The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters Read online

  “Daddy!” Johnny B. cried. He wandered through the framing, bumping into a sawhorse and tripping over tools. “Where are you?”

  Finally Johnny B. heard his father’s voice from below. “I’m in the basement.”

  The boy bent over a square opening in the floor. “Where are the stairs?”

  “There are no stairs, son. You have to jump.”

  Johnny B. stared into a black void. “But I can’t see you!”

  “It’s okay. I can see you. I’ve got my arms open. I’ll catch you.”

  He hesitated a moment. (I held my breath here. In Stories for Young Catholics, anything could happen.) But Johnny B. leapt safely into his father’s strong arms. I read on about how Johnny B. was saved because he had faith, and how we should trust in our Father, who is not visible to us.

  “How the heck did the father get down there without steps?” I asked.

  Fermina shrugged.

  “Well, I never would have jumped,” I told her. “If that was my daddy in the basement, no way would I jump.”

  Fermina raised her eyebrows. “¿Por qué no?”

  I clapped the book shut. “Now, if it was Mama —no problem.”

  She sighed and pushed my bangs from my forehead. A phlegm clotted cough rattled at the back of her throat. Fermina spat into her handkerchief, wiped her mouth, and settled on her side to rest. It was warm and close in her room, in her bed. Soon I fell asleep beside her, my arm around her waist. Fermina had many days like this, when we could read and talk. But some days, she had no voice, and she remained in bed, rising only to use the bathroom with the help of her heavy, rubber-tipped cane. On days when she was strong, she asked my father to call Irina to visit her.

  Irina was almost as old as Fermina, but she was strong and stout. She wore skirts made from old quilts, so worn that in places the ticking sprouted out. Into these skirts, she always tucked the same turquoise velveteen blouse, cinching the waist with a conch belt. She had large hands, stained purple with ink, and she carried a burlap handbag decorated with el ojo de Dios, the series of diamonds woven to keep the devil away.

  “Uh-oh,” I’d tease Rita whenever Irina appeared on our porch. “You better hide. Here comes Irina with that ojo de Dios to send you straight back to hell!”

  Unlike Fermina, who understood much, but spoke only a little English, Irina was fluent, according to my aunt Nilda, “in everything.” When Irina slipped into Fermina’s room and closed the door, I’d put my ear to the keyhole to listen to them speak a language that sounded like they were gargling. Fermina once mentioned that Irina was helping her prepare my gift.

  One afternoon, Irina stepped out of Fermina’s room, nearly stumbling over me as I knelt by the keyhole. “You are the one who likes animals,” she said.

  I nodded. “I like all kinds of animals —kittens, puppies, even a golden hamster, long or short hair, would be great.”

  “Fermina has a good gift for you.”

  “What about me?” asked Cary from the front room, where he sprawled on his stomach before a comic book, The Adventures of Superman. “What am I getting?”

  Irina pointed a thick-jointed finger at my brother. “Nothing for you.” Shaking her head, she stalked out the front door.

  Cary rushed to Fermina’s room. I followed, but lingered near the threshold, listening where Fermina couldn’t see me.

  “How come Irina says I don’t get a gift?” he asked.

  “Niño, ven aca.” She pulled him close and fingered his dark brown curls. She explained that he has a father to give to him what he needs, but the girls —las pobrecitas —have no mother for this. He didn’t need a gift from her, but she gave him her blessing before saying, “Besito por favor.”

  He reached to kiss her cheek. When he stepped out of her room and closed the door, he looked at me. “I still don’t get it. I’m good, aren’t I?”

  I shrugged. Sometimes he was, but there were plenty of times when he was a huge pain in the nalgas. I sure wouldn’t give a single thing to someone who pestered as much as he did with questions. “Maybe Fermina’s talking about desaguadero.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember what Mama used to say? She’d say that girls aren’t supposed to get mad and yell. But you, she said, you’re different. You’re a boy. You don’t have desaguadero like we do, so it’s okay for you to have fits.”

  He scratched his head. “But what does that have to do with getting a gift?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But maybe because you don’t have it, you can’t get a gift.” Whenever Mama cupped a cool hand over my mouth, stifling a howl of fury, the injustice of it stung more sharply than whatever had angered me, because she’d let Cary bellow, kick, throw things, and carry on until he wore himself into a sobbing heap.

