What You Wish For

by Janet Dawson

  * * *

  “But what about Christmas?” Lindsey asked. “We always spend Christmas together.”

  December was a set of rituals, evolved over time. She and Nina decorated the tree and listened to Christmas music, baked cookies and fragrant loaves of pumpkin bread, searched for special gifts, and wrapped packages with paper and ribbons. No matter who else was involved, family and friends, on other days, in other places, Christmas morning was the two of them, mother and daughter together, lingering over coffee, unwrapping presents. Lindsey was looking forward to the holiday, the first in this house since she’d moved back to Berkeley.

  “Chad starts a new job in Austin on January second,” Nina said. “We have to find a place to live.”

  “Why leave before Christmas? Can’t you join him after the holidays?”

  “We’re driving to Texas, Mom. With the two of us spelling each other we can make it in a few days. Chad thinks that’s the best thing to do.”

  He would. “Have you thought this through?”

  “Of course I have,” Nina said. “Give me some credit. I know you don’t like Chad. You’ve never even tried.”

  “Have I ever said I don’t like him?”

  “You don’t have to. It’s obvious from the way you treat him. You look at him like he was a bug that crawled out from under a rock.”

  No, Lindsey didn’t like Chad. Nina met him at a Pink Slip Party in San Francisco, where people between jobs or seeking employment in the tech industry gathered for drinks and networking. Job-hopping was the norm. Since graduating from San Francisco State University, Nina had changed jobs every year, using her technical writing skills to leverage her way through a succession of software firms in Silicon Valley, salary and perks increasing with each new position. She worked at an Internet start-up in San Francisco, sharing an apartment with a coworker. But they were hardly ever at home. They worked sixty or eighty hours a week. Nina loved her work, the fat paychecks sweetened with stock options and the conspicuous-consumption lifestyle.

  Lindsey had suspected for some time that all this New Economy stuff would face some Old Economy realities. So it had. Nina and her roommate showed up at their office one morning to find the doors locked. They were allowed into their cubicles long enough to clean out their desks. Their final paychecks bounced. Nina wasn’t worried, confident she could get another job. But it was the beginning of the long plunge. She and her roommate stuck it out for a while, drawing unemployment insurance, looking for work, taking contract assignments. Nina sold the sports car, the electronic gadgets, the furniture, and took much of her wardrobe to a resale shop. Her roommate packed up and left California. Nina moved in with Chad.

  Lindsey couldn’t understand what Nina saw in him. He was a tall, blond Texan, with attitude and ego to spare. He was also manipulative, with a mean streak. Lindsey had nothing to go on but her gut feeling about Chad, and the few times she’d seen him verbally upbraid Nina. She hoped she was wrong. It was Nina’s life, she’d have to bump into her own brick walls as she figured out her own path. Lindsey just hoped her daughter wouldn’t get in the way of Chad’s fist.

  Now Chad had decided to return to Texas, and Nina was going with him. She wasn’t interested in cautionary words about suddenly pulling up stakes and heading for a town she’d never visited before, with a man her mother didn’t trust.

  “It’s selfish of Chad to insist that you go with him right before the holidays.” Even as she said the words, Lindsey knew she’d added fuel to the fire.

  “It’s selfish of you to want me to stay,” Nina snapped, “so you won’t be alone at Christmas.”

  “I was looking forward to spending the holidays with you. It’s always been just the two of us.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Acid etched Nina’s words. “If you’d married my father, you wouldn’t be alone.”

  It always came back to that, the same argument they’d been ­having ever since Nina was old enough to feel the sting of being the child of a single mother, a child who, according to the dictates of conventional society, didn’t have a father. He existed, but his name wasn’t on the birth certificate. He wasn’t a presence in Nina’s life. Lindsey had done it all, teaching her daughter how to tie shoes and ride a bicycle, providing food, shelter and the pleasant accoutrements of middle-class life. But in the midst of what Lindsey called abundance, Nina felt lack. Over the years she had built up a powerful reservoir of resentment.

