The House of the Scorpion (5 page)

“Can I send it back to the poppy fields?” inquired the fierce man.

“Too late. The children have seen it.”

The men and Rosa went out. Matt wondered what would happen next. If he prayed very hard, Celia would surely come for him now. She would hug him and carry him off to bed. Then she would light the holy candle in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Except that the Virgin was far away in the little house, and Celia might not even know where he was.

Rosa slammed open the door and laid newspapers all over the floor. “The doctor says you’re housebroken, but I’m not taking chances,” she said. “Do it in the bucket if you’ve got the brains.” She placed a bucket next to the bed and picked up the lamp.

“Wait,” Matt said.

Rosa paused. She looked distinctly unfriendly.

“Can you tell Celia where I am?”

The maid smiled maliciously. “Celia isn’t allowed to see you. Doctor’s orders.” She went out and closed the door.

The room was dark except for a faint, yellow light filtering through the bars of the window. Matt craned his head up to see where it was coming from. He saw a bulb hanging on a wire from the ceiling. It was as small as the lights Celia used to decorate the Christmas tree, but it shone valiantly and softened what would otherwise have been complete darkness.

He could see nothing else except the bed and the bucket. The waUs were bare, the ceiling high and shadowy. The narrowness of the room made Matt feel as though he were locked in a box.

He had never, never gone to bed alone. Always, even though it might be very late, he could count on Celia’s return. When he woke in the night, her snores in the next room made him feel safe. Here there was nothing, not even the wind over the poppy fields or the murmur of doves in their nests on the roof.

The silence was terrifying.

Matt cried steadily. His grief went on and on. When it lessened, he remembered Celia and started crying again. He looked up with tear-blurred eyes at the little yellow light, and it seemed to waver like a flame. It came to him that it was like the holy candle in front of the Virgin. After all, the Virgin could go wherever She liked. She couldn’t be locked up like a person. She could fly through the air or even knock down walls, like the superheroes Matt saw on TV—only She wouldn’t do that, of course, because She was Jesus’ mother. She could be standing outside right now, watching his window. Something let go inside of Matt. He sighed deeply and soon he was fast asleep.

He woke to the sound of someone opening the door. Matt tried to sit up, but the pain made him lie down again. A flashlight shone in his eyes.

“Good. I was afraid this was the wrong room.” A small shape ran over to the bed, unslung a backpack, and began taking out food.

“María?” said Matt.

“Rosa said they didn’t give you dinner. She’s so mean! I have a dog at home, and if he doesn’t get fed, he howls. Do you like mango juice? It’s my favorite.”

Matt suddenly realized he was very thirsty. He drank the whole bottle without stopping. María had brought hunks of cheese and pepperoni. “I’m going to put them into your mouth one at a time—but you have to promise not to bite me.”

Matt indignantly said he never bit people.

“Well, you never know. Emilia says clones are as vicious as werewolves. Did you see that story on TV about the boy who got hair all over him when the moon was full?”

“Yes!” Matt was delighted he and María had something in common. He had locked himself in the bathroom after that movie until Celia came home.

“
You
don’t grow hair or anything, do you?” asked María.

“Never,” Matt swore.

“Good,” María said. She popped bits of food into Matt’s mouth until he couldn’t eat any more.

They talked about movies and then about stories Celia had told Matt of the dangers that lurked after dark. Matt found that if he lay perfectly still, his wounds didn’t hurt too much. María bounced around and occasionally hurt him, but he was afraid to scold her. She might get angry and leave.

“Celia hangs charms over the doors to keep out monsters,” Matt told María.

“Does that work?”

“Of course. They also keep out dead people who aren’t ready to stay in their graves.”

“There aren’t any charms here,” María said nervously.

That thought had occurred to Matt too, but he didn’t want her to go away. “We don’t need charms in the Big House,” he explained. “There are too many people, and monsters hate crowds.”

María’s interest drove Matt to greater and greater heights. He talked feverishly, unable to stop, and he ground his teeth from sheer nervousness. He’d never had so much attention in his life. Celia tried to listen to him, but she was usually too tired. María hung on his words as though her life depended on them.

“Do you know about the
chupacabras?”
Matt said.

“What’s … a
chupacabras?”
asked María. Her voice sounded a little high and breathless.

“You know. The goat sucker.”

“It sounds nasty.” María moved closer to him.

“It is! It’s got spikes down its back and claws and orange teeth,
and it sucks blood.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Celia says it has a face of a man, only the eyes are black inside. Like empty holes,” said Matt.

“Ugh!”

“It likes goats best, but it’ll eat horses or cows—or a child if it’s really hungry.”

María was pressed right up against him now. She put her arms around him and he gritted his teeth to keep from wincing with pain. He noticed that her hands were icy.

“Last month Celia said it got a whole pen of chickens,” Matt said.

“I heard about that. Steven said Illegals stole them.”

“That’s what they told everyone to keep them from running away out of sheer terror,” said Matt, echoing the words Celia had used. “But they really found the chickens in the desert without a drop of blood inside. They were blowing around like dry cantaloupe skins.”

Matt was afraid of Steven and Emilia, but María was different. She was his size and she didn’t make him feel bad. What was it Rosa had called him? A “filthy clone.” Matt had no idea what that was, but he recognized an insult when he heard it. Rosa hated him, and so did the fierce man and the doctor. Even the two older children had changed once they knew what he was. Matt wanted to ask María about clones, but he was afraid she might hate him too if he reminded her.

Meanwhile, he had discovered a wonderful power in repeating the stories Celia had told him. They had held him spellbound, and now they were impressing María so much that she was practically glued to him.

“The
chupacabras
isn’t the only thing out there,” Matt said grandly. “La Llorona walks in the night too.”

