by Lucia Berlin
Finally Uncle John came into the kitchen. I had iced tea while he drank. He put mint in his glass so Mamie would think he was drinking tea too. He told me that Uncle Fortunatus had left home years and years before, just when they really needed him. Both John and Grandpa were drinking badly and couldn’t work. Uncle Tyler and Fortunatus were supporting the family until Fortunatus went to California in the middle of the night. Left a note that said he’d had enough of Moynahan trash. He didn’t ever send any money or even a letter, didn’t come home when Mamie almost died. Now he was president of some railroad. “Best not to mention seeing him,” Uncle John told me.
Everybody was in the living room for Jack Benny. Sally was still asleep. Mamie sat on her little chair, with the Bible open as usual. But she wasn’t reading it. She was looking down at it and there was a look of happiness on her old face. I understood that Uncle Fortunatus had found her and had talked with her. When she looked up, I smiled. She smiled back at me and looked back down. My mother was standing in the doorway, smoking. This smiling made her nervous and she began to make all these Shh! signs and faces at me behind Mamie’s back. I just looked at her with a blank stare like I had no idea what she was talking about. Grandpa was listening to the radio and laughing at Jack Benny. He was already drunk. Rocking hard in his leather rocking chair and tearing the newspaper into little strips, burning it up in the big red ashtray. Uncle John was drinking and smoking in the dining room doorway, taking it all in. He was ignoring my mother’s signs to him to get me out of there. I figured he could see that Mamie was smiling too. My mother was making Shoo! signs at me to leave. I acted like I didn’t notice and sang along with the Fitch commercial. “If your head scratches, don’t itch it! Fitch it! Use your head! Save your hair! Use Fitch shampoo!” She was looking at me so mean I couldn’t stand it, so I took one of the silver dollars out of my sock.
“He, look what I got, Grandpa!”
He stopped rocking. “Where’d you get that? You and them A-rabs steal that money?”
“No. It was a present!”
My mother was slapping me. “Rotten little brat!” She dragged me out of the room and threw me out the front door. I remember it as her carrying me by the neck like a cat, but I was very big already so that can’t be true.
The minute I was outside, Hope hollered to come quick. “They’re burning early!” That’s what I mean about us thinking it was early. It just hadn’t gotten dark.
Massive billows and swirls of black smoke were rising from the smokestack high into the air tumbling and cascading with a terrible speed unfurling in billows over our neighborhood as if it were night now with foggy wisps creeping over the roofs and down alleys. The smoke thinned and danced and spread further over the whole downtown. Neither of us could move. Tears flowed from our eyes because of the foul sting and stink of the sulfur fumes. But as the smoke dissipated over the rest of the town it too was backlit like the glass had been by the sun and now even smoke turned into colors. Lovely blues and greens and the iridescent violet and acid green of gasoline in puddles. A flare of yellow and a rusty red but then mostly a soft mossy green that reflected in our faces. Hope said, “Yucko, your eyes turned all those colors.” I lied and said hers did too but her eyes were black as ever. My pale eyes do change color so they probably did turn in the spirals of the smoke.
We never chattered like most little girls. We didn’t even talk much. I know we didn’t say a word about the terrible beauty of the smoke or of the glowing glass.
Suddenly it was dark and late. We both went inside. Uncle John was asleep on the porch swing. Our house was hot and smelled of cigarettes and sulfur and bourbon. I crawled into bed next to my mother and fell asleep. It seemed like the middle of the night when Uncle John shook me awake and took me outside. Wake your pal Hope, he whispered. I threw a rock at her screen and in seconds she was outside with us. He led us to the grass and told us to lie down. Close your eyes. Closed? Yes. Yes. OK, open your eyes and look toward Randolph Street up in the sky. We opened our eyes to the clear Texas sky. Stars. The sky was filled with stars and it was as if there were so many that some were just jumping off the edge of it, tumbling and spilling into the night. Dozens, hundreds, millions of shooting stars until finally a wisp of cloud covered them and softly more clouds covered the sky above us.
