North of Montana (35 page)

“A distant cousin of their mother.”

“Do you know they are living with Mrs. Sofía Gutiérrez?”

“Yes, she’s been taking care of them since their mother was killed.”

“But she is not a blood relation?”

“No.”

“Does that make you the closest relative?”

“There are a grandmother, aunts, and uncles living in El Salvador.”

“I need to tell you that if the children continue to live in this country, they will have to be placed in foster care.”

“What happened?”

“LAPD was called because a neighbor complained about a loud television. The investigating officers found two unsupervised minors in the apartment and contacted us.”

I am dressing as we talk. “Are the kids all right?”

“They’re in good health, but we don’t consider Mrs. Gutiérrez a suitable guardian. For one thing her household income does not meet our standard. For another, it’s the law. Children can’t just live with any stranger who picks them up.”

I pull on jeans and socks. I understand the law.

“Unless you’d like to take them in yourself, Ms. Grey.”

“Me?”
A shock goes through my chest. I look around the Marina apartment. “I couldn’t.”

“Then we will place Teresa and Cristóbal in an appropriate foster care setting.”

“For how long?”

“That depends. We’re always looking for a legal adoption.”

“What’re the chances?”

“There’s hope for the little one. The older girl has some emotional problems that might make her less desirable.”

“You mean they wouldn’t be adopted together?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Well, Mr. Monte, that bites the big one.”

He doesn’t miss a beat, asking calmly if I’d like to be informed where the children are placed. I say okay.

“For the moment we’ve allowed them to live with Mrs. Gutiérrez with home inspections twice a week, but she’s having a hard time understanding. She seems to hold you in high regard because you work for the FBI—”

I guffaw.

“So I was hoping you could explain this to her. Might make it easier for the children.”

Sure, I’ll talk to Mrs. Gutiérrez. Anything to avoid the office today.

•  •  •

They call it El Piojillo—a few square blocks around MacArthur Park that is not so much a flea market as another continent grafted between the Wilshire District and downtown L.A. What used to be a fashionable address for wealthy whites, where old people from a nearby nursing home could rest their wheelchairs in the shade of an elegant park, is now one of the most crime-infested parts of the city.

It is also a place where the size, spread, and density of the Spanish-speaking population becomes impressively clear. Streets in every direction are overflowing with crowds of Latinos threading past unlicensed vendors selling sausages, stuffed animals, cassettes of
lambada
music, running shoes, fruit smoothies, hot ears of corn. “Call Anywhere in the United States—25 Cents per Minute!” “Swap Meet!” in an old ornate movie theater. Video Hot, Winchell’s, Salvadoran and Guatemalan restaurants. Drug dealers. Day laborers in straw cowboy hats waiting on a pickup corner for a few hours’ work below minimum wage. On every block there is a stucco mini-mall with shoddy signage that looks as if it’s been under artillery fire, and most likely has: Carnicería Latina, Excellent Beauty Salon, Chinatown Express, Popeye Fried Chicken, Librería Cristiana. Driving straight through, I reach a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Echo Park and sigh with relief. Here, one hopes, the homicide rate doesn’t kick in until after dark.

Mrs. Gutiérrez and the children are waiting in front of the address she gave me. It turns out to be a
botánica
, a storefront that sells herbs, candles, and spiritual advice, now locked with a rusted gate. We are on a small commercial street. Next door is a grocery called Tienda Alma, then a Mexican bakery and a Thai restaurant. Not incongruously, somewhere nearby a rooster is crowing.

“Today Don Roberto doesn’t open until four. He is getting his apartment fumigated.”

“Who is Roberto?”

“The spiritualist who will answer our questions.”

“I don’t have any questions, Mrs. Gutiérrez. I know what needs to be done.”

Mrs. Gutiérrez gives an impatient
tch-tch
. With a dark and sorrowful look, Teresa lowers her eyes. I squat down and touch her hair.

“Your birthday’s coming up. I’m working on a Barbie doll, how does that sound?”

Her whole face lights up with a beautiful smile. She looks like a different kid. Unable to express herself, she runs around in a circle of pure glee, then grabs her brother’s hand and just as randomly runs into the doorway of Tienda Alma.

“She is such a pretty girl,” Mrs. Gutiérrez observes. “Just like her mommy.”

She is wearing lipstick and today, perhaps to visit the spiritualist, all white: an oversize white T-shirt, white leggings, and white mules. She looks the most together I have seen her.

“Mr. Monte wanted me to talk to you.”

“I already tell him that I write to the grandmother to see what she want to do. I waiting to hear.”

“Until the family is contacted, the children will have to be cared for.”

“I caring for them.”

“You leave them alone in the apartment.”

“Only one time, when I have to go to the store.”

“Teresa doesn’t even have a bed.”

“In my country we sleep on
petate
mats on the floor. What is more important—the bed or the love? Why you not understand about family?” she demands. “These kids are your family, but you don’t think so. You are too Anglo.”

‘What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just like Mrs. Claire,” Mrs. Gutiérrez goes on. “Her kind don’t understand. If Mrs. Claire didn’t fire Violeta from that job, the children would have a mother today.”

I take a very deep breath.

“Mrs. Eberhardt fired Violeta because her daughter fell into a pool and almost drowned while Violeta was jabbering with another housekeeper and not paying attention.”

Mrs. Gutiérrez shakes an angry finger.

“What you say is not the truth and a disgrace to the memory of your cousin.”

“I have noticed there is always more than one truth, Mrs. Gutiérrez.”

In answer she spits on the sidewalk and stalks into Tienda Alma.

