A Manual for Cleaning Women (11 page)

At the drive-in we ordered Papa burgers and fries and malts, like always. I told her Ben could have some of mine. He was just ten months old. But she ordered him a Papa burger and a banana split. Our whole family is extravagant. Well, no, my father isn’t like this at all. He is from New England, is thrifty and responsible. I turned out a Moynihan.

After Bella had filled me in on the reunion situation she told me about Cletis, her husband of only two months. Her folks had been as mad when she got married as mine had been with me. Cletis was a construction worker, rodeo rider, roughneck. Tears rolled down Bella’s lovely cheeks as she told me what happened.

“Lou, we were happy as clams. I swear nobody ever had such a sweet tender love. Why in heaven’s name are clams happy? We had a dear little trailer in the south valley, by the river. Our little blue heaven. I cleaned house and washed dishes! I cooked, made pineapple upside-down cake and macaroni, all kinds of things, and he was proud of me, and me of him. First bad thing that happened was Daddy forgave me for marrying him and he bought us a house. On Rim Road, you know, a mansion, columns on the porch, but we didn’t want his house so Cletis and Daddy had an awful fight. I tried to explain to Daddy we didn’t need his ol’ house, how I’d be happy living with Cletis on the back of a flatbed truck. And I had to explain it over and over to Cletis too, because even though I refused to move he took to sulking. Then one day I went to the Popular Dry Goods and bought some clothes and towels, just a few things, on my old charge account I’ve had my entire life long. Cletis had a fit, said I had spent more money in two hours than he made in six months. So I just took it all outside and poured kerosene on it, set fire to everything, and we kissed and made up. Oh, Little Lou, I love him so bad, so bad! Next darn fool thing I did and why I did it I’ll never know. Mama had come to call. I guess I was just feeling like a married lady, you know? A grown-up. I made coffee and served Oreos on a little dish. Blabbed my big mouth about S.E.X. I suppose I felt I was big enough to talk to her now about S.E.X. Oh God, well, and I didn’t
know
, either, so I asked her if I could get pregnant if I swallowed Cletis’s come. She tore out of the trailer and ran home to Daddy. All hell broke loose. That night Daddy and Rex came and beat the living daylights out of Cletis. Put him in the hospital with a broken collarbone and two broken ribs. Talking about he was a pervert, and putting him in jail for sodomy and annulling the marriage. Can you imagine, going down on your own lawful wedded husband is against the
law
? Anyways I wouldn’t go home with Daddy and just stayed at Cletis’s bedside until I could bring him home. And we were fine, happy as those old clams again, even though Cletis took to drinking a lot, account of he couldn’t go back to work for a while. Then last week I look out and see this brand-new Cadillac in our driveway, with a huge stuffed Santa sitting in it, and satin ribbons all around it. I laughed, you know, ’cause it was funny, but Cletis said, ‘Happy, huh? Well, I ain’t never going to make you happy like your precious Daddy does.’ And he left. I figured he’d just gone off on a tear and he’d be back. Oh, Lou. He’s not coming back. He’s
gone
! He went to work on an oil rig off Louisiana. He didn’t even call. His trashy mother told me when she came to get his clothes and his saddle.”

Little Ben had actually eaten all that burger and most of the banana split. He threw up all over himself and Bella Lynn’s jacket. She tossed the jacket in the backseat, washed him off with napkins dipped in water while I got him out some clean clothes and a diaper. He didn’t cry once though. He loved the rock and roll music and the hillbilly music, and Bella Lynn’s voice or her hair, never took his eyes off her.

I envied Bella and Cletis, being so in love. I had adored Joe, but had always been afraid of him, trying to please him. I don’t think he ever even liked me much. I was miserable not so much because I missed him but for the whole failure of things and how it all seemed like my fault.

I told her my short sad story. How Joe was a wonderful sculptor. He had been given a Guggenheim, got a patron and a villa and foundry in Italy, and he left. “Art is his life.” (I had taken to saying that, to everybody, dramatically.) No, no child support. I didn’t even know his address.

Bella Lynn and I hugged and cried for a while and then she sighed. “Well, at least you have his baby.”

“Babies.”

“What?”

“I’m almost four months pregnant. That was the last straw for Joe, me having another baby.”

“It’s the last darn straw for you, little fool! What are you going to do? No way those folks of yours are going to help. Your ma will just kill herself all over again when she hears
this
news.”

