A Manual for Cleaning Women (40 page)

“What’s that?” the cabdriver asked.

“Sorry, I was talking to my baby.”

He laughed. “Did he answer?”

I crossed the bridge. I was still happy just with the smells of woodfires and caliche dirt, chili, and the whiff of sulfur from the smelter. My friend Hope and I used to love to give smart answers when the border guards asked our nationality. Transylvanian, Mozambican.

“USA,” I said. Nobody seemed to notice me. Just in case, I didn’t take any of the cabs by the border but walked some more blocks. I ate some
dulce de membrillo
. Even as a kid I didn’t like it, but liked the idea that it came in a little balsa box and you used the lid for a spoon. I looked at all the silver jewelry and shell ashtrays and Don Quijotes until I made myself get into a cab and hand him the piece of paper with Lupe’s name and the wrong address. “
Cuanto?
”

“Twenty dollars.”

“Ten.”

“
Bueno
.” Then I could no longer pretend I wasn’t scared. He drove fast for a long time. I recognized the deserted street and the stucco building. He stopped a few doors down. In broken Spanish I asked him to be back in an hour. For twenty dollars. “Okay.
Una hora
.”

It was hard climbing the stairs to the fourth floor. I was big with the baby and my legs were swollen and sore. I caught my breath in sobs at each landing. My knees and hands were shaking. I knocked on the door of number 43, Mel opened it and I stumbled in.

“Hey, sweetheart, what’s happening?”

“Water, please.” I sat on a dirty vinyl sofa. He brought me a Diet Coke, wiped the top with his shirt, smiled. He was dirty, handsome, moved like a cheetah. A legend by now, escaping from jails, jumping bond. Armed and dangerous. He brought me a chair to put my feet up on, rubbed my ankles.

“Where is La Nacha?” The woman was never referred to just as Nacha. “The Nacha,” whatever that meant. She came in, dressed in a black man’s suit and a white shirt. She sat at a chair behind a desk. I couldn’t tell if she was a male transvestite or a woman trying to look like a man. She was dark, almost black, with a Mayan face, red-black lipstick and nail polish, dark glasses. Her hair was short, slick. She held a stubby hand out to Mel without looking at me. I handed him the money. I saw her count the money.

That’s when I got afraid, really afraid. I had thought I was getting drugs for Noodles. All I cared about was him not being sick. I had thought there was maybe a big wad of tens, twenties in the packet. There were thousands of dollars in La Nacha’s hand. He hadn’t just sent me to get shit for him. I was making a big, dangerous score. If they caught me it would be as a dealer, not a user. Who would take care of the boys? I hated Noodles.

Mel saw that I was shaking. I think I even gagged. He fished around in his pockets, came up with a blue pill. I shook my head. The baby.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s just a Valium. You’ll mess that baby up worse if you don’t take it. Take it. Get it together! You hear me?”

I nodded. His scorn shook me. I was calm even before the pill worked.

“Noodles told you I was going to test the shit. If it’s good I’ll say so and you just take the balloon and leave. You know where to put it?” I knew but would never do that. What if it broke and got to the baby?

He was a devil, could read my mind. “If you don’t put it there I will. It’s not going to break. Your baby is all wrapped up in a drug-proof bag, safe against every evil of the outside world. Once he’s born, sugar, hey, that’s another story.”

Mel watched as La Nacha weighed the packet and nodded as she handed it to him. She had never looked at me. I watched Mel shoot up. Put cottons and water into a spoon, sprinkle a pinch of brown heroin into it, cook it. Tie up, hit a vein in his hand, blood backing up then plunge and the tie falling off as his face instantly stretched back. He was in a wind tunnel. Ghosts were flying him into another world. I had to pee, I had to throw up. “Where’s the bathroom?” La Nacha motioned to the door. I found the bathroom down the hall by the smell. When I got back I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to leave Mel alone. He was smiling. He handed me the condom, rolled up into a ball.

“Here you go, precious, you have a good trip. Go on now, put it away like a good girl.” I turned around and acted like I was shoving it inside myself but it was just inside my too-tight underpants. Outside, in the dark of the hall I moved it to my bra.

I took the steps slowly, like a drunk. It was dark, filthy.

