Hostile Witness (25 page)

27

 “My mom’s husband was gone, so when the job came at the Rayburn house she grabbed it. Worked like a slave, but what was she going to do? She had me and my brother to feed, put clothes on us.  My brother, he was older than me.  I was ten. Hell, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven living in that big house.”

Rosa snorted at her ridiculous fantasy. She unrolled the fingers of one hand, poking holes in the sky with her rhinestone tipped nails.

“Why is it poor people are so damn stupid, huh? We think if we live between the walls and climb under those pretty white sheets in our little rooms in the back that we’ve made it to the big time. We’re so damn grateful. I hate that shit. I look back, and I can’t believe we ever fell for all his crap.”

“Do you mind if we start at the beginning before we get to the crap part, Rosa?” Josie tossed back the drink their hostess had offered when it was clear they were going to be at this for a while.

Rosa had locked the door and flipped the open sign around.  Marguerite’s was closed. Not that anyone, as Rosa pointed out, would really care. The place was about to go belly up and she was just sticking around because that’s what she did. She stuck around people and places and things until they broke down on her, shit on her, or just went away.

Josie could get behind that. When Rosa brought out the shot glasses, the salt, the limes, and the tequila, Josie was proud to drink with her.  She saluted Rosa on the first two shots. They both sucked the salt from their hands, their dark heads tipping back, their long throats opening up to let the burning liquor slide down into their bellies. They sucked on the lime to cool their lips and Rosa refilled the tiny glasses.  Josie nodded her thanks but kept this one in front of her, fingers lightly on the sides of the shot glass. Her eyes were trained on Rosa as she did her math.  Rosa was twenty, maybe twenty-two at most but she seemed older by at least a decade. It was in the way she sat talking with them so casually, the way she drank so indifferently, and the way she let them know in the smallest ways that she was never relaxed enough not to be on her guard.

“Okay. You got the time; I’ll give you the whole story.”

She shot her liquor and pushed away the glass. Rosa spread her fingers to check out her nails. They were an expensive set, but she wasn’t admiring her manicurist’s handiwork. Rosa Cortanza was either thinking how far she’d come, or trying hard to remember way far back. She gave her head a little jerk, one of those very nifty gestures that street kids seemed to learn before they can walk. She wondered where Rosa had picked it up.  Not living at Fritz Rayburn’s house as the maid’s kid.

“I was born here, in the U.S. My parents were wetbacks. I have a brother in Mexico somewhere. He went back home one Christmas before we started living at the Rayburn place. He couldn’t get back into this country. My mom always meant to send money to get him but it never worked out. There was a sister after me. She died when she was little. Needed a heart or something. She died and then a little while later my brother went back to Mexico.  My mother starts getting weird.  She figures she’s a failure because I was the only one left. You know all that shit about children being blessings from God. My mom really believed it. She figured she was cursed because she couldn’t take care of her blessings. So that woman loved me to death. Like if she couldn’t take care of me it meant that God was pissed at her and she’d go to hell.”

“That’s a lot to lay on a kid,” Archer muttered.

“Tell me,” Rosa laughed. “When my dad left for a better piece of ass I was really in for a treat. You’d think I’d been the Virgin birth. God was telling my mother that she had one more chance to get into heaven. Hey, either of you smoke?”

Archer and Josie shook their heads. Rosa shrugged. She was used to not getting what she asked for.

“It’s okay. So, anyway, my mom couldn’t keep the apartment without my dad’s paycheck. She was cleaning houses. Forty bucks a pop. I used to think we were rich because she kept all that cash in a little box. I didn’t know that’s all we had. Most of it was ones and fives so it just looked like a lot of bucks.” Her nails clicked against the chair back.  “Hey, doesn’t matter. Anyway, somehow she finds out about the job at the Rayburn place. It was a live-in gig. No more rent.  I’d get to go to the Palisades’ schools. God had dropped a helluva plum in her lap.  She spent all night on her knees giving thanks when she got that job.”

The door rattled.  Two men in work clothes were hungry. Rosa turned around to look, but ignored them. When they wouldn’t give up she yelled at them in Spanish in a tone that didn’t sound like she was too concerned about losing their business.

“Was Rayburn living in the house fulltime?” Archer wanted to know.

“The old judge? Well, I guess he wasn’t so old, but he seemed that way to me. Old and kindly.” Rosa chuckled wryly. “But what did I know? I was a kid. Anyway, yeah, it was the old man and the son living there.”

“And life wasn’t so good?” Josie asked.

“For a while it was. I went to school and I came home on the bus. It was a hike back to the house because the bus didn’t go on that street. Palisades didn’t like their streets mucked up with buses. So that brings us to the good stuff. The old man kind of came and went. He was traveling a lot.”

Rosa’s chin fell onto her crossed arms. There was a tear tattooed next to her right eye. She’d lost at least one homeboy. There were probably a hundred thousand tears tattooed on her soul if she was anything like Hannah.

“It was raining one day when I got off the bus. Rayburn pulls into the neighborhood at the same time. I don’t know if it was planned or if it was just fate. You know. Whatever, he was there. He picked me up and took me home. Man, he was something. Big car. Big house. A judge. I was safe in Rayburn’s house. Nobody messed with me.” Rosa snorted a laugh. “What an idiot I was.

“The guy was sick. It started out with little stuff. You know. A pinch. A push. I had a splinter. He used a pocketknife to get it out.  But it was the rainy day when I knew I was in big trouble. He picked me up when I was half way back to the house. I was all wet. Rayburn took me inside. Took me up to his private bathroom and dried me off. Told me he wanted to help out my mom because she worked so hard.  We would surprise her and get me all cleaned up.

