Night at the Fiestas: Stories (28 page)

A
FTER
A
UTUMN HAD BEEN
put to bed—both Carmen and Margaret had tucked her in—they sat in the living room petting Daisy and watching a late show. It was past eleven when the driveway light flicked on. Margaret went to the window and looked out. She could see Ruben backlit by the glow of the spotlight, a dark, unsmiling face in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t looking toward the house, but at some point in the distance.

She backed away from the window, suddenly afraid of being seen. When the doorbell rang, she didn’t move to answer it.

“Ruben.” Carmen sighed and rose to open the door, as if she lived here. Daisy trotted after her.

Up close, Ruben wasn’t nearly as tall as Margaret had imagined, just an inch or two taller than she. His facial hair was scraggly and long, his teeth crooked and scummy-looking.

“What’s wrong, hijito?” Carmen said.

The remaining sensation of drunkenness washed away and Margaret felt sharp and dry and alert. “Come in,” she said politely, even though he was already inside and something was clearly wrong.

Ruben looked over Carmen and Margaret’s shoulders, his head darting about in quick stabs. Margaret had imagined him handsome, disarming; she had imagined she might have to brace herself against his charm. Instead, she was repulsed.
This
was the son Carmen spent all her money on? This was the man responsible for half Autumn’s genes?

“Where’s my daughter?” he said, head jerking. He moved into the living room.

“Hijito,” Carmen said again, voice wary. “What’s the matter?”

“Where were you? Where have you been?” His voice was whiny.

Daisy began to yap foolishly. Over the noise, Carmen continued to step toward her son. “We’ve been waiting for you.” Her eyes were on something in his hand.

With a horror that flooded her throat and extremities, Margaret realized Ruben was holding a gun. She’d never seen a real handgun before—shockingly solid and metallic.

Margaret had the impulse to run to the child, asleep in the guestroom, and push her deep under the bed. The old childhood memories of hiding from her shouting father. Autumn must have the same instincts.

“Where’s my fucking daughter?” He scratched at his neck as though clawing something out of him. “You been talking to that bitch Chelsea? The two of you keeping my daughter from me?”

Margaret drew herself up. “You need to leave my house. You need to go.” She extended a hand toward the door, an absurdly formal gesture.

But Ruben didn’t hear. He lunged at Carmen, the gun swinging at his side. “You stupid cunt bitch, trying to—” He stopped short without touching her, put his face right into hers. “Where’s my
fucking
daughter?”

“I’m not keeping her from you, honey. We’ve been here, waiting. For you.” Carmen’s voice was imploring. She didn’t shift her eyes from her son’s.

Without warning, Ruben lifted the gun, shot it into the ceiling, barely missing a recessed light. The crack stunned Daisy into silence, and they all stood frozen as the gypsum dust rained down. Then Daisy started yapping again.

Margaret tried to think how far out the police would be. Ten minutes. Longer. Maybe a highway patrol would be near. Maybe not. They might have trouble finding the turnoff, navigating the dirt road at night. A lot could happen in that time.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Please,” cried Carmen. She did not shift her eyes from Ruben’s. “Please! He’s a good boy. He’ll stop.”

Margaret looked wildly at the German knives lined up in the block on the kitchen counter. She remembered something she’d heard about knives being no good for self-defense because they can so easily be turned against you. She lifted her hands, looked at them: so thin, veins showing blue through her skin, the wedding band heavy and loose.

Ruben’s voice rose. “You better listen to me. Listen to me, listen to me. You never listen to me.” He moaned as he spoke, as if in physical pain.

“I’m listening, Ruben. I’m listening. Tell me what you have to say, and I’m listening.”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do!”

He was shaking, jumping, scratching at his neck, so there were red lines running down it. Margaret wondered if the skin might break. Margaret wondered if this was meth, if this was drunkenness, if it was a combination of the two.

Margaret imagined the scene from outside, where she wanted to be: the house all lit up like a silent stage, the terrible drama going on inside. But the house couldn’t be seen from the road. And any shout would sound like the wail of a coyote.

