by Mary Alice
“I shouldn’t’ve hung up on you,” Sully said.
Luz sighed with relief and rolled onto her back. “No, you shouldn’t have,” she said, but there was no scolding in her tone. “You never did before.”
“I guess I’m just scared. For you. For us.”
She was about to say “Don’t be,” but thought better of it. He didn’t need to hear platitudes now. He was telling her how he felt, which for Sully was a big deal. He was good at being strong and supportive for her, but rarely revealed when he was feeling insecure about something and needed support. Instead she said, “I’m scared, too.”
“I’m glad to hear it. That means you’ll be careful.”
She smiled inwardly. He was beginning to accept her decision. “What are you most scared of?”
“I’m scared I won’t see you again. I’m scared you’ll change. I’m scared of all the bad that can happen.”
She’d thought of all those same things and they scared her, too. “When I get scared, I try not to think of all the bad that can happen. Instead, I think of all the good things. Like I’m going to meet my family. I’m already meeting some really neat people. I’m going places I’ve never been before. I’m thinking for myself, making decisions for myself. It’s all good.”
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll hold on to that.”
Outside she heard the police sirens blaring, but on the other end of the line she heard the soft and steady sound of Sully’s breathing, and she felt safe. She yawned.
“You should go to sleep now,” Sully said.
“Okay. Good night, Sully.”
“Good night. Sleep tight. And call me in the morning.”
This time the click was soft and she didn’t feel disconnected. Luz curled her legs higher into her chest and tucked her arms tight. Hearing his voice made her miss him all the more and she felt torn again between her decision to keep going and the fear that Sully was right and she was taking too many risks.
Then she remembered the butterfly in her garden, how she’d fluttered her wings and without hesitation lifted herself into the air, fearlessly beginning her journey south to a place she’d never been before. No one was telling her to stay home. She had to fly or die.
Such courage, eh?
Luz closed her eyes, feeling as small and fragile as the butterfly. What was courage? She didn’t know. Maybe courage was listening to one’s own voice rather than the opinions of others. Paying heed to the call of one’s instincts, no matter how small and weak the voice sounded in her ears.
Before sleep overcame her, Luz wondered if maybe courage was nothing more than taking wing and staying the course.
Six
The journey south is difficult and filled with danger. Often the monarchs’ wings get torn and damaged, but they persevere.
The iron mantle of winter loomed in the daunting gray clouds over Lake Michigan. Luz found the appeal of her journey south growing with every gust of wind. She woke early on her third day in Chicago, eager to pick up her car and get back on her journey. In the back of her mind she ticked off the days of the calendar. She was in the second week of October, and if she was going to find her aunt in San Antonio, then head off to Mexico in time for the Day of the Dead, she needed to hustle.
The lunch rush was over at the taqueria. Luz scrubbed the last pot till she removed every bit of baked-on grime. Then she took a cloth and wiped the stainless steel counter with the fervor of a sailor on deck, not settling till it gleamed.
“Hey, chica. ¿Estás loca?” Ofelia leaned in to tell her, elbowing her gently in her side. “You want to make the rest of us look bad? We don’t want Cordero to get used to this.”
“I’m just trying to leave everything clean. It’s my last day and all.”
“Still, girlfriend . . . slow down. I’m still working here when you go, you know?”
Luz leaned back on the counter and blew out a plume of air. Her hands were chapped from the bleach cloth she used to wipe the tables, and her feet sore from hours running food and refilling beverages. Yet, she’d enjoyed the past few days at the taqueria. The banter with Ofelia kept her mind off the gaping hole in her heart that grieved for Abuela, and the pace of taking orders for tacos, tamales, and beans was so fast that she didn’t have time to be self-conscious about her Spanish. Table by table she butchered the language, but the orders somehow managed to come through.
“Have you called your boyfriend back yet?” asked Ofelia. She joined Luz and leaned against the counter, tossing her towel over her shoulder. “What’s his name, Sammy?”
