America's Dream (16 page)

She sits up. Outside her door, one of Ester’s soap opera stars is screaming hysterically. The screams trail off, and a male an- nouncer tells viewers that new, improved Tide with Bleach out- cleans all others.

We’re stupid! All women are stupid! We’ve let ourselves believe that men are better than we are. And we’ve told our sons that, and we’ve told our daughters.

She undoes her ponytail, pulling off the scrunchy in one tug.

¡Ay, Dios mío! I’m going crazy. I sound like those feminists that tell every woman to have an abortion and every man to clean house. She shakes her head to loosen her hair, lets it brush her shoulders. If it were only that easy! She ties her hair up again, into a knot atop her head. Pagán is probably right. I have been listening in on too many conversations at La Casa!

“Dersafoncolferye.”

“Excuse?” She’s changing the tablecloths on the verandah when Don Irving finds her.

He takes the cigar out of his mouth. “A phone call, in the of- fice.”

“For me?” It can only be bad news. The last time she was unex- pectedly called at work was when Rosalinda keeled over in school after lunch and had to be rushed to the hospital to get her appen- dix removed. Running from the front of the hotel, through the courtyard, down the back steps, around the pool to the office, she imagines all sorts of scenarios involving Rosalinda

in an emergency room in Fajardo. When she finally comes into the office from where Don Irving manages La Casa, She’s out of breath, her heart is racing, and she’s almost in tears.

“¿Haló?”

“Hi, América?” It’s a familiar voice, speaking English. “Sí.”

“Itskarnlevret.” “Excuse?”

“Karen Leverett, remember, with the children, Meghan and Kyle?”

“Ay, Mrs. Leverett! How are you?” She drops onto the chair by the counter where the tourists sign their credit card bills.

“You sound out of breath.”

“I run.” She takes in air, lets it out slowly. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I’m okéi now. How the children?”

“They’re good, everyone’s fine here. How are you?”

“Fine too.” There’s only one reason why Mrs. Leverett is calling her. “You’re coming back?”

“Oh, no, no,” she giggles, “it’s only been a week. I wish we could vacation that often.”

She giggles again, but América doesn’t know why because she hasn’t understood everything she’s said. “Yes,” she responds.

“América, Charlie and I have been talking—” “Excuse, Mrs. Leverett?”

“Yes?”

“Can you talk little more slow?” América blushes. She must think I’m stupid, she tells herself, and holds the phone closer to her ear. “Sorry, I no understand inglis too good on phone.”

“Oh, sure, I’m sorry, of course. Anyway, Charlie, Mr. Leverett, and I were talking, and we talked to Irving. You know he has a very high opinion of you.”

Mr. Leverett. Talking. Irving. You. A response is expected. “Uhmm.”

“And we, well, the children really like you. And our housekeep- er, she was from Ireland and she had to go back. And we

have to hire someone. And, well, Irving says you could use a change. So, we were wondering if you would ever consider leaving La Casa and coming to work for us here.”

Children like you. Housekeeper. Island. Higher someone. Irving. Leave La Casa. Work here. “I’m sorry…” She’s dizzy with the effort to understand.

“You don’t have to answer now. You can think about it and call me, collect. You have the number, don’t you?”

“Number?”

“Our telephone number. If you lost it, Irving has it.” “Ah, yes, your number. I have at home.”

“Great! Can you call me on Tuesday if you think you might be interested? If you are, we can talk in more detail.”

“Call Tuesday.”

“In the evening is best. After eight o’clock.” “Tuesday, eight o’clock.”

“Talk to you then. The children send their love.” “Okéi.”

She sets the phone down. In her left hand she still holds the rag she was using to wipe down each table before replacing the clean tablecloths. She thinks she knows what Mrs. Leverett asked but is not sure. Leave La Casa and go to New York? It can’t be.

Don Irving walks in, sits on the office chair behind a desk usually occupied by his bookkeeper, who’s out sick.

“Whadyathink?” His hazel eyes twinkle, as if he’s heard a very funny joke and is still laughing.

“You talk to her?”

“She wanted to know if you would come work for her, in New York.”

“In New York?”

“In her house, as her housekeeper, and, you know, baby-sitter.” “You say yes?”

He laughs, and the glint in his eye makes him look younger. “I have nothing to do with that! I told her it might be good for you to do something different.” He leans toward her, lowers his voice confidentially. “It might be good for you to get away from

here. You know what I mean.” He looks vaguely out the window. She follows his gaze, half expecting to see Correa standing under the mango tree. But he’s never where she expects him to

be.

“In New York is cold?”

“That’s why they all come here.” Don Irving chuckles. “I don’t know.”

