Why not, indeed? I shrugged. I’d studied English because I loved to read, but I didn’t really want to teach or get a PhD. The thought of starting something tangible with Jake sounded fucking wonderful.
After all, in a world of countless perils, whom better to stay near than a man who could tame fire?
5
Carla
ONE MORNING, MY grandmother didn’t get out of bed. She had been moving slowly for some time, taking frequent naps, but I figured that was just what happened to people as they got old. She still woke each day before the sun, shaking Junior and me awake to serve us tortillas, beans, and hot coffee. (Fried eggs were a thing of the past now that we’d eaten the chickens, and the coffee grew weaker and weaker.) So it was a shock to squint against the rising sun, roll over, and find my grandmother beside me. “Mamita!” I said, shaking her bony shoulder.
“I’m sorry, my love,” she managed. “I’m going to sleep a little late today.”
“Are you sick?” I said, good and panicked.
“I may be sick,” said my grandmother. “I just may be.”
I sat up, kicking my brother. “Get up, you lazy ass!” I said.
“What did I do?” said Junior, rubbing his eyes, barely awake but ready to cry. He was a sweet boy, but so sensitive. I worried about what the world held in store for him. It was as if God had sent his brother Carlos to protect him like a suit of armor, but now Carlos was absent, and Junior was soft, exposed.
“You didn’t do anything,” I said, my fear curdling to anger. “You never do anything! Help our grandmother! Boil some water.”
“Okay, I will,” whined Junior. As he started the stove, I turned my eyes resolutely away from my grandmother’s wince. I stared at my brother’s American underwear, at the faded image of a dog named Scooby-Doo on his bottom.
It was a Wednesday, and when my mother called that afternoon, I told her about my grandmother, wrapping the telephone cord around my wrist, watching the street beggars outside the window. “Dios mío,” said my mother. “I should be there to help you, little one. I’m so sorry. And poor Mami …” There was a silence as she gathered herself. Her voice was stronger when she said, “Okay. I’ll send money right away.”
“Can you come home?” I asked hopelessly.
“You know I cannot. Listen, I’ll send as much as possible. You have to take her to the hospital. If you must take a taxi, take a taxi. Damn it, Carla.”
“It’s not my fault!” I said.
“I know, little one,” my mother said, softening. “I just … I was trying to save money. I’m worn out.”
I didn’t say anything. I tried to push down my anger, the sense that I had been abandoned, a fledgling left to founder in a disintegrating nest.
“How is Junior?” asked my mother.
“He’s fine,” I said, my words coming out frozen as I tried to hide the neediness burning in my stomach.
“Did you get the T-shirts in the mail?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t go to pick up clothes at the post office anymore. It was too dangerous. A girl with a package was a girl waiting to be robbed. But I didn’t tell my mother this. What was the use in scaring her? I had already tried, and she had not come home.
“And you are going to school?” said my mother.
“Sure,” I lied.
When the money came to the Western Union a day later, Humberto helped me lift my grandmother from the pallet into a taxi. As I stood, feeling helpless, he pulled me toward him. “I’ll stay with Junior,” said Humberto, his voice warm in my ear. Junior, drawing in the mud with a stick, looked up and beamed.
“Put on some pants!” I told my brother.
At the hospital, a doctor told me that my grandmother had an infection in her blood. “She needs to stay here, where we can watch over her,” said the doctor. In the hospital hallway, he went on, naming medications she needed. I told the doctor that my mother was in America and would pay for everything. But when he let me into her room, my grandmother had climbed from her metal bed and was sitting in a chair, dressed and ready to go. “Take me home,” she said.
I explained the doctor’s orders. She shook her head angrily. “They don’t know the first thing,” she said. “I’m fine.” I helped her down the hospital stairs and held her hand, a bouquet of bones. We rode the bus back to the village. I knew she was going to die.
When my mother called the following week, I told her what had happened. “You must come back,” I said. “You need to buy the medicine and make her take it!” I could hear my mother breathing on the line. “She just stays in bed all day,” I added. “I have to watch Junior and cook … it’s too much, Mami.” I bit my lip, a sob hot in my throat. For a moment, I let myself imagine that she would return. Her arms, her fragrant skin. “Please help me,” I whispered.
“Oh, Carla,” said my mother. “If I return to Tegu, I’ll lose my job. I might never get back to Texas. What will happen to us then?”
I told her I was ten years old and I did not know.
“Please don’t be obnoxious,” she said. She said she would send every cent she could, all her savings, and that it was my job to make my grandmother go back to the hospital. “I know I can count on you,” she said. “You’re my big girl.” When I hung up the phone, I saw that the Call Shop owner was looking at me.
“Stop complaining, you,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
I pushed open the door, the air a hot hand over my face, and I began to sprint toward the bridge that would carry me across the river. Past the glue sniffers, past the men in suits, past the buildings that blocked the sky and the graffiti-covered cement walls, past the barbed-wire fences and the skinny dogs, past the women selling their bodies and the women selling tortillas. I ran past the dump and finally reached the small road that led to my house, which—let’s be honest—was a shack. As I approached home at last, my lungs tight and my thigh muscles scorched, I saw Humberto in the yard. My brother Junior was kicking a soccer ball, his face alight.
“You got him a soccer ball?” I said.
Humberto smiled.
My grandmother died that night, before any more money arrived and before I could talk her into anything. Junior and I were sitting next to her on the pallet. Junior was brushing her hair (which she loved, making a cooing sound at the pleasure of the bristles on her scalp) and I was massaging her hands and singing. She had not said much since returning from the hospital, but we knew she loved us. We knew she was worried about us.
When she stopped breathing, Junior’s whole body shook. “She’s dead!” he cried. “She’s dead!” The words came out of his mouth squashed, as if being stepped on.
“Calm down, Junior,” I said. “I will take care of you now.”
“You’re a kid,” he cried.