“Sweet dreams,” he whispered when he sent us back to bed.
By morning it was raining again. It rained and flooded all week until finally we got tired of getting cold and muddy and we ended up spending our dollars going to movies. The day Hope and I got home from The Spanish Main my father had come back safe from the war. Very soon we went to live in Arizona so I don’t know what happened in Texas the summer after that one.
Mijito
I want to go home. When mijito Jesus falls asleep I think about home, my mamacita and my brothers and sisters. I try to remember all the trees and all the people in the village. I try to remember me because I was different then, before tantas cosas que han pasado. I had no idea. I didn’t know television or drogas or fear. I have been afraid since the minute I left the trip and the van and the men and running and even when Manolo met me I got more afraid because he wasn’t the same. I knew he loved me and when he held me it was like by the river, but he was changed, with fear in his gentle eyes. All of the United States was scary coming to Oakland. Cars in front of us, behind us, cars going the other way cars cars cars for sale and stores and stores and more cars. Even in our little room in Oakland where I’d wait for him the room was full of noise not just the television but cars and buses and sirens and helicopters, men fighting and shooting and people yelling. The mayates frighten me and they stand in groups all down the street so I was afraid to go outside. Manolo was so strange I was afraid he didn’t want to marry me but he said, “Don’t be crazy, I love you mi vida.” I was happy but then he said, “Anyway you need to be legal so you can get welfare and food stamps.” We got married right away and that same day he took me to the welfare. I was sad. I wanted to maybe go to a park or have some wine a little luna de miel party.
We lived in the Flamingo Motel on MacArthur. I was lonely. He was gone most of the time. He got mad at me for being so scared but he forgot how different it was here. We didn’t have inside bathrooms or lights at home. Even the television frightened me; it seemed so real. I wished we had a little house or room that I could make pretty and where I could cook for him. He would come with Kentucky Fry or Taco Bell or hamburgers. We ate breakfast every day in a little café and that was nice like in Mexico.
One day there was a banging on the door. I didn’t want to open it. The man said he was Ramón, Manolo’s uncle. He said Manolo was in jail. He was going to take me to talk to him. He made me pack up all my things and get in the car. I kept asking him, “Why? What happened? What did he do?”
“No me jodes! Callate!” he told me. “Mira, I don’t know. He’ll tell you. All I know is you’ll be staying with us until he goes to court.”
We went into a big building and then in an elevator to the top floor. I had never been in an elevator. He talked to some police and then one took me through a door to a chair in front of a window. He pointed to a phone. Manolo came and sat down on the other side. He was thin and unshaven and his eyes were full of fear. He was shaking and pale. All he was wearing was some orange nightclothes. We sat there, looking at each other. He picked up a phone and pointed to me to pick up mine. It was my first telephone call. It didn’t sound like him but I could see him talking. I was so afraid. I can’t remember everything, except that he said he loved me and he was sorry. He said he would let Ramón know when he’d go to court. He hoped he’d come home to me then. But if he didn’t, to wait for him, my husband. Ramón and Lupe were buena gente. they would take care of me until he got out. They needed to take me to the welfare to change my address. “Don’t forget. I’m sorry,” he said in English. I had to think how you said it in Spanish. Lo siento. I feel it.
If only I had known. I should have told him
I’d love him and wait for him always, that I loved him with all of my heart. I should have told him about our baby. But I was so worried and too frightened to talk into the phone so I just looked at him until the two policemen took him away.
In the car I asked Ramón what had happened, where did they take him? I kept asking him until he stopped his car and said how did he know, to shut up. My check and food stamps would go to them for feeding me and I’d need to take care of their kids. As soon as I could I had to get my own place and move out. I told him I was three months pregnant and he said, “Fuck a duck.” That’s the first English I said out loud. “Fuck a duck.”
