Delia’s Crossing (5 page)

Of course, I had seen stately, elegant-looking women in magazines but never one in person as regal in appearance as
mi tía
Isabela. She was taller than my mother, full-figured in a form-fitted, sequin-covered dress the color of alligator. The V-neck collar dipped well down into her cleavage. Her ebony hair looked too rich and bright to be natural. Everything about her was somehow emphasized. It was as if she walked about under a magnifying glass that highlighted her eyes, her lips, her body, and her complexion. Nothing was out of place. There wasn’t a crease or a blemish. She was like one of her statues come to life. I could only gape in wonder, and as I focused in on her, she appeared to grow taller.

Of course, I was desperately searching for more resemblances to my mother, but except for the curve of her chin, which was as smooth as my mother’s, the color of her eyes, and a similar diminutive nose, I saw nothing to convince anyone beyond a doubt that they were sisters.

The gentleman beside her wore a gray sports jacket and slacks with what looked like tennis shoes. All of his facial features were a bit too large, starting with his protruding nose and thick lips. His chin was sharply rounded, with a slight cleft, and when he smiled, he revealed big teeth as well. Not quite my aunt’s height, he was slight of build. I saw that he had long, thin fingers that looked more like feminine than masculine hands. Those hands never did any hard labor, I quickly thought. They never opened a tightly closed jar. It was how my father would have characterized them.

“Look at how she’s gaping at us. Tell her to sit up straight,” my aunt said. “Especially when she is in my presence.”

“
Siéntese derecho, señorita joven, especialmente en la presencia de su tía,
” the gentleman told me like an obedient translator.

Why did my aunt need him to translate, and why was she speaking to me now only in English? She must know I had a very limited understanding of the language, I thought. This was no time to put on airs. Besides, she didn’t have to do anything more to impress me.

I sat up as straight as I could. She beckoned for me to stand, and I did. Then she walked around me, looking me over. Suddenly, she put her hands under my breasts and lifted them.

“Why aren’t you wearing a bra?” she asked. I knew what she meant.

“No lo tengo,”
I told her, and she made a face.

“See how they live, John.”

“Your daughter doesn’t wear a bra most of the time,” he told her, and she spun on him. I picked up a word or two, and from the smirk on his face, I thought he was referring to my cousin.

“She does when it’s proper to do so, John. It would have been proper for her family to have her wear a bra the first time she met me.”

“But her parents were killed,” he said.

I understood that he was defending me. Why was she so angry?

“Her grandmother should have had the…oh, what the hell am I talking about? They don’t know anything about social etiquette back there. Tell her I’m having a bra sent to her room, and I want her wearing it all the time.”

He did so, still smiling at me. I thought it was time to tell her or ask her to speak to me in Spanish.

“I don’t know little English,” I said. “Please. Talk
español.
”

“How idiotic she sounds. You want me to speak
español
?” she asked sweetly.

I nodded.

Without any warning, she brought her hand up and slapped me sharply across the face. The blow spun me around, and I had to catch myself on the arm of the sofa.

“Never! Never tell me what to do!” she shouted. “Tell her, John.”

He spoke quickly in Spanish, looking as terrified as I was. My eyes filled with tears, but I trapped them quickly. I would not cry. I held my palm against my cheek. It still stung.

“Sit down!” she shouted, pointing to the chair, and I did so. She strutted about a moment with her arms folded under her breasts and then began dictating to the gentleman, who told me the following.

“My name is Señor Baker. I’ve been Señora Dallas’s daughter’s tutor on and off for years, and now, anticipating your arrival after your family tragedy, she has hired me to tutor you in English. You are permitted to speak Spanish only with the servants and never in front of Señora Dallas and never again to Señora Dallas unless she so permits.

“Furthermore, Mrs. Dallas wants you to forget your Mexican background immediately. Never talk about your family or the…slum village you come from. It is an embarrassment to her to have any reminders of it or of your family. Your cousins don’t speak Spanish very well, so don’t hope for that.

