by Mary Morris
She is glad that Esmeralda Roybal is at the cash register because she doesn’t seem to recognize Elena. Perhaps she thinks she is just passing through, which she is. Elena picks up some juice, bread, diet Coke, beer, cigarettes, a few cans of tuna fish, cheese, pays and heads back. Except for the pungent odor of bleach, the trailer smells fresh and clean, and Elena puts the groceries away. Then she sits down at her mother’s kitchen table and looks around. This is where she grew up. This is where she would have grown old. And she puts her head down on the newly cleaned table and weeps for the first time in years.
* * *
For weeks after her rape she couldn’t stop crying. At times it seemed as if she would never stop. She cried until the corners of her eyes turned red and her body ached from endless sobs. But she won’t tell her mother despite Rosa’s pleas. “Tell me what happened to you,” her mother begged. “Tell me who hurt you and I’ll kill them.” But Elena wouldn’t tell. And in some ways she couldn’t. She barely remembered that night or who they were or what really happened to her. All she remembered were hands and fingers and a searing pain. What little she did recall she’d never tell. She let her secret grow and fester inside of her. My own brother. He let them take me. He laughed and drank his beer.
But then suddenly the crying stopped and Elena grew tired. It was impossible to explain how tired she was. She dragged herself out of bed, to the bathroom where for days blood trickled into the bowl. She’d stayed home from school, but then when she returned, when she sat at her desk, listening to a teacher droning on and on, her eyes closed and she slept. The minute she lay down at night she was asleep until her mother shook her awake in the morning. It was as if every muscle, every cell in her body was tired. She’d wake to go to the bathroom, drink a soda, then go back to sleep. If no one woke her, she could sleep twelve, fourteen hours. Once Rosa put a mirror under her nose to make certain she was still alive. It was as if her whole existence was sleep and with the sleep came a kind of euphoria.
She was actually happy. The darkness lifted and this tired warmth gushed through her bones. Even exhausted, she was happier than she could remember being in a long time. Even in her dreams she was content. It was around this time that she noticed the tenderness in her breasts. An ache that surprised her but that would leave, she knew, as soon as her period came. Except it didn’t come. Instead her breasts swelled. Her body thickened. And, just looking at her daughter, Rosa knew. “You are going to have a child.” “No,” Elena cried stubbornly, “I’m not.” But of course it was true.
“Whose is it?” Rosa asked, though she was fairly certain she knew. It could be any of those boys. This baby’s father was Entrada de la Luna, the town no one could ever leave. The town had created this child as much as any boy.
“I will get rid of it,” Elena said.
But her mother, a good Catholic, would not allow it. “You will not murder my grandchild,” Rosa said, “I will raise the baby.”
A week later Elena moved to Albuquerque to live with her aunt. For the rest of her pregnancy her aunt home-schooled her so Elena could keep up her grades. And during that time, as her body grew and her breasts ached and this alien occupied her body, her heart turned to stone. It would never change. And then during a summer storm the child came. He was early by six weeks because Elena wanted to get rid of him. He knew she did not want him inside her body.
Elena lay in her bed that night, listening to the rain, as her body was shattered with pain. She refused to call out. It was better if the child inside of her died, and she would do what she could to make it so. She gripped the sides of the bed and bit into her pillow. She paced her room, then stared outside, watching the hard rain coming down on the asphalt, rivulets of mud and water, coursing down the side of her aunt’s muddy yard. She squatted, clenching her sides, but she would not cry out.
She was silent even as the rain came harder and outside there was forked lightning as if the sky would rip in half, the way she was certain she would. She felt the child, pressing against her insides, splitting her in two, until a baby boy slipped onto the braided carpet, alive and wailing, covered in blood and his own sac. His dark eyes were open and fixed on her as if he already knew that she would never cradle or comfort him and that he would have to memorize her face before she was gone.
