Daughter's Keeper

by Ayelet Waldman

  Arthur leapt on his bicycle and pedaled off after Elaine. He caught up quickly, even though she was pumping her legs ­vigorously as she sped down a short slope in the path. He smiled. The way Elaine invariably used the descents to gather speed to propel her up the inclines pleased him.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said as he coasted up alongside her.

  She huffed a quick breath and bore down on her pedals.

  “I’m sorry about harping on the Morocco thing. I was just all charged up—you know how guidebooks always do that to me.”

  “It’s okay.” She was breathing hard from the effort of the ride.

  “No, really. If you want to go somewhere else, we can. We can do that Cotswalds hike if you want. I’m sure it’ll be beautiful.” Of course he wasn’t sure of that at all. In fact, he was fairly certain he’d find it tedious and disappointing—as bad as one of Elaine’s choices.

  Elaine shrugged and peddled faster. With a smooth pump of his left foot, Arthur easily caught up to her. She didn’t look at him, and pointedly ignoring the injustice of what she’d now forced him to offer, he said, “We can swap. You decide this year. I’ll make you go to Morocco next year. But I’m warning you, I may be on to something else by then. I know a great hotel in downtown Ouagadougou.”

  Elaine laughed, finally, and Arthur relaxed. She reached out her hand, and he grabbed it. They pedaled like that for a moment, side by side, fingers entangled. Then his momentum pushed him forward, and their arms extended farther and farther apart, until they finally broke away from one another.

  “Hey!” he heard her call.

  He turned his head in time to see her wave.

  “To hell with England—I’m dying to go to Morocco!” she shouted as the distance between them grew wider.

  Arthur smiled and spun his bike around. Within moments he was next to her again. He modulated his speed, and they rode close together, evenly matched, to the top of the next hill.

  ***

  Jorge woke with a start, as he always did. Olivia was the only person whose bed he had shared since he moved out of his mother’s when he was ten years old, and in the first moments of consciousness, he often thought himself back there, nestled in the warmth of Araceli’s embrace. It was the difference between Olivia’s body and his mother’s that caused him to jump. Olivia’s spine pressed against his belly like a pearl necklace, each vertebrae a separate globe. His mother’s bones were thickly covered by smooth, sleek flesh, like a seal floating next to him in the warm sea of her bed.

  The one overwhelming similarity was the feeling he had now, the same one that had plagued him as a child: that he was a guest in another’s bed. He had known when he was young that he shared his mother’s warmth on sufferance, that sooner or later he, like his brothers before him, would be exiled to a cot in the outer room. Now, this bed, this room and everything in it belonged to Olivia. The pillows they shared had been hers since she was a child. They covered themselves with the patchwork quilt her grandmother had made for her thirteenth birthday. Even the furniture was either discarded from Elaine’s house or purchased with the fruits of Olivia’s labor. Her income paid the rent, the utilities, the grocery bills, and even purchased the cigarettes he smoked. The air was redolent with her employment; the stench of food permeated her apron and work clothes and hung like a miasma of purposeful occupation over the entire apartment. He felt like something worse than a guest; he felt like a parasite feeding off of her industry. But all that was about to change.

  Jorge slid his leg along Olivia’s, and the stubble on her shin scratched him gently. He did it again, enjoying the prickling sensation. The first time he had seen Olivia shave her legs he had been astonished, nearly flummoxed by the sight. It had simply never occurred to him that women did that. His mother and sisters had legs covered in dark fur and seemed a different species than women like Olivia, whose smooth hairlessness he had believed to be a natural condition. He had at first been disappointed to find out that it was as contrived as the cherry lips women painted on their faces or the black of their eyelashes. He began watching women more closely, comparing those he met, even the ones he saw in the street, to the woman who he was still astonished to find sleeping next to him. He had come to realize that Olivia was less a creation of makeup and illusion than most women, and he liked this about her.

