The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters Read online

  “Put more Pine-Sol in there,” Lourdes keeps telling you.

  “I already poured on so much that I’m going blind from the fumes.”

  She marches to the employee bathroom and emerges with the pine cleanser to slosh about a few jiggers herself, while mumbling this curious refrain: “I ask you to put Pine-Sol, you better goddamn put Pine-Sol. . . . You want to work here . . . get paid to do what I say . . . when I say it. . . . Stupid motherfuckers let their kids act like animals, goddamn it. . . . Hate this shit!” before stomping off into the bathroom.

  “What’s that, Lourdes?” You lift the sticker gun from the pile of lavender culottes you’re pricing. “You talking to me?”

  But she’s already slammed the door. If only you had the cojones to dump the culottes and walk out. Instead, you shoot adhesive tags on garment tickets, building up an angry rhythm, when Fatima comes through the mall entrance, holding a dark green checkbook.

  “Hey, aren’t you off this afternoon?”

  “Afternoon off, sure,” Fatima says, handing you the checkbook.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to buy something.”

  Fatima eyes the jumble of purple plaid you’re stickering. “Pooh, not here.”

  “What’s this then?” You hold up the checkbook.

  “Customer leave this. I put in purse and I forget. Call to customer, okay?”

  “Sure, thanks for bringing it back,” you say before she rushes off. You turn the checkbook, flip it open. According to the register, the balance is over three thousand dollars —whew! Nobody should have that much money just sitting in the bank.

  “Where’s the goddamn soap?” Lourdes yells from the back.

  “Under the sink!” You slip the checkbook into your purse behind the counter. “You have to open a new bar!”

  Amazingly, every problem does have its solution.

  “Is it my imagination or was the carpet just cleaned again?” Cary asks as he enters the front door and catches you sprawled on the couch eating a grilled cheese and finishing off a family-sized bag of Fritos while watching All My Children.

  “No and yes,” you say. “In contrast to your imagination, the carpet’s just been cleaned.”

  “Wasn’t it shampooed last week?” He loosens his tie and kicks off his shoes before negotiating the carpet with stocking feet. “Yikes, still wet.”

  “You have to walk on the furniture,” you tell him. “Climb on the armchair over there, then jump to the hassock. It rolls, so pull yourself on the drapes to the door, if you have to get to the kitchen.”

  Cary mounts the armchair. “How come you’re home in the middle of the day?”

  “Stomach flu,” you say, stuffing a fistful of corn chips into your mouth. “You?”

  “Bomb threat —we had to evacuate the building.”

  “Did you get the mail?”

  “Yeah, Dad got a letter from Nilda.” He holds aloft an envelope. As much as you miss your aunt, who moved to New Mexico to live with her youngest brother, Santi, on the family farm soon after José died, and would like to open the letter, you know your father, though laid-back about most things, would have a fit if you tampered with mail addressed to him. Cary tosses the mail on the coffee table, leaps for the hassock, and grabs the drapes. “How come you keep shampooing the carpet?”

  “Not me —Harold.”

  “But why?”

  “He enjoys it.”

  After reeling himself to the hallway, your brother turns to say, “He better not think he can get in good with us by cleaning the carpet every few days.”

  “He just wants us to have nice rugs.” But the truth is —in the month he’s had the machine, he’s cleaned carpets only at your house and at his mother’s. He’s shampooed your family’s wall-to-walls three times, and you’ve paid him —fifty bucks! —each time, but his mother paid him only once. (She refused to pay the second time, saying it wasn’t necessary to shampoo again a week later.) Though you thought that once Harold got in the habit of making money, he’d want to earn more, so far this has not happened. In fact, the more Harold makes, the less he wants to work. Poor Harold, you sigh and lick the salt from your fingertips. The new business has overwhelmed him.

  Last week, your father complained about the damp floors. “I don’t want that boy cleaning these rugs no more,” he’d said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “It’s not costing you a penny,” you pointed out.

  “That ain’t the problem. The durn rugs are always wet. We’re going to get athlete’s foot. It’s stupid to keep cleaning them when they’re already clean.”

