Delia’s Crossing (9 page)

“We’re newlyweds, remember? That means you are Señora Baker, and I’m your husband.”

He kissed me on the forehead, then turned to leave and paused in the doorway.

“Put your suitcase in the bigger bedroom,” he said in Spanish, and then he said it again in English and had me repeat the words
suitcase, bigger,
and
bedroom.
“No need to use two bedrooms. Our work will take all day and all night. We’ll be inseparable for these few weeks.” He explained it in Spanish, and then he stopped smiling and added that in a few days, he would stop listening to my questions if I didn’t try to use the English words first.

“It will be as if I don’t hear you,” he said. “If the house caught on fire and you didn’t say
fire,
I would not hear you, and we’d burn up with it,” he told me.

Again, I thought that was silly and just meant to scare me, but he had no humor in his face when he said it or right afterward. In fact, his eyes burned with seriousness.

“I’m not going to fail here,” he told me in Spanish. “Which means you’ll do whatever I tell you to do and learn quickly, or else.
Entiende
? Well?
Entiende
?”

“
Sí,
” I said. His mood changed so quickly I was afraid to say anything else. There was much here I did not understand.

“Not
sí,
damn it. Yes, yes. Say yes.”

“Yes,” I repeated.

“Get your things into the drawers in the bedroom,” he ordered. “
Comprende
? You know what that means?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s get organized. C’mon.” He beckoned.

I followed him, took my suitcase, and watched him back out.

“Get started!” he shouted at me. “Clean the kitchen, and start on our first dinner as newlyweds.” He laughed as he turned the car around and headed away to buy whatever else we needed.

I clung to my suitcase.

The world around me looked desolate. I thought I had reached the bottom of the pit of loneliness at my aunt’s house, but my descent into hell apparently went deeper yet. I had the urge to start down the road in the direction opposite where he had gone, but where would that take me?

Back in Mexico, my grandmother was full of hope for my new future. It comforted her to know I was in the United States and exposed to so much more opportunity. Surely, if she saw me now, standing in the carport of this small, very simple house, confused and lost, her fragile heart would collapse inside her chest, and I’d be going to another funeral, only I would be standing there at her grave and wondering if I could have prevented her death by simply swallowing my fear and muddling my way through this hard time. I had to find the same grit and strength in myself that she had. As she often told me, “
No hay dolor de que el alma no puede levantarse en tres días.
There is no sorrow the soul can’t rise from in three days.”

Maybe, once I did learn English well enough, my aunt wouldn’t be as ashamed of me, and she would give me a place in the family, and I would give my grandmother the happiness she needed to take with her to her final rest. She would die with a smile on her face instead of a grim expression of defeat.

I owed her that much.

Pulling myself up with new determination, I went into the house and put my things away. Then I started cleaning the kitchen, finding the pots and pans, and beginning the dinner, silently reviewing every English word Señor Baker had just taught me about the kitchen. Losing myself in the preparation of food reminded me of
mi abuela
Anabela losing herself in food preparation to prepare for the crowd of mourners.

Work was truly the raft upon which we floated in this sea of sadness. It kept us from drowning. It was all we had to cling to, and it kept us from thinking about our dire situations. No wonder my people were out there in the fields, churning away at their chores, looking almost grateful there was at least that.

I smiled to myself, recalling another one of
mi abuela
Anabela’s
dichos
when we had to work hard: “
La pereza viaja tan lentamente que la pobreza no tarda en alcanzarla.
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon catches up.”

Back in my small village, we were always one step ahead of poverty.

A little more than an hour later, I heard Señor Baker drive into the carport. He was whistling as he entered the house, his arms full of some of what he had purchased.

“There is more to bring in, Señora Baker,” he said. “Look in the back of the car. In what?”

“The trunk,” I said.

“Good. Go on.”

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and went out to see. There was a blanket in a plastic wrap and two pillows. He waited for me in the short hallway and directed me into the larger bedroom.

“Make the bed,” he said. “I’ll put everything else away.”

“Why are we having only one bed?” I asked. “Aren’t you staying here, too?”

He smiled. “Of course. Even in your sleep, you will be learning.”

“In my sleep? How can I learn in my sleep?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said sharply. “Just do what I tell you. Your aunt has put me in charge, hasn’t she? Show respect.”

I felt my face brighten. His outburst of anger surprised and frightened me. I turned away quickly and went to make the bed. When I returned to the kitchen, he was looking at the food preparations and smiling.

“This all looks and smells delicious, Señora Baker,” he told me, and then he went about the kitchen making me identify everything in English. He was happy about my retention. “This is working,” he said, sounding surprised at his own idea. “This is really going to impress Isabela. Just continue with the dinner preparations, but repeat what I tell you,” he ordered. I did as he asked.

He translated every move we made and everything we touched in the kitchen and at the table. He made me recite repeatedly until he was satisfied with my pronunciations.

“Every day, I will test you on the things I have taught you the day and the night before,” he said. “When I think you are ready, I will ask you not to speak in
español,
only in
inglés,
understand? If you make a mistake, you will have to pay for it.”

“Pay for it? I have no money.”

He laughed. “There are other ways to pay for things, Delia. Everyone knows that. Especially women,” he added, and laughed.

I was afraid to ask him any more questions about it.

