by Lorraine Ray
***~~~***
Joseph shook out his raincoat and hung it in the living room closet. He was eager to devote that morning to his writing, which he relished assembling during the winter break after having neglected it in the last weeks of the semester. On his desk lay the scattered notes for a new article asserting that human sacrifice, which never actually a major element of Aztec life, displayed a courage of conviction on the part of the brave sacrifice victims.
The morning was a very dull one; the Arizona sun was not shining, the atmosphere was close and oppressive and a drizzling rain fell. Looking outside the corner window of his living room, he surveyed the extent of a muddy puddle in the parking lot of the Cochise Court Apartments. The pool of brown water reflected a meager string of Christmas lights draped through a patch of prickly pear cactus and glowing in the new gray morning like eerie fruit. Someone had painted several of the cactus pads different colors, embellishing each with a smiling face, the suffocating effect of the various pigments subjecting the cactus to a gradual, yet winsome, death.
Joseph was surprised to see a white station wagon skirting the brown pool to park. Juan emerged, strode to Joseph's door, and without knocking swung open the screechy screen door, furtively sliding an envelope through the mail slot. Joseph went to the door immediately and seized the mysterious crinkled envelope from amongst the dust bunnies and hair snags littering his rug.
The message explained that the society urgently requested the provision of a room for one refugee until the first of January, at which time transportation for this unfortunate of American aggression into the welcoming arms of a benevolent society member in Ohio could be arranged. Because of some newly aroused suspicions on the part of the INS, and the proximity to Christmas, this refugee had not been able to find shelter with anyone else.
Joseph rose indignantly from his chair upon finishing the note, raked with moral consternation at the thought of such a lack of generosity on the part of other safe-house operators. And at Christmas!
He immediately dressed for the rain and drove to Juan's office, where the society recently rented part of the lower floor.
As Joseph parked his car at the curb in front of the old adobe building, he noticed a group of transients gathered around a full-sized replica of the Bethleham stable. Most of them camped temporarily in the town on their way to the less tranquil but assuredly winterless streets of Los Angeles. They squatted here and there on the elevated sprinkler head in nearby palm tree wells. A few glared at Joseph with great ferocity, others who recognized him ran across the avenue to ask him for the handout which he never denied them.
A significant knock at a side door, and a woman of the society let him into a small kitchen where a group of women collectively manufactured some stodgy tamales for sale to benefit the Reappearance of Anauk. Joseph was told the refugee was at that moment hiding in the cellar.
"In the note Juan mentioned that no one would help, so I knew I had to do this," intoned Joseph in carefully pronounced Spanish, struck by the deep symbolism (for a desert dweller) of a nearby bowl of water in which dried corn husks were reinvigorated prior to becoming tamale jackets. "I'm appalled that no one else would find the generosity to help." This was Joseph's first conversation conducted during the whole day and his voice crackled like a poorly tuned radio station.
"Oh," Maria's so pretty," blurted a woman who prodded the soaking corn husks, "Everybody likes her. Actually we've all started to love her." She emphasized the word we've, smiling significantly at Joseph, implying that he would be next. The other women, who were fully aware of what was going on, glared at her, making shushing signs and shaking their fingers at her under the table, but one of the chiding women buried her face in a dishcloth, covering her laughter.
And the little boy ran out of the room. "Ack, the squid face is here!" he cried in Spanish to whoever would hear him in the other room.
Joseph remained oblivious to the chastening or the laughter, and his Spanish was so bad that he missed the significance of what had been said to him and about him. He watched mutely as the women prepared to assemble the tamales, slipping their hands into shimmering plastic sandwich bags, securing the bands at each wrist with a rubber band. In a few minutes, a burly society member appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing an enormous black raincoat which he coolly lifted in order to draw a key from his trouser pocket. One woman whispered briefly with him. Joseph was called out of the kitchen.
"Whenever he speak Spanish," whispered one tamale-assembler once Joseph had left the room, "I can't help laughing."
"You shouldn't laugh. It isn't kind. He works so hard, poor boy," said a lady with her hands in the masa dough.
"That's correct."
"Oh my gosh, he is going to be happier, though."
"Of course, we are doing him some good."
"I don't know why we should help him," snorted one lady.
"He works for the society."
"What kind of work? I never see him doing anything in here."
"He writes papers."
"I don't think that's useful."
"Well, Juan does. He knows what it useful."
