Bella (5 page)

No.

There were no other options.

She dialed the number. A warm voice assured her everything would be okay, and it would be, wouldn't it? Women did this all the time and they survived.

“Yes, we had a cancellation for Wednesday. You're in luck,” the voice said. “Is one-thirty all right?”

“Yes.” Nina whispered the word, feeling another bout of nausea. She gave the woman her information. Was told what to not eat, how much the procedure would be.

“How will you be paying for this?” the woman asked.

Nina had no idea. Rent was due on Monday and her bank account was down to her last five hundred dollars. “Cash,” she said, having no idea where she would get it, especially with rent due. “Yes. Cash.”

She'd hope for the best.

A lot can happen between now and then, right?

She grabbed her wallet off the coffee table, shoved it in her purse, and left for work. There was no way she could take a shower, and she'd spent last night rolling around in bed, covered in the slick perspiration of dread. Well, knowing Manny, he'd overbooked the dining room and she'd be hoofing it anyway. No amount of deodorant could keep that kind of sweating at bay.

Pumping her feet along the cracked sidewalk, she called Pieter.

“I got the test results.”

“Yeah?” He sounded hopeful.

“Positive.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so . . .”

“I was careful.”

“Me too, Pieter.”

Silence. “It's getting busy here, Nina. You should be at work.”

She smashed the phone more tightly against her ear. “So, yeah. So I thought you'd want to know.”

“Are you going to get it taken care of ?”

“Me? Just me?”

“You know what I mean, Nina.”

“I don't have that much money.”

“I'll go halvsies with you on it,” he said.

“Halvsies? Halvsies, Pieter? This isn't appetizers at Chili's.”

“Man, Nina. This isn't easy for me either.”

Oh brother. She could picture him with his slicked-back, faux European hair and attitude. Such a phony. Pieter. He'd grown up plain old Peter in Paramus, New Jersey. The rest of the staff thought he added the
i
to make himself seem French and up his chances of opening a restaurant of his own one day. “Look, I gotta go. We'll talk about the money after work, okay?”

“I'll write you a check for my half when you get here.”

“You do that, Pieter. Sure.”

“But you'd better hurry. Manny—”

She hung up, surprised at herself. She didn't think Pieter was the perfect guy, but she thought maybe he'd say something like, “Gee, Nina. I'm sorry. This must be so hard for you. I helped get you into this mess. I'll help you whatever way you think you need to go here.” Nope. Nothing like that.

And I'm having his child. Oh man.

She felt like the idiot of the century.

How come this never happened to the
Sex in the City
girls? They did a lot more than she ever did.

Manny entered the
kitchen, walking right up to José's station where he stood chopping peppers. José knew that look on his brother's face. So the day's troubles were already beginning.

“José, what's up with Nina? She was late yesterday, and today she is forty-five minutes late. That's two days in a row, plus calling in sick last week at the last minute makes three, and you know what happens at three.”

Everybody knew what happened at three. José swore Manny would fire himself if he was late three times. “She'll be here.”

Manny looked around the busy kitchen and said softly, “I can't run my business like this. I just can't.”

Carlos, a Cuban with eyebrows like caterpillars and an open gaze, held out a saucepan toward José. “Try this, José.”

José dipped the tip of his knife into the sauce. Not bad. Better than the cook's last try. “A little more epazote.”

Manny snapped his fingers, and the cook turned the pan toward him. He dipped in a finger and brought it to his mouth. José studied his face. He wanted to disagree, José could tell, but he shook his head and grinned.

“Just a little bit,” Manny said with a laugh.

Yes, there was the brother who had first played soccer with him. José shook his head. Manny.

“What's for family dinner?” Manny glanced at his watch. “It's almost ready, yes?”

“Yeah. Chiles rellenos and roasted quail in mole rojo.”

“What?” Manny leaned down to examine the pan of quail through the shelves of José's workstation. “That's a pretty fancy family dinner.”

