Carry Me Like Water (67 page)

He liked the people who worked there because they laughed a lot. One of the women wrote him a note and showed it to him. “A man who doesn’t talk,” she had written. “I’m surprised a woman hasn’t swept you up.” She had stood by him as he read it and then laughed. He liked it that she could joke—at least she wasn’t afraid of his deafness. The job was going to be just fine, he thought.

Diego was anxious to go on the rounds by himself. On Friday, at the end of his second week, he came to work and was told he would be on his own. He smiled at his boss and nodded. He showed him a card he had lettered to take along on his deliveries,
I’M DEAF
, it read,
BUT I READ LIPS
. The boss nodded. “Good idea,” he said. “You’ll do just fine.” Diego loaded up the van for the morning’s deliveries. Diego wrote down the addresses, studied his map, made some notes, and drove out into the streets of the city.

For some reason, he felt compelled to peek into some of the notes and read them. He felt as if he was a part of the messages that were being sent along with the flowers. He trembled a little when he read the first note: “Betsy, Happy Birthday you old bag of bones. Love, Tonya.” Diego shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t at all sure he would like to be called an old bag of bones. He read a few more of the notes before finishing his morning deliveries. One of the notes
was attached to a large plant and said: “Rachel, I know you’ll miss him. I loved him, too. My thoughts are with you, Letty.” He figured it was death, must be a death. He wondered who the “him” was, and wondered, loo, about the women, what they were like. Maybe they weren’t even friends. Maybe they were sisters. He wished he had more information. He enjoyed the morning deliveries, felt free because he was able to drive through the streets. His last delivery before heading back to the flower shop was a dozen yellow roses to a woman who worked on the fourteenth floor of a bank building. When he walked into the suite 1404, he showed the woman at the front desk the name on the card. He also flashed the card that informed her he was deaf. “I’ll show you to her office,” she said. He followed her down the hall and opened a door. He walked in, smiled at the woman, and held out the roses. Instead of taking the roses, she took the small envelope, opened it, and read the card. She said something to him, but her lips were difficult to read. He held the flowers in one hand, and showed her his card in the other. She nodded and said something else. He put down the flowers on her desk and wrote out on his pad: “Some people’s lips are hard to read. I can’t make out what you’re saying.” She smiled and nodded as she read his note.

“I don’t want the flowers,” she wrote on a piece of paper.

He nodded. “Don’t you want to give them to someone?” he asked.

“If you could deliver the man who sent them to me, I’d make him eat them.”

Diego laughed. “I understand,” he wrote. He took the flowers and drove back to the flower shop. When he went home that afternoon, he was happy. He worked in the sun, he worked in the city and had contact with its people. He was grateful for the job, and he promised that he would go by the cathedral in the morning before work and light a candle in memory of Mundo. He would not forget his dead. When he got home, Luz was making dinner, and he read the paper at the table as she cooked. He looked up from the paper occassionally, and watched Luz hover over the stove.

“We need to buy a better kitchen table,” she said. “Why don’t you look in the ads to see if anyone’s selling something reasonable?”

Diego turned to the ads and went through all of them. His eyes
fell on the ad his sister had written. She was alive, she was back. He kept himself from trembling. He read it over and over. It was for him. He knew the address—it was the large white brick house on the corner of Yandell and Los Angeles, He had noticed that some people had moved into that house in early August. It had been run down and they had wasted no time in making it look friendly and welcoming. Before, he had always crossed the street when walking past it because he had thought it was haunted. But the people had given the house a new life and it seemed a happy place, Luz had mentioned that she had seen an old woman sitting on the front porch holding a baby—and that the woman had waved to her. If they were rich, he thought, at least they were friendly.
My sister, my sister lives in that house.

“Is something the matter?”

Diego watched Luz move her lips. He shook his head. He did not want to tell Luz about his sister’s ad. She would make him go. She would drag him over there, and make him face her immediately. But as he read and reread her ad, he realized he did not know if he wanted to go and see her. Lately, he had wanted her forgiveness, but he realized now that he was afraid to see her. After all this time, she had become a myth, a legend like Carlota’s jewels. She was what he made her—but she was not real. What did he have to say to the real woman who was his sister? What if she would feel sorry for him? He did not want her to feel sorry for him—he wanted her to love him. The big white house was not far from where he and Luz lived. She was rich now. What did a rich woman want with a poor deaf man?

“What are you thinking, my Diego?”

“Nothing,” he wrote, “my first day on my own tired me out.”

“Eat,” she said, “you have to eat.”

He nodded. “I’ll wash my hands,” he wrote. He got up from the table, taking the section of the newspaper with the ads with him. He did not want Luz to see it. He placed it in his room. Luz never went in there.

That night, as he read in bed, he closed the book and stared at Maria Elena’s ad. He cut it out and placed it in the book. Would she know him? He tried to imagine her life in that big house, he
tried to imagine what a house like that looked like on the inside. Maybe she had married a gringo with lots of money, a gringo who did not want to have the poor inside his house. He would not go, he decided. She was dead to him, as dead as Mundo and Mary. He hoped she would place no more ads. If Luz saw it, she would make him go. He would not go. He would tell Luz it was too late for forgiving. What was a sister? He had grown accustomed to his exile. He belonged by not belonging.
I will not answer her ad.

The next day, when he was sorting out his afternoon deliveries, Diego noticed his sister’s address was on one of the cards. He moved the two dozen roses to the side and decided he would pretend to forget them. Maybe his boss or someone else would deliver them. He would not take them, he could not take them. It would be humiliating to deliver roses to his rich sister, who would feel sorry for him. Diego got in the van, but before he could drive away, his boss motioned for him to wait.

