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Her knees felt rubbery, her back ached low down. Wind off the East River chafed her face. The dark railroad like the walls of an ancient city, the cars going under in tu
At fifteen she stood in the kitchen of her family’s railroad flat on the near West Side of Chicago, braced against the sink in blue jeans and fluorescent pink sweater. She could remember herself at fifteen and it did not feel different, only louder, more definite. “I won’t grow up like you, Mamб! To suffer and serve. Never to live my own life! I won’t!”
“You’ll do what women do. You’ll pay your debt to your family for your blood. May you love your children as much as I love mine.”
“You don’t love us girls the way you love the boys! It’s everything for Luis and nothing for me, it’s always been that way.”
“Never raise your voice to me. I’ll tell your father. You sound like the daughters of the gangsters here.”
“I’m good in school. I’m going to college. You’ll see!”
“The books made you sick! College? Not even Luis can go there.”
“I can! I’m going to get a scholarship. I’m not going to lie down and be buried in the rut of family, family, family! I’m so sick of that word, Mamб! Nothing in life but having babies and cooking and keeping the house. Mamacita, believe me–oнgame, Mamб–I love you! But I’m going to travel. I’m going to be someone!”
“There’s nothing for a woman to see but troubles. I wish I had never left Los Calcinados.” Mariana closed her eyes and Co
From her mother she inherited that Mayan cast to her face,the small chin, the sensuous nose, the almond eyes. They had all traveled far, and all of it bottom class. She knew her mother’s family came originally from Campeche, near Xbonil. Troubles had driven them north, and north again, and again north, generation after generation plodding northward into the cold, into bondage, the desmadrados: taken too early from the mother; or the mother ca
Yet she understood now, climbing her stoop, that she had wanted her mother’s approval. She had wanted her mother’s comfort. She had wanted Mariana to come with her in her pursuit of knowledge and some better way to live. She had never been mothered enough and she had grown up with a hunger for mothering. To be loved as Luis had been loved. Only the very youngest girl, Inez, had had that. After Mariana had been robbed of her womb, she had lavished affection on the youngest.
So who was the worst fool, then–herself at fifteen full of plans and fire, or the woman of thirty‑seven who had given up making any plans? Despair had stained her with its somber wash and leached from her all plans and schoolbook ideals.
In her box she found a letter from Teresa, married with four kids in Chicago, several miles farther west than their childhood flat. Teresa lived near the old Midway airport in a little house on a street of identical boxes. That Co
“Marilyn’s birthday is April 28, I know you remember. What she likes best is dolls with real hair the kind you wash and set … .”
Co
In the refrigerator she found pinto beans in chili sauce, good still. With reheated beans she would fry a couple of eggs. She was tired of eggs and yearned for meat. How she would like to sink her teeth in a pork chop. Her mouth watered in faint hope. She turned on the little black‑and‑white TV she was always hauling back and forth from bedroom to kitchen. The news came on. She listened with half an ear; she did not have it turned loud. The set was company, a human–or almost human–voice. She tended to leave it on even when she was cooking or reading. It was her family, she had once wryly told Mrs. Polcari, who had not understood.
She stood slowly stirring the beans and waiting for the oil in the black frypan to heat up so she could break the eggs. She was in no hurry. What would she hurry toward? Below in the street evening hummed to the rhythm of high and low drums, a rising tide of dealing and hustling, the push of the young and not so young to score, to get laid. At a simmer, the slow bubbles rising through the thick air, sex and traffic quickened El Barrio. In thousands of meetings–accidental, accidental on purpose, clandestine, dating and courting–men were picking up women on corners, on stoops, in the family apartments, couples were going down the rotten stairs shoulder to shoulder, to restaurants and movies and bars and dancing. Women with no money were working magic in front of dim mirrors, frowning with concentration, as they waited for men to arrive. Couples climbed into cars and shot off into the night. Couples picked up barbecued ribs and chicharrones, couples carried packages of Chinese‑Cuban takeout and beer upstairs to their rooms. Men met their pushers and their dealers, or missed them and turned to ash. On the roofs pigeons were released to fly, to circle together fluttering like clean handkerchiefs among the chimneys where kids turned on and shot up and packages and money were exchanged.