Dominicana, page 12
You’re so generous and good in the heart, Ana.
My eyes water. Not even my mother ever says such kind things. I realize then that one day, I’ll be Marisela’s age, and my daughter will be the age I am now. What fortune to have Marisela in my life, in my kitchen, filling the emptiness in my heart and in the apartment. My tongue is tied and I fear sounding idiotic. Instead I do something I’ve never done before, even with my own mother. I kneel on the cold linoleum floor, dig my head into Marisela’s lap, and embrace her. For the first time, in a long time, I’ve found a true friend.
After I killed Pigeon Betty the rest stop visiting. They’re not stupid. Now I can no longer count on them to deliver secret messages to Teresa, who never makes the trip to call me. Now she must get my news from Mamá. When I write Mamá telling her I’m pregnant, I receive an envelope so thin and damp from the humidity, the black ink has bled. Most of it, impossible to read. I press it against my nose to catch a trace of Los Guayacanes.
Dearest Ana,
This pregnancy is gold in the bank. Don’t wait for Juan to settle your papers. It’s not in his best interest. You start on them right away so you can solicit us too. You can’t have a baby without our help. I know Juan is in trouble because they dumped a pile of cement after selling a chunk of our land for construction, but nothing’s happening here. So your father sold three acres and a horse to a woman in New York. She wants to grow cane, just like I’ve been telling your father we should do. But he doesn’t like the cane business. It’s gotten pretty bad here, a real tragedy. Guns are being handed out in parks in the capital to snot heads. So you can only imagine what a mess there is here. Lenny eats but doesn’t grow. And Juanita and Betty just need to find someone to marry them so I don’t need to feed them. Tell Juan to send money. Now he’s obligated because you are carrying that baby. You better believe he will profit from it. Don’t forget about us. No lights are too bright to forget where you come from. Remember. Remember.
With love,
Your mother
On Sundays the Ruiz brothers gather. This Sunday we will visit Hector, all the way in Tarrytown, to discuss the possible invasion of Americans in Dominican Republic. Finally I get to meet Yrene, Hector’s wife, who’s always left at home with the baby. It’s also nice to have César back after his short disappearance. What woman’s bed was he keeping warm this time?
Even if Juan can drive, César drives the car.
He prefers to be driven, César says, like a big man.
Juan laughs it off but César is right, Juan does walk about with an air of being better than his other brothers. Because he’s lighter skinned. Because he has straight hair. And taller too, by comparison.
César’s dark skinned, with tight-curled hair and a flatter nose. Unlike Juan, who cares very much what everyone thinks, César doesn’t seem to care. His eyes are filled with trouble and fun. No matter what he wears, it all seems put-together. And he acts as if the whole world should take care of him. When César turned five, both of his parents died, one after the other, and he was too young to remember them. His three older brothers basically raised him.
Hector and Yrene moved into a house—not an apartment—in Tarrytown. Their home isn’t piled up high like ours. They live on their own earth, with their own plants, in their own yard. They have one boy. Yrene isn’t Dominican.
I don’t trust Puerto Rican women, says Juan. They might as well be American—cold and only out for themselves.
He says it in a wounded way, clearly tied to some personal experience with Caridad.
Juan turns on the radio. I sit in the backseat like a child. But it’s better so that his heavy hand doesn’t rest on my thigh. His eyebrows pull into a V. The radio broadcasts the Mets vs. Giants game in San Francisco. Pitching for the Giants is Juan Marichal, who Juan bets big money on.
One day Dominicans will take over baseball, Juan says. Even if Marichal is one of a handful of Dominicans in the major leagues and doesn’t get the attention he deserves, when he lifts his leg and sneaks his killer pitch nobody can deny that the white boys have nothing on him.
The drive goes fast, not even an hour. But Washington Heights and Tarrytown can’t be more different. In Tarrytown there are birds chirping, dogs barking, the faint laughter of children playing in the backyards. Front yards with white fences and flags waving hello. Flowers in terra-cotta pots.
