A Stranger in My Grave

by Margaret Millar

  Pinata pressed the door buzzer and waited, trying to figure out why Juanita had suddenly decided to come back to town after an absence of more than three years. She must have known she’d be in trouble with the authorities for breaking probation when she disappeared in the first place. On the other hand, Juanita didn’t behave on the logical level, so the reason for her return could be something quite trivial and capricious, or purely emotional: homesickness, a desire to see her mother again or to show off her latest husband and youngest child to her friends, perhaps a quar­rel with a neighbor, wherever she’d been living, followed by a sudden violent desire to get away. It was difficult to guess her motives. She was like a puppet operated by dozens of strings; some of them had broken, and others had become so inextricably twisted that not one of them functioned as it was intended to. To remove these knots and tangles, and to splice the broken ends together, was the job of Alston and his staff. So far, they had failed. Juanita’s soarings and somersaults, her leaps and landings were beyond the control of any puppeteer.

  The door opened to reveal a short, thin middle-aged woman with black, expressionless eyes like ripe olives. She held her body so rigidly straight that she appeared to be wearing an iron brace on her back. Everything about her was stretched taut; her skin looked as if it had been starched, her hair was drawn back from her face in a tight and tidy little bun, and her mouth was compressed into a hard line. Pinata was surprised when it opened with such ease.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Rosario?”

  “That is my name.”

  “I’m Steve Pinata. I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if I may.”

  “If it’s about old Mr. Lopez next door, I have nothing more to say. I told the lady from the Department of Health yesterday, they had no right to take him away like that against his will. He’s had that same cough all his life, and it’s never done him a bit of harm. It’s as natural to him as breathing. As for the rest of the neigh­borhood getting into that ray machine, free or not, I refused and so did the Gonzales and the Escobars. It’s against nature, getting your lungs choked up with all those rays.”

  “I’m not connected with the Department of Health,” Pinata said. “I’m looking for a man who may be calling himself Foster.”

  “Calling himself? What is this business, calling himself?”

  “Your daughter knows him as Foster, let’s put it that way.”

  Mrs. Rosario took a tuck in her mouth, like a sailor reefing a mainsail at the approach of a storm. “My daughter, Juanita, lives down south.”

  “But she’s here now for a visit, isn’t she?”

  “Whose concern is it if she comes here for a visit? She has done no harm. I keep a sharp eye on her, she stays out of trouble. Who are you anyway to come asking questions about my Juanita?”

  “My name is Stevens Pinata.”

  “So? What does that tell me? Nothing. It tells me nothing. I don’t care about names, only people.”

  “I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Rosario. My job right now is to keep track of Foster.”

  The woman clapped one hand to her left breast as if something had suddenly broken under her dress, a heart or perhaps merely the strap of a slip. “He’s a bad man, is that what you’re saying? He’s going to cause trouble for my Juanita?”

  “I don’t think he’s a bad man. I can’t guarantee there won’t be trouble, though. He can be a little impulsive at times. Did he come here with your daughter, Mrs. Rosario?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they went off together?”

  “Yes. Half an hour ago.”

  A thin, red-cheeked girl about ten came out on the porch of the house next door and started rotating a hula hoop around her hips and chewing a wad of gum in matching rhythm. She appeared to be completely oblivious to what was taking place on the adjoining porch, but Mrs. Rosario said in a hurried whisper, “We can’t talk out here. That Querida Lopez, she hears everything and tells more.”

  Still not looking in their direction, Querida announced to the world in a loud, bright voice, “I am going to the hospital. None of you can come and see me either, because I’ve got spots on my lungs. I don’t care. I don’t like any of you anyway. I’m going to the hospital like Grandpa and have lots of toys to play with and ice cream to eat, and I don’t have to do any more dishes forever and ever. And don’t any of you come and see me, because you can’t, ha ha.”

  “Querida Lopez,” Mrs. Rosario said sharply, “is this true?”

  The only sign that the girl had heard was the increased speed of the hula hoop.

  Mrs. Rosario’s dark skin had taken on a yellowish tinge, and when she stepped back into her front room, it was as if Querida had pushed her in the stomach. “The girl lies sometimes. Perhaps it isn’t true. If she is so sick as to go to a hospital, how could she be out playing like this? She coughs, yes, but all children cough. And you see for yourself what a fine, healthy color she has in her cheeks.”

  Pinata thought that the color might be caused by fever rather than health, but he didn’t say so. He followed Mrs. Rosario into the house. Even after he closed the door behind him, he could hear Querida’s rhythmic chanting: “Going to the hospital—I don’t care. Can’t come and see me—I don’t care. Going in an ambulance ...”

  The rays of sun coming in through the lace curtains scarcely lightened the gloom of the small square parlor. All four walls were covered with religious ornaments and pictures, crucifixes and rosaries, Madonna’s with and without child, heads of Christ, a lit­tle shrine presided over by the Holy Mother, haloed angels and blessed virgins. Many of these objects, which were intended to give hope and comfort to the living, had the effect of glorifying death while at the same time making it seem repulsive.

