The Five Wounds

by Unknown

  That this child should die—this child who was unplanned and unwanted, dreaded and bemoaned, and now loved, loved so deeply by all of them—is cruel. Connor, with his effortful grunts of concentration, Connor, with his abrupt, joyous laugh, Connor, turning the junk mail delicately in his hands. No child has ever been as needed, as necessary and beloved, and tears leak onto the asphalt.

  Amadeo prays to die, and he’s never prayed so vehemently in his life. Take me, take me, take me. But nothing even hurts. Finally, he can put it off no longer. Amadeo opens his eyes onto a scene of peace, a night as still and bright as that first Christmas.

  The moon is barely over half full, but it is huge and flat in the sky above the piñon. Along the edge of the road, the gravel and dust shine silver. There is no sign of the coyote. Blue light pools among the chamisa and clumps of scrub grass, as cold and clear as water. Amadeo has the sense that if he reaches out with his fingers into that blue light, they will find clean, icy depth.

  Connor. Amadeo scrambles onto his hands and knees. His jeans are torn clear away from his left leg, his knee and shin scraped bloody. The truck’s tail is in the ditch, the windshield is dark and gaping, and the engine ticks. The fender, which has been ripped free against a tree trunk, gleams.

  Connor’s seat has indeed been flung through the windshield and landed in the middle of the road, somehow upright, facing down the road away from Amadeo.

  Amadeo crawls toward his grandson, his vision blurred. For a second, a fraction of a second, Amadeo imagines himself in that future, alone with his bottles, having squandered every good thing.

  When Amadeo reaches the seat, he’s afraid to touch it, so he crawls to face the child. The baby isn’t moving, and his face is round and shining in the moonlight. Shards of safety glass are strewn across his still body, like stars fallen from the black sky all around.

  Connor’s eyes are open, his head canted up, as though he’s mesmerized by the moon. Blank eyes. Amadeo thinks of his own mother, and the cooling stillness of her as he clutched her hand.

  Amadeo is making a strange honking animal sound, and he’s just realized that they are sobs when Connor turns from the moon. He looks his grandfather full in the face, and then his expression crumples and he sends up a long angry howl, gorgeous and rich and miraculous and slicing through the night.

  It’s truly cold now, and Angel’s denim jacket, chosen hours ago for the quick early-evening outing with Ryan, is unequal to the task. Though the sky is clear, the air has that dry, metallic tang of snow. Her eyes are trained tensely on the street, willing her father’s truck to appear. In the distance a coyote yelps in a quick series. Somewhere else, an answering wail, unsettlingly human.

  The cry makes Angel think of Connor, and then of La Llorona, the sad haunted woman who drowned her children for her selfish love of a man. She thinks of herself, leaving her child behind for her own selfish love.

  Her cheeks burn with the cold. She wonders if she’ll be found tomorrow, features glazed with ice.

  Where is he?

  The night is enormous, the stars icy points. There are no streetlights on Lizette’s block. At the distant reaches of the road stands one, its dirty orange light cutting a single circle in the dark.

  “Don’t worry, I’m coming,” her father said, and she could hear, even in those four words, that he was drunk.

  “Please hurry,” she said.

  Angel has the sense of herself as a spark, a lone spark in the vast desert, easily extinguished.

  Finally, headlights come swiftly toward her, swinging up and down with the bumps in the road. With relief, Angel steps into the road and waves with her whole arm, as if her life depends on it. When the car is almost on her, though, she realizes with terror that it’s not her father’s truck: it’s a dark sedan. Angel backs onto the curb and considers running. Could she make it out to Riverside Drive?

  The car slows. Angel’s fear is a fist around her throat, and then she understands, all at once, that it’s her mother. Her mother, in her old Aladdin sweatshirt, hair in a messy ponytail. Angel can’t step forward, so frozen with relief is she, but she bursts into tears.

  “Honey.”

  Her mother gets out of the car, envelops Angel in her arms. She’s warm from the car’s heater, from the warmth that is always hers. Angel clings to her as if to a buoy in the rocking, infinite ocean. She’s heaving, her face drenched. Angel tries to speak, but her voice is clotted with tears.

