“It’s a little big, don’t you think?” Jake asked. “And a little run-down.”
“The realtor said it needed a little work—’mostly cosmetic’” He tried to sound optimistic. “A little paint, a little this, a little that—it’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jake said. “Don’t be such a sucker, Eddie.”
Lizzie shook her head and glared at him. “Oh don’t be such a spoilsport, Jacob Leslie.” She kissed him on the cheek, took the baby from Maria Elena’s arms and placed him in his uncle’s arms. “Just hold him and be quiet. Be a nice uncle—and try not to talk.” He kissed his sleeping nephew softly. Lizzie looked at the huge house in front of them. “I like it. It’s big, but it doesn’t wear a sign: RICH PEOPLE LIVE HERE. It’s really kind of simple looking. And look—a big front porch. It looks like the South.”
“How many bedrooms?” Rose asked.
“Eight.” Nena said, “One for me and Eddie, one for the baby, one for Jake, one for Elizabeth, one for you Rose, one for Diego when we find him—and two left over for guests.”
“Guests? We want guests?” Jake asked.
“Shhh. You’ll wake the baby,” Lizzie said.
Jake smiled. “The baby can’t hear—and he’s practically a toddler.”
“He’ll be as big as his uncle,” Lizzie smiled, “And what’s wrong with guests?”
“Why not open a hotel?”
“This is communal living, Jacob.”
“Are you sure we should all be living together?” Rose asked.
“Why, Mother? Are you afraid it’s illegal?”
“Don’t make fun of your mother, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, Rose, it’ll work out just fine,” Maria Elena said, quietly nudging her husband.
“Yeah,” Eddie grinned. “We couldn’t possibly be more difficult to live with than your former husband.”
“Very funny,” Maria Elena said.
Rose broke out laughing. “Well, actually, it was funny, wasn’t it? You’d have to go a ways to be harder to live with than Sam,” she said, “but somehow living with so many people seems a little unnatural.”
“Unnatural?” Jake asked. “You mean like homosexuality?”
“Stop it,” Maria Elena said, trying not to laugh.
“It’s a serious question,” Eddie said. “What the hell’s natural? What’s so natural about living alone? Is it unnatural to live in packs?”
“Well,” Lizzie said, “look at us. Tell me we’re not all a little perverse.”
“Speak for yourself,” Maria Elena said, “I happen to be a mother.”
“What does that qualify you for?” Lizzie asked.
“When the hell is the realtor coming?”
“Be patient, Jake.”
Jake kissed his nephew again. “I haven’t got an ounce of patience—I never have. You should know this about me.” Just then the baby started to cry. Jake bounced his nephew awkwardly in his arms trying to make him stop. “He wants you,” he said handing the baby to his brother.
“Thanks.” Eddie felt the baby’s diaper. “He’s wet. Jake, it’s time you learned how to change your nephew.”
“Isn’t that the mother’s job?” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he saw the look on his sister-in-law’s face. He noticed a car drive up and park directly in front of the van. “Real estate agent’s here,” he said as he walked toward her. “Hello,” he said, “I’m Jacob Marsh.”
“Valerie,” she said, “Valerie Miller.” Her handshake was firm. She didn’t look like a Valerie, he thought, more like a Marian. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “we were enjoying looking at the house from the outside.”
“Are you the man I spoke to on the phone?”
“No, that would be my brother.” He pointed at Eddie who was changing the baby on the seat of the van. “The new father over there.”
The woman smiled.
“He likes to change babies,” Jake informed her.
Maria Elena smiled as they approached her. “I’m Maria Elena Marsh,” she said, “I’m dying to see the house.”
“It was built in 1915,” she said sounding exactly like a woman who sold houses for a living. “It was built by a David Victor Macias who fled Mexico during the Revolution. There were rumors he was a gunrunner.” The enthusiasm in her voice, however sincere, made Lizzie feel like a tourist. She was glad to fall behind and listen from a distance. “And on the third story, there’s actually a ballroom. You can use it for anything you like—even for throwing balls.” She laughed. Eddie managed a chuckle—he always accommodated strangers. Maria Elena dropped even farther back, content to let her husband and brother-in-law deal with the realtor’s anecdotes.
