America's Dream (22 page)

I will not cry for her, for him, for anyone. I will not cry. Tears roll from the corners of her eyes to her temples. He loves me. He’s always said he loves me. Rosalinda loves me too. So does my mother. But if they love me so much, why do they treat me like they don’t? Rosalinda only loves me if I let her have her way. Mami only loves me if I stay out of hers. Correa loves me, I know he does. But I don’t want to be loved that much. Not that much. “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If

you need help, hang up and dial your operator.”

The mechanized voice repeats its message, deliberate, com- posed, each word pronounced clearly so that there is no misinter- pretation. Help, América whispers as she puts the phone on its cradle. Help.

“On Sundays,” Karen Leverett said to her last night, “we usually do something as a family. We go for walks or to a museum or a movie.”

“Is América coming with us?” Meghan asked her mother.

“If she likes,” Karen said rubbing Meghan’s head. “Sundays and Mondays are her days off.”

“Maybe better I stay,” América said.

Karen seemed disappointed. “If you decide to go for a drive, take the Volvo.”

Where would I go, América asked herself.

The house is quiet. After her morning of phone calls, América is glad no one is around to see her swollen eyes and unhappy face. She prepares some canned chicken-noodle soup and two pieces of toast and sits in the family room eating and watching icicles melt on the roof overhang. I can’t spend every weekend like this, she says out loud, crying in the morning and eating canned soup in the afternoon. A cardinal lands on the edge of the back terrace. It’s the first bird she’s seen since she’s been in New York. Its red feathers seem out of place against the gray stone, the white snowbanks, the dreary green winter foliage. She made a dress that color one year for her birthday, and Correa made her change out of it into something less bright. Red, he said, made her look like a puta. The cardinal pecks at something in the interstices of the flagstone terrace, raises its head as if someone had called it, and flies away, its plumage a fiery streak against the drab landscape.

When América turned seventeen, Correa taught her to drive. He’s always loved cars, spends all his money and free time on wrecks that he buys for next to nothing and then fixes until the engine hums and the finish sparkles.

Early on a Sunday morning he took her to the parking lot at Sun Bay Beach and lifted the hood of his car, at that time a gray Monte Carlo. “This,” he said, as if he were revealing a marvelous secret, “is the engine.” He showed her how to check the oil and fluid levels in the radiator. He demonstrated how to scrape tiny grains of dirt from the battery connections. He pulled a pencil

tire gauge from his shirt pocket and showed her how to read the pressure. “The tires,” he said, “are the only contact you have with the road. Keep them inflated, and check frequently for wear.”

He took her on the narrow roads of Vieques and let her practice. “Step on the gas, and keep your speed constant. You shouldn’t let the engine struggle. Don’t ride the brakes, you’ll wear them out. Wash the car every week, the salt air is bad for the finish.”

When she got her license, he let her drive his car for practice and eventually gave it to her when he bought the first of his three Jeeps. But one day he came to the house and América wasn’t there. She had driven alone to Isabel Segunda, a twenty-minute ride to the other side of the island. When she returned, her arms laden with a week’s groceries, he beat her, saying that he didn’t teach her to drive so she could go running all over town. He took the car away and told her he didn’t want her driving anymore.

América sits at the wheel of Karen Leverett’s silver Volvo sta- tion wagon. She reflects that Correa also didn’t teach her to drive so that someday she’d be idling in the driveway of a mansion considering what to do with the rest of a cloudy Sunday afternoon in the middle of nowhere.

She takes a left onto the rutted dirt road. She has to slow down to let a group of riders on horseback line up single file so she can pass them. At the bottom of the hill she takes another left, toward the dry cleaners and the gourmet shop where Karen told her she always buys the coffee beans and extra-virgin olive oil she likes. Across from the gourmet shop there is a small movie theater.