  Her mother holds her close, cupping the back of Angel’s head with a palm as though she’s an infant. “Listen,” her mother says. “There’s been an accident. But everyone’s okay, sweetie. Everyone’s safe.”

  Part III

  LENT

  On Ash Wednesday, Amadeo meets with the rest of the hermanos in the morada after five o’clock Mass. As the men, foreheads smudged with ash, clap each other on the back, catching up on news, Tío Tíve stands, small and nervous, gripping his trembling hands. “Okay,” he says brusquely. “Sit down.”

  Frankie Zocal and John Trujillo exchange tolerant, bemused glances. Al Martinez gives Amadeo’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, then lowers himself to the bench. Shelby Morales rewraps his gray ponytail in the purple elastic, smoothing the length of it, and looks up at Tíve expectantly, like a student.

  The old man is dressed in his best clothes: stiff jeans, pearl-snap shirt. He wears his silver-dollar belt buckle and turquoise bolo tie. Amadeo feels affection for his uncle. He isn’t, for a moment, sure why the guy ever seemed so intimidating. The other evening, he stopped by the house, bringing groceries, and stayed for dinner, just a smiling old man clutching a squirming Connor on his skinny lap.

  Tíve stands before the men, palms raised like a priest. “I’m retiring. Al Martinez is taking over as Hermano Mayor.” Tío Tíve looks oddly ecstatic as he stands before them, light gleaming in his hazy eyes. “This year his son Isaiah is our Jesus. You explain it all to him, Al, and make him pray regular.”

  From the surprise on Al’s face, it is evident that Tío Tíve didn’t run any of this by him. With a nod, Al clears his throat. “Brother,” he says. “Thank you.” He stands, and makes as if to embrace Tíve, but Tíve walks past him, mouth serious, and takes his place on the bench.

  “All right,” Al says, turning slowly, as if seeing the morada for the first time. “All right. Let us pray.”

  As Amadeo speaks the words along with the other men, he pities his old self, the self that once believed there was a single, big thing he could do to make up for all his failings. He missed the point. The procession isn’t about punishment or shame. It is about needing to take on the pain of loved ones. To take on that pain, first you have to see it. And see how you inflict it.

  That December night, as Marissa drove them all down into the valley to get Connor checked out in the ER, Amadeo neither explained nor excused himself. He told Angel everything: the drinking, the coyote, the baby’s cry. It was the fullest confession he’d ever made. Amadeo and Angel sat in the back, leaning over Connor’s car seat as he babbled. He expected his daughter to lash out, but she was silent, her eyes wide and afraid. “The thing everyone warned me about, that’s what I did,” Amadeo whispered.

  After a scan, their second miracle: Connor was fine. He didn’t have even a single cut from the shattered windshield. He’d been thrown clear and had somehow landed upright.

  “This accident,” the admitting nurse said as she flicked a penlight in and out of Connor’s eyes. “Were drugs or alcohol involved?”

  “No,” Angel said. When the nurse narrowed her eyes at them, Marissa looked to Angel, asking, and then chimed in, in that authoritative office voice that always so impressed Amadeo. “No, none. I was driving.” And perhaps because it was a busy night in the ER, the nurse appeared to believe them. She offered to examine Amadeo’s leg, but he just shook his head, and she did not press it.

  This thing Amadeo did is too terrible and too large for them to deal with. He understands that it will remain with him—a
nd with Angel and Marissa, too—forever. Trotting along his life will run a ghost life, a life in which Connor is killed on this night.

  At home, the three of them crouched around Connor’s crib as he slept, disbelieving that his chest rose and fell. Amadeo reached through the bars, placed his hand close to the child’s muzzle to feel the faint stirring. “I don’t know why you lied for me. Both of you.”

  Amadeo’s ears buzzed in the silence.

  Then, in a voice that was low and steely, Angel said, “He’s okay. And we need you at home. And you’ll never drink again.” It’s true. Each time he wants to, he remembers that night, and when he doesn’t drink, it’s like a stone, one after another, building a bridge back to her.

