Jubilee

by Jennifer Givhan

  The real world had found them.

  From where he stood, he had to protect his wife from the outside. He’d taken that role willingly. He’d known how she appeared to others. He hadn’t cared. But Jayden? How would he keep the system from grabbing him away?

  Twenty-four

  Please Don’t Leave

  Before Jubilee

  Saturday night dinners at Nana’s were Bianca’s favorite. They’d barbecue outside on the grill, and Nana would make potato salad and homemade tortillas. Other times she’d make a huge pot of posole or albondigas, Gabe’s favorite.

  That night, two nights before New Year’s, Bianca served herself a heaping plate of rice, beans, cheesy potatoes, and chile con carne. Esme’s comadre Belen, who was in town from Orange County, had come for the dinner. Belen and her ex-husband Frank were Gabe’s padrinos. They had a daughter named Adriana, whom Bianca had heard about for years but never met. That night at Nana’s, Belen bragged about Adriana as usual, telling everyone how she’d gotten a job working as a teller at the bank in Newport Beach, and she’d bought herself a silver Mazda Miata.

  Every time she mentioned Adriana, Bianca wanted to gag. She could blame it on the morning sickness, but Adriana was the cause. From what Bianca could tell, Adriana was nothing special, but Belen gushed on and on about her to Esme, who oohed and aahed. It bothered Bianca, how possessive she’d become of Esme’s attention.

  She’d wanted to confirm the pregnancy at the Clínicas before telling Gabe. She hadn’t wanted a false positive. Earlier that afternoon, the nurse had confirmed it; the doctor had calculated ten weeks based on Bianca’s last period, which she’d dug through journals and calendars and the haze of the past few months to remember. It was safe to tell Gabe.

  She went for a second helping of everything, more rice, more beans, more cheesy potatoes, more chile con carne. Gabe saw her piling the food on her plate and asked snidely, “Don’t you think you’ve eaten enough?” A knot in her stomach. She might have been overdoing it, but he didn’t have to point it out in front of everyone. Besides, she was hungry.

  “No.” She sucked the word in the way she might breathe shallow after eating a chile, to keep it from stinging. “And there’s a reason I’m so hungry.” She motioned for him to follow her through the back door into the yard that his Nana shared with the neighbors. “I need to talk to you.”

  He followed, fidgeting with his cargo pockets like he wasn’t interested in whatever she had to say. “What’s up?” he asked, impatient. They stood beside the outdoor washer and dryer, on the side of the house, beside Nana’s rose garden. Bianca leaned against the washing machine while he shuffled back and forth in front of her. Her stomach uncoiled in the way that meant she’d need the restroom soon.

  “Do you love me?” It had popped into her head and felt ridiculous spilling out of her mouth, jagged as rock candy. Too sweet. Too hard.

  “Ay, Bee. Don’t start again. Come on, not now. Does everything have to be a dramatic scene?” He began to walk away.

  She pulled him back. “Gabe, wait. This is important, and I won’t make a scene. Stay and talk to me, please.”

  When she’d gone to visit Nana after moving home from Holy Cross to tell her that Gabe and she were back together, Nana made the sign of the cross and thanked God. By the time Gabe and Bianca were standing in her yard on New Year’s, Nana probably questioned whether it was God that brought her back. None of Gabe’s family acted outwardly angry with Bianca for the scenes she caused, because, really, they weren’t that bad compared with Katrina’s and the scenes her family caused. Katrina’s brother had knocked over Esme’s backyard fence at Lana’s first birthday party (Esme had told Bianca this, since she hadn’t been invited to the party).

  “I won’t make a scene,” she said again. His face softened, his body relaxed. He lifted her atop the washing machine, face-to-face with him, though he usually towered over her, a foot taller and still as broad as when he’d played football.

  “Of course I love you,” he said, resting his head against her chest. “I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass lately. I know this whole situation is hard on you. I know it hurts you. That’s why I never asked you to come back to the Valley, why I was so proud of you when you went away to school. You deserve more.”

