Rosa No-Name

by Roger Bruner

  “There’s no telling what will become of Alazne once we’re dead, but you can be sure he’ll make some evil use of her. She’ll never have the chance to finish growing into the kind of fine young woman we’ve been raising her to become.”

  I didn’t waste further words expressing my horror. We had to make sure Alazne didn’t end up in Tomás’s hands.

  “What should we do?” I wasn’t simply asking a question. I was pleading for an answer. “How can we prevent the things you have described?”

  “We do not call the police. Not yet, anyhow. If we call them later, we’ll explain that we were physically unable to call sooner. We were so badly injured we could barely tend to our own wounds, much less contact them.”

  “We would lie to the police?” That prospect made me nauseous.

  “Only if we must.”

  She started laughing. I narrowed my eyes at her. “Did you notice when I got nervous while talking to Señora Isabel?”

  “Yes. That worried—”

  “I started worrying, too. I’m not that good a liar. She believed me, thank goodness.”

  I understood, but since her explanation didn’t require a response, I returned to the problem at hand. “If we don’t call the police, shouldn’t we call someone else? We need help—the sooner the better. We can’t solve this by ourselves.”

  “Ah, Rosa. You’ve given me an idea.”

  Tell me—now. Please.

  “This Dr. Morales you go to.”

  “What about him?”

  “He is from your country and your culture. From what you’ve told Mother Chalina and me, I believe he can advise us. He will be sympathetic. And he’s a doctor. There is confidentiality between a doctor and a patient. I will become his patient, too, if that proves necessary. We need his help. I don’t know any other way.”

  “His questions make me uncomfortable at times, as if he knows more about me than I know about myself.” But then I pictured his kind smile. “He seems to care.”

  “He does, and he’s the only hope I see. Do you have his number?”

  “I’m not sure I…yes! He gave me his card when he finished examining me the very first time. It’s in my wallet. Do you know what he told me?”

  Nikki narrowed her eyebrows.

  “‘If you ever need anything…’”

  19

  “Dr. Morales?” Thank goodness he’d written his cell phone number on that business card. “This is Nikki King, Rosa del Mundo’s best friend. Do you remember…?”

  She reminded him that I had chosen him as my regular doctor and gone to see him at least once yearly. Then she put the phone in speaker mode.

  “Rosa del Mundo? Yes, of course I remember her—the sixteen-year-old who had just had a baby when she came to see me the first time. She’s been back several times since then. Nice girl. Is she having problems, uh, you said your name is Nikki?”

  “Nikki, yes. Problems she can’t come to your office about. I’m sorry to have to ask, but do you make house calls?”

  “It’s that urgent?”

  “Yes, yes, it is.”

  “And you can’t tell me her problem on the phone?”

  I shook my head, but she was already saying no.

  “Do I need to call the rescue squad, Nikki?”

  “It’s urgent in a different way from that.”

  Nikki was alternating between Spanish and English, aware that Dr. Morales spoke both languages. If she needed a Spanish word she must not have been able to think of quickly enough, she substituted the English word. If Dr. Morales noticed, he didn’t say anything.

  “Does…?” He sounded hesitant. “Does this have anything to do with Tomás del Mundo?”

  Nikki and I looked at one another in shock. Silence was her only response.

  “I see.” His tone of hesitation had turned to one of worry. “Can…?” Pages flipped, perhaps an appointment book. “Can it wait until 3:00 this afternoon? I have appointments until then and I don’t want to cancel them unless absolutely necessary.”

  Nikki and I looked at one another again. We were terrified at the prospect of having to wait, but we didn’t have a choice. Not when we were asking such a tremendous favor of Dr. Morales.

  “Sooner would be better, but if it’s not possible, 3:00 will do.”

  “I’ll come sooner if I can.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Morales. We aren’t going anywhere. Do you have the address?”

  “Is Rosa still living at the address on her chart?”