Having been conducted through two large rooms, Joseph emerged into a rain-deluged patio and small stairwell leading to the refugee drop, the cellar of a rather rowdy 19th century saloon and, subsequently, the herb cellar of a paranoid pharmacist named Tito Flores, who converted it into a bomb shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Joseph was guided to the shelter door by the lumbering man, who unlocked and opened it, unnerving Joseph with the scraping, splintering noise as the rain-swollen plywood scudded scraped across concrete, ending with a dull thud when the door struck a floor-to-ceiling stack of recyclable newspapers which had been hastily placed there out of the rain.
Looking down, he saw a small chamber lined with white washed bricks, containing only a canvas cot and a portable toilet and illuminated by a single bare bulb. The shadowy figure of the refugee, called on to emerge quickly by the society member, ascended a small set of steps, seeking support with one hand on the newspapers, struggling with a battered brown suitcase.
When Joseph beheld the refugee, he gasped. To him, she was a beautiful young woman in the last stages of pregnancy.
Though Joseph felt an immediate fear at the sight of her, he moistened his lips, and with difficulty omitted some croaking Spanish, which he hoped tempered the rash way he took the suitcase from her and led her to the patio gate. The burly society man, who was in attendance for fear of sudden INS action, fumbled to undo the gate latch; his black umbrella tilted comically, deflecting a small stream of rain down the part of his hair.
"Shit," he exclaimed, shaking his head and wiggling under the black raincoat as the gate open.
Joseph dropped Maria's arm, sprinting through the gate and past the huge man, springing up the drenched sidewalk to his car with Maria's suitcase under one arm and his car keys drawn in the other.
"Hey! Come back here," yelled the burly man, "Do you know what you're supposed to do if you think you're being watched?"
Maria shuffled across the slick sidewalk toward Joseph's car.
"Yes, of course," replied Joseph, his eyes growing wild at the sight of this beautiful specter moving toward him, his hands shaking violently as he tried to place the key in his door lock.
"What?" asked the big man taking a few threatening steps toward Joseph.
"Call you?" Joseph fumbled.
"No!" exclaimed the huge man angrily, "Call Juan!"
"Yes, of course," Joseph started the engine and unlocked the passenger door.
When Maria was settled in the seat, and had waved goodbye to the man at the gate, Joseph lurched the car away from the curb and headed for his apartment.
He made only one remark on the way home; it was really his favorite slogan and he was confident of how to express it in Spanish: "A new order of ideas and principles must be instituted in the regions of the old Aztec Confederation."
This opinion met a quiet, thou
ghtful reception within Maria's great brown eyes. Juan had been right, she thought, Joseph was a very serious man, but nice, like a young priest.
When they reached Joseph's apartment, Maria joined Joseph in his kitchen for supper.
"In Guatemala, do most Nauhautl members think the great cataclysm will be caused by nuclear warfare or ecological collapse?" he asked.
"Both, simultaneously," she said serenely in English. "And you can speak to me in English. I understand it well." She did not want to say his Spanish was atrocious.
"Oh!" Joseph exclaimed. "I am writing a paper with that exact idea! I have it in my room and I would very much like to discuss with you..."
By about ten o'clock that first evening, after Joseph had talked to her continuously and even read the article aloud, she went to her bedroom exhausted. He remained in the living room, excited and somewhat hysterical. When finally he passed her bedroom, he paused near the threshold. By touching the door ever so gently, he could nudge it ajar and see inside.
Maria was lying on the bed with head deep back in the pillows: her hair a shining black mass around her. Though Joseph had seen her for the first time only that afternoon, their conversation and her appearance completely unnerved him. So much so that for several hours after he had entered his bedroom he simply sat on the edge of his rumpled, unmade bed. He seemed carried away in an ecstasy or fit, there being a tightness in his chest and numerous uncontrollable shivers.
Of great and immediate concern to him was the reoccurring notion that with too much of this sort of stress, his work for the society might suffer. And surely she had a husband, or knew the father of the child? Suddenly, he wondered why it was that mysteriously no mention of the father of the child had been made. No doubt, he waited for her in the Midwest, in Ohio was it, or had she come ahead of the father? To think of usurping the father's place with the mother so close to the delivery of the child appalled Joseph, who simply would not tolerate such wickedness in himself. He wondered what he could have been thinking.
Eventually, however, Joseph grew more composed and no longer babbled to himself of the importance of the Nauhuatl political agenda, and of the distressing nature of his thoughts, but fell into a deep thoughtful sleep while listening to the cold rain in the patio.
