More Than Allies (8 page)

“Put that down!” She batted at the piece of wood. “You could put my eye out.”

He threw the stick on the ground and stomped on it. It cracked loudly. “Fuck,” he said.

“What did you say?” She grabbed his arm.

He wrenched away. “When I come here with Dad it's fun!” he cried. “We play knights and lances. We made rosehip tea once.”

“Well, your dad isn't here now,” she said, sorry as soon as she said it. She marched off toward the road again, hoping he was behind her.

“Girls are babies,” he said when they paused by the car. “Scared of everything. Even a little twig.”

She bit her lip and got in the car. “I'm not girls,” she said when he was in, too. “I'm your mother.”

“Too bad,” Jay said. He was just a boy, he was angry, he was grabbing for the first thing to say. Maggie knew all that, but it still made her want to cry.

“Fasten your belt,” she said sharply.

Instead, he crawled over the car seat with a thud and settled in the back. At Polly's house, they headed for separate bedrooms. Stevie, who had been in the living room with Polly, toddled down to Maggie's door. She tried the handle and couldn't turn it, then began whimpering.

Maggie lay on Gretchen's bed in a haze of resentment. Now she was going to have to tend to Stevie!

Polly, on the other side of the door, was already doing so. Maggie heard her as she carried Stevie away again. In a moment she heard Stevie giggling. Polly switched on the TV. Maggie put her head under a pillow, and hid from her life.

“Sometimes they're just too much.” As soon as Maggie settled onto Rachel's wonderful stuffed chair, the tears sprang from her eyes and her throat was choked. At least Rachel would understand. She had two kids, too, Mason, who was Jay's age, and Leah, who was four. Suddenly there were a thousand things Maggie wanted to say. She wanted to tell Rachel how bad the week was going—and it was only Tuesday! She wanted to ask her what she did when Mason was sassy and sour and sad. She wanted to ask if Leah had outgrown that terrible baby neediness yet.

Rachel put her palm against her own chest. “You have to find the place—in here—where you are the truest you. You have to protect it. Children—oh, they need you, of course they do, and you want to give them what they need, but if you aren't nurturing your
self
, what kind of mother can you be, anyway? If you are an artist and you put away your paints? A writer and you close the drawer on your manuscript? Children need parents who are whole and authentic.”

Maggie didn't think she and Rachel were talking about the same things at all.

“Of course you don't write,” Rachel said.

“Or paint.” Maggie smiled, thinking it was better if she made light of her lack of talent.

Rachel settled onto a chaise lounge across from Maggie. “Once you have a child, everyone sees you as part of a unit. I had to change therapists two times to get away from the family systems bias. Kids or not, I want to be an individual. My work doesn't have anything to do with the kids. The writing, I mean.” She crossed her legs and settled down deeper in the cushions. “I'm thinking about taking a leave from teaching. We don't really need the money. I've hit a plateau with this manuscript. There's something deeper evading me, and I don't think I can dig down to it when I have so many distractions. Actually, it may not be a matter of digging. It may be a matter of soaring, of finding the overarching theme, the ultimate story. You know what I mean?”

Maggie nodded yes, but she felt dizzy with bafflement. She also felt intimidated. It was Rachel who had asked her to join their splinter group when the larger book group broke up. Right away it was obvious she wasn't as well-read, as knowledgeable as Nora or Rachel, but neither was Gretchen (whom Maggie had immediately suggested), and they were never unkind. Rachel was in some way the group's spirit: she chided them to probe inside, to think harder, to relate everything, ultimately, to the deepest part of themselves. Maggie often felt a mistiness in her own thinking, as if Rachel's concepts were just out of reach, obscured, but attainable, if she made the effort. She had always felt she should try.

