Valentine(37)

And several years later, when Glory was taller and stronger than her mother, and Alma suspected she was skipping school, she pointed the spoon at Glory’s head and told Victor to translate as she begged her daughter to use the brains God gave her to do something more with her life than shoplift beer at Pinkie’s liquor store and go parking at the old buffalo wallow. It is this old wooden spoon that sends Glory to the small kitchen table in tears, where she sits cross-legged and rubs at the bright red scars on her feet and wonders how long it will be before Alma can gather up the money and nerve and opportunity to cross the river.

*

There are thirty-six rooms at the Jeronimo Motel, a U-shaped motor inn that sits near the intersection of Pearl and Petroleum, less than a mile from the refinery. On a hot night, if tenants blow a fuse running their air conditioners at the same time as their hot plates and televisions, they might step out of their rooms and lean on the iron railing and watch the blue-orange flames from the flare stacks. It’s not much cooler out there, but there’s usually a little wind blowing in their direction.

Victor pulls his long, white El Camino—El Tiburón, he calls it—into a space facing the pool. Pues, you can float there all day long, he tells his niece, who leans against the passenger door with her cheek pressed against the warm glass. It is after ten and the lot is already filled with diesel trucks, pickups, a smattering of sedans and station wagons. A small camper is parked across two spots on the other side of the pool, its yellow porch light flickering gently against the water. A woman paddles across the pool, a small wake radiating from her head and hands. When she reaches the middle, she flips onto her back and drifts in the dark, her body exposed to the air, her yellow hair floating eel-like around her face. The woman wears cut-off jeans and a T-shirt, Glory sees now, and her thick arms and legs gleam in the dark like shark’s teeth.

After Victor has helped Glory carry her things to the second floor, he hands her a room key on a plastic, Texas-shaped fob. Best thing about this place, it’s cheap enough that Glory can have her own room. Rooms cost twice as much at the Dixie Motel out on Andrews Highway. He gives her room 15. Which makes sense, he says, because she will turn fifteen in the fall. This year is gonna pass, mi vida, he says, and you’ll feel better soon. This isn’t your life.

Room 15 smells of cigarettes and grease, but there are fresh vacuum cleaner lines on the carpet and the bathroom smells like lemon Pine-Sol. A television sits on a low brown dresser that is nearly as long as the room, and the double bed is covered with a carrot-colored polyester bedspread. While Victor looks for the Coke machine, Glory strips off the bedding. She makes the bed with Alma’s floral-scented sheets and the bedspread her mother bought last fall after working some extra shifts. It is covered with Texas bluebonnets, a flower Alma claims as her favorite, though she has never in her life seen a real one. Last fall Victor promised Alma and Glory that they would drive down to the Hill Country in April, and Alma could take a picture of her daughter sitting in a field that had been overtaken by the tiny purple flowers, then put it in a frame and hang it on the wall, like every other parent in the great state of Texas. Thanks, Glory told her uncle, but I’d rather stay home and read The Scarlet Letter. See how ungrateful she is, said Alma, and they stared at each other until Glory dropped her eyes. And now it’s June, Glory thinks. We missed it.

Victor stops by with a bottle of cold Dr Pepper and a promise to bring her a doughnut before he leaves for work in the morning. When he steps back onto the landing that runs the entire length of the building, she closes the door and fastens the thin brass chain. There’s a door that connects their rooms, but he says it’s only for emergencies. He will knock on the front door, just like anybody else. For most of her life, Glory has dreamed of having her own room, her own door to lock, and she feels a little spark of pleasure, in spite of the horror that has brought them here.

A thin rectangle of late-afternoon sun pushes through a narrow gap in the curtains, the light falling across the carpet and catching the dust motes that drift through the air. She pulls the curtains tight and the light disappears. The window is hardly bigger than a pizza box, impossible for even a small man to climb through. Still, Glory checks the metal clasp on the window, and the piece of broomstick that someone has wedged along the jamb between the upper and lower sash. The yellow-haired woman is out of the pool now. She sits on a lounge chair with a towel around her head and a cigarette in her hand, her wet clothes clinging to her large body. The other rooms are dark, the Jeronimo Motel quiet and still.

The proprietor don’t put up with any silliness, Victor told her when they pulled into the parking lot and her eyes widened at the rows of work trucks. He only rents to working-men and families. You’ll be safe here—he reached over as if to pat his niece’s arm but stopped short of touching her—you’re gonna be okay.

Maybe he’s right, but when Glory climbs into bed, she reaches under the pillow and runs her fingers across the folded pocketknife she has stashed there. If anybody comes through that door, or the window, she will be ready for him. Once, twice, three times, Glory runs her fingers across the knife’s smooth steel and leather handle. She is still holding it, still running through the steps—grab the knife, press the catch, slash at the air until the knife connects—when she falls asleep.

In every dream, the desert is alive. She walks carefully, but the moon disappears behind a cloud and she doesn’t see the pile of rocks, or the nest of snakes on the other side of it. When she falls and rises shrieking from the ground, they are already on her, wrapping themselves around her ankles and legs, climbing toward her belly and breasts. One curls itself around her neck and Glory feels the quick, thin flick of a tongue against her eyelash. She stands perfectly still, waiting for them to move off her, to retreat back into the dark. Moonlight shines through the truck’s window. His pupils are black holes surrounded by blue sky. Time to pony up, Gloria, he says, time to pay for all my beer you drank, all this gas I used to get us here. Wait, she says. Wait! She reaches into the pocket of her jeans and wraps her fingers around the leather handle. The knife opens effortlessly and finds his gullet without fail.