“I didn’t know.” Omar was always working on nights Elda balanced the checkbook. When he got home, and she was already sleeping, he would see a tidy stack of bills, receipts, and Elda’s calculator left on the kitchen table. He had never seen her pore over each one, and he imagined her now, with the table covered in paperwork, picking up one bill at a time like they were puzzle pieces, that tiny crease forming over her nose anytime she thought she wasn’t really frowning.
“I’ll find out about the extra shifts first thing tomorrow, okay?”
They got into bed, both too exhausted to move. Elda slept on her side, facing the door and the hallway that led to the kids’ room, but she made a point to press her body close and wrap her feet over his. In this way, they would drift into dreams like two balloons tied together with string, floating apart, but never separated.
She kissed him goodnight and sank into her pillow. This, right here, was Omar’s perfect time of day—the beginning and the end, when there was nothing left to do but be with her.
He lay awake and stared at the ceiling, tracing figures in the popcorn ridges. “This is what life should be, lying by your side always.” But Elda had already fallen asleep.
CHAPTER 42
The drought had everyone on edge. There were water restrictions to be followed, designated days to remember when you could or could not wash your car or water the lawn. A thirst swept over the Valley. Local businesses posted “Pray for Rain” on their marquees, and precipitation forecasts were bumped up from the weather reports to the lead stories on the evening news.
The town’s water tower, an ever-present giant that hovered just beyond the highway, seemed to shrink each time Isabel drove past it. With every hour (then day, then week) without rain, she would wonder if its reserves could possibly be enough. She would think, What if it came to that? Then, It’d barely last a week. Until finally, she didn’t even look at it, didn’t want to think about it. Like all things, it would either be consumed or evaporate.
Other things were not so easy to ignore. One night when Martin was working late, she drove to Elda’s house and caught her standing over the ferns in her yard with a running hose in her hands. She held it limply as it emptied into a puddle of mud all around Elda’s feet, while she stared at the gray-brick siding of her house. It was not even the right day; a neighbor could have reported her, and she would be fined hundreds of dollars. Isabel left her car running in the driveway to go shut off the hose.
“What’d you do that for?” Elda protested.
She didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. “It’s too hot for yard work. Besides, the ferns look beautiful.” The ends of their long, feather-like stems had begun to yellow.
“It’s this drought. Everything’s drying up.” Elda threw her hands in the air as they walked the pathway to her door. “What’s the date I can water again? It’s on the side of the fridge.” She took a seat in the living room, suddenly out of breath.
“Wednesday.” Isabel handed her a cup of ice tea.
“It’s just that this heat is unbelievable.” She ran her palm over her forehead, and then looked at it, staring at the drops of glistening sweat. “I can’t remember the last time it was so hot. There was that summer we stood in line to sign up for amnesty, but even then, the government had set up tents. They handed out lists of the documents we’d need, and we used them as fans.”
“How long were you there?” Isabel sank into the couch, wanting to place her hand over Elda’s, but hesitating. Her mother-in-law didn’t want to be treated any differently since her sickness, but it had changed her. Or perhaps it’d made her more like the person she used to be, nostalgic and softer around the edges.
“Oh, hours. There were so many of us they had to set up stations, like an assembly line. Bureaucracy at its best. Yessica and I found ways to keep the kids busy, but Omar couldn’t stand it. He nearly left. I never did find out if he went through with it, getting naturalized. It would’ve been easy. I’d set up everything for him. I always did. I guess even that wasn’t enough to make him stay.”
Isabel placed her hand over her chest. Her heart pounded so hard against her palm, she worried it might give her away. “I can’t imagine how hard it was.”
“It was a very long time ago.”
“But still. You must have so many questions . . .”
“I did. For so long, I did. But now?” Elda crossed her legs and sat up straight against an extra cushion she tucked behind her back. The cushion was rigid and overstuffed; she whacked it several times before wiggling up against it. “Life’s too short, and I know better. I have nothing left for him.”
“Really?”
She seemed startled by the implication. “What else would you expect? Me curled up in a corner, crying for him? Oh, no no. Those days belong to another person. And it’s like they always say: ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ Of course, it’s a shitty thing to say about cancer. Or murder. And war and innocent children getting . . .” She stopped, and Isabel was glad she didn’t say it. “But a cheating husband, that happens for a reason.”
“Are you sure that’s really why he left? That he cheated?”
“What else makes a man leave his family?”
“You all left your family in Mexico. And your friends and everything . . .”
“That was different.” Elda gave a sigh heavy enough to swallow the rest of their conversation whole.
Isabel paused to stretch her legs, twisting her feet in small circles that made her ankles crack. “It’s been such a rough week at work. I had a patient come in yesterday with a piece of construction debris in his eye. A chip of wood the size of half a pinky finger left him half blind. I asked if there was someone he could call for a ride home, and he said his family’s all in Guatemala, and there was no point worrying them.”
“That’s stupid,” Elda said. “They’ll find out soon enough when he can’t work and stops sending money.”
“He said he can still pour concrete with one eye. And he didn’t want to make his suffering their suffering.” Isabel shrugged. “You’d be shocked to learn the secrets people keep to protect their loved ones. Accidents, injuries, diseases.”
