More Than Allies Read online

  Hilario sat in the corner of their saggy little sofa, looking half buried in it, and sullen. Gus held a hand up in greeting. Hilario gave the slightest nod. There seemed to be children everywhere, the baby crawling, the middle two running around a little crazy. Everyone was upset.

  “Shhh. Calm yourself,” Dulce said. She took Lupe to the table and they sat down. She held her hands. The baby crawled over.

  “What will they do to my boy?” Lupe wept. She picked up the child and held her to her chest.

  “They won’t do anything. He didn’t commit a crime. It’s not that. It’s that they’ll want to see you. They’ll come around.”

  Lupe stopped crying. “They’ll want to see papers.” The baby settled down on her lap.

  “Yes, when they see you don’t speak English. When they see—well, when they see all of you.”

  “Oh, my babies,” Lupe said.

  “Can you get hold of Cipriano? Is there a way to call him?”

  “Sí. I can call his brother, and he goes to him, he can take a message.”

  “You can’t stay.”

  Lupe bit her lip.

  “They’ll deport you.”

  “Sí.”

  “With your babies.”

  “Oh Hilario!” Lupe cried.

  “I told them he’s my nephew. I said his parents would be gone all weekend. They’ll come around on Monday. I work. It’ll be afternoon. I’ll tell them things.”

  Lupe’s hands came up, she covered her face. “Oh, oh,” she wept. The baby began crying, too.

  “Is there somewhere you can go? Until Cipriano comes?”

  Lupe’s hands came down. “My sister, she is in Hemet, California, it’s a long way.”

  “How soon could you be ready? Could you be ready tomorrow?”

  Dulce looked around the little trailer. They couldn’t carry everything, but they could get out. Lupe was bereft. “My little house,” she said.

  “They will come around. They will want papers. They will send you to Mexico.” Dulce paused. “Maybe that would be good. They send you home?”

  Lupe pointed to Hilario. “My boy is learning English well. He is good in the math in school.”

  “Then you must go.”

  Lupe shook her head. “But I have no money.”

  Dulce reached into her pocket. She held up some folded bills. “I’ll ask Maggie to drive me to get you tickets, all of you. I think this will get you to Hemet. Does your sister have a phone?”

  “For certain she has a phone. She is a teacher’s aide in a school,” Lupe said proudly.

  “Then you must go and call her. At the station, there’s a pay phone. I would take you to my house, but we are walking. My car—” she shrugged, then held her arms out for the baby.

  That night, Maggie called. An exhausted Gus had already gone to bed. Dulce had heard him crying, then he fell asleep.

  After she hung up, she went over and knelt down by him.

  “Gus, dear Gus, wake up.”

  He moaned.

  “Turn over, I have something to tell you.”

  He pulled himself up. “Is something else wrong?”

  She thought: He’s crying about Hilario.

  “No, not wrong.” She took his hands. “That was Maggie. Jay’s father is going to come for him, the day after school is out. They have offered to take you back with them. To your father. They have offered you a ride to Texas.”

  Her heart went out to him. “Oh Mama!” he said, and then his face fell. “And you’ll be in Oregon.”

  “Oh no,” she said. She took him in her arms. She rubbed her face against his hair. “I will not send you to Texas alone. I’m not living here without my son.”

  Dulce says: I dream of a girl with hair as black as currants. She reads to me from her dream-book.

  The girl is in a house. The house, once beautiful, is old and decaying. It is two stories, made of stones, with many rooms. The girl’s mother moves through the rooms, closing the door and windows, except the kitchen, downstairs, and, upstairs, a bedroom with a tiny balcony.

  The girl lies on a bed at dawn, her body covered by a finely woven white cotton blanket. Her long black hair spills across the pillow and sheet and onto the floor beside her.

  Below her, in the orchard, a man is singing:

  Despierta, mi bien, despierta.

  mira que ya amaneció;

  ya los parajitos cantan,

  la luna ya se metió.

  The moon has gone down.

  She rises and pulls over her head a white smock with an embroidered bodice. She twists her hair into a rope and loops it below her shoulders.

