“What about Margaux? Who will take care of her? Will you take off work?” She put her hands on his shoulders.
“I already told you. I will call Rosa, down the street. She doesn’t charge much.”
“She doesn’t do well with new people.”
“I know. I know she does not. I wish I could be here. But right now, my hands are tied. I cannot take time off, not even a few days. I will get fired; I know it. They don’t like me at this company. At Sanford, things were better, though it is the same everywhere. Always the same. The boss always wants me to go fast and I cannot! Don’t these people understand that my goal is quality, not speed? Products—that is what these people want! I am an artist. I cannot do things fast; I must take my time. With me, everything must be exact; if I make a little mistake on a piece of jewelry, no one at work notices it but it weighs on my mind at night and I cannot sleep! I am the best man they have; they do not realize it. They don’t give me any recognition, they treat me like a dog . . .”
“I can stay home with Margaux. Louie, please, cancel the cab.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “A friend of mine saw you walking with her on Bergenline the other day, not even looking while you crossed streets! He saw you two almost get run over!”
“I don’t remember that. I’m always careful.”
“I know you normally are, and this is why I know you are not well right now. Also, there are other things. You have been staring at the ceiling light while you listen to that record.” He grimaced. “You have no expression in your face, no expression in your eyes. It scares your daughter to see you like this. It scares me. I am afraid something will go wrong around here. I cannot sleep with this fear. If I cannot sleep, I cannot work.”
Everything Poppa had said was true. Mommy would laugh sometimes out of nowhere. She would call people every five minutes. She didn’t sleep at all; and, because Poppa and I didn’t sleep well either, we’d hear her calling hotlines or playing the
Sunshine
album all through the night.
After the cab took Mommy and Poppa shut the door, Poppa kneeled and took both my hands in his. “I must talk to you. I must speak to you as though you are an adult, my equal. First of all, you have not been watching her. That is a grave mistake. You have let her endanger your life. Suicide is one thing, but to bring anybody down with you is wrong. I do not trust that woman with your life. I do not trust her with my life, either. One day, I caught her handling my gun! Perhaps she wants me dead; maybe I do not completely blame her, but if she endangers you, an innocent, that is a mortal sin!” He paused. “Now, mistakes have been made on everybody’s part but we must forget them and move on. Why must we move on? Because we are strong and we can, and if we do not, life will crush us like we are eggshells! Now listen to me, you are under the care of a sick woman. She is mentally ill. You cannot go to her with problems like you would to a normal mother. The problems that normal people shake off like crumbs crush her to dust. Your problems are making her sick. You are a strain on the family. I can handle you; I can even sympathize because I am a strong person, but she is being destroyed by you though you do not mean harm. Child, you must stop your antics! You cannot starve yourself and cry all the time in your room. You think nobody hears you crying, but I hear you.”
I looked away in shame.
He lifted my chin. “Don’t turn your face away, don’t. You must have courage enough to face your wrongdoings. I am your father and I have no other choice but to tell you about the negative effects you have on us. You get sick and vomit nearly twice a week; no one knows why! You eat very little; you look like you are disintegrating! You used to get first honors; now you are failing mathematics! You are a disappointment to us. To me. I had high hopes. People have children to bring joy into their lives, not pain and worry! No, don’t cry; hold it back. You are strong. You will survive this. I promise you, Keesy. I promise you.” He rested his head against my chest for a moment and then lifted it up, smiling at me. “Now that she is gone, we can enjoy life a bit, no? I feel guilty we did not go with her, that she must wait in that emergency room by herself for hours, but I know you cannot handle it, Keesy. All those hours with those bright lights and seeing her face like a zombie, it takes your soul from you. In life, there are sights you see that are indelible; they cannot be erased. I will see her face like that, with no expression, forever in my dreams; that look haunts me. But we cannot be sad all the time; we must live another second for every second we die! Come, Keesy, get your coat, shall we go out on the town? Just the two us, like the old days?”
“Okay.”