At the second landing I heard the door open downstairs, noises from the street. Two young boys ran up the stairs. “
Fíjate no más!
” One of them pinned me to the wall, the other got my purse. Nothing was in it but loose bills, makeup. Everything else was in a pocket inside my jacket. He hit me.

“Let’s fuck her,” the other one said.

“How? You need a dick four feet long.”

“Turn her around,
bato
.”

Just as he hit me again a door opened and an old man came running down the stairs with a knife. The boys turned and ran back outside. “Are you well?” the man asked in English.

I nodded. I asked him to go with me. “I hope there is a taxi outside.”

“You wait here. If it’s there I’ll have him use the horn three times.”

Your mother did teach you to be a lady, I thought when I wondered about the etiquette. Should I offer him money? I didn’t. His toothless smile was sweet as he opened the taxi door for me.

“
Adiós.
”

*   *   *

I was nauseated on the little twin-engine plane to Albuquerque. I smelled like sweat and the couch and the pee-stained wall. I asked for an extra sandwich and nuts and milk.

“Eatin’ for two now!” the Texan across from me grinned.

I drove from the airport home. I’d get the boys after I had a shower. As I drove down the dirt road toward our trailer I could see Noodles in his pea jacket, pacing and smoking outside.

He looked desperate, didn’t even come to greet me. I followed him inside.

He sat at the edge of the bed. On the table his outfit was ready and waiting. “Let me see it.” I handed him the balloon. He opened the cupboard above the bed and put it on the tiny scale. He turned and slapped me hard across the face. He had never hit me before. I sat there, numb, next to him. “You left Mel alone with it. Didn’t you. Didn’t you.”

“There is enough there to have put me away for a long time,” I said.

“I told you not to leave him. What am I going to do now?”

“Call the police,” I said, and he slapped me again. This one I didn’t even feel. I got a strong contraction. Braxton-Hicks, I thought to myself. Whoever was Braxton-Hicks? I sat there, sweating, stinking of Juárez, and watched him pour the contents of the rubber into a film canister. He shook some onto the cottons in his spoon. I knew with a sick certainty that always if there were a choice between me and the boys or drugs, he’d go for the drugs.

Hot water gushed down my legs onto the carpet. “Noodles! My water is breaking! I have to go to the hospital.” But by then he had fixed. The spoon made a clink onto the table, his rubber tube fell from his arm. He leaned back against the pillow. “At least it’s good shit,” he whispered. I got another contraction. Strong. I tore off the filthy dress and sponged myself, put on a white
huipil
. Another contraction. I called 911. Noodles had nodded out. Should I leave him a note? Maybe he’d call the hospital when he woke. No. He would not think of me at all.

First thing he’d do, he’d shoot up what was left in the cottons, have another little taste. I tasted copper in my mouth. I slapped his face but he didn’t move.

I opened the can of heroin, holding it with a Kleenex. I poured a large amount into the spoon. I added a little water, then closed his beautiful hand around the can. There was another bad contraction. Blood and mucus were sliding down my legs. I put a sweater on, got my Medi-Cal card, and went outside to wait for the ambulance.

They took me straight to the delivery room. “The baby’s coming!” I said. The nurse took my Medi-Cal card, asked questions: phone, husband’s name, how many live births, what was my due date.

She examined me. “You’re totally dilated, the head is right here.”

Pains were coming one after another. She ran to get a doctor. While she was gone the baby was born, a little girl. Carmen. I leaned down and picked her up. I laid her, warm and steaming, on my stomach. We were alone in the quiet room. Then they came and wheeled us careening into the big lights. Somebody cut the cord and I heard the baby cry. An even worse pain as the placenta came out and then they were putting a mask over my face. “What are you doing? She is born!”

“The doctor is coming. You need an episiotomy.” They tied my hands down.

“Where is my baby? Where is she?” The nurse left the room. I was strapped to the sides of the bed. A doctor came in. “Please untie me.” He did and was so gentle I became frightened. “What is it?”

“She was born too early,” he said, “weighed only a few pounds. She didn’t live. I’m sorry.” He patted my arm, awkwardly, like patting a pillow. He was looking at my chart. “Is this your home number? Shall I call your husband?”

“No,” I said. “Nobody’s home.”

Silence

I started out quiet, living in mountain mining towns, moving too often to make a friend. I’d find me a tree or a room in an old deserted mill, to sit in silence.

