A man, bigger than his father had ever been, carried his mother on his shoulders. Another man carried him into the river. The water was cold on his legs and he thought he might freeze. He wondered how the men could be so strong. They laughed softly as they crossed. He wanted to be strong like them, laugh like them. They were afraid of nothing. No one spoke and it was so quiet. The world had ended. There were not many of them, twelve. Before they had crossed the river it began to snow. Joaquin looked up at the snowing sky and caught a snowflake on his tongue. “It is a sign,” one of the men said. He did not say what the sign meant, but his mother nodded. The whole earth was red from the glowing sky and he thought it was the end of the world. He could see everything from here. When they reached the other side of the river his mother said everything would be different. “We will be richer here,” she said, “but we will not be happier. And even if I have to live here—I will never die here.” And then he knew. It was the end of the world.
The cold summer left them. Autumn was warm. The Day of the Dead came and went, and still Joaquin breathed. Miraculously, a day before Thanksgiving, Joaquin rose from his bed and wandered into the kitchen where Lizzie and Jake were drinking coffee, his IV at his side. “Who’s going to make the turkey?” he asked. They stared at him.
Jake hugged him and smiled, then looked at Lizzie. “She is,” he said.
She had planned to be with Maria Elena, Eddie, and the baby. She nodded. “And Jake will make the stuffing.”
“He’s a terrible cook,” he whispered.
“It’ll be good,” Jake laughed, “I promise.”
He nodded. “Fine.”
That evening, Lizzie baked a pumpkin pie, following her mother’s exact instructions. Joaquin, who had somehow received a few ounces of strength from some unknown source, sat at the table and watched her roll out the dough.
“Have you ever made tortillas?”
She laughed. “No.”
“You have the hands for it,” he said.
“Oh?”
He stuck his hands out for her to see. “I do, too.”
Jake watched them as he stood at the door. He held two bags of groceries in his arms.
Lizzie looked up at him. “Did you get everything?”
He nodded. He placed a turkey in front of Joaquin. “Is it OK?”
“It’s wonderful, it’s a wonderful turkey.”
The next day, Joaquin actually ate. He ate slowly, but he ate.
“He’s going to live,” Jake thought. But Lizzie knew Joaquin had gathered all his remaining will to pay a last visit to the living. He wanted to eat with them one last time.
“He wants a priest, Lizzie. How the hell do I get one—and when the hell is he supposed to come? Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He ripped the newspaper he was holding in half.
Lizzie took the pieces of paper from his hands. “I know one,” she said softly.
“You do?”
“Well sort of. I met one when I went to Salvador’s funeral.”
“Salvador?”
“My brother. I told you the story.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Why do you have such a hard time believing my story?”
“Maybe because it’s more than a little strange.”
“You mean, as opposed to your life story.”
“I haven’t told you my life story.”
“But if you told me, what would you do if I just dismissed it because it was so outrageous?”
“It is outrageous. I don’t believe it myself.”
“You don’t believe your own life? Well hell, no wonder you don’t believe mine.”
They both laughed—hard—as if they could have just as easily been screaming or crying.
Jake looked up at Lizzie from where he sat. “How is it that he’s lived this long?”
“He’s waiting for you to let go.”
He nodded. “Will you call that priest, Lizzie?”
“I’ll go see him. I’m sure he’ll come.”
“Peace be with this house and with all who …”
The priest’s sober voice filled the room. There was something calm about the whole scene. Everyone was still, motionless, out of respect for the ritual, but also out of a kind of discomfort. Ritual was a place where Joaquin had lived, the rest of them were only onlookers, distant participants. Mrs. Sha held a candle in her hand. Mr. Sha had his hand placed on his wife’s back. Lizzie stood at the foot of the bed next to Jake. She held his hand. They almost looked like husband and wife. The priest blessed a bowl of water and sprinkled it with a branch of cedar.
“Like a stream in parched land, may the grace …”
Jake felt the cool drops of water fall on his face. He wished Joaquin had not asked for this. He watched his lover lying on the bed, eyes open, head nodding. He watched him cross himself as the holy water fell on him. He stopped listening to the words. It would be better if he stopped listening. He watched the priest as he anointed Joaquin’s forehead, the oil glistening in the dim light of the room and it seemed as if there was a star on his skin and Jake wanted to make a wish. “I wish he were well. I wish he could live to be old.” He kept himself from hearing the words the priest was uttering—it was enough just to watch. It was enough to have eyes. What were these words, anyway? What power did they have? What would it change? His body is rotting, and we are whispering prayers. But Joaquin looked peaceful. He seemed to grow calmer and calmer as the rite progressed. The priest anointed Joaquin’s hands, said a prayer, then anointed his feet, then anointed the place in his chest near his heart. When he had finished, he fed Joaquin a Communion wafer that looked to be as white and weightless as a summer moon. “Food for the journey,” the priest said.