María murmured something. Her face was pressed against his shirt, so it was hard to tell what she was saying.

“La Llorona drowned her children because she was angry at her boyfriend. And then she was sorry and drowned herself,” Matt said. “She went to heaven, and Saint Peter shouted, ‘You bad woman! You can’t come in here without your kids.’ She ran down to hell, but the Devil slammed the door in her face. Now she has to walk around all night, never sitting down, never sleeping. She cries, ‘Ooooo … Ooooo. Where are my babies?’ You can hear her when the wind blows. She comes to the window. ‘Ooooo … Ooooo. Where are my babies?’ She scratches the glass with her long fingernails—”

“Stop it!” shrieked María. “I told you to stop it! Don’t you ever listen?”

Matt halted. What could possibly be wrong with this story? He was telling it exactly the way Celia had.

“There’s no such thing as La Llorona! You made her up!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, if she’s real, I don’t want to know!”

Matt reached out and touched María’s face. “You’re crying!”

“I am not, you eejit! I just hate nasty stories!”

Matt was horrified. He’d never meant to scare María that much. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” María muttered, sniffling.

“Nothing can get through the window bars,” Matt said. “And there’s tons of people in the house.”

“There’s
nobody
in the halls,” María said. “If I go outside, the monsters’ll get me.”

“Maybe not.”

“Oh, great!
Maybe
not! When Emilia finds out I’m not in bed, I’ll be in really big trouble. She’ll tell Dada, and he’ll make me do the times tables for
hours
, and it’s all your fault!”

Matt didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll have to stay here till morning,” María concluded. “But I’ll still get into really big trouble. At least the
chupacabras
won’t eat me. Move over.”

Matt tried to make room. The bed was very narrow, and it hurt to move even a few inches. His hands and feet throbbed as he clung to the far edge.

“You really are a hog,” complained María. “Got any covers?”

“No,” said Matt.

“Wait a minute.” María jumped off the bed and gathered up the newspapers Rosa had spread out on the floor.

“We don’t need covers,” Matt objected as she began arranging them on the bed.

“They make me feel safer.” María crawled under the papers. “This isn’t too bad. I sleep with my dog all the time—are you sure you don’t bite?”

“Of course not,” said Matt.

“Well, that’s all right,” she said, snuggling closer to him. Matt’s mind churned over the punishment María would endure because she had brought him food. He didn’t know what the times tables were, but they were probably something awful.

So much had happened in such a short time, and Matt couldn’t understand half of it. Why had he been thrown out on the lawn when everyone had been so eager to help him at first? Why had the fierce man called him a “little beast”? And why had Emilia told María he was a “bad animal”?

It had something to do with being a clone and also, perhaps, with the writing on his foot. Matt had once asked Celia about the words on his foot, and she said it was something they put on babies to keep them from getting lost. He’d assumed everyone was tattooed. From Steven’s reaction, it seemed everyone wasn’t.

María wriggled and sighed and flung her arms out in her sleep. The newspapers quickly fell to the floor. Matt had to scoot to the extreme edge of the bed to keep from being kicked. At one point she seemed to have a nightmare. She called, “Mama … Mama …” Matt tried to wake her, but she punched him.

In the first blue light of dawn Matt forced himself to get up. He gasped at the pain in his feet. It was worse than last night.

He dropped to his hands and knees and moved as noiselessly as possible, pulling the bucket along with him. When he got to the end of the bed where he thought María couldn’t see him, he tried to pee silently. María turned over. The noise made Matt jump. The bucket tipped over. He had to fetch newspapers to sop up the mess, and then he had to rest with his back against the wall because his hands and feet hurt so much.

“Bad girl!” shouted Rosa, flinging open the door. Behind her was a covey of maids, all craning their necks to see what was inside. “We turned the house upside down looking for you,” Rosa yelled. “All the time you were hiding out with this filthy clone. Boy, are you in trouble! You’re going to be sent home at once.”

María sat up, blinking at the sudden light from the doorway. Rosa whisked her off the bed and wrinkled her nose at Matt cowering against the wall. “So you aren’t housebroken, you little brute,” she snarled, kicking aside the sodden newspapers. “I honestly don’t know how Celia stood it all those years.”

5
PRISON

T
hat night, when Rosa brought him dinner, Matt asked her when María was coming back.

“Never!” snarled the maid. “She and her sister have been sent home, and I say good riddance! Just because their father’s a senator, the Mendoza girls think they can turn their noses up at us. Pah! Senator Mendoza isn’t too proud to have his paw out when El Patrón hands around money.”

Every day the doctor visited. Matt shrank from him, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He grasped Matt’s foot in a businesslike way, doused it with disinfectant, and checked the stitches. Once he gave Matt a shot of antibiotics because the wound looked puffy and the boy was running a fever. The doctor made no effort to start a conversation, and Matt was happy to leave things that way.

The man talked to Rosa, however. They seemed to enjoy each other’s company. The doctor was tall and bony. His head was fringed with hair like the fluff on a duck’s bottom, and he sprayed saliva when he talked. Rosa was also tall and very strong, as Matt had found out when he tried to get around her. Her face was set in a permanent scowl, although she occasionally smiled when the doctor told one of his bad jokes. Matt found Rosa’s smile even more horrid than her scowl.

“El Patrón hasn’t asked about the beast in years,” remarked the doctor.

Matt understood that the beast was himself.

“Probably forgotten it exists,” muttered Rosa. She was busy scrubbing out the corners of the room. She was on her hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water by her side.

“I wish I could count on it,” the doctor said. “Sometimes El Patrón seems definitely senile. He won’t talk for days and stares out the window. Other times he’s as sharp as the old
bandido
he once was.”