Rag and Bone

by Michael Nava

  “Hey, Henry, I got the info you wanted on that lady. Jesusita Trujillo.”

  “A phone number?”

  He chuckled. “Phone number, address, Social Security, place of employment, number of kids. Credit rating.”

  “Another fly caught in the worldwide web, huh? She have a son named Peter?”

  “Yeah, and two daughters besides.”

  “I’m not at the office right now. Can you e-mail me this information?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “At the track.”

  “When did you start playing the ponies?”

  “A running track, Freeman,” I said. “I’m going to attempt to run a mile in under a month.”

  “You sure you want to do that?”

  “Doctor’s orders.”

  He snorted. “Hope his med-mal insurance is paid up.”

  “Talk to you later, Freeman. Thanks.”

  I finished my stretches, stuck the phone in the waistband of my shorts and walked to the start of the track. The air smelled hazily of eucalyptus from the surrounding trees and of sun-warmed grass. As I looked down the dusty length of the track, my body seemed in some subtle way to remember all those years of starting lines at track meets. My pulse accelerated a bit, my knees bent a little, my shoulders loosened, my neck straightened, the balls of my feet seemed to touch more lightly the ground beneath them. I got into position, counted three and slowly set off.

  Soaking in the tub that evening, I studied the printout of Freeman’s e-mail glimpse into the life of Mrs. Jesusita Trujillo, a sixty-five-year-old widow who lived in Garden Grove and worked as a teacher’s aide to supplement her Social Security. Peter, thirty-five, was the youngest of her three children. She also had two married daughters, one living in San Diego, the other in Hawthorne. She had recently taken out a loan for ten thousand dollars, using her house for collateral. Since she had no large debts, I wondered why she needed that much money. Home improvements? I would see for myself when I dropped in on her tomorrow evening. I had decided to visit rather than call, because if she was in touch with Vicky and Pete, she might refuse to see me, depending on what my niece had told her. The cell phone rang. I put the paper aside and answered it. It was John. I made him laugh with an account of my elephantine pace around the track and then I told him about my talk with Dr. Hayward.

  Garden Grove was one of those suburbs that, forty years ago, symbolized to the rest of America the vacuity of life in Southern California: block after block of identical split-level, ranch-style houses on barren plots of land that had once been part of the vast citrus orchards that had given Orange County its name. The houses had not aged well, particularly in Mrs. Trujillo’s neighborhood. The driveways on Avalon Road were cracked and oil stained. Paint blistered on the walls of the houses, and almost of all of them had barred windows and sat behind Cyclone fences. Those that did not were sprayed with gang placas. The spray-painted squiggles marked the neighborhood as the territory of the GGBoyz, and it had that unnatural stillness of a place where people feared to venture outside.

  Although the houses on Avalon Road had become small, shabby jails for their inhabitants, the little yards were planted hopefully with flowers and fruit trees, hedges and flowering shrubs and bushes. Even orange trees had made a comeback. The tart-sweet unmistakable scent of orange blossoms filled the air as I got out of my car in front of Mrs. Trujillo’s house, which was, like its neighbors, barricaded behind a tall fence. The gate was locked. I stood there a moment wondering what to do when the front door opened and a woman called out from behind the screen door, “Can I help you?”

  “Mrs. Trujillo? My name is Henry Rios. I’m Vicky’s uncle. Her mother’s brother? I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute.”

  “I haven’t seen Vicky since last time Pete went to jail.”

  “She was at my house until a couple of nights ago,” I said. “I think she and Pete and Angel are together. I just wanted to give you a message for her, if they call you. A message from her mother.”

  The screen door squeaked as Mrs. Trujillo opened it and stepped out onto the sagging porch. In the twilight I could make out a small, plump woman with wiry hair and a round, once lovely face that time and hardship had dissolved into a puddle of sagging, melancholy features. She came to the gate and unlocked it.

  “You better come in before someone tries to kill you,” she said. “Did you lock your car?”

  “Yeah. It has an alarm.”

  “That won’t stop anyone around here.”

  “Bad gang problem?”

  “When I was raising my kids, they used to play out in the streets. You see any kids out there now?”

  I stepped into her yard. In the center of the grass was a bathtub planted with red and pink geraniums.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What was your name again?”

  “Henry,” I replied, smiling. “Henry Rios. My sister, Elena, is Vicky’s mother, though I guess you’ve been the only mom she’s ever really had.”

  Mrs. Trujillo said, “I love her like she’s my own. Her and Angelito. Come in, Mr. Rios.”

  There was gold shag carpeting in her living room and an electric blue couch upholstered in crushed velvet, circa 1970. She wasn’t being retro. On the wall above it were a series of paintings depicting a vaguely familiar landscape. After a moment I recognized them as views of San Francisco Bay from San Quentin. Pete’s prison therapy, I thought. The television was set into a massive console and was running with the sound off. The top of the console was covered with framed photos that seemed to go back four generations, from snapshots to stiffly posed formal portraits. On the mirrored coffee table was an onyx ashtray, where a cigarette was burning. The first thing she did was to put it out and then ask me if I wanted something to drink.

