by Roger Bruner
“So Matilda was an orphan like me except she knew who her parents were and lived with them?”
Mother Chalina hesitated. “Extremely well said. Her parents didn’t act like parents, and they didn’t treat her like a daughter. There was no love between Matilda and her parents and very little respect. She had a horrible home life during most of the book.”
“Did she have a substitute mother like I have in you, Mother Chalina?” I held my breath waiting for the answer.
“Yes, one very much like me, but younger.”
I sighed in relief for Matilda’s sake. “Are there other reasons you think this story of Matilda will be meaningful to me?”
“Read it and find out for yourself.”
The stubborn look on her face told me she wasn’t going to explain. She always said that reading a book wouldn’t be as much fun if I knew the ending ahead of time, but I had found the opposite to be true.
If I already knew the basic story, I could look for clues—sometimes just the special use of a word or two—and examine how the author structured the book and how the characters changed as the story moved from one problem to another, connected by temporary solutions.
I had also learned that the “happily ever after” of children’s stories and fairy tales didn’t happen in the adult world. Another problem was always hiding just out of sight, waiting to reach out and strike the lead character with its vicious claws at the most inopportune moment, when its victim was weakest and most vulnerable.
~*~
I didn’t pressure Mother Chalina for more details about Matilda, but accepted her challenge to read the book and discover its significance for myself.
I read it twice—I didn’t want to overlook anything important—before coming back to discuss it with her.
I set the book down on the kitchen table. “Matilda was very bright. Very special.”
She smiled, nodded, and waited for me to continue.
“I can’t believe Matilda could learn to read and write and count and compute numbers all by herself. Not even I could do that.” I pretended to pout.
“You didn’t grow up around people who could read, write, count, or compute. The village had no reading material…”
“Tomás used to bring magazines for the teenaged girls.”
“Those magazines were more like the television set in Matilda’s home than like real literature.”
I nodded. Would I ever learn to make such brilliant observations?
“What did you think of Matilda’s use of the library?”
“She was clever. Daring. I couldn’t blame her for not letting her father stand in the way of her reading.”
She smiled. “So what about you?”
“So what about me what?” I knew all too well what she meant, but I didn’t want to admit it.
She quit smiling. “Will you let your husband stand in the way of your learning?”
Although Tomás was rarely home, I was no less terrified of him than before. He was unpredictable. I had seen too much of the violence he was capable of. Did I dare to defy him in yet another way?
Mother Chalina raised her eyebrows. “We are all in this together.”
Her statement calmed me slightly. She and Nikki had taken big chances for me. “I have made it this far,” I said with increasing boldness. “I will not let him stop me now.”
“Then you will go to the library like Matilda and pick out the books you want to read?”
She must have realized that my determination hadn’t totally overcome my apprehension. “Rosa, reading books of your own choosing will set your mind and spirit free. You will not spend your whole life locked up in this apartment. You may have to leave it at a moment’s notice.”
She couldn’t have missed seeing my confusion.
“I know more about Tomás than you realize. He lives in a dangerous world, and he will not be around forever. He will die young. He is not sufficiently strong or clever to survive in the world he has made for himself. The big question is whether you will be ready to leave and fend for yourself when the time comes.”
I had seldom paid attention to death. Villagers had died from time to time during my childhood, but I didn’t miss them anymore than I had cared about them while they were alive.
No one in the village lived to be as old as some of the people I had seen on television. Villagers in their fifties seemed ancient, and they were usually too infirmed by then to continue working. A grown child might care for an Elderly parent, but too often no such child existed. The villagers provided food and water for a while, but they eventually left the Elderly to die on their own.
Perhaps that’s why they provided for my basic needs when my parents passed from existence. Something—or somebody—told them I wasn’t old enough to die. If they failed to provide more support than that, at least they had pressured Tomás into marrying me.
In their eyes, they had done the right thing. In mine, only the expedient one. Transferring their responsibilities to someone else.
Mother Chalina’s warning that Tomás wasn’t strong enough to survive his own world made sense. I had seen how weak he could be. Or had that just been an act to gain my cooperation?
I trusted Chalina’s wisdom and insights. She would not advise me improperly.
If I wasn’t going to live in San Diego forever—or at least in this apartment—where would I go? How could I prepare to leave except through learning? Now was the time to make a commitment for my sake and Alazne’s.
“Mother Chalina, I will go to the library. I do not understand everything you have told me, but I believe you. I will not grieve when Tomás dies, but I will not celebrate, either. I will experience relief. Nothing more, nothing less. His death will be just another—what do you call it?—another ‘fact of life.’”
She nodded as I continued. “How strange that reproduction and death are both ‘facts of life’ even though they are opposites. But you are right. Once Tomás is gone, I need to be ready to move on. Perhaps the library will tell me where to go and how to get there.”
Mother Chalina had tears in her eyes. She probably hadn’t expected me to make such a strong commitment to preparing for the future.
