A Manual for Cleaning Women (39 page)

So every night then I began to tell Sally stories, like telling fairy tales.

I told her funny stories about our mother. How once she tried and tried to open a bag of Granny Goose potato chips, then gave up. “Life is just too damn hard,” she said and tossed the bag over her shoulder.

I told her how Mama hadn’t spoken to her brother Fortunatus for thirty years. Finally he asked her to lunch at the Top of the Mark, to bury the hatchet. “In his pompous ol’ head!” Mama said. She got him though. He forced her to have pheasant under glass and when it came she said to the waiter, “Hey, boy, got any ketchup?”

Most of all I told Sally stories about how our mother once was. Before she drank, before she harmed us. Once upon a time.

“Mama is standing at the railing of the ship to Juneau. She’s going to meet Ed, her new husband. On her way to a new life. It is 1930. She has left the Depression behind, Grandpa behind. All the sordid poverty and pain of Texas is gone. The ship is gliding, close to land, on a clear day. She is looking at the navy-blue water and the green pines on the shore of this wild clean new country. There are icebergs and gulls.

“The main thing to remember is how tiny she was, only five foot four. She just
seemed
huge to us. So young, nineteen. She was very beautiful, dark and thin. On the deck of the ship she sways against the wind. She is frail. She shivers with cold and excitement. Smoking. The fur collar pulled up around her heart-shaped face, her jet-black hair.

“Uncle Guyler and Uncle John had bought Mama that coat for a wedding gift. She was still wearing it six years later, so I got to know it. Burying my face in the matted nicotine fur. Not while she was wearing it. She couldn’t bear to be touched. If you got too close she’d put her hand up as if to ward off a blow.

“On the deck of the ship she feels pretty and grown-up. She had made friends on the voyage. She had been witty, charming. The captain flirted with her. He poured her more gin that gave her vertigo and made her laugh out loud when he whispered, ‘You’re breaking my heart, you dusky beauty!’

“When the ship got into the harbor of Juneau her blue eyes filled with tears. No, I never once saw her cry either. It was sort of like Scarlett in
Gone With the Wind
. She swore to herself. No one is ever going to hurt me again.

“She knew that Ed was a good man, solid and kind. The first time she let him bring her home, to Upson Avenue, she had been ashamed. It was shabby; Uncle John and Grandpa were drunk. She was afraid Ed wouldn’t ask her out again. But he held her in his arms and said, ‘I am going to protect you.’

“Alaska was as wonderful as she had dreamed. They went in ski-planes into the wilderness and landed on frozen lakes, skied in the silence and saw elk and polar bears and wolves. They camped in the woods in summer and fished for salmon, saw grizzlies and mountain goats! They made friends; she was in a theater group and played the medium in
Blithe Spirit
. There were cast parties and potlucks and then Ed said she couldn’t be in the theater anymore because she drank too much, acted in a manner that was beneath her. Then I was born. He had to go to Nome for a few months and she was alone with a new baby. When he got back he found her drunk, stumbling around with me in her arms. ‘He ripped you from my breast,’ she told me. He completely took over my care, fed me from a bottle. An Eskimo woman came in to watch me while he was at work. He told Mama she was weak and bad, like all the Moynihans. He protected her from herself from then on, didn’t let her drive or have any money. All she could do was walk to the library and read plays and mysteries and Zane Grey.

“When the war came you were born and we went to live in Texas. Daddy was a lieutenant on an ammunition ship, off Japan. Mama hated being back home. She was out most of the time, drinking more and more. Mamie stopped working at Grandpa’s office so that she could take care of you. She moved your crib into her room; she played with you and sang to you and rocked you to sleep. She didn’t let anybody near you, not even me.

“It was terrible for me, with Mama, and with Grandpa. Or alone, most of the time. I got in trouble at school, ran away from one school, was expelled from two others. Once I didn’t speak for six months. Mama called me the Bad Seed. All her rage came down on me. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized she and Grandpa probably didn’t even remember what they did. God sends drunks blackouts because if they knew what they had done they would surely die of shame.

“After Daddy got back from the war we lived in Arizona and they were happy together. They planted roses and gave you a puppy called Sam and she was sober. But already she didn’t know how to be with you and me. We thought she hated us, but she was only afraid of us. She felt it was we who had abandoned her, that we hated her. She protected herself by mocking us and sneering, by hurting us so we couldn’t hurt her first.

