Woman of Light (37)

“Yeah,” said David. “Right onto a policeman’s club.”





SIXTEEN




Three Sisters





The Opportunity School was a tall sophisticated building with amber-colored bricks and grimy windows. A row of fruitless crabapple trees lined the entrance’s sandstone walk. Luz stepped inside, heavy with nervousness, and remembered the last time she’d had any schooling. That was in Huerfano, the one-room schoolhouse with Diego. There she learned to read and write, add and subtract. She also learned that speaking anything but English was impermissible. Once, Diego, in his perfect Spanish, told their classmate that he’d rescued a bull snake locked and left for dead inside a dilapidated outhouse. The teacher, who was the color of soapy water, heard the tale and moved away from the green chalkboard, directing her body toward Diego like a shotgun blast in a black dress. Before the class, with a metal ruler, she struck Diego’s knuckles so hard and so many times that at first his skin opened and bled, later scabbed, and eventually scarred. The beating sounded like bones garbled in a sack. After that, Diego hardly spoke Spanish outside of their home, and eventually he even forgot certain words.

“Have a seat,” said the teacher, an older Anglo woman in a purple hat with an oversized feather and a bushel of a dress, as she entered Room 121. She was turned to the chalkboard, where her name, Mrs. Fenwick, was written in steady script alongside a diagram of a typewriter’s keys. Three long wooden tables were behind her, sporadically filled with two dozen or so students, all of them girls around Luz’s age. The room was chilly and smelled of talcum powder and Chanel perfume. Conversations pooled in murmuring pockets.

Luz dropped herself into a nearby chair, sliding her hands out of her gloves.

“Not there,” said Mrs. Fenwick without turning around. “There.” With a stub of white chalk, she pointed to the far left corner.

There Luz found three girls with hair as black as hers. Each was arched over the table. The girls wore similar dresses, the same maroon color but different cuts. They had matching leather notebooks, and the table beneath them had been scratched in long swirling streaks, as if a tiny ice-skater had run her blades over the wood. Above one of the girls, hanging from the wall, was a simple pendulum clock with a lengthy lance and a brass bob. The clock ticked and seemed out of place in the otherwise bare room. Luz immediately felt uneasy around the girls. They were like mirrors of one another, but distorted and pieced apart.

“Don’t worry,” said the girl beneath the clock. “We ain’t vultures.”

“Or crows,” said one with strikingly large front teeth.

“Both of you quiet now,” said the third in a lace-collared dress. “I prefer ravens.”

Luz smiled lightly and sat among them at an empty chair.

The lace-collared girl flicked her wrist, as if to say, Don’t mention it. She had a strong face with a sharp jaw. Her nose, though attractive, jutted out and shadowed her broad lips. She motioned to herself with an open palm. “I’m Isabella, that’s Marcella, and this one, well, she’s Anita. We’re sisters.”

Anita grinned with her big teeth, and her eyes seemed to sink into her small face.

“Hi,” Luz said, and told them her name.

Marcella whispered in a singsong voice, “Santa Lucia.”

Mrs. Fenwick then appeared at the head of their table, distributing papers that came around like empty, square plates. Each one had a typewriter’s diagram and a mock set of keys. “This is called the QWERTY layout,” she said. “Follow along as I show you on the board.”

Luz and the sisters placed their diagrams down, a dinner party of paper. At the chalkboard, Mrs. Fenwick used a lacquered black stick to slap her drawn keys. Thumb, smack. Space bar, smack. Q, smack. Ring finger, smack. After some time, she stepped away from the chalkboard and rummaged through her knapsack. Her face was rippled in forehead lines as she sifted through the bag. She pulled out a coverless book and flipped to a middle page. In a droning voice, Mrs. Fenwick read: “The 1910 Cuba hurricane was said to be one of the worst tropical cyclones that has ever hit Cuba. The storm formed in the Caribbean Sea on October ninth.” Luz didn’t understand, but Mrs. Fenwick explained to the class. “These sentences contain nearly every letter in the alphabet for your striking.”

“But, really,” said Marcella beneath the clock. “It was a horrid hurricane. It threw around cows.”

“How do you even know that?” Isabella stammered.

“I heard about it on the radio. It was a history special.”

“What about horses?” Anita asked. “Are they heavier than cows?”

Luz soundlessly scooted her chair away from the sisters. She tried to concentrate on the lesson. It was useless. She still had no interest in the sentences about cyclones. Instead, she found herself studying Mrs. Fenwick, who either couldn’t hear the sisters talking or didn’t care. “Are you secretaries, too?” Luz asked after some time.

The girls shook their heads.

Anita said, “We don’t want husbands and so our father is making us learn a trade.”

“Why don’t you want husbands?”

“Come to the Northside, you’ll see.”

“Why are you here?” asked Marcella.

“My boss wanted me to come. He’s an attorney.”