  “You girls have desaguadero,” she’d explain. “He doesn’t.”

  Afterward, I asked Bette what the desaguadero was, and she said it was like a drain or an outlet. I figured it must mean that girls have the thing that makes them behave, that keeps them under control, and boys don’t have this. I remembered how my father would wobble home after work, stinking like cough syrup. My mother never wobbled. And Fermina seemed to have the most control. Even I learned to make good use of my desaguadero. When my father behaved the way he did at the cemetery, I didn’t make a fuss. I simply flushed his hairbrush down the toilet as soon as we got home. Later that night, he had to dig the pipes out of the backyard while Cary held the flashlight. Listening to his curses in the dark, I thought what a useful thing it is, this desaguadero. I didn’t mind having it one bit, especially if it meant I would get a gift.

  SUBJECT: FERMINA/BURIAL PRACTICES

  WPA: 6-13-38 —DC: HMS

  June 12, 1938

  Words: 243

  BURIAL IN WALPI

  Fermina also recalls the burial of her Hopi father in Walpi on the First Mesa. She remembers how his body was prepared for the underworld the Hopi called Maski. Prior to burial, her paternal grandmother washed his head with suds from mashed yucca root. As she bathed her son, the woman wept and whispered words into his ear that no one else could hear. Then she and her sisters dressed the body in a blanket, shrouding the face with a raw cotton cloth that had holes cut for the eyes and mouth. Fermina’s grandmother next tied a string around the top of his head, inserting into this four turkey feathers pointing downward. The women finally arranged the body in the grave, sitting upright and facing east, in order for him to meet the kind “bahana” (or white guide) who is supposed to provide well-being to the entire village.

  Fermina shuddered at the sight of her father’s prepared corpse. Her mouth went dry with fright, and she could not swallow the wafer bread (piki) and mutton stew served at the feast. She longed to add her bowl to those holding the sheep’s heart and yucca roots upon his grave, under a nimbus of blowflies. She says now that she does not care how she is buried, but she hopes the little ones will see her face unmasked. Fermina wants them to see her as she is, in life and death, and not to be afraid.

  2

  TO TELL IT SLANT —BETTE: 1967

  True, I don’t always tell it straight, but I never snitch. That’s why people tell me things they don’t tell anyone else. And that’s partly why guys dig me, even older guys like Jesse Ramírez, a junior at Pope John’s. Why else would he show up at my side as our eighth-grade class lines up before school? Just to deliver a carton of chocolate milk? I don’t think so, though I take the chilly waxed box and shove it in my blazer pocket.

  He touches my elbow. “Meet me in back of the church in ten minutes.”

  I flash him my deep-dimpled Cover Girl smile, the one I’ve been working on over Easter vacation. He shoves his fists in his pockets and lopes off. Since I’m the shortest and youngest (just turned twelve) in class because I was double-promoted in third grade, I stand at the front of the line, and the other girls about bore holes into my back staring at me. I turn to give them this ho-hum look, like I am so used to cool guys com
ing up to me that it’s almost tedious. And Jesse is supercool. Check it out —he’s Golden Gloves, like Lance Álvarez, who made out with me at Bertha Villalobos’s party. I figure Jesse probably has some message for me from Lance.

  Jesse knows I’d never run to my teacher blabbing about some guy who told me to meet him. Instead, I tell Miss Weidermeyer that I’m “indisposed” and ask to be excused. I don’t exactly know what “indisposed” means. I read it in a book and remember it caused a lot of embarrassment. Sure enough, Miss Weidermeyer’s mouth drops open, and her cheeks get all pink. “You go right ahead,” she says.

  And I’m off, strolling through the corridor, enjoying the clatter of the metal taps I’ve fastened to my saddle oxfords until I’m near the front office. There, I slip off my shoes, duck down, and creep out the front door.