“It seemed that moving to Chile would be a dream come true for Mama. She loved elegance and beautiful things, always wished they knew ‘the right people.’ Daddy had a prestigious job. We were wealthy now, with a lovely house and many servants, and there were dinners and parties with all the right people. She went out some at first but she was simply too scared. Her hair was wrong, her clothes were wrong. She bought expensive imitation antique furniture and bad paintings. She was terrified of the servants. She had a few friends that she trusted; ironically enough she played poker with Jesuit priests, but most of the time she stayed in her room. And Daddy kept her there.

“‘At first he was my keeper, then he was my jailer,’ she said. He thought he was helping her, but year after year he rationed drinks to her and hid her, and never ever got her any help. We never went near her, nobody did. She’d fly into rages, cruel, irrational. We thought nothing we did was good enough for her. And she did hate to see us do well, to grow and accomplish things. We were young and pretty and had a future. Do you see? How hard it was for her, Sally?”

“Yes. It was like that. Poor pitiful Mama. You know, I’m like her now. I get mad at everyone because they are working, living. Sometimes I hate you because you’re not dying. Isn’t that awful?”

“No, because you can tell me this. And I can tell you I’m glad it’s not me that is dying. But Mama never had a soul to tell anything to. That day, on the ship, coming into port, she thought she would. Mama believed Ed would be there always. She thought she was coming home.”

“Tell me about her again. On the boat. When she had tears in her eyes.”

“Okay. She tosses her cigarette into the water. You can hear it hiss, as the waves are calm near the shore. The engines of the boat turn off with a shudder. Silently then, in the sound of the buoys and the gulls and the mournful long whistle of the boat they glide toward the berth in the harbor, banging softly against the tires on the dock. Mama smoothes down her collar and her hair. Smiling, she looks out at the crowd, searching for her husband. She has never before known such happiness.”

Sally is crying softly. “
Pobrecita. Pobrecita
,” she says. “If only I could have been able to speak to her. If I had let her know how much I loved her.”

Me … I have no mercy.

Carmen

Outside every drugstore in town there were dozens of old cars with kids fighting in the backseat. I would see their mothers inside Payless and Walgreens and Lee’s, but we didn’t greet each other. Even women I knew … we acted like we didn’t. We waited in line while the others bought terpin hydrate with codeine cough syrup and signed for it in a large awkward ledger. Sometimes we wrote our right names, sometimes made the names up. I could tell that, like me, they didn’t know which was worse to do. Sometimes I’d see the same women at four or five drugstores a day. Other wives or mothers of addicts. The pharmacists shared our complicity, never acting like they knew us from before. Except once a young one at Fourth Street Drugs called me back to the counter. I was terrified. I thought he was going to report me. He was really shy and blushed when he apologized for interfering in my affairs. He said he knew I was pregnant and he was worried about me buying so much cough syrup. It had a high alcohol content, he said, and it could be easy for me to become an alcoholic without realizing it. I didn’t say that it wasn’t for me. I said thanks, but I began to cry as I turned and ran out of the store, crying because I wanted Noodles to be clean when the baby came. “How come you’re crying, Mama? Mama’s crying!” Willie and Vincent were jumping around the backseat. “Sit down!” I reached around and whacked Willie on the head. “Sit down. I’m crying because I’m tired and you guys won’t be still.”

There had been a big bust in town and a bigger one in Culiacán, so there was no heroin in Albuquerque. Noodles at first had told me he would taper off on the cough syrup and stay clean, so he’d be clean when the baby came in two months. I knew he couldn’t. He’d never been so strung out before and now he had hurt his back at a construction job. At least he had disability.

He was on his knees, talking, had crawled to get the phone. I know, I know, I’ve been to the meetings. I’m sick too, an enabler, a co-addict. All I can say is I felt love, pity, tenderness for him. He was so thin, so sick. I would do anything for him not to hurt this way. I knelt down and put my arms around him. He hung up the phone.

“Fuck, Mona, they’ve busted Beto,” he said. He kissed me and held me, called the kids over and hugged them. “Hey, you guys, give your old man a hand, be my crutches to the bathroom.” When the boys left I went in and shut the door. He was shaking so bad I had to pour the cough syrup into his mouth. The smell made me retch. His sweat, his shit, the whole trailer smelled of rotten oranges from the syrup.