  Mostly things are good between them now, but occasionally she snaps, and he feels the dart of her anger. Amadeo understands that her forgiveness won’t come easily, that for all her sweetness, she holds something back, and he recognizes that this is a sign of her maturity. He’s proud of Angel for her anger, proud she sees that his behavior is something to be angry about. He pledges, once again, that he will earn her forgiveness.

  All of Lent, Amadeo attends AA meetings, then prays in the morada, alone and with the others. He’s lost his faith in processions, though. He knows now that for someone with his particular weaknesses, performance is a distraction. But he enjoys the quiet of the building, with his eyes shut among these murmuring men, his voice folded in with theirs. He is aware of their heat and thrumming thoughts, and as the prayer flows around him, he falls into the current.

  Meanwhile, at home, Connor cruises around the house, pulling himself along furniture, delighted by his new perspective. He has five words now: mama, ball, hat, hot, no. His daughter turns the pages of her GED study book. Occasionally a whole day passes without them mentioning Yolanda.

  Connor sleeps well now, and Angel sleeps better, too. Lately, she has been thinking about returning to her old high school in the fall. The prospect is scary: there would be so much to catch up on, that whole complicated social world to navigate. Would Priscilla speak to her? Would anyone?

  The main obstacle is child care. Her father has been helping more, now that he has a full-time job at Lowe’s, but it doesn’t pay much, and means he can’t watch Connor. Her mother has offered to help with day care, and so has Tío Tíve, from his meager Social Security check, but even so there will be a shortfall. Child care is so expensive, and now that she’s seen the quality of the nursery at Smart Starts!, she can’t imagine leaving him at the grubby KidKorral, even if she could afford it.

  But still, Angel thinks about school: the concrete hallways, the din of passing period, the airy openness of the library upstairs. She longs to be back in a regular life of classes and assignments, each day broken into manageable blocks. She longs to be learning.

  She thinks about Brianna, too, less with anger now than with sadness. But more frequently, she thinks about the things Brianna taught her—about encouraging Connor’s early literacy, about giving him loving boundaries, and mostly about valuing herself. In spite of what happened after, Brianna put the best of herself into these lessons, and for that Angel is grateful.

  One Saturday in March, Angel meets Trinity and Christy at the playground next to the library. It’s the first time she’s seen anyone from Smart Starts!, and, driving, Angel was nervous. But now, sitting under the spring sun, two scrub jays going nuts in the cottonwoods, her spirits rise, because here are her old friends Trinity and Christy, happy to see her.

  Angel plops Connor in the sandbox next to two-year-old Kristiana, who regards him levelly. Around her pacifier, Kristiana comments, “Baby.”

  Connor pushes a handful of sand into his mouth.

  Angel sweeps her finger through his wet maw, swiping at his struggling tongue. “Not for eating, hijito.”

  Sandy spittle drips down his chin. “No no no,” he says, beating his arms and gnashing. He takes up another handful, conveying it to his mouth with mercifully spread fingers and poor aim.

  “Fine,” says Angel, sitting back. “You want to eat it, eat it.”

  “You can’t stop them,” Trinity says with authority.

  “So,” ventures Angel. “How’s Smart Starts!?”

  Trinity shrugs. “It got crappy after you left.”

  Angel understands that this isn’t exactly the truth, that Trinity is saying this to spare her feelings.

  “I mean, the new girls are cool,” says Trinity. “But I don’t know, it’s like Brianna’s checked out. She’s leaving in June for grad school. Ysenia and Tabitha got their GEDs. I’ll be glad to be done.”

  “I’m passing all my practice tests, but I’m waiting for Trinity so we can leave together,” says Christy.

  “She got a 180 in science!”

  “That’s awesome,” Angel says, muted.

  “McDonald’s is giving hiring bonuses. We’ll schedule it so one of us can watch the kids while the other works, which is sad, ’cause when are we gonna see each other? Anyways, I’m good on all the subjects but language arts.”

  “You just gotta try harder,” Christy says. “You’ll get it.”

  Carefully, Angel asks, “Are you in touch with everyone?”

  “Ysenia wants to get her associate’s as a medical assistant, but she’s working until April starts school. Tabitha and the kids moved in with her sister in Albuquerque.”

