Woman of Light (80)

“She’s pretty, huh?” said Lizette, who had stood from the ground.

“Who?” David said, as if oblivious.

“That girl. Your uncle’s new girlfriend.”

“What’re you talking about, Lizette?”

Lizette smiled roguishly and made eyes at David. Luz kept quiet, tucking away the image of the girl being shoved into the car.

“I’m going back inside, girls. Clean up your mess when you’re done.”



* * *



—

When the cousins were alone again, Lizette gracefully threw the shooter and went through the squares, switching turns with Luz. They were both careful not to scuff their booties, as each had been warned they’d be in big trouble if they harmed their church clothes. As they hopped and skipped in and out of the archway lights, Luz imagined she was jumping between times. She saw herself as a little girl in the Lost Territory with her mother and father walking through snow fields, carrying fresh laundry to the company cabin. Then she saw herself in Hornet Moon with Maria Josie, beside the window to her new city, those few photographs of her parents scattered about the floor, the only remnants of them she had left. She saw herself eating Cream of Wheat for breakfast with Diego in the white-walled kitchen. They were listening to the radio, the summertime heat blowing in from the windows, the mountains far away behind the screen.

After some time, Luz and Lizette had grown bored of their “baby game,” as Lizette started calling it. She sighed and took a seat on the sidewalk. “That was wrong of Papa Tikas’s brother, by the way. My papa would never do that to my mama. He loves her a lot. He’s always kissing on her.”

Luz nodded. She said she could see that.

“I just want you to know, when we grow up and find our true loves, they better treat us good. Otherwise people fight and hurt each other. Men especially. Like our neighbors in the back. They’re always screaming—their papa takes the belt to everybody, even his wife.”

Luz felt scared. She said, “What if we don’t want to find true loves? Can’t we just be by ourselves?”

“I never seen nothing about that. Just nuns.” Lizette made a sour face. “But you know what? Even they have each other and God.”

“Well, we have each other, too,” said Luz, knowingly. “And you have your mama and papa and all your brothers.”

Lizette looked off into the archway, as if considering something of great magnitude. She looked and looked, and when she rotated her eyes to Luz, she said, “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Let’s go back inside now,” said Luz. “I’m tired of this Magic Arch.”





THIRTY-FIVE




Woman of Light

Denver, 1934





In the morning, Luz dressed herself in her gray work dress and sat on her bed. She hadn’t slept, and Maria Josie snored softly on the other side of the hanging sheet. The apartment smelled of day-old perfume and alcohol rising from human pores. She listened to the beginning notes of songbirds. Luz pulled her bruised knees to her chest, held herself with both arms. She was sore, her mouth, her breasts, between her thighs. As soon as she woke up, she had placed flowers from the wedding at her altar and lit a candle, not really knowing why. She watched it snuff out—a single line of smoke rising from the wick.

Luz’s eyes felt tender as the window glowed with sunrise. She turned her face into the light, dimly bathing her skin. The rosary from Simodecea was draped over her left wrist. She thought of saying a Hail Mary, but as she heard Maria Josie stirring awake on the other side of the room, she decided to get out of the house. Luz stood, quietly disappearing from the bed. She headed for work.

She took the long way through the city. Steam billowed between office buildings and tenements, churches and mills. The air was crisp, pleasant. But nothing could move her thoughts away from herself. Ashamed. Luz was shamed. She felt it all night long. The longer she walked, the more this feeling burrowed into her mind. But wasn’t this moment in her life supposed to be joyous? Wasn’t it supposed to be about love? With every step, she grew angrier at her body, at her emotions, at her inability to be loved by David, or to let herself be loved by Avel. Did this mean David would be with her, marry her like Avel had wanted to? But Luz didn’t even want that for herself. She laughed a clipped laugh. Stupid, she thought. I’m being stupid. Luz wondered about Avel then, knowing full well that she’d never see him again. She could feel his leaving in the tepid breeze, the way river water slushes over lumped rocks, moving only forward not back. She lifted her face to the sky, felt her naked throat, her skin where Avel’s ring had once dangled around her neck. She was suddenly very afraid. She knew it could have happened to her, a pregnancy, and with every certainty she’d ever know, Luz did not want that with anyone right now, and with David, not at all.

She cried a little then, wiping her eyes as she turned onto Seventeenth Street, the banks and other office buildings optimistic in red stone. She didn’t want to go to work. She didn’t want to see David at all. But she had to, and as she walked, Luz imagined herself disappearing, her body lapsing into invisibility, one limb at a time. The sky was layered in morning brilliance rising from the prairie and lapping against the Rocky Mountains. The entire city, Luz’s whole world, seemed to awaken as one.