“Eventually, Señora Dallas will make your adoption formal, and you will become a legal American citizen, but until then, you are to earn your bed and board here just like any other servant. Señora Rosario will show you where you sleep and will tell you what your duties are. You are not to wander about the property without permission or go into anyone else’s room without permission. You are to do your work properly and efficiently, and you will be held accountable for anything you break or damage.”

“What about school?” I asked him.

“Until you learn enough English to get by, you will not attend public school here. Those are your aunt’s specific orders. For the time being, until otherwise instructed, you are not to tell anyone that you are Señora Dallas’s niece.”

What?

I looked at her. Of course, she understood everything he was saying in Spanish, but she kept her face unchanged and stared at me.

“
Por qué
?” I asked. I had to know why I couldn’t do that. She was my mother’s sister. We had the same blood.

She muttered something to him that I couldn’t hear.

“Señora Dallas is a woman of high regard in Palm Springs. She is very well respected and admired. She would find it an embarrassment for people here to know that she has such an uneducated, unwashed relative living under her roof.”

“Unwashed?”

“She doesn’t mean you’re dirty. It simply means unsophisticated, uneducated.”

“I’m not uneducated. I go to school,” I said.

“It’s not the same thing. Don’t worry. I’ll be teaching you all about social etiquette. I’m very good at what I do. I’ll have you ready for school in no time, if you listen and do what I tell you to do,” he added, smiling and drawing very close to me.

He’s the one who looks unwashed, I thought. His teeth were yellow, and now that he was close to me, I could see he wasn’t very careful about how he shaved. There were tiny pockets of stubble along his jaw bone. He put his hand on my upper left arm.

“Repeat after me, Delia, in English. Thank you, Mrs. Dallas. I am pleased to be here and grateful for all you are doing for me. Go on.” He winked. “She’ll like that.”

He repeated it, urging me strongly.

I turned to her and said it.

“See how easy that was?”

“Well, John,” my aunt said, relaxing her posture, “if anyone can turn her into something at least tolerable, it’s you, I’m sure.”

“I might need to spend a lot more time with her,” he said, scrutinizing me as if he were going to adopt me and not her. “I’ll let you know when we begin and I see how much we have to do. I have no idea how quickly she can learn.”

“Spend as much time as you want. She has no important appointments at the moment,” she added, and they both laughed. I knew the words
spend
and
time
and
important.
I could figure out that they were making fun of me.

“Dare I say I see some resemblance between you?” Señor Baker asked her, pointing to me and to her.

“No. She looks more like her father than my sister.”

“Your aunt says you look like your father,” he told me. I took it as the first sign of familial warmth, but when I looked at my aunt, she seemed even angrier. I was afraid to say anything or even smile.

I glanced at the front door. The thought crossed my mind that I should pick up my suitcase and walk out now, but how would I get back to Mexico? I had no money, and I didn’t even know the way back. Abuela Anabela would be so disappointed, too, even if I did find my way home.

My aunt saw the look in my face and the direction of my gaze.

“Tell her she can leave anytime she wants and go back to that squalor she calls home,” she told Señor Baker, who translated for me.

I looked directly at her now. I would not speak through him.

“I am here,” I told her in Spanish. “I will do what I must to make you happy, and in the end, you will be proud to have people know me as your niece.”

She nearly smiled and caught herself. “Tell her I didn’t understand a word she said,” she told Señor Baker. He started.

I smiled and looked away, daring to mumble, “
Sí.
Yes, you did.”

She heard me, and it reddened her cheeks and put the fire back into her eyes.

“Mrs. Rosario!” my aunt screamed.

Señora Rosario appeared so quickly that it was obvious she was waiting just outside to be called.

My aunt pointed to my suitcase.

“How could you permit that dirty thing to be brought into the main house?”

“I…she had…”

“Never mind. Take her and that thing to her room, and show her what her duties are. Don’t treat her any better than anyone else, and let me know the moment she fails to do what you say.”

“Yes, Mrs. Dallas.”

“Mr. Baker will be teaching her English whenever her work is completed. Do whatever is necessary to make him comfortable in the library.”

“Yes, Mrs. Dallas.”

“Get her moving. I won’t tolerate another lazy Mexican in my house or on my grounds,” my aunt said, and started to turn away.

