Delia’s Crossing (16 page)

I sat on the bed and opened the envelope. Before I read the letter, I brought the empty envelope to my nostrils and smelled it to see if I could catch some wonderful aroma I associated with our small
casa, mi abuela
’s cooking, or simply the scent of wildflowers behind the house, anything that would bring me home for an instant. There was nothing. I sighed and began to read.

My heart felt so heavy under my breast that I was certain it would simply explode with sadness and I would die on this bed. No one here would shed all that many tears for me, if anyone shed any. Since I had come, I had brought only trouble. It didn’t matter whose fault it was. None of it would have happened had I not come.

But it was Tía Isabela who had brought me here. I was still confused about why she wanted me. She didn’t need another house servant, and when she looked at me, all I did was remind her of her unhappy days back in Mexico. There had to be a good part of her, something inside her that was strong enough to overcome her anger and her hate. Surely, there was a part of her that wanted her family back, and perhaps that was why I was brought here.

I must have patience, I thought. I must have faith, even in this house that had no faith in anything. I knelt beside my bed, and with
mi abuela
’s letter in my hand, I prayed for everyone, even Sophia, who I believed was burning up inside herself. Her selfishness, jealousies, and spite would eat away at her until she was torn apart.

Rising slowly, I took deep breaths and neatly folded my grandmother’s letter to put it back into the envelope. I slipped it under my pillow. I would read it again before I went to sleep, and I would read it every night until I received another letter from her. It would be my way of remaining close to her.

I changed clothes and went to do my chores. When I was cleaning one of the downstairs powder rooms, I heard a scream and then the sound of many footsteps in the hallway. I stepped out to see Señor Garman hurrying past the kitchen on his way to the front entrance. Señora Rosario and Inez came hurrying down the hallway as well. Slowly, I walked out and saw
mi tía
Isabela rushing down the stairway.

“What’s happening?” I asked Inez.

“Señor Edward was in a car accident,” she told me. “An ambulance is taking him to the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

My blood chilled, and my heart began to pound.

“The car’s out front, Mrs. Dallas,” Señor Garman told her, and held the door open.

I watched Tía Isabela run out the front entrance. Señor Herrera came up behind us, and Señora Rosario explained why there was such commotion. He shook his head and returned to the kitchen.

“Where’s Sophia?” I asked, looking back up the stairway. “Isn’t she home yet?”

“Forget Miss Sophia, just finish your work,” Señora Rosario told me. “There’s nothing for us to do but that.”

My hands were trembling so badly I didn’t think I could do anything, but I returned to the powder room and washed the tile floor. Hours passed, and we heard nothing. Sophia didn’t return home, either. I showered and changed my clothes for dinner as usual and then went down to the kitchen, where Señor Herrera, Inez, and Señora Rosario were all sitting around the table talking. Nothing was being prepared.

“What’s happening?” I asked, my voice so thin and low it betrayed my fear of hearing the answer.

“Señor Garman called to tell us Señor Edward was seriously injured and is still unconscious,” Señora Rosario said.

“He may die,” Inez added.

Neither of them contradicted her.

“Señora Dallas won’t be home for dinner. You can get yourself something to eat,” Señora Rosario said. She was looking at me but really looking through me at the tragedy unfolding.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “Thank you.”

“None of us is hungry,” Inez said.

“What should we do?” I asked.

“We can do nothing but wait,” Señora Rosario replied.

I thought about sitting with them but chose instead to return to my room, where I could say a prayer for Edward. Then I lay on my bed, looking up at the ceiling and listening to the sounds around me, the clock ticking, the murmur of the voices below, and the
thump, thump, thump
of my own troubled heart. Close to two hours later, I heard someone running up the stairway. My heart stopped and started. I sat up when my bedroom door was thrown open.

Sophia stood there, glaring in at me.

“What did you tell Edward this time?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. Her hair was wild, and her eyes were blazing as her nostrils flared.

“How is he?” I asked, instead of answering her.

“What did you tell Edward?” she screamed at me.

I heard more footsteps in the hallway. Señora Rosario came up beside her.

“What’s going on?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“Ask her what she told my brother,” Sophia ordered. “Go on, ask her. Do it!” she screamed at her when Señora Rosario hesitated with confusion.

Then she spoke in Spanish. “What did you tell her brother?”

“I know what she wants. I understand. First tell me how he is now,” I insisted.

She asked Sophia, who rattled it off quickly. From the look on Señora Rosario’s face, I knew it was very bad.

“He was driving much too fast and went off the road and hit a stone wall. The airbag exploded in his face, and it seems right now that it has seriously affected his eyesight.”

“His eyesight?” I touched my face under my eyes, and Sophia brightened with even more fury.

“That’s right, you idiot. Edward is blind!” she screamed. “Blind!”

“They don’t know yet if he will be blind long, Señorita Sophia,” Señora Rosario told her.