  The argument had really started when Nina was still in the womb, as Lindsey debated with herself. Should she terminate this unplanned pregnancy? Should she have the baby? What would raising this unexpected child do to her plans, her dreams, her life? Once she’d made that decision, Lindsey had made a second—that she would not reveal the identity of the father to anyone, not even her child.

  Lindsey felt she’d made the right choice. She loved her daughter. It had been difficult, finishing her course work and her doctoral dissertation, putting her dreams on hold, finding work, supporting herself and her daughter. But she sometimes questioned the wisdom of her second decision. As Nina grew older, she wondered why other little girls had daddies at home and she didn’t.

  Lindsey had never told the man that he’d fathered her child. It was late in the game for such revelations. There were other reasons, people, consequences to consider. As the years with no answers passed, Nina’s questions became more infrequent. Lindsey was relieved of the burden of not answering them. But Nina’s resentment simmered under the surface, sometimes bubbling up in harsh words. Like now. Why wasn’t it good enough for Nina to have a mother who loved her?

  “This isn’t about me, or your father. It’s about you and Chad.” Lindsey voiced her concerns about Chad and the possibility of abuse: verbal, emotional and physical.

  Nina shook her head in disbelief. “You’re crazy. You’re projecting it on Chad and trying to control me.”

  It was as though Lindsey had pulled on the end of a piece of yarn, causing a carefully constructed garment to unravel. Nina lashed her with harsh, bitter, ugly words that spouted like a geyser from her well of resentment. Then she headed for the door.

  “Don’t leave.” Lindsey reached for her daughter. Nina pushed Lindsey away. Her hand struck one of the Christmas decorations on the hall table, a small plaster-of-Paris angel, painted silver, gold, and blue. Nina had made it for Lindsey when she was in third grade. Now the angel flew off the table, crashing onto the hardwood floor, breaking into several pieces. Lindsey cried out, knelt to pick up the pieces.

  Nina wrenched open the front door and stormed out into the rain, tossing words that hurt at her mother.

  I’m leaving. I don’t want to see you, ever again.

  * * *

  Now Nina was back, asleep in the guestroom, hair dark against the white pillow, her discarded green robe on the floor. Lindsey picked up the robe and draped it over a chair, her fingers brushing her daughter’s cheek. The older she got, the more Nina looked like her father.

  Lindsey shut the door. She got the mail and sifted through the envelopes, separating junk from bills, finding a letter from her mother. There were two bedrooms at the back of the house. The smaller of these was her office, walls crowded with bookshelves. An ergonomic desk held her computer and printer. The calico cat was curled into a ball in the office chair, nose tucked under paws.

  Lindsey tossed the junk mail into a recycling bin and opened the other envelopes, glancing at the bills before filing them in a basket on her desk. Then she took out the digital recorder that contained that morning’s interview. She needed to upload the audio file on the recorder to the computer and then transcribe the interview. But Nina’s unexpected appearance on her doorstep had taken precedence over work. The transcription would keep until tomorrow.

  * * *

  Lindsey woke on Friday morning, nose-to-whiskers with Lola. The white cat pushed her head under Lindsey’s hand. Lindsey stroked the cat. Sleep tugged. Her eyes grew heavy and her hand stilled. A paw, claws s
heathed, batted Lindsey on the cheek.

  “All right.” Lindsey threw back the covers and got up, putting on robe and slippers. Both cats jumped to the floor and headed for the kitchen to stand purring by their bowls.

  It was chilly this April morning, a gray sky hinting rain. Lindsey ground coffee beans and poured water into the drip coffeemaker. The coffee perfumed the kitchen with its aroma. She filled a mug with dark brew, lightened it with milk, and carried the mug back to her bedroom. After she’d showered and dressed, she looked in on Nina, who was still asleep.

  Lindsey retrieved the San Francisco Chronicle from the porch, glancing at headlines that heralded war, a stumbling economy, climate change, another murder. May you live in interesting times, she thought. She’d been living in interesting times her whole life. Right now she could go for some boring times. In the kitchen she ate a scone while she read the paper. Then she refilled her coffee mug and walked back to her office. Time to get to work. She turned on the computer, connected the digital recorder to its cradle, and uploaded the audio file of yesterday’s interview with the woman from El Salvador.