Almost all of the rest of the storefronts on the street are real estate offices with photographs of million-dollar houses on the windows. She drives past a strip of stores with a supermarket at one end and a bank at the other. This is not where Karen said she should do the shopping, even though it’s the market closest to the house. Beyond it is a flower shop and a veterinarian, and around the corner from it, a twenty-four-hour gas station. She

drives past the fenced green meadows where a mother horse and her pony chase each other. Beyond it, at the bottom of the hill, is the high school, with its playing fields, a duck pond, and a clay track. She drives as if she knew where she was going, under the highway overpass, past an arrow signing a tennis and racket club. The two-lane road continues beyond Kyle and Meghan’s school, to a crossroads in front of a hospital.

She takes a right onto the main street of Mount Kisco, the nearest town, seven miles from where she lives. She parks at the first space she finds and hops over the slushy puddle onto the cleared sidewalk. She left the house because she was tired of being alone, playing and replaying images induced by this morning’s conversations. But she finds herself as alone on a street whose architecture, signage, and cold air are foreign. A storefront sign next to a karate studio advertises
OFICINA HISPANA,
and this is the first inkling she has that she’s not the only Spanish-speaking person in Westchester County, New York. The office is closed, but through the plate glass she can see posters for Peru, Ecuador, and Guatemala.

Farther down, a restaurant with a Spanish name, Casa Miguel. She peeks in its darkened door and sees a long, dark, narrow room decorated with serapes and sequined sombreros, peopled by Yanquis being served by Spanish-looking waiters. A man asks her if he can help her, and she backs away, shaking her head.

Hair salons, a jeweler, empty storefronts with
FOR RENT
signs. Across from the movie theater there is a pizza restaurant filled with chattering children and harried adults. América hurries past it.

Around the corner there is a small park by a stream, with a statue of Christopher Columbus in a pose that at first looks to her as if he were peeing. But he’s actually holding a scroll of some sort. Across the street, a statue of a feathered Indian turns its face away from Columbus.

Couples walk hand in hand, a group of men smoke on a street corner. They look Spanish to her, but as she approaches, they stop talking, so she can’t be sure. She’s surprised there are

no piropos so typical of groups of young men back home. Maybe, she thinks, I’m not dressed up enough. She’s wearing her only warm clothes, jeans, her Minnie Mouse sweatshirt, Karen Lever- ett’s boots and heavy coat. Her curls are squashed under the tight blue knit hat. No wonder men don’t say anything to women here, she says to herself, studying the bundled people passing her. We’re nothing to look at.

So much walking around in the cold makes her hungry, and she follows a garlicky aroma to a Chinese restaurant. The place is full of Spanish-speaking customers.

“Buenas tardes,” says the Chinese woman on the other side of the counter.

“Buenas tardes,” América replies, smiling with surprise at a Chinese person speaking Spanish. There’s an open kitchen behind the counter, at which three men wearing high white hats cook food in large woks over high fires. They nod in her direction.

“El menú,” the woman says, pushing a large printed sheet with the menu in Chinese characters and their English translation, which to América looks as foreign as the original Chinese.

“Gracias.” She stares uncomprehendingly at the list of dishes, trying to find chow mein, fried rice, and egg rolls, the only Chinese food she’s ever eaten. And she’s not even sure if it was really Chinese because the owner of the restaurant was a Viequense who had lived in New York for ten years and had never been to China, as far as she knows. The woman behind the counter points to photographs on the walls.

“El menú,” she repeats, smiling, only this time she’s not quite so friendly, as she realizes that América doesn’t know what to order.

A couple walks in, and the woman smiles and greets them in the same way she greeted América. She hands them a menu, and América realizes that maybe the Chinese woman only knows enough Spanish to greet and serve her customers.

“Número cuatro,” she says, pointing to the shrimp and lobster dish with a side of fried rice and egg roll.

“Y para beber?”

“Coca-Cola.” The woman gives her a receipt, a Coke, and straw, and points to an empty table.

“Yo llamo el número,” and she points to the numbers on the piece of paper in América’s hand, at the table again, as if América didn’t get it the first time.

As she sits, the people at the next table watch her. When she looks their way, the man nods, and the woman appraises her brazenly, a warning in her eyes. América pops open the can and stares out the window, avoiding the gaze of other women in the restaurant who watch her as if she had come in here to seduce their men right out form under their noses. This is my man, the look says, stay away from him. She’s had this look on her face. When Correa takes her out, she’s possessive if any woman looks at them. It is the same look Correa wears when he’s with her, the same look Don Irving had on his face the three months Ester lived with him. And who knows, might be wearing it again now that she’s come back.

