More Than Allies (16 page)

She heard Polly go into the room where Jay was, directly across the hall. She left the door open.

Jay let out a cry which was then muffled. Maggie knew he had thrown his face into his grandmother's lap, which was just what she would have liked to do.

“Now, you're not hurt,” she heard Polly say. She couldn't hear Jay's low voice in reply.

“I know it was an accident,” Polly said. “A
didn't-mean-to
accident. But not an
out-of-the-blue
accident. Not an
entirely-unasked-for
accident.”

Jay's protest was short and whining.

“Listen, Jay-Jay, you're okay, you didn't get hurt, that's the main thing. But you have to think about what you're doing. Not what happened today, I don't mean that. You three boys cooked up an adventure and it got out of hand. I mean all this crying and pouting and acting mean to your mother. You have to act nicer. Your mother needs for you to be more grown-up. You need to treat her better. You need to help me take care of her.”

Maggie pressed the towel against her mouth to keep from crying out. She got up, shut the door, and sat down on the side of the tub.
You have to help me take care of your mother
. She could have died of shame. Jay is
nine years old
, she thought. He needs more than a loss group. He needs a mother who's stopped being a baby. He needs parents who are all grown-up.

She washed her face and brushed her hair, then stepped across the hall to look in on him. He was asleep, or was pretending to be. He looked especially young, curled up. She put her palm on his forehead. His eyelids jumped.

She sat down beside him. “Jay-Jay, listen to me. I'm your mother. You don't have to take care of me. You don't have to worry about me at all.
I'll
take care of
you
, do you hear? Me and your daddy. We'll take care of you. Don't worry. Don't think about anything. I'm going to make it better. Mo and I are going to take care of you. Not because you did something bad, or because you're angry. Because we love you, and we love Stevie, and we love each other.”

He still didn't move or open his eyes. Maybe he was asleep after all. If so, he must have been dreaming, to twitch so.

She went into the kitchen. Stevie had crawled up on the couch with a teddy bear and fallen asleep, her rump in the air. Polly was at the table, drinking a glass of apple juice. She looked terribly tired. “Sit down, honey,” she said. “Want some juice?”

“He didn't do anything awful,” Maggie said.

“Of course he didn't. He's a little boy. They like to scare them, though. I think they think of it as inoculation.”

“It wasn't like he hurt someone or stole something.”

“I could tell you stories about Mo,” Polly said.

“We need to talk about Mo,” Maggie said.

Polly nodded.

“I miss him.”

“I know. I miss him too. But a mother, well, a mother is supposed to. It's okay. You, though, the children—”

“I know. I'm ashamed of what I've put you through.”

“Nothing. You've done nothing. You've done what you could.”

“I've been such a baby.” She couldn't help it, the damned tears started again. “You are—like—” It was hard to say. “Polly, you know you are my mother.”

“I'm not her, Maggie. But I love you. And I'll love you when you go back to my son. I'll love you when you make your own family.”

“Do you think I can?”

Polly took a moment to answer. “There were times when I didn't think I loved Morris anymore. In the middle years. I didn't understand that there are—these spaces—in a marriage. It scared me, until I'd gone through them and learned I could. But these times, when I didn't know about him? About my husband? I still loved the unit. The family. I always loved the family.”

“I wouldn't want to move all the way to Texas because it's too hard to be a single mother. Lots of women do it. I could, too.”

“You could. And would you
not
go to him, just to prove you could? Would that be a reason?”

Jay came stumbling in, rubbing his eyes. “I'm hungry,” he said.

Maggie smiled at him. “I thought you had hot dogs.”

It took Jay a moment to assess this. He saw his mother's smile, though. “They burned,” he said.

Maggie got up. “Why don't I take you over for a taco? And then we'll go to the store. I'll make dinner.” She bent and kissed Polly on the cheek. “You ought to grab a nap while you can.”

“Ahh, what an idea,” Polly said. She headed for the couch. “Stevie won't mind.” She scooted the baby over and stretched out.