  Outside, I jam my shoes on and dart around the parking lot to the rear of the church. I could cut straight across the lot, but I have to steer clear of the tree with toes, dead center of it. It’s an old shaggy tree with crumbly bark and fernlike leaves. The roots —shaped like long gray toes with thick, smooth nails —are yanking up from the ground. I stay away from that tree after what it did to Blanca Hinojosa last fall.

  I wasn’t there at the time, but other kids in my class saw the whole thing. Supposedly, the tree got even with Blanca for chasing my sister Loretta with a booger. They say that old tree lifted a heavy toe —dripping with hairy, dirt-clotted roots —to trip Blanca, and then it snagged her jaw with a drooping limb, tumbling her flat on her back. The tortoiseshell comb in her bun gouged her scalp like an arc from the crown of thorns. Blanca’s pretty well-known for being mean to quiet kids like my sister. Still, what that tree did to the girl freaks me out. First of all, I can’t stand goriness, and they say the blood spurted out. I would have fainted on the spot. And, if that tree is on Loretta’s side, I hate to think what it would do if it ever got its branches on me.

  The church is dark and cool. I dab my fingertips in the holy water and make a quick sign of the cross. Then I step over to the pamphlet rack in the vestibule. It kills me how many brochures on dating, heavy petting, and premarital sex are written by priests, nuns, and brothers. Most have these serious block-letter titles printed over traffic-sign shapes: STOP BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! THE DANGERS OF DRINKING AND DATING! THE POINT OF NO RETURN! I pick up a copy of NECKING AND SIN! Corny as the titles are, Rebecca Chávez sure could have used these at her ditching party last month, where we huffed airplane glue and guzzled Boone’s Farm wine like it was Orange Nehi. When I went for the bathroom at her house, I pulled open the wrong door and found all these guys huddled around Becca. She was slumped on the bottom bunk in her brothers’ room, judging from the cowboy wallpaper, and she had her blouse off. Becca’s pretty heavy, but still I was astonished at how large her chi-chis were —the nipples staring back at me, huge and pink, like wounded eyes. She blinked at me like she’d just woken up and someone shouted, “Shut the goddamn door!” So I did. Then I found the bathroom and spewed up every sticky drop of wine.

  Even remembering this makes me queasy. I’m relieved when Jesse hisses, “Bette, over here” from the stairs to the choir loft.

  I smile and approach the stairwell.

  “I thought you might not come.” He cups my shoulder with a hot hand, pulls me down beside him on the steps. “You’re nice to come.”

  I’m thinking, Boy, is he ever friendly, but maybe he wants to whisper Lance’s message in my ear. Next thing, though, he’s got his slimy lips all over my mouth, and he’s breathing like he’s just run a race. Soured chocolate milk coats his tongue as he forces it, like a hunk of meat, between my lips. I push away. “Hey, wait a minute.”

  But Jesse wraps his arms around me, fingering the back of my blouse for bra straps, which he plucks, as if this will loosen them.

  I wrench free. “That hurts!”

  “Come on, babe. Lance says you’re cool.” He dives for my neck, while forcing a knee between my legs. He yanks open my blouse, popping the buttons off. These bounce down the stairs, pinging like beans tossed into a pot.

  That’s when I know he’s trying to do me like my uncle used to before I put a stop to it. Jesse jams his hand up my skirt, and I try throwing him off, but he’s too heavy. I clench my fist and pop him in the eye. He pulls away, covering his face. I sink back, so we’re seated side by side. I suck in a deep breath and jab an elbow in his side.

  “Hey,” he says. “No fair. I can’t hit girls. I’m Golden Gloves, you know.” He stands, hauling me up to face him, circling me with his arms. “I could really hurt you, babe.” And I jerk my knee up, hard as I can, between his thighs. He grunts and collapses on the steps, curling up like a pre-born baby in one of those anti-abortion posters.

  My taps hit the floor like gun blasts as I race through the vestibule and into the church. As I’m sprinting up the center aisle, I glance at the Jesus nailed on the cross over the altar. It’s a goofy idea, but I’m hoping I’ll catch his eye, trade a look, as if to ask: Did you see that? But the statue stares off somewhere over my head with a puzzled look on the blood-streaked face. Maybe he’s supposed to be gazing into heaven and wondering, Why hast thou forsaken me?