  With his body pressed to hers, she put her arms inside his hoodie sweatshirt’s front pocket, keeping her hands warm the way she’d done when they were in high school. “Remember that night at the fair? You locked your keys in your car in the parking lot, so we waited by the FFA pig barns for your friend to bring you a spare set. It was so cold and windy. I asked you to my sophomore Baby Ball. You said yes.”

  His eyes were bright, and Bianca could see again why she’d ever loved him. “I’d never been to a dance with anyone before.” He sounded almost shy, the way he’d been when they met.

  “You danced pretty good for a first timer.”

  “I danced good with you.”

  “I’m on a bench again, Gabe. Hoping you’ll come sit with me . . . wait with me . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He lifted his head from her chest, pulled back, looked hard into her face. “You sure?”

  “I took a test at the Clínicas. I’m ten weeks.”

  “Bee . . .” His forehead wrinkled, he shook his head as he stared at her knees, still pressed against his stomach. “What are we gonna do?”

  “We could be happy . . .” She put her hand on his cheek, pulled his face toward hers, took his hands and wrapped them around her waist. “We could dance.” She swayed against his arms. When he half laughed, she whispered, “Let’s keep it, Gabe.”

  He started crying. Softly at first but then in heavy rib-shaking sobs, his tears soaking through Bianca’s sweater. “I can’t.” She tried pulling him away to look at him, but he clung to her. “I can’t . . .”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “We’d never get out of here, babe. You’re asking me to stay here. To keep forklifting, all my life forklifting. You’re asking me to keep working in a feedlot, delivering seed. I already can’t afford to take care of Lana and Katrina and get myself a life.”

  “What about the restaurant?”

  “It’s a stupid dream, Bee. Come on. You must know that. We don’t stand a chance down here. I already feel trapped. This was not supposed to happen now . . . Not again. Not like this. I’m not ready.” He wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, his voice firm. “Sorry, but I’m not.”

  She pried his head from her chest, looked at him straight in the eyes. “Ready or not, Gabe. What do you want me to do?”

  “Can’t you get it taken care of?”

  “How many babies am I supposed to lose for you, Gabe? How many will be enough for you? And why only mine? Why not Katrina’s?” She shoved him away, hopping down from the washer onto the grass, feet sinking into the soil.

  “Fuck, Bianca. Why are you throwing that in my face? I told you she was lying about that. Lower your voice.”

  “You act like you don’t care. You don’t care that our baby bled down my legs.”

  “Please don’t start making a scene. Please. Let’s go. Come on, we can talk in the car. Don’t say that shit out loud. My nana will hear . . .” He grabbed her arm, but she pulled away.

  “Why should I care?” She was yelling.

  “Be angry with me, fine. I understand you’re angry with me. But don’t say things that will hurt Nana. She didn’t do anything . . .”

  “Is everything all right, mijo?” Nana opened the back door, peeked through the screen.

  “Yes, Nana, sorry. We’re fine,” he called, controlling his voice, his dark eyes pleading with Bianca to stay quiet. “We need to leave though, but thank you for the food.”

  “Ay, ¿por qué?”

  “Bianca feels a little sick, that’s
all. Talk to you later, Nana, love you.”

  “Okay pues, be careful driving, you two.” She blew a kiss through the screen. “I’ll tell your mom and everyone you left. Are you sure you won’t take a plate with you?”

  “No thanks, Nan,” he said.

  “Bye, Bee, feel better, mijita,” she called.

  Bianca looked at Gabe then turned back to Nana and smiled, “I will, Nana. Love you.”

  They drove the two miles across town to the other side of the tracks without talking. She felt drunk and vomity, though for once when they were fighting, she hadn’t been drinking. Her stomach churned. When he pulled into her driveway, he left the car on. She asked, “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “No, I think we need to cool off and think about things tonight. I don’t want to argue.” His voice was quiet, the bitterness seeping out of him and lying between them in the cup holders, murky.

  “Please stay, Gabe. Please.” Her voice was shaking. “Please don’t leave.”

  “I’m sorry, Bianca. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I need to think about things. Clear my head. Give me some time. I need some time to process this.”

