Let Their Spirits Dance (11 page)

Irene is crying now, nodding her head. “Of course, there's your answer, right there on the Wall.”

My mother clasps both hands to her heart. “I vow this day, before all the hosts of Heaven, before God, una manda. I'll get to the Wall before I die and touch my son's name. If it's the last thing I do on this earth, I promise I'll touch Jesse's name!”

“Cree lo,” Irene says. “God will get us there!”

“
Us
?” The word sends a chill down my spine.

R
emember the man who married Doña Elodia and Doña Azusena, the one Nana said looked like Mutt?” Mom's sitting on a wing chair in her room. I'm rubbing her feet, slowly, gently, kneeling on a small carpet. Her feet are swollen, painful, even though I've given her medications that should work to open up her blood vessels.

Images of the two ladies Mom's talking about focus in my mind. I first saw Doña Elodia Beltran and Doña Azusena Gamez shuffling up to the altar at St. Anthony's in line with the other Guadalupanas. In my mind, they were saints. They reflected the same long-suffering look I had seen on saints' faces on calendars at home. I never wanted to serve them coffee when they came over to see Nana, fearing I'd drop a cup of hot coffee down one of their backs and they would sit there, taking in all the pain, forgiving my clumsy ways, eyeing me with pity for being a modern girl, crude and undisciplined. Nana surprised me when she told me a little of their histories after one of their visits to our house.

“Don't let them fool you, mija,” Nana said. “Look at their holy faces, parecen la pura verdad, but I remember when they ran away from home. One went one way and the other went in the opposite direction and both ended up marrying the same man anyway. Ay Dios, can you believe it? One of the Robles brothers, who looked like something out of a cartoon.” Nana was an avid reader of the comics. “Remember Mutt and
Jeff? The man's name was Feliciano or Felipe or something, I don't remember, but he looked like Mutt. He was a talker though! First he married Azusena, then afterwards decided he had made a mistake and married Elodia. Las dos tontas, both of them were stupid for marrying him in the first place. Then when he died, there they were, crying over his coffin. Hardheaded, both of them! Your mother should learn something from them.” Hearing the story of the two old ladies that day made me want to grow up and join the procession of solemn women and marvel at the mysteries of God and La Virgen, and most of all, find out who ran away from home when they were young.

“Nana always said the Robles brother looked like Mutt. You remember, Teresa. Ay que mi Ma! Anyway, he made a manda once, a promise to go to Magdalena in Mexico to the church of San Francisco Xavier. People went there in the old days to see a statute of San Francisco in a big casket laid out like he was sleeping. They put their hands under his head and tried to lift him and if they did, it meant they would get their prayers answered. If they didn't, that meant God wasn't listening to their prayers, maybe they didn't have enough faith, or something. They still go there, faith isn't dead, you know. Well, this dimwit of a man made a promise and didn't have the sense to keep it as he said he would in one year. That's why he died the way he did, mija, screaming with pain in his stomach. He said he had swallowed a needle he was threading for one of the Doñas. The doctors kept telling him the needle would have stuck in his throat before it got to his stomach, but he insisted it had disappeared down his throat. He finally went to Magdalena five years after his promise and look at what happened—he couldn't even budge the saint's head. That's when he knew he was headed for the grave. And look, he died as soon as he got back to Phoenix.”

“That's a sad story. Nobody gets healed by lifting up a ceramic statue, Mom. It's all in people's heads.”

“It's not the statue, mija. It's faith in God that matters. I believe you can lift up anything in this world if you have faith.”

“You do?” I look up at her. The collar of her flowered blouse is tucked in under her neck. Strands of gray hair fall over her eyes.

“Your hair's getting long.”

“I know.” She hands me her socks. “That's enough, mija.” I look around for her shoes, slip-ons she bought at the Goodwill. I'm putting them on, hurrying.

“I have faith I'm getting to the Vietnam Wall,” she says.

“Now that's something we should talk about! The airplane tickets are
expensive, Mom, more than $200 one way, and it's a five-hour flight to get from here to Baltimore, then from there we have to take a shuttle into D.C.” My mother stares at me, then starts laughing.

“Oh, no, mija, we're not going by plane. We're going by car!”

