Daughter's Keeper (43 page)

They spent the rest of the day strolling through the main square and the churches, staring into the beatific face of
La Virgin de Guadeloupe
on every corner and in every building. Luna seemed happy, cuddled up against Elaine's chest. The heavy warmth of the baby gave Elaine a sense of well-being that surprised her. She nestled each of Luna's bare feet into one of her palms and ambled through the city, tickling the tiny toes and placing periodic kisses upon the baby's soft head.

In the late morning, Luna began to fuss, and Elaine realized that she, too, was hungry. She ducked into a storefront
taquería
and sat on one of the high stools. She unsnapped Luna from the carrier, and, balancing the little girl on her hip, dug through the diaper bag until she found the bottle she'd put there before they had set off on their tour of the city. The milk had defrosted during their walk, and Luna began drinking noisily. The woman behind the counter wandered over and smiled at the baby.

“Su hija
?” she said, leaning over the counter and stroking Luna's head. “
Que guapa.”

“My granddaughter,” Elaine said. “
Hija de mi hija.”

The woman let loose a torrent of Spanish and reached into the pocket of her apron. She laid a photograph of a small girl in an elaborate white gown on the counter. “
Mi nieta
,” she said.

Elaine looked at the photograph of the other woman's granddaughter. She traced her finger along the edge of the picture. “
Muy bonita.
”

“
En los Estados Unidos
.
Tejas
. Houston.” She put her hands over her heart and mimed the ache of being separated from the child. Elaine shook her head sympathetically, and the woman shrugged as if to say, “What can you do?” She smiled and motioned to the pots of food bubbling on the gas rings in front of her. Elaine ordered two tacos with chicken, but found that she couldn't finish them. She had lost her appetite.

When the time came to head up to Araceli and Juan Carlos's house, Elaine's peaceful calm began to drain from her, replaced by an anxious dread that gripped her deep in her bowels. She packed lightly for the excursion, with just a single change of clothes for the baby and a few diapers, wanting to make it clear by her paucity of belongings that Luna was not going to remain there that night, that she was going to stay at the hotel with her grandmother for at least another day.

Elaine held Luna in her lap as the taxi meandered through the cobblestone streets and up into the hills surrounding San Miguel. They left behind the large gracious colonial homes and passed into neighborhoods of little houses behind wrought-iron gates. The barks and howls of dogs greeted them at every turn, ratcheting Elaine's anxiety up another notch. Luna gazed out the window, her eyes wide, almost as if she knew that she was going to her new home. The small, neat houses gave way to more ramshackle ones with corrugated tin roofs, and the taxi bumped along uneven pavement and finally pulled to a stop in front of a narrow two-story house. A tiny market took up the first floor. Elaine had passed what seemed like hundreds like it during her walk through the city. Every corner had one—its narrow shelves stocked with dusty cartons of unfamiliar foods and coolers of soda and ice cream.

“Is this the right place?” Elaine asked the driver, showing him once again the scrap of paper with Jorge's family's address.

“
Si. Familia Rodriguez
,” the driver said, motioning her to disembark from his cab.

Elaine looked up and down the long crooked street, miles away from the center of town. “Can you come back for me later?” she asked, as she handed him the money for the fare. The driver shrugged ambiguously, and Elaine clambered out of the cab, clutching Luna in one arm and her bag in the other. A curtain hung in the doorway to the
tienda
, with beads that formed a mosaic image of the face of Jesus. Elaine pushed aside a few strands of beads and found herself face to face with a small wrinkled woman with black hair held back with two pink barrettes.

“Araceli Rodriguez?” Elaine asked, trying to roll her
R
s the way Olivia did.