  “So you’re forbidding me from having the carpets cleaned?”

  “Qué forbid, ni forbid. I don’t forbid nothing. I’m just telling you enough is enough. No more rug cleaning, period,” he’d said.

  Cary pokes his head in the doorway. “What’s Dad got to say about all this?”

  “Oh, he’s cool.”

  Someone pounds on the front door, and you jump. Harold? Surely, he doesn’t expect to shampoo the carpets twice in the same day. You stand on the couch to peer out the window: a tan uniform leg, leather belt, holster, hairy forearm, and clipboard. Your heart seizes. The room whirls. Maybe you’ll faint and fall into the wettest part of the carpet and, with luck, drown.

  “Who’s that?” Cary’s feet make squishy sounds as he pads to the threshold.

  “Don’t open it,” you say, but it’s too late.

  Fingerprinting, photos, officers barking orders, but the worst part for you is the waiting. You wait hours before you’re led into the courtroom, where the old judge’s eyes are so recessed in his puffy lids that you’re sure the codger’s asleep until he sets bail, naming a figure so high the room spins. He raps the gavel and calls, “Next!” You’re herded to a holding cell for more waiting. Nothing to read, nothing to see but the dejected faces of the others grouped with you. Except for you, everyone here could have been arrested for filthy hair. You have never seen such a collection of oily, uncombed locks. You hope to distance yourself from the others through superior hair hygiene, and through crying.

  You will beg Harold to go on with his life. You can’t expect him to wait for you to be released, a hardened woman of uncertain age. You see your future self emerging from the prison walls. Dated street clothes hang on your gaunt frame. You’ve lost weight in prison, so you look pretty good, sadder but wiser . . .

  “This is a mistake,” a woman with bad skin says to no one in particular. Everything about her —from her stained turtleneck sweater to her paisley bell-bottoms —is a mistake. She should be more specific.

  You dread what Rita and Loretta will have to say about all this. You hate to even think about how your father will take this, and remembering how Cary’s jaw dropped when you were cuffed and led out to the squad car prompts a fresh flow of tears. Bette, at least, will understand.

  Someone shouts your name. You follow a guard to the desk, where a clerk says your bail is paid and gives you a form with a trial date on it.

  “I don’t have to stay?”

  “Not unless you want to,” jokes the clerk.

  You picture Harold swiftly shampooing scores of carpets for bail money, but reality shuts down that image, and fast. Your father, no doubt, dug into his retirement for bail. But when you step into the visitors’ area, you behold a most stunning sight: Cary slouching before the wanted posters, his thumbs in the belt loops of his Levi’s.

  “You bailed me out?”

  “I went to this bondsman, so I only had to pay like ten percent.”

  “Still, that’s a lot of money.”

  He shrugs. “Savings.” Cary has wanted a Mustang convertible since he started building model cars as a kid.

  “Was Dad too pissed-off to get me out?”

  “I didn’t tell him, didn’t think you’d want him to know.”

  “I wish no one had to know.”

  “Don’t tell anyone then,” Cary advises.

  “What about the tri
al? What about a lawyer?”

  “We’ll figure that out when the time comes, okay?” A deep flush rises from your brother’s neck to his forehead, suffusing his jowly cheeks with violent color. “You got to pay me back, you know.”

  “Of course, I will.” This may take time. No doubt you’ve lost the Wee Folks job.

  “And this has to be the last time this kind of shit ever happens, got that?”

  “Never again, I swear!”

  He pulls open the door. “Better be. ’Cause, Sophie, this ain’t funny. Not one bit.”

  SUBJECT: FERMINA/SERVITUDE

  WPA: 7-7-38 —DC: HMS

  July 5, 1938

  Words: 817

  CHILDBIRTH AND MANUMISSION

  To pay gambling debts, Hidalgo sold Fermina, sending her off to the Rio Puerco Valley to work for Inocencio and Yrma Gabaldon. Devout Catholics, the couple named the servant girl “Fermina,” after San Fermin, on whose feast day, the 25th of September, she had arrived in their house. Later, Fermina learned that the date marked the martyrdom of San Fermin, first bishop of Pamplona, who was strapped to a bull and dragged to his death.

