“A fucking hammer?” I said.
“If I had known I’d lose this baby,” said Jane, tearing up, “I wouldn’t have felt her feet kicking inside me.” Her eyes grew damp. “I got to feel my daughter’s kicks, and they felt like butterflies.”
I frowned and opened my mouth, but Jane stood quickly and continued up the trail. We hiked for three more hours without saying a word, finally reaching the highest ridge. On the Bridge of Heaven, Jane reached her arms up to the sky. “Goodbye, my baby girl,” she said. She began to sob—raw, wrenching cries.
“It’s okay,” I said, holding her, starting to cry myself.
“It’s not okay,” said Jane. “But it’s the way it is.”
Her words hit something inside me, something hard and cold. I felt as if I had been punched. I thought about holding Mitchell, when I’d thought he was mine. I’d touched his face with my nose, breathing him in. And then, hours later, I relinquished him, and was left by myself in his room, staring at the crib.
But standing on the Bridge of Heaven next to my sister, my memory shifted. I hadn’t been alone, in truth. Jake had been there, next to the crib, just out of focus. His heart was as shattered as my own, and I had not even seen him.
“It’s the way it is,” I repeated.
And Jane repeated, “Goodbye.”
43
Carla
MY FIRST MORNING in America was just as I’d dreamed it would be. My mother did not go to work at the Texas Chicken restaurant. She stayed with me, cooking tortillas, beans, and stew on the hot plate in the corner of the room. She sang and let me sleep all day in one of the two beds. Whenever I woke, she fed me, the savory sopa de mondongo like happiness on a metal spoon. She stroked my face, repeating, “Mi bebé, mi bebé,” and when my brother Carlos came home from school, he pounced on me like an overgrown dog, hugging me and looking so big and easy in his sweatsuit made of nylon material.
It was then that my perfect day concluded, because at this point I was introduced to my new sister, one-year-old Marisol; her father, my mother’s boyfriend, Mario; and the two other families who lived with us in Room Sixteen.
I would never sleep in a bed after that first morning. My mother took me on the bus to Fiesta Mart, where I chose a Dora the Explorer sleeping bag and three stuffed animals, and we carried them back to the Ace Motel. I made a place next to my brother on the floor. It seemed fun—like a game—for the first few nights. The television was always on and the other families had a total of seven children, so it was very loud. At night I tried not to hear the arguments, financial discussions, and sexual relations inside our room, and the drunkards and drug addicts who congregated in the Ace Motel parking lot.
My mother asked me about Junior only once more. We were alone in Room Sixteen, a rare event. “I know what happened to Junior was what God wanted,” my mother began. “I am thankful for all that He has given me. I am thankful He brought you to me in Texas.” She looked down at her clasped hands and managed, her voice thick with unshed tears, “I cannot help but ask you, Carla: why?”
I told her what had happened, confessed that I had climbed into the combi when I should have waited. My mother held me and rocked back and forth, a low cry coming from her throat, the sound of a heart breaking. My face pressed to her chest, I became hot with fury. “You left me alone in Tegu,” I said, pulling away from Mami. “I asked you to come home and you didn’t come. I could not fight the Resistol! I did my best!”
My mother put her head in her hands. When she raised it, I saw how unkind America had been to her. Her face was lined. Underneath her eyes, the skin was grayish. She stared into a middle distance, as if lost herself. She was a woman who maybe should have stayed. “There is no use in regret,” she said unconvincingly.
“What does that mean?” I said. “Why did you never send for me?”
“This is God’s plan,” said my mother.
“Do you really believe that?” I said. “God’s plan is for Junior to be lost in Mexico?”
“We cannot understand His ways,” said my mother. “We can only have faith. God brought you to me. God will watch over Junior.” Her eyes glittered. Her jaw clenched with the effort of believing the only thing she could believe.
“He is probably dead,” I said.
Her face blazed and she raised her hand to slap me, but stopped herself. Her arm fell to her side. She closed her fingers around the cross she wore on a chain around her neck. “If he is dead,” she said. “If he is … if he is …” She could not finish. Her faith, I saw then, was a rope dangling above an abyss of despair. She could hold on to the rope or let go. Finally she concluded weakly, “We will all be together in heaven.”
I felt both admiration and pity as I stared at her. She tightened her embrace. “We will be together,” she whispered. I relaxed into my mother. She believed it, she believed it, she believed it.
But America! It was easy (too easy?) to distract yourself from weighty matters here. Everything was so bright—it was as if stores had more light bulbs than the ones at home. The streets were very wide and there was no trash on the ground. There seemed to be endless space—supersized restaurants; huge cars; fat white, black, and brown people eating triple-decker hamburgers.
My mother told me that when she first came to Texas, the only food she knew how to order in English was a hamburger. “I ate so many I could not eat another,” she said. But then McDonald’s started numbering the meals—it was the best thing to happen in her life! “I could order a Number Six!” she exclaimed, “I could have anything—fish, chicken, the McRib sandwich!” My mother was chubby, and I looked forward to becoming as plump as an American myself.
My first week in America, we walked to McDonald’s, and when we got there she told me to order whatever I wanted. I chose a meal with two meat patties and cheese and sauces and pickles. We waited for a Guatemalan man to wipe our table with a rag and then we sat down and I bit into my Big Mac. It was so delicious I could hardly believe it was real, but I still found room to eat every single french fry in my bright red french fry holder. Even Coca-Cola tasted fatter in America.