Irma Voth (15 page)

My mother was quiet for a long time. I wanted her to say something. The baby fell asleep and my mother took her nipple out of its mouth and gently laid the baby down beside her so it was tucked in between her and Aggie and then she put the top of her nightgown back on. She asked me to move so that she could get out of bed and she asked Aggie to stay with the baby and I helped her walk to the kitchen because she was still sore from the birth and she asked me to sit down at the table. She sat down too and put her hands on my hands.

How are you, Irma? she said. She touched my cheek and my forehead. We were whispering.

I’m okay, I said. How are you?

She smiled and said she was okay except that I was holding on to her hand so tightly she thought it might break.

Does Jorge know? she said.

No, I said.

But he’s your husband, she said.

I know, I said. She was quiet for a bit, staring at something invisible on the wall.

Are you cold? she said.

No, I said.

Are you hungry? she said.

No, I said.

Will you be brave? she said.

I’ll try, I said.

I love you, Irma, she said.

I love you too.

I pressed my fingers hard to my eyes. I put my head in my mother’s lap and she stroked my hair. My precious Irma, she said. Then she sang a little bit of this hymn we all knew called “Children of the Heavenly Father.” When she was finished singing she was quiet for a minute. She kept stroking my hair.

Your braids need redoing, she said.

I know, I said.

But there isn’t time now, she said.

That’s true, I said. She tried to help me up. She whispered to me that I should kiss the boys goodbye, they wouldn’t wake up, and she would talk for a bit with Aggie. I got up and went into the boys’ bedroom and looked at them. Doft was buried under his blanket, his fuzzy little head just barely poking out, and Jacobo had thrown his covers onto the floor. I leaned over each of my sleeping brothers and kissed them. They smelled like hay and sweat. I wanted to give them something to remember me by but I didn’t have anything. I kissed each of them again. Then I remembered the oranges and I went out to the truck and
took two of them out of the bag and brought them back in and went and put one orange each beside my brothers’ heads. I went back into the hallway and I heard Aggie and my mother talking in her room. I heard Aggie say hold me closer, Mom, squeeze hard. They were both crying. I walked back to the kitchen and waited.

When my mother came out of the room she told me she had a very big favour to ask of me. I told her I’d do anything for her.

Take her with you, she said, and don’t tell me where you’re going.

I am taking her with me, I said. That’s why we’re both here. To say goodbye.

I know, she said. I mean the baby. Take her too.

SEVEN

I WROTE A NOTE AND SLIPPED IT
under the door for Diego to find when he woke up. I told him the truck would be at the airport in Chihuahua and the keys in the ashtray. I thanked him for everything and wished him well with his movie. I asked him to please forgive me for leaving the shoot early and for taking the truck and to give Marijke a hug from me and goodbye to all the others. And I signed it.

I drove fast, straight into the rising sun. Aggie held the baby and stared at her.

Does she have your eyes? I said.

It’s hard to say, said Aggie. Just one is open. It’s really dark blue.

Hmmm, I said.

I don’t think she has any pupils, said Aggie.

Of course she has pupils, I said.

I don’t know, said Aggie, I can’t see it.

Well, that’s just because her eye is dark blue, I said. She must have pupils.

What does a pupil do, anyway? said Aggie.

I don’t know, I said. I was calculating the amount of time it would take us to drive to Cuauhtémoc and wondering if the
farmacia
would be open so that I could buy some baby formula and bottles.

You should know that by now, said Aggie.

Okay, I said, they react to the light. They dilate and contract.

So, said Aggie. If she doesn’t have pupils will the sun just burn holes right through her eyes?

She has pupils, I said.

Maybe she’s blind, said Aggie.

See if you can make her blink, I said. Or just move your hand around and see if her eye follows it.

Aggie moved her hand slowly through the air in front of the baby’s one open eye and then the baby closed that one too.

Well, said Aggie, that didn’t really work.

She’ll be fine, I said.

You always say that, said Aggie. You’re always saying everything is fine.

No, I’m not, I said. I’m not an idiot.

She has your fists, said Aggie.

What do you mean, fists? I said. Hands?

She’s a fighter, said Aggie.

I’m not a fighter, I said. They just ball up like that on their own. Stretch them out.

Aggie took the baby’s hands in her own and gently pried them open. The baby was trying to scratch her own cheek. Her hands were flailing around all over the place.

Don’t let her do that, I said.

Do what? said Aggie.

Tuck her hands in under the blanket so she doesn’t scratch herself, I said.

Isn’t it strange, said Aggie, that Mom gave us all those baby clothes and now we have a baby but none of the clothes?

Yes and no, I said.

Are we going to look for Jorge? said Aggie.

I don’t know, I said. I don’t think so.

Wilson? said Aggie.

No, I said. I don’t know where he is.

Well, you don’t know where Jorge is either, said Aggie. That’s why it’s called looking.

I said, she’s still kind of scratching herself. Tuck her hands in. Or hold them away from her face.

I didn’t say goodbye to the boys, she said.

They were sleeping, I said. They’re all right.

See, said Aggie, you’re always saying everything is all right.

I didn’t say everything is all right, I said. I said the boys are all right.

The motor on the truck was loud but we could still hear the mourning doves.

Dad will kill Oveja, said Aggie.

No, he won’t, I said.

Yeah, he will, said Aggie. Stop saying stuff you don’t know. I hate that. He’ll kill him for sure.

Well, now you’re saying something you don’t know, I said. Maybe Oveja will kill him first.

What’s he gonna do when he finds out the baby is gone? said Aggie.

Nothing, I said. He barely noticed her. Mom will tell him she had dengue and died and is gone.

That’s it? said Aggie.

