Malas, p.4
Malas, page 4
Trini took a swig of his beer. The boys had all gone quiet. A freckly debutante looked at Pilar as if to gauge whether or not she too was afraid. “Did he die?”
“Well, you’d think anybody vomiting blood would be on their deathbed, but no.” Trini shrugged. “Every other day he was fine. Even after one of those fits he was fine. That was the strangest part of it. Muy curioso.
“As the summer went on, more men in the camp became aware of the kid’s strange problem. Caray, it got to be that by the end of every week there’d be men hanging around waiting to see if it was true.”
“How awful,” Pilar said, shuddering.
“It is,” Trini agreed, “but that’s how people are. Anyway, one Thursday a man, Pancho Morales, came out to our section of the grove, and of course, it happened again. The next day he came back and asked Antonio, and the rest of us in that part of the grove, to pray with him. Afterward, he told us what he thought. Antonio was vomiting blood, he said, because he was bewitched by someone in the town in Mexico from which he had come. ‘Do you want me to get rid of it?’ Pancho asked, and of course Antonio said yes.”
“Well, even if you don’t believe it,” said the López boy, smirking at Dulce, “it’s cheaper than the doctor.”
“That’s right,” said Trini, “but if you’d been vomiting blood for weeks, you might have started believing it.
“Pancho went to a nearby ranch the next Friday for some rope. That night he came back out to the grove, where a lot of us were sleeping. He began the ritual by tying twelve knots in the rope and saying a prayer between each knot.
“All the time he was tying the knots, an owl was making noise down at the other end of the row of trees—a big one from the way it sounded. Pancho tied the last knot in the rope, and then he picked up a fallen branch and started walking out to the tree.”
Trini paused, looking around at the teens. “This next part is kind of rough for the girls.”
“I want to hear it,” said Dulce. The other girls nodded, even the nervous freckled one. “C’mon Señor Sanchez. What happened?”
“Well, I couldn’t really see that far in the dark. It was all the way down the row and I wasn’t about to go down there for a closer look. But he must have gotten the owl out of the tree somehow, because I heard it squabbling, you know, kind of like an angry chicken will, and after a little bit it started screaming. He was beating it with the tree branch.
“This went on for about twenty minutes. I could hear where sometimes Pancho missed and struck a tree instead. The sound was like when you hear a gun crack in the distance.” Trini sipped his beer again, as though telling it had left a bad taste in his mouth.
“And all of a sudden it was quiet. Real quiet. And in the quiet I heard a woman sobbing.”
An image of her father rose in Pilar’s mind: his face flushed, mouth wide with shouting, shouting as he never had, the rest of his face closed over with the effort of his fury. The memory was suddenly there, vivid and whole, as if it had been lying at the bottom of her mind all this time, waiting to trip her. Her father shouting. A woman hurrying away, her low, sneering voice, all shadowed in the dim light just before dawn.
José Alfredo tucked her against his side and squeezed her shoulder, but absently. Now he was invested. He wanted to hear the story. He whispered, “Don’t be scared.”
Pilar didn’t answer him. She had been quite young when Papá chased away the woman. Still living with her old criada Facunda in a tiny adobe house on Papá’s family’s land.
Trini continued. “Pancho stayed out there awhile, talking to that husky-voiced woman. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could hear their voices. He was talking real calm, but she cried and growled the whole time. Finally Pancho came back. He was breathing heavy and sweating, I mean, the sweat was just pouring off him. His shirt was bloody and torn and there were scratches all over his forearms.”
Pilar felt cold all the way through, despite the humid night. No se salga de la casa, mi niña, Facunda would say, her dark face solemn and watchful. Andan por ahí rondando. But she had never said what or who might be lurking beyond the door.
“He stood over the rest of us,” Trini was saying. “We were laying on our petates too scared to even stand up with him. He bent over Antonio and shook him, kinda rough. ‘Do you know—’ well, I won’t say her name, but Pancho asked Antonio if he knew a certain woman, and Antonio admitted that he did.”
