Woman of Light (79)

THIRTY-FOUR




Portal

Denver, 1926





Papa Tikas had thrown David’s twentieth birthday party in a friend’s vacant house. The celebration had gone into the night. The home was three stories, and there were statues of lions all around the perimeter. It was lighted with lampposts, and the summer night was comfortably warm. Luz and Lizette were playing with chalk outside beside a stone carport with a great wooden door. Luz called it the Magic Arch. Her mother used to talk about sacred archways in the Lost Territory, a portal that could carry her from one world to another.

“We’ll draw the hopscotch squares into the Magic Arch,” Lizette said. “That way, you only win if you make it back out.”

They had just one piece of chalk between them, and it wasn’t even sidewalk chalk. Lizette and Luz had stopped Eduardo in the billiards room, and lingered before him as men smoked cigars and swilled tumblers of mezcal and whiskey. While the men talked, Lizette swiped the blue cue chalk from a mantel. Her father had caught her. He chuckled and said she was an ornery little cat, but he also said she had hung the moon and stars.

Whenever Papa Tikas threw one of his parties, the grown-ups drank like they’d never tasted anything so sweet. They danced and played pool, hardly noticing the mischief of their children.

“What’re you girls doing?” It was David, who had exited the Victorian house through the deliveries door. He stepped down from the rock porch and walked toward Lizette and Luz with his summer jacket flung over his shoulder. David was a decade older than the girls—Luz and Lizette were both ten years old. He was smoking a cigarette and hovered over them as they drew numbers across the pavement. They had barely made it under the Magic Arch and were still mostly along the sidewalk.

“Nothing,” said Lizette, hiding the blue chalk behind her back.

“I already saw it. Just don’t let anyone else catch you out here.” David inhaled his cigarette. He sighed, as if exhausted by his own party. Luz didn’t see him often. He was usually away at school, and whenever he was home in Denver, he worked in the market with a surly attitude. Luz had heard him arguing once with his father. He said he didn’t want to return to Colorado after his schooling. He wanted to stay in New York. But your family is here, Papa Tikas had said. Don’t be so selfish, David.

“Happy birthday, David,” said Luz, smiling but looking down.

David thanked her and winked. He kneeled where she was seated on the pavement. He pointed to the number Luz had just drawn. There was blue chalk on her green dress. She had a matching bow in her hair. Diego had helped her tie it before they left the apartment.

“What’s this supposed to be?” David said.

Luz didn’t know if he was teasing her. “You can’t tell?”

“I mean, it sort of looks like a sickly four.” He cocked his head. “I don’t know, Lucy Luz. Your numbers might need some work.”

She felt embarrassed, and her face reddened. She examined her number, trying to understand what was wrong.

“Come on,” said Lizette. “It’s a nine, David. So, you gonna play hopscotch with us or what?”

David laughed at Lizette. “Since when do you have so much attitude?”

Lizette stuck out her tongue.

“All right,” David said after a pause. “I’ll play.” He sprang up and checked around the ground. “We need something to throw—what do they call it?”

“A shooter,” said Luz.

“That’s it,” David said, and lifted a bottle cap from the ground.

“You go first,” said Lizette, who seemed bored with the entire thing.

David had put out his cigarette in a sandy pit at the side door. He stepped beside Luz and tossed his shooter. It landed far beyond the first square.

Lizette said, “That’s not even how you play.”

At that moment, the carport’s magnificent door swung open and out came Papa Tikas and his younger brother Dominic, ushering an Anglo girl with flapper hair into the underside of the Magic Arch. She had an angry-narrow expression and her stance was wobbly. Papa Tikas was placing her summer shawl over her shoulders and sliding the gold chain of her purse onto her skinny arm. He was piling her things upon her as if she were a cart he was pushing into the alley, something you’d see beside a sign labeled FREE.

“What did I tell you?” he said. “You were not to come here.”

They overheard Dominic say something in Greek before placing his hands around the girl’s wrists and yanking her away from the house, as if she were nothing more than a doll in a box. She was crying now, her bottom lip drooping.

“You can’t even face me?” she cried, but Dominic struck her in the face with his open palm, and she turned around abruptly as a black Ford drove under the Magic Arch.

Papa Tikas opened the car’s passenger door, and before the young girl ducked inside, he handed her a fistful of dollars.

Dominic scoffed. The girl leaned forward and, with a great whimper, told Papa Tikas, “Thank you.” She then kissed Dominic on the mouth for a long while.

Luz was astonished. Dominic’s wife was inside the party just beyond the door. Once Papa Tikas had ushered the girl into the car, he turned away, but Dominic watched as it drove off. He then spat onto the ground, very near to their hopscotch squares. He looked blankly at his nephew and headed inside. Luz peered at David, whose face twitched.