The Book of Unknown Americans(43)

Looking at him now, though, a fire roared up inside me. I was tired suddenly of feeling so bereft, so unmoored by sadness. I wanted to smother that feeling, to clear it from our lives like cobwebs from a dusty corner. I wanted to erase the anguish and the distance, the remorse and the blame, and replace it with something new. I wanted to figure out how to grope our way back to each other. Even now, even after the day I’d had. Especially now.

I lifted my foot under the table and rubbed it against Arturo’s leg.

He looked at me, startled. “What?” he asked.

I pushed back from the table and walked to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I put my hand on the back of his neck and leaned down, kissing his skin, breathing in the scent of his hair.

“Alma,” he said, curling away.

I lifted his hand from the mug. “What is all this?” I asked, touching the frayed skin around his thumbnail. I raised his hand to my lips, closing my mouth around his thumb, waiting to see if he would protest. I sucked each of his fingers one by one while he watched.

And then I climbed on top of him, straddled his lap. “I miss you,” I murmured.

Arturo put his hands on my hips and pulled me toward him. “I’m here,” he said.

“Closer,” I said.

He shimmied me closer and buried his face in my neck. I spread my fingers through his hair, feeling the warmth of his scalp, the faint scratch of his mustache against my skin. And by the time he pushed himself inside me I believed that even after everything, even after the accident, and having traveled so far, leaving behind the landscape that we had woken up to every morning our whole lives—cedar mountains and citrus groves, a blue lake and mango trees—no matter what else happened, we would be fine as long as we had each other. Contigo la milpa es rancho y el atole champurrado. And then, the rush. It was as if the whole world sighed. As if every human and every creature and every gas and liquid and speck of dirt and granule of sand and gust of air settled all at once, and all was right in the universe. If only for that moment.





Mayor


Not long after New Year’s, my tía Gloria called my mom to say that her divorce had gone through.

“Esteban is no longer part of my life,” she said.

My mom burst into tears.

“Why are you crying?” my aunt asked. “It’s good news. And listen to this—he has to pay me!”

“What do you mean?” my mom asked, sniffling.

“I’m getting eighty thousand dollars from the settlement!”

My mom’s tears dried up immediately. Her voice turned serious. “How much?”

“It’s from that summer house he had. The one his father gave him that we never went to. He has to liquidate it and I’m getting the money!”

“And,” my mom told us over dinner that night, “she’s giving some of it to us.” She was pink in the face, barely able to contain herself.

My dad wiped his mouth with a napkin. “How much is she giving us? Fifty dollars?” He smirked.

“Well, that was nasty,” my mom said. “You’re going to feel bad when I tell you the real number.”

I peeked at my dad, who was waiting with the napkin clutched in his hand. My mom started eating again, delicately picking the capers off the rice with the tines of her fork.

She took at least four bites before my dad finally said, “Well? Don’t keep it a secret.”

A grin played on my mom’s lips.

“Never mind, then,” my dad said.

“You don’t want to know?”

“Why would she be giving us money anyway?”

“Because we need it.”

“Who needs it? Not us. We’re fine.”

“We’re fine? Now we’re fine? For months you’ve been talking about how you might lose your job, but now you’re telling me we’re fine?”

“Yes.”

“Unbelievable.”

My dad shoveled rice into his mouth, probably to stop himself from saying anything else.

But my mom couldn’t let it go. “I’m only saying we could use the money.”

My dad dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter. “Jesus, Celia! I told you we don’t need it! What’s she giving us? A hundred dollars? Two hundred dollars? We don’t need it!”

“If you don’t want to take it, you don’t have to! I’ll just keep it for myself, then.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What I said.”

“You want to leave?”

“Who said anything about leaving?”

“You take this, I take that. Is that what you’re doing? Just like Gloria?”

My mom rolled her eyes.

But my dad was in a groove. He lifted his plate from the table and slammed it down, scattering rice and capers and peppers and chicken across the floor. “Goddamn it, Celia! How many times do I have to tell you that I will take care of this family? What do you think I’m doing out there every day? You think I’m working my ass off for fun?” He stood, toppling his chair.

My mom pursed her lips and stared at her plate.

He reached across the table and seized both of her wrists. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”