The drive was sad, and the move was harder.
Diego was not happy in their new home, and he did not like his new school. Pilar’s friend had gotten Engracia a job at a casino called the El Capitan, and she had told her about the apartments near Maryland Parkway, where everyone spoke Spanish and she would not need a deposit. But the neighborhood was rough, much rougher than where they had lived in Pomona. All night long, Engracia heard loud talk and fighting, sudden shouts, and the undulating whine of police sirens. She did not let Diego outside after dark, and she worried about the kids he walked home from school with, even while she was grateful that another mother had invited Diego to have breakfast at her house when he woke up alone, hours after Engracia had left for work.
Engracia did not think the school was so bad. She had gone to a meeting for Hispanic parents, where a man in a suit and tie talked with them about college. His Spanish was very good, and he told them there was a lot of money for Hispanic children who wanted to go to college. They could go to the best schools in the United States. And then a woman, a mexicana, spoke. She explained that the children who got this money had to go to school every day, had to take AP classes when they got to high school, had to join the debate team or the math club, and stay after school when they could be home taking care of younger children. Engracia heard one father say that he did not want his child to leave home, and he did not understand a college that preferred math club to a child who helped his family, but Engracia did not feel this way. This is what she wanted for Diego. This is why she had left her family, so that Diego could live differently.
It had been Juan who had first felt this way about America, who had given her these ideas about their children. But when he finally called, the day he arrived back in Jerez, he said that maybe they should all go back to Mexico. Life was so much easier there; one didn’t need very much money to live in the village. Engracia was shocked. They had never considered returning to Zacatecas.
After the meeting, she wandered the school, looking at the walls filled with children’s art: watercolor paintings and origami sculptures and brightly colored maps that showed small children in different cities around the world. Peering in the windows of a classroom, Engracia saw a row of computers and three bookshelves stacked with books—even though the school had its own library where the meeting had just been held—and plastic cups filled with markers and paintbrushes and rulers.
Engracia had gone to school. It was a long walk, very hot, to the next village, and the school had been just two rooms: one for the younger children and the other for the older ones. There was a little building in the back, with three pit toilets, and in between there was a dusty field where the children played at recess. The teacher, Senorita Consuela, was from Mexico City. She had been to the national museum filled with stone figures too heavy for fifty men to lift and also to the house painted blue where the artists had lived. Engracia had liked school.
Weeks went by, and still Diego did not thrive. He gained weight. He pretended to be sick in the mornings. He would call her at work and beg not to go to school, saying his stomach hurt, he had a fever, he could not get out of bed. And she would make him go to school, not listen to his pleas, and wonder at how long that would last. How long would he relent and do as she asked, and when would he figure out that there was nothing she could do if he did not go?
One night at dinner, Diego was animated. A scientist had visited the fourth grade. He had dipped a rose in nitrogen and made it freeze. He had showed slides of Death Valley and told about the Indians who had lived there, and the giant boulders that rolled mysteriously, leaving tracks in the dry earth, even though no one ever saw them move and they were too big for any living thing to push.
“Can we go see them, Mama?”
“The boulders?”
“Yes. They’re sailing stones. And where the Indians lived. And the castle.”
“Maybe, papí. Maybe in the summer, if you get good grades.”
“Could Papa come?”
“I don’t know.”
She regretted telling him that they might go to Death Valley. She was afraid of this place. She didn’t want to go there without Juan. “Do you still like to skateboard? Maybe we can get a skateboard for summer.”
Diego’s face dimmed.
“Sí, Mama,” he said slowly.
At this thought, Engracia dropped Ms. Navarro’s laundry basket to the floor.
The clothes at the top rolled onto the floor, and she heard Ms. Navarro walk to the bottom of the stairs to see if something had happened. Engracia did not call down to her. A tight band stretched across the bottom of her rib cage, and squeezed. She doubled over, trying to breathe. Padre Burns had said that it was good to remember, that she had to let her feelings out, but she couldn’t bear to remember; it took her breath away. But then, what difference did it make if she could breathe? And as soon as that thought came, her body relaxed, the cinch around her middle eased, and air filled her lungs.
She picked up the clothes that had fallen, and the basket, and started down the stairs carefully. Ms. Navarro wasn’t standing there anymore—Engracia could hear her in the kitchen—so when the bell rang, she set the basket carefully on the bottom step and hurried to open the door.
The man was large, and older. His face was quite red, as if it were always that color, and at first, he seemed nervous.
“I’m looking for Honorata Navarro. Is she here?”
Engracia hesitated. Perhaps she shouldn’t have opened the door. She struggled to find the right words.
“Just a minute.”
She started to close the door to look for Ms. Navarro, but he put his foot in the jamb and then said calmly, “I’d like to speak with her if I could.”
Engracia looked from his foot to the door to the empty hallway behind her. “Ms. Navarro!” she called.
As soon as she spoke, the man entered the doorway. He didn’t move farther into the house, but stood on the entryway floor, waiting.
Engracia’s heart beat faster. Why had she answered the door?
“She’s not here,” Engracia tried. “I’m sorry, she’s not home right now.”
“I’ll wait.”
“No. You can’t stay here. You have to leave.”
Her voice was weak, but at least she was finding the words she wanted.
Just then, Ms. Navarro rounded the corner. Engracia was looking at her, past the man, and the shock on her face, it actually went white, made it clear that she should not have opened the door.
“I’m sorry. I try to tell him to leave . . .”
“Rita,” said the man.
“Honorata,” said the trembling Ms. Navarro.
26
Life perfects us, if we let it.