Red Glass (3 page)

During the fourth phone call, an aunt told Mom, “We have decided something. It would be good for Pablo to grow up in your rich country, with all the opportunities there. This is what his parents wanted for him. You see, here he will be no one. He will grow up poor. He will stop school at eighth grade to work in the fields and barely make enough to eat. We know you are good people. We hear this in his voice, in your voice. We know that you care for him well. If you want to keep Pablo,” the aunt concluded, crying, “and if Pablo wants to stay with you, that is all right with us.”

Mom and Juan weren’t sure it was best for him to stay in Tucson, but Dika insisted it was. For once, I agreed with Dika. If Pablo left, the chickens would probably stop laying eggs, and I’d mope along with them, feeling useless. In the end, we decided that Pablo should stay at least until the end of the school year, because, after all, he was just starting to talk and raise his hand in class. That way, Mom and Juan could save up money for plane tickets and afford time off work. Then they would take Pablo to visit his relatives and he could decide where he wanted to live.

“Too big decision for little boy!” Dika clucked, shaking her head.

Over the next week, we stood in lines and waited hours in plastic seats at government buildings to get permission to travel with Pablo. The CPS man said we could take Pablo to visit his village, and if he and his closest relatives decided he could live with us, we’d have to sign adoption papers.

I wanted to stretch out my time with Pablo. We all did. Now, when Mom came home from work, exhausted from being on her feet all day at the café, instead of lying in the hammock and having a beer, she sat cross-legged on the floor with Pablo and played Chinese checkers. Juan started spending his weekends building a playhouse in the far corner of the yard, letting Pablo bring him tools and hold the wood while he sawed. As they worked, he told Pablo the folktales he used to tell me when I was little. Usually, the star of the story was a scraggly little orphan who went on a quest somewhere—to the moon, or the bottom of the sea, or inside a deep cave—and ended up finding a treasure and turning into a world-famous hero.

Once in a while, Pablo talked about his relatives. He mentioned how good his cousin was at catching lizards, or how fast he could run down the big hill in his village. But mostly, he seemed wrapped up in life with us and the chickens. Every morning he brought a handful of eggs to Mom. The three other hens, too, had started laying them. He was so proud of those eggs. Even though I liked fruit and cereal for breakfast, I forced myself to get used to a daily star-shaped egg instead.

Dika’s Boyfriend

Back when Pablo first arrived, Dika decided he should learn to swim—or at least that was her excuse for sneaking into the pool at the apartment complex down the street. So, except for the cold months—November, December, and January—we spent every afternoon at the pool. Dika’s daily schedule was: collect broken pieces of colored glass at sunrise, work at the Salvation Army in the morning, and once Pablo and I got home from school, lounge at the pool. She wore a bright blue sarong over her turquoise bikini. She placed her bag by the lounge chair, slipped off her sarong seductively, and settled in the chair. There she lay, her legs like two whales, one bent coquettishly. She would examine her body and check her tan lines, pleased. If anyone else was there, she’d show off the tan lines to them, too.

“My friends in Germany should to see me now! There it is snowy and cold and gray. Look at this sky, so much blue.” Germany is where she had asylum after she left Bosnia and the war.

She spread baby oil on her legs, arm, stomach. It took forever, this process—there was so much flesh to cover, and she went over every area twice, three times if a man was there. She wore a blue headband that pushed back her orangish hair, which showed the gray roots. Then her eyes closed and a smile spread over her face. A woman of leisure. The only thing that set her apart from a lady of questionable taste on a resort vacation was the series of three thick, shiny scars on her left inner arm.

A relic from the war prison camp, Mom told me. All Dika had said about the camp was that she ate raw onions for three straight months, and that her only possession was a small shard of red glass that she’d salvaged from her bombed-out house. At the camp, she kept it hidden in a pocket, and planned on one day piercing the heart of a guard. She never did, as far as I knew.

When Mom first announced that her Bosnian war refugee great-aunt was coming to live with us, I’d pictured a skeletal woman in a shawl, deep half-moon shadows beneath haunted eyes. But Dika came with mounds of flesh and cheap jewelry, a wardrobe of tight turquoise shirts, white capri pants, peroxided hair. She inserted herself into our lives loudly. I wasn’t completely convinced she was even our relative.

I went to the pool with her, dragging my feet. I had nothing better to do. I hardly ever saw my only real friend, Jasmín, anymore. Jasmín was the reason I spoke Spanish. Her parents were Mexican, old friends of Juan. We’d hung out together since elementary school, and she’d stayed friends with me out of habit. Then, in ninth grade, when Jasmín got a scholarship to a private school and started working as a camp counselor in the summers, she might as well have moved to a different planet. She’d drifted away and found replacements for me, but I hadn’t found anyone who came close to replacing her.

At the pool, I mostly sat in the shade reading and watching Pablo splash around, worrying my skin would break out in a sun rash. Mom blamed my mysterious rashes on the fact that I had been a premature baby. I did feel sometimes that I wasn’t fully formed. Like that Native American story where white people weren’t fully baked in the ovens so their clay never reached the proper brown color. My body was more underbaked than most, and all the Tucson sun did for it was make it pink and bumpy.