“Probably got them from their mistresses.”
Isabel tried to stifle a laugh. “I’m serious. I can’t imagine going through what they did, what you and Omar did. I can’t imagine having to make those kinds of decisions.”
Elda stared at the floor, smiling to herself as if remembering an old joke. “Decisions are not the same as choices.” She stood up to refill her ice tea. “But enough of that. It’s just this drought. It’s got us all on edge.”
“You’re right,” Isabel said, though she wished the weather were their biggest problem.
“When’s the date I can water again?” Elda emerged from the kitchen holding a glass of ice tea for both of them.
“Wednesday. It’s on the side of the fridge.” She hid her half empty glass on the side table behind her and thanked Elda for the new one.
CHAPTER 43
MARCH 1988
In those days it had become easier to think the boy was well taken care of. That they had switched places—Tomás, gathering dirty dishes in the bus bin and marveling that they never cracked or chipped, and Omar, just a passerby outside the window, catching a whiff of bacon or brisket as he considered popping in for a bite.
Training Tomás had only taken a few hours. When Omar expressed his surprise, Jimmy laughed and said, “What’d you expect?” Then he had told him he could stay the next two weeks if he really needed the hours. Omar knew he was just being kind. Jimmy paused in that way people do when they offer to pick up a tab without meaning it.
“No, it’s fine,” he’d said, thinking of Elda and the hours they would spend worrying about his next paycheck. Time is money (people here loved saying that). It was always impossible to accumulate one without wasting the other.
Somehow things had worked out better than planned. Omar got the extra shifts he
was promised at the office building, until eventually he was working six nights. His pay as a supervisor was the highest he had earned since they had arrived, and he often went weeks without cleaning a thing. He kept track of the staff’s hours and productivity, oversaw that their work was up to standard, and kept the building’s cleaning supplies stocked. He had a round key chain the size of handcuffs, and when he walked through the halls, the heavy jingle of the keys against his hip made him feel important and trusted.
The downside was the schedule. Working a few evenings of the week had been one thing, but with his shifts now back to back, there was never a sense of rest or normalcy. He slept during the day and worked at night, but the transition wasn’t as simple as inverting his habits. Elda, the kids, their life: it all went on without him, and when he tried to catch up, it was all a daze. He felt like one of those snow globes Claudita had become so obsessed with; flipping him right side up made his world feel scattered and suspended.
Now that he was home during the day, Omar noticed things he never would have known otherwise. That television programing was terrible in the mornings, and the commercials assumed the women watching were accident-prone drivers. That when Elda and Claudita walked Martin to the bus stop, Martin made his sister walk on his left, so he was closer to the road and moving traffic. Most surprising of all, that Elda became restless in the early afternoons, fidgeting, looking for something to do and always finding it in the kitchen—dishes that needed to be washed, cabinets that needed rearranging or cleaning. She went on like this for one or two hours, usually until the mail came and she stepped out to retrieve it, only to come back looking deflated.
It got to be impossible to ignore. When he finally asked her about it, Elda looked terrified, and then relieved.
“I’m just waiting on more amnesty papers,” she said, tossing a pile of circulars into the trash.
“More?” Omar thought the forms and letters they had provided for proof of residence and employment had been plenty.
“There’s always something,” Elda said. “There’s no sense in us both worrying.”
She began chopping carrots and celery for the kids’ afternoon soup. Now that they had their green cards, their life was an endless wait. If everything went as planned, they could apply to become citizens in three years.
“So we just have to be patient, that’s all. Perfect citizens.”
He cupped her shoulders from behind. Her muscles were like patches of rocky soil, and even as he tried to knead them, it felt like he was only moving the clumps of stress from one part of her insides to another. A brief moan escaped her, and Elda released her grip from the knife as she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Sometimes I look at our children, and I can’t believe something as simple as a birthplace can make us so different.”
He rubbed a spot above her shoulder blade harder, until he thought his thumb might snap off. “It doesn’t. All this stuff with the papers, it’s not real. Not like our family is.”
“It’s real to Yessica. Real to us if we don’t get approved.”
“You can’t think like that. It only hurts you. And I never want to see you hurting.”
Elda took his hand from her shoulder and kissed it. “You should get some rest before you have to go. You were inquieto all morning. Nearly kicked me out of bed.”
Omar had no memory of a restless sleep, but no matter how deeply he plunged into his dreams, he could always tell when Elda had gotten out of bed. The sheets turned cold, and there was a vastness that made everything feel empty.
“I was planning on going in early today.”
She didn’t ask why, and he didn’t say. Most days Elda’s trust made him feel worse than if he had lied.
When he walked into the diner, it smelled different. Or rather, like it always had, but more pungent, as if time could squeeze particles closer together the longer you stayed away. He hadn’t stopped by in nearly a month, and he was suddenly very aware of the plastic odor that rose out of the vinyl booths, mixed with the cinnamon of apple pies and the buttery baked potatoes. He wondered if it ever stayed on him, and if it did, if Elda would recognize the diner on him when he came home.
