Woman of Light (32)

“You bitch,” said Maria Josie, pulling the boy close and hollering into the wind. “Give it a rest, you old hag.”

She had halfway lifted the young man onto her lap, as if he were a toddler she could carry, when his father came running down the banks. A roundish man with a kind face, he heaved and cried out for his son. “David,” he said. “David. David.”

The son opened his remarkably green eyes.

Weeping with gratitude over Maria Josie, the father said, “We’ll never be able to repay you. What you have done, we’ll never forget.”





FOURTEEN




The Body Snatchers of Bakersfield, California Denver, 1934





Luz sat at the kitchen table, spinning the dial on her Zenith Tombstone radio. In that gray evening, Maria Josie nearby at the stove frying potatoes with heaps of salt, the radio pulsed with news and more news, detective serials, advertisements for chocolates and hard pink candies. There was a long feature on Bonnie Parker, who had been spotted in the Lost Territory with her limp. Last summer, Clyde had been speeding in north Texas and missed a warning sign of a dilapidated bridge. Their stolen V-8 smashed through a barricade at seventy miles per hour. Battery acid had poured from the crushed car, scorching Bonnie’s right leg down to the bone. Luz wondered if this had made her feel less in love with Clyde.

Luz sometimes stared into the radio filament, aimlessly, as if the voices emanating from the box painted pictures in her mind. She wondered how it all worked, volts, watts, cycles, and tubes. There were shortwaves and longwaves, invisible carriers of human voice. The radio smelled of dust and minerals, and in some ways reminded Luz of reading tea leaves. They were similar, weren’t they? She saw images and felt feelings delivered to her through dreams and pictures. Maybe those images rode invisible waves, too? Maybe Luz was born with her own receiver. She laughed, considering how valuable such a thing must be, a radio built into the mind.

There was a knock at the door then, muffled and polite. Maria Josie spun around from the stove. She set the burner low, telling Luz to keep watch on the blue flame as she untied her white apron strings with oily fingers. She fetched paper money from a round tin resting above the mantel and carried it to the door—opened halfway.

A tall and slim man said Good evening in a joyful voice, and Luz edged back on her chair, craning her neck to glimpse the handyman’s features: Avel Cosme, his gentle eyes glinting above Maria Josie in the doorframe. The hallway behind him was dim, and his voice relaxed in the somber entryway. Luz turned down the radio. She tucked her hair behind her ears. His hay-colored hat was in his hands, and he was dressed nicely in a formal western shirt, roses and white stitching on black. His boots were white and clean, as if he were headed to a dance.

Maria Josie had handed him the money, but they were laughing now, and he was passing some back. “The part was actually less. I’d hate to overcharge you ladies.”

“That’s honest of you,” said Maria Josie.

“I was raised to be a truthful man,” he said.

“Well, you did good work, Avel. Haven’t had any problems since.”

He ran his fingers through his black hair, confident and smooth. “Thank you.” He lightly bowed. “And hey,” he said, “now you can bleed it yourself.”

Maria Josie accepted from his hands what appeared to be a silver key, which she slipped quickly into her back pocket. She told Avel that he was too generous.

They spoke for some time longer. Their body movements widening. Maria Josie was chuckling some, bobbing her head and sliding her right hand across her waist, the way a teacher will when stopping at a student’s desk for a chat. She even fully opened the door. Avel looked beyond Maria Josie and into the apartment. His eyes went straight to Luz.

Embarrassed, she looked away, turning up the radio.

“You’re requested,” Maria Josie called out. “And turn off the stove.”

Luz felt flushed. She stood from the table, did as she was told, and checked her reflection in the nighttime window. She bit her lips to make them larger, redder, a trick she had learned from Lizette.

“Yes?” Luz said, appearing in the doorframe alongside her auntie.

Avel was smiling now, a great big smile with strong teeth. He smelled fragrant like rose, an undercurrent of groundwater. He was holding some kind of tickets, proud like a child revealing a crayon portrait. “Some old friends of mine are opening for La Chata Noloesca tonight. I thought maybe you and Maria Josie might want to come?”

“Just her and me?” asked Luz.

“I mean, me, too, if you’ll have me.” Avel laughed softly.

“I can’t,” said Maria Josie. “I have some things to take care of tonight.”

“You do?” Luz asked, surprised.

“You go ahead, though. Just be back by nine.”

Luz was even more shocked. “All right,” she said, skeptically.

“Beautiful,” Avel said, with a clap.

“But, hear me—neither of you,” said Maria Josie, waving her forefinger, “do anything stupid.”



* * *



—

Teatro Oso was dimly lit at the bottom of the Sixteenth Street clock tower, an octagonal room with sixteen bunches of curtains, the walls painted like clouds. As they entered the theater that night, a jazz singer with a purple iris pinned to her shining hair swayed with a smoke-lined view of a piano player behind her. The barroom floor was thick with the smell of liquor and musky perfumes. Glasses clinked and patrons laughed. Conversation roared. Red lanterns on circular tables illuminated black hair, warm skin, that rich combination of people from all neighborhoods having fun. At Teatro Oso, anyone was allowed, the clock’s bell raining down on all.