My spirit felt underbaked too. Most people seemed to have a hard outer shell that protected them from mean people, insults, bad memories. I was not one of those people. I wore long sleeves and long skirts, and not just because of the sun. Mom’s friend from Saudi Arabia veiled and draped herself in black, only a slit for her eyes. She told me that her body was sacred and shouldn’t be exposed for all eyes to see. I liked the idea of living behind so much fabric. It would be a comfortable feeling.

I usually wore a big T-shirt at the pool, taking it off only to dip myself in the water a few times. And this, only after spreading myself with so much sunscreen I left an embarrassing layer of grease on the water.

“Look at this!” Dika would say when we got in the water. She left a slick film of oil, too. “My poor, poor boyfriend! He must to clean up all this grease!”

“We shouldn’t even be here, Dika. It’s illegal.”

“My boyfriend invites us! He is boss of the pool!”

He wasn’t exactly the boss of the pool. He was the maintenance man.

One afternoon, a few months after Pablo arrived, we’d been cooling off in the water while Pablo did flips between us. We were arguing, as always, about whether we should be using the pool. The maintenance man, meanwhile, slowly picked out leaves here and there.

Dika reasoned, “Ah, Sophie! No one uses this pool! We are only ones! Whoever made this pool will be too happy that some people uses it. And that poor pool man. He doesn’t have job if no people uses it!”

The pool man was a short, stocky man—from Mexico, I assumed. Brown skin, a polite smile. We saw him fixing things sometimes, leaving an apartment with a case of tools. Dika watched him closely whenever he was around. She made a show of applying baby oil to her legs, rubbing it on the folds of flesh hanging over the bikini; made a point to check the tan line of her giant bosom as he raked the water’s surface with his pole net.

This day he was hovering by the pool, waiting for us to get out of the water so he could clean it, yet pretending he wasn’t waiting so we wouldn’t feel rushed. I got out and dried off. “Let’s go, Pablo. Come on, Dika!”

“Always you are rushing, Sophie, rush rush!” She lumbered up the pool steps and then her foot slipped. I think it really was an accident, because I saw the shock in her eyes, and how her chin jarred as she fell, but within seconds she’d recovered and decided to milk it for all it was worth.

“Ohhh! Ahhh!
Mein Gott!
My leg!” And she sat on the step, clutching her thigh, massaging it.

The pool man rushed over and crouched down beside her. She looked at him with designed bashfulness. She actually fluttered her eyelashes.

“You are okay, miss?” he asked in a thick Spanish accent.

I could see her mind at work.
Miss.
He must have noticed she had no wedding ring. Or else he just thought she was very young. Or else he was deliberately complimenting her.

He helped her up, walked her over to her chair as she pressed her body against his, coating his shirt with oil and water. He crouched by her chair and she bent her leg. “Look at it!” she moaned. “You think it will be okay? You see bruise?”

He looked at it and swallowed hard. “Is good, I think, very good.”

I saw the corners of her lips curve up.

An hour later they were still talking in a mix of Spanish and English. “Children! I must to let my leg rest more before I walk home. Mr. Lorenzo helps me! You go!”

And that is how Dika snagged the boyfriend whose son would change my life.

Jewel Errands

School ended in June, but since Juan was swamped at work and Mom couldn’t find a waitress to sub for her, they postponed the Mexico trip. That was fine by me. I’d already made a three-page list of things to do with Pablo over the summer.

Then, one sweltering evening, out of the blue, Dika announced over dinner, “We have plan. We drive to Mexico together. Me, Mr. Lorenzo, his son, Sophie, Pablo. We stay in Pablo’s village for one week. They go to Guatemala and they find the jewels. Pablo can to see his poor family. Mr. Lorenzo and his son return to Pablo’s home, they pick us up, and we return to Tucson. Good for everybody, no?”

“What jewels?” Juan asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Find the jewels,” she said, impatient. “You know, the things they have to do, like the errands.”

“Jewel errands?” Juan raised his eyebrows at me.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “This is news to me, too.” My pulse quickened, but no, this wouldn’t really happen, it was too far-fetched.

“You’ve only known this Mr. Lorenzo guy for a few months, Dika.”

“That is how long I
date
him. But really, we know him more. No, Sophie? We watch him every day. For one year! Watch him work.” Dika punctuated her words with her fork. “Every day. He works hard.”

“Hmmm.” Mom looked skeptical.

“But you know me, you know I am good judge of the people,” Dika insisted. “He works hard, Sophie, no?”

I shrugged.

“What do you think, Sophie?” Mom asked me.

It sounded like a bad idea. I wanted to keep postponing Pablo’s trip until the idea of it faded from everyone’s memory. Anyway, a road trip was way too dangerous. After all, didn’t car crashes kill more people than all natural disasters combined? And I’d never traveled anywhere without Mom and Juan, never been brave enough to. Once, on a family vacation, we were in the car and suddenly a panic gripped me, a panic so strong I felt as though I were suffocating. I made us turn back. That panic would pop up at other times, too.

