“Hi, Wanda,” he said, smiling with effort. “I totally forgot I promised to buy you a dress.”
“I don’t need a dress,” said Wanda. “But thank you.”
“Well, then, maybe just a ride home?”
“That’d be nice.”
Wanda looked at Gary’s hands as he steered. His fingers were bright red. His body radiated a nervous heat. Poor Gary. He needed to find his job.
“You seem like you’re in a good mood,” said Gary.
“Do I?” said Wanda.
“Yeah, you’re, like, smiling.”
“I am in a pretty good mood,” said Wanda. Then she looked around the car. “You changed cars.”
“Oh. This is my car. We were in Winston’s before.”
“I know,” said Wanda.
When they reached Wanda’s complex, Gary said, “Um, can I come in and use your bathroom?”
“Sure,” said Wanda. She led Gary up the walk and into the apartment, which she never locked. She showed Gary to the bathroom, then went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of the sun tea she had left brewing on the windowsill. Then she sat down and turned on the TV, completely at ease.
Gary came out of the bathroom and strolled around the periphery of the living room as if it were a playing field he mustn’t disturb.
“You wanna watch some TV?” Wanda asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and came to perch on the couch’s edge. He spread his fingers and rubbed the flats of his palms together.
Wanda closed her eyes and drifted for a while, thinking of nothing at all. When she opened her eyes, Gary was seated on the couch, watching her. She smiled.
“Wanda?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Remember when I told you I don’t have a girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s more than that. I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
“Why not?”
Gary shrugged. “I dunno.” He seemed a little less nervous now that he had resolved to tell her these things. “I’ve never even had sex.”
“I’m sorry,” Wanda said.
Gary shrugged again. “For what?”
There was silence again. Did Gary want to have sex with her? She didn’t want to. She didn’t feel like being jostled around. She did enjoy having a visitor, though, this polite boy sitting on her couch. He could tell her his secrets if he wanted. Wanda opened her eyes and realized that they were watching a news program about that woman in New Jersey who had carried a baby for an infertile couple and now refused to give it up. To protect the child they called it only Baby M. Had this been on the whole time? How boring this must be for Gary! Wanda reached for the remote and started to search for something better to watch.
“Um, I was thinking . . .” said Gary.
“Yes?” Wanda said.
“Well, Winston told me that he did stuff with you . . . that he paid you for . . . and that was cool with you—to get paid.”
Wanda’s heart felt as if it were suddenly under attack, like a little troop of feelings dispatched from the other side—the world of ache that she had left behind at Tammy’s house. She turned to Gary and was about to say, He never paid! I never charged him! Why would he say that? But something stopped her—another dispatch from the world of ache, but this time from herself—a message from the Wanda that lived in pain, saying, You need the money.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to insult you!” Gary said, starting to stand.
“It’s all right. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.” Wanda swallowed the sob, took Gary’s hand, and pulled him back onto the couch. She had promised herself on her birthday last March that she wouldn’t do this ever again—take money for it. But now she saw that this, like everything else she did, was part of her job.
She touched Gary’s soft skin. She stroked him like his mother must have when he was little. Gary hid his face against her and became a nameless baby.
Wanda moved to turn off the TV.
“Oh, don’t,” said Gary. “It helps.”
Wanda lay back, carrying Gary with her. She felt his soft bulk over her, ignored the hardness underneath, and listened to his halting breath.
Big baby. Poor baby.
Chapter 4
Lina rang the doorbell and allowed a moment for someone to answer while she groped around her duffel bag for her keys. When no one came, she unlocked the door and entered the bright, chapel-like entranceway where, two weeks earlier, she had stood waiting to see if Mr. Hall would come out of his bedroom after her. She looked up at the second-floor railing. As if the house had been holding its breath while Lina came in, it released a long, quiet exhalation—the heat had kicked on. She took off her coat. It was hot in here. She would have opened a window, but the Halls, like the rest of her clients, preferred to keep their climate-controlled house sealed. Instead, she set down her things and looked around for the thermostat. When she found it in the parlor (which was what the Halls called their second living room), she saw that it was set on seventy-five degrees. What a waste! She turned it down to sixty-eight.