  “Ice water?”

  “You don’t want a beer?”

  “I don’t drink,” I said.

  She seemed to become a shade less wary. “You sober?”

  “For a long time.”

  “I have iced tea,” she said, definitely unbending. “You sit down. Here, turn the TV off. I keep it on for company.”

  She left the room. I noticed the sewing box on the floor beside the couch, and over the arm a pair of boy’s jeans. A patch was half-sewn over a torn knee. I went over to the television set and examined the pictures on top of it. The oldest appeared to date from the turn of the century: a fading shot of a group of dark-skinned, Indian-featured men and women standing or sitting against a painted backdrop of a rose-covered trellis. Country people immortalized by an itinerant photographer plying his trade through the villages of Mexico a hundred years ago. I could almost see the dirt beneath their nails, feel the scratchy newness of the men’s high, stiff collars against their skin, the women’s callused feet wedged into unaccustomed shoes. Their eyes were unguarded but alien; the eyes of people at home in a world of which no trace now existed. I put the picture down and picked up a small snapshot that showed a pretty girl, a good-looking boy and, in the boy’s arms, a baby with the grave eyes of his mestizo ancestors. After a moment, it dawned on me that I was looking at Vicky, Pete and Angelito. Elena had told me Vicky was nineteen when Angel was born but she scarcely looked that old. I was so accustomed to the suspicious, wary expression she wore around me that I hardly recognized this fresh-faced, hopeful girl. She was lovely. Pete Trujillo was a tall, thin boy with a face almost as guileless as Vicky’s; when this picture was taken, he was already a convicted felon. He held Angel in one arm and wrapped the other around his wife’s waist. A smear of tattoo was visible on his neck beneath his shirt collar, but otherwise he wasn’t decked out in the usual gangbanger regalia. He looked like an ordinary Latino boy and beamed with evident pride in his little family. Only Angel, who appeared to be at most a few months old, seemed by his serious expression to have a premonition of what was to come. I heard Mrs. Trujillo enter the room behind me. She was carrying a tray with tea, sugar and a plate of Oreo cookies, which she
set down on the coffee table. I handed her the picture.

  “When was this taken?”

  “When Angel was baptized,” she said. “See, he’s wearing his baptismal dress. I made it for him.”

  “Pete doesn’t look like he belonged to a gang. He looks like a good kid.”

  She stared at the picture a moment longer and sighed. “He is, Mr. Rios. He has a good heart.” She returned the picture to its place and picked up another, of a stocky, handsome man with a pencil mustache and thick black hair. “This was Pete’s dad, my husband, Evaristo. He worked down in the shipyard in Long Beach, with the asbestos. That’s what killed him. I wish he’d been around when Pete was growing up. He would’ve kept my baby away from those damn drugs and his damn cousin, Butch.”

  “How old was Pete when his father died?”

  “Nine,” she said. “Come and sit, Mr. Rios.”

  “Please call me Henry. I mean, we are related by marriage.”

  “You can call me Jessie if you want, like my friends do. I brought you sugar and lemon for your tea.”

  I fiddled with my tea for a moment. “Has Vicky told you about Elena and me?”

  “Why, no,” she said, after a prevaricating pause. “Like I said, I haven’t talked to her since Pete went to jail.”

  “I’m not the police or anything. I’m only here because Elena and I are worried about Vicky and Angel. They came to us, and I think we must have done or said something that upset Vicky because she left without even saying good-bye to her mother. We’d just like to know she’s okay.”

  Jessie folded her hands in her lap. “That girl used to sit here and cry and ask me how her mom could have put her up for adoption the way she did.”

  “My sister was a young, unmarried woman trying to finish her education so she could make a better life for herself than the one we had growing up,” I said. “She didn’t think she could do that and raise a child. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven herself. Vicky’s young. Maybe she hasn’t learned yet that good people can make terrible mistakes and still be good people.”

  Jessie nodded, almost imperceptibly. Perhaps she was thinking of her son, the felon with the good heart, or maybe she was old enough to have made a terrible mistake or two herself.

  “Elena did get her education. She’s a professor at a college up in Oakland. I’m a lawyer. A criminal defense lawyer. Vicky and Angel are our only family.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know you and your sister are—” She paused. “Vicky told me about your lifestyle.”

  The way she hesitated and fumbled over the phrase made it clear she was loath to give offense. She was a kindly woman whom life had taught tolerance. I felt for her, barricaded in her own house, surrounded by photographs of a family that had apparently dispersed. I decided not to point out to her that only a moment earlier she had told me she had not spoken to Vicky since Pete went to jail, long before Vicky had come to Elena or me.

  “I know Vicky doesn’t approve,” I said. “That’s all right. We’d still like to help her, on whatever terms she’s willing to accept help from us.”

  “They don’t need money, Henry,” she said. I could see she was struggling with whether to speak freely to me. “I made sure they’re going to be all right.”

  “Where are they?”

  She looked at me with a terrified expression. “No puedo decir más. I’m sorry.” Now she seemed to panic. “I think you should leave, Henry.”