The worst thing was, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was always a dark, sinister shape lurking just underneath the surface. And that worry spawned another one: What if, after a big wave of fear knocked you over, you could never, in your whole life, stand up again? What if you could never feel pure happiness? I imagined my fears piled up inside me like broken pens, leaking ink and turning my innards black.

Dika’s idea was terrible, too, because it meant weeks trapped with her and her boyfriend, and the son. Who was the son, anyway? How old was he? I pictured a short, stout twelve-year-old, a miniature Mr. Lorenzo.

While I was making this show of thinking about it, Pablo piped up. He hardly ever talked, so it was easy to forget he could understand us.

“I like the pool man.” His voice came out small and thin, and in English at that. His eyes were lit up, more animated than ever before. “I really really like the pool man,” Pablo added, louder this time.

A warm, liquidy feeling spread out from my chest.

“You really want to do this, Pablito?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes!”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll think about it.”

Mom stared at me. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s think about it.”

“The pool man is cool,” Pablo said, rearranging his mouth into what almost passed for a smile.

After dinner I lay in the hammock and watched the layers of leaves quiver above me. Could I do this? Mom and Juan wouldn’t let them go without me. Maybe not even with me.

The idea of traveling outside Tucson made my pulse race. Here, at least, I could control things. I could change the dish sponge every week to avoid bacteria buildup and check the radon detector’s battery daily. But traveling was like standing in an open field during a storm, danger shooting from all directions like lightning bolts. I suspected Mexico would be my worst nightmares wrapped into one deadly package: exotic germs, ruthless criminals, poisonous creatures. And no turning back.

It wasn’t just Mexico, or traveling, or Mom dying; all kinds of possibilities made my breath quicken and my throat start closing up. Life-threatening illnesses might creep up on me, like cancer or AIDS—not to mention hepatitis, typhoid, malaria, and leprosy. Then there were the everyday risks of getting trapped in an elevator or poisoned by a disgruntled fast-food worker. And of course, with every car ride, a giant truck could smash me, or a driver with road rage could beat me to a pulp. Then there was a whole slew of natural disasters like a building crushing me in an earthquake or a flash flood drowning me. And the more insidious dangers—molds and toxic gases and deadly chemicals seeping into our house through the ground.

I pushed myself in the hammock with my foot, rocking back and forth. Beams of sunlight sifted through the leaves, illuminating a patch of my left thigh, my right ankle, the center of my chest. Above me, the layers of green shifted, like all the layers of myself. Layers I’d forgotten about, or maybe never knew existed. I saw my trail stretching before me. Up ahead, it branched into two. One route led through a forest of thickening fears to a small, closed-in life, and the other led…somewhere else.

Suddenly I had the feeling that everything depended on whether I went to Mexico.

Later that night, after Pablo and Dika had gone to sleep, Juan and Mom and I sat at the kitchen table under the wobbly ceiling fan.

Juan tilted his head at me, looking baffled. “You really think this is a good idea, Sophie? You think you can do this?”

“I think Pablo needs to see his family, and we need those adoption papers signed, and, well—I think it makes sense.” I tried to sound confident.

Mom raised her eyebrows. Wispy pieces of blond hair floated around her face. “His village sounds pretty remote—you won’t be able to snap your fingers and be home.”

“I know. I can do it.” As I said this my heart was pounding. Was I crazy to think I could go?

Mom and Juan looked at me doubtfully.

“I can do it,” I said again, biting my lip.

“And, Sophie,” Juan said. “Remember, Pablo might decide to stay there.”

My stomach contracted. “No, he won’t.”

Mom looked at Juan. “We can’t force him to be happy here. It’s been nearly a year and he’s still all melancholy, still wants to sleep out there with the chickens. Sure, he’s better than at first, but have you ever seen him laugh?”

I thought about it. “I guess not.”

“Okay, Sophie,” she said. “Go down there with them. Spend a week or so in his village. See how he feels.”

The full impact hit me in bed that night: If Pablo decided to stay in his village, and Dika went off and married Mr. Lorenzo, I’d be an only child again, just me, Juan, and Mom. It gave me a thirsty feeling, but I couldn’t figure out what I was thirsty for.

We planned to leave at sunrise—who knows why, but Dika had some idea that all long trips must start at sunrise. “We must to leave when the sun raises. We must!” I wasn’t clear whether this was a superstitious thing or a practical consideration.

I slept outside with Pablo the night before our departure. When the sky started growing lighter, I heard people loading our Volkswagen bus, but I just wanted to lie there. I’d hardly slept from nervousness. Pablo was sound asleep, eyebrows wrinkled, intent on some dream. The rooster crowed and I covered my ears.

“We should get up,” I whispered to Pablo, nudging him.
“Ya, levántate, principito.”

He opened his eyes, groggy.

“Buenos días,”
he said. Not to me, to someone else.

I propped myself on my elbows and squinted into the sun. A guy my age, in mirrored sunglasses, towered over me. He wore a long black leather coat, about five gold chains around his neck, glaring white tennis shoes, and a baseball cap pulled low. Reflected in the lenses were convex images of me in my dirty white nightgown with chicken feathers in my hair.

He knelt down and extended his hand. “I’m Ángel. Lorenzo’s son.”