Hector waits outside for us on a plastic chair on his porch, chain-smoking cigarettes. A pile of stubs on an ashtray on the floor. His hairline receded, his freckled forehead pronounced. He isn’t the handsomest of brothers, but the peppered day-old beard and the softness in his eyes make it clear he is harmless, a good man.
My brothers, he calls out, even before César parks the car in his driveway.
Hector grabs both my shoulders, takes a good look at me, and pats me hard on my back. Then he pushes me away to grab Juan’s neck and pull him into his house, César close behind them. They are like a centipede, one organism, lots of arms and legs.
Hector makes us enter from the backyard. The ground, all cement. A rusted wire fence marks his land. Their large short-haired dog is tied to a post and barks incessantly at Juan, who hides behind me.
Sit, Hector commands. High five! Soon the dog sits and gives Hector its paw.
I must’ve been smiling, because Hector winks at Juan and then asks me, You want to try?
Stay away, Ana, Juan says, as if I’m the one with fear.
I crouch down and let the dog smell my hand. Hi fi, I say, in my strongest voice.
The dog lifts his paw into mine. His soft fur warms my cold hands.
That’s enough! Juan says, terrified.
Calm down, brother, César says.
We look back at each other, tickled. Juan’s scared of a sweet dog. Juan, a real city man.
Let’s go inside, Hector says.
Once inside, Juan relaxes. The living room is full of brown. We sink into the chocolaty-brown sofa, with tan cushions so soft, the coils of the mattress underneath poke at our bottoms. The floors are covered in a pale beige rug. Toys scattered all about. No one has cleaned the rug in months. Crusted food snagged here, dried soil there. The small television, full of fingerprints. A loud banging of pots draws me toward the kitchen.
I stand in the nearby hallway waiting for Yrene to greet me. The faucet’s on. The radio’s on. She pokes her head out and startles me.
What doing, in dark? she says, in mangled Spanish. Her voice is strange, as if she doesn’t know all the words.
I’m Ana, Juan’s wife.
She looks me up and down and sucks her teeth. I stare back with a smile, showing all my teeth as if I can break her. She has just pulled rollers from her hair; large round curls bounce around on the top of her head. A barrette holds it in a twist the same way Teresa does her hair. I miss Teresa so much it hurts. Yrene’s much darker than Teresa but with high cheekbones, a pinched nose. The bones around her neck poke out. Teresa’s round and soft everywhere. Yrene’s eyebrows are plucked in a thin line, a perfect arch as if she spent hours on her face and her hair. But not a stitch of makeup. She’s wearing a housedress and flip-flops. I am overdressed in my church clothes. I will have to work hard to earn her favor.
I creep into the kitchen. She hands me a plátano and a knife. Her fingernails are cut short and square like a man’s. She moves about in a way that makes it difficult for me to look at her face.
Okay, Ana, help, she says.
I peel back the skin of the plátano and slice it diagonally one inch thick.
She heats oil on the stove and purses her full lips, lifting her chin, signaling for me to keep helping. The men are hungry, her son napping. Yrene doesn’t make small talk. I’m glad. She’s older than me, maybe thirty. Her body, pear shaped. Voluptuous motherly hips.
In the kitchen she moves about like an octopus, swatting flies, slicing, cutting, washing. The kitchen is cluttered and small, everything piled on shelves—the dishes, the pots, the baby food jars, bottles. I start to wash the dishes. Carefully, not using too much soap, making sure water doesn’t stray from the sink. Yrene’s nervousness makes me nervous, as if I’m doing something wrong. I drop a dish. It slips and shatters by my feet.
Yrene breathes loudly, exasperated.
I quickly go to pick up the pieces. Six, maybe seven pieces.
I’m so sorry.
Because the floor needs a good sweeping and mopping, I take the broom from inside a small closet not wider than my hand, and sweep the entire kitchen.
Where’s your mop? I ask, ready to help her. She obviously needs help.
Away! Go! Her voice strains. Her eyes fill. Her barrette has come loose, her hair in disarray.
Now, baby wake, she scolds, and leaves me in the kitchen. All the burners are on. I quickly fry the plátanos and stir the rice. All the food looks pretty done. I turn off the burners.