  I nodded. “All right, but take my card. Here, I’ll write Elena’s number on it, too. Please, ask Vicky if you can call us to let us know how they are.”

  Reluctantly she took my card. “It was nice to meet you, Henry”

  “It was nice to meet you, too,” I said, and knew that as soon as I left, she would throw the card away.

  As I drove back to L.A., I tried to make sense of my encounter with Jesusita Trujillo. The problem was that it didn’t make sense. Jesusita was clearly trying to protect Vicky and Angel from some danger but the only one I was aware of was from her son. I got the distinct impression, however, that she was not of this opinion. Hadn’t Vicky told her about the beatings? Wouldn’t they have been obvious? Well, at least I now knew why she had taken out the ten-thousand-dollar loan on her house. It was money for Pete and Vicky and Angel to start a new life. But where?

  The next evening, John and I went to a movie and I stayed at his house. Dr. Hayward was right—once I was reassured I wasn’t going to drop dead in the middle of an intimate act, my problem solved itself. John dropped me off the following morning on his way to work. I leaned into the cab of his truck and said, “I’ll call you tonight?”

  “I’m seeing Deanna,” he said.

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  He reached out and grabbed my hand. “You mad?”

  I wasn’t and said so. “It’s just not like that. I told you I don’t have any expectations. I meant it.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I get home,” he said, in the tone of a man who had made an important decision.

  I spent the rest of the day finishing my judicial application and dropped it off at the post office when I drove to the high school to run. When I got back into my car, I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror and realized I wasn’t wearing the pendant Edith had given me. Then I remembered, in the midst of some maneuver in bed the night before, it had swung from my neck and hit John in the eye, so I’d removed it. I grinned, remembering. Elena said love was a miracle? This was a lot earthier, but for that reason I trusted the feelings growing between us. I didn’t know where it was leading, but I had never felt so comfortable with another man. John had told me he felt the same way. That’s why I thought nothing of it when he didn’t call that evening. I was sound asleep when the buzz of the doorbell seeped into the dream and woke me. I glanced at the alarm clock; it was a quarter after one. I was a little shaky as I made my way to the door, looked through the peephole and saw John shivering in the yellow porchlight. His shirt and pants were stained with vomit. I opened the door and could smell the booze on his breath even before I saw his eyes.

  “John?”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  He reeked, and behind him I saw his truck was parked half on the sidewalk.

  “Come inside, man. What happened to you? I thought you didn’t drink.”

  He stumbled into the hallway and leaned against the wall. He dug into his pocket and pulled out my pendant.

  “Deanna found this by the bed. She asked me what it was. I told her about you.”

  The pendant slipped from his fingers. I caught it

  “I guess she didn’t take it very well.”

  “She called me a faggot,” he said, beginning to blubber. “She said I was trying to give her AIDS.”

  “Oh, baby,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I came this close to punching her,” he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger.

  “But instead you took it out on a bottle of”—I sniffed him— “tequila?”

  “I puked most of it on myself.”

  “I can see that. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and then we can talk.”

  He leaned on me. “I’m sorry. I told you I had slips.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said, steering him toward the bathroom. “I thought you meant something else.” When we reached the bathroom, I asked, “Can you take a shower without drowning yourself?” I sat him on the toilet, untied his shoes and removed them and his socks. “I think you can take it from here.” I ran the shower while he undressed and took his clothes while he got under the nozzle. “I’m going to put on some coffee and find you something to wear. Will you be okay in there?” There was no response. “John?”

  “I’m okay,” he said gruffly.

  I tossed his clothes into the washing machine, found him a pair of sweatpants and a pullover, put on a pot of coffee and went back into the bathroom. The shower was off but the shower curtain was still drawn. I pulled it back. He was sitting in the empty tub, crying.<
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  “John, why are you crying?”

  “I fucked everything up,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about what happened with you and Deanna.”

  “Not with her.”

  I held out my hand. “Come on, baby.”

  He grabbed my hand and I pulled him up until we were face to face. He looked at me with bleary eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing. Just get dressed and tell me what happened.”

  The shower had sobered him up, and in fresh clothes he was recognizable as the man who had dropped me off that morning. He slowly sipped a cup of coffee and blinked at his surroundings like someone coming out of a dream. For a moment, I thought he might be in a blackout, but when he looked at me I saw in his eyes that he was present and accounted for.

  “I thought you told her you’d been with men,” I said.

  “I did. She was cool about it, you know. I think it even turned her on a little, but I guess she thought I was done with all that.” He put the cup down on the table with a clatter. “I let her think that ’cause I thought it was over, too. Until I met you.”

  “You made it sound like things were winding down between you two.”

  “I thought they were,” he said. “How was I supposed to know what she was thinking? She turned me down when I proposed and now she’s screaming at me that she thought we were going to get married.”

  “Maybe she’s been working on a different calendar than you.”

  “Duh,” he said. He swallowed a couple of aspirin. “She didn’t have to call me names and say that thing about AIDS.”

  “You caught her off guard,” I said. “People react out of their gut when that happens.”