Now it's my turn to laugh. “Car! Mom, you've got to be kidding! It'll take a week to get us there, and with you sick, it'll take two!”

“Me and Irene have never gotten on a plane. God forbid we get on a plane, tempting God by flying into the clouds!”

“The two of you are going?” I can see them in my mind. My mother with her cane, Irene with her thick stockings, looking up a sobador in D.C., and the two of them wearing their medallions of La Virgen.

“Mom this isn't a joke. This is a long trip!”

“Don't worry, mija, El Santo Niño will get us there. He walks around in his sandals all over the place. Haven't you heard?”

“Mom, how can you believe in that? That's just a story! It's something people made up to make themselves feel better.” I'm up on my feet, reaching for the plastic pitcher on the nightstand. “I'll go get you some water.”

“God can do what He wants, Teresa. If He wants to get me to the Wall, He will.”

“How? Can you tell me how? For one thing, we don't have the money; for another thing, you don't have the strength. Doctor Mann will never let you leave town. Do you want everything and everybody to stop just so you can get to the Wall? I'm working, and the kids are in school. And if that's not enough, I'm waiting for the divorce to be final,
and
for my court date with Sandra. So now, how are we getting to the Wall?”

“Don't yell, Teresa. I'm not deaf.”

“I'm not yelling!”

“You
are
yelling, and you're mad, too.”

“If I'm mad it's because you're so stubborn!”

“Too bad I can't get to Magdalena to San Francisco's Church to find out if God's listening or not.”

“Yeah, right, that would help us! Maybe I should check with El Santo Niño, too. Just think, he might lead the way to the Wall in his little sandals.”

“What do you think Jesse wanted to tell me that night?” she asks as I'm walking out with the pitcher.

“How should I know? I never heard anything.”

 

• I
T'S RAINING
the day I call a family meeting with Priscilla and Paul, raining on a Sunday in March. Doesn't the saying go
April showers bring May flowers
? In Arizona any rainy day is a miracle, so people don't complain much when it rains. I run my thumbs along my bedroom window-pane tracing two trails of raindrops falling on the opposite side of the glass. Two smudges appear on the glass. Mom and Jesse separated by a thin layer of reality. I'm caught in the middle.

I look into the backyard made lush green by the steady rain. Pomegranates appear ruby red between the plant's boughs and leafy maze. New tendrils sprouting from the honeysuckle vine curl into white blossoms that look like bells. Tata's Victory Garden is a sodden mess, its furrows extinct. Oleanders along the fence are overgrown, with branches bending under the weight of raindrops. I make a mental note to have Cisco cut them down. Oleander dust can be poisonous. Cholo lies crouched under my Honda, the white x on his chest hidden under his shaggy coat.

I see Irene's back door through the chain-link fence. Irene is in the house, probably resting her head on the pillow with the American flag under it, the flag her son, Faustino, won with his death. Keeping the flag close to her is Irene's way of holding on to her son. The ancient shack is the same tottering structure I remember as a child, except it has a shingled roof and real glass on the windows. There was always a question as to what Irene did with the $10,000 she got for Faustino's death. Mom says she handed it over to her husband, Lencho, and he bought a brand-new car and a fancy tool chest. He bought her new carpet, too, a shag green that looked like poor Irene had moved into the Vietnam jungle. Lencho wanted the tools so he could do side jobs at home and quit plaguing his flat feet by running all over the neighborhood playing delivery boy. I never heard of a single family who prospered from the money they got for their son's death. It was as if they wanted to get rid of it as soon as they could.

Reminds me that I never found out what my mother did with the money she got for Jesse. I make a mental note to ask her about it. I know there were repairs made on Consuelo's house, probably my dad using some of the money (the gall of the man!). A washer and dryer were bought for the first time ever, and lots of trips to Mexico were made to visit old relatives and help them with money. My mother never said anything more about it. It took her three years to display Jesse's medals in
the cabinet with the ballerina. The money and the medals meant nothing to her.

 

• I
FEEL LIKE
we're a secret clan making plans behind closed doors instead of a family trying to figure out what to do with a stubborn old woman. We're sitting in the living room. Mom's resting in her room. Lisa and Lilly are on the phone in their bedroom, Cisco's watching a baseball game on TV in the next room.