The woman's face cracked into a huge smile, and she bustled out from behind the counter, a stream of Spanish greetings flowing from her lips. She wrapped Elaine in an embrace and then held out her arms to Luna. She tickled the baby on the neck and tried to take her from Elaine. Elaine resisted, and for the briefest of moments, the two held the baby between them, each tugging on whatever yielding limb she could reach. At last Elaine let her arms fall, and Jorge's mother squeezed Luna close to her chest, beaming gratefully at her opponent in the grandmother tug-of-war. She called out loudly to someone in the back of the market and motioned for Elaine to follow her behind the counter and through another beaded curtain, this one of St. Michael with his sword, treading on the chest of Satan Defeated. They clambered over crates of laundry soap and plastic flats of Blimpie Bread, pushed aside the dusty curtain, and walked into what looked like the family's living room. The market appeared to take up the front hall of the house and was separated from the rest only by the St. Michael curtain. In the living room, there were two daybeds pushed into opposite corners of the room and a brightly colored rug on the floor. A long, narrow table stood against one wall, and an open door let out into a courtyard. Araceli rushed out through this door, and Elaine followed her much more slowly. The courtyard was full of people. It was dark but for the light of the television flickering from its perch on a metal stand against one of the walls. A group of men, some old, some young, sat on chairs and on the floor watching a soccer game. There must have been five or six children zooming tiny cars around and playing house with an oversized cardboard box. The courtyard was loud with the sound of men's voices and the children's happy cries. When Elaine walked in, it fell silent for a moment, and then one by one members of Jorge's family came over and greeted her.

Juan Carlos, a tall man with Jorge's Mayan features but a far readier smile, took Luna from his wife. The baby seemed perfectly willing to be passed from stranger to stranger, and grabbed hold of Juan Carlos's nose. He laughed delightedly and said something in rapid Spanish to Elaine that was beyond her rudimentary skills. He motioned to a young woman who had come out into the courtyard from a small room that looked like it might be the kitchen.

“Hello, Elaine. I am Aida. My father say thank you for bringing the beautiful Luna to us.”

Elaine smiled faintly, and in a voice that surprised her with its tremulousness said, “Thank you, too, but I think I'd better take her now. She's not used to so many new people.” Aida murmured something to her father, who dutifully handed the giggling infant to Elaine.

“Please, sit down.” Aida led Elaine to a chair in the courtyard. Moments later, two of the young men had dragged the long table out into the darkness. They set it before Elaine, and Araceli appeared with a bowl of steaming soup.

“Please, eat,” said Aida. “My mother's
sopa Azteca
is delicious.”

Elaine sipped from the proffered bowl and nodded her agreement. “Wonderful.” She ate self-consciously, watching the others watch her. Only once Araceli had placed before her a plate laden with
carnitas
, beans, and rice, did she ask, “Aren't you all eating, too?”

“Yes, yes,” the girl said and called to her mother. Plates and bowls and heaping stacks of tortillas began materializing from the kitchen. Soon, everyone was eating. Some people sat at the table, but they left Elaine a large space to herself. She ate with one hand, holding Luna in the other. She knew that she should allow Luna's family to hold the baby and play with her, but she was unwilling to let her go. After they'd eaten, Juan Carlos pulled a chair up to Elaine and leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees. He drew his finger along the length of his moustache and motioned to his daughter to step forward. Aida translated as he spoke.

“My father say he so sorry that Jorge and Olivia be so trouble to you and to him. He say he is shamed of his son. He say a man should protect his woman, not bring problems to her and to her family. He say can you forgive him for this.”

Juan Carlos held his hands out to Elaine. “I so sorry,” he said, in thickly accented English.

“I am, too,” Elaine replied. She spoke slowly to give Aida time to translate. “My daughter is innocent. I think your son was tricked by evil people, and I think he grew frightened, and that is why he brought Olivia into his troubles. I understand his fear, and while I am terribly sad my daughter has been punished for something she didn't do, I am grateful to you for your apology.”

Juan Carlos frowned as Aida spoke and shook his head, almost reprovingly. He spoke again, and Aida translated. “My father say, let's not talk about who is right and who is wrong. They are both in a sad situation now, and we must help them. Right now we must think about Luna and how to care for her. He say thank you for bringing the baby to him. He say I promise we will care for her and that you will be proud of her.”

