Broken Ground (15 page)

A string of quotes follows the introduction. I skim them. It is no surprise that I don't recognize the names of those quoted—I know nothing about California politics—but each person confirms, in various ways, that the repatriates, all citizens of Mexico, are relief recipients or charity cases who are taking a further toll on the already struggling economy, and putting the larger community at risk due to their tendency toward contagious disease. All those quoted confirm that the illegals are more than willing to return to their home across the border.

Home.
The word is repeated time and again, as is the fact that the people are being
offered
their return to Mexico and
rewarded
for it in the form of transportation payment, be it by train, bus, or truck. The United States government both supports and funds repatriation, as it is the result of a federal act put in place by the Hoover administration in 1930, and supported by the Roosevelt administration today.

Repatriation appears to be exactly as I've been told it is: necessary and justifiable, with positive repercussions for all. The article concludes:

The ongoing rumor that forced raids have been conducted without due process in public settings, including that which was purported to occur in the Plaza at Olvera Street, also known as La Placita, in February 1931, is simply that: a rumor, insidious and destructive in its intent. This particular incident of repatriation, like every other, was in fact a government-sponsored undertaking, duly enacted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

No surprises here, really. Things are as I've been told. I fold the newspaper and shut it away in the desk drawer.

The kitchen is warm; Alice, also in dry clothes, has gotten the oven going. She's poured us two cups. Already, she's preparing the chicken. She may be a little more subdued than usual, but with tasks at hand, she seems fairly steady. I take a sip of coffee, then set to work mixing up a batch of dumplings. The sack of potatoes has gone missing from its place on the counter; Alice confirms that Thomas is peeling away on the porch. We don't mention the rain, still falling hard, but as soon as Alice sees I've finished the dough, she snatches an umbrella from the line of coat hooks on the wall and presses it into my hands. “There's an eave and gutters, so he won't drown. But will you see how he's doing?” She wants to know more than the number of potatoes peeled, it's clear from her furrowed brow.

I slip out the back door, letting it close behind me. Thomas sits on the top step, his upper half sheltered, as I am, by the eave. But his legs—he's carelessly stretched them out on the steps below. They're soaked, his trousers clinging below his knees as my dress recently did. The difference between his legs is so clear now that he might as well have his trousers rolled up. His left calf is lean and strong, the shinbone and muscles clearly defined; his right, while shaped like its counterpart, is noticeably thinner, with unnaturally smooth contours.

I open the umbrella. Stretching out my arm, I shield his legs from the rain as much as I'm able. “You're going to catch a cold if you're not careful.”

He shrugs. He has yet to look up at me. He holds a half-peeled potato in one hand; the peeler rests in the palm of the other. Only two potatoes of the entire large sack lie peeled in the bowl beside him.

I prop the umbrella on the porch railing so that it continues to provide partial shelter for his legs, and then, taking the peeler from his hand and a potato from the sack, I sit down beside him, careful to keep my legs tucked in close. At least one of us will stay dry. Thomas acknowledges my new perch by shifting slightly away from me. Otherwise he stares out at the narrow, weed-ridden backyard, which serves both the Everly family and the people who inhabit the other half of the duplex. There's an overturned tricycle beside the dilapidated picket fence, and a wooden sandbox. Any hollows in the sand and yard are now puddles, rapidly expanding.

“We need this rain,” I say, for something to say. “It's a godsend, really.”

A man of few words, now as ever, apparently. I start peeling the potato.

The neighbors' back door bangs open, and a man carrying an umbrella and a wailing baby hurries into the yard. The baby is swaddled in a red blanket, and is red faced, too, from the crying. The man wears a brown suit. He joggles the baby up and down, trying to soothe it.

“We have to go!” the man yells at his back door. “My parents are waiting dinner!” He sees Thomas and me then, makes a sheepish face, and nods at the baby. “She won't quiet down. Colic, we think. Thought some fresh air might help.”