I looked at Señor Baker and quickly spoke up in my newest English words.

“Thank you, Mrs. Dallas. I’m pleased to be here and grateful for all you are doing for me,” I said.

She spun around, her eyes wide. I held my gaze. I would not be treated as if I were no better than a
cucaracha,
something to be crushed and swept away. She glanced at Mr. Baker, who dared a short laugh and shrugged.

“She’s got spirit,” he said. “She’s more like you than you think, perhaps.”

She paused and stared at me a moment. I held my gaze on her, my self-pride still firm.

“We’ll see,” she said, and then marched out of the living room, her high heels tapping the travertine floor in a rhythm of rage, rage I neither appreciated nor understood. It was as if my very presence infuriated her. If this was so, why did she send for me? Why did she want me in her home? If she still hated her family so much, why did she want a living reminder of it right under her nose?

Something told me, warned me, however, that I had just seen only the tip of the flame. There was quite a fire burning in her chest, a fire started years ago back in our village. Would I ever understand it?

More important, would it consume me, or would I snuff it out before it could?

“You can get more with honey than with vinegar,” my grandmother used to tell me. “Anger is easy. Kindness is harder but more rewarding.”

I had seen the anger.

Now I wondered, where was the kindness here?

S
eñora Rosario told me to pick up my suitcase and follow her. I was surprised when she took me out a side door and led me to one of the buildings away from the house. I was anticipating going up the beautiful stairway to my room.

“
Adónde vamos,
Señora Rosario?” I asked.

“In this building is a room for you,” she said as we walked toward it. “You will be responsible for cleaning up after yourself and keeping your things in order. You will share a bathroom with Señor Garman, Señora Dallas’s driver. I can tell you now that he is not happy about it. He’s never had to share his bathroom before, so don’t dilly-dally whenever you’re in there, and be sure you pick up after yourself, and never, ever touch any of his things.”

So, that’s why he was so upset, I thought. There were so many bedrooms and so many bathrooms on this property, probably, and he had to share his with me. I wondered if Señora Rosario slept in this building, too, but before I could ask, she told me that she and the other servants lived in their own homes. Señor Garman and I would be the only servants sleeping on the property.

Of course, I never considered that I was being brought here to be another servant. This was my family. Supposedly, I was going to have an aunt for a legal guardian, not an employer. I looked back at the beautiful
hacienda
longingly. I was not to have a grand room to myself after all. There was no way I could think of myself as part of this family now. In fact, I had just been warned that I couldn’t let anyone know I was related to Señora Dallas and her children. She had slapped me only once, but her words were far more stinging anyway. I was sure my ears were redder than my cheek.

At least I no longer had to feel guilty about my parents’ deaths bringing me wonderful new opportunities. I felt more like a starving girl standing outside a restaurant, watching other people gorge themselves on rich and delicious foods. My suffering hadn’t ended. It might only have just begun.

Now that I was closer, I could see that the building where I was to sleep was devoid of any style or character. It looked as if it had been thrown together in a rush, the dull brown stucco smeared quickly over the squared structure. It had a very ordinary front door and a dark, dank-looking, narrow hallway that took us to what would be my room.

I stood there staring in at it. Ironically, I had enjoyed a bigger room with my grandmother back in our humble
casa
in our Mexican village. This room was stark and had only a single window. The floor was charcoal-painted concrete, cracked and pitted, with a rusty drain at the center. It wasn’t meant to be a bedroom, I thought. To the right was a single bed which now had a naked, stained mattress and a pillow without a pillow case. The bed had no sides, no headboard. It had been pushed against the wall. I saw spiderwebs in every corner, and the window looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the day the building had been constructed. There was a strong, stale odor that reminded me of dead fish.

“I’ll show you where your bedding is,” Señora Rosario said. “You make your own bed, of course. There’s a blanket and a pillow case. You should strip it down and wash everything once a week. The room needs a little dusting as well,” she added, gazing about.

A little? I thought. As my grandmother might say, there was so much dirt in here I could plant flowers.