I peek into the living room. The men drink whiskey. Hector calls out for Yrene in English.
You speak English? I ask Hector.
All the men laugh.
What’s there to laugh about?
Hector had to learn the hard way, César says, he married a gringa.
The brothers all look at each other as if the secret between them is too big to tell.
To us Yrene is without a mother tongue. Her father had moved from Puerto Rico to fight in World War II. She is one-hundred-percent Americana, something I will never be. How lucky she speaks English so well. How strange for her to look like us but be one of them.
Come here, Juan says, and pats the space next to him on the sofa.
I sit next to him and he rubs my head, smoothing my hair down.
Ana’s gonna make a beautiful mother, he says. She really knows how to take care of me.
You’re a lucky man, Hector says, already drunk in the eyes.
César lifts his beer, winks at me, and says, Let’s make a cheer for Juan.
I’m going to be a father! Juan says.
Hector leaps to his feet.
Yrene, get some glasses. We have so much to celebrate.
Let it be a boy! Juan salutes.
With brains, Hector adds, pouring rum and Coke in everyone’s glass once Yrene arrives with a tray.
She cuts her eyes at Hector when he says they should try again, as if their thirteen-month-old son doesn’t count. They had lost their first child a few days before he was born, and their second son was born retarded.
And let’s hope the kid gets his mother’s face, says César. Yrene smiles then frowns when he walks over to clink my glass and plops himself in the chair next to me. His thigh touches and lingers on my thigh in an act of solidarity.
They all look over as if waiting for me to smile.
I extend my arm to turn on the radio. The Giants lost three to four.
Son of a bitch! Juan says, then comes over and grabs my shoulder and rubs my head some more. I slip from under Juan and excuse myself. I need fresh air, so I exit to the front of the house.
I sit on the plastic chair. Wrap my coat tighter around me. The cold is trapped inside my bones. This is all so different from Los Guayacanes. Each house with uniform lawns. No animals. Just pigeons and squirrels. No smells of fruit or flowers. The cottony clouds dot the blue sky. To look at the bright sun, you’d think it’s hot like back home. Why are the clouds so dotted here? What makes them that way? The cold air? Are Mamá, Papá, Lenny, Betty, Juanita, and Yohnny outside now, looking at the same sky, the same sun?
From the moment I greet Marisela at the door I can tell she bears bad news. Despite the cheeriness of her bright pink knitted pants and matching sweater, her face betrays her.
Please sit, Marisela says almost immediately, and holds both of my hands on her lap. I imagine the worst: She’s dying. Her sister’s dying. Her husband has left her.
I’m in big trouble, she says.
What?
My husband came back from D.R. last night, and he noticed I’m not wearing my wedding ring.
I don’t know exactly what she’s about to ask, but I sense it.
Are you hungry? I say, I made sancocho.
On the days Marisela is due to make payments on her loan I always cook a full meal. Rationing the ingredients just so. Faithfully eating the Chef Boyardee when I am alone to stretch our groceries.
I go to the kitchen; Marisela follows.
He thinks I took it off to be with another man, she says, watching me pour a bag of beans into a bowl. Anita, can you believe that? As if with all the things I have to do, I would have time for that.
I tell her how I can’t even tell Juan a man was nice to me without him getting upset.
Ay, Anita, my sister, my friend. I knew you’d understand.
I carry the bowl with me to the table, for protection, for assurance, and sift through the beans looking for pebbles.
Marisela places her hand over the bowl and says, Listen to me, Anita.
She makes me face her. For the first time, I notice the gray in Marisela’s hair, the two small lines between her eyebrows—a number 11. Her body slumps toward me, pleading.
Women don’t beg, I remind Marisela, hoping to lighten the heavy mood.
Look, kid, jokes aside. I need my ring back.
Now it’s you who’s joking, Maris—
Anita, listen! I promise to pay back the money the same way as I always have. Juan doesn’t need my ring. He has my word. You have my word.
No, Juan won’t allow it.
He doesn’t have to know.
But Marisela, I can’t get into Juan’s things. I don’t even know where to look.
