Woman on the Edge of Time

He’s crazy, she thought. That’s it. She quickened her steps toward the subway station.

“I’m ru

“I had two years of college! Just because I’m Chicana and on welfare, don’t try to tell me what poor vocabulary I speak with. I bet I read more than you do!”

“You plural–excuse me. A weakness that remains in our language, though we’ve reformed pronouns. By your language I mean that of your time, your culture. No personal slinging meant. Believe me, Co

“Your culture! What are you into anyway–a real La Raza trip? The Azteca stuff, all that?”

“Now I lack vocabulary.” Luciente reached for her arm, but she dodged. “We must work to commune, because we have such different frames of redding. But that we seeeach other, that feathers me fasure!” The two cabs met at an intersection and both slammed their brakes. Luciente started muttering.

“So where are you from? The high Andes?”

Luciente grimaced. “In space not that far. Buzzard’s Bay.”

Every time they came to a street, Luciente acted barely in control. He must have escaped from Bellevue. Her luck. He kept looking up and sideways and then trying not to. They were almost to Sixth Avenue when he said, “Look. I have to leave. This place u

“Why should I? You’re crazy as a loon!”

Luciente beamed, capturing her hand in his dry, warm grip. “Ever see a loon, Co

Not till she was standing in the subway, wedged in, did she cautiously raise to her nose the hand he had seized. Yes, that chemical scent. She was afraid.

She stood swaying between people to her right, her left, her back, clutching her purse and Daily Newsagainst her breasts with one hand while the other just reached the strap above. He was right about the whatever he called it–receptive part. Queasy things happened in her. She never talked about those happenings much–a little to Dolly, who consulted palm readers and bought herbs from the botбnica in spite of speaking Spanish almost as badly as her father, Loois, who prided himself on having forgotten. Sometimes Co

“Who tells you this garbage? Those gossiping women! You do nothing all day but listen to lies!”

“You tell me! You tell me yourself when you walk in!”

Wise she wasn’t. Never could predict, not for herself, not for others. She had tried to tell fortunes and always guessed wrong and knew in her heart she was just guessing. The other event was not something she tried to do any more than seeing that there was a rat scuttling away in the hall. The information entered her as a sound entered her ears. Often when Eddie was about to strike her, she knew it and cowered before he drew back his hand for a blow. If this was a gift, she could not see what good it had ever done her. When Eddie was going to hit her, he hit her anyhow. Maybe she had a moment to raise an arm to protect her face, but if he knocked her down it hurt as much. Her bruises were as sore and shameful. Her tears were as bitter.

Her knowing that he had been with another woman did not make Eddie love her, did not give her flesh back that spicy tang it had held for him briefly, did not make him want to carry her off to bed. It only meant that she was deprived of the comfort she might have felt when from time to time he was sweet to her for the sake of getting some small thing he wanted. To read his contempt for her had turned love acid in her veins. It had made their marriage last a little less long than it would have.

She could have used some of her mother’s resignation. When she fought her hard and sour destiny, she seemed only to end up worse beaten, worse humiliated, more quickly alone–after Eddie had walked out, alone with her daughter Angelina and no man, no job, no money, pregnant with the baby she must abort. She was late for an abortion, past the third month, and it had gone hard with her. When the doctor told her she had been carrying a boy, she had felt a bitter triumph. In fact, she had gone to the bar where Eddie hung out, marched in and told him. He had for one last time beaten her.

A catcher, that’s what the cholo called her. The contemptuous word grated on her, leaving in her mind a trail of sore pride like a snail’s slimy track. Like black people calling each other nigger. She was angry at Luciente’s airs, his beautiful accent in that high‑pitched voice. “By your language, I mean that of your time, your culture … .” What scheme was he working on? What could he hope to get out of her? If he wanted her welfare check, that was a matter of a blow on the head. She was scared. He had wiped Dolly from her mind, leaving her almost envious of Dolly’s sorrow instead of this mystery that must cover some common evil like a cockroach under a plate.

Receptive. Like passive. The Mexican woman Consuelo the meek, dressed in black with her eyes downcast, never speaking unless addressed. Her mother kneeling to the black virgin. Not of course that her mother, Mariana, had lived her life as a peasant. Mariana had been uprooted from a village near Namiquipa, Los Calcinados, and migrated with her family to Texas to work in the fields. In El Paso Mariana met Co

When Co

Wearily she hauled herself up the steps at 110th and Lexington. PASAJES SEGUROS, the awning flapped. That was a dream. She looked down at herself in a battered green coat. She too, she was spayed. They had taken out her womb at Metropolitan when she had come in bleeding after that abortion and the beating from Eddie. U