Rachel gazed beyond Maggie, at the wall behind, where there were a dozen or more photographs of herself at various ages. “When I began this novel, I thought it was a journey story. Daphne moves out from the house—at night, I told you this before, didn't I—in circles, widening the territory, exploring the night of her neighborhood, her town, even as she is exploring her own dark side—and the circles widen, and I thought, well, eventually she'll go out far enough that she won't come back. She'll be free, she'll be somewhere she hasn't been before. Then I realized there had to be something more objective than that, something tangible, a desire, and I embodied that in the Other—you don't know if it's a man or a woman. But you know what I've discovered?” She sat up, her shoulders now raised, her head bent toward Maggie. “That intensity of desire, once abated, creates stasis. It's anticlimactic.” She fell back on the chair again. “It's boring.” She lifted her hands, palms up, and smiled ruefully. “Maybe it's inevitable. Maybe fulfillment means closure, and closure is—for me at least—
dishwater.
”

There was a timid knock at the door, the door squeaked open slightly, and Leah peeked around. “Mommy, we're having rice pudding.”

“I'm so sorry,” Rachel said, looking at Maggie. To Leah, she spoke sternly. “I'm talking now.”

“But Daddy said to tell you.”

“Tell Daddy I'm busy.”

Leah's face clouded. She inched the door open a bit wider, put one foot inside the room.

“You may not come in now,” Rachel said.

Maggie jumped up. “I need to go anyway. The kids need baths, stories—” She lifted her hands the same way Rachel had done earlier, palms up.

Leah ran across the room and stood by her mother.

“You set boundaries,” Rachel said. Maggie nodded mutely.

“And you separate issues, those that have to do with—them—” she glanced at her daughter—“and those that have to do with you.”

“I better go.” Maggie's face burned. Leah looked like a child mannequin, standing by her mother, a pretty child with no expression at all just now.

Rachel heaved herself off the chair. Leah clung to her long pink dress. Rachel moved across to Maggie and put her arm over her shoulder. “A therapist could help you sort it out, you know,” she said. “The right one.”

Maggie took a breath and found a voice. “I was really just wondering what you do when Mason—when he—sometimes he must—”

Rachel smiled. “Sandy looks after the kids in the evenings, so I can work. I really leave the discipline—that's what you're asking about, isn't it?—to him. You could talk to him.” She kissed Maggie's cheek. Leah had followed her movement across the room. She stood pressed against her hip, her face still blank and patient.

“Bye, Leah,” Maggie said.

Rachel glanced down as if she'd only just noticed the child. She patted her shoulder. “Run have your dessert, angel.” To Maggie she said, “Come any time.”

Maggie took Leah's hand. By the time they were at the stairs, she heard Rachel's door close firmly with a click.

Dulce tells me: Rachel was one of the first people I met when I moved to Lupine. Gus was four-and-a-half. I had to find work, but I didn't know what I could do so that I could also afford a babysitter. I had a place to live, and I applied for food stamps, but I didn't want to go to welfare. My husband was in prison. I didn't want nobody asking me questions. I didn't want to answer to nobody
.

There was an ad in the paper for a babysitter, “Live in or out
.”
I went and talked to her. I saw that what she really wanted was a housekeeper, cook, laundress
, and
babysitter, so I promised her I could do everything, if she would hire me, and if I could keep Gus with me whenever I was in her house. Her son Mason was the same age as Gus, so it made it easier for me, and was good for the boys. Rachel was teaching, and she was soon pregnant with Leah. I didn't know what her husband Sandy did, exactly, because he was in and out all the time, but that was his business and I never thought about it. I knew it had to do with money. I guess I thought he was a banker, except that he didn't seem to have a schedule. Now I know he's just rich. He goes somewhere when he feels like it, and he plays with his own money. And, you suppose, he makes more of it. He's nice, Sandy. He was always good to Gus. He never really could decide how to act around me, though. Americans don't know how to act with servants. My papa told me once that in Mexico, everyone has someone who helps out in the house, except the poor campesinos. Everyone understands, you aren't friends. Sandy always wanted me to know how much he appreciated what I did. He could have given me more money and I could have done my own things with my son, but he didn't pay me, Rachel did
.

Well, little by little I moved some clothes over to their house and spent most weekday nights there, then went home to our trailer on the weekends. That was what made me finally like the trailer. I had hated it at first, because of the way I got it, and where it was. I liked the way it was mine, we had our privacy, but it was cozy, tucked in so close to the other trailers. I liked not doing nothing for other people, being the lady of my own shitty little house
.