“Do they go to school to talk like that?” Maria Elena whispered as they entered the house.
“Behave yourself,” Lizzie whispered back. “She’s nice. I can tell.”
“Maybe so, but someone should tell her we’re not buying the house for snob appeal.”
“It doesn’t matter, honey,” Rose said. “Just let her talk—she’s harmless. She looks like she’s honest, anyway.” Rose had managed to end up with the baby. “I’ll catch up with you later,” she said as she sat on the steps of the front porch. As Maria Elena walked through the front door of the house, she looked back and saw Lizzie’s mother holding her son. She thought of her own mother, how she had watched her hold her brother every night, how she had worn a look that said he was everything in the world. She had hated her brother on those nights, had wanted to be held, had wanted to be as loved as he was. She sometimes still felt her mother’s warmth in Eddie’s arms as he held her at night. Sometimes, she wanted him to be her mother—her mother and her father and her husband and her lover. She wondered if he knew these things. “Stop it,” she told herself—but she knew that living in this neighborhood would bring back all the memories she carried. The commands Maria Elena spoke to herself would not send the visitors away. They would come to see her in this house—they would come and they would stay. It was a better thing to welcome them than to try and exile them. She walked into the house. She heard voices echoing from upstairs. She took off her shoes and fell the cool wood floors beneath her feet. It was big and old and dusty. The walls needed painting, but the house was solid, strong, well built—and in its day it must have been as elegant as the woman who first owned it. It would never be elegant again, but it would be a clean and happy shelter. Maria Elena remembered seeing this house from the outside when she was a little girl—like the other big houses in this neighborhood, it was something that was meant to be seen only from the outside. Her mother used to clean houses like this, she thought. I’ve come back, Mama. I’ve come back to find him. Will you help, Mama? ¿Me oyes? Yo sé que me estás oyendo. It was wrong of me to leave, but I’m back now, Mama. She sat down in the middle of the dining room and looked out into the backyard through the French doors. She imagined herself making love to Eddie on this floor. She imagined her brother sitting across from her. She imagined having a thousand conversations with Lizzie and watching her son learning to walk on the floors of this house. “I want this house.” She felt the spirit of the house, and knew it was good. Perhaps it was her mother. She knew it would bring her blessings.
“Nena!” She heard her name echoing down the stairs, “Nena, come and see!” She rose slowly from the floor and made her way up the stairs. Eddie was leaning over the railing. “Nena, it’s incredible. It needs a little work—but it’s really incredible!” He looked like a college boy.
She smiled at him calmly. “Tell the realtor we’ll take the house,” she said softly.
“But you haven’t seen it all,” he said.
“No, amor, but you have.”
He laughed. “I didn’t know you were so spontaneous.”
“After making love to me for more than seven years, you think I can’t be spontaneous?”
“The bedroom’s different.”
“Nope
.”
As she reached the top of the stairs, Jake walked up to his brother and put his arm around him. “Great house,” he said— “not as big as the one we grew up in—but much simpler. Lots of light. Did our house have light, Eddie? I don’t remember.”
“I don’t remember light.”
“Lots of light in this house,” Maria Elena said. “They call it the city of the sun.”
“This house?” Jake asked.
“No—the city.”
“Well, I haven’t seen much of it—but I can tell you this much, Nena, it’s not San Francisco.”
“Are you two fighting?” Eddie asked.
“No, honey, we’re not fighting—we’re just relating.” She winked at Jake as she spoke. “Where’d you put the realtor?”
“She’s on the third floor talking to Lizzie—turns out she’s an ex-nurse—and they’re talking shop.”
“Does Lizzie like the house?”
“Are you kidding—she loves it. She says she wants to live in the ballroom—windows on every side. She’s decided she wants to paint.”
“And maybe,” she laughed, “she’ll give us lessons on how to leave our bodies.”
I’m leaving mine soon enough, Jake thought.
Maria Elena stood between them and took each of them by the arm. “Give me a tour of my new house.”
“I didn’t know looking for a house would be so easy.”