My mother was usually reading or sleeping so I spoke mostly with my father. As soon as he got in the door or when he took me up into the mountains or down dark into the mines, I was talking nonstop.

Then he went overseas and we were in El Paso, Texas, where I went to Vilas school. In third grade I read well but I didn’t even know addition. Heavy brace on my crooked back. I was tall but still childlike. A changeling in this city, as if I’d been reared in the woods by mountain goats. I kept peeing in my pants, splashing until I refused to go to school or even speak to the principal.

My mother’s old high school teacher got me in as a scholarship student at the exclusive Radford School for Girls, two bus rides across El Paso. I still had all of the above problems but now I was also dressed like a ragamuffin. I lived in the slums and there was something particularly unacceptable about my hair.

I haven’t talked much about this school. I don’t mind telling people awful things if I can make them funny. It was never funny. Once at recess I took a drink from a garden hose and the teacher grabbed it from me, told me I was common.

But the library. Every day we got to spend an hour in it, free to look at any book, at every book, to sit down and read, or go through the card catalogue. When there were fifteen minutes left the librarian let us know, so we could check out a book. The librarian was so, don’t laugh, soft-spoken. Not just quiet but nice. She’d tell you, “This is where biographies are,” and then explain what a biography was.

“Here are reference books. If there is ever anything you want to know, you just ask me and we’ll find the answer in a book.”

This was a wonderful thing to hear and I believed her.

Then Miss Brick’s purse got stolen from beneath her desk. She said that it must have been me who took it. I was sent to Lucinda de Leftwitch Templin’s office. Lucinda de said she knew I didn’t come from a privileged home like most of her girls, and that this might be difficult for me sometimes. She understood, she said, but really she was saying, “Where’s the purse?”

I left. Didn’t even go back to get the bus money or lunch in my cubby. Took off across town, all the long way, all the long day. My mother met me on the porch with a switch. They had called to say I had stolen the purse and then run away. She didn’t even ask me if I stole it. “Little thief, humiliating me,” whack, “brat, ungrateful,” whack. Lucinda de called her the next day to tell her a janitor had stolen the purse but my mother didn’t even apologize to me. She just said, “Bitch,” after she hung up.

That’s how I ended up in St. Joseph’s, which I loved. But those kids hated me too, for all of the above reasons but now worse for new reasons, one being that Sister Cecilia always called on me and I got stars and Saint pictures and was the pet! pet! until I stopped raising my hand.

Uncle John took off for Nacogdoches, which left me alone with my mother and Grandpa. Uncle John always used to eat with me, or drink while I ate. He talked to me while I helped him repair furniture, took me to movies and let me hold his slimy glass eye. It was terrible when he was gone. Grandpa and Mamie (my grandma) were at his dentist office all day and then when they got home Mamie kept my little sister safe away in the kitchen or in Mamie’s room. My mother was out, being a gray lady at the army hospital or playing bridge. Grandpa was out at the Elks or who knows. The house was scary and empty without John and I’d have to hide from Grandpa and Mama when either of them was drunk. Home was bad and school was bad.

I decided not to talk. I just sort of gave it up. It lasted so long Sister Cecilia tried to pray with me in the cloakroom. She meant well and was just touching me in sympathy, praying. I got scared and pushed her and she fell down and I got expelled.

That’s when I met Hope.

School was almost over so I would stay home and go back to Vilas in the fall. I still wasn’t talking, even when my mother poured a whole pitcher of iced tea over my head or twisted as she pinched me so the pinches looked like stars, the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, the Lyre up and down my arms.

I played jacks on the concrete above the steps, wishing that the Syrian kid next door would ask me over. She played on their concrete porch. She was small and thin but seemed old. Not grown-up or mature but like an old woman-child. Long shiny black hair with bangs hanging down over her eyes. In order to see she had to tip her head back. She looked like a baby baboon. In a nice way, I mean. A little face and huge black eyes. All of the six Haddad kids looked emaciated but the adults were huge, two or three hundred pounds.

I knew she noticed me too because if I was doing cherries in the basket so was she. Or shooting stars, except she didn’t ever drop a jack, even with twelves. For weeks our balls and jacks made a nice bop bop crash bop bop crash rhythm until finally she did come over to the fence. She must have heard my mother yelling at me because she said,