It was only then that Elena screamed and her aunt rushed in. Her aunt had not raised five children for nothing. With scissors she cut the cord. She made Elena hold the baby as she bathed it, but Elena would not nurse and she would not hold it any longer. She handed the baby to her aunt and, as soon as she was able, walked out the door. Six weeks later, which was the time when Miguel was due to be born, Elena was in New York, dancing with the American Ballet Theater. Miguel had stayed in the hospital where his aunt had taken him. It was at the time when Elena was to deliver that Roberto’s wife, MG, hemorrhaged and gave birth to a stillborn child. In the hospital MG was told that she could have no more children.
For Rosa the decision was easy. She told her son, “You will raise your nephew as if he is your own.” Because in some ways he really was.
* * *
In the morning, Elena gets up, goes into the bathroom and takes a shower. She washes her hair, her body. She dries herself off with the towels she laundered. Then she takes out the black dress she brought and a pair of black heels. She slips the dress on, zipping it up the back. She puts on the heels. Then she gets into the car and goes to bury her brother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE PILGRIMAGE—1992
Hundreds of crucifixes line the fences at El Santuario de Chimayó. They have been carried by pilgrims—some for hundreds of miles—to reach this holy place where the earth itself is said to cure you. Some people crawl on their knees to get here. Rachel Rothstein walks past the crosses, leading her boys. “Come on,” she says. “We’re already late.” The boys shuffle along. They are dressed in identical white shirts and black trousers with black ties. The only difference is that Jeremy is wearing sneakers and Davie is in leather boots. He has been wearing the boots since the snake bit him.
Singing comes from inside the sanctuary. A guitar strums out hymns in Spanish. Rachel takes each boy by the hand as they enter a room where thousands of crutches and braces hang from the ceiling. The boys look stunned. Rachel explains to them in a whisper, “People come here to get cured. They come on crutches and then they walk away.” Then they enter the sanctuary. It is a simple dome-shaped room of adobe walls and it is about half full. In the center of the room before the altar is the coffin of Roberto Torres.
Miguel sits in the front row and Rachel goes up to him. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She gives him a hug. At first the boys stand back. Then Davie grabs Miguel by the knees. Miguel squats down and whispers into his ear, “You won, big man. You fought the dragon and you won.” He hugs Jeremy as well. Standing up with tears in his eyes, Miguel turns to Rachel. “Thank you for coming. I want you to meet my mother.”
Rachel turns to face the woman sitting on the bench who looks just like Miguel. She is tall and thin with a long face and dark skin. “This is my aunt Elena,” Miguel says, awkwardly directing her away. “Here is my mother.” And he points to the woman sitting beside him. Rachel, who is confused at first, shakes MG’s hand.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Rachel says to MG. But during the ceremony it is the lithe former ballerina whom Rachel keeps staring at.
After the service, Rachel, clutching her boys, goes up to the woman introduced as his aunt. “Excuse me,” Rachel says, “but who are you?”
Elena looks at Rachel. “I don’t live here anymore,” she says with a sigh, “but Roberto was my brother.”
Rachel nods, looking into Elena’s eyes. “Yes, I can see the resemblance. I’m sorry.”
Elena stares back at this bold, dark woman. “And you are?”
“I’m Miguel’s employer.” Rachel is proud to say it this way. “He’s a very smart boy.” She places her hands firmly on the shoulders of her
children. “We’ve been lucky to have him.”
* * *
Back at his mother’s trailer metal tubs filled with cold cheese sit on the kitchen table. There are loaves of bread, mustard, catsup. As the guests serve themselves, Miguel holds back. He sits in a corner on a folding chair, a plastic cup of Coke in his hand. While everyone mills about in the narrow space, grabbing beers from the fridge, making sandwiches, chatting among themselves, Miguel is silent. He can’t get over the way his father died. He can’t stop thinking about it. At night sometimes he wakes up, unable to breathe. He envisions the weight of the car crushing his father’s chest. The car he was fixing up for Miguel. Dying there alone on the cold garage floor. And no jack stands. How many times did Miguel have to tell him to use jack stands?