“Jake, everything is easy when you have money.”
Eddie noticed the bitterness in her voice. It was like a grain of sand in his eyes.
2
ON MONDAY MORNING Diego walked slowly and carefully through the darkness of the downtown morning as if he were walking on bodies he thought he might crush as easily as leaves—no one on the streets but him and the weight of the things he felt. The dark sky was turning pale blue and he wondered if his boss would be at Vicky’s waiting for him to return, waiting with extra work, waiting with a face that made him feel as though he should be invisible. He imagined his boss’s face, hard like the street he walked on, like the concrete of the gray jail. Normally, his boss didn’t show up at Vicky’s until noon, but he sensed he would be there on this morning, there, waiting. It felt strange to be walking back to work after a week’s absence—he had never been free of work for a whole week, and now he felt as though he had been gone for a lifetime, and had forgotten about that previous life. He didn’t want to be walking toward Vicky’s—not anymore—that path too much like the steps that went nowhere. He dragged his feet on the sidewalk as he approached the faded blue building. He read the hand-painted sign on the wall: VICKY’S BAR. He hated the hand that had painted it. Diego stared at the letters as if by staring at them, he could erase not only the name of the place but the whole damn building. He put his key in the door and walked in. The lights were on, and his boss was waiting for him, his face sagging with wrinkles, and yet the wrinkles were anything but soft—ungiving as if his wrinkles had hardened permanently. His skin looked like cracked stone. Diego shut the door behind him and stood motionless.
His boss glared at him. “Give the kitchen a good cleaning before the day’s over. Wax the floor before the noontime lunch crowd. You’re working late every day this week until you catch up on your work—and no overtime pay. You got that? And I’m cutting your salary to two seventy-five an hour.” He held up a sign that read: $2.75. “Did you get that, deaf man?”
Diego paused and then nodded.
“I’m surprised you had the nerve to come back to work.”
Diego did nothing, just stared at his lips.
“You’re pretty brave when you have that hoodlum with you.” He took off his apron, then came out from behind the bar and handed it to Diego. He grinned: “So long as we understand each other we’ll get along fine”—he paused—”like we always have.” He walked back to the bar and picked up his briefcase. “I’ve been working my ass off all week. I’m going home, but I’ll be back around noon—and the place better look good.”
Diego walked into the kitchen and began preparing the food.
His boss walked in a few minutes later and stared at him. Diego tried to ignore him, tried not to look up from his work, but he could feel his boss’s eyes crawling on his body like roaches. Diego felt him as he left the room, and he took a deep breath. He lit a cigarette. When the food was prepared, he stepped out into the small dining room and bar. His boss was gone. Diego shook his head as he looked at the filthy floor. He took out the ammonia and the mop and stacked the chairs on lop of the tables. He scrubbed the floor and then waxed it. It shone like the T-Birds’ cars. He lit a cigarette and stared at the drying floor from the kitchen. All the dirt was gone. He smiled at his good work. “Magic hands,” he thought, “like Mundo’s.” The first customers walked in and sat down at a corner table. Diego smiled at them and brought them a menu.
The week went by slowly. “This will never end,” he wrote when he got back home each night, “it will never, never end.” He worked late every evening until Vicky’s was spotless. He didn’t write any notes to his boss all week, not once. His boss cave him orders when he came in around ten o’clock. He seemed happier now that he knew Diego could read lips. He always ended his orders with: “Did you get that?” When he spoke too fast, Diego would shake his head. “Idiot, pay attention,” he’d say, and repeat the command. Diego hated him more than he had ever hated anyone. His hate for his sister wasn’t like this, he thought, not like this at all. Sometimes even his hands itched as if they were on fire when he saw his boss’s face. He scratched at them. This is hate, he thought, this is really hate, and he wondered if he would ever feel anything that made him feel as sad or alive as this hate that blew through him daily. “Magic hands,” he thought to himself, and laughed. He even had a dream that he could hear, but the only thing he heard was his boss saying, “Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that?”
