Authors: Mario Alberto Zambrano
Loteria (13 page)
W
e’d go to Buelita Fe’s house and hear church bells.
Do—ong! Do—ong! Do—ong!
Go to mass by ten and be out by half past eleven, then be in her backyard playing by the time it struck noon. We’d chase each other and I’d trip on a rock and brush off the dirt from my knees and see the blue and red mix together. I’d get up and run around the tree, go inside the garage and hear it again:
Do—ong! Do—ong!
Not able to find her, I’d stop trying and go inside and forget. When it was over, I could still hear them. She’d creep up and say, “Where’d you go?” And I’d say, “I’m right here. I’ve been here the whole time. You’re the one who got lost.” She’d run inside or to the back of the house and leave me there, sitting by myself, with the bells in my head and the bells in the trees. Still ringing.
Do—ong! Do—ong! Do—ong!
I
woke up this morning and I couldn’t find my journal. No one was awake so I went to the counselor’s office, and there it was on her desk, by the printer next to the phone. I grabbed it and flipped through it. They hadn’t changed anything or marked in it, but still.
How did they find it?
It was there. Someone went to my room and took it. And I’m sure they read it, but which part? In the hallway I looked to the exit where the security officer was sitting, leaning back, listening to some news channel on his stupid radio. I went over to him and knocked on the glass, “Hey!” I screamed, and he was shocked by the sound of my voice. It was the first time he had heard it. He flinched and turned around. “What about my rights?” I screamed. They were thieves. The man, tall now, standing, looked at me. “Why aren’t you in bed?” “Because!” I yelled. “You like it when people take your things?” “Calm down,” he said and opened the door. He tried to reach for my shoulders but I backed away. The hall lights turned on and I heard Larry from down the hall. “What’s going on?” he said, coming out of the counselors’ lounge. “What?” I said. He looked at the journal in my hand, with his stunned and stupid face, probably because it was the first time he heard my voice. “You took it!” I screamed. “You can’t take my things!” Then he tried to catch me, but I kicked him between his legs.
In my room, crying all stupid, my mouth wet, I shoved my bed in front of the door. I went to the shower and turned the cold knob as far as it’d go. The journal got wet when I opened the first page and the letters began to smear. I was about to tear it into pieces so that no one could ever figure out what I’d written. But something stopped me. I threw it out and it landed on the sink. Then, under the shower, I turned the knob to hot and grabbed it with both hands. I wanted to hit my head against the wall but I was too chicken, then I was mad for being too chicken. My skin turned pink, and to keep moving I grabbed the shampoo and covered myself with it.
Larry and the officer banged on the door, over and over again, until I screamed as loud as I could. “THIEVES! You hear me! THIEVES!”
And then they stopped.
T
here was a photograph from their wedding day in a frame under the television. You can tell it was Papi who took the shot, the way Mom is running away from him, looking back, the veil between her and the lens. When you look at the photo you know he’s smiling too. You can sense it.
Entre ellos no hay nada en el mundo que no tenga sentido
.
Tencha gave me a photo of myself the other day and I tried to remember being a two-year-old sitting on the counter with flour on my face. My hair was red then, which is weird because now it’s black. The ones who love me say,
Sí, mija, eres tú.
I have no choice but to believe them. In the photograph, the girl has a smile over her face, her mouth is half-open, and there’s a pasty white mess between her fingers.
T
his is what Julia said to me this morning.
“Larry thought it might be a good idea if I was the one who spoke to you. I know it’s been awhile since you’ve been here and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”
I was sitting by the window with hot chocolate in front of me steaming out of a cup.
“I want to apologize,” she said. “We’re sorry, everyone is very sorry about your notebook. It was very inconsiderate of us and we should’ve asked your permission. We had no right, but I want you to know, Luz, we thought your notebook would help your father. But—”
Silencio
.
She didn’t have the balls to explain how wrong she was.