Papá had not admitted anything. When she had asked Papá about his fight with the woman, he’d told her she must have dreamed it. Now, listening to Trini, she thought, Papá lied to me. Of course he had.
“Pancho told him, ‘You have to burn all your clothes,’ ” Trini continued. “ ‘All of them. Right now—go and get the kerosene.’ So Antonio picked up his bedroll and his knapsack and he and Pancho went off a ways from the grove. My God, they burnt up all the kid’s clothes, down to his last pair of underpants. He came back buck naked and had to borrow pants and a shirt from one of the other guys. Boy, he wore those the rest of the summer, ’cause he didn’t have a lot of money to spend buying up a bunch of new ones.”
“And it worked?” asked one of the escorts, a pimply young man with a faint mustache.
“Yep,” said Trini, belching into his fist. “He didn’t have one fit the rest of the summer.
“But—” Trini looked around at the teens. “You know, that boy had to go all the way back to his home town in Sinaloa and burn the rest of his clothes. Can you imagine having to burn up all your clothes?” He smirked at Raúl López and the boy scowled.
“It’s true. The owl was only her spirit; the real woman, a witch, lived back in Sinaloa. When Antonio went back to complete his limpia, he went out with a couple of his uncles looking for her. They caught her and were going to burn her; but the witch started crying, begging them to let her go because she had a baby boy to take care of, and promising that if they let her go, she would never again practice brujería. So they left her alone after all.”
Pilar shuddered. Facunda said they whistled for you in the dark. Clicked their talons like scissors opening and closing. Sometimes they mimicked a crying infant or said your name to lure you out. Papá had scolded her for repeating Facunda’s nonsense. Maria del Pilar Corrales, he’d said severely. No hables como una india pata rajada. Soon after, he had sent Pilar to live in town, with the nuns.
Raúl López said, “They shouldn’t have let her go. When the boy grows up, he’ll probably be into brujería like his mother.”
“What a hard heart you have,” said José Alfredo, biting off the end of a cigar and spitting it in the grass. “She didn’t want to kill Antonio. If she had, he would have been dead.”
Pilar wondered if José Alfredo would feel the same if he’d seen the old woman this morning. She watched him light his cigar, noted the little gold paper band. He had denied knowing anything about the unexpected woman too. But no. He was not like Papá. He was not.
“That’s the truth. Antonio was the stupid one, pissing off a bruja. Of course, you can never tell what’s behind a pretty face.” Trini raised his eyebrows and then tugged the flounced edge of Dulce’s dress. “Right, Dulce?”
Dulce giggled, but did not reply. What a silly girl, Pilar thought. She doesn’t take it seriously. It’s just a story to her. What does she know about life?
“My advice to all you enamorados,” Trini said, getting to his feet, empty plate in hand. “Watch out.”
On the stage, the accordion player burst into a jaunty taquachito-style polka. The teens at Pilar’s table took their leave. At other tables, couples rose from their seats, heading to the dance floor. José Alfredo put his arm across the back of her chair. “We’ll dance too, when they play a waltz.”
“All right.” She reached up to rub the hand he had set on her shoulder. José Alfredo wanted to dance because he was ready to go. He always took her for at least one dance before they went home. Even in his consideration he was methodical, and the transparency was comforting. Why had she allowed herself to get so worked up over a story?
“Oye,” José Alfredo said, as Joselito ran by with two other boys. “Come eat your dinner.”
“I’m not hungry,” Joselito yelled, putting on a burst of speed to evade his father. Pilar noted the fresh grass stain on his white shirt, that he had sweated the pomade out of his hair. She sighed. He wouldn’t settle down unless José Alfredo dragged him to the table. Then he would refuse to eat. He’d wait until they were home to say he was hungry. He was always that way.
“Don’t feed him when we get home,” José Alfredo said, watching Joselito climb up the bandstand. “We need to break this habit.”
“You tell him no then,” she said. “I can’t stand for him to be hungry.”
“Oh, one night won’t hurt him.”