  The book-in-progress was a study of Latin American women who’d immigrated to the United States as a result of wars and upheaval. Through her interviews, Lindsey had collected firsthand accounts, a catalogue of horror, evidence of the human cost of political unrest and civil war, tales of the powerless exploited, and frequently murdered, by the powerful. Many women found it difficult to talk about their experiences. War, deprivation—and in some cases torture—had traumatized them.

  Lindsey had been meeting Flor Cooper for two months, at a panadería, a Mexican bakery, on Fruitvale Avenue. At first Lindsey did most of the talking, filling silences, gaining the Salvadoran woman’s confidence. Then Flor began to talk, about her husband and children, their home, and her husband’s large extended family. She talked of the immediate past, but she skirted the story of her life in El Salvador, before she came to El Norte, the United States. It was as though her life began the day she crossed la frontera. But yesterday Flor had opened the long-shut door and talked. What came out disturbed Lindsey. How could she do what Flor asked?

  The researcher should remain detached from the subject. But what if the interviewee asked the interviewer for a favor? Lindsey the mother wanted to help Flor. Lindsey the historian countered with a reasoned argument for remaining detached, uninvolved.

  But I am involved, Lindsey thought, ever since I got that woman to trust me. This is real life, with real people and real emotions.

  It was a simple request. Flor wanted Lindsey to meet her Saturday morning at the Berkeley Farmers Market, so she could prove that what she’d told Lindsey was true. Lindsey looked at the calendar. Saturday was free—or did it have a cost?

  Yesterday Flor’s hands had been busy with her needlework. Her wooden embroidery hoop held a length of crisp white fabric, stretched tight, as Flor pushed a needle and a strand of crimson thread through the fabric, creating a border of flowers—roses and pansies and daffodils, meticulously stitched in jewel-bright red, purple and yellow. She was making pillowcases, Flor said, a gift for a friend.

  Flor set aside her embroidery and reached into the canvas bag at her feet, producing an envelope containing recent snapshots of her children. After Lindsey admired these, Flor took another photograph from her bag, this one in a plain wooden frame. Her smile faded, like the colors in the picture. The image showed a man and a woman in front of an adobe building, a church with a crucifix above the door. To the man’s right was a second building, with a sign that read MERCADO, Spanish for market. The woman was a much-younger Flor, wearing a printed blouse and a long skirt. In her arms she held a sturdy little boy, perhaps eighteen months old.

  “This is me,” Flor said. “My husband, Atenacio. My son, Efraín.”

  “You were married before? In El Salvador?”

  Flor nodded. “I was sixteen. Atenacio was eighteen. We had ­another child before Efraín. A little girl. She died when she was a baby. Then Efraín was born. A strong little boy. Mi corazón, mi ­precioso.”

  My heart, my precious one. Something terrible must have happened to Flor’s husband and son. Surely she wouldn’t have left them behind in El Salvador if she’d had a choice. Lindsey handed the photograph back to Flor, who put the picture into her bag and pushed her chair away from the table. Outside they walked to a nearby park, an oasis of green in the urban neighborhood, and sat on a bench near the children’s play area, where a young woman pushed a little boy on a swing.

  Now, in her office, Lindsey started the recording, hands poised over her keyboard, ready to transcribe the spoken into the written. First she heard traffic noise and a child’s laughter. Then came Flor’s voice.

  “I was born on a finca in Ahuachapán department in western El Salvador. Department means province. Finca means plantation, estate. My family moved from one finca to another. My husband ­Atenacio and I did the same. That’s the way it is, with coffee. The work is seasonal. The workers come and go. The last place we lived was a finca in Chalatenango department, in a village called San Blas. You won’t find it on a map. It isn’t there anymore.”

  3

  San Blas, Chalatenango Department, El Salvador, April 1989

  “No, m’ijo,” Flor Guzmán said as her son neared the fire. Efraín was hungry, lured by the beans simmering in the iron pot and the grill full of pupusas, small thick cornmeal patties filled with queso, soft white cheese. Flor tore a piece from a pupusa and gave it to Efraín, who crammed the morsel into his mouth.