The room had no closet, just an old wood armoire with one door open. I would discover that it wouldn’t close. To the right of that was a small dresser of lighter wood. There was a lamp on the dresser and a naked light fixture at the center of the ceiling dangling on a wire. That was it. This was my new room. Could a Mexican prison be any worse? How surprised and disappointed
mi abuela
Anabela would be if she saw this, I thought. I would never tell her. It would break her heart to hear about it and to hear the things
mi tía
Isabela had said and done to me.

“Follow me,” Señora Rosario said.

She led me farther down the hall to show me the bathroom. It had a tub and a shower with a faded yellow plastic curtain, a sink with a small cabinet above it, and a toilet. The toilet seat was up and had urine stains all over it. The floor was a chipped and cracked pale white linoleum, and the walls looked as if they had never been repainted or, on closer inspection, ever painted.

All of the fixtures were old and rusted, and there was a long rust stain at the bottom of the tub. She opened the cabinet. The four narrow shelves were crowded with Señor Garman’s things. There was no place for anything of mine.

“Um,” Señora Rosario said. “There is no room. You’ll have to bring your things in and out every time you use the bathroom. Sorry.”

She continued down the hallway a few more feet to a closet and showed me my bedding.

“You have no time to start all this now,” she said, “but later, this is where you will come for your things.”

“No time now?”

“No. You need to go directly to Señorita Sophia’s room and start on the bathroom. Señora Dallas so instructed before you arrived.”

“But after all this traveling? I’m not to be given any chance to rest?”

She looked at me as if I had asked the dumbest possible questions, and then she took an apron off a bottom shelf and handed it to me.

“You are to wear this over your clothes always when you are here on the property. There’s another in here so you can wash one and have a spare. Don’t ever let Señora Dallas see you wearing one that’s dirty. You saw how clean the house is kept. She has a thing about seeing any dust or smudges and can get very angry about it. Put it on now,” she ordered.

I did so. It was starch white with a hem that was somewhat frayed. It nearly reached my feet.

“Pull it higher and tighten it around your waist, or you’ll trip over it,” she instructed. “Okay, let’s go.”

I followed her out of the building. She led me through a rear entrance of the main house this time, to familiarize me with the pantry that had all of the cleaning utensils, soaps, rags, and pails. She told me what to take. It was so much I almost dropped some of it as we made our way from the rear of the house to the stairway. I glanced about to see if my aunt was nearby but neither heard nor saw anyone.

“Señorita Sophia and Señor Edward are still at school. They attend a private school,” she told me as we started up the carpeted stairway. She glanced at my feet. “Be sure you never track anything onto these carpets. If you work quickly, you will be finished before Señorita Sophia arrives. She doesn’t like any of the help in her room when she’s there. Her room, her bathroom, her clothes are all now your responsibility.

“However,” she added at the top of the stairway, “that’s not all you will have to do here. You will help serve the meals and clean the kitchen and the bathrooms downstairs. Señora Dallas calls them powder rooms, so if she says that, you should know what she means.”

“Powder?”

“Just remember it,” she snapped. Either she was impatient with me now or with
mi tía
Isabela’s assigning her to supervise me. Before I had even set foot on the property, my aunt’s main employees resented me, I thought.

The upstairs was just as beautiful as below. The floors had thick light blue carpets, and there were big teardrop chandeliers all the way down the hall. The windows were stained glass, and there was more statuary, busts on pedestals, and great pictures in gilded frames.

We paused at a double doorway.

“This is Señorita Sophia’s room. Even though she is not here, knock. We might be mistaken, and she might be here. Sometimes she comes home earlier from school or doesn’t go and we don’t know it. You are never to go in there without first knocking. Understand?”

I nodded.

She knocked and then waited to demonstrate or drive the point home, because she had already told me she was sure my cousin was still at school. Why knock? Did they all think I was that stupid just because I had just arrived from a small Mexican village and they had to demonstrate such a simple thing? How sad that a Mexican would think that of another.

She opened the door.

I was not prepared for such an overwhelmingly grandiose bedroom. At the center was an enormous four-poster bed with a canopy and a headboard that had two great butterflies facing each other. Their eyes were filled with emeralds or stones closely resembling them. The bedspread looked softer than a cloud, and the pillows were enormous. The pink rug was so thick I felt as if I were truly walking on air when we stepped into the room.