“I heard the doctor, not you. He sounded very pessimistic about it. Well?” she shouted at me. She turned to Señora Rosario. “You translate so she has no excuse, Mrs. Rosario. Translate everything word for word.”

She turned back to me.

“What did you say to him? Tell me everything. Whatever you said to him sent him after Bradley. They had a bad argument, and Bradley ran away from him, drove off quickly. Edward went after him, and that was when he got into the accident. Bradley said you made up lies and told them to Edward. What did you tell Edward?”

I understood most of it, but Señora Rosario did translate for her.

“I made up no lies,” I said firmly. “No lies. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

Sophia deflated a bit and stepped closer to me. “Okay, then, what did you tell him?”

I looked at Señora Rosario.

“Señorita, this is…”

“Make her tell me. My mother is very upset.”

Señora Rosario looked at me. “Do you wish to tell her?”

I nodded. “Edward was waiting for me at the bus station,” I began. “When I got into his car, he saw I was very upset and knew something bad had just happened.”

“What?” Sophia asked. “Tell me, or I swear…”

“Bradley came for me at school,” I said. I was speaking rapidly in Spanish now, and Señora Rosario was translating without comment as quickly as she could. “He said if I didn’t get into his car, he would come here and tell your mother stories about me, and she would have me arrested and sent back to Mexico in disgrace.”

Sophia smirked, but her skeptical expression was weakening. “Go on, talk,” she ordered.

“I got into his car, and he brought me to another car, where there were two boys.”

“What two boys?”

“A boy named Jack and another named Reuben,” I said, and the skepticism left her face completely.

“Jack Sawyer and Reuben Bennet?”

“I do not know their family names.”

“And?” she asked.

“He wanted me to get into the car with them and go for a ride with them, but it would be more than a ride. They, too, would do bad things to me.”

Señora Rosario’s eyes widened as she translated. I was too nervous to use any of the English words I had learned.

“What did you do?”

“I got out of his car and ran down the street, back toward the school. Bradley came after me, but my friend Ignacio Davila, a boy in my ESL class, chased him away.”

Sophia looked pensive now. She was silent for a moment. Señora Rosario was looking at me and shaking her head.

“And you told all that to Edward?” Sophia asked.

“
Sí,
and what Bradley did to me the day before. I had to tell him,” I added.

“Did to you the day before? I thought you said he just drove you home. That’s all you told my mother at the dinner table.”

“I was ashamed,” I said.

“Well, where did you go with him?”

“He took me to where his father is rebuilding a house. There was no one else there working, but he said he wanted to look at what was done.”

“He took you to that house?” Her mouth opened and closed. “That’s where he tried…and what happened after you got there?”

“He forced himself on me,” I said.

Señora Rosario didn’t translate. She just stared at me, and then she asked, “
Él le violó
?”

“Yes, I was raped,” I said, crying.

“What did she say? What did she just say?”

Reluctantly, Señora Rosario translated.

“That bastard, liar. I knew it.”

Sophia shook her head, looked at Señora Rosario. Then, mumbling to herself, she walked quickly out of my bedroom, slamming the door behind her. It was like a firecracker.

Señora Rosario looked after her and then turned back to me. She still wore a look of amazement and shock.

“I am sorry to say it, but maybe you should return to Mexico, Delia,” she said. “Maybe that would be the best thing for you now.”

“Don’t be sorry. There is nothing I want more, Señora,” I told her. I looked toward my pillow, under which was Abuela Anabela’s letter. “Nothing.”

M
y grandmother had a saying whenever tragedy struck someone again and again.
Un clavo saca otro clavo.
One nail removes another—one grief cures another. I didn’t understand it then, but now I thought I did, because after learning what had happened to Edward, I soon put aside grieving over the terrible thing that had happened to me. This sorrow, this tragedy, diminished my own. It did not cure it, but it caused me to put it aside, to stop thinking about poor me and think about poor Edward shut up in this darkness, his beautiful, promising young life perhaps cut off at the knees, as my father might say.

I thought now it was certain that Tía Isabela would send me back to Mexico. I waited in my bedroom, anticipating her arrival any moment. Sometime after midnight, I heard the voices of some people talking below, and then I heard footsteps outside my door. I was sitting on my bed, my hands in my lap, my head down, when she opened the door and entered. There was no longer any pretext, any airs of superiority, in her demeanor. She looked tired but, more important, like someone brought down to walk the earth with us mere mortals. Tragedy had sent her reeling back to her origins. As if to underline all of this, she spoke Spanish as if she had never learned how to speak English.

“You have heard what happened to Edward?”

“Yes. I am so sorry. How is he? Is it true that he is blind?”