  The singing goes on.

  She moves onto the tiny balcony and watches the sun rising over the hills. Across from her the pear trees are in blossom. To look across the orchard is to scan a sea of white.

  Qué bonita, mi querida.

  She gazes down on a young man standing at the foot of the nearest tree. He wears white pajama bottoms and a red scarf twisted and tied on his forehead. He reaches up and extends his arm. She leans over to see him better. His chest is bare and brown.

  Oh love! her heart sighs. A shaft of fresh sunlight strikes her face and she raises her hand to shield her eyes. For a moment the man is lost to her and she gasps. But she hears him again.

  Qué bonita, mi querida.

  Behind her she hears her mother’s voice. Below she hears the man’s. Come away! her mother calls. Come away! he calls.

  She bends over, as far as she dares, her arm stretched toward him.

  Her mother cries: Come away!

  A light wind moves the dress against her body.

  Come away! he cries.

  The house groans and pulls up higher above the orchard. The terrible space between the girl’s hand and the hand of the man with the red bandana grows wide.

  Aiee! both of them cry.

  She weeps and tosses her head, until the thick dark mass of her hair falls out of its twist, and cascades over her shoulders and down her back.

  Your hair! he cries. Your hair!

  She leans over and her hair spills over the balcony and onto his head and shoulders. Her heart thrums. As he climbs, she sings:

  Qué bonita mañanita,

  como que quiera llover.

  What a beautiful morning,

  as if it might rain.

  Now her mother shrieks, the house shudders, birds cry, but up, up comes her love to her on the rope of her hair.

  Under her smock, her brown round body yearns for him.

  Across from the balcony the tree stretches out its limbs and the girl and the young man climb onto one. Below the canopy of blossoms, the tree is heavy with fruits in many colors, and the air is sweet with their smell.

  They sit on a limb, red and orange globes of fruit lying in the pouch her dress makes between her legs. The limb breaks away without a sound and carries them from the closed-off house, the mother’s cries, toward sunlight.

  The girl’s breasts swell and press against the cloth of her dress; the flat plane of her belly rounds; a woman’s breasts, a woman’s belly; the caress of a breeze, the weight of the flesh of fruit, the blush of a woman’s skin, the heat of a man’s gaze.

  June 1992

  Maggie drove Dulce and Gus to Dulce’s mother’s house the morning before they left. She had brought a paperback book to read. “Take all the time you need,” she said, holding it up. “These may be the last calm moments I have for a long time.” She gave Dulce a thumbs-up, good-luck sign.

  Gus was all dressed up in a starched white shirt and pressed jeans. His hair was combed wet and slicked back. He looked a little bewildered. Dulce had worn a cotton print dress, and had taken the extra time to French-braid her hair down her back. She wore lipstick. She wore a little cross on a chain around her neck.

  The house was in a nice development above the hospital, in a town twelve miles away. The lawn was green and bordered with flower beds. A blue jeep sat in the driveway. It was early after
noon; her mother had said she would be going to the hospital at three. She had suggested one. Dulce thought it was her way of saying they wouldn’t take long.

  She rang the doorbell, expecting her mother to answer, but it was her sister, Karen, instead. She had not seen her since she was a little girl. Now, at eleven, she was tall and very pretty, with short curly hair. She was dressed in white jeans and a tank top. She had carefully arched, plucked eyebrows. She held the door open for an awkward moment, then stepped back and waved them in. Across the large room, Dulce’s mother walked toward them. She was dressed in the white pants she wore to work, with a pale blue blouse. She was wearing her hair shorter than Dulce had ever seen it.

  “Come in,” her mother said. “And Gus!” she added brightly. She did not embrace Dulce, nor even reach for her hand. Instead, she gestured toward the furniture arrangement in front of an ornate fireplace. Dulce and Gus sat down on the couch. Dulce’s mother sat on a chair. Dulce looked around. Karen had disappeared.

  “My, what a big boy you’ve become,” Dulce’s mother said. Gus stared at his knees.