Elaine stifled her flash of anger at any implication that what had happened was Olivia's fault in any way. She reminded herself that Juan Carlos knew only what Jorge had told him and what Olivia had written in her letter. “Aida, please ask your father if he understands that Olivia will want Luna back in a few years, when she's released from prison. Does he promise to give her back, even if Jorge wants her as well?”

Juan Carlos nodded vigorously as Aida translated. “My father understands that of course Olivia is afraid to send her child so far away. My father say a child belongs with its mother, and when Luna's mother is free she will have her baby.”

Elaine nodded. She looked around at the sea of serious, thoughtful people. The room was simple, spartan even. Many of the toys the children played with were broken—their dolls had hair worn to a frazzle or rubbed off completely. Most of the toy cars seemed to be missing wheels, and the children wore clothes that had clearly been handed down from older siblings or cousins. But they looked content and well fed. Juan Carlos and Araceli seemed, as Olivia had promised, to be warm, loving people who would take good care of their granddaughter. Luna would be safe; she would be comfortable, she would be happy. Elaine believed the man when he said he would return Luna to Olivia when she was released.

Araceli came out from behind Juan Carlos's chair where she'd been hovering and took Elaine's hand. Aida translated her mother's words. “My mother say you keep Luna for another night, so that you can say good-bye. Tomorrow, maybe you come and sleep here with her. After, you must promise you will visit many times, so Luna will have both her grandmothers to take care of her.”

Elaine smiled and began to cry. Araceli rushed to hug her, and they rocked back and forth together, Elaine bent over awkwardly in the small woman's embrace.

***

The line for the pay phone was long and the women huddled under a miasma of gray cigarette smoke. Olivia leaned against the cold tile wall whirling her hair with a raw-looking finger. Chewing on her cuticles and playing with her hair were two of the habits she'd developed in the two weeks she'd been confined at Dublin. From the moment she'd arrived, Olivia had crept through the prison, hoping to slip undetected by the grim, angry inmates who ran the place. On her first day, a bleached-blond with a jagged purple scar across her throat had lifted a lock of Olivia's hair as they stood side by side in the meal line.

“Sexy,” she had said, and Olivia had cringed under her foul-smelling breath and the threat she was sure was implied by that single hissed word. From then on, Olivia had scraped her curls back into a braid so tight it made her temples ache. She shared a cell with two other women, both as silent as she. After she'd dumped her blanket and sheets on the bunk, she'd mumbled her name to the women. They'd told her theirs, but had said little else in the weeks they had been sleeping side by side.

The line moved sluggishly forward, and Olivia did her best to tune out the whining voice of the woman at the front. She was speaking Spanish with what Olivia thought was a Guatemalan accent and was berating the person at the other end of the telephone for not putting money in her prison account. Olivia closed her eyes, and Luna's face swam into view behind her eyelids. She was desperately afraid that her daughter's image would grow cloudy in her memory, or, worse, that the living, breathing face would be replaced by the static likeness in the single photograph Olivia had been allowed to keep with her. She lingered over her daughter's brown eyes, so round they seemed like circles fringed with velvet lashes. She held tightly to the memory of her daughter's soft pink lips pursed around a nipple. Just as she traced a finger across an imaginary downy cheek, she felt a sharp poke in her back.

“Move it or lose it, girl.”

Olivia turned and saw a tall dark-skinned woman with long, kinky hair done up in a mass of braids. Her lips were berry-red and shiny with contraband lipstick. The woman motioned to Olivia to move a few steps forward in the line and then looked at her with narrowed eyes.

“Do I know you?” the woman asked.

Olivia ducked her head, shaking it at the same time, and stepped forward. She turned her face away, wrapping her finger around a strand of hair that had pulled loose from her braid. The woman leaned over her and peered into her face.

“I know you, girl. You have your baby already?”

Olivia looked up, startled, and then it dawned on her. She'd met the woman in lockup when she was awaiting trial.

“Queenie?” She was surprised at the hoarse croak of her voice, then realized that she had not spoken a word in days.

“That's me. What your name again?”

“Olivia.”