Woman of Light (18)

Then there was a sight Luz hadn’t seen before.

“What is that?” she said as they stepped over the trail, pointing with surprise at a black automobile rounded like a cockroach parked alongside their cabin.

“A Model T.” Diego stopped walking. “The mine’s superintendent has one,” he said. “Some of the older Italian and Black boys got to ride in it once.” Diego slung his book bag from his right side, paused at an old fruit crate. Delicately, he pried the baby snake from his bag as if he were removing a single eyelash from a cheek. “Shhhh,” he told the snake, before placing her in the crate and motioning for Luz to follow him into the cabin.

“Wow,” said Luz. “Do you think we’ll get to ride in a car?”

“I don’t think so,” he whispered, and they stepped inside.

In the cabin, divided with once-white sheets, their father stood tall among the fabric, many papers in his hands. The room smelled of oil and leather, etchings of chile powder. His shoulders were visible in thin suspenders, the outline of his jaw. Their father looked at his children with insulted surprise, shoving paperwork into an open travel chest. He was in a hurry, mildly out of breath.

“Why aren’t you two at school?” he asked with clipped irritation.

“Papa,” Luz said, waving her arms into the air. “We were stung! By wasps.”

“School’s canceled,” said Diego, stepping toward his mother’s collection of medicines along the windowsill. He pulled a glass vial from a low wooden shelf. He began applying dabs of the liquid first to Luz’s arms and then along his own neck. “Mrs. Oberdorf is sick,” he said, and then, with further consideration, added, “She’s coughing up blood.”

“Blood?” said Benny, his Belgian-French accent thick. “Best you children stay away.”

“What’re you doing home, Papa?” said Luz, sweetly. She ran to her father’s side, hugging him hard around his sinewy legs.

Benny kneeled. He ran his hands along Luz’s black braid and kissed her on the forehead. “I have to go away on a trip, my baby girl.”

“In the automobile?”

“Yes, baby girl.”

Near their father’s feet, the travel chest was filled with his wool coats and work boots, a smattering of script and some government money, too. Luz expected a fierce punishment to rain down on her and Diego for getting stung, but their father only shoved more papers into the trunk and slammed closed the door with its brass lock. Benny then stood, his shoulders grazing the hanging sheets, the cloth fluttering like a visible wind.

“You two help me load up. This trunk here and another out back.”

Diego cautiously walked around his father, eyeing the chest. “Why do you have Mama’s money in there?” he asked. “Her silver, her turquoise?”

Benny hardened his posture. “Your mother’s money?”

“Yes,” Diego hissed. “We need that money, so we can leave this damn coal camp someday.”

Their father paused for a moment before lifting his right arm and slapping Diego, as hard as he could, palm-side in the face. The sound was like splitting wood. “Everything here is mine,” he said.

Diego let out one groan, but he clenched his mouth, keeping anything else inside.

Luz stepped back out of reaction. She was used to her father’s temper. One moment he could be euphoric, singing Belgian songs, strumming his mandolin, kissing their mother and lifting Luz high into the air, swinging her with joy around the cabin. But like a thunderstorm flooding the plains, their father often changed, a violence bursting from his mouth and hands, usually directed at their mother. When that happened, Diego would walk Luz around the camp, telling her stories about the mountains, the names of the trees, the pictures in the stars.

“Don’t you question me, Son,” he said. “Get the trunks now.”

Diego helped their father load up the automobile with a pained expression. Luz sat outside on a tree stump, surrounded by the haze of dirt from their hauling feet. When they had finished and the cockroach car was filled with every artifact of their father’s existence, Benny walked through the sunlight cascade, taking a seat behind the steering wheel. He started the engine and drove off in a rumble, the automobile gaining speed, a foggy pillar dispersing into the air. It went on like that for some time, rocking back and forth, until, suddenly, the car stopped and Benny jerked open his door. He stepped down and ran toward the cabin.

Luz yelled, “Did you forget something, Papa?”

“Yes,” he said, trotting to her feet. He hunched over, sucking in a huge breath. With Luz in his arms, he lifted her into the sky, swirling her in a circle, the entire world a colorful blur. She focused on her father’s face—his freshly shaven cheeks, his green eyes, the slight upcurve of his lip. When Benny set Luz back down, he kissed her face and touched her hair one last time. Luz gazed at her father as tears flooded his reddened eyes. He was turning away from her now, hiding his crying against the landscape.

It was the first time it happened, that Luz suddenly understood something unsaid. She knew, sensed it in her hands and heart, a feeling spreading like ice water to her mind. Her father was a liar, and he was leaving and not coming back.

She began to cry as she had as a baby, thick, rolling, guttural. Luz held on to Benny’s shirtsleeves, pulled his hands to her face.