Poppa stood up. He glanced at the time. He was still in his work clothes—a nice dress shirt and crisp trousers. “I don’t have time to put on my jewelry. Well, tomorrow night. Tomorrow we will both get decked out for the town, since it is Friday night and I am free! Today we will just go to the place down the street. But tomorrow I will show you a bar across town that has a pinball machine. Remind me to bring quarters! I want you to wear a nice dress and good shoes and nice ribbons in your hair and some bracelets for your wrists, some perfume. We will go from place to place and I will show you off to my friends and they will remark on how beautiful my daughter is! They will say that
my
daughter is more beautiful than the moon! As for now, we go out to a little place, I order you a Shirley Temple, hold the rum. Now, get your coat, Keesy.”
I was glad Poppa had called me beautiful. I couldn’t help but love him now that Mommy was away. He was all I had. I got my coat from the closet and put it on. As I started to zip it, I realized the zipper was stuck. It made me angry, so I yanked on it, and the thing broke in my hand. Poppa came over and slapped me across the face.
“How many times have I told you not to be rough with things! You must be gentle, all the time, gentle! You cannot break things; things cost money! I cannot buy a new coat! I cannot afford it now that she is back in that hospital!”
“I’m sorry I broke it.”
“Listen to me. Listen and hear me. You must never say sorry.”
“What should I say?”
“Don’t say sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry, what does that do? You cannot take it back!”
The next night, Poppa kept his promise. We went to bar after bar, including the one with an old-fashioned pinball machine designed in the style of the Old West: horses clopping their hooves and guns firing. I kept running back to Poppa whenever I used up my quarters, almost slipping in my Mary Janes. I did look pretty, in a blue crushed-velvet dress and tights. A young woman was sitting on Poppa’s lap. She had big hair and her brightly made up face was a carnival of color. She kept laughing at whatever Poppa said and he kept ordering drinks for her. But she didn’t stay long, and when she left we went to another bar and then another one. I’d sneak some of Poppa’s beer when no one was looking.
In a dark bar where we sat at a round cherrywood table in the back, Poppa ordered a Grey Goose on the rocks for himself and a Coke with an orange slice for me; he had remembered that I didn’t like cherries.
The barmaid came over and set the drinks on the table. Poppa tipped her, complimenting her acrylic nails as he set the tip in her hand.
“Keesy, eat the orange slice,” Poppa said when she was gone.
“Can I tell you something, Poppa? The other day, Mommy was slicing oranges for me. While she was doing it, she started cutting herself and blood got all over the oranges.”
Poppa was silent and then he said, “I am glad I hospitalized her when I did. I made the right decision.” He took a cigarette out of his pack of Marlboros and lit it. “I told you that when I was young, about nineteen, I ran with the bulls in Spain. While I was running, a man fell down. I wanted to help him up. But I had to keep running. You understand, Keesy? I had to watch out for myself, because if I had stopped, I would have been trampled.” He paused. “This is biblical. Lot’s wife, in the Bible, looked back and she turned into a pillar of salt. Looking back is salt. Looking back is tears. Looking back on the past is death.” He cleared his throat. “Let us change the topic. Sometimes I, like you, think too much.” He motioned to the orange slice and when I didn’t reach for it, he ate it. “I will tell you something, Keesy, a fact about oranges. They originated in China. Everyone thinks they come from Florida, but no, oranges are Chinese. Pasta, too. It doesn’t come from Italy. You know where I learned that?”
“No,” I said, drinking my Coke through the straw. My face was hot and I felt a little nauseated but didn’t have my usual sense of anxiety and dread. I didn’t know if it was due to the alcohol, or just the fact that we were in a new place. “Where did you learn it?”
“Your mother’s Fact Book. Her little book of disasters that she carries everywhere, her little guide that helps her through life, but not really. Not really.” Poppa drank and then continued, “You must learn to smile again. No one likes a grouch. I myself have learned to smile in times of hardship. You, too, will learn this skill. So tell me, what is the problem, Keesy? Tell me why you are so sad. And do not say it is your mother. You are used to her.”
My heart beat fast and then I blurted out, “I miss going to Peter’s house. Not because of him. He was always busy when I went over there, so I never saw him. But I had a crush on his son, Ricky. We used to play together all the time. He was cute. I used to wish I could marry him. I miss him, Poppa. I miss the way I felt when he was in the room.”