  In this room, or another one just like it, Juanita had grown up, and this first glimpse of it did more to explain her to Pinata than all the words Alston had used. Here she had spent her childhood, surrounded by constant reminders that life was cruel and short, and the gates to heaven bristled with thorns, nails, and barbed wire. She must have looked a thousand times at the haloed moth­ers with their plump little babies, and unconsciously or deliber­ately, she had chosen this role for herself because it represented aliveness and creativity as well as sanctity.

  Mrs. Rosario crossed herself in front of the little shrine and asked the Holy Mother for assurance that Querida Lopez, with her fine, healthy color, was lying. Then she tucked her thin body neatly into a chair, taking up as little space as possible because in this house there was hardly any room left for the living.

  “Sit down,” she said with a stiff nod. “I don’t expect strangers to come into my house asking personal questions, but now you are here, it is only polite to ask you to sit down.”

  “Thanks.”

  The chairs all looked uncomfortable, as if they had been selected to discourage people from sitting. Pinata chose a small, wooden-backed, petit-point couch, which gave off a faint odor of cleaning fluid. From the couch he could look directly into what appeared to be Mrs. Rosario’s bedroom. Here, too, the walls were crowded with religious paintings and ornaments, and on the night-stand beside the big carved double bed a candle was burning in front of the photograph of a smiling young man. Obviously, the young man had died, and the candle was burning for his soul. He wondered whether the young man had been Juanita’s father and how many candles ago he had died.

  Mrs. Rosario saw him staring at the photograph and immedi­ately got up and crossed the room. “You must excuse me. It is not polite to display the sleeping quarters to strangers.”

  She pulled the bedroom door shut, and Pinata could see at once why she had left it open in the first place. The door looked as if it had been attacked by someone with a hammer. The wood was gouged and splintered, and one whole panel was missing. Through the jagged aperture, the young man continued to
smile at Pinata. The flickering light of the candle made his face appear very lively; the eyes twinkled, the cheek muscles moved, the lips expanded and contracted, the black curls stirred in the wind behind the broken door.

  “One of the children did it,” Mrs. Rosario explained in a quiet voice. “I don’t know which one. I was at the grocery store when it happened. I suspect Pedro, being the oldest. He’s eleven, a boy, but the devil gets into him sometimes, and he plays rough.”

  Very rough, indeed, Pinata thought. And playing isn’t quite the word.

  “Pedro’s down at the lumber mill now, seeing about a new door. For punishment, I made him take the other children with him. Then he’s got to paint and hang the new door by himself. I’m a poor woman. I can’t afford painters and carpenters with such prices they charge.”

  It was obvious to Pinata that she wasn’t rich. But he could see no signs in the house of extreme poverty, and the religious items alone had cost quite a bit of money. Mrs. Rosario’s former employer on the ranch must have been generous in his will, or else she earned extra money doing odd jobs.

  He glanced at the door again. Some of the hammer marks were at the very top; if an eleven-year-old boy did the damage, he must be a giant for his age. And what would be his motive for such an act? Revenge? Destruction for its own sake? Or maybe, Pinata thought, the boy had been trying to break down a door locked against him.

  It didn’t occur to him that Mrs. Rosario was lying....

  She’d seen them coming up Granada Street, Juanita in her green uniform and an older man. Mrs. Rosario didn’t recognize the man, but the two of them were laughing and talking, and that was enough: they were up to no good.

  She called the children in from the backyard. They were old enough now to notice things, to wonder, yes, and to talk, too. Pedro had the eyes and ears of a fox and a mouth like a hippopotamus. Even in church he talked out loud sometimes and had to be punished afterward with adhesive tape.

  She gave them each an apple and took them all into the bed­room. If they were very good, she promised, if they sat quietly on the bed and said their beads to themselves, later they would all go over to Mrs. Brewster’s to watch the television.

  She had just locked the bedroom door when she heard Juanita’s quick, light step on the porch and the sound of laughter. She took the key out of the lock and put her eye to the keyhole. Juanita was coming in the front door with the stranger, looking flushed and restless.

  “Well, sit down,” she said. “Take a look around. Some dump, eh?”

  “It’s different.”

  “I’ll say it’s different. Don’t touch anything. She’ll throw a fit.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  Juanita raised her eyebrows, the corners of her mouth, and her shoulders in an elaborate combination of shrug and grimace. “How should I know? Maybe she dragged the kids over to church again.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “So what’s too bad about it?”

  “I was hoping to meet them.” Fielding made his tone casual, as if he were expressing a polite desire instead of a deadly serious purpose. “I like children. I only had one of my own, a girl. She’s about your age now.”

  “Yeah? How old do you think I am?”

  “If you hadn’t told me about the six children, I’d say about twenty.”

  “Sure,” Juanita said. “I bet.”

  “I mean it. That goo you put on your eyes makes you look older, though. You should stop using it.”

  “It enhances them.”

  “They don’t need enhancing.”