“Let’s go to the library now, you and Nikki and I. We will start looking for a better world than the wicked world of Tomás.”
17
Sometimes I couldn’t believe I had been living in San Diego since just before Alazne’s birth four years earlier, but my eyes couldn’t deny it. I had grown into the adult I thought I was then, and my baby had become a beautiful little girl.
“Just like her momma,” Mother Chalina and Nikki always said.
So did our neighbors. We saw them more frequently than we used to because we took Alazne outside to play whenever we could. Alazne loved the outdoors, and she kept me on my toes with never-ending questions.
“What bird is this? What flower is that? Why do the bees land on the flowers? Does the rain hurt the grass when it falls? Why do squirrels have bushy tails? Do all rainbows begin and end at the same place?”
No matter how successful her spina bifida operation had been, her nerves still didn’t quite correctly connect her brain to her feet and legs. She had started walking on crutches eighteen months earlier, and she had taken to them so easily—so naturally—she moved faster than I could.
She was so kind-hearted she would have brought home every stray cat we saw—not because she wanted a pet, but because she thought they were homeless and unable to care for themselves. I was thankful we seldom drove where needy people slept in doorways, on benches, or under bridges. I could imagine Alazne saying, “Let’s carry this poor old lady home. She can sleep in my bed and I will sleep on the floor.”
Although her desire to assist the helpless would have been even more impractical than her desire to care for stray animals, I was proud of her unselfish concern for others. I would have done anything for her and Nikki and Mother Chalina, but I couldn’t imagine I would ever feel that generou
s toward anyone else. Especially the villagers who had rejected me the first sixteen years of my life.
But what did that matter now? I wouldn’t return to Santa María. Ever. No matter what the voice of the wind once said to me.
~*~
Tomás was never home during the day and rarely at night. He often changed vehicles in the parking lot outside the apartment building without bothering to come inside.
Once when we were heading out to the library, we saw him. We waved and yelled to him. We knew he saw us, for he looked in our direction momentarily before looking away without acknowledging us. Was this a sign of his weakness—or of his fear of the world he had built for himself?
Perhaps the two were the same.
Nonetheless, he stuffed cash in the mailbox on a regular basis and paid the bills—including Nikki’s credit card purchases—every month. As if any amount of money could buy our good will. Whatever slight respect we might have had for him diminished a little more with each prolonged absence, even though we thrived during those times.
Perhaps I was foolish to think this way, but Tomás didn’t seem to live with us anymore or to be part of our lives. To my amazement, he quit having Nikki take pictures of Alazne and me to show the villagers.
His absence gave us greater freedom and we started going different places—places Tomás had forbidden us to go because they weren’t part of Latino culture. Alazne and I finally got to go to the beach. We walked in the sand and waded in shallow water, and the four of us went back frequently.
And each time I saw a beach ball, I remembered how I had looked when I was pregnant. How thankful I was I would never look that way again.
~*~
We grew more careless about keeping my reading and studying a secret.
We Three—as Mother Chalina, Nikki, and I began referring to ourselves—agreed that Tomás had forfeited his control over us through his absence and lack of personal involvement. If he was trying to protect us from the dangers of his world, he had chosen a strange way to do it.
Nikki did so well in her study of Spanish that Mother Chalina rarely needed to translate more than an occasional word for her, and that united us even more. Even though our accents were more authentic than Nikki’s—or should I say “less American”?—she could make herself understood quite well.
She was thankful for our continued tutelage. I say “our” because I helped. Teaching was fun—and fulfilling.
We Three talked in Spanish both outside and inside the apartment, and Alazne loved to talk so much we couldn’t keep her out of the conversation. We thought it was cute.
Why didn’t we foresee the dangers of that?
~*~
We Three had quit turning the deadbolt lock a year or so earlier. Not intentionally. We just didn’t see the need to keep doing it.
The counters and kitchen table were almost buried in Spanish-language library books covering a variety of subjects—far too much evidence of our disobedience to hide quickly.
Why worry about it, though? We hadn’t seen a sign of Tomás in months.
Nikki had been playing cards with Alazne, teaching her the numbers, and Alazne was sitting on Nikki’s lap at the very moment someone started to unlock the front door. Mother Chalina and I were so deeply involved in our reading it took a moment too long for us to realize what was happening.
We Three glanced at one another during the several seconds it took Tomás to walk into the living room and plop down in an easy chair. The smell of beer almost made me puke, even though he was a good forty or fifty feet away.
The additional seconds it took for him to climb out of the chair again and stumble into the kitchen gave us just enough time to communicate wordlessly that we should act as if nothing was going on and hope Tomás was too drunk to notice the books, several of which lay open.
Not an ideal plan, but it was our only hope.
Tomás made me dizzy as he swayed back and forth, trying to maintain his balance at the opposite side of the table. He leered at me for a number of seconds before making a perfunctory effort to start a conversation. I couldn’t tell if he was just drunk or also strung out on drugs. I had seen people in this condition on television, but I had never seen anyone act this way in person.