“He has retina damage to both eyes caused by the airbag. He will need eye surgery, and the doctor doesn’t guarantee anything. They never do,” she said dryly. “Both retinas were torn badly.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Yes, well, instead of worrying about himself, he insists on my bringing you to see him first thing tomorrow morning, so you will not go to school,” she said.

“Me?”

Her eyes grew smaller as she stared at me. “Yes, you. He wouldn’t tell me why he was chasing after Bradley like that, driving so recklessly, and Sophia has locked herself away in her room. Some people are blessed with children. I am cursed with them.”

I shook my head. I wanted to say it wasn’t possible to be cursed with children, but I recalled how my mother had described her father’s feelings about Isabela. Surely, he had felt cursed, too. He was very bitter, and when she had left them and he had considered her dead, he justified it by saying, “
Cuando el perro se muere, se va la rabia.
” When the dog dies, the rabies are gone.

It would be too cruel to remind her of all that, I thought, even though it was on the tip of my tongue to say,
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

“Be ready to go right after breakfast,” she told me, turned, and left.

I never thought I would do it, but at that moment, I pitied her and felt sorrier for her than I did for myself. I prayed for Edward and even prayed for Tía Isabela that night. The emotional fatigue of the day and the evening was enough to send me reeling into a dark pit of sleep, with horrid images flashing through nightmares strung together in a bracelet of misfortune and terror. I awoke with a start, feeling as if I had just come up from a pool of ink, gasping. My head felt like one large rock on my neck.

Not having had anything for dinner the night before, I managed some appetite, even though my stomach had turned into a hive of bees. Sophia did not come down for breakfast as usual, and Inez, who had taken back the responsibility of bringing her breakfast to her room, reported that Sophia was still sleeping when she knocked on the door. She didn’t want anything, and she would not get out of bed. Tía Isabela went up to speak to her but returned shaking her head.

“That girl seizes on any excuse not to go to school,” she muttered to Señora Rosario. “I have no time for her today.” She turned to me and told me to be outside in five minutes.

Her Rolls-Royce was brought around, and Señor Garman, glaring at me with disapproval, opened the door for her. I expected I would be told to get in the front passenger seat, but he continued to hold the door open, so I got in after Tía Isabela. I glanced at her and thought she was never underdressed, no matter what the occasion. Even going to the hospital to visit her injured son, she was dressed as if she were going to a grand fiesta.

She wore expensive-looking rings on all of her fingers and a white-gold necklace with diamonds that had matching diamond teardrop earrings. With her fashionable hat and her olive-green dress and shoes, she looked like royalty. I could only be in awe of that air of superiority about her. Once again, she seemed untouchable and far above ordinary people and things in this world. Now that she had regained her strength, even family tragedy dared not disturb her. What were her dreams like? Was she so strong that even nightmares dared not enter her sleep?

There was so much about
mi tía
Isabela that I despised but so much I envied. Was that wrong?

She looked out the window and fiddled with her jeweled purse as we drove along. I didn’t want to stare at her, but I kept glancing her way, anticipating her saying something to me. She didn’t speak, however, until we arrived at the hospital.

“Just follow me, and wipe off that depressing poor-Mexican-girl look,” she said as Señor Garman opened the door for her.

How could she hate what made us both Mexican so much?

She shot off, clearly making me think she wanted me to walk behind her and not side by side. I did just that, but I kept my eyes down and my face turned away from people.

In the elevator, she patted the back of her head and took a deep breath that she didn’t release until the elevator opened on Edward’s floor. It was as if she were going underwater. Again, I wondered if there was something to learn from how she handled hardships.

She had Edward in a private room with a private-duty nurse. As we drew closer to it, I grew even more nervous, and when we entered the room and I saw Edward’s head with bandages over his eyes, I gasped and bit down on my lower lip. His cheeks were bruised, as were his nose and his chin. It looked as if the skin had been peeled off in places.

His nurse, who was sitting near the bed and thumbing through a magazine, nearly leaped to her feet when Tía Isabela entered. Edward sensed she was there. After all, who else could cause a nurse to jump like that?

“Mother?”

“Yes, Edward, I’m here,” she said. “How is he doing?” she asked the nurse.

“His vitals are good. He’s gotten some sleep,” she said.

“Was the doctor in this morning?”

“No, Mrs. Dallas, not yet. I believe he’s to be here within the hour.”

“Did you bring Delia?” Edward asked the moment they stopped talking.

“She’s right here, Edward.”

“I want to be alone with her,” he said.

“What is the reason for all this intrigue, Edward? It’s…”

“None of your business, Mother,” he finished for her.

She stiffened, glanced at the nurse and then at me.

“Fine. Let’s leave them,” she told the nurse, and they left the room.

“Delia, come closer,” Edward said.

I stepped up to his bed. He reached up, and I took his hand.

“I am sorry for you,” I said, and he started to smile and then cried out in pain.

