Sweetie's Diamonds (47 page)

“Hello?” he called.

The woman looked up.
 
She was Hispanic and not a young woman.
 
It was difficult to say how old she was from this distance.
 
She gave him a little wave and began to walk toward him.
 
When she got within ten feet he could see that she was probably sixty or thereabouts.
 

“Good morning,” he said.
 
“Uh, do you speak English?
 
Habla Anglais?
”

The woman smiled and said with a strong accent, “Yes, I speak English.”
 
She had a pleasant face.
 

“I'm looking for Manuel Delgado.
 
Does he live here?”

The woman's smile remained on her weathered face as she answered, “He died three years ago.
 
I'm his wife, can I help you?”

Marshall felt embarrassed.
 
“I'm sorry, I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

She shook her head.
 
“I never have visitors.
 
Unless you're selling something, I'm happy to have you here.”

“I'm not selling anything, ma'am.
 
I'm, uh, well, I'm a journalist.
 
A reporter, from California.
 
My name is Darren Marshall.
 
I'm doing some research on… well, is this the Barnett ranch?”

“It used to be.
 
It belongs to me now.”

“Actually I'm trying to find out some information about the Barnetts' nieces who lived here, I think in the sixties.
 
Would you have known them?
 
Diane, or maybe Dana?”

“Yes, sir, I knew them.
 
My husband and I worked on the ranch back then.
 
Manuel was Mister Barnett's foreman for years and I helped out in the house.
 
Would you like to come in for some iced tea?”

“I'd be delighted.”
 
Marshall was elated.
 
Had he finally hit the jackpot?

He followed the woman to the back porch, where she removed her muddy boots and revealed bare feet.
 
She opened the screen door for him and they went inside.
 

The place looked and smelled old.
 
There was no central air conditioning—all the windows were open.
 
This helped some, but the house was stuffy and warm.
 
Marshall loosened his collar as the woman led him through another door and into the living room.
 
“Make yourself at home,
Señor
Marshall,” she said, disappearing through an archway.
 
“I'll be right back.”
 
Marshall figured the kitchen was in that direction.
 

The living room was tidy and furnished with what were now antiques from the early 20
^th
Century.
 
The easy chair looked well used, as did the sofa and rocking chair.
 
There was an old-fashioned stone fireplace on one side of the room, the mantle of which was covered with fading black and white photographs in frames.
 
No television.

Marshall examined the photographs while he waited.
 
Most of them were of a Hispanic family and he recognized the woman in a few of the pictures.
 
The man he presumed to be Manuel was a large, burly fellow with short black hair and a mustache.
 
Apparently the Delgados had a child, a girl, as there were several shots of her at various stages of growth.
 

Marshall picked up a frame that was particularly interesting.
 
It was a shot of Manuel with a tall Caucasian man in a cowboy hat.
 
He had a stern, rugged face and looked as if he wasn't pleased that his picture was being taken.
 

“That's Mister Roy and my husband, Manuel,” the woman said as she came in the room, carrying two glasses of tea.
 
She placed one on the coffee table and then sat in the rocker.
 

“Mrs. Delgado, I didn't catch your first name?” Marshall said, replacing the frame on the mantle.

“Marisol,” the woman said.
 

Marshall sat on the sofa and took a long drink.
 

“You know, I was wondering if someone would ever come around asking about those girls,” Mrs. Delgado said.
 

“So they really were twins?” he asked.

“Yes.
 
They were beautiful children.
 
So… white, with golden blonde hair!”
 

Marshall got out his notepad and said, “Suppose we start at the beginning—you know, how you came to be here and all that.”

“Manuel and I came here in nineteen fifty-eight.
 
Mister Roy hired Manuel ‘cause he was good with cattle and had experience down in Mexico.
 
And he was cheap.
 
Mister Roy wasn't a big spender, but at the time we couldn't find anything else.
 
I didn't get a wage.
 
We lived in the cabin next to the barn.
 
That's before I had my daughter.”

“What were the Barnetts like?”

“Miz Edna was real nice to us.
 
She was a good person, a Christian.
 
Mister Roy, well, that's a different story.
 
He was probably the meanest man I ever met in my life.”
 

“Is that so?”

“I don't think I
ever
saw him smile or laugh.
 
I know he treated Miz Edna pretty bad.
 
He hit her.
 
He even hit me a couple of times.
 
Manuel couldn't confront him, though.
 
He needed the work.
 
Couldn't afford to get fired.
 
So he kept his mouth shut.
 
I don't blame him.
 
There was nowhere else for us to go.
 
Manuel was a good man.”

