Carry Me Like Water (48 page)

Maria Elena reached for her arm. She was cold and trembling. “Are you leaving?” she asked. “Lizzie?”

“No,” she said again.

“What?”

“How did you get in here?”

“Lizzie?”

“No, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Who are you? What are you—”

“What’s happening, Lizzie?”

“Don’t hurt me. Please don’t—”

“Lizzie!” Maria Elena tried to keep her from shaking. “Lizzie?”

She froze in Maria Elena’s arms. She trembled as if she were coatless in a freezing rain. “No! Please, no! Take anything you want. I can’t—don’t hurt—How did—please—”

Maria Elena tried to hold Lizzie up as she fell to the floor on her knees. “Lizzie, what’s happening? Lizzie!”

Then she was calm again. Lizzie knelt on the floor and was perfectly still. Maria Elena knelt next to her and placed her head on her lap. “Lizzie?”

She opened her eyes. “Mama,” she said. “Mama! No. We have to go and help her.”

“What?”

“Just take me, Nena!”

“You just had a seizure, Lizzie! You need a doctor.”

“That was no seizure. That was my mother!”

“What?”

“My mother, Nena! My mother!”

Lizzie ran toward the door the second Maria Elena’s car stopped in front of her parents’ house. She banged on the door. “Open the door—open the goddamned door! Open this door goddamn—” Somehow, in her panic, she remembered she had a key. She reached for her purse. It wasn’t there. “Damn! No!” She banged on the door again, oblivious to the fact her fist was throbbing from hitting the door again and again and again. As she leaned into the door, she felt it open slowly. She saw her mother, bent and crooked, lean against the doorway and sway. She looked as if she had been broken by a wind, her bones no longer able to hold her up. Her clothes were washed in sweat. The old woman strained to make out who was standing in her doorway, her hands groping in front of her, groping, reaching—trembling and reaching. “My glasses—”

Lizzie and Maria Elena stood in front of the old woman, breathless
and paralyzed by the terror they saw in the woman who stood in front of them. Instinctively, Lizzie reached to help her mother remain standing. The old woman flinched. “It’s OK, Mama, It’s me, it’s Lizzie.”

“Thank God,” she sobbed. She fell into Lizzie’s arms, no longer able to hold her own weight. She winced and sobbed and was utterly confused. Maria Elena helped lay her on the floor carefully.

“Who did this to you? Where is he? I’ll find him, Mama. God help him when I do. I swear I’ll kill that—”

The old woman did not speak. She was too hurt and far away and confused to hear her daughter’s voice. Maria Elena took Lizzie’s shoulder and shook her gently. She looked at Lizzie’s mother. “Where does it hurt. Rose? Are you hurt?”

The old woman slowly pointed to her chest.

“I’m going to call an ambulance. You’re going to be just fine. It’s me, Rose, Helen Marsh. Do you remember me?”

The old woman nodded and groaned quietly.

“It’s all right. Rose, we’re here now.” She placed her hand firmly on Lizzie’s trembling back, then went to find the telephone. When she returned from calling an ambulance, she placed a blanket over the old woman’s shaking body. She watched Lizzie weeping as she knelt beside her. She clenched her fist and slammed it against the wall. “I’ll kill whoever did this,” she said, “I swear I’ll kill him.”

Maria Elena shook Lizzie gently. “She’s just frightened, I think. She’ll be fine. She’ll be just fine.”

Lizzie could not hear Maria Elena’s voice. “I’ll kill them all,” she said.

“I’m old and tired,” she said. Rose spoke to the yellow roses in the vase. She couldn’t smell them. Why couldn’t she smell? Was she half-dead already? She reached for a rose, ripped off a petal, squeezed it between her fingers, and breathed in the fragrance. She didn’t know if the smell was really present or if she was merely bringing her memory into the room. But the smell was there, and that was all that mattered. She laughed to herself. She remembered the smell of her father’s sweat, the way he used to tease her, hold
her, make her feel as if she were the only person in the world. He used to care for roses in his garden and place them in a vase for her mother. He could make things grow. His life had seemed so easy and simple, his love so uncomplicated. She closed her eyes and willed him into the room. She opened them and half-expected him to be standing there, thin and strong, his kind brown eyes taking her back to that Iowa cornfield she’d left for that ambitious man she’d married. “Papa, I married badly,” she said, “just like you.” She tried not to think of her mother, how badly she had treated him, how she seemed to enjoy humiliating him in public. She tried to remember something happy, something that would remind her she was once alive, something that would redeem the life she had led. She tried to picture Lizzie’s face, her dangling earrings reflecting all light. At least she’d had Elizabeth. For all of her rebellion, for all of her stubbornness, for all of her verbal rages, Rose’s daughter had been the only presence in her house that had made her feel as if she were more than an inanimate object. She was tired. She closed her eyes and slept:

“
You what?”

“
I told her.”

“
You told her!” She felt the coldness of his stare.

She stared right back. “She knew anyway. Sam. She knew.”

“
I should have never let that girl into this house. I should have let her go with her brother. How did she know? How?”

She shook her head. “I won’t tell you.”

“
I want to know!”

“
You’re drunk, Sam.”

“
You promised me. You said you’d never tell.”

“
You had no right to ask, damn you! Damn you!”

He banged his fist on the table. “Who told her?”