“The chiles are going bad, man.”

Manny tapped his fingers on the stainless-steel surface of the workstation window. “I'm talking about the quail, José. It could have been a special.” He stood up straight. “Oh, I see how it works. You just make the fancy staff orders and I pay for them, right?” He leaned forward. “Wrong. We cook for the customers, not for the staff. Next time you feed them
tacos and rice. Period!
”

José nodded like he'd hop to and obey those orders in the future. But he wouldn't. He made the quail on purpose. If Manny wasn't going to pay some of these people in the kitchen, illegals mostly, a fair hourly wage, he'd pay in food. It was only right.

Nina thought about
calling her mother. No. Not now. She wished she could call her father. He'd have been there for her. She smiled when she imagined the conversation they'd have had. She always pictured him sitting on the beach.

“Dad, I'm pregnant.”

“Oh, so the virgin birth is happening again, is it?”

She'd smile, just a little sideways grin. “It's Pieter's.”

“Never did like the guy.”

Or he wouldn't have, had he met him. To her father, all people were fashioned of cellophane.

“Come back home. Your room's the same. I'll take care of you.”

And then the truth of it would have hit him.

“Doggonnit, Nina! I raised you better than this!” And he would have remembered the fact that he was going to have to face his family, and they'd be judgmental because Gregory was the one who never quite lived up to his potential, and wasn't this proof ? Didn't it just figure? Well, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, they'd say, because her father's family wasn't exactly original in the speech department.

She'd make excuses to her dad, right there on the cell phone, about how she needed to get to work, how she was almost there, which she was, how she was sorry. But she lived in a big city, millions of lonely people, and besides, she was twenty-five, Dad, and how many twenty-five-year-old females were still celibate?

She'd work her shift and he'd leave five voice mails, the first one a little clipped, the final one saying how sorry he was for getting so upset and call him back. Please.

That's how it would have shaken down if he'd lived into the age of cell phones. But he hadn't.

He would have told her what she could say to soften Manny's heart when she walked in late, but what on earth could she possibly say to “three strikes you're out” Manny that would convince him to let her keep her job?

Not one person Manny ever fired had come up with the lucky phrase. And today, well, she wasn't one of the luckiest people in the world to begin with.

Seven

O
kay, Loochi. Ready to play again?”

“Yes!”

Celia hated hide-and-seek, and it figured it was Loochi's favorite game. Her sister warned her about that sort of thing too. “Okay, I'm going to count . . .”

She hid her eyes. “Ten . . .”

Something inside of her always stuttered when Lucinda ran from her view.
Don't go!
she always thought, for sometimes two people are all each other has, and this was very much the case with Celia and her daughter.

“Nine . . .”

Her husband was killed overseas even before the baby was born, and Celia had almost lost Lucinda at birth.

“Eight . . .”

But Celia kept her alive by sheer force of will, demanding the doctors, the nurses, God, even that still little baby, blue, not breathing, to live. Live!

“Seven . . .”

And so Lucinda did live, sucking in a breath, finally, at the raging shout of her mother who, by all that was right, wouldn't let this child go without a fight. “Breathe!” she had screamed, the word ending in a pitch that caused one of the nurses to hold her hands against her ears.

“Six, five, four, three, two . . . one! Ready or not, here I come!”

Celia opened her eyes.

“Cheese!” Lucinda, still right in front of Celia, held out the butterfly.

“Sweetie, this is the part where you're supposed to hide.”

“I see you!”

Celia laughed. “I see you too. We're going to play this game a lot when we go to Grandma's. She has horses and pigs and cows.”

“Moo!” Lucinda scrunched up her smooth brow.

“Moo! That's right!”

Celia just couldn't bring herself to leave the apartment she and Scott moved into five years before.

“Play again!”

Lucinda scrambled off and Celia covered her eyes, counting backward from ten. Again.

