Malaya. She would be coming home from school now. Engracia couldn’t see a clock, and she didn’t have a watch. But the light in the window. It would have to be about the right time. What would happen if Malaya walked in now?
These were, perhaps, the last moments any of them would be alive. They all knew it, and they were all afraid, and somehow the experience linked them: the woman who had lied to the man, the man who had a gun, the woman who did not know if she wanted to live or die.
Jimbo was still sitting on the floor, his back against the wall with the window. Honorata leaned into the couch, but Engracia could feel her alertness. It was one thing to wonder if she wanted to die, it was another to imagine a teenage girl walking through the door right now. Engracia could not bear it that Malaya might walk in. That something might happen to her.
“Mi hijo died,” she blurted. “My son. Diego. He died.”
Her voice came out cracked and accented. Engracia concentrated. She would have to say this in English. They would have to hear her.
“He was ten years old.”
Ms. Navarro let go of her hand. Engracia did not move. Out the corner of her eye, she saw the man looking. She stared at the table in front of her. The wood was ornately carved, with a thick slab of greenish glass in the center. Through the glass, she saw her own foot in its dirty white sneaker. She could see her heel and then, under the glass, the rest of her foot, as if it had suddenly grown larger.
“I have only one child. He died.”
Silence.
“When he was a little boy, he told me that when he grew up he would give his money to everyone on the street, to everyone who was hungry.”
Ms. Navarro shifted slightly in the seat next to her. Engracia saw that the red glow of the police cruiser was also reflected in the greenish glass, just at the edge, a sliver of red.
“He said he didn’t know why people walk by people who are hungry, who ask for food. ‘Why do we do that, Mama?’ I told him we do not have enough money to feed everyone. That my job was to feed him. And he told me that his job was going to be to feed them.”
She inhaled deeply. Her heart thudded dully in her chest, and her stomach, fluttery and unsettled for the last hour, cramped. Still, it was not as hard as she thought to speak. Engracia had no one to tell about Diego now. The padre. Mary from work, who had come to see her. But she wanted to talk about her son. She wanted someone to know who he was. And she wanted these stupid, stupid people, who had their daughter, to stop it.
When Diego was small enough to swim in the bathtub, he had put his face in the water and said he could see Dios. When he was three, Juan took him to the Los Angeles County Fair, and they came home with two fish in plastic bags. Diego named them Hombre and Nacho. One time in first grade, he jumped out of line before he was supposed to leave the teacher and came running up to Engracia: “Mama, I can write in Spanish! Not just English. There are words in Spanish too!” Even then, he liked to crawl between her and Juan in bed, and sometimes, if he thought she was asleep, he put his thumb in his mouth and stroked her cheek with his small, gentle fingers.
Remembering the feel of his fingers on her skin nearly choked her. As always, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted somehow to force the universe back on the track it was meant to be on. But nothing, nothing that she did, nothing that her body could do physically, could express the horror of what was true, of what could not be changed. Even tears, the instant they fell, or screams, at the moment of sound, became nothing at all, worse than no movement, no sound, because they were so much less than what she actually felt and so much less than how utterly unbearable this fact was.
“He wanted to go to Death Valley. A scientist came to the school, and told him about the sailing stones. He wanted to see them.”
She stopped. This was hard: what Diego had wanted and what she had done. Engracia listened for any sound in the room, her eyes not leaving the coffee table with her foot, distorted by the green glass, beneath it. Ms. Navarro and the man still said nothing. It was as if time had stopped. There was no gun. There was no argument. There was no girl about to walk in the door. There was just this moment, with Engracia hanging in space, concentrating, trying to tell them. She had to tell them now. Before Malaya came in.
“When the scientist came, Diego was happy. He didn’t like Las Vegas. He missed his papa. But he liked the scientist.”
Engracia heard the man sit down flat against the floor.
“I wanted Diego to go to college. I told him to study hard. Maybe he could be a scientist.”
There was no other sound. The phone did not ring.
“Diego was afraid here. Without his papa. One boy even had a gun.”
Honorata made a sound.
“And I was afraid. I was afraid of the boys here. I was afraid of the men on the street.”
Everything was coming out all wrong. She wasn’t making sense.
“He wanted to go to Death Valley. But I was afraid to take him there. By myself.”
Engracia closed her eyes. She could not tell this story. She could not talk about what she had done. She could tell them something else. Something about Diego.
“His name was Diego Alejandro Juan Diez-Montoya. He was born in Abril, in San Diego, the United States, on the eleventh. Every year, I decorated his cake with flowers.”
Out the window, the stucco continued to glow red. Engracia looked up and saw a shadow move—a man on the wall, perhaps.
She heard Jimbo stir, as if he were getting up. Maybe the man on the wall would shoot him now, before she had told them, before they understood. She had to tell them.
“He wanted to go to Death Valley, and I was afraid to take him, so I bought him a skateboard.
“But he was disappointed. He still wanted to go to Death Valley.
“So I told him I would take him to Red Rock, to the trails there, and we would look at the paintings the Indians made a thousand years ago. And on a different day, we would go and see the sailing stones.
“I told him we would go on Saturday, when I came home from work.
“But first I had to sleep that day because I work all night. So I told Diego to watch the television and to wake me at noon. I told him do not take the skateboard outside. Because his friends are too crazy. And he does not know how to ride it yet.”
Engracia shuddered. Por favor Dios mío, ayúdame. Help me.
“Diego woke me at noon. And we got in the car right away, so we would have lots of time to find the paintings on the rocks.
“And he was quiet. Tired. I say, Diego what’s the matter? But he say he is fine, he is happy, he wants to see the rocks.
“I know something is not right, but I think it is these boys, his friends. Or maybe he watched the news on the television, and something happened. I wait, because he will tell me when he is ready.”