  “You look well,” Dulce said.

  “We’re all fine,” her mother replied.

  “Karen is a beautiful girl.”

  Her mother smiled. “And Gus, you’re such a handsome boy. Do you do good in school?”

  Gus looked at Dulce. Dulce said, “He’s a good student, Mother. School isn’t hard for him.”

  “Yes, well, what is this about the trailer? You said on the phone—you’re going out of town?”

  “We’re leaving, Mother. We’re going to Texas. I told you. Gustavo is in Texas now.”

  “I thought you were divorced.” Dulce’s mother glanced at Gus, then back at Dulce. “I thought that happened a long time ago.”

  “I never told you I was divorced.”

  “I assumed.”

  “I’ve brought you the keys, and the title, to the trailer.” Dulce opened her bag and took them out. She laid them on the glass top of the coffee table in front of her. Her mother looked at them oddly, as if something dirty had climbed up there.

  “Whatever for?” she asked Dulce.

  “I want to return the trailer to you, that’s all. You can sell it.”

  “How do you know? What if you need it again?”

  “I’m leaving Oregon, Mother. I’m going to live in Texas.”

  “I wouldn’t know—”

  “Thank you for the trailer. I don’t know what we’d have done, especially at first.”

  Dulce’s mother observed her almost suspiciously. Perhaps she thought Dulce was being sarcastic? But it was true; she did not know what she would have done, since she could not live with her mother. Since she had had no skills, no money, and a small son.

  “And there’s something I want to ask you about.”

  “Yes?”

  “About Papa. I want to talk about Papa.”

  “How odd,” her mother said.

  “It isn’t odd at all. He’s my father, and I have questions.”

  Her mother’s eyes darted back and forth: Dulce, Gus, Dulce, Gus. She said, “Gus, would you like something to drink? In the kitchen, you could help yourself from the fridge.”

  Gus looked at his mother, who said, “Why don’t you go and wait in the car with Maggie?” He nearly leapt to his feet. “Tell your grandmother goodbye,” she said.

  Her mother smiled broadly. “So nice to see you, Gus.” No one could possibly believe it.

  Gus mumbled something and fled.

  Dulce and her mother stared at one another.

  A funny expression flitted across her mother’s face.

  Dulce said, “He looks very Mexican.”

  Her mother said, “Yes.”

  “I knew you were thinking that.”

  “Actually, I was thinking he looks like Salvador. Maybe he looks like his father, I don’t remember what he looked like.”

  “I thought maybe he looked like Papa.”

  “I don’t know where he is, you know. I’ve never heard.” She waved her hand. “Zacatecas. I was never there. He wanted us to go. Someday we’ll go, we said. My people were from South Texas. I’ve never been across the border.”

  “I know.”

  “What is it, Dulce? Why have you come?”

  “I want to tell you goodbye. I don’t think I’ll ever get up here again. I can’t afford to run back and forth.”

  “Many people do,” her mother said. Dulce knew she meant: migrants. Mexicans.

  “I want to know about Papa, about when he left.”

  Her mother smoothed her trousers across her thighs. “You know. He went to see his mother. He didn’t come back.”

  “Why? Was he so terrible, to do that? I never understood.”

  “Why do you want to know now?” Her mother waved her arm, gesturing around the room. “I have made a very good life here. I made a good life for you. Just because you chose to leave it—that’s not my fault. We would have sent you to college. To business school. Whatever you wanted.”

  “I did what I wanted. That’s not what I came to talk about.”

  “Salvador belonged in Mexico,” her mother said. “He was a country man, a simple man.”

  “That was so bad?”

  “It wasn’t bad, Dulce. But it wasn’t helpful. It wasn’t going to make us any kind of life.”

  “But you married him!”

  “We had dances. It was just a little town. I knew all the boys already. They whistled and made eyes at me. They said things when I walked by. I could ignore the Anglo boys. But the Mexican boys, I minded them. Salvador was working the fields. He came to one of the dances. He was polite. He was soft-spoken. I felt like a queen.”