The hostess, a pale twentysomething with a side ponytail, asked Omar if he needed a table for one. He held his hand in the air and shook his head, and she followed him as he walked past, asking if she could help him with anything. As if he were a stranger, just another customer.
The line cook eyed him suspiciously but said nothing as he walked behind the counter toward the kitchen. The door swung open, barely missing Omar as Jimmy stepped through holding an empty dish bin. “Hey!” He set the bin aside and gave Omar a hug. “If you’re looking for the boy, he should be here by now, but he’s not. Didn’t call in sick or anything.”
Minutes later, Omar was back in his car, circling the school and the park before heading toward Tomás’s neighborhood. He should have been angry, but he was worried. The boy wouldn’t betray his trust, would he? The boy was not a boy anymore, he thought.
The streets were quiet and full of parked cars. Omar’s engine rattled as he crossed a speed bump but didn’t slow down in time. He stopped at the only traffic light on the street and made a left, toward an apartment building with a tower of dented mailboxes near the entrance and a security gate left halfway open.
He saw them as soon as he turned the corner. At first it was no one he recognized, just four bodies kicking at the ground as if they had gotten gum on their shoes, or stepped on an anthill—nothing really worth noticing. It was only a small flash of neon green that made him stop. Tomás had a pair of shoes that color, and as he followed the bright speck through the limbs that surrounded it, Omar realized what he was seeing. The green became a pair of shoes, became a clenched body that rocked side to side in the dirt as countless legs pummeled it. Tomás made no sound, but his body absorbed the impact of each strike with a dullness that made Omar think he might already be dead. He jumped out of the car and left it running, keys still in the ignition, shouting words that were incomprehensible and waving his arms in the air as he ran. It was useless. The blows kept coming faster as he approached. The attackers yelled and grunted and spat at the ground, until one of them bent to lift Tomás’s head and punched him in the face. To Omar’s horror they began taking turns. A punch in the jaw, the eye, the other eye. His legs burned from running so fast. From the depths of his desperation he pulled out the most threatening words he could think of.
“I’ve called the cops! They’re on their way now.”
The group scattered, and Tomás fell to the ground.
“They’re gone. I’m here. It’s me,” Omar said. He hooked the boy’s arm over his neck and lifted him up. A mixture of sweat and blood pressed against the back of Omar’s head, sticking and slipping as they moved.
He carried Tomás into the car and started driving just to leave, unsure where to take him. The hospital would ask questions. Tomás’s aunt would disown him. Omar thought about bringing him home, and though he shut away the thought before it fully formed, the shock of it stayed with him. It commingled with the memory of Elda, curled against a bloodied tile wall. Time had worn away the image until it was just fractured details: Tomás’s father, lying an arm’s length away, his feet like the hands of a clock, stopped at 1:55. And Elda, so paralyzed that he often wondered if every step she had taken since then protested and ached.
“You shouldn’t’ve done that. Now they’ll never be done,” Tomás said. He could barely move his jaw, and so his voice sounded like drowning.
“Shh. Hold still and save your breath. Talking will only make the pain worse.”
“You’re not listening. Ah!” he winced and doubled over. “Where we going?”
“Work. Not to Jimmy’s. Mine. It’s not far from here.” Without realizing, Omar had been driving in that direction. It was the only place that made sense. It was early enough that staff wouldn’t have arrived yet, and the building’s daytime occupants would have
long since gone home. The only person to worry about was the security guard in the main lobby.
“Just wait here.”
“Where the hell would I go?” Tomás attempted a smile and coughed instead.
The sky was turning colors now, its glow dimmed by hundreds of grackles landing on the wires strung across the parking lot. Their crows were like thousands of songs playing all at once, noise so meaningless it nearly went unheard.
Omar’s plan was simple enough; there was a first-aid kit in the supply closet that he hoped was still stocked with all the essentials. Years ago, one of the staff had cut his hand emptying a trash bag littered with pieces of a broken glass, and Elda had bandaged him up. He made a mental list of the supplies she had used, remembering how the webbed skin between the man’s thumb and forefinger had slit in two, how Elda had narrated in a low, gentle voice everything she was doing before she did it. The dab of alcohol, which would sting. The topical antiseptic, which tainted the wound orange.
He wished she were here now, still working with him. Under any other circumstances the bruises and cuts on the boy’s face wouldn’t faze her. Only Elda could look at something broken and see a million different ways to fix it.
He tried to conceal the small box and a handful of paper towels under his arm as he exited the building, which turned out to be easy because the guard was absorbed in a comic book. Back in the car, Tomás had reclined his seat. He held his arm over his forehead, covering his eyes as if the sun were beaming down on him.
He looked suspiciously at the cotton balls and tape. “What are you, a doctor now?”
“I’m the next best thing. You think any doctor would take a look at you and not assume the worst? They’re trained to recognize these things.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
Omar raised an eyebrow at the boy, but said nothing as he cleaned off his wounds. Tomás’s shirt was stained with blood, and it was getting so dark he had to turn on the car’s interior lights. Anyone walking through the lot might look in on them and see everything.
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