More Than Allies Read online

  Stevie began to cry more earnestly. Polly had to get up and mind the food on the stove. Maggie moved to the rocking chair and soothed the baby. Rocking made them both feel better.

  “If I were you,” Polly said from the kitchen, “I’d keep Jay home tomorrow and spend some time with him. Go for a hike or something. A bike ride. Let him sleep in. In fact, why don’t you let Stevie stay the night, and you can sleep in, too?”

  It sounded so good.

  Jay slipped open the door. “It’s Dad on the phone,” he said.

  “He could call me here,” Maggie said. She’d like for Polly to be on hand, for Mo to know she was.

  “He says come right now,” Jay said. “He says he wants to talk to you out there.”

  Polly held her arms out for Stevie. Jay turned and ran back to the cottage. Maggie followed slowly.

  Jay was holding the phone out in front of him. She took it from him. “I was in the house with your mother,” she said.

  “Where else?” Mo said. Maggie nearly hung up right then, but Jay stood in the middle of the room, watching her, his expression—hurt? lonesome? confused? eager?—so needy and expectant and so like her own, she gripped the receiver and took a long breath through her nose.

  “Did you get my letter?” he said.

  It had come that day. It lay unread on the arm of her sofa.

  “Stevie’s sick. We were up all night,” she heard herself say. “Jay’s been in trouble at school.”

  Jay made a small, startled sound, and ran out of the cottage.

  “Sick with what? Has she been to the doctor?”

  “I’m too tired to talk,” she said.

  “You haven’t read it, have you?”

  “I just got home. I had to go see Jay’s teacher.”

  “Let me talk to Jay.”

  “He’s outside.” She sniffed, ready to cry for the second time today.

  “Jerry’s opening a second shop. I’m going to manage this one.”

  “Great.”

  “Maggie, it’s a real job, and I like it. Please, Maggie. Hang up and read my letter. You can call me back. You have the number there, don’t you? I’ll be home all night.”

  She knew he would hear the tears in her voice. “I’ve got to go.”

  “You have to tell me what’s going on.”

  “We thought she’d swallowed something!” she burst out. “I thought she was choking. Polly took us to the hospital.”

  “You weren’t going to call me?”

  “She’s making supper, I’ve got to go.”

  “Maggie. We’re not talking about my mother, we’re talking about us.”

  “I owe the hospital seventy dollars,” she said.

  “I’ll send it in the morning.” He sounded flat and sad. “What about Jay?”

  “I couldn’t do it without Polly.”

  “You could do it with me,” he said. “I love you. You love me, don’t you?”

  “There are too many things to think about here. I can’t think about you.” She felt a burning pain just under her ribs. It hurt so much she bent over.

  “I’ll call tomorrow. I’ll call every day. Read my letter, please.”

  She couldn’t think what to say, but she could hardly believe it when he hung up.

  She did read his letter. It made her cry. Then she went in to talk to Polly.

  Polly was just hanging up the phone herself. She set it in the cradle and turned as Maggie came into the kitchen. Maggie had Mo’s letter in her hand.

  Polly looked happy, her whole body poised, her hands in the air in front of her, that bustling, ready look she had sometimes, when there were things to accomplish.

  “The baby is coming day after tomorrow!” she said. “A little girl.”

  Maggie stared. Her arms hung at her side, and Mo’s letter brushed her hip.

  “Supper’s about ready, dear. Want to call Jay?”

  Maggie took the letter back to her cottage and laid it on her bed. Outside, she called Jay, but he didn’t answer. When she was quiet, though, she heard sounds by the garage.

  He was sitting on the ground, crying. His face was hidden in his arms. She knelt beside him. As she did, she saw something was broken on the ground in front of him.

  “What’s this?” She picked up a shard. It looked like a piece from a mug.

  Without looking up, he sniffed and said, “It’s my Garfield cup.”

  She moved over by him and slid her arm across his back.

  “I don’t understand, honey.” She saw the other pieces. She could tell they had been here a while. Most of the pieces were crusted with dirt.

  Mo had given Jay the cup and the T-shirt for Christmas.