Dr. Fritz should be here soon, so at least I can get some of these patients into rooms. He should have been here two hours ago, but as usual he added another surgery. He knows he has office hours Wednesdays. The waiting room is packed, babies screaming, children fighting. Karma and I’ll be lucky to get out of here by seven. She’s the office supervisor, what a job. The place is steamy and hot, reeking of dirty diapers and sweat, wet clothes. It’s raining of course and most of these mothers have taken long bus rides to get here.
When I go out there I sort of cross my eyes, and when I call the patient’s name I smile at the mother or grandmother or foster care mom but I look at a third eye in their forehead. I learned this in Emergency. It’s the only way to work here, especially with all the crack babies and AIDS and cancer babies. Or the ones who will never grow up. If you look the parent in the eyes you will share it, confirm it, all the fear and exhaustion and pain. On the other hand once you get to know them, sometimes that’s all you can do, look into their eyes with the hope or sorrow you can’t express.
The first two are post-ops. I set out gloves and suture removers, gauze and tape, tell the mothers to undress the babies. It won’t be long. In the waiting room I call “Jesus Romero.”
A teen-age mother walks toward me, her infant wrapped in a rebozo like in Mexico. The girl looks cowed, terrified. “No Inglés,” she says.
In Spanish I tell her to take off everything but his diaper, ask her what is the matter.
She says, “Pobre mijito he cries and cries all the time, he never stops.”
I weigh him, ask her his birth weight. Seven pounds. He is three months old, should be bigger by now.
“Did you take him for his shots?”
Yes, she went to La Clinica a few days ago. They said he has a hernia. She didn’t know babies needed shots. They gave him one and told her to come back next month but to come here right away.
Her name is Amelia. She is seventeen, had come from Michoacan to marry her sweetheart but now he is in Soledad prison. She lives with an uncle and aunt. She has no money to go back home. They don’t want her here and don’t like the baby because he cries all the time.
“Do you breast feed him?”
“Yes, but I don’t think my milk is good. He wakes up and cries and cries.”
She holds him like a potato sack. The expression on her face says, “Where does this sack go?” It occurs to me that she has nobody to tell her anything at all.
“Do you know to change breasts? Start off each time with a different breast and let him drink a long time, then put him on the other breast for a while. But be sure and change. This way he gets more milk and your breasts make more milk. He may be falling asleep because he’s tired, not full. He also is probably crying because of the hernia. The doctor is very good. He’ll fix your baby.”
She seems to feel better. Hard to tell, she has what doctors call a “flat affect.”
“I have to go to the other patients. I’ll be back when the doctor comes.” She nods, resigned. She has that hopeless look you see on battered women. God forgive me, because I am a woman too, but when I see women with that look I want to slap them.
Dr. Fritz has come, is in the first room. No matter how long he makes the mothers wait, no matter how mad Karma and I get, when he is with a child we all forgive him. He is a healer. The best surgeon, he does more surgeries than the others combined. Of course they all say he is obsessive and egomaniacal. They can’t say he is not a fine surgeon though. He is famous, actually, was the doctor who risked his life to save the boy after the big earthquake.
The first two patients go quickly. I tell him there is a pre-op with no English in Room Three, that I’d be right in. I clean the rooms and put more patients in. When I get to Room Three he is holding the baby, showing Amelia how to push the hernia in. The baby is smiling at him.
“Have Pat put him on the surgery schedule. Explain the pre-op and fasting carefully. Tell her to call if she can’t push it in when it pops out.” He hands her back the baby. “Muy bonito,” he says.
“Ask her how Jesus got the bruises on his arms. The ones you should have made note of.” He points to the marks on the underside of the baby’s arms.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him. When I ask her she looks frightened and surprised. “No sé.”
“She doesn’t know.”
“What do you think?”
“Seems to me that she’s…”
“I can’t believe you’re going to say what I think you are. I have calls to return. I’ll be in Room One in ten minutes. I’ll need some dilators, an 8 and a 10.”
He was right. I was going to say that she seemed a victim herself, and yes I know what victims often do. I explain to her how important the surgery is, and the pre-op the day before. To call if the baby was sick or had a bad diaper rash. No milk three hours before the surgery. I get Pat to come set up a date with her and go over the instructions again.