That’s all, I said. You have to be buried quick with dengue. Mom will tell him she put her with that other one behind the feed barn.

What about a funeral? said Aggie.

Not worth it, I said. Dad will say a prayer at dinner and send her soul to heaven.

What does Mom call her? said Aggie.

Ximena, I said.

What? said Aggie. For real? That’s a Mexican name.

Well, we’re in Mexico, I said.

Let’s give her a Mexican last name too, said Aggie.

Sure, I said. Molina?

Ximena Molina, said Aggie.

Or we could call her Miep, I said.

Ximena Molina Miep? said Aggie.

Sure, I said.

How will we feed her? said Aggie.

I’m thinking about that, I said.

It started to get a little cloudy and after about twenty minutes it started to rain hard. Finally Diego could shoot the scene he needed so desperately. Except that we had his truck. We were driving to the airport in Chihuahua city. I stopped at a
farmacia
on the main road going out of Cuauhtémoc and bought some baby formula and bottles and a bag of infant-sized diapers and a package of three sleepers and a blue box of moist baby wipes. I bought a beach towel with a herd of wild horses on it against a setting sun to use as an extra blanket for Ximena and a forbidden teen magazine and a Snickers bar for Aggie. When I got back to the truck Ximena was screaming and Aggie was trying to get her to stop.

You have to walk with her, I said.

It’s raining outside, said Aggie.

Walk under that canopy for a bit while I make her a bottle, I said. I read the instructions on the formula tin and carefully measured out four level scoops of powder. I had taken care of babies all my life but until now my mother had always provided the milk. I added clean water and I shook the bottle and then I squeezed a drop of it onto the inside of my wrist to make sure the temperature was perfect. It was a little cool so I rubbed the bottle between my hands for a minute. I considered starting the engine and putting the bottle on it to warm up fast but I didn’t want the plastic to melt.

Aggie came back to the truck with Ximena, she was still crying but not as hard and she’d stopped waving her arms
around, and I took her and gave her the bottle and Aggie took her magazine and chocolate. Ximena spit the rubber nipple out several times and tried to scream but I kept putting it back into her mouth until she got the hang of it.

Aren’t you supposed to boil those bottles before you use them? said Aggie.

Yeah, you are, I said. I shrugged. I wiped the bottle with a sterilized baby wipe.

When Ximena had finished her bottle I burped her and changed her diaper on the seat of the truck.

Look at that, said Aggie. Is that normal?

Yeah, I said, it’s her umbilical cord. It’ll fall off in a few days.

We should keep it, said Aggie.

Sure, I said. It’ll eventually shrivel up, though.

How long will that take? said Aggie.

I don’t know, I said. Marijke keeps her son’s umbilical cord in a little pouch around her neck.

How far is it to the airport? said Aggie.

About an hour and a half, I said.

Where are we flying to?

I’m not exactly sure right now, I said.

How about Canada? said Aggie.

The world seemed spectacular and beautiful and calm, like the sacred heart of Jesus, as my mother would have said. The world we were leaving, that is. But I guess that’s how the world works. How it sucks you in by being all beautiful just when you’re ready to leave. Jorge used to get me to walk and
talk with him when I was sad. He’d hold my hand and sometimes we’d skip all the way to San Miguel, the tiny village down the road, because skipping is stupid but exhilarating and it made us laugh. Words and movement, he said, would push all the bad stuff away. I tried it on myself. I was starting to think hard about my mother, wondering if we’d ever see her again, and I didn’t want to cry in front of Aggie.

Are you thinking about Mom? I said.

Yeah, said Aggie.

Well, that was all we said. So much for words. And driving wasn’t the same as skipping. So the bad stuff stayed in our minds and we both stared straight ahead through the dirty windshield. Ximena made odd noises like she was trying hard to fill the void but didn’t yet know exactly how to articulate loss or, like Wilson had said, how to communicate loneliness.

We had Ximena and her sunset beach towel and diapers and bottles and stuff and the woman behind the counter asked us where our bags were and I told her we didn’t have any. Well, we have a bag of oranges, said Aggie. The woman looked at the bag of oranges and frowned and looked at Ximena and frowned more. I told her I wanted to buy three tickets to Vancouver, Canada, or two if my baby could sit on my lap. She said we’d have to fly to Houston first, or Los Angeles, and then to Vancouver. She asked us when we wanted to fly.

Now, I said.

Do you have passports? she said.

We were sitting on the curb in front of the airport. I was nervous, worrying that my father would drive up any second. We had half an hour to kill before our flight to Acapulco. We didn’t have passports. Aggie was eating an orange and leaning way over so the juice didn’t dribble onto her dress. Some of it fell onto the asphalt and a bee spotted it just like that. And then a bunch of them. The baby was awake again and waving her arms around like a shipwreck survivor.

We’ve learned something today, haven’t we? I said.

Is this my new school? said Aggie.

We’ll go to the beach, I said.

We don’t have bathing costumes, said Aggie.

Bathing costumes? I said. They’re not called that.

That’s what they’re called at school, said Aggie.

Are those books from the eighteen hundreds? I said. They’re called bathing suits now.

Bathing
suits
? said Aggie. That’s worse.

Men call them trunks, I said.

Trunks? said Aggie. Why?

I guess you can figure that out yourself, I said.

We’ll teach Ximena how to swim, said Aggie. Just throw her in like those hippies.

What hippies? I said.

I don’t know, said Aggie. Hippies. They throw their babies into water right after they’re born.

They don’t throw them into oceans, I said. Here, hold her for a second so I can eat my orange.

A Mennonite family walked past us and we all stared at each other. The father nodded and the kids trailing behind
him all dominoed into each other because they were staring so hard and that made us smile.