Woman of Light (13)
FIVE
Night Owl
Teresita suffered from insomnia and was awake fixing posole when the men rushed into her kitchen, tossed cups and plates from her table, and dropped Diego onto the oilcloth. Luz and Lizette followed like flower girls, their eyes matted and red from weeping the entire ride to Fox Street. The kitchen swelled with voices, the slap of a spoon on the oven’s edge, a knife slicing pork. A single lightbulb swung over the table, casting bold shadows over Alfonso, David, Papa Tikas, Tío Eduardo, a handful of others, and a halfway-conscious Diego. His breathing was very slow and he could not speak. Luz avoided looking at him. She preferred the men’s scuffed shoes, the pristine linoleum, her ankles smeared with dust and blood. It was a little after midnight, but the night had expanded into something else, something immeasurable and void.
Teresita yanked her daughter’s arm, directing Lizette to give the men glasses of milk and bowls of yesterday’s menudo. “Sober those drunks up,” she said. “This is unacceptable. All of you,” Teresita shouted, her wooden spoon high as a shield, “get the hell out of my kitchen.”
The men were a small mob in their crunched shirtsleeves and wetted hair. Maria Josie was with them, too—David had driven to Hornet Moon, thrown rocks at the windows until she woke up, a woman beside her (they had said in snide remarks) she left behind as she rushed out. Their armpits were damp and their alcoholic stench was thick. Voices caught like fire. Anguish grew or diminished within seconds. The room was sick with fear. Papa Tikas raised both arms, as if to argue with Teresita. His velvet jacket lay lazily over one shoulder and his watch face was speckled in blood. He muttered into a clenched fist before retreating from the kitchen, the other men following as Lizette trailed them with food, the glasses of milk bone-white against the pewter tray. The men debated their way into the next room, cursing in all their languages. Teresita told Luz to stand at the counter, finish chopping pork for tomorrow’s meal. “Wash your hands,” she said, and Luz felt sobs returning to her face, but out of fear of Teresita’s anger she sealed that part of herself away. She focused on the meat, the faint and spiraled veins, and as she cut, Luz noticed that her red satin dress was darker in all the places where she’d cradled her brother’s head to her body, crying out for help in the empty alley.
Teresita set her spoon on the stove. She wiped her hands over her beige apron, working the flesh between her fingers. She was a beauty like Lizette, though motherhood had increased her body, left her breasts full and low, her forehead in a constant pinch. Her black hair was braided down her left shoulder, and she wore strings of turquoise clipped into each ear. She had bronze skin, a wide and regal nose, and intimidating black eyes that were wet like a cow’s. Bending over Diego, Teresita’s form was commanding. The smell of his body mixed with the scent of hominy, like pennies, turned soil, very alive. She lifted his chin with two fingers, turned his neck side to side. Sniffed.
Luz turned away and returned to her pork.
Teresita said, “Better get used to it, mija. Soon you’ll be a wife and a mother. They blow themselves up in mines, shatter bones with gears, crush their faces with rocks. Who do you think fixes all that?”
There was commotion from the other room then, a pounding on the front door. Luz heard Maria Josie’s voice rise above the men. A woman screeched from the stoop, pleading to be allowed inside the home. The woman said that she loved Diego, her voice rhythmic with tears. Eleanor Anne, Luz thought, and then Maria Josie shouted, firm and final, “Can’t you see you’ve done enough? You’ll get us all killed if they followed you here.” Then the door was slammed.
Lizette reentered the kitchen with an empty tray. She gave the table and Diego a sidelong glance. She looked like herself but as a little girl. Her eyes met Luz’s and together they understood each other, now fluent in fear.
“He needs a sew,” Teresita said. “Get the white thread. Break some ice.”
Lizette reached first for the metal pick in the sink. Beside Luz at the counter, she hacked at a block of ice before plunging her hands into a junk drawer filled with rubber bands, matchboxes, needles, and twine. Their movements were synced, two girls working away in a kitchen, as if food were spread across the table instead of their semiconscious kin. Teresita flicked on the radio. She moved the dial from a mystery serial and past Leon Jacob until she landed on a lonesome ranchera, the emotional notes held within her throat, a humming above the table.
Lizette brought her mother the thread, and Teresita pulled an arm’s length against the lighted room and snapped it with her teeth. Diego groaned across the table. Beneath her apron, Teresita wore a gossamer nightdress, the cotton style of peasant girls. She almost seemed younger than Lizette or no age at all. She pulled a chair near Diego’s face and told the girls they could watch, if they wanted. “I won’t make you fix him this time, but it’ll serve you both to learn.” She got to work, her nimble fingers diving into Diego’s skin as though he were a quilt. Luz was ashamed of herself as she moved to the open doorway between the kitchen and the other room. She couldn’t look at the garbled openings in her brother’s face.
“There, that should do it,” said Teresita, tying the thread in a bow, Diego’s moans escaping his mouth. “Easy does it, Nephew. Easy does it.”