Across the room Elena is carrying platters of meat, pickles, bags of chips. She puts a chicken casserole someone brought on the table. Deviled eggs. Carrot sticks. Tamales. She moves like a dancer. Her head high, her feet out-turned. He watches as she crosses the room, those long, lanky legs, her straight dancer’s spine. She sits down at the table, folding her legs beneath her. When she laughs, her mouth opens wide, revealing her shiny white teeth. As he watches her, Miguel feels that his life has been a puzzle and the pieces are coming together.
Just the way he wakes up from his dreams, Miguel feels as if he can’t breathe. He has to get out of here. As he starts to leave, some of his school friends arrive. There’s Pablo Martinez with his brother and their girlfriends. They’re laughing, drinking Cokes. They come up to Miguel and pat his arm. They tell him that they are sorry. Mr. Garcia has come in as well. He’s wearing a suit and a plain blue tie. Miguel is disappointed. He wishes he were wearing a reindeer tie. He doesn’t want to see any of them. All he wants is to be alone. As soon as he can, he slips outside. He walks under the cottonwood tree and smokes a cigarette.
He needs to get away. He gets in his car. At first he drives around, heading toward Española, but then he turns around and drives to his father’s trailer. He hasn’t been back to the trailer since his father was found crushed beneath the truck by a customer who wanted an eagle airbrushed on his car. As he drives, tears stream down his face. His father died because his son wanted a four-wheel drive vehicle. And now his aunt is here, and observing her for the first time he realizes what he has suspected for some time.
He pulls onto his father’s street. The El Camino his father was working on is parked off to the side. A sob catches in his throat. The tow truck that lifted it off his father left it there. They should have just towed it away. He tries to imagine what his father was thinking as the El Camino came down upon him. You stupid old man. Why didn’t you use the jack stands like I told you? Miguel’s eyes well up. What was his father thinking? The doctor told them he died quickly. But how quickly would you die if a car were crushing your ribs? Not quickly enough.
MG had watched Miguel leave. She saw him drive off, laying rubber as he swung onto the road toward Española. She knows her son. She has loved him since he was weeks old and put in her arms. She has taken Elena aside. “It’s time,” MG tells Elena. “It’s time that Miguel knows the truth.”
But Elena hesitates. “Why?”
“Because we all need to know where we’ve come from,” MG replies.
“He’s already left,” Elena says and MG nods.
“Yes, but I can tell you where to find him.”
* * *
Miguel stands in his father’s driveway. Taking a deep breath, he walks into the garage. He hasn’t been here since the accident and he wonders if his beetles are still alive. It seems absurd to think of beetles when his father has just died, but there they are, in their aquarium, staggering aimlessly. He closes the garage door and shines his flashlight on the ceiling, illuminating the night sky. His beetles right themselves. They begin their foraging again.
These are his tests. Soon he will show them to Mr. Garcia. Miguel will enter his dung beetles into the national science competition and prove that they navigate using the stars. He will receive an honorable mention. The following year he will receive a National Science Foundation scholarship to the college of his choice for an experiment in astrobiology and the possibility of water molecules on Mars. Both times Mr. Garcia will give him a high five. Later when Mr. Garcia becomes an inspirational speaker, he will include Miguel as one of his success stories. To his surprise, Miguel will attend one of his speeches and will get up and say that he would not be who he is if it weren’t for his teacher. This will bring tears to everyone’s eyes. Miguel will go on to study astronomy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a full scholarship and eventually he will work for NASA. He will be among the scientists to enable the rover, Curiosity, to land on Mars. By then he will be a professor at the University of New Mexico. His wife and children will live in an adobe house on the outskirts of Albuquerque. He will tell people about his history. He will never hide from them the fact that he believes he is a Jew. Just before his first child is born, he will send his DNA to a lab in Atlanta and it will confirm his Iberian Jewish roots.
As he opens the garage door to let in the light, someone is standing there. For a moment he wonders if his father hasn’t come home from wherever he’s gone. Then he sees his Aunt Elena. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m staying here,” she says. And then she adds. “This is my home.” Elena steps inside the cool garage and looks down at the tank filled with manure and dung beetles. “What is this?”
“It’s my experiment.” And then he adds. “I don’t want to talk to you. I know what you did.”
“And what is that?” Elena asks.
