Give It To Me. Ana Castillo

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СКАЧАТЬ Angela. (Daughter was spelled “dauhter.”) Her abuela’s daughter, a.k.a, Palma’s biological mother. Dear Mami, How are you? I hope well. How is our baby Palma? We miss her! Her gaze ran frantically over the page. Her tiny toes with teeny toenails. I love her so much, she read . . . about her. She’s such a good baby (i.e., said baby never cried). She put the letters in order chronologically and began reading about Angela and her boyfriend, Mariano, Jr.

      Apparently, they had Palma when they were both around fifteen. Kids. (So he was Palma’s biological father—not a rogue as Abuela insinuated.) Mariano, Jr.’s family were migrant workers, the letters revealed. Abuela was opposed to the pregnancy, the couple getting married, and most def did not want her daughter to go on the migrant trail picking onions, tomatoes, and fleas off their necks and ankles at bedtime. But Angela went anyway. (It explained why Palma’s birth certificate read that she was born in Indiana.) Angela and Mariano, Jr. left her with her abuela over summer when they were working the fields with his family in that nearby state. When they came back Abuela had begun the process of taking full custody. Those kids had little wherewithal to understand what was going on. They appealed to Abuela’s compassion, which only existed for Christ on the Cross, Jim-Bo, and the Holy Spirit—nothing left for bad girl Angela, who’d gone against her mother’s wishes.

      If only my father were still alive, Angela wrote in her last letter, he would never have taken my dauhter away from me. As far as Palma could tell, her parents married, stayed together, and eventually settled down in Los Angeles. You are heartless, Angela had written to her mother from there. Not exactly a news flash. What Palma didn’t know was how had Mariano, Jr. felt about it all that time. Leaving his baby behind, and with Angela’s “heartless” mother?

      Everything Palma had taken for truth was rearranged.

      If she’d felt sorry for herself her whole life because she believed she had parents who hadn’t loved her, Palma now felt worse discovering that they had. Knowing she was possibly wanted, every corpuscle, capillary, and nerve ending started to quake. She gulped down a glass of ice water and then put the glass against her forehead. Palma’s brain went rat-a-tat-tat with one doubt after the next. Had they tried hard enough to get her back? A Rubik’s Cube of scenes from her entire upbringing shifted around in her head. The day-by-day blows of her upbringing. The kids in grammar school who mocked her for not having a mom and dad. Arrimada, the Mexican kids called her. It meant an orphan freeloader. What would have getting her menses been like had her mother been there, and not an old woman from a village who believed it was one more shameful aspect of femaleness? Silly things came to mind too: the mother-and-daughter tea as a senior in high school with their pretty hats and dainty gloves, going to the salon together beforehand for manicures. Palma never knew if her grandmother would have come, but as a teenager she was ashamed of the old woman—the scant English, the wrinkles, and the tote bag she used as a purse. The fact that around her own—other poor Mexicans—she was a tyrant, but with Alta Mulch or even regular Mulch, Abuela shrank until she became an India watermark on the wall. Totonaca de pata rajada she called herself.

      Would someone have asked the girl to the prom if she’d had a dad willing to lend him the car and made sure the boy got her home at a decent hour instead of the word around the school being that she could be had for a song? When Palma got called dirty Mexican in the neighborhood, what if her hard-working father came out and pounded them with his farm-worker fists? Would she have worked evenings waiting tables at the diner if she had parents to insist that homework came first? Did Palma have her mother’s eyebrows that at fourteen she started plucking, then shaving, and then had to draw back in as slim flapper’s lines? Was her humor that people called sardonic her mother’s—a distilled version passed on from Abuela’s acidity or from the Y-chromosome? Or instead, just an urban Darwinianesque trait adapted for survival in the South Side of Chicago?

      Most of all, what Palma Piedras wondered that night was, would those anonymous parents have loved her for the girl she was, had they come back when she was eight? Sixteen? At forty-plus it was too late for a mommy and daddy, but could she ever set her heart straight?

      6

      I miss you, baby. Most of his texts were like that, short and sweet and possibly sincere. She didn’t know what to make of them. Palma would have preferred that her lil cous’ pick up the phone and make an old fashion call, although obviously, he already had his cell in his hand when texting. Why was he calling her baby? She didn’t text back. The current object of his affections figured he was sending texts out like e-blasts to every female who gave him her digits. One day he sent a picture of himself. A kind of man-on-the-street pose. No message. He was fine, no lie, but Palma already knew that. What conceit. She saved it to her phone. Another day she got an animation of two kids on a park bench. The boy slid over and kissed the girl on the cheek. Hearts appeared like bubbles. That did it.

      Palma called. Why did you send me this? She pretended to be irritated. What? He said. It’s cute. It’s to let you know I’m thinking of you. Palma considered the thought. Maybe time had stopped when he was in the joint and he thought he was still twenty-two, the age when he got arrested. It’s fucking childish, Palma said. She used the F-word for emphasis.

      Another thing he did to let her know he was thinking of her was send cold, hard cash. Not literally. It came in a cashier’s check. Apparently the forty grand he mentioned that first time they met again had come through. The Post-it attached read, Your share. Palma deposited the eight grand into her account. Pepito called and asked, Did you get my gift? She understood. Yeah, she said, it fit beautifully. (Thanks to the Patriot Act you never knew who might be listening in on your cell phone.) What did I do to deserve it? She asked. Whoa, he said. Whoa yourself.

      Ain’t that what family is for? He replied.

      How would I know? She asked. What should I do with it?

      Why don’t you use it to take an art class? He suggested.

      No time, she lied.

      Buy yourself that Chanel suit you always wanted, he said. (He remembered. When she was in high school she tried to sew one from a pattern on Abuela’s Singer. Sewing, as it turned out, was not her thing, and the discarded fabric in Abuela’s hands made expensive seat covers). Depending on how thrifty she’d be (and taking any page out of the Abuela Book of Ultimate Frugality—from buying day-old bread to getting the kids’ socks and underwear at the flea market), he’d set her up for six months. We’ll see, Pepito, she mumbled.

      I don’t go by Pepito, anymore, He-Who-Reinvented-Himself reminded his older cous’. That was a child’s name. He was grown. I go by Joe now, he said. In prison they called me Chi-Town José to distinguish me from all the other Josés. But you can call me Pepito, Prima, he said. She imagined the smile of white, even teeth, made whiter against a reddish dark hue. He had a smooth face. Palma began to trace it with her mind’s eye. The square jaw and even hairline. Tell me you love me, she heard herself say. It wasn’t something she had ever told anyone herself, maybe not even him as kids. Maybe she had. Was there a pause? A nano-second hesitation?

      I love you, Pepito said, with a voice that nearly sounded as if he had left his body. A macho had to be the loneliest creature on earth. He never let anyone in. Women mistook the aloofness as the result of a man being wounded. Pobrecito, they said. And like the snake the old lady cared for, which once it was healed . . . people were surprised when they got hurt by such a man. Pepito’s upbringing was no better or worse than anyone else’s, but the macho could not let people get close because he perceived himself at war with the world.

      Go to hell, she said. They hung up. Palma was at war, too. Possibly MIA. Saving Private Piedras. She went to the stereo and put on an old CD. Whitney belted I’ll be your baby tonight.

      7

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