  Careful not to wake her, he stroked her hip with the palm of his hand. She didn’t stir. He reached his arm all the way around her belly and drew her back and buttocks in close to him. She murmured and pressed against him. He leaned his face against the back of her neck, inhaling the slightly sour perfume of her hair. Jorge could not quite believe that he was permitted these everyday intimacies. Olivia was not his first, but she was the only one whose body was laid open to him, whose curves and crevasses he was allowed, even expected, to explore. And yet, despite this familiarity, she was a stranger to him. Her body was receptive, available, but her mind was shut tight. He rarely knew what she was thinking, had little access to her emotions, goals, or fears. And the truth was, this did not bother him much. Olivia was so foreign to him, so different from what he knew and recognized, that it would have seemed more bizarre to understand her than it was to find her entirely opaque. It was not just the difference in their backgrounds, the fact that they had no shared cultural context, no common first language. It was her very femaleness that moved her beyond the range of his comprehension.

  He heaved himself out of bed. He had plans today. For the first time since he’d arrived in the United States, there was something he had to do, some place he had to go. The thought energized him, and he dressed quickly. After today, things would be different. Tonight he would come home to this bed and sleep in it as one who had a right. He would never again fear exile to another, colder place.

  ***

  Once the door closed behind Jorge, Olivia stretched and rolled out of bed. She had only been pretending to sleep. She simply could not muster, so early in the morning, the energy to face the misery of Jorge’s day, standing on the corner, waiting for a job that never came. She was disgusted with her selfishness and wished she had risen with him, cooked him breakfast, sent him out the door with a kiss.

  She went to the bathroom and washed herself in the tub, standing over the faucet. She quickly rinsed the evidence of the night’s lovemaking from her legs and belly and splashed water over her face. She didn’t bother showering—in a few hours she’d be bathed in the sour stink of other people’s food. Olivia pulled a clean pair of panties and a bra from the pile of laundered clothes permanently ensconced in the one armchair in the living room, and tugged on the shirt and pants she’d worn the day before. She was just pouring water into her tea cup when the telephone rang.

  “Olivia, que tal, it’s Gabriel, from the restaurant.” Gabriel’s accent was different than Jorge’s and most of the other Spanish speakers Olivia knew. He insisted on speaking English, but the Cuban lilt was unmistakable.

  She had no idea why the bartender would be calling her. They weren’t friends, although she appreciated that he was always nice to Jorge. When Jorge would come early to pick her up from work, he would wait at the bar and, if the managers weren’t around, Gabriel would give him a free beer.

  “Hey. What’s up?” she asked.

  “Can I speak to your esposo?”

  “We’re not married, and he’s not home.”

  “Okay, listen, hombre, take this message, okay?”

  “Okay.” She dug around the kitchen drawer for a pencil and some paper. She found a menu from a Chinese takeout and prepared to write on that.

  “Tell Jorge that the dudes have got the lana.”

  “What?” Olivia could barely hear Gabriel’s voice over the music in the background. It sounded like he was calling her from the bar.

  “Just write it down. Tell him that as soon as he’s got the shit, he should call me. Let me give you my pager number in
case he lost it.”

  The tip of Olivia’s pencil broke, and she realized that she’d ground it into the scrap of paper. “Gabriel, what’s going on? Are you and Jorge doing some kind of deal?”

  “Hey, I’m not getting in between the lovers, man. You want to know what your hombre is doing, you ask him yourself. Just give him the message, okay?”

  Olivia slowly hung up the phone. She must have misunderstood the message. She knew that Gabriel did a little dealing. She’d heard he sold ecstasy and methamphetamine to a couple of the waitresses who were into the rave scene. They swore that his stuff was the best they’d ever had. Olivia herself had shared a joint with him one night after a particularly hard shift. But it didn’t make any sense at all that Jorge would be involved with him. Jorge never did drugs. In fact, he’d been furious with Olivia for smoking pot with Gabriel and had made her swear never to touch the stuff again.