  “Mi precioso.” She smiled and brushed dust and crumbs from Efraín’s mouth. Her first baby, a girl, had died at three months, too soon buried in the churchyard of another village near another ­finca. A year later, Flor gave birth to this healthy boy, with his father’s round face and good humor. Efraín was strong and smart. He would learn to read and do sums. Maybe he would go out in the world and do something besides pick coffee cherries.

  Be careful what you wish for, her neighbor Prudencia told her. You might discover it isn’t what you want after all. Don’t tempt fate by trying to change it. Besides, what else would the boy do? He was a campesino, a peasant, like his parents, following generations of ­peasants who roamed the countryside, working ranches and fincas, hands stained, gnarled and callused from hard labor.

  It’s good for a mother to dream for her son, Flor thought. She saw Atenacio climbing the hill. How handsome he was, how strong and gentle. She was lucky to have such a good husband.

  That morning, Flor and Atenacio, carrying Efraín, walked down to the little adobe church. Father Bartolomeo, the priest from Texistepeque, came once a month, to celebrate Mass and hear confessions. Afterwards, the men of the village gathered outside, while the women went home to prepare the midday meal.

  Atenacio was with Nazario Robles, who wore a uniform and carried a rifle. Nazario’s mother and sister lived here, in a house by the earthen dam that bisected the little valley where San Blas lay. The family came from Morazán department, to the east, where the Salvadoran army fought the rebels. They’d fled, fearful of being killed, like those in the terrible massacre in a village called El Mozote, where hundreds were murdered by the army.

  It wasn’t the first time Flor had heard of such horrors. Death squads and the army sowed fear everywhere. Even Archbishop Romero had been murdered in a chapel in San Salvador, shot down as he celebrated Mass. And the old ones told stories of la Matanza, the great killing of 1932, when tens of thousands of peasants had died in an insurrection, put down with swift and brutal slaughter. Nothing changed, they said. There was unrest and peasants died.

  While Nazario and his compadres fought the army, his mother, sister and brother-in-law had joined the tattered throng of peasants moving around the countryside, from one department to the next, seeking work. They came to San Blas at the same time Atenacio and Flor arrived at this huge finca owned by Don Humberto.

  When Nazario visited his family, his presence—and the gun
he carried—made some campesinos uneasy, especially Tránsito Vigil, the man who ran the market. Flor had overheard the two men arguing that morning, when she and Atenacio left the church to find Nazario in the plaza, waiting for his mother.

  “Why are you here?” Tránsito demanded. “You bring danger. Don Humberto will be angry to know you are on his finca. We don’t want that. He has been good to us.”

  Nazario snorted his derision. “He exploits you. All of you.” He looked around, his eyes taking in the ramshackle houses on the slopes above the plaza, the threadbare clothing worn by his mother and sister. “You work from dawn far into the night and he pays you a pittance. You live in miserable shacks and pay rent money to that rich bloodsucker. When the work is gone, you move on to another finca, where another rich man exploits you. This will go on, unless we break the backs of these landowners.”

  “Our lives are as God meant them to be,” Tránsito said. “You rebels bring trouble, blowing up bridges, burning fincas. Then the army comes and attacks villages.”

  “You’re a fool.” Nazario moved toward Tránsito, but Father Bartolomeo separated the two men. Atenacio told Flor to take Efraín and go home.

  Flor didn’t know what to think. She lived in a small, familiar world, caring for her family, working. She and Atenacio picked coffee cherries from trees covering the hillsides and worked in the processing plant that separated the outer skin of the coffee berries from the thick pulp that covered the beans. Atenacio ran machinery, Flor filled sacks with roasted beans.

  Maybe Nazario was right. Flor wasn’t sure she understood everything he said. But she and Atenacio had moved many times, with nothing more than their clothing, some blankets, and Flor’s iron pot. When there was no work, the campesinos migrated, and there were always others seeking the same jobs. In her grandfather’s day the campesinos stayed on the land, worked it, and were paid with food and a place to live. Now landowners like Don Humberto moved the people off the land and planted crops that didn’t need as many campesinos to work them, or ran cattle in the cleared fields. Campesinos came and went, struggling to survive, sometimes desperate for work.