A woman appears on the porch, holding a brimming spoon and a glass filled with amber-colored liquid. “Whiskey and honey,” she calls to the man. “Tilda across the street said to try it.” She dashes through the rain to join her little family beneath the umbrella and, there, mixes the spoonful of honey into the glass. Together, fumbling and cooing, the man and woman spoon the solution into the baby's mouth. The wails crescendo to howls. “It'll calm her, Tilda promised. Just give it a minute.” The woman raises her voice to be heard.

It takes a few minutes, but the baby's wails do diminish to fretful squalls. “See?” the woman says, taking the baby from the man's arms. The family goes back inside, woman and child first, then the man, who hesitates at the door to apologize for the noise. “Didn't mean to disrupt your peace and quiet.” His smile is rueful. “But don't worry. We'll be on the road momentarily. You know how it is.
Babies
.” And with that, he goes inside.

A knot forms in my throat as I stare at the empty backyard. Charlie and I had hoped for our own version of this. If our baby had been colicky, my Tilda might have been Edna Faye's mother. I might have asked her for a remedy if things had been different.

“My mother told me about your husband.”

I look at Thomas, startled. With his thumbnail, he digs at a potato eye, then flicks it to the patchy grass at the bottom of the porch steps. “I'm sorry. I lost someone, too.” He nods to where the woman and man just stood with their baby. “I loved the girl who used to live next door. Sounds like a song, doesn't it? I guess it's kind of your song, too, as Ma said you all but grew up with your husband.”

I swallow hard against the lump rising in my throat. There are black-eyed Susans I hadn't noticed before, planted in a patch at the back of the yard. The storm has stripped away their yellow petals, leaving only the brown, brittle centers. “No
all but
about it,” I say. “Charlie and I did grow up together.”

Thomas nods. “The girl I loved was—
is
—named Guadalupe. She had to leave with her family.” He is soft-spoken, but the words tumble from him as if pent up too long. “This is the first time I've been home since she left, so her ghost is everywhere. Yes, she's alive, but the living can haunt the people they leave behind, too. Losing a person—” He glances disdainfully at his prosthesis. “It's worse than losing a limb. Phantom limb, that's what it's called when you feel like your leg is still there. There's a tingling sometimes, or a feeling of—I don't know—
wholeness,
like I'm the person I used to be. Then I remember I'm not. Sometimes the pain of the injury returns, too. I lost my leg in a so-called farming accident, but you want to know what really happened? What really happened was the boss didn't want to pay to have a tractor blade repaired. And when the phantom limb hurts like it's still flesh, well, God help me, sometimes I have to bite on something, a stick or a rag, to keep from making a ruckus. But being haunted by Lupe is worse than any of that, I promise you. A dark-haired woman will pass me by, wearing a dress Lupe might have worn, and for a moment I'll think she's returned. Once I ran after such a woman. I caught her by the arm and spun her around only to see that she was a stranger. I frightened her. I frightened myself.”

The rain drums on the eave that covers our heads, on the umbrella and the weed-ridden grass, and what's left of the black-eyed Susans.

“Lupe and her family had to leave.” I keep my voice soft, almost a whisper. If he doesn't want to respond, he can pretend he didn't hear me. “Were they repatriated?”

“Did my parents tell you?” His jaw goes so tight that the little muscles ripple there. “What was their version of what happened? No, don't tell me. I can just imagine.”

“It wasn't them,” I quickly say. “They haven't said anything about her. It was her name. It's not
any
name. And your newspaper—the story on the front page. I wasn't sure, but the way you were absorbed in that article, it seemed a logical conclusion.”

“Like that newspaper, my parents would have told you the official story. The unofficial story—that's the one you should hear.”

“Well, they didn't tell me anything, if that's any comfort.”

We both start as the door opens behind us. Alice peers out. “Why don't the two of you come inside and do that?” She flicks her eyebrows at Thomas, trying to make light. “If you're in a better mood, that is.”

Thomas nods. Clearly pleased, Alice turns back inside. We start to get up, but Thomas's crutches slip on the slick porch. I catch his arm to keep him from falling.

“Thanks.” His voice is sharp. “But I don't need any help.”

I quickly release his arm. “Well, I do.”

He cuts me a look. “What help can I give you?”

“Tell me the unofficial story when you have a chance.”