In the town where I grew up there was a low bridge across the river. I didn't live there after I was twelve, but I went back once, when I was fourteen. I was with a group of kids from the church, my foster parents' church, and we had been swimming along the bank. The water was quiet there, that whole stretch. From where we were we could see the old school where I would have gone to junior high if I'd stayed
.

It must have been five, five-thirty in the evening, which, in late summer, was still hot and bright. I was bored with the swimming, with the group. They had started singing “contemporary Christian songs,” which they learned at church. The church had a charismatic minister who lifted weights and wore skin-tight jersey shirts to show the results. He brought in performers every month or so, pretty people who sang about Jesus and raised their arms and smiled and showed huge white teeth. They were very tedious. I used to get through the services, and the performances, by imagining myself doing something shocking, like taking off my clothes and running down the aisles, or hunkering down and peeing for Jesus
.

I didn't feel anything for Jesus, and I didn't like to sing. I didn't like my foster family. I was angry at my mother
.

I left the group and walked up onto the school grounds for a while, and then back onto the bridge above where they were gathered. I was facing the sun, and I couldn't really see them, they were washed out in the light. The water and the banks and the river stretching out past where it could be seen
—
all these things looked like something done in watercolor. It was pretty. I stopped thinking or feeling for a few moments; I just looked at the color and light
.

There was a beautiful old sycamore high on the bank above where the kids were gathered. At the top it seemed to shimmer. Once I looked at it, I couldn't seem to look away. I stopped hearing the laughter and singing below; I didn't even hear the occasional car passing behind me on the bridge. It was like I had moved over, across that space, onto the tree itself, and I was seeing something I had never seen before, only it had no form, it was, simply, light
.

Not long after, I read a book about angels. I couldn't stop thinking that the light I had seen that day, high on the tree above the river, had had a shape after all, had been something real and not-real and important and special. It was nothing, I know, a play of light, but it helped to think of it as something given to me, apart from the life I was living. I thought of it as a gift from my mother. I can't tell you why; it didn't make sense to me, even then, but it made me feel better. It made me stop being angry. It gave me a new way to feel
.

“You want to talk Spanish? How about loco? Try estúpido!” Dulce spoke furiously as she dabbed at her son's face. He was going to have a black eye, and the skin had been broken open on his chin. She ran into the bathroom, threw open the medicine cabinet, and tossed bottles and boxes into the sink. She found Merthiolate and Band-Aids and went back to doctor him.

“Ow!” he protested.

“You'll think ow,” she said. “You'll wish ow.”

“Aw ma, what'd we do that was so bad?”

“What you did was you called attention to yourself, you stupid boy. I heard him. ‘The little Mexican kid,' he called you. ‘The big Mexican kid,' he called Hilario.”

“So?”

“So that's how he thought of you. How he remembers you. You think if you were a few years older he'd have sent you home? Maybe not even if it'd been just me and not Maggie, not an Anglo with a car and another kid. If this'd been L.A., you bet you'd be in detention. Or shot.”

“It's not L.A. Lupine is sure not L.A.”

“No? Well, isn't Lupine where—you're the one brought this up last night—where a ‘little Mexican kid' can get harassed for riding his own goddamned bicycle?”

“I'm sorry.” She thought maybe he was. Sorry she was mad at him, anyway.

She put her hands on the sides of his face and kissed one cheek, then the other. She kissed his forehead.

“
Ma.
”

She sat down. “You learn something from this, Gus. You don't call attention to yourself.”

“Okay.”

“And that's not the only risk you took. Going downhill in a car you can't control? You don't know about a car. You didn't know what would happen.”

“It was just a big open field, Mama, except for the shed.”

“Was it Hilario's idea?”

“No. He said we didn't need to be in it. He just wanted to see it roll. He said we could just watch, see where it would stop. But Hilario's lived in five states and Mexico, Mama. He's had all kinds of adventures. I thought, here's mine. Like somebody on a track. And it was fun. Even the crash was fun.”