  She didn’t move to open the door.

  “Come on, Bee. Please get out of the truck so I can go home. I’m tired. We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll come over, and we’ll talk. I promise. Get out of the truck.”

  She sat still. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs. Emily understood why Bianca couldn’t move.

  “Bee.” He reached across her lap and opened the latch, shoved the door open. “Please. Let’s not get into this tonight. I need some time. Go inside and get some rest.”

  She hated him. She hated his truck. Hated his face. He was mean. He said he loved her, but he didn’t. If she didn’t move, he might push her out. He’d done it before. Why did she want to stay and fight? Why would she rather hear him scream than go into an empty house, alone? Though it was insane, she wanted her father. He’d been just as mean to Mama. Is that what was happening with Gabe? She was having daddy issues? How much more of a cliché could she get?

  The bile rose up, burning her throat. She gagged.

  “Shit. Bee, turn over.”

  She threw up in her hands and lap, vomit splashing across the seat, onto the floor.

  He yanked his seatbelt off, jumped out of the truck, ran around to her side. He unbuckled her, turned her toward the driveway, pulled her hair back. It was too late to salvage anything; she’d soaked her clothes, shoes, the seat, the floor mats. Once she stopped heaving, he helped her out of the car. “Come on,” he said softly. “I’m here. I’ll help you.” He held her close to him, despite her stench, leading her up the dark walkway, her slick clothes sticking to him. She’d forgotten to turn on the porch light again. “Do you have your keys?” he asked.

  She nodded, dug into her jeans pocket for the keys, apologizing as she handed them over.

  “You couldn’t help it. We’ll get you cleaned up.” He helped her inside, led her down the hallway and turned north at the fork, toward her parents’ old master bedroom. “You gonna throw up more?”

  “I don’t think so.” The ghosts couldn’t hurt her when Gabe was around. She let him help her into the bathroom the way he’d done so many nights when she was drunk and staying with him at Nana’s, the times he’d propped her onto the toilet to pee without falling over and hitting her head on the sink. He helped her shower and get into her pajamas, then he changed himself into basketball shorts and an undershirt before putting their clothes into the stoppered, soap-filled sink, since Mama had sold the washing machine at a yard sale before she’d moved to LA. It was too big and old to haul, she’d said. From where Bianca sat cross-legged on the mattress on the floor, bolstered by pillows, she heard him outside washing his truck beyond the sound of ocean; he’d turned on Finding Nemo on her thirteen-inch television. She fell asleep to cartoons most nights.

  When he came back in, he said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  She didn’t answer. In the background, Dory was forgetting Nemo’s dad, Marlin, again.

  “I can stay tonight if you need me to.”

  She nodded, and he kicked off his shoes, checked his cell phone, then plopped onto the mattress. “Good night,” he said, turning over, away from Nemo. “Let me know if you need me.”

  She sat still and watched the water. Even on a small screen, it was so blue.

  In the middle of the night, she awoke to Gabe’s loud snoring. Her stomach still wobbled, queasy, but she didn’t feel like vomiting. She stared at the ceiling where a brown water stain was forming. When she relaxed her eyes, the way she had as a girlchild, lying on the grass in her front yard to watch cloud formations, it looked like a sad old woman hunched and carrying firewood on her back, her head hung in either exhaustion or despair. It morphed into a rhinoceros, depending on how much Bianca squinted. Then the woman was back, not carrying firewood but a baby in her rebozo. Her baby was crying, but the woman didn’t know how to make it stop. So she cried along with it. They unsettled Bianca’s stomach like too many beers or another ill-timed pregnancy, that crying woman and her crying baby.

  She couldn’t watch anymore. She felt voyeuristic. What could she do to help them? She was a blob on the mattress of the floor, a water stain on the bed.

  Bianca wanted to get up and pace the halls, crawl into Mama’s bed between her and Dad as if she were a girlchild again. But she was already in Mama’s old room. Mama’s bed was gone, and Bianca wasn’t a girlchild anymore. She could never crawl between Mama and Dad ever again.