  Olivia stood, holding the telephone in her hand. She was suddenly aware of a clammy sensation in her armpits.

  When Jorge came home a few hours later, he was accompanied by a man Olivia had never seen before. He was older, also Mexican, wearing spotlessly clean jeans with an ironed crease down the middle. Long hairs curled from a large mole in the center of his cheek, and he kept his sunglasses on, even in the house.

  Olivia was sitting on the sofa, holding the well-worn copy of Dagon and Other Macabre Tales by H.P. Lovecraft that she’d taken from her mother’s bookshelf when she was nine and had kept with her ever since. Because Elaine never evinced any interest at all in horror, Olivia assumed the book had belonged to her father, and she turned to it whenever she felt herself missing the man she had never known. It was hard to imagine what kind of man would enjoy a story about a giant fish god preparing to devour humanity, but Olivia comforted herself with familiarity, if not insight.

  Jorge paused in the doorway for a moment, obviously surprised to see her. He was wearing a pair of pants she’d never seen before—army green and slung low on his hips. He had unlaced his white sneakers, and the tongues lolled like a dog’s. Since when had he begun dressing like this? He came over and gave her a kiss. “Hola, mami.” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “I swapped shifts. Who’s your friend?”

  Jorge’s jaw tightened, but he smiled and said, “Oreste, Olivia. Olivia, Oreste.”

  “Good to meet you,” Oreste muttered, staring down at his shoes, pale-gray lace-ups that might have been made of leather, but looked more like vinyl, or even plastic. Olivia said nothing, she just looked at Jorge and raised her eyebrows slightly. He stared back at her for a moment and then turned to the other man.

  “Hombre, the woman isn’t feeling well. I’d better stay in and take care of her.”

  The other man nodded. “Okay. We’ll talk tomorrow. We’ll set it all up then. No rush.”

  After Oreste left, Olivia glared at Jorge. She kept her voice calm and flat. “Are you doing some kind of drug deal with Gabriel Contreras?”

  Jorge smiled, and, for a moment, Olivia thought he was about to reassure her. Instead, he leaned over and stroked her chin with the tips of his fingers. “This is none of your business,” he said.

  Olivia jerked her face away from him. “How can you say this isn’t my business! You could get arrested. You could get deported! If they deport you for doing drugs, you’ll never be allowed back in the country. Of course this is my goddamn business!” Even as her cry rang in her ears, Olivia realized, with a sense of shame so ­profound it was almost frightening, that she wanted Jorge to be deported. She wanted him to go away, to go home, no longer to hang around her neck like a millstone of unsought responsibility. Horrified, she grabbed his hand and squeezed, as if to prove, more to herself than to him, that she cared what happened to him, that she wanted him there, that she loved him.

  Jorge stood very still for a moment, then he sat down next to her. “Don’t get so excited, Olivia. This is no big deal. Really.”

  Olivia leaned back heavily into the sofa cushion. She felt exhausted by the discussion before they’d even had it. How could she explain to this man for whom all of the United States seemed like one vast scam, one that other, bolder men knew how to work, that there were some things he just couldn’t do?

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  For a while Jorge was quiet. Then he began to tell her about the humiliation of standing on the corner, day after day, sometimes getting picked to work, more often being passed over. She had heard this all before, but when she tried to tell him that, he hushed her and talked on.

  “They drive up in their trucks and look us over like we’re cattle or pigs. And you can’t just stand there, waiting. You have to rush the truck and beg for work, because if you don’t, they choose someone else. If you don’t look eager, they won’t hire you. The worst is that that’s not even enough for them. You must look eager and willing to work, and you must also grovel. Yes boss, no boss. Otherwise they pick someone else, someone who kisses their asses.”

  “I know, papi, I know,” Olivia said, reaching her arms around him.