Above the bed was a ceiling I didn’t understand. There were hundreds of tiny lights. Señora Rosario saw how I was staring, my head back.

“Mr. Dallas designed this room for Señorita Sophia before he died. He created a night sky in the ceiling.”

“Night sky?”

“Those little lights look like stars, and to the right up there, they form the Milky Way. There are other constellations as well. Do you know what that means?”

“
Sí,
” I said. “Stars shaped as things. Aquarius, Cancer.”

She looked surprised that I knew so much.

“
Mi padre
loved to tell me about the stars,” I said, and for a moment, I saw some pity and sadness for me in her eyes, but just as quickly, as if she were afraid she would be caught showing kindness, she blinked it away.

To the right, I saw the closet door was open, but the closet looked as big as my room, if not bigger. I could see the shelves were stacked with shoes, and there was a very long rack of dresses with blouses and jackets on the other side. At the end of the closet were a dressing table and a full-size mirror. There was even a small television set in the wall. Why would someone want to watch television in a closet? I wondered.

“Everything is supposed to be organized in that closet,” Señora Rosario said, smirking, “but never is, no matter how well it’s kept. Nevertheless, you are to put everything back where it belongs as best you can. You see where the dresses belong, the blouses and shoes. Just around the door, there are five bathrobes on hangers.”

“Five?”

“Some were presents, and some were just…some presents,” she added, holding her smirk. “Don’t ever hang a bathrobe where a dress goes,” she warned.

Glancing through the bathroom door, we saw a pink silk bathrobe on the floor. There was a slipper near it and another just outside the bathroom.

“She’s not in the habit of picking up after herself,” Señora Rosario muttered, picking up the slipper outside the bathroom.

When I entered the bathroom, my mouth dropped open. Not in the habit of picking up after herself? That was an understatement. Besides the wet towels and washcloths on the floor, there was a sanitary pad beside the garbage can, at which it had been tossed perhaps. The roll of toilet paper was unraveled on the floor. There were two sinks side by side, and both were streaked with makeup and toothpaste. The mirrors were smudged, and the shower doors were streaked with shampoo residue. Everywhere I looked, something was left open. Drawers were open as well.

Señora Rosario checked her watch.

“You have less than a half hour to do this and straighten out the closet and the bedroom, so work quickly, and don’t dilly-dally. When you’re finished, come down to the kitchen,” she said. “And don’t leave any cleaning supplies behind in the room. She hates that.”

I wanted to ask how a girl this young had so much authority and could put so much fear into the servants, but I didn’t have to ask. Señora Rosario saw it in my face.

“Señorita Sophia and Señor Edward are owners of the estate and of the family’s financial holdings. It is in the will their father left, and they have let everyone know it. Stay out of her way, and you’ll be all right,” she added.

How do I stay out of my cousin’s way? I wondered. What did that mean, anyway?

I began to clean up the bathroom. I had everything picked up and the tub and sinks washed down before I started on the shower stall. I had taken off my shoes and socks and had gone into the stall to wash down the tile. Time was never something I paid much attention to when I worked with
mi abuela
Anabela in our
casa.
I was determined to do a very good job and impress my aunt Isabela, so I lost myself in the work.

Squatting to get at the lower tiles in the shower, I had my back to the stall door and did not hear anyone enter the bathroom. Suddenly, a downpour of ice-cold water crashed down on my head and shocked me so much that I lost my footing and fell back onto the shower floor. The water rained down over me, soaking my clothes, my apron. I heard laughter and turned to see my cousin Sophia standing in the doorway.

As quickly as I could, I regained my balance and turned off the shower faucet. Dripping wet, I looked at her. Her smile evaporated, and her face filled with rage.

“How dare you go into my shower with your filthy, diseased feet?” she screamed. I understood
filthy
and
feet
and figured out the rest.

In Spanish, I said, “It was the best way to clean it.”

“I don’t speak Spanish, you idiot. Mrs. Rosario!” she cried. “Mrs. Rosario!”

Her screams echoed in the shower stall. I actually felt myself trembling. Mrs. Rosario came running to the bedroom.