I admired Rachel, but she was frightening in some ways. For one thing, she was very large, a tall, big-boned woman, with a belly that looked ready to burst with triplets, at least. She was intense, and nosy, and full of advice. She insisted on taking Gus to Mason's pediatrician. She thought he ought to be growing faster; her son was much bigger. I told her, my papa was a short man. I'm only 5'2”. I didn't say anything about Gus' father, and Rachel didn't ask. She gave me Mason's old clothes for Gus. When I went home on Friday she sent me with a sack of groceries, leftover roast, and fruit, bags of potatoes. I worked long hours; it really was like being the wife and mother of a large family, but I was happy that the boys got along so well. And I didn't have to worry too much, since we ate ten or twelve meals a week at their place. We ate like family. Most of the time, it was Sandy and me and the kids. Sandy said Rachel ate in the middle of the night. She was getting strange. He told me he appreciated the way I looked after the kids. Often in the afternoon I took them to the park and sat on a folded blanket and watched them play, and felt lucky. I wanted to write Gustavo and say we were okay, but I felt guilty; I thought things ought to be worse for a woman whose husband was in prison. As long as I didn't look back and I didn't look too far forward, I felt almost happy. I could watch my son grow. I could figure out something more at another time
.

After Leah was born, the load on me was much heavier. Rachel stayed in bed for weeks, all the time she had off from school. She didn't nurse Leah. She slept a lot in the day. She wanted me to keep the kids quiet. She got up at night and wandered around downstairs, sometimes until morning. I began to feel the tension between her and Sandy, too, but it wasn't my place to say nothing, and what would I have said? I went to the health food store and bought herbs to calm her. She laughed. When she saw she'd insulted me, she said she'd try them, but that was the last I heard. My papa's grandmother was a healer. Even my mother knows herbs. She buys them in fancy sealed bottles at the supermarket
.

The boys began going to kindergarten. We enrolled them in the afternoon session in Mason's neighborhood so that there wouldn't be any hurry in the morning. I could put Leah down for her nap part of the time they were gone. At first I slept then, too, but after a while I began to think of the time as mine, and I didn't want to waste it. That was when I began a dream book. I used one of those little school notebooks
.

Some dreams I had over and over again
—
the children in the orange grove, for example, and the girl on the balcony. Others I had only once, and I was anxious to write them down. I often wrote in Spanish, though I had never really studied or read it. Writing kept the language in my head. Besides, I dreamt in Spanish, most of the time
.

In May of that year, the year the boys were in kindergarten, Rachel told me that she would “take over” the care of Leah in the summer. For certain, I said. To myself, I thought: well, why shouldn't you, you're the mother! But she hadn't ever taken care of Leah. I was sure that when I did not stay in the house, it was Sandy who got up with Leah. Even if Rachel was up, reading, or walking, or, eventually, writing, she would ignore her daughter's cries. I don't mean she was cruel. I think she didn't hear. Me, I dream when I'm asleep. Rachel dreams, walking around
.

So there won't be so much for you to do, she said. She thought maybe I could come just in the mornings. Well, that would cut my pay in half, wouldn't it? But I didn't say anything right away; I needed to go home and think about it, think about what else I could do. Then she said she'd also been thinking she wanted to concentrate on her writing more, and she thought she needed a quieter house, and would I please not bring Gus anymore? Like he was a puppy
.

What did she think I was going to do with him in the summer? She was paying me less than minimum wage, and now that was for only half a day, and did she think I could find a babysitter who would charge me even less? Did she think I would have anything left over?

I went to welfare. I cried for days before I did it, but I didn't see what else I could do. When I went in, I had this feeling, like they'd known all along I'd be in. Like maybe my mother had called ahead! Well, I told them I would work if they would pay for child care, but that's not how it goes. All that summer I was home with him, and I should have been happy, I should have enjoyed it
—
and I did, much of the time, especially when we were outside
—
but I was frantic to find work and a way to live. I told Rachel I would come once a week to clean, but I had to bring Gus. She said it wasn't possible. She found someone else, a service, to do the cleaning. You can bet she paid them more than she'd ever paid me. I heard that they come in, two of them, and it's $25 an hour. They're fast. But if I'm slower, I'm cheaper, and I was there, why wasn't that as good?