I forget about her then until at least a month has gone by when for some reason it occurs to me she never brought the baby for a post-op. I asked Pat when the surgery was.
“Jesus Romero? That ma is such a retard. No-show for the first surgery. Didn’t bother to call. I call her and she says she couldn’t get a ride. O-Kay. So I tell her we’ll have a same day pre-op, to come in really early for an exam and blood work, but that she has got to come. And hallelulia, she shows. But guess what?”
“She feeds the baby half hour before surgery.”
“You got it. Fritz will be out of town so next slot I have is a month away.”
It was very bad living with them. I couldn’t wait until Manolo and I would be together. I gave them my check and food stamps. They gave me just a little money for things for me. I took care of Tina and Willie, but they didn’t speak Spanish, didn’t pay me any attention. Lupe hated having me there and Ramón was nice except when he got drunk he was always grabbing me or poking at me from behind. I was more afraid of Lupe than him so when I wasn’t working in the house, I just stayed in my little corner in the kitchen.
“What are you doing there for hours and hours?” Lupe asked me.
“Thinking. About Manolo. About my pueblo.”
“Start thinking about moving out of here.”
Ramón had to work on the court day so Lupe took me. She could be nice sometimes. In the court we sat in the front. I almost didn’t know him when he came in, handcuffed and with chains tying his legs together. Such a cruel thing to do to Manolo who is a sweet man. He stood under the judge and then the judge said something and two polices took him away. He looked back at me, but I didn’t know him with that face of anger. My Manolo. On the way home Lupe said it didn’t look good. She didn’t understand the charges either but it wasn’t just possession of drugs because they would’ve sent him to Santa Rita. Eight years in Soledad prison is bad.
“Eight years? Cómo que eight years!”
“Don’t you go lose it now. I’ll put you out right here in the street. I’m serious.”
Lupe told me I had to go to the Clinica because I was pregnant. I didn’t know she meant I should have an aborto. “No,” I told the lady doctor, “no, I want my baby, mijito. His daddy is gone my baby is all I have.” She was nice at first but then she got mad said I was just a child I couldn’t work how could I care for him? That I was selfish, porfiada. “It’s a sin,” I told
her. “I won’t do it. I want my baby.” She threw her notebook down on the table.
“Válgame diós. At least come in for checkups before the baby is born.”
She gave me a card with the day and time to come but I never went back. The months went by slow. I kept waiting to hear from Manolo. Willie and Tina just watched the tele and were no trouble. I had the baby at Lupe’s house. She helped but Ramón hit her when he got home and hit me too. He said bad enough I showed up. Now a kid too.
I try to keep out of their way. We have our little corner in the kitchen. Little Jesus is beautiful and he looks like Manolo. I got pretty things for him at the Good Will and at Payless. I still don’t know what Manolo did to go to jail or when we will hear from him. When I ask Ramón he said, “Kiss Manolo goodbye. See if you can get some work.”
I watch Lupe’s kids while she works and keep their house clean. I do all the wash in the laundromat downstairs. But I get so tired. Jesus cries and cries no importa what I do. Lupe told me I had to take him to the Clinica. The buses scare me. The mayates grab at me and scare me. I think they’re going to take him from me.
In the Clinica they got mad at me again, said I should have had pre-natal care, that he needed shots and was too small. He was seven pounds I said, my uncle weighed him. “Well, he’s only eight now.” They gave him a shot, said I had to come back. The doctor said Jesus had a hernia which could be dangerous. He had to see a surgeon. A woman there gave me a map and wrote down the bus and BART train to get to the surgeon’s office, told me where to stand even to get the bus and BART back. She called and made me an appointment.
Lupe had taken me, she was outside in the car with the kids when I got in. I told her what they said and then I began to cry. She stopped the car and shook me.
“You’re a woman now! Face it. We’ll give you some time till Jesus is OK, then you’re going to have to figure out your own life. The apartment is too small. Ramón and I are dead tired and your kid cries day and night, or you do, worse. We’re sick of it.”