“I don’t know what to do. Another really dumb problem … I wanted to come so bad but they wouldn’t even give me Christmas Eve off at the escrow company. So I just quit, and came. Now I’m going to have to look for a job pregnant.”

“You need an abortion, Lou. That’s all there is to it.”

“Where would I do that? Anyway … it will be as easy to have two babies alone as one.”

“As
hard.
Besides, that’s not true. Reason Ben here is so sweet is because you were with him as a baby. He’s old enough now to go to somebody while you work although it’s a crying shame to leave him. But you can’t go leaving a newborn infant.”

“Well that’s the situation.”

“You’re talking like your father. The situation is that you’re nineteen and you’re pretty. You have to find yourself a good strong decent man who will be willing to love little Ben as his own. But you’ll have a hell of a time finding somebody who’d take on two of them. He’d have to be some kind of rescuer do-gooder saint type you’d marry out of gratitude and then you’d feel guilty and hate him so you’d fall madly in love with some fly-by-night saxophone player … Oh it would be tragic, tragic, Lou. Let’s think. This is serious. Just you listen to me now and let me take care of you. Haven’t I always had you do what’s best?”

Well, far from it, as a matter of fact, but I was so confused I didn’t say anything. I wished I hadn’t told her. I had wanted just to come to the reunion and be happy, forget all about my troubles. Now they were worse, with my mother killing herself again, and Daddy not even coming.

“You wait right here. Order us coffee while I make some phone calls.” She smiled and waved to people, men mostly, who called to her from other cars at the drive-in as she made her way to the phone booth. She was in there a long time, came out twice, once to borrow a sweater and get some coffee and later to get more dimes. Ben played with the radio knobs for a while and turned the windshield wipers on and off. The carhop warmed a bottle for me; Ben drank it and fell asleep in my lap.

Bella put the top up when she got back, flashed me a smile and took off down Mesa toward the Plaza. “South of the border … down Mexico way!” she was singing.

“Okay, Lou. It’s all settled. I’ve been through this myself. It’s horrible, but it is safe and the place is clean. You’ll go in this afternoon at four and be out by ten in the morning. They’ll give you antibiotics and painkillers to bring home, but it doesn’t hurt real bad, it’s like having a period. I called home and told them we were going shopping in Juárez, were spending the night at the Camino Real. That’s where little Ben and I will be, getting to know each other, and you can come the minute it’s all over.”

“Wait a minute, Bella. I haven’t thought this out.”

“I know you haven’t. That’s why I’m doing all the thinking.”

“What if something goes wrong?”

“We’ll get you to a doctor here. They can save your life and everything in Texas. They just can’t do abortions.”

“What if I die? Who will care for Ben?”

“Well, I will! And I’ll be a darn good mother too.”

I had to laugh then. She made sense. In fact a big load was off my mind. Not worrying about a little infant in addition to Ben. God, what a relief. She was right. An abortion was the best thing to do. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the leather seat.

“I don’t have any money! What does it cost?”

“Five hundred. Cash. Which I happen to have in my hot little hand. I have money to burn. Every time I go near Mama or Daddy—sometimes I just want a hug or to tell ’em I miss Cletis or ask maybe should I go to secretarial school—they shove money at me, go get yourself something pretty.”

“I know,” I said. I knew what that was like. Or did, before my folks disowned me. “I used to think if a big old tiger bit off my hand and I went running up to my mother she’d just slap some money on the stump. Or make a joke … ‘What’s that, the sound of one hand clapping?’”

We came to the bridge and the smell of Mexico. Smoke and chili and beer. Carnations and candles and kerosene. Oranges and Delicados and urine. I buzzed the window down and hung my head out, glad to be home. Church bells, ranchera music, bebop jazz, mambos. Christmas carols from the tourist shops. Rattling exhaust pipes, honkings, drunken American soldiers from Fort Bliss. El Paso matrons, serious shoppers, carrying piñatas and jugs of rum. There were new shopping areas and a luxurious new hotel, where one gracious young man took the car, another the bags, and still another gathered Ben into his arms without waking him. Our room was elegant, with fine weavings and rugs, good fake antiquities and bright folk art. The shuttered windows opened onto a patio with a tiled fountain, lush gardens, a steaming swimming pool beyond. Bella tipped everyone and got on the phone to room service. Jug of coffee, rum, Coke, pastries, fruit. I had formula and cereal and plenty of clean bottles for Ben, begged her not to feed him candy and ice cream.