  “But he was poor. You knew that from the beginning.”

  “I was poor! We were all poor! I didn’t have any world knowledge. Kids now, even poor kids, they grow up on TV. My parents were like old-country people. No one had TVs then. I didn’t know I could get an education and make a better life. Have things.”

  “Have things,” Dulce repeated.

  “Yes, have things,” her mother said.

  “And not with my father.”

  Her mother twisted her wedding band on her finger. “I grew up, married to him. I looked around. I didn’t want us to spend our lives in trucks and camps and ratty houses. He never really learned to speak English, you know. He could get by, but he didn’t have any feel for it.”

  “And he went to Mexico.”

  Her mother looked away. She put her hands together, as in prayer. “He went to see his mother. She was ill, maybe dying.” She looked back at Dulce. “And while he was gone, I moved us. I simply—moved.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes you do. I thought you always did. Perhaps he wrote, and the letters went back. He called, and the phone was disconnected. Perhaps he came back, though I doubt it. I freed him. I freed myself. We were too different. We were old and new cultures. I wanted to be American.”

  “I wanted to have a father.”

  “My husband was a father to you.”

  “He was a step-father.”

  “He tried.”

  “Oh Mother.”

  Her mother stood. “I have to eat something and go to the hospital. I don’t understand, Dulce. I don’t see why you would want to bring all this up. What I did—it wasn’t an easy thing for me. It was very hard for a long time. But I made a better life. You had a chance.”

  “But then there was Gustavo.”

  “Yes.”

  They were no more than a yard apart. Neither moved toward the other. Dulce felt herself trembling inside, invisibly.

  The phone rang. Karen called from somewhere to say it was for her mother.

  Her mother gave Dulce a helpless, so-sorry look.

  “My friend is waiting,” Dulce said. Her mother took a few steps toward the door, behind her.

  “Mother!” Karen called.

  “I’ve got it in the kitchen!” her mother c
alled back.

  Dulce let herself out. The sun struck her face, hot and bright and clean. As she walked down the curved steps to Maggie’s car, she saw her son’s white shirt, brilliant in the light. She saw his glossy black hair. She hurried to join him.

  I-10 across the Southwest just about killed us. It was so hot, we filled milk jugs with water to keep in the car. Ahead of us, in the truck, Mo let the boys pour water over their heads. We stopped at markets and bought six packs of pop for them.

  We stopped in El Paso for the night. The boys had seen sights and were agitating for sights to see. They wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns. They wanted to cross into Ciudad Juarez. They wanted to go up to the White Sands Monument. Mo cornered me in a McDonald’s, before we found a motel, and asked me what I thought. Standing in the hall by the restrooms, he put his hand on my arm. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I felt so tired and confused, and excited, at the same time, and his hand on my arm was hot. I looked at him and felt perspiration trickling down my breasts under my shirt.

  I said Dulce and Gus ought to get to San Marcos, and I was tired, and we didn’t have much money. I said it was too hot. I reminded him we had stopped to see the saguaro trees outside Tucson, and then that night he’d found a carnival and taken the boys on lots of rides.

  He moved closer to me, so that I could feel his hot breath and smell the sweat staining his shirt under his arms and across his chest. He said, shouldn’t we ask Dulce?

  So what we did, then, was find a nice motel with a big swimming pool (thanks to Polly’s credit card), and then we traipsed across the border into Juarez and found a nice restaurant and ate and ate until I was so full and sleepy I had to prop my head up on my arms. Mo promised the boys he’d take them to Carlsbad before the summer was over. Gus said, probably my dad will want to go. Stevie began fussing, and then cried with a full throat. Her bottom was fiery with heat-rash, and she was the most tired of all.

  The boys swam late while Mo watched them. The three of them shared a room. I bathed Stevie and lay with her on one bed while Dulce bathed and washed her long black hair. I turned the TV on low. Gorillas in the Mist was playing. I had seen it before, but I found myself mesmerized, again, by the idea that a woman would isolate herself like that, up in the mountains of a faraway country, for a bunch of gorillas.