  “I broke it when he left,” Jay said. “I smashed it against the garage.”

  Her heart felt squeezed inside her chest. “But you wear the shirt.”

  He finally looked up. “I was used to it.”

  December 1982

  “Shh.” Maggie holds her finger to her lips, looking back at Mo behind her in the doorway. The house is dark, so her roommate is already asleep. Mo pulls her finger to his own lips, and kisses it. Funny melting feelings run down her, from her earlobes to her toenails.

  The tiny house has a small bedroom below, and a loft above. To get to the loft, which is Maggie’s, they have to climb steep stairs. They scamper up giddily, eager for the hour ahead.

  Maggie sheds her black skirt and white blouse. She waits tables four nights a week at a Chinese restaurant near the college, where she takes three freshman courses: English Composition, American History, and Biology. She is eager to get past these first hurdles, which seem like high school over again. She wants to be an upperclassman, and read Shakespeare and Hemingway. She is planning to be a teacher. Polly approves, saying she will be good at it, it will be a good career. This means a lot to Maggie.

  They undress, kneeling because there isn’t enough headroom to stand up on the loft. Moonlight makes a long ray across the mattress and shines on their legs. It is cold in the house—they keep the heat off, or down, as much as possible, to save money—and beads of moisture have collected on the window. Maggie slides under the blankets, and as she lies back on the pillow, she sees the fat moon just beyond some trees. She reaches out and touches the wet pane. She wonders if he will give her a Christmas present. It doesn’t matter; she has never been this happy. She has never had a boyfriend that mattered, though she did let one show her how It’s done, her senior year.

  Mo, beside her, moves his leg over hers and presses his knee into her groin. They are perfectly matched, she thinks. He is small, like her, with fine bones and a smooth pale chest. When he kisses her, she feels how well their bodies suit one another, how their warmth goes back and forth, and then inside her, lush, sweet, hot.

  “I’m going to come back, you know,” he says.

  “I hope so!” she says, her gaiety forced. “You do live here.”

  He has been away, in the army, in Texas. He is a mechanic. He’s home on Christmas leave.

  “Mom told me over and over how special you are,” he whispers.

  She shivers, thinking of Polly. “Oh, what would she say?” she asks. She doesn’t want him to go; she doesn’t want his mother to know.

  “I’ve never had a special girl,” he says into her ear.

  March 1983

  Over spring break, she took a bus all the way to his base in Texas. They had three days. They stayed in a motel. She couldn’t get over how nice it was. The glasses were wrapped in a waxy paper. The bathroom was spacious, with a deep tub and lots of hot water. She took two baths every day. She washed her hair and Mo combed it while she sat on the bed wrapped up in towels.

  They went to a bar where there was a band and dancing. He loved to dance. He had learned steps there that went with the Texas music. They carded her, so she drank Cokes all evening. Mo drank beer. Still, she felt high and happy. She was pretty good at the “stomp” by the time they left.

  There were two beds in
the motel room. They made love in one and then moved to the clean one. As she was falling asleep, she thought about Mo’s bed at home, in the Jarretts’ house. She remembered how bare the room had been when she arrived.

  She thought about him sleeping in that bed when he was home on leave, maybe on sheets she had slept on lots of times.

  She tucked her face under the edge of the sheet; she wanted to smell their smells after making love.

  The second night, they went to a carnival and rode the ferris wheel. They took their pictures together in a tiny booth, and divided them up.

  It was May before she wrote to tell him she was pregnant. She was so afraid. She thought he would think she planned it, but they’d used condoms, it was an accident, it was meant to be.

  “I haven’t told your mother,” she wrote. She was scared. Polly meant the world to her, what would she think?

  Mo called the night he got the letter. He said he wasn’t sure how soon he could get home, but not to worry. We’ll tell her together, he said.

  What will she say? she asked. It was confusing, to be so scared and happy at the same time.

  She’ll say, welcome to the family, he told her. He wrote her a long letter, saying that he loved her. He said it couldn’t have worked out better.