She changed her clothes and went to the broom closet, where she saw that the Halls were low on cleaning supplies. Sandra usually kept an eye on this. Lina would have to make do. She’d dilute the Pine Sol more than usual and leave Sandra a note.
“We both need to kiss.” In saying that, Mr. Hall had spoiled the kiss, made it an endeavor against loneliness. But over the intervening two weeks, Lina had come to be touched by his honesty. He was sad, and could see that she was, too. He could just as well have said, “We both need happiness.”
This didn’t make it right, however. Neither did it make Mr. Hall handsome, or strong, or whatever it would take to make her want to kiss him again. She had entertained herself with imagining the come-ons he would use the next time they were alone in the house, and how she would shoot them down.
Can I show you my train set?
Mr. Hall, it’s time to grow up. Stop playing with trains and stop kissing women other than your wife.
Can I offer you a glass of chardonnay?
Mr. Hall, it would take a lot more than a glass of wine to make me break the Sixth Commandment.
Yes, she was armed and ready, but he was not here.
The order in which Lina cleaned rooms had to do with the way dirt particles fell. She dusted first, from the highest point to the lowest, then vacuumed, upstairs, then down. She cleaned the bathroom and kitchen fixtures, and, finally, mopped. Sometimes when she left, she shuffled across the still-wet floors on paper towels, then put her shoes on outside. It made her feel like she was sealing closed a pristine chamber, like the incubator Jesús had lived in for the first days of his life. He had been frail and yellow, and they had still wanted to circumcise him. “Leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s sick?” “Of course, Lina, of course. It’s your decision,” the doctor had said. It was this kind doctor who told the Van Bekes about Lina’s situation. An older couple whose children were grown, they had visited her in the hospital the next day. Carl Van Beke had been a banker. The community had given them so much, Janet explained, they wanted to give something back. They had the room, the means, the stamina to raise one more child. Lina would remain the boy’s mother and could visit when she liked, and teach the boy Spanish, even. Lina had been numb and dry-eyed when they took him. It would be weeks before she broke down and cried, months before she visited, much longer before she looked the boy in the eye. She was poor back then. She ate stale bread from the day-old outlet and bought gas two or three dollars’ worth at a time. She couldn’t have given Jesús what he needed.
Lina climbed the stairs and walked down the softly carpeted hall. She was tempted to go into the Halls’ bedroom for a moment, just to be where he had kissed her, but before she decided whether or not she would, the door opened and someone stepped out.
Lina jumped.
It was Sandra. “Lina,” she said, “sorry to startle you. I heard the doorbell ring and I knew it was yo
u. I figured you would let yourself in.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” Lina said.
Sandra had a tired look around her eyes, as if she had just awakened from a nap. At the same time, though, her face looked strangely drawn-on, her eyebrows very arched, as if she had just made herself up to go out.
“Well,” Sandra said, “I’ll try not to be in your way.”
She walked slowly past Lina, down to the parlor.
Lina went to Abby’s room and began to dust. Usually Sandra greeted her brightly and gave her a little hunched-shouldered hug that Lina never resisted, but certainly never enjoyed. The two women would not put their arms all the way around each other, but just to each other’s backs. Lina could feel the ridges of Sandra’s shoulder blades and, at the same time, was aware that Sandra could feel her soft rolls. Lina would have preferred a handshake.
Damas. That’s what Lina’s mother had called white women. She said it sharply, pushing the word to the front of her mouth, while mujeres, her word for Mexican women, sat comfortably in the back.
But Sandra hadn’t given her a hug today. Was she tired? Or did she know?