  “You can sure throw the bull around.” But she began rubbing her eyelids with her two forefingers, as if she had more respect for his opinion than she cared to admit. “Is she pretty? Your kid, I mean.”

  “She was. I haven’t seen her for a long time.”

  “How come you haven’t seen her for a long time if you like chil­dren so much?”

  It was a question with a hundred answers. He picked a couple at random. “I’ve been moving around. I’ve got itchy feet.”

  “So’ve I. Only I can’t do much about it, saddled with six kids and an old lady that watches me like I got two heads.” She flung herself almost violently on the couch, rolled over, and stared up at the ceiling. “Sometimes I wish a big wind would come along and blow this house away and me in it. I wouldn’t care where I blew to. Even a foreign country would be O.K.”

  From the bedroom came the sudden, sharp cry of a child, fol­lowed immediately by a noisy babble of voices, as if that first single cry had been the signal for a whole chorus to begin.

  Juanita glanced toward the door, looking angry but not sur­prised. “So she’s in there spying on me again. I should’ve guessed.”

  The noise from the bedroom had increased to a roar. Fielding could scarcely hear his own voice above it. “We’d better leave. I don’t want to get mixed up in another brawl.”

  “I haven’t changed my clothes.”

  “You look fine. Come on, let’s go. I need a drink.”

  “You can wait.”

  “For Pete’s sake, someone might call the police like last time. Two hundred bucks that cost me.”

  “I don’t like being spied on.”

  She jumped off the couch and moved swiftly toward the bed­room, yanking a large crucifix off the wall as she passed.

  “What are you doing in there?” She banged on the door with the crucifix. “Open this up, you hear me? Open it up!”

  There was a sudden silence. Then one of the children began to wail, and another answered in a scared voice, “Grandma won’t let us.”

  Finally Mrs. Rosario herself spoke. “The door will be opened when the gentleman leaves.”

  “It’ll be opened now.”

  “When the gentleman leaves, not before. I will not allow the children to see their mother consorting with a strange man while her husband is away.”

  “Listen to me, you old spook!” Juanita screamed. “You know what I got here in my hand? I got Jesus Christ himself. And you know what I’m going to do with him? I’m going to pound him against this door—”

  “You will not blaspheme in my house.”

  “—and pound him and pound him, until there’s nothing left of him or it. Hear that, you witch? For once, Jesus is going to do me a good turn. He’s going to break down this door.”

  “If there is any violence, I will take steps.”

  “He’s on my side for a change, see? It’s him and me, not you.” She let out a brief, excited laugh. “Come on, Jesus baby, you’re on my side.”

  She began striking the door with the crucifix, as rhythmically as a skilled carpenter driving nails. Fielding sat, his face frozen in a grimace of pain, listening to the sound of splintering wood and sobbing children. Suddenly the crucifix broke at the top, and the metal head flew through the air, narrowly missing Fielding’s, and ricocheted off a table onto the floor.

  The same blow that broke the crucifix had shattered one of the panels in the door, so that Mrs. Rosario could see what had hap­pened. The door opened then, and the children scrambled out like cattle from a boxcar, confused and terrified.

  With a cry of rage Mrs. Rosario darted across the room and picked up the head of Jesus.

  “That’ll teach you to spy on me,” Juanita said triumphantly. “Next time it’ll be more than Jesus; it’ll be every lousy piece of junk in the house.”

  “Wicked girl. Blasphemer.”

  “I don’t like being spied on. I don’t like doors locked against me.”

  Three of the children had run directly out the front door. To the others, one hidden behind the couch and two clinging to Juanita’s skirt, Mrs. Rosario said in a trembling voice, “Come. We must kneel together and ask forgiveness for your mother’s sin.”

&nbs
p; “Pray for yourself, you old spook. You need it as bad as anybody.”

  “Come, children. To keep your mother’s soul from the tor­ments of eternal hell—” “Leave my kids alone. If they don’t want to pray, they don’t have to.”

  “Marybeth, Paul, Rita….”

  None of the children moved or uttered a sound. They seemed suspended in midair like aerialists aware of an imminent fall and not sure which side would be safer to fall on—God and Grand­ma’s, or Juanita’s. It was the youngest, Paul, who decided first. He pressed his dark, moist face against Juanita’s thigh and began to wail again.

  “Stop slobbering,” Juanita said, and gave him a casual push in Fielding’s direction.

  Fielding found himself in the position of a spectator at a ball game who sees the ball suddenly coming off the field in his direc­tion and has no choice but to catch it. He picked the child up and carried him into the bedroom to get him away from the screaming women.

  “You’ll go to hell, you wicked girl.”

  “That’s O.K. by me. I got relatives there.”

  “Don’t you dare speak his name. He is not in hell. The priest says by this time he is with the angels.”

  “Well, if he can get to be with the angels, so can I.”

  “‘Hi diddle diddle,’ “ Fielding whispered in the boy’s ear. “‘The cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.’ Did you ever see a cow jump over the moon?”

  The boy’s black eyes looked grave, as if this were a very impor­tant question that deserved something better than a snap answer. “I saw a cow once.”