“Sully. And no, I haven’t.” She felt the sting of pride again. She’d checked her phone messages a dozen times but he hadn’t called. Not once in three days. At night she sat alone in that small room and gazed out the grimy, bolted window at the street below, keeping her cell phone close.
“I think he’s trying to make me call first.” Luz tossed the towel on the counter with a sigh of frustration. “I know he doesn’t want me to go on this trip. What is it about men that they’re so reactionary? All I asked him was to let me take care of myself and he’s like beating his chest with his fists.”
“Tell me about it! Ay, Angel has such a temper!”
“He can call me first,” Luz said, crossing her arms.
“Yeah, but what if he doesn’t? I know if it was me, I’d be calling Angel before some other girl caught his eye.”
Luz never thought of herself as the jealous type. Sully had never given her reason to be. Yet the thought of Sully going after another girl so quickly after she left town made her skin clammy. “He wouldn’t,” she said summarily.
“I don’t know,” Ofelia said in a singsong voice. “When the cat’s away . . .”
“Maybe your cat,” she replied. “Not Sully. But if he does cheat on me, then I don’t want him!”
“You got it, girl,” Ofelia said, leaning in to bump shoulders.
“I’ll call him tomorrow, when I’m back on the road.”
“Nothin’ he can do about it then, right?” She wiggled her brows.
Luz’s lips twitched in commiseration. That was her plan. She wanted to talk to Sully, but she was nervous enough about heading out on the road. She didn’t need to hear his doomsday scenarios.
“So, do you love him?” Ofelia asked.
Luz looked at her, surprised by the bluntness of the question. “Sure I love him. We’ve been dating for a few years.” She paused as she mentally counted the years from the day she met Sully as a freshman at the Milwaukee Area Technical College. “I was studying for an associate’s degree in social services and he was almost finished with his automobile mechanics program. He was this tall, broad-shouldered grease monkey with stick-straight brown hair and a shy smile. Every time I see it, I melt. We had lockers next to each other, and though we’d see each other every day, it took him two weeks to work up the nerve to ask me for coffee.”
“Sweet. Kinda high school, though.”
“I don’t know. Guys can be shy like that no matter what age.”
Ofelia laughed. “Not Angel. He was born forty.”
“God, is it three years already?” Luz muttered, more to herself. Her face softened. “Sully’s a great guy. Very thoughtful.”
Ofelia made a face. “Thoughtful? I’m talking about love. Passion! Check it . . . the kind where your heart leaps every time he walks in the room. When he kisses you, he makes your bones melt.”
Luz shifted her weight, wondering how long it had been since she’d felt her heart leap when Sully drove up to the house. “Don’t get me wrong. Sully’s sexy. He’s brooding and muscled, in a working-class kind of way. More Marlon Brando than James Bond.”
Ofelia scrunched her nose. “Who are they?”
Luz rolled her eyes and laughed, not knowing how to explain. “Sexy working-class versus sexy money.”
“My Angel’s a little of both,” Ofelia said archly.
Luz thought that she was always happy to see Sully, but did her heart flutter? Did that b
one-melting tingling dissipate over time, replaced by something stronger and more sure? Or was something lacking? “What we have is comfortable.”
“My old sofa is comfortable. That’s not love.”
“No?” Luz asked, feeling suddenly defensive. She absently reached up to tug at the silky hair that fell from her ponytail over her shoulder. “Then what do you call it?”
“That’s . . .” Ofelia tugged the towel from her shoulder and gathered it in her hands. “I don’t know what to call it. Friendship, maybe? With benefits?”
Luz choked out a short laugh, shaking her head no. That definitely wasn’t it. Her relationship with Sully wasn’t so trivial.
“He is my best friend,” she said, trying to explain her strong feelings. “That’s true. I can tell him anything. Things I can’t even tell my girlfriends. And it’s like he knows what I need and when I need it.” Her eyes softened as she recalled his strong arm around her in the funeral home, and his gentleness in holding her while she wept.