Lina dusted the upstairs bedrooms, the downstairs living rooms (Sandra had either slipped back upstairs at some point, or left), and, since she hadn’t last time, the basement. Here, in the dimness, she simply ran a feather duster over shelf after shelf of toy trains: engines, cabooses, cars loaded with tiny logs, cars loaded with coal, cars painted with the flowery logos of old-fashioned companies. Boxes of track, too, and railroad crossings. Trees, houses; even, in a big box, a pond.
“Don’t use Pledge down here,” Sandra had said while giving her the introductory tour. “These boxes are very valuable. Just use a feather duster.” She said this loudly, and made a feather-dusting motion to make her meaning clear. As if Lina didn’t speak English.
The first years, Lina would wonder, as she dusted the boxes, how much were they really worth? If you sold them, how much money would you get? Enough to make a down payment on a doublewide? But then Lina had saved her money and gotten a doublewide, and now she was tired of wondering about the worth of Mr. Hall’s trains.
The maglev train, they call it. Magnetic levitation. They don’t have wheels.
Lina smiled. What a weirdo.
She went to the broom closet, got the vacuum, and took it up to Abby’s room. After she had been vacuuming for a few minutes, in the corner of her eye she saw Sandra, who stood in the doorway waving apologetically in an apparent attempt to avoid startling her again. With her toe, Lina pushed the button to turn off the machine.
“I’m sorry, Lina. I have a little headache,” she said. “Would you mind not vacuuming?”
“Sure, Sandra.”
Sandra returned to her room.
Lina yanked the cord from the wall and began to coil it. For some reason she did mind. If you want to get me out of here early, she thought to herself, fine! You still have to pay me the same.
Lina brooded as she mopped. Sandra knew. She would call sometime in the next two weeks and tell Lina not to come back. She’d make up some lie, We need to cut costs, or whatever, but it was because Lina had kissed her husband. Because her husband had kissed Lina.
BEFORE LINA WAS born, her parents, aunts, and uncles had established something of a homestead out near Payette, more than an hour’s drive from Eula. They called it “la Hacienda,” which was a joke, as the house, though roomy, was in a state of perpetual disrepair. The roof leaked, and once Uncle Mario got around to nailing down a few new shingles, the pump gave out, and the family had to start contributing to the coffee can to buy a new one and, in the meantime, drink from jugs of water they bought at Albertson’s and shower at a cousin’s house in Chandler. Slowly, over the years, as the family’s fortunes improved, as more babies were born in Idaho and more parents got their papers, the house became sturdier.
Lina’s family still lived at the Hacienda—distant cousins who spoke no English. It was their first stop in Idaho. Lina had rarely visited since Mamá died. The Cortezes of her generation all had their own places now, mostly in Payette, but a few in Chandler, and Lina in Eula.
Lina used to go on holidays. She’d pick Jay up from the Van Bekes’ and make the long drive out, Jay pouting all the way. Once at the Hacienda, he refused to speak Spanish with his cousins. He would pick at his dinner, claiming to hate spicy food, while Mamá glowered at him from her wheelchair at the head of the table. She resented the fact that Lina had given him to the Van Bekes instead of her to raise, and found it easier to take this resentment out on the boy than on his mother. Lina was her youngest, her favorite, the child of her old age, and the only one born in the United States. Mi americana, she liked to call her.
Eventually, Lina gave up and stopped forcing Jay to go. Now she had Enrique, who loved the Hacienda. He would play for hours outside, hiding-and-seeking with his cousins under the porch and climbing apple trees in the orchard while Lina helped with dinner. Later, he’d crawl into the broad lap of his grandmother, whom all the other children feared, and fall asleep. If only Lina’s father could have seen it!
Papá was rarely mentioned, and this was not because he had been cruel, although his sternness did sometimes border on cruelty, but because they feared that he had been lost to the fires of hell. The sound of his name, Papá, had a chilling effect on everyone at the Hacienda; it was better saved for prayers.