“You had me and you left me, right?”
And Elena nods. “Yes, that is right. I did.”
“But my dad was my real dad, wasn’t he?”
Elena gazes at him perplexed. It takes her a moment to absorb what he is saying, and then she raises her hands into the air. “Oh no. He wasn’t your father. I don’t really know who your father was though I have an idea.” Elena leans against the wall of the garage. “Could we go inside and sit down? I have something to tell you.”
In the kitchen of Roberto’s trailer Elena pours a Coke for Miguel. “This is very difficult to say to you.” And she tells him about that night, about the drunken rape, and her need to get away from Entrada forever. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t come back.”
“So my real dad…he could be any one of them?”
Elena nods, then looks over Miguel’s long lanky legs. “But I think I know who he was. He was very tall like you. In fact I liked him until that night. He died a year after you were born on this very road. And if I am right you have grandparents who are living in Entrada.”
And suddenly Miguel feels sad for the two fathers he has lost, but also strangely happy for the mother he has found. MG will always be the mother who raised him, but as he looks into Elena’s eyes, he finds his own. It is in her face that he sees his round dark eyes, his angular nose and wry smile. He sees his thin, lanky body and long legs. They do not have to speak of this and perhaps they never will. He understands that she had not known how to love him and others had, but now his three-body problem is solved, the mysteries of his own universe that have for so long eluded him are answered. He knows why his family settled in Entrada and why his own mother left him and why the parents who raised him loved him just as he understands how the moon is held in its place by Earth and the sun and how it is that we orbit among the galaxies and stars.
Miguel turns to his aunt, who is now also his mother. “And there’s something I think you should know.” And he proceeds to tell her who they are and where they came from. And why for the past four hundred years they have chosen to live on this dry, hard land. Elena sits, absorbing this information. As Elena listens to Miguel, it occurs to her that the recipe for the lamb with apricots and garbanzos that her grandmother made must have traveled the same distance that her family had. The recipe she tasted in Tangiers must have left Spain along with the
Jews.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she says. “I have a lot to take care of before I do.”
Miguel nods. “Would you meet me this evening at Roybal’s? I want to show you something.”
“All right,” Elena says, “I’ll be there. What time?”
Miguel thinks for a moment. “Six would be fine.”
Elena spends the rest of the day tying up loose ends and pondering what Miguel has told her. The people of Entrada are descended from Spanish Jews who fled the Inquisition. They settled here four hundred years ago and after generations they forgot that they were Jews. But they did not forget their rituals. It is more than she can fathom so instead she pays bills that her brother owed. She has been more or less put in charge of his estate, such as it is, and she focuses her attention on this.
At six sharp she drives to Roybal’s General Store. Vincent Roybal is at the cash register and he gives Elena a nod. Elena decides that after Miguel shows her whatever he wants to show her, she will introduce Vincent to his grandson.
Miguel is waiting for her on the porch and he has something folded under his arm. He has a flashlight and slowly they begin their climb. Miguel shines a flashlight on the ground so that Elena won’t trip over any stones or roots. He doesn’t want her to hurt her ankle again.
“Where are we going?” Elena asks, and Miguel points to the top of the hill.
“The old cemetery,” he says. Elena’s eyes widen. “Don’t worry.” Miguel laughs. “It’s just where I like to go.” It’s a cold night and the wind is blowing. “Are you warm enough?” Miguel asks.
Elena puts the hood up on her sweatshirt. “I’m fine. I’m glad to be here.”
They cross the road to the dirt path and begin their climb. Elena struggles a bit. Her ankle is wobbly on uneven terrain, and Miguel takes her arm. Finally they reach the top of the hill and the cemetery. Miguel shines a light for her on the tombstones as he explains how these are the people who came here before them and what is written is in Hebrew. Then he sets up the telescope he’s carrying. Not the one he made but the one she sent him. He used it only once, the day he received it, so he practiced during the day how to set it up and focus. Now he opens the tripod and adjusts the lens. He motions for her to join him. As they stand among the crumbling stones of their ancestors, Miguel teaches his mother how to follow the stars.