  May 1992

  When Dulce returns to the trailer and finds that Gus has not come home—he will have gone off with Hilario—she moves about the tiny space, picking up clothes, washrags, bowls and cups. There is no room for the casual clutter of a house. There is space only for the essentials. Dulce resists whatever they can do without. Gus says they are the only family in the whole country without a television. All Dulce can say is it seems unnecessary. She doesn’t want the noise. She loves long quiet evenings with her son. She sits on the kitchen chair, her chin on her knees, and watches him read. He looks up and catches her and frowns, but when he goes back to his book he lets his grin show. She turns to the table and opens her notebook, running her finger down the lines where her dreams are written.

  Gus has left a mess from morning, making his lunch. She woke him as she left, but he turned over with a groan and probably got up late. She doesn’t mind. She cleans the lid of the peanut jar and screws it on tight, wipes the breadboard and props it against the wall, and picks up the empty bread bag. As she crumples it, she suddenly remembers standing in a tiny space like this, a girl of five, working before dawn to make sandwiches for her father, his brother, and her mother, while her mother made breakfast. It was a scalding summer in the Midwest—Michigan?—their last migrant season before they came to Oregon and stayed. Get up, Dulcita, her mother would say, it’s time. And then, with the sky barely light, they were away to the fields, and Dulce back in bed to sleep, and later to play with a sock doll her mother had made, and sleep more, and wait.

  As Dulce recalls herself at five, she envies the small child with her morning responsibility, and the pleasure of her parents’ return for supper, then the night in the one-room cabin, the three of them in one bed, her uncle on a cot.

  She throws the bread bag away and goes to the other side of the partition to lie on her bed. Gustavo’s letter is tucked between the pillow and the wall. It rustles as she puts her head on the pillow.

  She dreams of a boy and a girl in an orange grove. They sit under a tree and eat the fruit, waiting until the trees are shadowy and frightening, and the sky has lost its light. They clasp hands and creep through the grove, listening for the sounds of animals, listening for their parents’ calls. They hear other children singing, but when they get toward the voices, their direction is lost. Papa! the little boy calls. Mama! calls the girl. Then, as they are exhausted and hopeless, they stumble into a clearing. There is a hut, and smoke from a fire. Carefully, slowly, they creep toward the hut. The door is ajar. Inside, the fire lights and warms the room. A rough wooden table is laid with food: heaping bowls of beans, a plate of pan dulce, shiny, slippery peppers in bowls. They sit. Bowls and spoons are already at their places.

  But whose hut is it? Who lives here, and where are they? Eat, the little girl says. She has Dulce’s face.

  When she awakes, it is nearly seven. She sits up, not quite alarmed, but disturbed to find herself still alone. She knows Gus feels more and more at home at the Hinojosas’; she knows he likes the bustle and chatter, the presence of children. She tries not to mind. Lupe treats Gus and her son Hilario like small men, especially now, with Hilario’s father away in Mexico. But Gus is only nine—nearly ten—and he is her son, and what she does mind is waking in the near-dark to find him gone.

  She takes out her notebook and looks back through old pages. The dream of the children in the orange grove: she has had it before. Sometimes they hear a woman singing. Sometimes they see a deep, lidded pot on the stove. Sometimes they hear footsteps outside the door, and spring from their seats, calling, Papa!

  She closes the book again. The boy, of course, is Gus. Why should she dream that they are lost?

  It doesn’t matter. Dulce believes in her dreams, not as portents or metaphors, but as separate experiences, valid and wholly sensate. She knows that the life of her dreams is another life quite apart from her ordinary dailiness. Her dreams are a deeper, more mysterious, yet simpler life. They keep her sane. Even when they disturb her, they seem fine. She writes them down, not to analyze them, but to savor, and record. She does not wish to scare her dreams away, or complicate them. She does not mind that they are outside of her control. She understands that dreams are a kind of salvation. They are the way she holds to the parts of her that would otherwise be lost. Most of the time they are in Spanish—if there are words—and thus it is in dreams that she maintains her identity. Dreams are her culture.