Poppa nodded. “I understand. I have seen the boy’s picture. Your mother showed me his picture once. Very handsome, though a little unkempt. You are approaching that age now. That age when boys take on more meaning. But let me tell you something. Love is what you call a phantom pain. The poets write of it, our great art represents it, it inspires our musicians, but it does not really exist.” He took a long drag from his cigarette. “Like an ulcer you think you have but the surgeon opens you up and finds nothing there. It is a chemical reaction, Keesy. Hormones. People die for it, but no one has ever proven it exists.”
I drank the rest of the Coke and excused myself to go to the bathroom. As soon as I got there, I fell to my knees on the dingy floor, which was covered with toilet paper. I bent over the small bowl with brown stains on the sides of it and threw up until there was nothing left.
P
eter sent me a “Happy Easter” card and Mommy, recently released from the hospital, said I should phone to thank him. It had been almost a year since we’d last seen each other. When we talked, he complimented me so many times and told so many funny jokes that, after we hung up, I was beaming. After that first call, Mommy said, “I
knew
your father was wrong about him. How could a bad person send such a nice card?” She paused. “Your father has a control disorder, that’s what Dr. Gurney says, but you know what: he can’t control what he doesn’t know. He’s not even here half the time.” Giggling like sisters, we discussed exactly how we would slide this by Poppa: I would call Peter whenever Poppa was at the bar. For the first time in almost a year, I felt close to Mommy again. We had a secret now, something that was just ours that Poppa couldn’t know.
The first sign that Poppa was going to leave was the scent of his cologne erupting through the house. I would hear his feet slam the stairs as he charged up and down; he always went to the master bedroom and into his closet several times, and often I would hear him singing in Spanish. Poppa would fluff his shirt collar, repeatedly patting even the slightest crease in the fabric. He despised wrinkles; he got all his good clothes routinely dry-cleaned and never removed them from their plastic wrapping until it was time to dress. He still shined his shoes with black shoe polish and even repainted his one pair of Converse sneakers white every few years.
He would gather his rings and slip them on without the slightest sound—if one failed to sparkle, he prepared a solution to dip it in and cleaned it with a jeweler’s brush—and out would come his gold crucifix, which he checked in the bright light for its shining power. It was not safe to call Peter until Poppa had left and the porch gate had snapped back into place. If the machine answered after the standard five rings, I would simply keep calling and hanging up on the machine. I assumed my constant calling didn’t annoy anyone, because Inès and the boys were always polite when they answered.
That school year, in fifth grade, I made friends with a Dominican girl, Winnie Hernandez. People sometimes made fun of Winnie because she liked to read and her skin was considered too dark—just as blond Barbara Howard was thought to be too pale. Also, Winnie was a bit spacey, like me. She had a habit of walking around a blue pole during indoor recess; one day, I started following her and we made a game out of it. Then, a week later, Stacy Gomez told me pointedly after music class, “Winnie says to stop following her.” The next day, I forlornly stared at the pole. Winnie motioned me to come over and Stacy said to her, “Don’t play with her. Do you want to be just like her?”
A few weeks later, Winnie dropped a note on the floor for me to find. It said, “Meet me behind the auditorium stage tomorrow at Bake Sale.” I did and we spent a long time talking. She said that she had overheard Carlos Cruz, the cutest boy in our class, say, “Aw, Margaux’s not ugly. She’s just weird.” Winnie then told me, “I can be your friend, but I can never be seen with you in public. You can never sit with me at lunch or talk to me when people are around.” I accepted the deal and, same as with Peter, we had a phone friendship. On our new portable phone, I confided to Winnie about how a grown man had fallen in love with me and made me into a woman.
“Don’t tell anyone. He still loves me and we talk on the phone when my father is out.”
Winnie didn’t quite understand. “A grown man can’t be your boyfriend. That’s against the law.”
“He says the law’s stupid. He’s a rebel.”
“Oh. We-ell. Do you still like Carlos?” Every girl had a crush on Carlos.