  From the stroller, Ricky fusses. Christy ties back her hair and gets up to release him. “Jen’s taking the test next month. She got a job working at her church’s day care center, which is awesome because she’ll be with Nathan all day.”

  “Precious Lambs of Heaven?”

  Christy laughs. “She can actually be pretty cool. Jared tried to get back with her, but she told him to get out of her face, which, good.”

  “You ever hear from Lizette? How’s she doing?” Angel keeps her voice even, but fears they’ll hear the whole history in her question. Maybe Lizette has told them everything, and they’ve been laughing at her behind her back.

  “Wait, are you for serious? You don’t know?” Christy says. “I thought you two were best friends.” Her surprise shades to sorrow, and she and Trinity exchange a look.

  “What?” asks Angel. Christy seems about to speak and then stops. “What?”

  “You really didn’t hear?” Trinity asks gently. “Mercedes got taken. I guess Lizette started using.”

  “No,” says Angel.

  Christy regards her sadly. “I know.”

  “We saw her at FoodMart,” says Trinity.

  “She’s all skinny now.”

  “I almost wouldn’t’ve recognized her but she came up and was like, ‘Hi, guys,’ all smiling, but not herself, you know? When she told us about Mercedes, she’s like, ‘Shit happens, but guess I’m free now.’ I was like, ‘Do you even feel? I’d kill myself if Kristiana got taken.’ ” She touches her daughter’s back.

  “She didn’t mean it, Trinity. You could tell she was fronting.”

  “But I just saw her in December,” says Angel. That clear cold night comes back to Angel again, as it does many times each day. But instead of thinking about the accident and Connor and how much she nearly lost, or about Lizette’s meanness, she thinks about something she hasn’t remembered until now: the crib in Lizette’s dark living room, the shadowed hump that Angel assumed was Mercedes. How she wishes she’d checked on her, laid a palm against the sleeping back. She wonders if Mercedes was already gone or if that night was one of the baby’s last with her mother.

  “Why didn’t she just let me love her?” The question comes out as a croak.

  “We all love her,” says Christy. “But chiva—it’s, like, impossible to fight.”

  Trinity shakes her head. “Things were never going to go right for Lizette, with the crap she went through.”

  “No,” Angel says. “That’s not true.” What she means is that there were a million moments when events might have unfolded differently for Lizette, when a word, a gesture, a
smile from a caring adult might have changed her course, might still.

  “She’s right, Trin,” says Christy. “There’s always hope.”

  RYAN HAS CONTINUED to come by a few days a week. One evening, as the three of them sit on the carpet, building block towers for Connor to knock down, he tugs at the cuffs of his sweater and asks quietly, “That was a lie, right? About me not being his dad?”

  Angel nods. “I’m sorry.”

  “I knew it.” A smile twitches his thin lips.

  Ryan has, to Angel’s surprise, become a good friend. She doesn’t confide in him, and they still have little in common, but he is the only person as interested as Angel in the details of Connor’s growth, and he seems to be doing a lot of research on early-childhood milestones.

  “Come here, doodarooni!” As Connor crawls toward him, slapping the carpet at great speed, Ryan spreads his arms. “Hey there. Come to Dada.” He shoots a fearful glance at Angel, as if to gauge her response.

  Alarm frills through her, then fades—not entirely, but enough to allow her to feel a kind of warmth, like an open palm against her heart. Ryan wraps Connor in his arms and tips him back. Connor’s eyes flutter, and he retracts his arms and neck, chortling in maniacal delight.

  Part of Angel, therefore, is not surprised when, one afternoon, her phone chimes, Ryan’s messages coming fast upon each other.

  Um, I’m sorry, but U should know I told my mom.

  She’s freaking.

  She wants to come by tonight. To meet you guys.

  Is that okay?

  “Dad?” Angel calls outside.

  He pokes his head into the kitchen, gulping from a glass of lemonade. “What’s up?”

  Her father smells like sweat and sawdust. Recently he has begun messing around with carpentry projects out back—a mini table and a short bookshelf for Connor—using wood purchased with his employee discount and his own father’s tools.