“Ready or not, here I come!” She opened her eyes and saw no trace of Lucinda. Maybe the three-year-old was finally getting the hang of the game.

“Loochi?” She peered beneath the back porch and all around the small garden behind their first-floor apartment, where they'd planted bulbs the previous autumn. Now irises bloomed and the daylilies were broadcasting a sunny tint against the greenery. The crocuses were long gone, most of them ending up pinned in Lucinda's hair, and when Lucinda made enough of a fuss about it, in Celia's as well. One morning they walked to the store with at least ten blossoms each in their hair. Lucinda told her they looked like flower queens.

“Loochi, where are you?”

No. Not behind the snowball bushes either.

“I'm coming!” she yelled.

Not in the yard at all, as a matter-of-fact.

Fear trilled down the back of Celia's neck to the base of her spine. “Loochi?!”

Eight

J
osé wished Pepito would turn off that radio, but instead the cook turned up the volume of the sports show. “The Mexican National soccer team will face the United States in New Jersey in the Gold Cup elimination game.”

So. The Mexican National team would be in the area soon. José hoped his old manager, Francisco, would not be traveling with them. Francisco managed several players now and was doing quite well for himself. This came as no surprise to José.

He poured chopped green tomatillos in the blender and set it to whirring, his former hopes of coming face-to-face with that very team welling in his chest cavity. Knowing Manny, he'd somehow get them in the restaurant because it was “good for business.”

José threw some wilted greens in the sink, then flipped on the garbage disposal. The water swirled in the suction, a whirlpool of greenery, leaves, and stems that joined together. He stood, mesmerized, immune to the game on the radio and the squeal of the blender, sweat pricking his brow. What looked like a butterfly, green and papery, swirled down the drain.

That day. That day. His hand smarted from the earlier burn, but instead of bandaging it like he usually did, covering up the blistered, angry flesh, he gripped the edge of the sink, becoming not so much oblivious to the pain as wrapped up inside the exquisiteness of the sensation. You are still alive, it told him.

Manny stepped into
the kitchen and saw his brother over the sink. Two years had passed since José had been released from prison. In that time he'd come further than Manny would have thought possible. For six months José had stayed in an apartment their parents set up for him, reading books, eating the simplest of foods. Few of his old friends from his soccer days remained, and the ones who showed up usually stood at the apartment door, knocking and knocking and knocking.

They'd give up after several minutes, and after a while they gave up completely, telling Manny they tried.

Manny and his parents talked about it, their words flying back and forth across the kitchen table on a Sunday morning in January. “
He can't live like this anymore, Mama
,” Manny said. “
You have to do something
.”

His mother nodded, her black hair, parted in the middle and gathered in a bun, picking up the overhead light. Blue lights streamed along the strands. “
I grieve for him. He is
gone
.”

He cannot forgive himself
,” his father said, his brown “eyes turned down at the corners, his mustache doing the same.

So much sadness.

Mama grabbed Manny's forearm that morning. “
Hire
him at El Callejon
.”

“
What? No, Mama. I'm still trying to get this restaur—
”

Please, Manny. You've been in business for six years. Manny.
“
Please
.”

Manny turned to his father, who shrugged. No help there.

You know he can cook!
” she said. “
He's even better than
“
you were.
”

“
Now, now
—”

She took his hand, kissed it. “
Please, my son. Just for a little
while and then, if it doesn't work out, we can find something
else. He can come back here and stay with us until he heals.
”

He may never heal
,” Papa said. “

No! Do not say that
.” Mama's eyes fl ashed like drops of
“oil on a rainy street. “
He will
.”

And now, in the kitchen, Manny leaned toward his brother. José still zoned out much too often. And the burns. His family hadn't figured out what José was doing to himself. But Manny knew. He kept it to himself, however. It obviously met a need his brother had or he wouldn't show up occasionally with his hand bandaged. It didn't seem to affect his work, and he kept quiet about it.