  “That’s it. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye. He had sounded worried, yes, and he probably wouldn’t have agreed to come if he hadn’t been. But he must have been curious, too.

  Unable to imagine his reaction once he got here, I grew increasingly fearful he couldn’t or wouldn’t help us.

  Nikki was more optimistic. “From what Chalina has told me, Dr. Morales doesn’t always act strictly within the letter of the law, but he is one hundred percent trustworthy.”

  “I don’t know.” What was I trying to say? “How can we be sure? How can anyone be sure about someone else?”

  ~*~

  Dr. Morales must have seen many types of vicious injuries during his years as a physician, but I didn’t expect him to gasp and then blanch when he first looked at Nikki and me. I thought he might gag, but he didn’t.

  He couldn’t speak at first. Tears ran down his cheeks. How would he react to the battered, nearly faceless body of Mother Chalina? I couldn’t imagine.

  “Tomás. Tomás del Mundo. He did this?”

  I don’t know whose face bore the greater look of amazement, Nikki’s or mine. We hadn’t told Dr. Morales anything yet. He had asked about Tomás on the telephone, yes, but…

  Observing our reactions, he added, “You didn’t need to tell me, Señoras. Tomás has a reputation for cruelty and violence. I know more about him than you can possibly imagine. That man is evil from head to toe.”

  I wanted to be angry at Dr. Morales for failing to warn me about Tomás four years earlier, but his face bore such a mixture of sorrow and regret, not to mention anger toward Tomás—and perhaps toward himself as well—that I felt sorry for him.

  Besides, Nikki and Mother Chalina had warned me. And I had seen Tomás in action years earlier. I couldn’t blame the doctor, and he shouldn’t blame himself, either.

  “I should have helped you…” He grimaced and then bit his lip. He seemed to have forgotten for the moment that we were there.

  Then, without saying more, he opened his bag. “I need to examine each of you, clean your wounds, and put on fresh bandages.” His lips curled downward in a frown. “Nikki, I will begin with you. Your wounds appear to be more serious than Rosa’s.”

  Although she didn’t cry out during his examination, the twinges of tightness on her face described her pain better than words could have done.

  “Your nose is broken, Nikki.” His matter-of-factness shocked me. “Tonight after dark we will bring you to my office to X-ray and set it, but we can’t have you going out during daylight hours looking like this.”

  She narrowed her eyes. That slight motion appeared to almost make her cry out in pain.

  “Too many questions. We can’t have anyone see you this way.”

  She nodded, obviously thankful for his concern.

  I could tell from her expression that we agreed—not only had calling Dr. Morales been our only choice, it had been a good decision. A wise one.

  He turned his attention to me. His examination was thorough, but I whimpered whenever it hurt. “I am being as gentle as I can,” he said. His eyes revealed a depth of kindness I hadn’t noticed before. I tried to react more maturely during the rest of the examination.

  “Rosa…” He seemed hesitant to continue. “I don’t want to ask. It’s a sensitive subject…”

  I knew what he was thinking. No matter how ashamed I felt, I spoke up before he could elaborate. “I fought him. I screamed, I cried,
I clawed him with these very fingernails.” I held up my hands. “You can almost still see the flesh and blood that was caked beneath them.”

  “But that wasn’t enough?”

  “No. Once again he took advantage of me. I didn’t understand before how babies are made. I do now. Am…am I pregnant with another of his babies?”

  I started crying. Several minutes passed before I calmed down enough for him to respond. “It’s too soon to know.”

  “I’ll kill this baby before I let it live.”

  “Let’s take things as they come—day by day, one day at a time.” His words were gentle, but insistent. “‘Tomorrow will have enough worries of its own.’”

  He seemed to be quoting something when he said, Tomorrow will have enough worries of its own. But it didn’t come from anything I had ever read.

  Under different circumstances, I would have asked about it.

  “I will send a car for you after dark.” Dr. Morales began packing his bag. He stood up, apparently thinking he was done. “And how is Chalina? It’s good she wasn’t here last night.”