“We’ll never take it again. I promise. It’s yours, and we’re deeply sorry.
“I want to speak to you like a grown-up because I think of you that way, Luz. The way you’ve coped has been more mature than some of the teenagers here. You’re a big girl, and we want you to be protected. Do you understand? It’s important for us to provide a good home for you.”
I know she wanted me to look at her or respond, but I didn’t. I looked down and cleaned the dirt from under my nails.
“Luz, your father has pleaded guilty to aggravated assault of a police officer. The D.A. decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with anything else. And that’s good news, Luz. He might, or rather, he could get out of prison in three years and live with you again. You can visit him whenever you want if you stay.”
Silencio
.
“Because there is no legal guardian who can take custody of you, and you
are
an American citizen, we would like to transfer you to
Casa de Esperanza
. We know your Aunt Tencha has been trying to get her residence permit, but . . . we have to find you a home. You need someone who’s going to look after you and take care of you. Luz, you can’t live with your aunt here in the United States. She doesn’t have a resident permit, and we’ve been told by immigration that she’s never applied for one. She mentioned you might want to go back to Mexico. Is that true? Would you want to go back to Mexico? If you don’t want to live at
Casa de Esperanza
, we have decided, for your well-being, to give you the option to return to Mexico with your aunt. But only if you want to. I’m sure your grandfather would love to see you. And you could come back whenever you want and visit your father.”
M
á
s silencio
.
“Do you understand, Luz? If you want to go visit
Casa de Esperanza
, we can arrange that for you. We’re here to help. You know that, right? Do you understand? Do you have any questions?”
The hot chocolate steamed even after she was done talking. Not until it was cold did she get up and leave me alone
.
I
dreamt of
Angelitos negros
last night. The movie about the mom who has a black baby girl and hates her because she’s black. Not until the end of the movie does she find out her “real” mom is the black maid she’s had all her life. But in the movie the girl is not even black. They paint her skin with dark makeup and it’s obvious she’s white. There’s a moment in the movie the girl covers herself in flour, and they ask her, “What are you doing?” She says, “I want my mother to love me.” And she makes this pouty expression like Shirley Temple. In my dream I was the actress playing the girl, but I was late for work. I didn’t have time to put the makeup on, so only half of my face was dark and the other light. I didn’t want to get fired, so I ran to the set where we were filming and did the scene anyway. The director said something looked different. Something was off. “No, no, nothing’s off,” I said. “I think you forgot, you said we’d be shooting underwater today. So maybe that’s what it is.” He said, “Oh yeah, let’s move it!” We all packed our things, lights, costumes. Pedro Infante and I talked about where we were going for lunch, hoping this one taco vendor was going to be near the parking lot in his usual spot during break. Then, all of a sudden, we were all underwater and I couldn’t hear at first, let alone see, but we moved through the scene as if it were normal, like if we’d done it before. And down there, the makeup came off anyway, so it didn’t matter. I told the director, “This is so much better, it makes so much more sense,” with bubbles around my face. And he tried to tell me something too, so I leaned in closer to him, but I was talking and he was talking and there were bubbles everywhere. I felt his fingers on my lips like if he were trying to tell me to shut up and listen, but his fingers were thin. And slowly, the bubbles floated away and right in front of me was Mom. She was looking at me, holding my shoulders in place, keeping me still and staring at me like if I were in a fishbowl. There was a white light coming off of her and I started to feel happy, without saying anything at all, just feeling happy because she was giving me tips in a movie I was in, directing me here and there, saying don’t cry so much in this part, don’t move around so much when people say their lines. I nodded at everything she said because I understood, and I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to make her proud. As I looked at her, all quiet, all still, I saw the dark blue fingerprints around her neck, like two hands wrapped around her throat that had become stained on her skin. And when she saw me looking at them she grabbed my chin and lifted it, then pointed with two fingers to her eyes. Like if to say, “Look here, look up here.” And then we floated to the surface as she slowly disappeared.