  She felt four years old, lying in the dark cradling her own damn self. She remembered those uneven bangs she’d chopped herself and the ballet slippers cemented to her feet all summer. Mama couldn’t pry them off her. Bianca used to hunch under the round oak table at Bisabuela’s house where she’d shared a room with Matty, swallowing whole packets of Sweet’N Low. She’d rip apart pink paper after paper, pouring the bittersweet granules straight onto her tongue and letting them melt there like Eucharist, until Mama caught her and spanked her with her chancla.

  Bisabuela’s house meant escape. The night that Dad had stuck his head into the lion’s mouth, that great fool, and lived. Bianca most clearly remembered scrubbing out with a sponge the Crayola shapes she’d scribbled on the walls, and Bisabuela’s avocado tree pitching its fruit at Bianca’s head while she swung on the set below, Dad or Matty pushing her. Oh how I love to go up in a swing, up in the sky so blue.

  In that house, she’d lain foot to head with Matty in his bed, which he’d let her crawl into when she was night-frightened, which was often, while he sang to her.

  The night Dad washed down his Prozac with a few beers, he seizured through the halls like a wild sword-swallowing performer, his shadow staining shapes too dark to scrub away. The way Bianca remembered it, Dad called for her from the boiling pot of his body, a doorway seething. Girlhood was white and shaking until she couldn’t remember where he went or why but only that he needed help. Memory interpreted through the wash of color and sound—a big brother’s baritone singing go to sleep and Bisabuela’s yellow hands folding eggs into the pancake batter in the morning when one’s father was gone.

  Fifteen years later, she was walking the red dust of Chaco Canyon in her imagination, following Bisabuela’s people, who only entered the sacred ruins to pray for their ancestors. Did you mean to end it, Dad?—the broken pottery Bisabuela warned her not to touch—shards meant for the spirits. A piece of an article she’d read in Smithsonian Magazine pinned itself to her: The very act of remembering can change our memories. She wanted to remember Dad there, in Chaco Canyon, against the clay, against the constellation of stars where Bisabuela’s ancestors tracked the sun, the moon, their entire lives.

  She wanted to touch Gabe, to find something concrete to hold her to him. She closed her eyes, imagining she wasn’t something already broken.

>   When she opened her eyes to the faint-yellow morning, Gabe stood in the doorway putting on his shoes. She blinked, sleep crusted in her eyes. She looked again. No, he was taking his shoes off. He was returning from somewhere, carrying a white paper bag. She pulled herself up onto the pillow, rubbed her hands across her puffy face, trying to smooth back her tangled hair. She felt swollen from crying and vomiting. But she was starving.

  “Hey there.” He wasn’t smiling, but she could tell he wasn’t angry. “A peace offering. With extra salsa.”

  He handed over the bag, which held two giant Jaliscience breakfast burritos. She tore open the paper, poured salsa onto the warm, soft tortilla, then stuffed a corner of the burrito deep into her mouth and bit down, scooping bacon, potato, and egg between her teeth. She couldn’t remember ever eating before that morning. Couldn’t remember ever being so ravenous—as if she could open wide and swallow the entire room into herself, Gabe and all, and still not have been filled. She was a snake, guarding her nest. (Here was Gabe, offering her peace, and she was imagining herself a venomous creature, eating him like prey.)

  “Thank you,” she said after huffing several bites.

  “Pregnant women are always hungry. I realized that’s why you were eating so much at Nana’s.” He laughed, and Bianca felt a stitch in her side she knew was jealousy. Had Katrina been so hungry? Had he brought the same food to her? The burrito felt tainted.

  He lowered himself to the edge of the mattress, and Bianca scooted her legs away so he could sit. “I’m sorry about last night. I was shocked is all.”

  “Shocked? You should know babies happen when you don’t use a condom.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it doesn’t matter now, I guess. What’s done is done. But you were right last night. This is my responsibility. I do love you. I shouldn’t have been so mean to you. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He ran his hands through his spiky hair. “What I’m trying to say is, yes. Let’s dance. Let’s have this baby. Let’s be a family.”