“It hurts to laugh,” he said. “You don’t mean you’re sorry for me. You’re sorry for what happened to me.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted you to come here right away,” he said. “Don’t let anyone blame you. Do you understand? This is not your fault. I already know you well enough to know you’ll blame yourself.”

I said nothing. He was right. In my heart, I thought it was my fault. If I had not come to live with him and his sister and mother, he would not be in this hospital bed, and he would not need a serious operation on his eyes.

“You must not return to Mexico,” he continued, as if he had the power to read my thoughts. “Don’t let my mother send you back.”

“How can I stop her?”

“You can stop her. My mother respects only strength. She pushes until someone pushes back. You understand?”

I did understand, but I couldn’t imagine pushing back on Tía Isabela.

“I need you to help me get better. Okay?”

I was still holding his hand. “Yes, but how?”

“You’ll see. I was afraid you were already sent back. That’s why I wanted you brought here right away. Do you understand what I’m saying, Delia?”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Good.
Muy bueno.
Now I will have plenty of time for you to teach me how to speak Spanish.”

I smiled and was still holding his hand when Tía Isabela returned with the doctor.

“You’ll have to end this tête-à-tête, Edward. Dr. Morris is here.”

Edward released my hand. “Delia is going to help me with my recuperation,” he told her. “We’ve just settled on it. She’ll read to me.”

“She can’t read English, Edward.”

“She’ll manage. I want to learn more Spanish, anyway.”

“We’ll discuss this later, Edward. Now is not the time. Let’s not jump too far ahead,” Tía Isabela said.

“That’s what I want,” he said sharply.

The doctor put his hand on Tía Isabela’s arm to get her to stop any possible argument or unpleasantness. She glared at me, spun on her heels, and retreated to a corner of the room.

“Go wait in the visitors’ lounge,” she told me in Spanish.

Edward plowed through his pain to smile. “Haven’t heard you speak Spanish in some time, Mother,” he said.

“Go,” she told me, and I left the room. I had no idea where the lounge was, but I stopped another nurse in the hall and asked, “Where I wait?”

“The lounge? Oh, go through that door, and turn right,” she said, pointing down the opposite end of the hallway.

“
Gracias
. Thank you,” I said, and walked down the hallway.

In the corridor, standing by the door, was a boy about Edward’s age, wearing a pair of jeans, a tight black T-shirt, and a royal-blue sports jacket. His light brown hair was very thick and, although not as long as Edward’s hair, was nearly down to the base of his neck and over his ears. He had it brushed away from his indigo-blue eyes. I thought he had a very gentle, almost angelic smile.

“Hi,” he said. “You’re Delia, right?”

“
Sí,
yes.”

“I’m a friend of Edward’s, Edward’s
amigo.
Jesse Butler.” He extended his hand. It was as smooth as mine, with thin fingers. On his pinkie was a black onyx ring with a tiny diamond at the center. “
Cómo está
Edward?”

I shook my head and started to explain in Spanish.

“Whoa, sorry. I just know a little Spanish,
un poco español
.”

“His eyes,” I said, moving my hands over my head to explain the bandages. “Bruises,” I added, and ran my fingers over my cheeks, nose, and chin.

He looked through the window in the door and nodded.

“The doctor’s in there. Doctor?”

“Yes,” I said, “and
mi tía
Isabela.”

“Oh, right. Okay, I’ll just wait with you,” he said, and nodded at the lounge.

We went into the lounge. I thought it was very nice that a friend of Edward’s had come right away to see him. He had not mentioned Jesse to me, but he had told me very little about his life, his friends, or even what interested him most to do.

There were only a few other people in the visitors’ lounge, but one of them was a woman with a little girl who looked no more than three or four. She spoke Spanish to the girl, who focused her beautiful ebony eyes on me and smiled when I smiled. I began to speak to her in Spanish, too, and her mother asked me who I had here. I explained that my cousin was in a car accident, and she told me her sister’s husband had fallen from a scaffold while painting an office building’s window frames. Her sister was in with her husband now, and she was watching their little girl. I asked her if she spoke any English, and she said very little. However, she and her sister and her sister’s husband were not from Mexico. They were from Costa Rica.

When I asked her how long she had been in the United States, she grew very nervous and mumbled an answer. As if to make things sound okay, however, she told me her sister’s little girl, Drina, had been born here. Jesse, who said he spoke little Spanish, listened keenly to our conversation.

He leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I think she’s illegal,” he said. “Maybe the parents are, too.”

I told him Drina was born in America.

“She’s an anchor baby,” Jesse said.

I shook my head. “Don’t understand.”

“Baby born
aquí
?”

“Sí.”

“Illegal parents are anchored to the U.S. because the baby was born here. You know the word
anchor
?”

I shook my head.

“Tied down, like a boat is tied,” he explained, gesturing with his hands.

“Oh,” I said. “They stay because of the
niña
.”