Marshall had the feeling that the old woman really wanted to talk.
 
It was as if she had a story to tell and she'd been waiting decades to relate it.
 

“And the Barnetts raised cattle, I take it?”

“Uh huh.
 
Did pretty well, too.”

“Now, what about the twins?”

“Diane and Dana came to live here in nineteen sixty-six.
 
They were very young, not yet in grade school.
 
I remember that day distinctly because Mister Roy made such a big fuss about it.
 
He got drunk before they arrived and broke one of Miz Edna's china dishes.
 
He didn't want them here.
 
They came down from Illinois, where they lived until their mother died.
 
Their father died of heart attack, very young, not long after the girls were born.
 
Their mother died from—I think—cancer.
 
Roy was their father's older brother and he was the only kin so he had to take them.
 
He didn't want to.
 
He hated having those girls in the house.”

“How come?”

“He hated children,” the woman said.
 
“He didn't want me having kids either.
 
I didn't have my little girl until after Mister Roy died.”

“When did he die?”

“Nineteen seventy-six.
 
I thought I was too old by then to have children, but I did all right.
 
Manuela was born a year later.
 
We named her after her father.
 
Miz Edna was good to her and to us after Mister Roy passed on.
 
In fact, she willed us the ranch.
 
That's why I still live here.
 
Miz Edna's in a nursing home now.
 
She lost her memory.”

“Where's your little girl now?”

“In Dallas and she's not so little anymore!
 
She works as a nurse.
 
I don't see her often enough.”
 
The woman smiled warmly.
 

“How long were the twins here?”

A cloud passed over the old woman's face.
 
“That was a bad time,” she said.
 
“A lot of unhappiness in this house.
 
A lot of secrets.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I fear the devil was in this house during those years.”

“Why is that?”

“Bad things happened.”
 

When she wouldn't elaborate further, Marshall moved on.
 
“Tell me about the girls.”

“Like I said, they were so pretty.
 
Always together.
 
You couldn't separate them if you tried.
 
They shoulda been joined at the hip, they were that close.
 
They did everything together.
 
Slept in the same bed, too, and Mister Roy didn't much like that.
 
He was very strict.
 
He wouldn't let them go to school, so Miz Edna had to teach ‘em here on the ranch.
 
He made ‘em work, too.
 
They had to milk the cows, feed the chickens, work the hay.
 
He made ‘em read the Bible every day.
 
He called himself a Baptist but if you ask me he didn't have a Christian bone in his body.”
 
All of sudden the woman smiled broadly.
 
“I just remembered something.
 
The girls always called each other ‘Sweetie.'
 
It was a game they played.
 
It was always, ‘Hey, Sweetie, you wanna do this?'
 
‘No, Sweetie, I'm doing that.'
 
‘Come on, Sweetie, or I'll go without you.'
 
‘You better wait ‘till I'm finished, Sweetie, then I'll come too.'
 
That sort of thing.
 
It drove Mister Roy crazy.”

Marshall took a sip of tea and then asked, “So what kind of bad things happened?”

It was clear that this was something that Marisol Delgado was uncomfortable discussing but she said, “
Señor
Marshall, I've wanted to tell someone about this for so many years but I didn't dare.
 
I thought it would be doing wrong to Miz Edna.”

“But if she's got dementia, how would she know?”
 
He realized it was a tacky thing to say but Marisol responded favorably.

“That's what I'm beginning to think, too.
 
I've held this secret long enough and I'd like to get it off my chest.”
 

He looked at her expectantly.
 

“Around the time the twins went into puberty, I guess they were nine or ten, Mister Roy started to change his attitude toward them.
 
You know what I mean?”

Marshall thought he did but didn't want to say.
 
“Uh, not really.”

“First he separated them at night.
 
Made them sleep in separate bedrooms.
 
This happened after one awful night when he caught them, uhm, well he caught them without their pajamas on.
 
In bed.”

Marshall wrinkled his brow and the psychoanalyst in him took over.
 
“Well, girls—and boys—of that age often experiment with sex.
 
Especially siblings.
 
It's part of adolescence.”

She raised her eyebrows and said, “I suppose so.”

“And Mister Barnett took umbrage to that,” he ventured.

“Took what?” she asked.

“He didn't like it.”

“No,” the woman answered.
 
“He did not.
 
He had to face the fact that these two pretty girls were growing up and had sexual feelings.
 
So, after separating ‘em into two different rooms, he became extra nice to ‘em.
 
He let ‘em off easy on their chores and brought home ice cream—something he never used to do—and other little presents.
 
The thing is… he was going into their bedrooms at night after Miz Edna had gone to bed.”