The children are gathered around a cardboard Christmas tree studded with lollypops. I wander deeper inside, lured by the smell of spices. A rack holds packets of arnica, cinnamon stick,
chile postila
, anise,
te de yerhabuena
. There’s not much stock—a few coconuts, oranges with green spots, two kinds of bananas, pineapples, and flowers. Rickety shelves are stacked with cans of guava nectar, hominy, sardines,
menudo
, and corn
masa
and old gray plastic sacks of rice and flour. The lights are off.

Mrs. Gutiérrez is pulling the children outside.

“Is it okay if I buy them a lollypop?”

She only glowers. I give them each a dollar, then notice that behind the lollypop tree is a picture of a saint laminated in plastic, resting on an overturned blue milk carton.

“What is that?”

Mrs. Gutiérrez isn’t talking. A young woman comes out from around the counter.

“El Niño de Atocha.”

She moves the rack aside to reveal a painting of a young boy surrounded by heavenly objects and animals. In front of him there are candles and a dish filled with loose change, small plastic cars, rubber balls, and candy.

The girl, wearing a USC sweatshirt and silver star earrings down to her shoulders, speaks without an accent.

“El Niño is a saint who comes from a lake and helps drowning people, or those who are lost. We have a festival in Guatemala where every year we take him out of the lake and parade him through the streets in a big procession.”

“People leave him things?”

“For good luck.”

“Why the toys?”

“Because he’s a little kid. Roberto, next door, told my mother to make this for El Niño. Every other store on the street has been broken into except us.”

“You go to USC?” She nods. “And you believe in this stuff?”

“My mother has faith on Roberto. I didn’t used to believe, but people come to see him from Las Vegas, Texas, San Francisco.… He has a very great gift. They come sick and they leave calm.”

I drop some change into the dish.

“Isn’t that a funny place for a shrine?”

“A shrine can be anywhere. A lot of Spanish people make shrines in the place where someone has died, like in Baja, you see them along the road where people have been killed in car accidents.” She moves the lollypop tree back in place. “We keep ours here so people won’t steal from El Niño.”

Some saint, I think, following Mrs. Gutiérrez outside.

The children have trailed the sounds of the rooster to a tiny pet store crammed with aquariums and rank with the smell of tropical fish in stagnant water. Two roosters blink suspiciously from cages on the floor.

“Are those fighting cocks?” I ask the man.

He nods. Cock fighting is illegal, but the hell with it. The children are fascinated by a pair of parakeets. Although Mrs. Gutiérrez is keeping her back to me, I lay a hand on her shoulder.

“I want to know the truth about my cousin.”

The two of us step outside where the long hot afternoon sun smacks our faces with a direct hit. Mrs. Gutiérrez pats her white vinyl pocketbook several times. She is still seething.

“Your cousin was fired because she saw Mrs. Claire with a man who was not her husband.”

“When was this?”

“Violeta came back from a walk with the baby and a man was with Mrs. Claire inside the door.”

I remember Warren Speca telling me that he saw Violeta one time when he went over to Claire’s near the end of their affair. This must have been the time.

Mrs. Gutiérrez waves a hand in disgust. “They were doing bad things.”

I can see Warren Speca surprising Claire, emboldened by the fantasy that she will leave her marriage, pushing her up against the wall of her husband’s house and trying to make love right there, standing up, underneath the crystal chandelier.

Violeta came in. They were surprised but they no care. The man leave right away. Violeta is very angry. She is a religious person—”

Mrs. Gutierrez’s voice breaks. She wipes her eyes.

“ ‘You have a husband,’ she tells Mrs. Claire. ‘You sin against God.’ ”

The pocketbook opens and the pound-size roll of tissues comes out.

“Violeta says, ‘I love your children like they are mine. I leave my own children to work for you. I no lie to you but you lie to me. You are sleeping around like a whore!’ Mrs. Claire fires her on the spot.”

“She was afraid Violeta would tell her husband about the affair.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Gutiérrez blows her nose savagely. Her manner turns cold. She is going to tell me the facts of life:

“Mrs. Claire spreads this terrible lie that it was Violeta’s fault the little girl almost drowned. Violeta cannot get a job. She does not have a reference. She cannot pay the rent. Teresa has a bad ear infection and the clinic takes only cash. Violeta is terrified that she and the children will end up on the street or in a church basement with the homeless, or maybe the welfare people will take the children away. After many weeks she finds work at night, washing the laundry in a big health club in West L. A. Her children sleep in my apartment until she comes home at six in the morning. Only one night, she doesn’t come home.”

The crime scene photos tell the story. Violeta gets off the bus on a destitute corner before dawn, trudging past hustlers and dealers. By now the route is habitual. She’s almost home, she’s tired, her guard fails.

“This is why I say it was the fault of Mrs. Claire.”

I remember Claire Eberhardt’s overwhelming guilt the very first time I met her at the front door. She was acting like a suspect with something to hide: an illicit affair. A desperate cover-up that ended in ruin.

“Here also is the truth: the girl did fall into the pool, but it was Violeta who saved her life.”

My eyebrows raise in skepticism but Mrs. Gutiérrez nods many times.

A youngish man with dyed auburn hair walks up to us and unlocks the rusted gates.

Mrs. Gutiérrez makes a small deferential bow, as if to a priest.
“Buenos días, Don Roberto. ”

He returns the formal greeting, pushes the gate open, and continues inside.

Mrs. Gutiérrez speaks with breathless urgency: “The only person who knows what is best for the children is the mother. The government of the United States will
not
decide. Don Roberto will ask the spirit of Violeta. She alone will tell us what to do.”

Hispanic workers are getting off buses, sending curious glances my way as they stop into Tienda Alma on their way home. Mrs. Gutiérrez has gathered the children. With a last look at the busy street bathed in setting sun, I follow the
clap-clap
of her heels into the darkened
botánica
.