Sunday morning Diego woke early. It was late May, and soon it would be summer. The winds had come and gone. He didn’t bother with coffee; he didn’t brush his teeth; he didn’t shave; he didn’t wash himself. He put on his dirty clothes, and before the sun rose he walked through Sunset Heights and stole flowers from people’s gardens until he had a large bouquet. He went downtown and bought a newspaper from a machine and wrapped the flowers carefully on a bench at San Jacinto Plaza. He took a long walk toward Concordia Cemetery. It took him over an hour to walk there, but he had not minded the walk. Diego placed the wilting flowers on Mary’s unmarked grave. He pulled the weeds and raked the litter away with his hands. He placed a note with the flowers on the ground: “I’m going to get you a marble marker.”
The sweat rolled down his face and burned his eyes—the loose dirt from the graveyard stuck to his sweaty skin. He stared at the colors of the flowers and remembered the tulips he had seen at the plaza on Easter Sunday. He clenched his fist and his teeth, turned from the grave, and headed toward downtown. By then, it was almost noon. He thought of going back home, but decided to keep walking. He wandered toward Sacred Heart Church and watched the workers rebuilding it. An old lady came up to him and asked him something. He didn’t understand what she was saying. He shrugged his shoulders, and she repeated her words but her lips were too difficult for him to read.
“¿Que no entiendes español?” she asked.
Diego look out his pad and wrote: “Señora, no oigo. Nací sordo. Si habla despacio y con cuidado la puedo entender.” He showed her his note.
“Ay,” she said, “pobrecito, Dios lo ha de cuidar. Mire, estamos juniando dinero para renovar nuestra iglesia que se quemó.”
Diego stared at the raffle tickets in her hand, GRAND PRIZE: BRAND-NEW LINCOLN CONTINENTAL. DONATION $1.00. SPONSORED BY THE DAUGHTERS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY OF SACRED HEART CHURCH. Diego smiled to himself, knowing that he would buy a ticket. What was he going to do with a new car? He didn’t even know how to drive. He smiled at the old woman and took a dollar out of his pocket.
“¡Que lindo
muchacho!” she said. “Tan amable.”
He smiled at her as he put his raffle ticket in his wallet, and watched the workers that kept coming in and out of the church. He wondered how long it would take before they finished rebuilding it.
As he stared at the doors of the church, Luz appeared in front of him—out of nowhere like a vision, like the Virgin of Guadalupe had appeared to the Indian Juan Diego.
He shook his head and wondered when the dreams were going to go away. He closed his eyes and opened them again. Luz was still there—in front of him—standing like a statue. He smiled at the image.
“So,” Luz said, “why the hell are you buying raffle tickets from old ladies, my Diego? You really think you’re going to win the pinche jackpot?”
He stared at her, wondering when she was going to disappear. Maybe she wasn’t there. Maybe she didn’t really move her lips, maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he had gone crazy. He wanted to write on his pad and show her his handwriting, but he was afraid. Maybe she’d disappear. He wanted her to be real.
“Well, Dieguito,” she said, “no kisses? Not even a pinche abrazo?”
He reached over and touched her arm, real skin—it was her. He smiled at her, touched her face, and did not want to move his hand away. He looked into her bright brown eyes and hugged her, held her in his arms for a long time, the tears from his face rolling off onto her shoulder. She let him cry and softly rubbed his back. Finally, he let go and looked at her again. She wiped his tears with her wrinkled hands, and Diego stared at her eyes that sparkled like the water in the river.
They sat at the corner, and Diego took out his pad. “Don’t ever leave El Paso again, Luz. You understand?”
“No, my Diego, I’m never leaving El Paso again, that’s for damn sure. If I’m going to be screwed over, I’d rather be screwed over in El Paso.”
“I never thought anybody could look so good,” he wrote. “You look beautiful.”
Luz grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Ay Dieguito, you think I’m Miss America or something. Not only are you deaf, querido, but you’ve gone damned blind.” She threw her head up and combed her hair with her fingers. “Look at me, Diego, I look like a dried-up prune. I smoke too damn much—it’s wasting me away. The cigarettes and the pinche floors I clean, they’re going to kill me. I feel like shit, Dieguito.”
Carry Me Like Water Page 39
