Until I Find Julian (12 page)

Abuelita and I walked back along the creek road, carrying packages of fabric from the post office. They weren't so heavy, but they were bulky, and the sun beat down on us. I could hear her heavy breathing; she began to walk slower.

Halfway home, she tapped my shoulder. “Let's do this…. ”

“What?”

Without answering, she put her package under a tree. In two seconds, her shoes came off, and her bare feet rested in the mud.

She grinned, and for the first time I could picture her as a young girl.

She went ahead of me, down to the creek, and splashed into the water, holding up the hem of her housedress. “Why are you waiting, my boy?”

I dropped my package on top of hers, slipped out of my sneakers and into the water right behind her, both of us saying “Ah” at the same moment.

As she reached down to splash me with a little water, we saw the miserable old woman walking along on the other side of the creek. She glanced at us and sniffed, then looked away as she kept going.

“Old witch,” I whispered, thinking Abuelita would laugh. “Wretched.”

“Poor thing,” she said instead.

“Ha!” I cupped my hands and brought water up to trickle over my face.

“People who act tough, who act mean, are usually unhappy,” she said, twisting the braid that hung over her shoulder. “And that one is surely unhappy. She has no one there to love.” Abuelita turned her head. “And I have you. So lucky.”

I was the lucky one. I knew that.

She looked serious. “I know you will be a writer; it's easy to see that. But remember you have to study people like that one.” She pointed toward the road where the woman had disappeared. “And maybe,” she said, “you'll understand.”

After a while, we splashed our way out of the creek, shaking ourselves off to dry. I grinned seeing her wet dress, her braid dripping.

“Yes, I was young once,” she said.

“A thousand years ago,” I teased.

She patted my cheek. “True,” she said as I smiled up at her.

In the morning, before Angel
wakes up, I tear a piece of paper out of the notebook. I'm not such a hot artist, but still I draw, erasing every two minutes: the head, the body, the stick-like legs. “Not bad,” I tell myself, and write
la ciguena
underneath.

I tiptoe into the kitchen and prop it up on the table. Then I wait.

Angel comes in, rubbing her eyes and yawning; she stops. “What's that? A chicken?”

“Are you crazy? Does a chicken have legs two feet long?”

She's laughing now. “A stork. The worst-looking stork I've ever seen.”

She touches the word. “What's this about?”

“Simple. You can read that:
la ciguena.
Take a good look and remember.”

She cuts an apple Sal sent home and munches on slices as she looks at the stork, its chicken body, its pencil-thin legs. “So, one word,” she says at last.

I go into the living room and pick up the mail on the floor: shiny papers with pictures of cars, all colors, all sizes, in a language I can't understand.

There's a small folder with red sweaters, and sweatshirts, and a picture of a woman wearing huge bracelets halfway up her arm. She reminds me of the woman I saw outside the unfinished building, the same woman who feeds the animals in the pine forest.

“Come and see something,” I call into the kitchen.

She comes to the doorway and taps the molding. “What, Matty-Mateo?”

“I was thinking. Maybe today you'll learn some words. And I'll learn to speak English.”

I hold my breath, afraid she'll be angry, but she just tilts her head and looks away. So I gather up the papers and spread them out on the floor. She hesitates, then sits across from me.

On top of a shiny car page, I spell out
car
in Spanish. “Simple,” I say.

Angel bends over the page, writes
car
in shaky letters underneath.

From there we go to
eyeglasses,
to
sweater,
to
sweatshirt,
and she says them aloud in English as she writes.

“Car,” I say. “Eyeglasses. Sweater.”

But I want more, need more. She tells me outside words like
pine
and
sky
and
tree.
She tells me Sal words like
work,
soup, please,
and a long piece that means
See you tomorrow, Sal.

Now it's late afternoon and we have nothing left to eat, so I have to go to Sal's; I want to anyway. I splash water onto my face, and then I picture all of us squeezed in at the table at home, eating Mami's beans and rice, while Lucas plays the guitar, mouth full of food.