“When Abuela died, he was always there, looking out for me. He made sure I always had something to eat, and that I slept. He even brushed my hair.” She glanced quickly at Ofelia to see her bewildered expression.
“Sounds like your mother,” she said.
“No, it was cool,” she added with a short laugh. “You see, after Abuela died I didn’t remember to do basic things like eat, sleep . . . and my hair is so thick. It was all knotted up, a real mess. So one night he just picked up my brush and started brushing my hair, real gentle-like, stroke after stroke. It felt so good, like I was being hypnotized.” A small smile escaped as she remembered the feelings that had coursed through her. “He was so tender. I felt taken care of. Safe.”
Ofelia’s sarcasm fled from her face and in its place Luz saw a yearning so fierce it embarrassed her. She averted her gaze.
“I think maybe you’re the one who has it wrong,” Luz said. “What you were describing earlier sounds to me like that first gush of attraction. That’s fun, sure. But that’s lust. Easy come, easy go. What I’m talking about is real love.”
Ofelia wiped her hands on the towel, then pointed a long, painted nail at Luz. “Whatever. Girl, if you’ve got a man with clean teeth and feet, and he brushes your hair, marry him! It don’t get better than that.”
“Abuela thought I should marry him. She was afraid that at twenty-one I was getting too old. That’s not the way it is today, though. I’m too young to get married and I’m sure not ready to start a family. But hey, that’s just me,” she said, acknowledging Ofelia. “I know Sully is ready. He’d get married today if I said yes. But honestly, there’s a lot I want to do, to learn, before I settle down. Maybe go back to school. Something, you know?”
Ofelia made a face. “Not really. I couldn’t wait to get out of school! You’ve got a good man who wants to marry you and you’re walking away? Chica, what’s the matter with you? All I want is to settle down and have my baby and be a family.” She laughed and affectionately patted her belly. “And I’m on my way.”
“Are you and Angel getting married?” Luz asked.
Ofelia’s smile slipped. “Oh, sure,” she said with forced bravado.
“I hope it’s soon, or your little bambino there won’t have his last name when he or she pops out.”
She’d meant it as a joke but Ofelia paled and stared at her hands. Luz immediately regretted her facetiousness. “Ofelia, I didn’t mean—”
“Angel tells me we don’t need to be married for when the baby’s born,” she said in a hurt tone. “That it’s just a piece of paper. The baby won’t know. But he promises we will get married. He just wants to wait until he has enough money saved up so we can do it proper. I want a big wedding with a white dress and my parents coming up from Mexico.” Ofelia idly scraped at something on the counter. “But we gotta wait, that’s all. It’s not his fault he’s marrying a girl with no papers, right?”
It occurred to Luz that Ofelia was using words that Angel had put into her head.
“Family is everything,” Ofelia said with passion. “My mom and my dad, they got sent back to Mexico. So I went to live with my aunt in Kansas. She’s a good woman, but she’s not my mother, you know? I was only thirteen and I cried and cried, so hard I thought I was going to die. You don’t know what it’s like to be alone in a strange country with no family.”
“I might have an idea,” Luz said softly.
Ofelia arched and rubbed the small of her back. “My aunt didn’t have no children or husband and she treated me okay. She tried. But it wasn’t easy. I had to go to school in the day and when I came back I worked at the garden center where my aunt worked. When I got to be a senior my aunt had this new boyfriend.” Her lip curled at the memory. “He drank a lot and wanted me to call him uncle. As if. He was no good so I went out a lot. I started hanging with a bad group and my grades were dropping. It was a bad scene. I just had to get out. I wanted to go back to Mexico. I missed my mother and my father and my two sisters. They got to be a family. But what about me?”
She let her hand drop and straightened her apron. “That’s why I’m going to marry Angel. He’s all I got. I know he might not be the most handsome man and he has a terrible temper when he’s drinking, but he’s my baby’s father and I’m gonna make it work. Angel will marry me and he’ll be a good father to our baby.” She put her hand over her belly. “That’s what love is,” she said, convincing herself as much as Luz.