I fixed dinner for the boys and they watched
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
on TV. All the kids in school wore Levi’s and T-shirts except Willie. In third grade, and he wore black pants and a white shirt. His hair was combed like the blond guy on TV. The boys had bunk beds in a tiny room, Noodles and I slept in the other bedroom. I already had a bassinet at the foot of our bed, diapers and baby clothes in every spare nook. We owned two acres in Corrales, near the clear ditch, in a grove of cottonwoods. At first we had plans to start building our adobe house, plant vegetables, but just after we got the land Noodles got strung out again. Most of the time he was still working construction, but nothing had happened about the house and now winter was coming.

I made a cup of cocoa and went out on the step. “Noodles, come see!” But he didn’t answer. I heard the twist of another syrup cap. There was a gaudy splendid sunset. The vast Sandia Mountains were a deep pink, the rocks on the foothills red. Yellow cottonwoods blazed on the riverbank. A peach-colored moon was already rising. What’s the matter with me? I was crying again. I hate to see anything lovely by myself. Then he was there, kissing my neck and putting his arms around me.

“You know they are called the Sandias because they are shaped like watermelons.” “No,” I said, “it’s because of the color.” We had that argument on our first date, have repeated it a hundred times. He laughed and kissed me, sweet. He was fine now. That’s the lousy thing about drugs, I thought. They work. We sat there watching nighthawks sweep across the field.

“Noodles, don’t have any more terps. I’ll stash the rest of the bottles, give it to you just when you get sick. Okay?”

“Okay.” He wasn’t hearing me. “Beto was going to score in Juárez, from La Nacha. Mel is down there. He’ll test it. He can’t bring it. He can’t cross the border. I need you to go. You are the perfect person to do it. You’re Anglo, pregnant, sweet-looking. You look like a nice lady.”

I am a nice lady, I thought.

“You’ll fly to El Paso, take a cab over the border, and then fly back. No problem.”

I remembered waiting in the car outside the building where La Nacha lived, being afraid in that neighborhood.

“I’m the worst person to go. I can’t leave the kids. I can’t go to jail, Noodles.”

“You won’t go to jail. That’s the point. Connie’ll keep the kids. She knows you have family in El Paso. There could be an emergency. The kids would love to go to Connie’s.”

“What if narcs stop me, ask me what I’m doing there?”

“We still have Laura’s ID. It looks like you, maybe not so pretty but you’re both gueras with blue eyes. You’ll have a ratty piece of paper with ‘Lupe Vega’ scrawled on it and an address next door to Nacha’s. Say you’re looking for your maid, she hasn’t shown, she owes you money, something like that. Just act dumb, have them help you look for her.”

I finally agreed to go. He said Mel would be there and to watch him try it out. “You’ll know if it’s good.” Yes, I knew the look of a good rush. “Whatever you do, don’t leave Mel alone in the room. You leave alone, though, not even with Mel. Have your own cab come back for you in an hour. Don’t let them call you a cab.”

I got ready to go, called Connie and told her my uncle Gabe had died in El Paso, could she keep the kids for the night, maybe another day. Noodles gave me a thick envelope with money in it, taped closed. I packed a bag for the boys. They were happy to go. Connie’s six kids were like cousins. When I took them to the door Connie shooed them inside, came out onto the porch and hugged me. Her black hair was up in tin rollers, like a kabuki headdress. She wore cutoffs and a T-shirt, looked about fourteen.

“You don’t ever have to lie to me, Mona,” she said.

“Did you ever do this?”

“Yeah, lots of times. Not after I had children. You won’t do it again, I’ll bet. Take care. I’ll pray for you.”

*   *   *

It was still hot in El Paso. I walked across the sinking soft tarmac from the plane, smelling the dirt and sage I remembered from childhood. I told the cabdriver to take me to the bridge, but first drive around the alligator pond.

“Alligators? Them old alligators died off years ago. Still want to see the plaza?”

“Sure,” I said. I leaned back and watched the neighborhoods flash by. There were changes but as a kid I had skated over this whole city so many times that it seemed I knew every old house and tree. The baby was kicking and stretching. “You like my old hometown?”