  A single teardrop ran down my face. “But she was.”

  ~*~

  I cannot describe Dr. Morales’s look of horror when he looked at Mother Chalina’s body. Seeing this normally calm man react the way he did scared me. Would he have a heart attack?

  We sat down at the kitchen table, and he shook his head. “So she never told you we were once sweethearts?”

  I had just opened a huge box of Kleenex tissues yesterday. It was nearly empty.

  “We were engaged to be married some years back, but she called off the wedding because she couldn’t marry a man who would never be home. Not that I blamed her. I was married to my work, and she needed someone who would be a husband to her and a father to the children she wanted.”

  He paused momentarily, and tears—the largest ones I had ever seen a grown man cry—rolled down both sides of his face.

  “We never stopped loving one another—I’m certain of that—but we stopped seeing each other. Remaining friends was too difficult.” He sniffled. “Too frustrating.”

  I could barely see him through the tears in my own eyes. I took the last Kleenex from the box, and Nikki shuffled slowly and painfully to the hall closet for another box.

  Dr. Morales blew his nose. “Chalina must have loved you very much. In spite of our mutual avoidance, she didn’t hesitate to ask me to examine you after you gave birth to Alazne. Even then I would have given up everything to please Chalina and win her back.” He moaned softly. “Everything but my chosen profession.”

  Minutes passed. No one spoke. Only the sounds of occasional sniffles broke the silence. But then Dr. Morales glanced at the blanket-covered body on the floor and began sobbing loudly.

  I had barely noticed the blood on the floor last night, but now I saw it had dried wherever it landed. The kitchen was an unspeakable mess.

  Lost in my private world of grief, I wasn’t aware at first that Dr. Morales had begun speaking. “…get the body out of here tonight. You have done well to avoid calling the police. Once Tomás comes to his senses—from your description, I’m confident narcotics and alcohol were both involved—your lives will be in great danger. You are the only witnesses to this murder, and he will probably panic when he realizes that. People who panic often do very stupid and careless things, and one evil deed invariably leads to another.”

  Nikki and I looked at one another. Although we had discussed the same thing just hours earlier, the danger we were in sounded even more frightening coming from someone like Dr. Morales.

  “Do not fear. I have connections. I will send someone to guard your apartment. You won’t see him. He will remain outside in the parking lot, but he will be vigilant, especially during the dark of night. I will have the body removed this evening.

  “Dressed as paramedics, they will carry Chalina out on a stretcher as if she were ill. They will work silently. No siren will call attention to their activities. I will certify that Chalina has died of a heart attack, and another helper will have her body cremated so nobody can examine it and learn the truth.”

  I’d never felt so overwhelmed. Too much had happened—was still happening—and I couldn’t take it all in. I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep, and Nikki looked as perplexed—as hopeless—as I felt.

  “I will also send someone to clean the apartment, do some cooking, and help you any way she can. She won’t ask any questions, and she won’t answer any. She will remain here as long as she is needed, be it days, weeks, or months.”

  Cooking? Only then did I realize we had involuntarily fasted the whole day. Which were we weaker from, hunger or our efforts to cope with this ordeal?

  I doubted whether either of us could have fixed a simple sandwich, much less a meal. Earlier, the thought of food would have been repulsive, but now it sounded good. Or perhaps not good, but necessary.

  Dr. Morales appeared to know what I was thinking. “She will feed you before she begins cleaning up.”

  Thank you, I half-smiled voicelessly.

  While calling the yet-nameless person who would wait on us for an unknown number of days, Dr. Morales held his cell phone awkwardly between his left ear and shoulder. He almost dropped it once, but caught it and put it back. His eyes and hands were busy searching the refrigerator to determine what our helper needed to bring.

  He poured a big glass of milk for each of us. “Very nutritious.” He smiled. “But whole milk? That is dangerous. How will you live to a ripe old age if you continue to drink all that fat?”