Ofelia marched off with intent to the radio and, with a wink, cranked up the ranchero music. “Come on, chica! It’s your last day, eh!”
Ofelia loved to dance and her condition didn’t slow her down. She lifted her arms and began waving the dishcloth in the air, around and around over her head, while rocking her hips, her belly straining against the apron. Throwing back her head, she belted out the lyrics to the popular ballad by her favorite singer. Luz burst out laughing and whirled around, joining in. They formed a line dance, swinging their hips in unison and slapping towels in time to the music. Luz remembered how she and Abuela used to dance together in the kitchen as they stirred the sauces or washed the dishes, giggling like girls.
“Hey, you girls go loca or something?” Mr. Cordero called out over the singing. He came out from the back room, stopping to turn down the radio.
“We just love our job so much it makes us so happy,” Ofelia said with a lilt. “And it’s Luz’s last day so we should party a little, eh?”
Mr. Cordero waved his hand at her in dismissal while his eyes scanned the tables, counters, and floors of his restaurant. He put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips in satisfaction. “Looks good,” he said. Luz had cleaned out corners that had never seen steel wool.
He came closer to Luz and spread out his hands magnanimously. “You sure you don’t want to stay on? I could offer you a little more per hour.”
Ofelia swung her head, eyes hopeful.
“Thanks, that’s a nice offer,” Luz replied. “But you know I made a promise to Abuela.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said, nodding. He hadn’t really expected her to accept. He handed her an envelope of cash. Then, looking over his shoulder to be sure he wasn’t overheard, he said in a low voice, “I put a little something extra in there for your trip. To tell the truth, I wish I was going with you.” He saw her about to protest and shoved the envelope toward her. “No, no, I wanted to. Take it! Consider it an offering for your abuela, eh?”
Luz smiled and gave Mr. Cordero a hug. The move surprised him and he awkwardly patted her shoulders. “Thank you, Mr. Cordero.”
“Let me know how it goes, eh? A postcard maybe? Not that e-mail stuff. Or you could call Ofelia. And, if you have a minute, look up my family, eh? I put a note in there for my mother. Could you see that she gets it?”
“I will. Yo prometo,” she added, already feeling more at home with the language.
“Go on, then. Get your car before the shop closes. And if you want a job when you come back, let me know.”<
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Luz thanked Mr. Cordero again. She went to hug Ofelia, whispering in her ear, “Good-bye, sweet friend. I’ll come back to see your bambino.”
Ofelia’s eyes filled with tears as she hugged her fiercely. “You better.”
Luz took a quick look around the restaurant, dropped her dirty apron in the bin, grabbed a peppermint candy from the dish near the register, and tugged open the door.
“Good-bye!” The little bell over the door rang as she left.
She immediately walked to Vera’s to pick up her car. Mr. Vera charged what he said he would. Luz laid out the twenties, spreading the worn paper on the counter. She was used to paying bills, to seeing most of her meager paycheck disappear in a day. But so much spent on one car repair hurt. The mechanic thanked her, then told her the old Volkswagen was good to go for another hundred thousand miles.
“Or not . . . ,” he added with a crooked grin.
She felt a rush of affection for the battered orange car when she saw it looking clean and raring to go in the lot. When she turned the ignition, El Toro roared to life. It was a beautiful sound.
“Thank you!” she exclaimed to Mr. Vera. Then, with a final glance at the mural of La Virgen, she said, “And thank you, Abuela.” She’d thought the car breaking down was the worst thing that could happen. For a stop that hadn’t been planned, it turned out to be an empowering experience. Instead of turning and running back home and letting Sully solve the problem, she’d handled it on her own. She’d discovered strangers could be kind, and that there was something to learn from every job. Most of all, she’d discovered a new confidence in herself.
She pulled her maps from her bag and laid them across the passenger seat. Her plan was to spend a last night at Las Damas, then head off tomorrow at first light for another full day’s drive to make up time. She was on her way again!