  The childless couple treated Fermina well enough in the beginning. Yrma Gabaldon taught her to cook and serve meals. But la señora had a reputation for stinginess. Early in marriage, Yrma had delivered two stillborns. It was rumored that she was too selfish to get a living baby out. When Fermina came to the Gabaldons, Yrma was again with child. The midwife advised her to offer the poor food to assure a safe birth. But Yrma refused. After a long labor, a lifeless boy —a frown stamped like a boot heel on his blue face —emerged from between her thighs. Inocencio buried him beyond the apple orchard and Yrma never conceived again.

  Over time, Fermina learned Spanish, forgetting much of the Tewa and Hopi she once spoke. On trips to town, she would see men and women from the other Pueblo tribes. These people reminded Fermina of ghosts, they were so emaciated and haggard. She felt fortunate not to have to live as they did. So when Yrma cuffed her for dropping an egg, she dared not complain, and when Inocencio came to her at night, she did not cry out, though at first, she feared he was murdering her, ripping her insides out. In time, it became “como una mosca caminando sobre mi mano” (like a fly walking on her hand), and before long, Fermina grew round in the abdomen.

  One morning, her back flamed with pain. She sank into a chair and warm water gushed between her legs. Yrma sent Inocencio for the midwife, who arrived in time to help birth the baby. To cut the umbilical cord, the partera set the infant, a boy, on Fermina’s stomach. He blinked at her and croaked. Fermina called him “rana” because his legs were bent like a frog’s.

  Fermina was about thirteen years old when she delivered her son in 1882. Yrma and Inocencio claimed him as their child, naming him Decidero for Inocencio’s father. After his christening, the Gabaldons invited the priest for dinner. The curate noticed Fermina and grew agitated. He explained that people could no longer keep such servants. The president had said that the Moqui, the Hopi slaves, must go back to their people. Yrma readily agreed, but Inocencio refused to send the girl away.

  The next time Inocencio rode into town on his own, Yrma ordered Fermina to return to her people. Decidero, Yrma said, was old enough to drink goat’s milk now. Not sure where her people were of if they remembered her, Fermina gathered her few belongings and trudged toward the ditch. After wandering a distance, she doubled back and slipped into the Gabaldons’ adobe barn. From there, she heard the baby wailing and Inocencio cursing Yrma when he returned before nightfall. Finally he emerged, called out Fermina’s name, and whistled for her, the way he would summon a dog. She hurried from the barn and followed him back into the house.

  The baby was red faced, rigid with cramps and weak from diarrhea. Fermina nursed him through the night and he recovered. Though Yrma agreed to let her stay, things changed in the household. Yrma would pull Fermina’s hair and slap her without provocation. Fermina worked harder than ever because she feared Yrma would again cast her out, especially once the baby was weaned. After the priest’s visit, the Gabaldons were ashamed to attend mass, prompting the curate to return to their home. He found Fermina outside boiling lye for soap and questioned her. She explained that she wanted to stay. Then, he said, she must be baptized to become a member of the family.

  So it was that Fermina was taken to church for the first time to be baptized and have her name written in the records. Though it was the custom of the time, Yrma refused to give her their surname, and Inocencio induldged his wife in this matter. Instead, they christened her Fermina Hidalgo, after the man from whom they acquired her. Now Fermina could attend church with the family. This infuriated Yrma, but at least she and Inocencio could bring the boy up in the sacraments. Sunday mornings, Fermina enjoyed sitting in church and watching the parishioners, who squirmed in stiff clothes and tight shoes, much more than cooking alone in the hot kitchen. Besides, the priest had said the man on the cross was the son of God, who was all-powerful, so Fermina prayed to him for help.

  10

  MIASMA —RITA: 1982

  Assholes, Rita thinks as she scans the other crew members on the bus to a work site one summer morning. The ranks of the California Environmental Maintenance Corps are filled with repeat shoplifters, chronic truants, druggies, minor gangsters, and underage drinkers. These low-level lawbreakers have been given a choice: lockup in a detention center or join the CEMC. Though they chose the corps, they nevertheless groan at reveille, gripe at mealtimes, and complain while digging trenches and pulling up brush —the good-for-nothing malcriados.

