25
Chayo raised her glasses, holding them up close to her face, then removed them altogether since they were really only reading glasses and at the moment she didn’t have anything in front of her to read, not a prescription, not a label off an old vial, not the name of a medicine scribbled in English on a piece of paper that she could then look up in her big red book with all the proper medications listed in Spanish. The glasses were attached to a silver-beaded necklace that she was knotting up between her fingers until she finally let it rest against the front of her blue smock. Then she and Socorro moved to one end of the counter while the two men lingered at the other end: Don Fidencio, near a small rack of sunglasses, trying on the various styles; Don Celestino, next to a plastic display, where he was sniffing an open tube of brilliantine.
“You can pretend the medicines are for my mother,” Socorro said, reaching out for her hand.
“Your mother, I have known for many years,” Chayo replied.
“But remember that first time, how I came here and you hadn’t met her?”
“That was different. By then your mother had been to many doctors. You showed me what they had given her.”
“Don Fidencio has been to the doctor many times.”
“Yes, but who can say what they prescribed for him?” She let go of Socorro’s hand. “Here you have me in the dark. All you can tell me is that he needs medicines for his blood pressure and cholesterol, so he will not urinate so frequently, and because he had a stroke not that long ago, and the rest only God knows. Like that, you want me to guess, like I was his doctor.”
“Only enough for a little while, for a few days, until we get back from the trip.”
“At a great risk, and not just for him — for you, for me,” Chayo said. “Tell me what you are going to do if he gets sick anyway or if I give him the wrong medicines and they do him harm. Then what?”
They both turned when the door chimed. The security guard smiled briefly as he held open the door for a young pregnant woman with two young children, then he went back to crossing his arms over his flak jacket. Chayo excused herself to attend to some of the other customers that had entered the small pharmacy. She left Socorro waiting at the end of the counter near the display of mentholated lozenges and the long glass case containing various brands of condoms and contact solutions. A string of Telmex phone cards, each wrapped in plastic, dangled from the register inside a Plexiglas booth. The cashier girl counted off the colorful bills in front of her, arranging them into disheveled stacks. At one point she looked up at Socorro and gave her the passive smile of someone who isn’t paid enough to be genuinely pleasant. Then she entered an amount into an office calculator and waited for the machine to produce a receipt before sticking it and two of the stacks of bills into a metal box beneath the register. The pregnant woman was now lingering near the booth, holding one child in the cradle of her right arm and carrying another in a stroller. She wanted to know what size diapers she should buy if she needed one that fit both a seven-month-old and an eighteen-month-old. Chayo told her that, unfortunately, she would have to buy different sizes, but today she would make her a special price on the Pampers.
Once she had taken care of her customer, she and Socorro walked to the counter where she kept the pharmaceutical book.
“Just tell me how you want me to feel doing something like this?”
“If we have to, we can find a doctor,” Socorro said.
“The doctor you should have found before you brought him here. Before, not later. That’s how it is supposed to happen. These medicines are not for taking chances.”
“And if he goes with no medicines?”
Chayo turned toward the center of the store as the old man was trying on a pair of dark sunglasses and crouching to see himself in the tiny mirror. The squared frames were the kind his doctor had given him years ago after removing his cataracts. He held them against his brow, then stared up at the fluorescent lights as if he were staring into the sun. When he looked back down, he lost his balance and staggered forward, in the direction of the sunglass rack, but at the last second grabbed hold of the walker to correct himself.
“Only so you can go for a few days,” Chayo said, shaking her head, “and nothing too strong. After that you have to promise to take him to a doctor, with someone who can prescribe some real medicine. A man his age and in that condition needs special care.”
She reached for the beaded necklace that held her glasses, sliding her fingers down it as if she were counting off each bead on a rosary. Then she walked around to the other side of the counter and opened the big red book.
The old man clung to his brother’s arms as he made his way down the three steps from the pharmacy. The security guard was kind enough to carry the walker and open it again on the sidewalk.
They were about to walk back to the taxi when Don Fidencio noticed an old india sitting in the shade near the bottom step, her cupped and pleading hand stretched out in their direction. The frayed rebozo draped the edges of her withered face and then stretched out to cover what at first appeared to be a child but was only the swollen curve of her back. He reached into his pocket for some change, but all he found was his lighter.
“Here,” Don Celestino said, and handed him the change from the medicines.
The old man dropped a few pesos into the india’s hand and she hid the coins somewhere under her rebozo. Then she nodded and, raising the same hand, said, “May God bless you with a long life.”
The old man stared at her, wondering if he shouldn’t take his money back or at least ask for a more useful blessing. He was about to say something to her, but he could feel his brother tugging at his arm.