She may look hurt, but I’m not about to give a dog a leash made out of sausage links. Juan drilled me more than once on the combination of our safe. He gave me detailed directions on how to handle his papers if he were to die. Marisela’s ring is in the safe inside a small yellow envelope. But how can Marisela ask this of me?
Please, Ana. I’m always on time with payments. I won’t disappoint you. I promise.
Marisela, you’re asking for the impossible.
Haven’t I been a good friend to you? Did I tell Juan about the money you made from the souvenirs? Did I tell him about your pregnancy?
It’s my neck on the line.
She grabs my wrist.
Girl, if I don’t have the ring on my finger when my husband comes home tonight I’ll be as dead as all those boys in Vietnam. He thinks it’s at the jeweler. He didn’t even want my sister to come. I told him I had saved all that money by doing my own nails and hair.
I recognize the fear in her eyes. Maybe Marisela’s husband hits her too. She’s never said as much—but neither have I. When she noticed the redness on my neck weeks ago, I told her it was a rash. If we’re such friends, why don’t we both just tell the truth?
Please, Ana, if my husband finds out about this, he’ll never forgive me. He and Juan already have a complicated relationship.
Complicated how?
Marisela’s face pales. She bites her bottom lip and lowers her eyes in contemplation.
Look, Anita, there are things you can’t understand. Better you don’t even think about. You’re so innocent. Ay Anita, if I could be your age and start over!
Her head bends onto my sleeve. Ay, she cries. I scratch her arms and back, feeling the contours of her body, her tears dampening my blouse.
I’ll get that ring for you, I say without thinking.
I leave Marisela sniffling alone in the living room with a roll of toilet paper. The safe, the size of two shoeboxes, is hidden inside the closet, behind the rack of clothing. The combination is the date his mother died. I take a deep breath, almost regretting my decision. Even with my head inside the closet, I can hear the sobs out in the living room. They are getting louder. Don’t exaggerate, is what Mamá would say because she doesn’t trust anyone. Especially not family. But I don’t want to be like Mamá. Besides, Juan’ll never know—as long as Marisela continues to pay every week.
I return to the living room and put the ring on her finger.
I missed you, Marisela says, admiring it. On her hand, the ring comes to life. The small diamond appears brighter, bigger. She embraces me.
Thank you! Thank you!
Will you stay for lunch?
Ay no, I can’t today.
It’ll only take me a minute to prepare, I say.
My sister’s home alone.
Sadness bathes me. I had even added fresh tomatoes to the rice and grated carrots into it for color.
You know how it is when we first arrive. Everything’s so confusing. But next week, I promise I’ll come. I’ll even bring my sister. You’ll love her. She’s a few years older than you are.
Marisela embraces me good-bye. She looks back as if forgetting something. I try not to think about it. Next week we’ll have lunch. I’ll wear my new dress, coat, shoes, and purse Juan bought at El Basement. Maybe Marisela and I will finally take a walk in the park together.
Yesterday Juan arrived from work drunk. He fell onto our bed without talking. He waved me away. Asleep before I could ask him if he wanted something to eat, before I could peel off his socks. When he’s drunk, he sometimes rolls over onto me, his dead weight suffocating me. Does he know how heavy he is? How the stench of a day’s work at the raceway is buried deep inside his skin, his hair? How my stomach turns when he comes near me with his work-drink smells?
I let him sleep late because for once he has a day off. I’m also relieved he’s too tired to ask about Marisela’s visit.
I keep myself busy organizing the glasses in the cupboard until he calls me from the bedroom. I have become skilled at telling his voices apart.
Ana!
My mind races. Marisela’s missing ring. The money I’m saving to send to Mamá. A bad day at work. Some trouble in Dominican Republic. A fight with Caridad or a fight with one of his brothers.
Ana! His voice grows louder.
It’s a bad day at work. His voice as if he has hair caught in his throat.
I tuck my knees to my chin, my feet flat on the cushions. I hug my legs and rock my body as if I’m on a rocking chair. I wait. Sometimes Juan calls me and falls back to sleep.