“It's your fault,” Priscilla says. “You're the one who took Jesse's medals to school. You're the one who showed Mom the picture of the Wall. All this is getting to her. I don't even know why Jesse's name is all over the place these days. Why can't we just let him rest in peace?”

“Get a life, Priscilla! Did I stage the voices she heard at Christmas? That's what started the whole thing. Do you honestly think I want her to make the trip? And as far as Jesse's concerned, it looks like he's the one disturbing the peace.”

“You got the money?” Priscilla asks. “Must be a fortune you're getting for selling that house.”

“I don't have any money, you know that. Why don't you try telling Mom she can't go, huh? Or you, Paul?”

“Nobody can take care of things as good as you can, right, Teresa? Why should we try?” Priscilla says.

“I'm surprised you don't remember how you felt when you lost Annette. Mom has felt that way for years.”

“That has nothing to do with this!”

“It has everything to do with it. Pain is pain, no matter whose pain it is. You should sympathize with Mom instead of trying to sabotage the trip.”

“Sabotage it? I'm trying to help her get back to reality! She's risking her life going to the Wall.”

“How do you know? Maybe it'll bring her peace, something she hasn't had for years.”

“It'll be too much for her—you watch. Mom can't take this.”

“Speak for yourself!”

“Get off my back. I don't need any advice from you!”

“Who's up to bat?” Paul yells at Cisco.

“Baltimore.”

“Screwballs.”

“Paul, are you listening to all this?” Donna asks.

“Sure, I'm listening. I'm hearing that you girls want to get Mom to the Vietnam Wall when she's practically on her deathbed. Great planners all of you!” Paul's holding Donna's hand. I can make out the last part of the letters,
onna
, tattooed on his left arm. He was lucky the girl's name he tattooed on first was named Anna. All he did was go back to the same guy who tattooed
Anna
on his arm and had him redo the name and make it
Donna
. Now he's running around with an
A
that looks like a capital
O
. Donna's got tats that are small flowers and stars, one on her hand, one on her ankle.

“It's not what we want to do, Paul. It's what Mom wants. I can't get her to change her mind.”

“You can't leave the state anyway, Teresa. You've got a court case pending—you've joined my ranks, a common criminal. I can't believe it, my holier-than-thou sister charged with assault!”

“You weren't there. She provoked it, so why don't you back off.”

“Some example you're setting for Elsa and the twins.”

“I can't believe you just said that, Priscilla, considering how you've lived your life.”

“Where's Elsa, anyway?” Paul asks.

“She's not here. She's pissed off,” Priscilla says, “mad as hell with Teresa for the divorce.”

“At least I have a marriage to get a divorce from, not like some people I know who live together like rats in a maze.” Priscilla glares at me.

Paul's son, Michael, is sprawled on the carpet reading a road atlas. He's following lines of numbers on the page, marking distances with a red pen. He's concentrating hard, his lower lip pressing tight over his upper lip. The spiky part of his hair looks like it's grown out, and he swishes away a loose strand. “It's 2,350 miles from Phoenix to Washington, D.C,” he says. Angelo, Priscilla's son, is next to him, coloring with fat Crayola crayons on a Disneyland coloring book. He's scribbling over Tinkerbell's face. Angelo is chunky, his face full. When he smiles, he shows front teeth that haven't finished rounding off yet.

“Look,” Michael says. He points to a red circle he's drawn on a chart and shows it to Priscilla.

“I can't see it,” says Priscilla, “the letters are too small.”

“Hey, Einstein,” Paul says, “quit all the research, your nana's not going there, pal, unless you want to pay for her funeral.”

Michael looks closely at the atlas. “I can chart the whole way and
build us an itinerary. It would be easier if Nana went by plane, of course; she'd be there in five hours.”

“Look at that, my own kid making plans like a travel agent,” Paul says. He sits next to Michael on the floor. “A kid who doesn't want to live with his poor old man even though I've been following the rules like a damn priest.” Paul gets on his knees. “Please forgive me, a sinner! But, na, I'm not good enough for you, right, Michael?”

“I spoke to your parole officer yesterday and explained my side of the story,” Michael says. He keeps his eyes on the atlas.