“You forgot these,” he said.

There was no way out. Diego smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s OK,” his boss said. “Mistakes happen.”

“I don’t want to deliver these,” Diego wrote.

“What?” his boss asked.

“It’s just that those people are mean. I live around there—they act mean.”

His boss read the note and nodded. “Well, that’s none of our business, Diego. These flowers are paid for, and it’s our job to get them there. They won’t hurt you. You’ll be fine.”

Diego nodded and drove off. He was angry at his boss for having found him out. There was nothing to do except deliver the flowers. He would save that delivery for last, he thought. He would ring the doorbell and run away. Maybe the old lady would answer the door, and he would be spared from running into his sister.

At the end of the afternoon, only his sister’s flowers remained. He stopped the van at the Circle K on Yandell and bought himself a soda. He lit a cigarette and smoked it. After he put out his cigarette, he decided to read the note that went with his sister’s flowers. It
was probably from her gringo husband. Who could it hurt? It was a very small transgression. He opened the envelope and read the card: “Maria Elena, You are water, you are rain. Te adoro, Eddie.” He liked what the note said and he thought that maybe his sister had married a nice man. But what was that to him? He was surprised at his own anger. But he couldn’t help but think of his sister, of her name—it was a good name. He wondered if she was happy, and wondered why she had written that ad and why she wanted to see him. Was his memory painful in her heart? He began feeling sad, but made himself stop thinking about her. It was no use. What was done was done. Luz had told him he had to stop regretting. “Forgive yourself,” she said. “Why are you harder on yourself than God. Who do you think you are, anyway?” He smiled.
I will stop with all regrets. I am still young. Regrets will make me old.
He finished his soda and drove down the street to the big house. It was only a few blocks away. He would ring the doorbell, and if his sister answered, he would look down, hand them to her, and run away before she was able to see his face. He had the advantage in this game, he thought.

He pulled up in front of the house, carried the flowers carefully in his hands, remembering that his boss had told him that balance was everything when it came to the art of carrying flowers. He made himself stop shaking. He prayed Maria Elena would not answer the door. He concentrated on not dropping the flowers—it was his job to carry them—not drop them. Rather than reach for the doorbell with the flowers in his hands, he placed the flowers on the ledge to the front porch, made sure they would not fall, then reached for the bell. As soon as someone answered the door, he thought he would point to the flowers and run—yes, that is what he’d do. He waited for a long time, then decided to press the button again. After waiting a while longer, the door opened. His heart felt as if it would jump out of his body and free itself at last. He prepared to run. A young, pretty woman with white hair smiled at him. “Yes?” she said. “May I help you?” He was relieved. It was not her, he did not have to run, he could act normal, walk away, go home, eat his dinner with Luz, and live his life, a sisterless life he had grown accustomed to living. The woman looked at him carefully as though she was studying every pore on his face.

He pointed at the flowers on the ledge and smiled at her.

Lizzie looked and looked at the man’s face again and again. She stared at him for a long time.
I
know this man, she thought. Where—where have I seen him? She trembled as she remembered a dream she had had before coming to El Paso. She remembered a face she had never seen, the face of a man, still young, a dark face with dark eyes and a look of ceaseless wonder, a look that was easy to read as a child’s. And then she smiled.

Diego looked at her strangely. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t feel like running anymore. This woman’s face kept him frozen in place. He was not afraid in her presence, something about her was as calm as the late September air. He wanted to ask her what had happened to her hair, why she would not say anything, why she kept staring into his face, and why she was suddenly smiling. He looked down at his clothes to see if there was something on him. As he was staring at his shirt, he felt the woman’s warm hand under his chin. She lifted it.

“Diego,” she said.

He took out his pad and wrote. “How did you know my name?
I
don’t know you.”

“It came to me in a dream,” she laughed. “Do you believe in dreams?”

Her lips were as easy to read as Luz’s. “I have had too many dreams,” he wrote.

She took him by the hand, “And will have many more,” she said as she took him inside.

He looked back at the flowers.

“Leave them,” she said. “We’ll come back for them later.”

When they stepped inside the house, Diego was overwhelmed at the size of it. He was suddenly afraid again. He knew this woman would be taking him to his sister. He stared back at the door. Why did this woman have this power, why was he letting her lead him? It was not too late—he could still run. He thought of his mother. He thought she would think him a coward—she who had been so brave. “Today is not a good day for running,” he thought, “not a good day for raging at the past.” He stared at this young woman with the old hair, not knowing what to do, what to feel, not wanting
to run, not really wanting to do anything but be led by her. Diego saw her standing at the bottom of the stairs. She was yelling. He could not make out what she was shouting.

And then he saw Maria Elena coming down the stairs. In ten years she had changed very little. Her hair was still long and black, she was still small and thin. She wore a look that was at once warm and arrogant, a look he knew, a look he remembered. She stared at him from the top of the stairs. The white-haired woman held out her hand to her. “Come,” she said. Diego could see her repeat the word. “Come.” When she reached the bottom of stairs, she looked at Diego and began to tremble. Maria Elena placed her hands in front of her and signed: “Forgive me.” She signed it again and again, signed it frantically as if she would not, could not stop until she received an answer. Diego walked closer and closer to her. He had even forgotten that she had learned to sign just to talk to him. In his anger, he had forgotten all the good things about his older sister. He took her hands and held them in his, though he could no longer see them. His eyes were full of a blinding water. They had been dry through Mundo’s funeral, but now they were a river and he felt himself lost in it. He felt her arms tight around his neck. He felt her sobs in his body, sobs that were as good as any word he had ever desired to hear.