“Look what I bought you, Señora Baker,” he said after we had eaten our dinner and I was cleaning up the kitchen. He showed me a video. “It’s one of my own movies, from my own collection. There are many good words to learn in English, words you will have to know when you are out there in the world meeting boys and men. If you don’t understand these words, you will be at a big disadvantage, and you don’t want to be at any disadvantage when it comes to young men, Delia.”

I stared at the video box. There was a picture of a man wearing the skimpiest pair of underwear and a woman with her back to him leaning against him. She was obviously naked. I did not understand the title,
Bubbles, Bangles, and Bedsheets,
even after he translated each word.

“You’ll figure it out after a while,” he told me. “Finish up here, and we’ll watch our movie.”

It all made me very nervous, especially his calling me Señora Baker. My fingers trembled around the dishes, and I dropped one. It shattered on the floor, sending shards everywhere. He came rushing back.

“What’s going on? Damn it,” he said. “We can’t break things here. Your aunt will not be pleased.”

I started to cry. Were these dishes expensive?

“Get it all cleaned up,” he said. “And you’d better not break another thing,” he warned. When he spoke, I smelled whiskey on his breath.

I hurried to get the broom. He kept calling to me from the living room, telling me he was getting tired of waiting for me. He wanted to start his movie. I moved slowly, hesitant, my instincts telling me that I was falling deeper and deeper into some sort of danger. Finally, I had nothing more to do and had to go to the living room.

“It’s about time. Do you people always work so slowly?” he asked me. “Everything’s left for
mañana, mañana.
Well, there is no more
mañana.
You understand?” Before I could answer, he smiled and said, “Of course, there are some things you should do slowly.” His smile confused me. “Sit,” he said, patting the place beside him on the sofa. I saw he had a bottle of whiskey on the table and a glass with some in it.

I sat, and he turned on the television and then the video player. His movie began, and almost immediately, a man and a woman undressed each other. He sipped his whiskey and began to translate what they were saying to each other, but it didn’t make sense to me. Clothes were “peeled off.” She wanted him to “raise her temperature.” He wanted her to “pump him up.”

Soon they weren’t talking. They were just moaning and groaning, and what they were doing shocked and embarrassed me. He stopped the video and told me he was rewinding it to teach me the words again. This was why a video was good for learning language.

“You can go over and over it until you learn the words perfectly,” he said, but he spent more time on the sections where they were doing nothing but moaning and groaning.

“You ever do that?” he asked me. He finished his whiskey and poured himself some more.

I shook my head, my eyes wide. He laughed.

“Nothing’s wrong with doing that,” he said. “It’s how we get to know each other better.”

The man in the movie was soon with another woman, doing the same things and saying the same things. I became more and more uncomfortable. I saw that Señor Baker was getting more and more agitated. His face reddened, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. If he was so uncomfortable watching this with me, too, why didn’t he stop it?

“I know you like watching this,” he told me instead. He sneered. “All girls your age love watching these movies.”

I hadn’t seen many movies, but none of them was anything like this.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t like it.”

“Sure you do. You’re just being coy,” he said, and went into a long explanation about the word
coy.
He said it was a natural part of being a woman. Women pretended they didn’t want the same things a man wanted, but they do, he insisted. “It’s all right. You can be coy,” he said.

I shook my head. Now that I understood what it meant, I wanted him to know I wasn’t being coy, but he wouldn’t believe me.

Suddenly, he grew angry and shut off the television.

“It’s time you took your bath,” he told me. “I want you to take a bath every night. I like my girls to be clean and smell sweet, fresh, and innocent. Go on,” he urged.

He jumped from one mood to another the way a little girl would jump from one square to another in a game of hopscotch. I hurried away from him. I took out my nightgown and my slippers and went to the bathroom with my things. I heard him turn on the television set again and start watching something else.

I locked the bathroom door and ran my bath. He had bought some bath oils and soaps and new towels and washcloths. While the water flowed into the tub, I sat on the toilet seat and wondered what would happen to me next and what I should do. I had learned a lot of new words, stuffed many new things into my head, but I was so frightened and confused now that everything was jumbled. I would probably not do well on any test he gave me, and then what would he do? What did he mean by saying I would pay for things without money?

When the tub was filled enough, I got undressed and stepped into the water. I was barely in it a minute before I heard him try the door.

“Why did you lock the door?” he screamed. He rattled it hard. “You never lock a door in this house. I lock the doors in this house! Open this door now,” he demanded.

“I am in the bathtub,” I cried.

He was quiet a moment.

“You unlock this door as soon as you’re out!” he shouted. “Don’t dry yourself completely first. First, open this door. Understand?”

“
Sí,
” I said, holding my breath.

“Not
sí,
yes. Yes!” he screamed.

“Yes.”

“From this moment on, every time you use a Spanish word instead of the English word I taught you, you will be penalized,” he declared.

I listened hard and thought he had left, but suddenly, he pounded the door with his fist once.

“Just wash yourself and get out!” he screamed.

I unplugged the bathtub and reached for one of the towels. As quickly as I could, I dried myself enough to put on my nightgown.

He started to pound on the door again, so I unlocked it. He stood there looking in at me.

“I thought I told you not to dry yourself completely,” he said.

“I had to so I could put on my nightgown.”