The car keys were on the counter in the kitchen. With her purse and her cell phone. Could she grab Autumn, grab the keys? It would take too long. There were too many open spaces in this house. It was all exposure and space. These were surfaces you could crack your head on.

Daisy’s bark hammered off the high ceilings, incessant. Margaret longed to run to her, clamp her mouth shut, longed for her to shut up so she could think. “I’ll give you money,” Margaret cried, hands shaking. She swung her arm wildly. “Take whatever you want, just leave us . . .”

Ruben turned fast, and Margaret shrank against the wall. “Fuck you,” he said, the words cutting. “I don’t want your money, rich cunt.
Fuck you
.”

Give this maniac Carmen, give him Autumn. Negotiate. You can have them all, she shouted in her head. Just leave, just leave.

“Calm down, hijito. Calm down.”

He turned back to his mother. “Don’t you fucking get near me! You want to keep me sucking at your fat tits.” Sinking to a crouch, Ruben buried his head in his arms, weeping. The gun hung loosely from his hand. Carmen knelt beside him and touched his shoulder gently.

Margaret’s courage returned. In a loud voice, so that she could be heard over Daisy’s panicked barking, she declared, “Get out now. I will not allow you to terrorize us.”

Carmen whipped around, eyes savage. Her voice was quiet, cruel. “You leave him alone.”

Whatever this was, they all understood it. Even Autumn. The terror and fury and love and whatever else was mixed up in it was theirs alone, and it was Margaret’s own stupid fault it was taking place in her house. She wanted them out, all of them, the little girl, too. She didn’t care what happened to them—they could tear each other limb from limb for all she cared—she just wanted them away from her. She wanted it all gone: the sun finding its way in, the dust sifting under the doors. Rattlesnakes. Coyotes and scorpions. God knows what else. Everything wailing, crying, howling.

Daisy barked, sharp, relentless.

Ruben rose in a sudden roar, grabbed the dog in his thick hands. “
Shut the fuck up!”

Daisy squealed when he threw her across the great room. Her body hit the window with a thud, dropped to the ground in a gray heap. The thick pane didn’t break. When she stood, her black eyes were open, glassy, and she breathed in quick shallow breaths.

There was blood, just a little, in the fur at her ear. Daisy made her way unevenly toward Margaret, tags jingling, then stopped and tipped her head as if perplexed.

Margaret made her move: swept Daisy into her arms, ran across the tile to the heavy door, pushed it open, and burst into the cold night. Point-seven miles to the road. Her feet tore on the stones of the driveway as she ran.

After a time, she realized she was sobbing. She stopped and looked up the hill at the lit house, clutching the dog’s little body to her chest, her breath ripping through her. The scent of piñon was sharp and acrid in the cold air.

Above, the bright window hung against the darkness like a canvas on a gallery wall, framing Carmen and her son. They were motionless, as minutely wrought as figures in a medieval miniature. His face was buried in her lap, and she bent over him, so close their heads were nearly touching, the two of them as destructive and unstoppable as any force of nature.

THE MANZANOS

M
Y NAME IS MY GRANDMOTHER’S:
O
FELIA ALMA ZAMORA
. I am eleven years old and too young to die, but I am dying nonetheless. I have been dying since the day my mother went away. I’ve been to doctors—to the clinic in Estancia, and all the way to Albuquerque—but they take my temperature, knead my stomach, check my throat, and tell my grandfather the same thing: perhaps it is a minor infection or virus, one of the usual brief illnesses of childhood, and they see nothing seriously wrong. They don’t know about the ojo, the evil eye.

There is no one left in this town who can cure me, so for now I sit at the edge of the yard, my feet in the road, turning a piece of broken asphalt in my hands, in case a stranger passes. Are you a healer? I’ll ask her. I think of how it will be when I find her, how when she lays her hands on my head I’ll close my eyes and feel the blessing pass through me like fire.

I imagine this, knowing I can’t be cured, knowing I couldn’t bear to be.