  Outside, I tie the tails of my blouse together and button my blazer all the way up. My heart’s thumping like some animal squeezing up from my chest to push out through my throat.

  At my back, a gravelly voice makes me jump. “What are you doing here?”

  I lean over, clutching my guts like I’m sick.

  “What are you running from?” Monsignor Hartwell drops his cigarette and crushes it out with his heel. He’s seen me hightailing it, so he’s not likely to buy that I’m all that ill, or even indisposed. “What’s wrong?” he says.

  Sure, he’s acting all concerned, but if I fink on Jesse, I’ll just get myself in trouble; so I go, “My grandma died.” And I burst into tears.

  Monsignor marches me straight to the school office. Weirdly, my sister Loretta is already there, hunched like an owl on the bench before the secretary, Mrs. Ortega, at her desk, and my father’s standing by the window, gazing out the venetian blinds.

  “H’ita,” my dad says when he sees me. “Sit down. I got some bad news.”

  I sink to the bench beside Loretta.

  My dad takes off his glasses and wipes the lenses with a handkerchief. “Fermina passed away this morning.” Then he folds me into his arms.

  “Why, Bette already knew,” says Monsignor as he reaches under his cassock for a pack of Salem cigarettes. “Anyone mind if I smoke?”

  Mrs. Ortega juts a thumb at the back office. “Mother Superior doesn’t allow smoking.”

  Monsignor taps out a cigarette, extends the pack to my father. “Care for one?”

  Salem is not his brand, so my father waves it away. “What do you mean Bette already knew? Knew what?”

  “Bette already knew that her grandmother passed,” Monsignor explains. He flicks his silver lighter and sucks the flame into his filter-tipped cigarette.

  “You put that out, Monsignor, or I’m going to buzz Mother Superior.” Mrs. Ortega pulls an orange plastic ashtray from a desk drawer and thrusts it at him.

  He takes the ashtray, examining it as if it’s some artifact from an ancient civilization. “She told me her grandmother had died.”

  My father shakes his head. “But how —”

  “Sometimes children, like animals, can sense such things. It’s one of the mysteries of life.” The monsignor gestures with his cigarette, like he’s making a smoke diagram to show how this works. Bluish spumes stream from his nostrils, reminding me of the brass dragon that Fermina —oh, Fermina! —uses for burning incense.

  It hits me —she’s gone! Thick, hot tears blind me, and I wail. My father hands me his kerchief and pats my back.

  “My Lord,” the monsignor says.

  “That’s it.” Mrs. Ortega pushes an intercom button and then leans forward to speak into the box on her desk. “Mother, would you step ou
t here for a moment.”

  The monsignor grinds his cigarette in the ashtray and then pockets it —ashes, stub and all —in his cassock. He reaches for the window, but he can’t get it open, though he mangles the blinds trying.

  Mother Superior steps out of her office, her pale, wimple-pinched face looking harassed, and then confounded. I can only imagine what she thought at the sight of us in that smoky room —me ratcheting up the decibels, my father thumping my back to get me to stop, Loretta hunched and rocking, and the monsignor working at the window, as though trying to fling it wide to escape the lot of us.

  As Dad steers our red-and-white finned Chevrolet Impala onto Alvarado Street —me up front and Loretta, Cary, and Rita in the backseat —I let up on the crying, which is making my forehead ache.

  As soon as I stop blubbering, my father says, “Why did you say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “About Fermina.”

  I draw a shuddery breath. “When I saw you and Loretta, I figured she died.”

  “Not that.” He switches to Spanish, so the others won’t understand.

  “Then what?” I say.

  “Dígame en español.” My father lowers his voice.

  “How come you’re talking in Spanish?” pipes Cary.

  Loretta and Rita can be so stubborn I have to pound bruises into their arms, but at least they know when to keep quiet. Not Cary. He’s the all-time, family champion, blabbermouth king of the living pests, and no amount of sibling brutality can stop his questions. I give the old man credit for being patient with the kid. When he’s fed up, Dad just says, as he does now, “I do not know. I just do not know.”

  When my father parks the car, he tells the younger kids to go inside and get something to eat. I reach for the door handle, but Dad grabs my arm. “Espérate.”