Conjunto Vega settled into a vals norteño, the accordion player squeezing out a tender, lovelorn melody. The song was an old favorite, “La Panchita” by Lucha Reyes. For the first time all night, Pilar felt unreserved enthusiasm. It was a good song, and not too fast for her ungainly belly.
José Alfredo led her to a corner of the dance floor. The grass was wet. The Ramirezes had sprayed it down before the party, or perhaps the night dew had already fallen. They slipped into time at the edge of the circle of dancers.
Panchita with the big eyes, the way she looks at me robs me of my calm, José Alfredo sang along, sang to her, as he navigated her through the couples. He made a silly face to show he was teasing, not serenading in earnest. Pilar knew he did mean it, in his way. He teased to hide that he meant it.
“Go sing with Conjunto Vega,” she laughed. “You sound better than Ernesto.”
“I’m where I want to be,” he said, and pulled her into a turn.
“Me too,” she said. She reached up, swept a curl from his forehead, allowed her fingers to trace the curve of his face. Brown and smooth, a strong nose and jaw. Heavy dark eyes beneath perfectly straight dark brows. A face that escaped severity only because when he spoke, he revealed a dimple.
Pilar shut her eyes against the blur of the other dancers, reveling in the pleasure of the music, of being in her husband’s arms. His breath was feathery and hot against her ear. He had always had a trick of grace that felt, as he swept her through the crowd, as though he were made of wind. It was a little like hurtling through the air, but she was not afraid. José Alfredo knew how to balance her. They had danced all through her first pregnancy.
A bolt of pain seized her lower belly. She opened her eyes. Images whirled past her: Dulce, in the arms of a gangly boy; Hipólito and Carmen on the steps of the gazebo; the china doll beside the cut-up cake, its porcelain skin gleaming in the shadowy light; the dandy Raúl, scowling, standing alone at the edge of the dance floor. The music blared. Her cramp released, but surged again, deep and solidified. Pilar felt a rush of wetness across her thighs.
She collapsed against José Alfredo. “Stop, stop!”
“What’s the matter?” He stopped mid-step and the crush of dancers did not. He shrugged them off, tried to shield her. There was pressure, like a wall of iron, across her throat and lungs.
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
José Alfredo had hold of her elbow. They staggered through the crowd, the girls in their party dresses standing apart, watching, curious, while the dancing couples knocked against each other in their haste to clear her way. Pilar stumbled as they reached the grass.
“I told you those shoes were bad,” said José Alfredo, voice harsh, though he sounded more fearful than angry.
“What is it?” Romi gasped, trotting up to them.
“Can you keep Joselito?” José Alfredo demanded. “We’re going for Doctor Mireles.”
“Go,” Romi said. “Go now.”
Pilar moaned in terror and pain. Her legs were slick all the way to her calves. She was like a broken pitcher, everything seeping out the bottom.
Chapter Two
La Muertita
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Pilar watched the darkened streets flash past the truck window, feeling that she was dreaming. In the more likely version of her life, she was home from the dance. Letting Joselito have a piece of leftover cake before bed, even if José Alfredo grumbled that she spoiled him.
She had not even had time to lay eyes on her son before she and José Alfredo left the party, headed straight for Doctor Mireles’s house. There’d been too many people, too much noise. José Alfredo hurrying her along, half carrying her. He’d pulled off her heels as soon as she was settled in, tossed them in the back of the truck. As if that would solve anything.
“Siempre quieres andar de coquetona,” José Alfredo snapped, staring straight ahead. “You care more about looking pretty than being safe. It’s irresponsible.”
“You were the one who wanted to dance,” she said, incredulous. “Why didn’t you care then? Probably it was you spinning me around so much.”
“Stop arguing with me. It’s bad for the baby.”
Pilar swallowed another remark. The pain left her breathless, at a disadvantage in this argument. Now it was coming at regular intervals. She tried to remember what Romi had told her when Joselito was born. Pick an object and focus. Breathe through the pain. There was the shining chrome hasp of the glove compartment, right in front of her. The night had shattered into a thousand pieces and José Alfredo blamed her for it. She pressed her hands to her belly. Breathe anyway. Breathe. Breathe. For the baby’s sake.