“Flan?” she asked. I nodded. “Flan,” she told the phone. Bella called the gift shop and ordered a size 8 bathing suit, crayons, any toys they had, and fashion magazines. “Maybe we should stay here the whole time! Plumb forget Christmas!” she said.

*   *   *

We walked around the grounds with Ben between us. I was so relaxed and happy I was surprised when Bella Lynn said, “Okay, hon, it’s time for you to go.”

She gave me the five hundred dollars. Told me to take a cab back to the hotel and have her come down and pay it. “You can’t take any other money or identification with you. You can give them my name, and this number.”

She and Ben waved good-bye to me after she had put me in a cab, paid for it and told him where to go.

The taxi took me to the Nueva Poblana Restaurant, to the back entrance of the parking lot, where I would wait for two men dressed in black, wearing dark glasses.

I was only there for two or three minutes before they appeared behind me. Quickly and silently an old sedan pulled up. One of the men opened the door and beckoned to me to get in, the other ran around to the other side. The driver, a young boy, looked around, nodded and took off. The back windows were curtained, the seat so low I couldn’t see out; it seemed we were driving in circles at first and then the whap whap whap of a stretch of highway, more circles, a stop. The creaking of heavy wooden gates. We drove a few yards and stopped, the gate closed behind us.

I had a glimpse of the courtyard as I was led inside by an old woman in black. She didn’t exactly look at me with scorn but her failure to speak or greet me was so devoid of usual Mexican warmth and graciousness it felt like an insult.

The building was yellow brick, maybe an old factory, the ground was entirely cemented, but there were still canaries, pots of four o’clocks and portulacas. Bolero music, laughter, and the clatter of dishes from across the yard. Chicken cooking, a smell of onions and garlic, epazote.

A businesslike woman nodded to me from her desk, and when I sat down she shook my hand but did not give her name. She asked for my name and the five hundred dollars, please. The name and number of someone to call in case of an emergency. That was all she asked, and I signed nothing. She spoke little English but I didn’t speak Spanish to her, or to any of them; it would have seemed too familiar a thing to do.

“At five o’clock the doctor will come. You will have exam, catheter placed in utero. During the night cause contractions but sleeping medicine, you don’t feel bad. No food, water after dinner. Early morning spontaneous abortion most usually. Six o’clock you go to operating room, go to sleep, get D and C. Wake up in your bed. We give you ampicillin against infection, codeine for pain. At ten car will take you to Juárez or to El Paso Airport or bus.”

The old woman took me to my bed, which was in a dark room with six other beds. She held up her hand to show five o’clock, then pointed to the bed, then gestured toward a sitting room across the hall.

There had been so little sound that I was surprised to find twenty women in the room, all Americans. Three of them were girls, almost children, with their mothers. The others were emphatically alone, reading magazines, sitting. Four of the women were in their forties, perhaps even fifties … change-of-life pregnancies, I imagined, which proved to be true. The rest of the women seemed to be in their late teens or early twenties. Every one of them looked frightened, embarrassed, but most of all, intensely ashamed. That they had done something terrible. Shame. There appeared to be no bond of sympathy between any of them; my entrance was scarcely noticed. A pregnant Mexican woman swirled a dirty damp mop around, staring at us all with undisguised curiosity and contempt. I felt an unreasonable fury toward her. What do you tell your priest, bitch? You have no husband and seven children … you have to work in this wicked place or starve? Oh, God, that was probably true. I felt a tiredness, an immense sadness, for her, for all of us in the room.

We were, each of us, alone. The young girls perhaps most of all, for even though two of them were crying, their mothers also seemed distant from them, staring out into the room, isolated in their own shame and anger. Alone. Tears started to come to my eyes, because Joe was gone, because my mother wasn’t there, ever.

I didn’t want to have an abortion. I didn’t need an abortion. The scenarios I imagined for all the other women in the room were all awful, painful stories, impossible situations. Rape, incest, all kinds of serious things. I could take care of this baby. We would be a family. It and Ben and me. A real family. Maybe I’m crazy. At least this is my own decision. Bella Lynn is always telling me what to do.