  She brushes at the wrinkles in her skirt, then splashes her face at the kitchen sink. She goes to her car, and thinks about going over to Lupe’s, the pleasure on Lupe’s face: oh comadre, she’ll say, come in and I will give you a cold drink. She’ll put her in the one soft chair, near the table she uses as an altar, covered with a crocheted throw, a statue of the Virgin, a picture of the Sacred Heart, votive candles and rosaries and holy cards, postcard photos of a cathedral in Mexico City. The babies will try to crawl onto Dulce’s lap, and she will kiss their fat cheeks and say how fast they’re growing. In a little while, she’ll ask what Lupe needs, this woman in a trailer with no hot water, four children, an absent husband, no English, and complete faith in the will of God.

  It makes Dulce so tired, she leans her forehead against the steering wheel and sighs. She wonders if the school meant this to happen, if someone said, why we’ll put this big Mexican boy in Gus Quirarte’s class so that they can look out for one another, for who else should? They stand out, two dark broad-faced boys with shiny straight hair, though Hilario is a head taller. And it’s true, the boys have grown so close they seem to be excluding everyone else, and Lupe has grown fervently attached to Dulce, who, after all, speaks English, is a citizen, knows her way around. Has a car.

  For the Hinojosas are illegal, and Lupe will not—cannot—ask anyone in the government for help. She works several afternoons a week at a laundromat, paid “under the table.” She cleans each pot of beans she feeds her family to the last morsel. They live in a trailer on a lot near the freeway exit, behind the filling station where her husband Cipriano has worked since their truck broke down in February, passing through Lupine on the way to California from Christmas tree planting. Only Cipriano has gone to Chihuahua to see his sick mother, and all that Dulce can think is, maybe he won’t come back. She wonders if Lupe wouldn’t be better off in Chihuahua, too, but when she asked why they didn’t all go, Lupe said, it is too hard to cross. It is too hard to come back, and we are already here.

  As she puts the key into the ignition, she looks up and sees her son loping across the intersection toward the trailer court. He is with Hilario. At the corner, only two car lengths away, the boys pause, give one another a slap of palms in the air above their heads, and Hilario runs back toward home. Du
lce watches, and sees how her son swaggers, a child imitating a man. She is about to call out to him when she hears his name, sees Hilario turned again, gesturing for him to come. She watches Gus run across the street, where Hilario is leaning into a low-slung car parked at the curb. Horrified, she sees the boys open the car doors and slide in. She jumps out of her car and runs over to them. Hilario’s hands are on the steering wheel. She hears him as she reaches the car. Vroom! vroom! he says. Gus is laughing, and bangs on the dashboard.

  She jerks open the door and slaps her hand on her son’s shoulder. “Get out of there!” she shouts. Both boys are instantly silent, shocked, turned to stare at her. “What do you think you’re doing!” she screeches. Her hand is clamped on his arm.

  “Mom!” he protests, shoving at her hand. “Okay, okay.” He crawls out, pushing against her body, as Hilario gets out the other side. “Es nada,” Hilario says. “We don’t do nothing.” He tries to laugh. “A yoke,” he mispronounces. He looks at her with the native, jocular insolence of a cocky young man. Already he knows women will defer to him.

  “Go home!” she says sharply. He shrugs, turns, and runs away.

  To her son, she says, “Where were you?” though she knows.

  She marches him across the street. By her car, she pauses. Her chest hurts. She realizes that, in fact, they were doing nothing, boys acting silly in an unlocked car. She puts her hands on her son’s arm again. Intently, she looks at him and she says, “You have to understand. Two Mexican boys in someone’s car. It doesn’t matter that it was nothing. You would get in so much trouble.”

  “Mom, we knew the car. It’s Mr. Nathan’s car. The P.E. teacher. What would he do to us? He left it unlocked. We weren’t hurting it.”

  She makes herself take a deep breath, takes her hands away. She points to her car. “Get in.

  “Did you eat?” she asks. He presses himself against the far door. He mumbles something about a tamale.

  “What? What were you doing?”

  They were watching the little kids while Lupe was at the laundromat. She left tamales.