I
’M WAITING FOR MY
GRANDFATHER
, relieved because today, finally, he has gotten up and dressed for the city: plaid shirt buttoned all the way up his thin tortoise neck, bolo tie with the silver dollar set in a ring of turquoise. Face scrubbed, white hair combed in lines over the brown crown of his head. He’s in the house rinsing our coffee cups and wiping toast crumbs from the oilcloth.

I am ready, too, wearing my blue dress (though the sleeves no longer cover my wrists), white tights (dingy and loose at the knees), and my sneakers. In my pocket is the address for the VA clinic, which I have copied from some papers in my grandfather’s desk. This morning my grandfather braided my hair and fastened the ends with rubber bands from the newspaper. Because I’m tall, I sat at the kitchen chair, and he leaned over me, his trembling fingers slowly working the braid into shape. When I was younger, he would tease me as he combed out the knots, pretend to find things in the tangled mass. “A jackrabbit!” he’d cry. “My pliers!” I’d laugh as the yank of the comb brought tears to my eyes.

Behind me, the porch sags under the weight of the refrigerator and the gyrating washing machine on legs that my grandparents bought during a good year in the fifties. There are places we cannot step, because the boards are gray and fragile with rot. “I’ll fix the porch,” my grandfather says. “One day I’ll find the time and shore it up.” But the truth is that for years he has been unable to do jobs that he once did without even thinking.

Every day for a week I have dressed for Albuquerque, and every day he has shivered and shaken his head. “Not today, mi hijita. Perhaps the weather will be better tomorrow.”

He spent those mornings in his pajamas, blanket pulled tight around him. It’s late spring, the sky above the swaying cottonwoods so blue it has a texture, but he wore his wool cap, sweating. He would not let me go to the neighbors or the priest.

But today he is up and dressed, preparing for our monthly trip to Albuquerque. We will shop for what we need, and we will have lunch in a restaurant, and my grandfather will see the doctor, though he doesn’t know this yet.

I touch the slip of paper in my pocket. I catalogue every detail of my grandfather as he is now, as if by leaving nothing out I can keep him safe. I catalogue the smooth, pink mole on his neck, the brown spots like smudged fingerprints on his temples. His eyebrows, gray and wiry and curled. Often a drop of clear fluid hangs from the end of his nose. My grandfather’s nose is large now, almost a beak, but it wasn’t always that way. In my cigar box, I have a picture of him as a slight, handsome soldier in the army, his features delicate: serious mouth, light eyes, black lashes.

T
HERE ARE A FEW
families still in our town—mostly old people, no other children—and those of us who are left are used to the high weeds, the crumbling houses of neighbors, the plaster that falls like puzzle pieces. The exposed mud bricks dissolve a little more each time it rains.

Across the road from where I sit is the dance hall that belonged to dead Uncle Fidel. It hasn’t been a dance hall since long before I was born—hasn’t been anything but empty and overgrown with branches—but there is still the green silhouette of a bottle painted on the cracked wooden door. When he was young, my grandfather tells me, there were bailes every Saturday night, and, if he’d had a drink and his shyness left him, he would dance until he was breathless and sweaty, twirling the girls, clapping and stomping with the rest of the town through cuadrillas and polcas. In those days they sprinkled water on the ground to keep the dust down, and dirt clotted on the black toes of his shoes.

At night I imagine I can hear the accordions and fiddles and guitars across the street, but it takes effort, and soon I am weary and overcome with the sense that I have arrived too late. I long for that other Cuipas, for the families and the river. I want to have known my grandfather as he was then, to have been with him all those long years.

T
HE SUN STRETCHES ALONG
the road and warms my legs in my tights. If I turn my face to its heat, I must close my eyes, and in the drowsy redness behind my eyelids I remember what makes me uneasy. Last night I lay stiff in my bed—which I used to share with my mother, which I imagine still smells of her—kept awake not by the ojo, but by a sound I’d never heard before. Instead of my grandfather’s steady sleeping breath from across the kitchen and through the open door of his bedroom, I could hear a rattling, chattering gurgle. The sound, so much like an animal—but an animal I have never heard and cannot picture—kept me tense and afraid until dawn, when my grandfather stirred, his bed creaked, and his slow footsteps assured me that he was okay.