Joaquin whispered, “Amen,” and ate. Outside, an early January rain pelted the parched city.
7
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN he’s deaf?” She pointed her chin at him as if it were a knife, as if she might stab him with it.
He reached for her hand. She pulled her hand away, turned her back on him. “No.”
“Honey, he’s healthy in every way. It’s no big—”
“No. I said no. He’s perfect.”
He touched her back. Again she moved away. “What’s perfect, Maria Elena?”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Shoot the messenger, is that it?”
“He’s my son, damnit. I didn’t want him to suffer. You don’t know—”
“Oh, I get it, yeah, I want him to suffer. I want him to go through life without hearing my voice, without hearing yours. I want that? What are you saying?”
“You don’t get it do you, Eddie?”
“What? Talk to me.”
She shook her head. “Not now.”
Eddie pulled at his hair. “Not now,” he said through his teeth. “Going at this alone, are you?”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what’s a marriage for, Nena?”
She stared out the window.
“Good girl.” he said shaking his head.
“Don’t ‘good girl’ me, Eddie.”
He stared at the back of her head. “I think I’ll just leave and come back when you’re not so angry. Maybe you just need to be with your anger for a while.”
“Grief,” she corrected.
“No,” he said, “I know grief, and I know anger—and this is definitely anger.”
She grabbed his alarm clock and threw it against the wall. It broke into several pieces.
“It’s definitely anger,” he repeated.
She threw a book he’d been reading at the same wall.
He watched it bounce on the wall and land on the floor, pages dog-eared and folded. “You have a hell of an arm. At least the baby didn’t hear it.”
“Get out!” she said.
He left the room, paced his office, then went downstairs and paced through every room. He walked slowly out of the house.
At four o’clock, Ma
ria Elena began watching the clock. She fed the baby, held him. He was good; he liked to sleep. She watched his tiny mouth sucking on her breast. She felt sad and numb, and did not sing to him. What did it matter? He could not hear her voice. Eddie would have sung anyway. Her mother used to sing to Diego: “He can feel it,” she said, “he can feel my voice running through his body. It’s different than hearing, maybe better.” “Jacob Diego, is it true? Can you feel my voice?” She put him down in his basket. “Such a tiny boy,” she said.
She carried the baby into the kitchen in his basket. She set him down on the table and began cooking dinner. She chopped the carrots and onions as if they had somehow offended her. She stared at the stove, stared at the table, stared at the cabinets.
The stew was done by seven—she’d never made it before—it was a stew her mother had made. She wondered why she’d made it. This was peasant food—more potatoes than meat—a bad cut besides. She wasn’t poor any longer, no longer just the daughter of a wetback. Look at this kitchen, she thought, it’s mine. But as she tasted the stew, she smiled. It was good. She could almost smell her mother and the small apartment they had lived in on Ochoa Street after they’d left her father. She looked at the clock: seven-twenty. She put a lid on the stew, turned off the burner, and left the pot on the stove.
The baby was still sleeping. By eight, no Eddie. By nine, she’d fed and changed the baby again. She sat in a rocking chair in the living room and began singing to him, singing a song she remembered, a song that meant nothing to her. She didn’t even know she remembered it—and she was not really aware she was singing it:
Hush my babies, go to sleep.
I know your eyes are sad
But Mama’s here, she’ll keep you warm:
Sleep safe, sleep calm, sleep deep.
Go to sleep, now all of you.
Your Dad is drunk and gone.
But he’ll be back soon—sober
Don’t count the days, they’re long …
A month ago she had been happy. A perfect baby, a perfect husband, and even she was becoming something that resembled that word. Finally, perfection. She laughed. Maria Elena wondered why she was so attached to this thing called normalcy. What if Eddie didn’t come back. Hadn’t she acted perfectly disgraceful? Hadn’t she wanted him to leave her alone? “Good girl.” She thought of her mother and her father, she fought remembering how they lived. She stared into her son’s eyes, who stared back so intelligently. She wanted to know what he saw, and wondered if children loved. No, they only had instincts, they only had needs. They needed to be fed and cared for, needed to be protected, and perhaps he was beginning to recognize her as his protector. She wanted him to hear her voice, though somehow she had sensed something in her pregnancy, and sensing it, she had insisted all the more he would be perfect. She laughed at herself. “Perfect”—that word had no meaning. It had no meaning whatsoever. Only the dead were perfect—because they were dead. Her mother used to say that. Her mother’s face and the memory of her voice had been returning slowly, and she found herself speaking to her more and more since the birth of her son. Now she felt even closer to her because she would come to know everything her mother had known. Two mothers. Two deaf sons. She looked around the room and shook her head. But her life would not be like her mother’s. She was not poor, and her husband was not like her father, and there was no going back—even if she lived the rest of her days in El Paso, there was no going back to the way she had lived. She had crossed a line, and now there was a wall that prevented the return. The gates had shut behind her. If she went back, what would her life be like? But she still remembered. And she could not make herself cease from that labor. Her mother was sitting on an old rocking chair. As she sat on the floor and colored in her book, she looked up at her, and her mother smiled. “Mama, does it hurt if you’re deaf?”