“
Her brother, Sam, her brother.” She tried to calm him. She wondered why she still needed to make things right with him when they had been so wrong for so many years.

“
I hate you,” he said.

“
I want to leave.”

“
You’ll leave with nothing.”

“
I don’t care.”

He stormed out of the house slamming the door. Rose sat alone in the late morning light. She woke to the sound of a broken window. A big man with a blond mustache stood over her. She came down the stairs. “Who are you? What do you—” She felt his hand against her cheek. Run, I have to run. She managed to free herself from him for an instant. She took a step. He pulled out a knife and it sparkled like a diamond in his big hands. She dropped down on her knees. “Take anything you want.”

’ ‘Please,” he said. ‘ ‘Say please.’

“
Please.”

He smiled. She felt she would die there, no one would come to save her, Sam would not come to help. Sam was gone. They would find her there, they would find her dead. She closed her eyes, her heart pounding against her chest as if it were a hammer knocking out her ribs. She could not move. The door! Someone was at the door. Go away. Go away and let me die. I want to die. The door, I have to—

Rose made herself wake. She expected to find the man—he was gone. She looked up and saw her daughter standing over her. The younger woman smiled at her mother and wiped the sweat from her face. “It’s OK, Mama, it was only a dream. He can’t hurt you, now. You’re safe, Mama.” Her voice was as soft as the rose petals in her father’s garden.

“You won’t let him come here, will you?”

“He won’t come here. Mama.” She bit her lip to keep from crying as she stared at her mother’s face, “He won’t hurt you again, Mama. Everything will be fine—everything will be beautiful.”

“And Sam?—why didn’t he come, Lizzie? Why didn’t he come when I called his name?”

“He wasn’t home. Mama.”

“I’m his wife—”

“Shhhh, Mama. He was gone.”

“I would’ve heard,” she said, “I would have done something,” Her throat was as dry as the yellow hills of the California summer. “He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. And that man. I heard a window break, and he had a knife—” Her voice cracked. Lizzie didn’t know who to hate more, the man who broke into the house, or her father who was gone, always gone. Lizzie handed her mother a cup of
water and held her head as she sipped from a straw. Her lips trembled as she drank. “I told him you knew about your mother—Sam, I told him. And I told him I wanted to leave. He was angry. And he left the house. He doesn’t care, Lizzie. He doesn’t care. It’s my fault, It’s all my—”

“Don’t you ever take the blame, do you hear? Never! It was them, damnit, it was them.” She placed her head on the bed and cried. “
It was my fault Mama, it was all my fault.”
Her mother combed Lizzie’s hair with her fingers. When she had had enough of her own tears, she lifted her head and laughed. “We’re all so arrogant,” she said, “we always think everything is our fault.” She smiled at her mother. “You’re so beautiful.”

The old woman smiled. “I’m not. I’m not beautiful.”

“Don’t argue, Mama.” She kissed her on the cheek—softly—so as not to hurt her. “I’m taking you with me,” she said.

“I don’t know anything about the desert,” the old woman said, “and I’d only be in the way. I’m getting old.”

“Should I throw you away, then—because you’re old? I can’t leave you, Mama. Don’t make me leave you.”

“Don’t cry, child. It always hurt me so much to see you cry.” Rose nodded at the young woman, “I’ll go then.
EL
Paso is as good a place as any for an old woman to rest.” She laughed, “Do they have roses there?”

“We’ll grow them, Mama.”

16

“Y
OU HAVE A LOT
of nerve walking into my house.” he said. “You swore you’d never come back. What do you want?”

“Nice to see you, too, Pop.” She maintained perfect control.
I promised her.

“You could have knocked.”

“I have a key.”

“What do you want?”

“I came to ask you to leave while she comes and gets her things.”

“You can both go to hell together.”

She gave him a hard stare. “What happened to you? When
I
was a child you were kind.”

“I don’t owe you any explanations,” he said quietly, his voice almost soft.

“No,
I
guess you don’t. And I don’t owe you my life—and neither does my mother.”

“She’s not your mother.”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

“If you knew—”

“I don’t need to see my mother through your eyes. She’s invisible to you—she always has been. Why can’t you see her?”

“I can see just fine. What would you have done—either of you—what would you have done without me?”

“
What would you have done without us?”
Lizzie felt strangely alive, almost drunk. She was stronger than him, now. She wondered why she had feared this man for all of her adult life, but wondered, too, where he had placed his kindness. She could see how much he hated her. Those hard eyes were a wall, and she did not know how to make that wall crumble. “My mother’s coming for her things,” she said casually, “and I’d like it very much if you let her pack her things in peace.”

“She can leave with the clothes on her back.”

“If you don’t do me the courtesy of making yourself scarce for one miserable afternoon of your more than miserable life, I swear I’ll beat you like a drum—and if you don’t think I’m willing or able, try me, old man.”
I’m breaking my promise. Be careful. Lizzie.
She took a deep breath, then smiled.

“This is my house, damn you—my house.”

“Who cares? No one wants it but you. I just want you to make yourself disappear for a few hours. If my mother wanted to, she could take you for the financial ride of your life. You’re getting off cheap, so don’t push me. All you have to do is step out of this place for one crummy afternoon. It’s not so much to ask, is it?”

He sat down on the chair that had conformed perfectly to his shape over the years—it was as deformed as his old body. He stared into the room seeing nothing in it—nothing but emptiness. He nodded and kept nodding.