“Rayburn got a towel. He dried me off. My shoulders. My legs. Nothing weird about it. Then he got another towel and he started drying my hair. You know how you do?” Rosa lifted her chin and checked out her audience to make sure they were attentive. She put her hands up and pantomimed. “He threw the towel over my head and started to rub, but it was really hard.  I guess I hollered or pulled away or something. He stopped. He kept the towel over my head for a minute then dragged it real slow off of me. I looked up and could see him in the mirror. I’ll never forget the way he looked at me.”

Rosa’s expression changed. Her features snapped tight, muscle-by-muscle, like shutters in a house closing against a big wind.

“He was thinking real hard, like he was looking for something he couldn’t find.  You know how something changes and you can’t put your finger on it? That’s what happened to him. He sort of melted.  I don’t know how to explain it. His eyes weren’t nice anymore. They were dead. His face kind of lost all its muscles. His skin was hanging off his cheekbones.  It was like some kind of horror movie. There was something wrong.”

Rosa lapsed into silence. It lasted just long enough for her to be in that room again, looking up at Fritz Rayburn with her big, dark, innocent eyes. When she started again Rosa talked slow, her voice was sad.

“So, anyway, he’s mad. He tells me he didn’t hurt me. So I figure I’m an ungrateful little slut and better get out because I don’t know how to take a favor nicely. But he grabs my arm when I try to leave. Rayburn says you have to finish what you start. You always have to do that. So I figure, okay. I mean, who am I to say no to him? I’m standing there in this big marble bathroom.  I’m in all these mirrors and he’s in all these mirrors. I look like a rat and he’s dressed in a really nice gray suit and a shiny blue tie. His shirt was really white. My mother ironed those shirts. She starched the heck out of them and they could stand up by themselves when she was done. He looked perfect and I looked like what I was – a piece of shit.”

Rosa breathed deep. She looked at Archer then spoke to Josie.

“So I’m looking at him in the mirror.  He walks around me, standing kind of in front of me but facing the mirror. I’m like this little soldier standing really straight with my arms down by my sides. I remember shaking but thinking I better not let him see that I’m shaking or he’ll get mad.  He picks up the blow dryer and holds it near him. I remember thinking it looked like he was loading a gun. He held it down at his middle and checked it out, looked at the settings. Finally he turns around and points the thing at me. Not at my hair but at my face. He doesn’t turn it on, just points it at me then he walks real slow until he’s standing right behind me. The thing was always pointing at my head like he was holding me hostage.

“He looks at us in the mirror. He put one hand on the side of my head, the hair dryer is pointing at the other side of my head.  He pushes my hair to the side so that my neck is bare. It was cold there because my wet hair had been all stuck against my skin.

“Rayburn puts the blow dryer in his other hand so the cord is around my neck.” Rosa’s hands were going through the motions. “I put my hands up, you know, to push the cord over my head. He told me to leave it. He said it real quiet, just like he’s telling me to go back to sleep. So I didn’t touch the cord even though I could feel it pulling against my throat. I was shaking, man.  Nothing bad had ever happened to me before, but I knew something bad was happening right then.”

Rosa smiled wryly as if having some sick appreciation for the moment now that she could look back on it.

“But he was so smooth. It was so slow.  Rayburn turned on the dryer. He turned it on hot.  First he put it so that my hair blew out around my face. He ran his fingers through it. His fingers got caught in the tangles.  He yanked through them and tears were coming to my eyes because it hurt so much.  Once I could see that a whole bunch of hair came out when he pulled.  I think he could feel me shaking because the side of his body was touching my back. He smiled a little. Just a little bit.  Then he started drying the hair down here, at the neck. It was getting hot. I moved my head. It hurt so bad. He. . . .”

Rosa put a hand over her mouth.  Then she reached over and pushed her shot glass to the middle of the table. Archer poured. Rosa drank it fast, not bothering with the salt or the lime.

“Shit, I haven’t thought about this for a long time,” she muttered. “So, okay. Rayburn takes his free hand and he holds my head and he puts that damned hair dryer on my neck. Right on it.   Man, I could smell my skin burning and then I screamed. That bastard kept it on me like a second more and then he takes it away. It burned me bad. I’m telling you, it was like a hot iron”

Rosa lifted the back of her hair and turned so that Archer and Josie could see the raised white scar just behind her ear.

“That bastard branded me.”

They sat in silence. Archer and Josie watching; Rosa with her head down, her lashes lowered. Finally she looked at them again, tears in her eyes. She wiped them hard, ashamed they were there.

“Then?” Josie asked.

“Then he was normal again. He told me that the burn looked bad. He knew I wouldn’t want to bother my mother so I should stop crying. Then he said didn’t I feel better now that I was all dry, and didn’t I love the rain.”

“And that was it?” Josie pushed, wanting every damning detail.

“No. He gave me a tube of something. Told me it would help with the pain where I accidentally got burned. Man, that was the weirdest part, you know. To do something like that and then pretend like it was an accident. I’ll never forget it. Never.”

The afternoon came and went, the dark descending early now. Rosa got up a couple of times. She turned on the lights including the Coors sign hanging near the picture of the Virgin Mary. She told her stories as she put the frijoles over a low flame. Josie helped set out the silverware for the customers Rosa said would come after they got off work in the factories, and the airport, and made their way home to tiny houses and dilapidated apartments.

Rosa talked about a reign of terror that lasted until she was fourteen.