Back when he was a young man, Papá had worked his hands to bleeding in the corn fields. He had no family here, and the other migrant workers shunned him, fearing he’d take work from them and their families. His heart ached for his brothers and his wife and three children, who were in Mexico, unable to cross over, and for his parents, who were too old to make the journey. Having little to eat, as he sent his money back home, he became ill. One feverish night he wandered far out into the sugar-beet fields, calling out to God for help. He knelt down in the dirt and prayed to God yet again to deliver his family to him. The night was starless and moonless and he felt that God had drawn a black curtain between them, despite Papá’s prayers and his weekly attendance at Mass.
So he prayed to the Devil.
“Satanas, traeme a mi familia y danos un hogar. Give us a home. Después puedes tenerme.”
That’s all he said, and for some minutes he felt silly, like a child who had been playacting. It was so quiet and dark it was easy to believe that there was no heaven or hell, and that his words had traveled only as far as he could see, then settled into the furrows like the dust raised by his steps.
Then he heard something coming toward him swiftly from across the field. He leaped up and ran. He could hear hoofbeats gaining on him. The creature, close behind him, grunted menacingly. Papá looked over his shoulder to see a huge pig chasing him, its evil eyes shining like black pearls. It bit at his ankle, and he tumbled through the dirt. He pushed the pig off, and ran again. He ran and ran until he saw the lights of the barracks. When he reached the door, the pig had vanished.
The next morning his fever was gone and he was able to work. A few months later he had his brothers with him and, a year after that, his wife and children. Then the Hacienda.
He confessed his sin and did penance many times over, but still feared that his soul was lost. All his life he worked with fatalistic determination. He rarely smiled and never sang, and he died young.
Lina’s mother once told her that Papá’s soul was trapped in purgatory—forever, she feared. God had forgiven him, but the Devil had him by the ankle and wouldn’t let him go. She knew this because she had dreamed it. There were tears in her eyes as she told Lina this; it was the only time Lina ever saw her cry.
On Lina’s last visit to the Hacienda before Mamá died, two nieces, having heard that Mamá’s health was in decline, had visited from Mexico with their children. The house was full to bursting. Enrique, who was growing up and turning shy, especially around all these cousins he didn’t know, would venture out among them, then return to Lina’s side. He slowly wa
shed leaves of lettuce as Lina diced chilies with a plastic grocery bag covering her left hand like a glove. Her eyes watered, and she raised her wrist to her nose, letting the knife dangle.
Enrique’s aunt approached with a steaming pot. “Enrique, muévate, I need that sink!”
“There’s nothing for you to do, baby,” said Lina. “Go sit with Abuela.”
Enrique’s grandmother sat under blankets in her wheelchair. She nodded when Enrique sat down, but then closed her eyes and said nothing. Someone played a guitar on the back porch, sang a call-and-response song with the children in Spanish.
A horizontal bar repeatedly licked the fuzzy image on the screen of the old television in the corner. Abuela’s head nodded and she seemed on the verge of sleep. (A week later Enrique would wonder if she had been on the verge of death, testing the waters of the black river, el rio negro, and then retreating. Old Mexicans, he felt, died in a very different way than old white people, who slipped away quietly in clean hospitals.)
After dinner they all gathered on the steps out back for a family photo. Abuela squinted, let her jaw hang slack, and seemed to wonder, Who are all these fools? A cousin from Mexico named Julio sat on the step behind Enrique. Enrique had watched him roughhousing with the other boys earlier. He didn’t earn their respect by hitting or pinching, but by carrying himself with utter confidence, shoulders thrown back and a white smile blazing forward.
At one point he had come over to Enrique. “You live here?” he asked in Spanish. Unlike the others, he wasn’t ashamed that he only spoke Spanish.
“No, I live in Eula.”
“But you live in the United States?”
“Yes.”
“I live in Juárez.”
“Yes, I know.”
“But I’m going to move here.”
And with that he had run off.
Enrique had watched him for a while and fantasized that, when Julio moved here, they would become best friends.
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