Woman of Light (63)
“My goodness,” said Luz, stunned. “You made this?”
“Natalya taught me how to do some of the trickier stitches. We worked on it together.”
“And the cost of the fabric?” Luz couldn’t take her eyes off the dress. It was as if a piece of liquid gold floated through the air of her sweltering kitchen.
“She gave me an advance, said I’ve been doing good work at the shop.”
Luz asked if she could touch the fabric, and Lizette motioned of course. Luz wiped her hands across her cotton blouse and then moved her fingertips along the wedding dress’s buttons and seams. It was exactly as Lizette had planned. A simple satin silhouette with hidden clasp buttons along the left side, a fine grouping of lace around the bodice, and capelet sleeves. “Wow. You’ll be a beautiful bride,” Luz said, frankly.
“Are you kidding me?” Lizette puffed out her hair. “I’m gonna be a dime. Everybody is gonna be mad they ain’t marrying me.”
“I’m so happy. You made the dress you wanted.” Luz stepped toward Lizette and they embraced, their sweaty faces smearing saltiness across each other.
“Let’s get it back in the bag and open up these windows. It’s hotter than fresh dog shit in here.”
“Lizette…” said Luz with a frown.
The cousins hugged once more and stood together with their joy. Sometimes, when Luz looked at Lizette, it was as if she were peering into a speckled mirror at pieces of herself rearranged in another person. It was her shyness distorted into assertiveness and her delicate features pulled into the beauty of a masculine femininity. Luz reached up and moved her hands through Lizette’s black curls, and they were cooler than the air between them. Luz thought of when she first came to Denver at eight years old and how Lizette seemed to instinctively understand the heartbreak Luz had experienced in losing both her mother and father to something different than death. She remembered how Lizette noticed that Luz’s clothes were stained and ragged when Maria Josie first brought her and Diego over to Tía Teresita and Tío Eduardo’s Fox Street home. Lizette, in a sly manner, brought an embroidered dress from her own closest to the front room, wrapped in a white washcloth, which she passed discreetly to her newfound cousin.
* * *
—
Once a date was set, things happened quickly. Alfonso found a small two-bedroom home to rent on Inca Street that had a square yard and a blossoming peach tree. The landlord had given him a special deal for being Pinoy, or so Alfonso claimed. He was a man named Buck Valdez, originally from the Lost Territory, a village called Antonito. He took great interest in Alfonso’s collection of ten-gallon hats and bolo ties and said that once in his youth, when he traveled as far as California, he worked the fields alongside Filipinos, enjoying their humor and taste in clothing and women.
After he paid the deposit, Alfonso brought Luz and Avel along for a tour, each of them whistling with echoes throughout the empty stucco rooms.
“Do you think she’ll like it?” Alfonso asked as he stood in the blue kitchen. The stove was a new gas-range model with two ovens and Luz thought if Lizette ever learned to embrace housework, that stove alone was enough to make a girl’s dream house.
“The question is,” said Luz, walking under the low archway into the front room, “will she be able to throw her parties here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Alfonso with pride. “You’ll be here so often, Lucy Luz, we’ll have to charge you rent.” He chuckled some and nudged Avel, who laughed and stepped away, examining the light fixtures and windowsills, a true handyman always.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Avel and turned around on his boot heels, grabbing Luz by the left wrist. “Lucy Luz might have her own place someday soon.”
The men seemed to share a knowing look, and Luz frowned. “I don’t see it in the leaves.”
* * *
—
At work, David pretended nothing had happened between him and Luz. The office was in disarray. The vandals had pushed their way into the front room, rummaging through Luz’s desk, taking with them several notarized documents and signed paperwork for the Ruiz case. A grand jury investigation still hadn’t been announced. Whenever Luz thought to ask David about what had happened under the desk, she’d open her mouth to speak but could only picture white moths fluttering from her lips. Maybe it wasn’t her place. Maybe it was something she’d have to wait on David to bring up, and Luz wondered why she was always waiting on men to act.
Luz occupied her evenings and weekends with Avel, going from dance hall to dance hall, Benny’s, the Emerald Room, Teatro Oso. She watched his new band move the crowds each night. Occasionally Lizette and Alfonso would tag along, and there were times when even Maria Josie and Ethel appeared at the edge of the dance floor, fingers touching delicately at their sides. While Avel never gave Luz that warm giddy rush of her insides twisted like rain clouds, he did make her feel valued, wanted, cared for—qualities she had never received consistently from any man. In her letters to her brother, Luz announced Lizette’s wedding date and Maria Josie’s new friend, but for some reason she didn’t dare mention anything new about Avel. In her latest letter, she begged Diego to consider coming home for the wedding. He wrote back a few weeks later.