CHRISTMAS DINNER—CHICKEN
and dumplings, carrots, mashed potatoes, and cornbread—starts out a subdued affair. Alice raises up a strained prayer, emphasizing her gratitude for my presence and Thomas's. We
please pass
this and that for a while, and then we dig into our food. Poor Alice. Her gaze darts nervously between her husband and son, who keep their eyes on their plates and eat with forced dedication. “The food is delicious,” I finally say; I don't want this fact to go unnoticed. Alice casts me a look of gratitude, and then, her voice quavering with desperation, she asks me to tell Thomas about my college experience—how I came to be there, what it's like, and what I'm studying. I set down my fork, take a deep breath, and launch into the fullest summary I'm able to provide of these last few months. When I get to the part about my long-held desire to be a teacher, Thomas sits up a little straighter. “I know where they really need teachers. I teach a bit there myself.” But after a sharp look from Talmadge, Thomas doesn't elaborate. So I carry on talking, going into more depth about what kind of teacher I aspire to be. In the whole of this rather lengthy monologue, I leave out only the information I most want to share with Thomas: my experiences at the train station and with the boy beneath the bleachers, and the small silver cross that lies hidden beneath my mattress at Garland Hall.

And so the meal passes. By the time Thomas and I are washing the dishes, the tension seems to have all but lifted. Alice hovers about us, drinking in the sight of her boy, I believe. Talmadge makes occasional appearances, refilling his coffee cup, collecting matches from a drawer. But mostly he's in the front room, busy with something that Alice says is a surprise. The radio plays; carols accompany the cleaning up. If I weren't missing Charlie so much, I'd say I was happy. But now that we've survived dinner, my thoughts turn to him. Feels like my heart is breaking all over again. It's a physical sensation, a hollow ache in my breast. Even as I bow my head over the brimming sink and bury my hands in soapsuds, I sense a black fog coming on.

“You all right?” Thomas asks.

I glance over my shoulder. Alice has left the kitchen, so I feel free to I shake my head.

“Phantom limb?”

And like that, tears spring to my eyes and fall into the sink. One, two, three, four, parting the soapsuds, sinking into the water. Five, six, seven, eight, like the rain outside, which has lightened to scarcely a drizzle. Thomas drapes the wet dish towel over the counter, then tentatively puts his arm around my shoulder. Scrubbing my tears away with the back of my soapy hand, I look out the window before us. The darkness outside makes the glass a mirror. There I am reflected, with a man standing near, comforting me, a man who is not Charlie.

Footsteps sound. Thomas swiftly withdraws his arm, and we step apart. A chill settles where his arm was; I shiver. But Alice's approach—for these are her footsteps, heavy and brisk—has knocked the tears right out of me. I am dry-eyed as she enters the kitchen.

“You know what's up, don't you, son?” Alice wrings her hands, not in worry but in delight.

“I do.” Thomas smiles stiffly.

“Don't spill the beans, all right? Let's surprise our guest!”

With that, Alice takes a clean dish towel from a drawer and, when I give her my surprised permission, wraps it like a blindfold around my eyes. “We're coming!” she calls. Then she takes me by one arm, and Thomas takes me by the other, and they lead me slowly from the kitchen to the front room. There, they sit me down on the couch. No sound from the radio now, but there's the sulfuric odor of matches recently struck, and the sizzle of freshly lit wicks.

“Ready?” Alice asks. She takes my hand in her plump one, and I realize she's talking to me. I nod, and she yanks the blindfold from my eyes.

The room is dark other than the soft light cast by the flames that flicker from slender cream-colored tapers anchored in the brass candleholders clipped to the tips of the Christmas tree's boughs. It's a holy glow, little tongues of fire licking the air. Talmadge begins to sing, his rough, husky voice perfectly on pitch.

O, Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of our dear Savior's birth . . .

Talmadge sings only the first verse of the carol, and then quickly, lest the candles burn too low, he puts a long, thin tube to his lips and proceeds to blow out each flame. The room is shadowy for a long moment, a faint haze of smoke circling the tree. Then Alice turns on the lights.