My stomach hurts with thinking.

I washed my T-shirt this morning, and it's still damp. But the sun is beating in the window, leaving patches of heat on the couch and the table, so I pull it on and the dampness feels terrific.

I leave Angel to write
car
and
eyeglasses
a million times.

It's even hotter outside. I walk along the streets with no one paying attention. I look for the kid who took my money, but he's nowhere around.

Sal's store is dim and cool from the air-conditioning. He's at the counter, putting containers of milk into a bag for someone.

When she turns, I see it's the woman who scattered sunflower seeds. She smiles at me and Sal raises his hand in a wave. “He's a good kid, that Matty,” he tells her.

He grins at me and points to the back room. “Eat.”

I know that word. I can taste the soft dough, the sugar thick on the outside, and the jelly hidden in the center. He's probably left juice there, too.

I go back for the broom, and stop to see what he's left for me. On a plate is a sugary cake. I take a bite of the soft dough; jelly is hidden in the center. I gulp down some of the juice, and then I sweep the back room. I take huge strokes, bending under the table to get up every crumb. Miguel at the factory wouldn't believe it.

My shirt is drying now, sticking to my ribs, when Sal comes back nodding. “Good job.”

“Yes,” I say, not sure what he means, but he has such a kind face. He must know that I'm illegal, and a word Angel said this morning:
undocumented
something. But he doesn't seem to mind.

“When,” I begin. No. I shake my head. “What.” Wrong again.

“Who,” I say at last, pointing to the door.

“The woman?” he asks.

“Yes.”

I dredge up the words. “She was…” The word
crying
comes to me. I begin again. “She was crying at the unfinished building.”

“Elena,” he says. “She owns the building.”

“Owns?”

“It's hers. The police took away some of the workers that she'd already paid. She can't afford to hire others.”

In my mind, I put it together. This is the person Julian worked for. She paid him, and Tomàs, and the others. The woman with a clip in her hair, and the black eyeglasses, crying over her building.

I begin to tell Sal about Julian slowly. I tell him in Spanish, putting in some English words that I somehow know.

He sinks back against the glass doors of the refrigerator that holds all the sad-looking chickens.

Sal raises his hand. He's trying to understand. “Your brother?”

“My brother. Missing.”

I can't believe I know that word,
missing,
but I do, and I know he understands by the look on his face, the droop of his mustache. He tells me, “Sorry.” He puts his large hand on my shoulder for a moment.

I swallow and begin to sweep again. And the long swishing sounds of the broom seem to say,
You'll find him. Don't worry. You'll find him somehow.

If only that were true.

I finish everything and pick up the bag Sal has given me. “See you tomorrow,” he says, and I nod.

I walk back to the house. It's late. Angel will be asleep, so I'll write again, write about Julian.

I'd stolen the broom, walked right up there on the stone path the old woman had made. Without meaning to, I scuffed up the stones, ruined her path. I was sorry about that.

The next day, Julian came home, his fishing pole over his shoulder, a mess of fish on a string for Mami to cook up for dinner.

“Not only the broom,” he whispered so I was the only one to hear. “But you scattered her path.”

I could hear the anger in his voice. “You did that, Mateo.”

I didn't know what to say, and Julian shook his head and looked away from me.

We ate the fish that Abuelita fried, and carrots or pole beans, I guess, I don't remember. But instead of enjoying the usual sweet taste of the poor fish who'd been swimming in the creek just an hour ago, I could hardly swallow the pieces in front of me.

Julian talked to Mami and Abuelita about going to
el norte
someday.

And Mami sighed. “Not now,” she said. “Not until you're taller than I am.”

Abuelita winked at Julian. He was inches taller.

The next time I waded down the creek, I saw that the stones on the woman's path were back in place and swept clean.

And I was sure Julian had done that.

What had Abuelita said? Everyone has something. Julian had his painting. But much more than that.