, Roberto.”
“I don’t want you talking to her. And I don’t want her here anymore, no more Sunday lunches. Got it?”
“For crying out loud, Roberto, she might not even be a lesbian, you know that? She’s probably straight. Even if she is a lesbian, who cares? Does it really matter?”
“You’d like to find out, too, wouldn’t you? Yeah, I bet you would.”
“What?”
He moves in close, grabs me behind the neck, and shakes me lightly. “No calls. No visits. No … clitoris.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” He squeezes my flesh until it hurts. I shrug out of his grasp.
“You just want to fight,” I say. “Calm down. I don’t feel like fighting right now.”
“No, I don’t. Think about it, she never has a boyfriend, right? I’ve seen her stare at you before. I bet you even knew about it already, didn’t you? Best friends in college, huh? What else did you girls do?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I’m serious. I’ve seen her staring at you like a man. I told you that once, remember? I bet you liked it.”
