31
After staring at the grimy keypad for a couple of minutes, Socorro finally took out a pen and, on the palm of her hand, jotted down her mother’s number. She was standing on the corner outside their hotel, which had fifty channels on the television but no phone in the room. The noise from the traffic and the nearby torta stand was loud enough that she wondered if she shouldn’t have walked an extra block to the plaza and found another pay phone. Before this, she had gone to the pharmacy so she could buy the calling card she was now inserting into the card reader. The number on her palm still looked strange to her, like she was off a digit, but she couldn’t say which. She blamed her forgetfulness on all the traveling they had done that day. Who wouldn’t be a little disoriented so far from home?
As the phone rang, she imagined, as she had most of the day, how exactly she would go about telling them where she was. It was still too early for her mother or her aunt to be missing her. She had thought she would ask her mother about her day, how she was feeling, if the swelling in her feet had gone away, if she had taken her afternoon nap and remembered to keep her feet elevated. There was no need to rush into the news about the trip. It would be like peeling an onion, layer by layer, and slowly revealing what had occurred and how, so her mother could see that the sudden trip actually wasn’t so sudden. There was the news of Celestino’s brother, the poor man living in a home filled with the elderly and infirm. There was the news of their grandfather and how he was kidnapped as a child by the Indians and taken from his ranchito in Mexico to the United States. There was the news of the terrible things that had happened to the other people in their family. There was the news of Don Fidencio’s promise to his grandfather to someday return to the ranchito in his place. There was the news of his need to fulfill this promise but also the unfortunate condition of his health (something her mother would surely be able to understand), and how if the poor old man were going to make the trip, he would need help. There was more, but with these details she thought her mother would accept the rest of what she needed to tell her. And perhaps her plan would have worked if she hadn’t blurted the whole thing out as soon as her mother answered the phone.
“And then, what do you want from me?” her mother said, only after what seemed like an interminable pause. “What did you call here for? Not to ask for my advice, not to see if this was a good idea.”
“Just to let you know, that’s all.” Across the street a taxi driver blasted his horn at another driver who’d tried to cut him off. “So you wouldn’t be worried about me.”
“And now you want us to relax, knowing you ran off with two little old men?”
“We didn’t plan it this way,” she said, then repeated herself over the traffic and the flush of heat she could feel spreading across her chest.
“You also never said anything about taking a trip,” her mother said. “What you want is to go have your fun, leave us here, and then come back whenever you feel like it because here you always have a bed.”
“Are you saying not to come back?” The remaining minutes on her calling card were counting down on the digital screen above the keypad, and she was glad she bought only enough for a five-minute call.
“Not if you are going to act like a woman who any man can take to sleep wherever he decides you will lie down, and you run off with him.”
She rubbed the nape of her neck and could feel a feverish sweat soaking through her hair. “Celestino is not just any man.”
“He is to me, he is to your tía. We only know him from looking through the window when he drops you off across the street. For us, he is any man.”
“Like bringing him to the house would change things, after the way the two of you talk about him.”
“At least then we would know who you ran away with.”
“Maybe later I will bring him to the house.”
“And when will that be, when you come to tell us that already you married him?”
“I never said we were getting married, that things were that serious.”
“Not serious for getting married, but serious for other things,” her mother said. “And if he gets you in trouble?”
“Trouble how?”
“Trouble the way old men can get young women in trouble.”
“You know if that was even possible for me, it would have happened years ago.”
“With a little faith, it would have.”
“I had faith.”
“If you had waited.”
“I did wait,” she said. “He was the one who didn’t wait, remember?”
“You never stop blaming the poor man, dead so many years.” Her mother had more to say on this matter, but by now the automated voice had announced that only a few seconds remained on the calling card. Socorro thought about going back to the pharmacy to buy another card so they could finish their conversation, then realized they’d been having the same conversation for years and would probably continue to do so. Now she only had to wait for the seconds to tick away.