  He shook her off. “You don’t know. You can’t know. You’ve never had to feel that humiliation. You’ve never had to beg for work. You’ve never had to smile that pathetic campesino smile.”

  “I have to suck up to customers every day. I know exactly what it’s like.”

  “It’s not the same. You know the worst, Olivia? The worst is when I do get the job. When they do choose me. Because when I jump into the back of the pickup, I look behind me at the men standing there, the ones who got left behind. And maybe one has six kids back in Guatemala who will go hungry this week because I’m taking the job that would have let him send them money. And another one has a sick wife who won’t see the doctor because the money to pay the bill is going to end up in my pocket, not his.”

  Jorge told her that a few weeks before, when he’d come by the restaurant late one night to pick her up, he’d confided in Gabriel about his difficulties finding work. Gabriel listened and sympathized. He had come to America on the Mariel boatlift, and he, too, had had problems finding a job. Then he told Jorge about two friends of his, gringos, who were willing to pay top dollar for methamphetamine. The problem was, the guys couldn’t find ­anyone to buy from. Gabriel told Jorge that Mexicans had taken over the meth market and the old biker sources in the desert were starting to dry up. He said if Jorge could find someone, or even someone who knew someone, with connections, the two of them could make some easy money. The gringos wanted about five thousand dollars’ worth. At a 50 percent markup, Gabriel and Jorge would clear a nice profit.

  “But, Jorge, you don’t know any drug dealers. You don’t know anybody like that!” Olivia said.

  “I don’t, but who knows who knows, you know?” Jorge smiled. “I just started asking around, and one of the guys I met on that gardening job last month, he introduced me to Oreste. Oreste’s been around. He knows some guys who are connected to the Mexican Mafia. They bring the crank in from Tijuana.”

  Olivia shook her head, wondering how the man who had laboriously copied Pablo Neruda poems onto blue paper with purple marker and decorated them with cutouts of little white doves for her could have become someone who so casually discussed the Mexican Mafia and methamphetamine connections.

  “You’ll get caught.”

  “Nobody’s going to get caught. It’s all between friends, you know? Gabriel’s friends, my friends.”

  “You didn’t even know this Oreste until two minutes ago. He’s not your friend.”

  Jorge stroked her hair and began unbuttoning her shirt. “Don’t worry, mamacita. I’m not going to touch the stuff. I’m just going to introduce some people. That’s all. Look, I’m a man, Olivia. It’s a man’s job to care for his woman. That’s all I’m doing, caring for you.”

  As he slid her shirt open, he b
egan to kiss her between her breasts. She sighed, wanting to argue with him, but she understood how emasculated he felt. A while ago, he had started secretly ­taking money out of her wallet, and while at first she’d been angry, she soon realized that he was trying only to save himself the humiliation of asking, so she forced herself not to mind. What was hers was his. That was the way it was supposed to be when you lived with someone, when you were in love.

  She leaned back in his arms, not giving up, just, for the moment, giving in.

  The first time Olivia and Jorge had made love it had been in a motel on the outskirts of San Miguel. She had paid for the room. They’d been meeting every evening for a couple of weeks, after she finished her Spanish classes. He hadn’t gone back to Guanajuato after the conference. Instead, he spent his days at the Universidad del Valle de Mexico, the private secondary school and college in town, trying to organize the students there into a union. She would find him waiting for her outside of the Instituto Allende where her classes were, leaning against the wall, usually with one or two of his friends. Then they would all go back to the Universidad for a meeting or a rally. That was what charmed Olivia most about Jorge: his politics and his politicking. A state university student on scholarship, he nonetheless managed to inspire the private school students, most of whom had previously been concerned only with maximizing their earning potential. Jorge taught them to care for el pueblo and la lucha. He organized demonstrations in support of the Indians of Chiapas and against the government’s brutal quelling of their rebellion. He convinced the students to paint murals of Che Guevara on the school’s walls and to boycott classes taught by any professor not sympathetic to their cause.