Woman of Light (10)
“Hi, Papa Tikas,” Luz said with a smile.
“You’re a beauty,” he said, waving his arms to the tin ceiling. “But you know what else you are, Luz? You’re smart. What’re you thinking of?” Papa Tikas worked his hands through his canvas apron, his white eyebrows lifting.
No one besides Papa Tikas ever asked Luz about her thoughts, and the question made her feel warmth, a worthiness. “My auntie,” she said, motioning at Maria Josie, who walked toward the register with a meager basket.
“Ah,” he said, “who could ever forget the prodigious Maria Josefina.”
Maria Josie waved her left hand in the air, as if to say, Nonsense. She took some bananas from Luz’s basket, directing her to put the rest of her groceries back.
Papa Tikas weighed the fruit and flour, speaking to Maria Josie about the weather, the stray cat he had found sleeping in the milk crates behind the shop, his bad case of ar-ther-rite-us.
“You gotta put clove oil on your joints,” Maria Josie told him.
Papa Tikas nodded with his whole body. It was so much easier, he claimed, to complain about problems than do something about it. “The gift of gab,” he said, looking at Maria Josie with precision. He took her change and handed over three paper sacks. “Looking forward to the party?”
Maria Josie chuckled, her breasts lifting as one long shelf. “Oh, a dance is for young people. But how proud you must be that David has his own office now.”
Papa Tikas’s only son, David, had just opened his own law practice after working for a large firm for several years. He had gone east and graduated from Columbia Law School, bringing back mysterious seashells, potent Chinese herbs, and several lanky, unadorned Anglo girlfriends. Luz was only a child when he first left, but whenever he was home for break, she caught herself gazing at him in the store—his body was as sculpted as an athlete’s, and his eyelashes were full, like clumps of dust. Once, around Christmastime, Luz watched David shake out his curly brown hair after walking in from the snow. Flecks of water ran down his face and jacket, beading the skin around his neck. Luz was fifteen then and wanted nothing more than to run her tongue along his Adam’s apple. She had never wanted something like that, and it startled her that she could.
“Proud, yes,” said Papa Tikas, “but also anxious.” He told Maria Josie that David had become quite the radical, fighting for one cause or another. Fair wages. Affordable rent. It was a noble heritage, he explained. In his own youth, Papa Tikas had been an organizer, assisting his fellow coal miners in the Lost Territory, but it was dangerous—many of his compadres were murdered by company guards, those hired by Rockefeller to corral striking miners into obedience. “He means well, but David only knows the life of a successful shopkeeper’s son.” Papa Tikas winked before turning to Luz. “You and Diego will be there, no?”
Luz nodded. “And Lizette with Alfonso.”
“Of course,” he said, chuckling. “Your loudest accessory.”
On the way home, riding along Sixteenth Street, the streetcar turned a sharp corner, sending Luz and Maria Josie swaying to the right in the back section. Their grocery sacks toppled from their laps, carrots and onions rolling over booted ankles. Luz gathered the items from the dirty floor, scrambling on her knees, arms fumbling as if panning for gold. When her hands fell upon several pounds of pork, a good cut with lots of fat, wrapped in wax paper, she knew immediately the meat had come from Papa Tikas. Either a gift or a handout, and sometimes those were the same thing. Luz shamefully handed the bundled meat back to Maria Josie.
“Damn that man,” she said, turning away from Luz.
Luz said quietly in Spanish, “I won’t tell Diego it was free.”
FOUR
The Trouble with Men
They parked on Curtis Street and scrambled out of Alfonso’s busted-up Chevy in a line of dress clothes, a click-clack of Luz’s and Lizette’s pumps. David’s party was at the end of a strip of dance halls with names like Royal, Empress, Colonial, and Strand. Dime girls danced in rosy windows while corner Romas sold hash and breathed fire from sticks. The night smelled of the far-off meatpacking plant’s manure and metal, and soon mixed with the scent of marijuana and perfumed skin. Diego and Alfonso ducked into an alleyway, their black hair glinting, their secondhand wing-tipped shoes polished bright. They sparked a joint and told Lizette and Luz to keep watch.
“You better not get too owled,” said Lizette. “David won’t like that.”
“Let that pendejo get mad,” said Alfonso, inhaling so deeply that his face resembled a skull. He offered a hit to Diego, who refused and flicked the joint quick and red like a small comet launched into the sky. The alleyway was dotted with stagnant pools of water among dead weeds and fuming sewers. Feral cats shifted in shadows. Beyond brick walls, spotlights rose into the night, white masts shooting into the sky like swords. The air held the strange stillness of oncoming snow. No breeze, only lingering smoke.
“Come on, you guys,” Luz said. “We’ll miss the food.”
Rainbow Hall’s enormous brass doors opened to a lobby that ended in a crushed velvet curtain beneath a stucco arch. In the main room, black bears and trout were carved into stone walls. The ceiling was an elaborate mosaic of covered wagons sailing the plains, their wheels trailed by hordes of buffalo.