“No. It doesn’t hurt him. Nothing hurts.”
“Will he ever talk?’
“No, m’ijita, nunca.”
“Who’s going to talk for him?”
“We are.”
“What about when he needs to go to the bathroom—how will he ask?”
Her mother smiled. “M’ija, there are other ways to talk.”
“What other ways?”
“Some people talk with their hands.”
“Oh,” she said, then continued coloring.
She heard her father walk through the door. He was always noisy. She picked up her coloring book and crayons from the floor and sat perfectly still. Maybe he would not yell. Maybe he would go to bed. She could smell the liquor on his breath even from where she sat, and it became the only smell in the room, the only smell in the entire house. His black eyes seemed to be more red than black, and his whole body was on fire with a rage that she knew nothing about, but it scared her. He started shouting that there was no food. “Pero si hay comida,” her mother insisted. He grabbed the baby from her arms and shook him. He tossed him on the couch as if he were a lifeless doll, but the baby, not being a doll, began to cry. Her father seemed not to hear his son crying. Her mother shouted, yelling. “No, no, no.” Her mother tried to reach for her baby, but her father stopped her and shoved her back in her chair. Then I will pick him up, she thought, so she ran and gathered her brother in her arms. Her mother nodded at her, and almost smiled. Her brother did not seem to be hurt, and she held him, and rocked him in her arms. She went to the corner of the room, the corner where she went when she was afraid, and there they sat, she and her baby brother. She heard her father yelling at her mother. He began to hit her, hit her and hit her and hit her. She couldn’t watch, never could watch this scene that had repeated itself for as long as she could remember. She closed her eyes and prayed that her father would go away and never come back. She did not look up until the room was silent. When she opened her eyes, her mother’s nose was bleeding and she was lying on the floor. “Dame comida, cabrona,” her father said. Her mother picked herself off the floor slowly and went to the kitchen. She began warming up his food, which had grown cold because he had spent hours in a place where men drank.
She rocked her brother in her arms and he was sleeping again. He was a peaceful child, and he was fine, and she was happy he had not been hurt. Her mother held some ice in a cloth and pressed it against her face as she stood over the stove. She walked into the living room and watched her as she held her baby brother. “He’s OK, Mama,” she said. Her mother nodded, her tears glimmering in the light of the room. But tonight she was wearing a rage she had never seen, and though she did not speak, she knew something else was going to happen. “¡Tengo hambre! ¡Vieja inservible!” her father yelled as he sat at the table staring at the empty plate, a plate that had been sitting there placidly for hours. Her mother said nothing. She warmed some tortillas on her comal, served him beans and papas con chorizo. “Good,” he said and ate. When he had finished, he said nothing. He stared at his wife as if he might hit her again, as if he might kill her. But he was too tired to hit her again, so he stumbled into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
Her mother told her to put on her coat. And her mother, too, put on her coat. “No digas nada,” she said, and so she sat perfectly quiet watching her mother. She watched as she tiptoed into the bedroom. When she opened the door, she could hear her father snoring. Her mother came out with some clothes. She went back into the bedroom and came out with a suitcase. She put her clothes in the suitcase, then went into the other bedroom and came out with some of her daughter’s clothes. “Where are we going?” she whispered. “Shhh,” her mother said. She stuffed everything into the suitcase. “Carry your brother,” she said as she wrapped him in another layer of clothing, “it’s cold outside. “She carried him carefully, as carefully as she had carried anything in her life.
They walked in the cold for a long time. They came to a place. Her mother knocked on the door and waited. A woman answered the door and let them in. Her mother cried for what seemed an eternity, and the other woman held her and kept
telling her everything was going to be OK. The woman looked over at her and her brother and told her she would make a good mother some day.
Maria Elena fell asleep clinging to her son. She was dreaming he could speak. She woke up wondering where she was. Eddie was sitting across the room. “Have you been there a long time?” she asked him softly.
“Maybe an hour,” he said—his voice as soft as hers. “Can I hold him?”
She nodded.
He walked across the room and took him in his arms. “He’s so small.” The baby started to cry. “Shhhh, baby, it’s OK. It’s just your daddy.”
He sat in the chair next to his wife.
“Did the doctor say why?”
“Well, the long and the short of it is that they don’t know. It’s just a defect, Nena. Did you know that dimples were weaknesses—tears really—tears in the tissues surrounding the mouth. Weaknesses. Defects. Is there any reason why we should value hearing any more than we should value silence?”
She watched her husband holding their son. He was so in love. With him. With her. “Eddie, I didn’t mean to send you away.”
“It’s OK.”
“There’s deafness in my family.”
“Don’t, Nena. Does it matter, Nena? If you would have known he was deaf before you had him, would you have aborted him?”