Is it possible, América wonders, to love someone without pos- sessing them? Is it possible to love and not worry that the next person who comes in the door is going to take your lover away with one glance?

Her number is called, in Spanish, and she picks up her order, and sits at her table alone, surrounded by couples speaking a different Spanish than she’s ever heard but Spanish nevertheless. And she’d like to talk to these people in her language, to find out where they’re from and whether they’re used to this cold climate and whether they live in this town or, like her, are visiting on their day off. But the looks on the women’s faces discourage her. She’s a woman alone, and that makes her suspect to every other woman there. She eats the delicious Chinese food in silence, avoiding the dark eyes of the other diners, watching the passersby through the window, feeling as lonely as she’s ever felt in her life.

When she returns to the house, América tries Estrella’s phone number, hoping that Rosalinda will be calm and able to talk to her. She wants to apologize for sounding as if she were going to

lecture Rosalinda about Taino. What she was actually about to say was that, even though what Rosalinda did was wrong, it wasn’t the reason she decided to leave Correa. I should’ve done it long ago, she wants to tell her daughter, but I never knew how, or even that I could. But as she’s formulating the words, América fumbles, not quite sure how to answer her own questions, afraid that Rosalinda’s which will be more like demands, will be even harder. She’s relieved when the phone is busy.

I suppose Rosalinda’s running away with Taino had something to do with it, she allows herself. Knowing that I did what I could for her and that it didn’t matter anyway. This line of thinking raises her temperature, so she changes into her nightclothes, even though it’s only 6:00
P.M
. Maybe I shouldn’t call her, maybe she’s the one who should be calling me, apologizing for hanging up so disrespectfully. Then she remembers Rosalinda doesn’t have her phone number.

She dials again. Either Rosalinda is on the phone with her father, or she has taken the phone off the hook to spite her. She thinks it’s more likely that Rosalinda and Correa are on the phone talking about her, then decides she’s being paranoid. But then she remembers them sitting on the couch back home, talking quietly until she walked in, silencing each other with a conspirat- orial look that they didn’t even try to hide. Whose side is Ros- alinda on?

The garage door opens and drops below her. The Leveretts must be home from their Sunday together. She hears them puttering around and for a moment considers going downstairs to help them prepare dinner or whatever it is they’re doing. But it’s her day off. She curls deep into her comforter. If it’s still busy next time I dial, she tells herself, I’m giving up. She waits fifteen minutes, dials again, slams the phone down after the insistent buzz. Now she’s certain Rosalinda has left the phone off the hook. I’m supposed to feel guilty for mentioning Taino. I’m supposed to forget it ever happened. Well, I have news for you. I’m never forgetting it, never. You’ve made your bed, she tells her daughter across the ocean, now lie in it.

She makes her last call of the day.

“Aunt Paulina? It’s your niece, América.”

“Ay, nena, what a surprise! Hold on a second.” In a louder voice, away from the phone. “Everyone settle down, it’s América.

¿Cómo estás, mi’ja?”

“I’m fine, Tía. Did you get my letter?”

“Sí, mi’ja, but you didn’t give me an address or a phone num- ber. Are you in New York yet?”

“Yes, I came last week.” “Really?”

“I have a job with a family here.

“Yes, you said that in your letter. Where is their house?” “The town is called Bedford.”

“I don’t know where that is. Hold on a second.” The receiver rattles as if she’s put the phone on a table. Paulina’s voice comes through it muffled and distant as she talks to what sounds like several people. América can’t quite make out what’s being said, but it sounds as if they’re trying to determine where she is and whether any of them have ever heard of the town. Paulina picks up the phone again. “Leopoldo knows where it is.”

“How is Tío Poldo?”

“Ay, mi’ja, the same as always. We’re all the same here, gracias a Dios. And your mother?”

“She’s good. She sends her love.”

“When is your day off? Can you come visit us?” “I’m off Sunday and Monday.”