He was incoherent, loud, and overly talkative. He didn’t usually talk much, especially to women. Seeing him this way for the first time would have terrified me even if forbidden books hadn’t blanketed the kitchen so conspicuously.
“What’s with you gals tonight? I came by to tell you all how much I love you, but you are silent. Don’t you see me? I am here. I see me.”
He held his right hand in front of his face. His fingers were trembling.
At first we laughed at his slurred efforts to speak. We kept making him repeat himself and telling him to speak more clearly.
“Any Mexican woman would be proud to be seen with me…would be proud to—uh—be with me…”
We Three just looked at one another. Surely he didn’t mean what it sounded like. Only two Mexican women occupied his apartment, and Mother Chalina was old enough to…to have been my mother. Surely, he wouldn’t touch her, not even in his drunken condition.
He nearly toppled over, but then managed to straighten up…slightly. “But you are the three women I truly love.”
The stench of beer was indescribably worse this close up.
Although he was leaning on the table for support, he was still wobbling. “The three ladies of my life. Three lifely ladies.” He laughed at his joke. “The only three.” He leaned over and reached into the refrigerator for several cans of beer. Then he collapsed clumsily into the chair opposite me.
His tone of voice changed. His joviality disappeared, and We Three stopped laughing.
“It is you three I love, but you do not love me. No, you do not love me like I love you, but I will make love to one of you this very night. I will give you the privilege of being with a real man. Any true Mexican woman would be proud to make love to a real Mexican man like me.”
Although he may not have known what he was saying, I dared not take his words lightly. I was as scared for Mother Chalina as I was for myself.
“I am not a Mexican woman,” Nikki said in English, taking a horrible chance that Tomás would overlook the fact she shouldn’t have been able to understand his Spanish.
I started nibbling on my fingernails. I had never done that before, but never had I been so terrified.
Nikki feigned a smile. “But I will make love to my fine Mexican man tonight. I will be proud to.”
“Nikki…sacrifice…save us,” Mother Chalina whispered quickly. I barely heard her, but I caught her meaning.
Before anyone else could speak, Alazne spoke up impatiently in Spanish, “Señorita Nikki, who is this man? He has interrupted our card game. Let’s play again now, please.”
Nikki turned deathly pale.
I envisioned us as the passengers cowering behind the blue convertible and waiting for the gunshot that would hit the gas tank and make the car explode. Had any of the passengers survived? And would any of us?
Nikki did her best to ignore Alazne, probably hoping Tomás hadn’t paid attention to what she had said.
“I’m your daddy, little girl.” Tomás emphasized the word daddy. He reached across the table to take Alazne’s hand, but she pulled it away before his fingers could close around hers.
“No, you cannot be!” I’d never seen her face so red. “My Momma says my daddy is dead!”
“She does, does she?” He scowled at me with such a vicious sneer I shrank down as far in my chair as I could. “Perhaps your momma is the one who should be dead.”
Alazne stared into Tomás’s eyes. “Señorita Nikki says my poppa is dead, too.”
Be quiet, Alazne! You are endangering our lives.
“Oh?” Suspicion spilled from Tomás’s face into his voice. “And how does she tell you that? Do you speak any English, girl?”
Alazne was shaking. How I longed to c
omfort her. “No. No, Señor. I do not speak English.” Her words were barely audible.
“But Nikki doesn’t speak Spanish…”
“Yes, she does.”
Alazne, don’t say anymore!
“She learned to speak Spanish while Mommy learned to read and write. Señorita Nikki speaks very good Spanish now. Don’t you, Señorita Nikki?”
At first Tomás appeared not to have fully taken in what Alazne had so innocently revealed.
Please! Whoever watches out for weak and pathetic human beings, whether you are god or someone else, do not let Tomás be angry at Nikki.
“So you have learned to speak Spanish behind my back when I have forbidden you to do so, Señorita Nikki?” he asked in Spanish.
His words had dripped with sarcasm. Although his speech had cleared up slightly, his mind seemed just as foggy as before.
He slapped Nikki so hard it made Alazne slide from her lap onto the floor. Alazne began crying, but I didn’t dare to reach out to her. If I called undue attention to myself, I might not live to care for her again. I sighed with silent relief that the fall appeared to have frightened more than actually hurt her.
How close Tomás had come to striking his own daughter…
If he had done so—even by accident—I would have killed him without stopping to think. I would have grabbed a kitchen knife from the drawer and jabbed him numerous times before he knew what was happening. Attacking him like that would have been the instinctive act of a mother protecting her young—an aggressive act I would never regret, regardless of the consequences.
“You,” he said, focusing on Nikki, “you will not disobey me again. You do not deserve to make love to me anymore. You will never sleep in my bed again.”
Had this scene taken place in a book or on television, I might have laughed at his exaggerated sense of pride and his ridiculous concept of punishment. Nikki wouldn’t miss his bed any more than she would miss his violence.