  I started to defend our choice of milk by pointing out that Alazne’s pediatrician had wanted her to drink whole milk to make up for deficiencies in her diet during her months inside my womb. She said it would make Alazne’s bones stronger and help to ward off other health problems when she got older.

  Before I could say anything, however, Dr. Morales laughed. He had been joking. Teasing us. The amount of fat in our milk was the least of our worries, he explained. Especially when it came to surviving to old age.

  I hid my mouth in the glass as I drank my milk. I didn’t want him to see I wasn’t laughing at his joke. He might not have meant to frighten me, but he had.

  Nikki smiled politely. Maybe she had interpreted his joke differently.

  After such a lengthy fast, I couldn’t remember any beverage ever tasting better. But then my stomach growled. Although Nikki and Dr. Morales laughed, I didn’t care. The milk had already made me feel better. Perhaps even soothed me slightly.

  Dr. Morales arose to leave, apparently satisfied that he had taken care of every detail. But then he looked into my eyes. “What about your daughter?”

  “Alazne? What about her?”

  “She is safe?”

  “She is with a neighbor, Señora Isabel. We told her Nikki and I had both come down with a disease we didn’t want Alazne exposed to. So she took Alazne while she was still sleeping. Neither of them saw us.”

  “Bring her back in four or five days. Explain to Alazne that you were both in a car wreck. That’s why you look so bad. And why Chalina is dead.” He must have sensed my hesitation. “What about last night? Did she see or hear anything?”

  My stomach rose in my throat before I could answer, but I didn’t throw up. “Everything we saw and everything we heard. At least until Nikki put her to bed. Alazne is a witness, too.”

  Words couldn’t have expressed his concern the way his sigh did. “Take care.” He opened the door. “May God bless you.”

  He closed the door before I could ask who or what this god of his was.

  20

  The doorbell rang an hour or so later. I looked through the peephole viewer and saw a young woman—slightly older than Nikki—wearing what I assumed was a maid’s uniform.

  “Call me Juanita.” Never had I heard anyone speak in such a neutral tone. “I do my job and I don’t talk much.” But then she added, “And I don’t listen to what I shouldn’t hear.” />
  I was too naïve to be suspicious about why she had said, I don’t listen to what I shouldn’t hear. Because I hadn’t read anything by William Shakespeare yet, I wasn’t familiar with “The lady doth protest too much.” Although Juanita hadn’t protested as such, her words struck me as odd when I thought about them later.

  ~*~

  Juanita came into the kitchen. “We’ll all go this evening for Dr. Morales to treat Señorita Nikki’s broken nose. Going out may be painful, Señorita Rosa, but it will be safer for the two of you to remain together.”

  And better that no one is home to witness the removal of Mother Chalina’s body?

  Shortly before time to leave for the doctor’s office, I overheard her on her cell phone, apparently talking with Dr. Morales. I wasn’t surprised that she told him we were leaving, but when she switched to English in the middle of their conversation, she caught me off-guard.

  Until then, I had believed she was just another Mexican immigrant doing whatever she could to earn a livelihood in the big city. But I couldn’t imagine a maid needing to learn a great deal of English, and hers sounded fluent.

  I wondered if Nikki had heard her, but I didn’t have a chance to ask.

  We took what I assumed to be the back streets of San Diego to get to Dr. Morales’s office. Juanita drove rapidly, but maintained complete control of the car at all times. Her driving didn’t frighten me the way Tomás’s had.

  She constantly monitored the rearview mirror and looked in all directions through the car windows. She occasionally made a sudden turn and drove for a while on a different street.

  Maybe I had watched too much American television—or read too many mystery and suspense novels—but she appeared to be making sure no one was following us.

  We parked behind the building. A bright security light shone over the entire parking lot from the top of a telephone pole.

  A man I had never seen before appeared out of nowhere and let us inside the building. He locked the door behind us and remained there on guard.