His rest was comparatively undisturbed and he rose early on a sunny but cold Thursday morning, ate a slight meal of cold cereal, and devoted himself anew to his article. He was enjoying the flow of his ideas about the ecological disaster that the world was going to endure soon. But when Maria awoke and began washing her clothes in the bathtub, singing softly, the hysterical feeling again returned, and at half-past nine o'clock Joseph feared he would not be able to control himself during the ordeal of her stay. What was the length of it going to be, anyway? Did they know exactly when she was leaving for Ohio?
With the washing done, she whispered past him, her skirt swishing, the wash load borne awkwardly on one hip. Joseph was badly startled. As she made her way outside to the clothesline at the back of the apartment complex, he lurched up from his desk, not to assist her with her dripping burden, but to lock the flimsy door behind her with a flick of his wrist. His mind immediately grew calm with the thought that Maria could not return unseen. However, he knew the feeling of safety was only temporary.
He fled directly back to his desk, ridden with guilt, but summoning such feelings of righteousness as he could manufacture. After all, he told himself, she was surely a distraction from more important issues. If the thought that she could not enter the room unexpectedly comforted him and enable him to continue with his article, then it was necessary. But again, he began to shake and mutter, on par with the night before.
In this distressed condition, he concluded he had to be rid of the poor girl.
This dreadful resolution being formed, the next consideration was how to effect it: he considered it frantically, until at length the stress of the unwelcome "new emotion" of love, prompted Joseph to resolve on calling Juan, to claim that the INS was closing in on him and the girl was bound to be seized.
Now, as Joseph dialed the phone, helpless in the hands of his own inhibitions, one could not help pitying him. He appeared to be almost unconscious, both elbows held close to his sides, the hand holding the receiver rubbing the other wrist, both of which truthfully burned as though they were bound up in strong leather thongs. His shoulders, from the tension of relating a lie to Juan, hovered near his ears and his face was now distorted by fear; his lips were parched, his eyes were fixed upon vacancy, and his face was ashen.
Juan answered the phone and hardly seemed surprised that it was Joseph calling.
"What is it, Joseph?" Juan asked.
"Juan, I don't know what to do," Joseph paused nervously, "I think the apartment is being watched."
"Well, why don't I drive by later and see about that," Juan said slightly sympathetically.
"Oh, Juan," said Joseph tearfully, "I think you ought to take her...Maria...back."
"What is it that's really bothering you?"
There was a stony silence from Joseph.
"Don't you see you would be putting the society at risk by moving her so soon? You wouldn't want to hurt the society, or Maria, would you?"
"No, no," Joseph blurted, "But I have another problem."
"Yes?" sighed Juan.
"Some of my family is...that is...ah...I'm expecting my...cousins are coming to town this week. I don't see how I can continue to keep Maria," he chattered.
"Oh my. That is a problem, Joseph," replied Juan.
"Yes. I'm very concerned...naturally...of coo course..."
Just then Maria tapped on the small window pane of the locked door like a hungry bird.
"I can't understand why you didn't mention this when you agreed to take her." Juan remarked sternly.
"I didn't know about it ahead of time. Really."
"But surely you could explain the situation to your cousins and offer to put them in a hotel just for a few more days," Juan suggested.
"But I'm worried about her being here in her...her...condition. Her husband, the father of her child, must be eager to be reunited with her, especially during this season. I would gladly pay her fare. Isn't her husband expecting her?"
"No, Joseph. The father is dead," Juan answered gravely, "and, of course, we don't dare move her if you say you are being watched."
Joseph delayed placing the receiver down, though Juan had hung up. The insight about Maria's marital status visibly affected him.
Maria rang the front doorbell and when Joseph admitted her, his face softened, and was full of longing and remorse.
She said, "You forgot me."
The reader can guess the rest of the story only too well. How, in that season of so much happiness on the evening of the very next day (which was Christmas Eve), Joseph proposed, Maria accepted, and soon after they were quietly united for life by an appropriate Aztec ritual. The machinations surrounding the first and only love of Joseph's life were thus accomplished in three tumultuous days, and I suppose it was in many ways preferable to a more modern, unarranged courtship, perhaps fitting in with the odd ways of the Movement for the Reemergence of Anuak.
After the Aztec wedding ceremony, Joseph returned to his article with an increased vigor, which he had not imagined possible: renewing faith that every sort of creature may be grateful for affection, and rendering Juan's friendship all the more magnificent because of its influence for good, Juan having bestowed upon the world a Joseph of greater strength, and, among other fine moral effects from the union, perhaps in some perfect future, a genuine aboriginal democracy.
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THE END
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Mother's Woman-Marine Bra
