Woman of Light (16)

“Papa,” she said at last. “I just see Papa. No one else.”

Diego laughed luridly. “How is that deadbeat?”

“You have his markings on you,” said Luz. “Like a scar.”

“Well, shit,” said Diego. “Who believes any of that bull, anyway?”

“I do,” said Luz.

Before he left for good that night, Diego stood on the sidewalk with his satchel and hat. The neighborhood was cast in black and white, the moon full with abundant light. Street cats patrolled their territory, and brackish heaps of dirty snow rested in the gutters, melting slowly into the dark. He’d walk to the train station, and from there, Luz had no idea where her brother would go. She could sense his feelings of powerlessness. The night wind blew ugly through skeletal trees.

Diego said, “Our people never been this far north before, where I’m headed.”

“Maybe you’ll like it better.”

“Shit, I still miss the Lost Territory. That’s our home. Everything else is edges.”

“I’ll write you whenever I can,” said Luz. “I’ll tell you all about the neighborhood, all about Lizette, the dances. Everything.”

He smoothed his sister’s hair, kissed her forehead with his damaged mouth. “I love you, Little Light, and I promise I’ll be back for you.”



* * *



—

Hours later, Maria Josie brought the coolness of the night into the apartment on the shell of her jacket. With matter-of-factness, she said hello to Luz and hung her coat in the hallway. There were small cuts along her knuckles and wrists, tiny slashes from mirror shards that she’d later cover in a pi?on salve. Maria Josie pushed a toothpick from one side of her mouth to the other. Luz studied her face as they stood beneath a dangling light in the hallway. There were shadows under her eyelashes, fanning, thick flaps. They were inches apart, and the claylike base of Maria Josie’s skin gleamed.

“Why are you doing this to Diego?” Luz asked.

“I have my reasons, Luz.” Maria Josie cleared her throat, removed the toothpick with a flicked wrist. “You feel a way now, but over time, it’ll change.”

“No, it won’t. I have no brother now. I’m alone.”

“You remember when you came here? When your papa left you,” said Maria Josie. “I promise you that was the lowest you’ll ever feel. No man will make you feel worse than that. Not even Diego.”

The hallway resembled a cave with humid air and bowed walls where Luz looked to their shadows like puppets. She was angry with Maria Josie, could feel it leaking out into the apartment, this rage. Was there nothing she could control? No constant besides work and those she loved leaving? At seventeen years old, Luz’s back often ached from hauling laundry across town, she had split toenails from too-small shoes, and a single worry line developing down her forehead like a crack in her skull.

“You just hate all men,” said Luz and waited to be slapped, but it didn’t come.

Maria Josie put her hands into her trouser pockets. Her forearms were corded and she smelled of sand. “When you first came here, to this apartment, you sat down on my floor with a little pillow sack filled with good shoes and clean underpants. Nothing else. You had no mama or papa. Only me and Diego, and what did I tell you? I said you could stay with me if you were good people, pulled your weight, weren’t hurtful or cruel because of the fate befallen you. Ever since you were little, I’ve protected and watched you both. If I say it’s time for Diego to move on, he needs to leave. You must trust me, Luz.” With that, Maria Josie went toward their bedroom, turning back for only a moment. “You have a great light inside you, and I’m sorry you’ve known such loss at this young age.”

Gently, she closed her door.





SEVEN




A Getaway Car

The Lost Territory, 1922–24





Maria Josie had once appeared at the cabin where Luz lived with her mother and father and Diego, high in the desert mountains, in that place called Huerfano. As if swirled into being through wind and sparkling snowmelt, she arrived in summer with no carriage or automobile or even a horse. It was nighttime and the sky was marbled in stars. She wore her hair in a tightly knit bun, long beaded earrings pouring like water onto her collarbones. Maria Josie was frantic, crying. She was strong and beautiful in a floral print dress. And pregnant. Luz saw it right away, the swell of life at her center.

“Please come with me, hermana,” Maria Josie pleaded. “I am begging you. You can’t live at the mercy of a man who beats you, who won’t even marry you.”

There was shouting, Mama standing before the door, pressing hard with her open palm, turning her own sister away. “What do you want me to do? Abandon my family?”

“Bring them,” Maria Josie cried. She turned to Luz, peering through the cabin door. “Baby Luz, come with me. I’m your auntie. I’ve come to get you all.”

Mama was closing the door now, the room moving from starlight into a walled darkness. “He’ll be back from the saloon. You trying to get us all killed?”

Luz stayed motionless in the semi-dark, allowing her terror to widen, to sweep across the dirt floor, over the stove and washbasin and rocking chair. Her mother and auntie began speaking a language Luz didn’t know. It wasn’t the Spanish they spoke, the English, or even the French of her father. It was Tiwa, Diego told her later, and Luz found it lovely even as Maria Josie cried out in its sounds before embracing her sister, rushing through the cabin dimness to hug Luz and Diego, her belly pressing into them with force. She then disappeared into the night in the same way she came.