“It’ll be all right,” José Alfredo said, squeezing her arm. He was sorry, but as usual, would not say so. “We’re almost there.”
* * *
• • •
But Doctor Mireles was away. He and his family had traveled three hours south to Laredo, to attend a wedding. They would be back Monday morning, probably. So said the Mireleses’ housekeeper, who answered José Alfredo’s frantic knocking.
“We have to go to el Inmaculado,” he said, pulling out of the Mireles driveway. “It’s okay. They have everything there.”
“All right,” Pilar said. “If that’s the only choice, we better.”
The Immaculate Heart of Mary Medical Center, el Inmaculado, as it was known in the Caimanes barrio, was the only hospital in La Cienega that served Mexicans. On the glass doors of the entrance was a sign, white with black stenciled letters: Latins Welcome. Latins was the polite Anglo word for Mexican. Occasionally, someone used the word Spanish. That term was for wealthy, light-skinned Mexicanos, however. Not brown mestizos.
When whites didn’t want you, the word was Mexican. Irrespective of what side of the border you were from, Mexican was for anyone. Tejanos, Mexicanos, it did not matter. Almost everywhere, signs were posted: No dogs or Mexicans. In that order.
But el Inmaculado was a Catholic hospital. As such, there were parochial ties between the hospital and the parishes in each of the city barrios. Pilar had been to el Inmaculado once before, a year ago, when Joselito had had tonsillitis. It was good in its way—if you had a reason to be in a hospital full of white nurses who spoke only English and treated you, and every other Mexican, with a lofty superiority, patronizing in the best case and openly contemptuous in others. Latins were welcome, but they should not forget their place.
* * *
• • •
“She’s having the baby too early,” José Alfredo said in English to the Anglo nurse at the reception desk when they reached the hospital. “Our regular doctor is out of town.”
“I assume one of Doctor M.’s patients,” the nurse said. She was an older woman with watery blue eyes and a thin face. “Don’t worry. Our Doctor Allen is familiar with the very latest procedures.”
“Yes, thank you,” José Alfredo agreed.
“How far along is she?”
“Eight months.”
“So you’re pretty close to term,” the nurse said, sliding a sheet of paper across the desk. “Please fill out the admission form.”
Pilar said nothing. José Alfredo refused to allow her to put the heels back on, even to walk inside the hospital. Here she stood, barefoot at the reception desk, dealing with a nurse who wanted them to fill out paperwork. The floor was ice-cold and probably filthy. She was conscious that her body was still leaking, and while it shamed her, the greater feeling was anxiety. Her baby was all that mattered. Who cared about forms?
José Alfredo squeezed Pilar’s hand. She squeezed back, even though she didn’t want to. His hand felt strong and warm in hers. The hospital frightened her. The light was overbright and artificial, somehow forbidding. If only she had some shoes, any shoes.
“My feet are cold,” she whispered to him.
“I’ll get you something. Be patient,” he said. The nurse frowned at him.
“Does your wife speak English?” she asked.
“Yes,” Pilar answered.
“Then you should speak it.”
Pilar kept her lips firmly together. She would not speak to this woman again, in any language, if she could possibly help it. José Alfredo ignored the nurse too, signing his name at the bottom of the admitting form and passing it back to her in complete silence.
“Wait over there,” the nurse said, eyes flinty. “You’ll be called in shortly.”
The waiting area was crowded with a subdued assortment of sick and injured people, and others who were undoubtedly waiting for their relations. A pair of middle-aged women with a frail, elderly mother between them. An old man reading a newspaper. A mother with two small children, boy and girl, sharing a picture book, while she sat with her pocketbook clutched in her hands. Three teenage boys whispering and laughing, even the one with a bloody forehead.
“Let’s sit there,” José Alfredo said. He pointed at a sofa in the corner of the room. “How do you feel?”