  There are a few exceptions like Rennie, who sits across the aisle from Rita, strumming his secondhand guitar, his rust-colored afro ablaze now in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Although serving a stint for dealing, Rennie claims he likes working for the CEMC. Definitely a step-up, he says, from peddling hashish at the high schools. There are also a handful of genuine volunteers who start out with Rennie’s attitude, but the inland summer heat, the manual labor, and the low pay soon weed out these workers. And most that remain are lazy and aggressively stupid, like the slack-mouthed Jackie snoring in the seat in front of Rennie, his mullet tapering to a rat’s tail along the back of his thick neck.

  So far, Rita hasn’t met anyone like herself in the corps, a mature twenty-one-year-old volunteer who doesn’t complain and doesn’t quit. Deep in the woods, she savors the fragrant sanctum of pine straw, fern, and moss under the canopy of loblolly, incense cedar, and redwood —all of it so insistently green that her throat tightens with pleasure. She prefers working alone, so she can imagine a solitary life in the forest, at least until a shovel clangs nearby or curses echo through the woods when one of the petty criminals bursts a blister. Even this stream of shaggy eucalyptus and tall rippling grass scrolling past the bus window lends Rita a few calm moments before she finds herself eavesdropping on a conversation between the two girls seated behind her. She’s familiar enough with them to dislike them in a vague way, though she doesn’t know much about the two, except that they’re cholas who’ve been in the corps almost as long as she has.

  “Hey, you seen that new guy this morning?” Lupe asks, her voice loud and gruff.

  Rita pictures the girl’s flabby face, wiped clean of the heavy makeup she applies for trips to town. Without the caked-on foundation, glittery eye shadow, thick eyeliner, and clumpy mascara, Lupe’s wan face resembles that of a pretreated corpse.

  “Yeah, I seen him dragging his duffel over to the guys’ dorm,” says Belinda, a whittled-to-the-bone cholita, who struggles to ingratiate herself with the tougher, louder girls, like a small dog wriggling abjectly before larger ones.

  Lupe smacks her lips. “That’s one fine dude, mmm-mmm-mmm.”

  “He ain’t bad,” Belinda says, “for a gabacho.”

  “Check it out, eh, he’s supposed to be on the bus with us, but he tells the director he’s got this lawyer coming out here and he’s got to wait for him at the office.”
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  “You talked to him?”

  “Yeah, I went up to him, and I go, ‘What’s with you, dude? How come you ain’t in khakis?’ Says his name’s Andy and gives me all this crap about the lawyer —biggest pile of mierda. I’m surprised Noah bought it.”

  “Well, he ain’t on the bus,” Belinda points out.

  “Eh, did I tell you about the time we crashed that party in Echo Park? We didn’t know nobody there, and we was drunk, I mean off our asses . . .”

  Rita tunes Lupe out, wondering who this new guy thinks he is, slacking off the first day. This takes her mind off the road. Rita’s been tense on bus trips lately, especially when she can see enough from the window —like now —to second-guess Rafe, the driver. The narrow highways often wind around steep mountain face, and as the bus climbs, the drops grow dizzyingly sheer. When she sits at the back of the bus, Rita doesn’t dwell on this too much, but here in front, she wonders if Rafe might be hungover, sleepy, or otherwise impaired. To distract herself, Rita works herself up against the newcomer. Just who the hell does he think he is?

  After a week, Rita, though curious, still hasn’t met the new guy, who probably works with another crew. Some teams clear hiking trails, while others reforest burn areas. It’s common not to see male coworkers, who sleep in a separate dorm, for several days, if they have a different mess rotation. But Rennie mentions to her that this Andy has been in the infirmary the whole week.

  “What’s his problem anyway?” she asks.

  “Malaria.”

  “Malaria? How’d he get that?”

  “He’s some kind of rich kid. Parents take him all over the place, private jets and stuff. Supposedly, he contracted it in Nairobi, and now he has to take it easy.”