“Ohhh,” she groaned. “Adventure.” She pushed his hair back off his forehead. “Change your shirt. We're going to go see Hilario. And Lupe. You have to see what your adventure means to them.”

Lupe was sobbing. When she saw Dulce come in the door, she wailed. She cried to the Virgin, she cried for her own mother, she cried for Cipriano, who was so far away he didn't even know.

Hilario sat in the corner of their saggy little sofa, looking half buried in it, and sullen. Gus held a hand up in greeting. Hilario gave the slightest nod. There seemed to be children everywhere, the baby crawling, the middle two running around a little crazy. Everyone was upset.

“Shhh. Calm yourself,” Dulce said. She took Lupe to the table and they sat down. She held her hands. The baby crawled over.

“What will they do to my boy?” Lupe wept. She picked up the child and held her to her chest.

“They won't do anything. He didn't commit a crime. It's not that. It's that they'll want to see you. They'll come around.”

Lupe stopped crying. “They'll want to see papers.” The baby settled down on her lap.

“Yes, when they see you don't speak English. When they see—well, when they see all of you.”

“Oh, my babies,” Lupe said.

“Can you get hold of Cipriano? Is there a way to call him?”

“Sí. I can call his brother, and he goes to him, he can take a message.”

“You can't stay.”

Lupe bit her lip.

“They'll deport you.”

“Sí.”

“With your babies.”

“Oh Hilario!” Lupe cried.

“I told them he's my nephew. I said his parents would be gone all weekend. They'll come around on Monday. I work. It'll be afternoon. I'll tell them things.”

Lupe's hands came up, she covered her face. “Oh, oh,” she wept. The baby began crying, too.

“Is there somewhere you can go? Until Cipriano comes?”

Lupe's hands came down. “My sister, she is in Hemet, California, it's a long way.”

“How soon could you be ready? Could you be ready tomorrow?”

Dulce looked around the little trailer. They couldn't carry everything, but they could get out. Lupe was bereft. “My little house,” she said.

“They will come around. They will want papers. They will send you to Mexico.” Dulce paused. “Maybe that would be good. They send you home?”

Lupe pointed to Hilario. “My boy is learning English well. He is good in the math in school.”

“Then you must go.”

Lupe shook her head. “But I have no money.”

Dulce reached into her pocket. She held up some folded bills. “I'll ask Maggie to drive me to get you tickets, all of you. I think this will get you to Hemet. Does your sister have a phone?”

“For certain she has a phone. She is a teacher's aide in a school,” Lupe said proudly.

“Then you must go and call her. At the station, there's a pay phone. I would take you to my house, but we are walking. My car—” she shrugged, then held her arms out for the baby.

That night, Maggie called. An exhausted Gus had already gone to bed. Dulce had heard him crying, then he fell asleep.

After she hung up, she went over and knelt down by him.

“Gus, dear Gus, wake up.”

He moaned.

“Turn over, I have something to tell you.”

He pulled himself up. “Is something else wrong?”

She thought: He's crying about Hilario.

“No, not wrong.” She took his hands. “That was Maggie. Jay's father is going to come for him, the day after school is out. They have offered to take you back with them. To your father. They have offered you a ride to Texas.”

Her heart went out to him. “Oh Mama!” he said, and then his face fell. “And you'll be in Oregon.”

“Oh no,” she said. She took him in her arms. She rubbed her face against his hair. “I will not send you to Texas alone. I'm not living here without my son.”

Dulce says: I dream of a girl with hair as black as currants. She reads to me from her dream-book
.

The girl is in a house. The house, once beautiful, is old and decaying. It is two stories, made of stones, with many rooms. The girl's mother moves through the rooms, closing the door and windows, except the kitchen, downstairs, and, upstairs, a bedroom with a tiny balcony
.

The girl lies on a bed at dawn, her body covered by a finely woven white cotton blanket. Her long black hair spills across the pillow and sheet and onto the floor beside her
.