“If it doesn’t work out,” he leans toward her again, “you’ll al- ways have a place here.”

It makes her nervous to have him so close, so fatherlike. “I think about.”

He leans back, punctuates the end of the conversation with a slap on the knees. “You do that,” he says, and turns toward the ledger on the desk in front of him.

“Thank you,” she says, but he doesn’t seem to hear her.

She returns to the verandah, troubled as much by the phone call as by Don Irving’s interference. She suspects Ester’s influence. Didn’t Ester suggest to América that she leave Vieques? Didn’t Ester tell her Don Irving could help her find a job? Maybe the Leveretts are Don Irving’s friends. Maybe he called them and asked them to come to Vieques. Maybe the day he asked América to baby-sit for them María was not sick at all. Maybe Don Irving asked the Leveretts to convince her to go to New York with them. But why would Don Irving do such a thing? He likes her and Ester, but she doesn’t believe he would concoct such an elaborate scheme.

Correa will never let me go. He won’t let me leave Vieques to work interna, in someone else’s home. As it is, he’s always snooping around La Casa, suspicious of every man whose bed I have to make, whose clothes I have to pick up from wherever he dropped them after a night on the town.

New York. It’s so far away. América has never been anywhere but Fajardo, and she only stayed there a month, hiding out in the same house where Rosalinda now lives with Correa’s aunt and cousin. She didn’t think much of it. It was a big town, noisier and more congested than Vieques.

Some of her neighbors who have gone to New York talk

about how hard life is over there, about apartments infested with roaches and mice, about drive-by shootings and drug deals on their doorsteps. The ones who’ve had success in New York come back with a stick up their ass. Paulina’s daughter Carmen, who’s a few months older than América, is like that, always criticizing Puerto Ricans, talking about how things would be better if the island were a state.

No, she couldn’t live in New York. The tourists who come in the winter gather around the portable radio in the Bohío to listen to the news, and they whoop and holler when the weather is an- nounced and there are snowstorms in New York and they’re in Vieques. She’s seen stories on television of long lines of cars stuck on wide highways covered with snow, and trucks jackknifed across roads packed with ice and people holding on to one another as they try to hop slushy puddles with the wind blowing hard as a hurricane, their heavy clothes making them look like bears with scarves. When tourists from New York show up here, they’re pale and sickly-looking, and it takes them a while to look healthy, once the sun touches their cheeks and they can move freely be- cause they’re not wrapped up in all that clothing they must wear all the time. No, I couldn’t live like that.

Correa will never let it happen. Even if she swore it was for a few weeks, to try it, he’d not allow it. Once, when Paulina was visiting and offered to take her back for a couple of weeks he said she couldn’t go anywhere without him. If he couldn’t go, she couldn’t go. And he couldn’t go, so she didn’t.

He says that Puerto Rican women who go to New York come back behaving like Americanas, and he doesn’t like Americanas. “Our Portorras,” he says, “the old-fashioned ones I’m talking about, know how to treat a man, they know the meaning of the word
respect.
Our women,” he tells his friends, “are well trained.” She winces at the memories of Correa’s training, the punches and slaps, the kicks, the rapes. It is rape, she tells herself, if I don’t want to do it. She shakes her head. ¡Ay, Dios mío! It’s too much

to think about! She hits her temple with the palm

of her hand, as if to chase away the thoughts.

She’s finished with the tables on the verandah, has dusted the railings, swept and mopped the tile floor, chased spiders from the corners. She brings the dirty tablecloths to Nilda in the laundry shed.

“Are you okay?” Nilda asks.

The question startles América, and she peeks in the little mirror over the sink, where her reflection looks back, a deep furrow between her eyebrows, her lips pursed tight as a dog’s asshole. “I’m fine,” she says, rubbing the expression away.

“You looked mad.”

“No, I’m not angry. Just a little tired. See you tomorrow.”

She feels Nilda’s eyes on her. Busybody! Always meddling in other people’s affairs. If I go to New York, I won’t tell anyone. I’ll not show up for work one day, and a week later they’ll get a postcard with a picture of a tall building or something. No one has to know my business. It’s my life.

She stops in the middle of the path, where the two trees on opposite sides from a canopy over pebbly dirt. No one has to know. She shakes her head, walks on. A snake crosses in front of her, slow and sinuous, unconcerned. She freezes, stares as it esses its way across the sandy portion of the path, leaving a faint trace of its shape, subtle but unmistakable. She jumps over where the snake crossed, so as not to distrub its signature. She walks fast away from it, wondering if it’s bad luck or good luck or no luck at all when a snake crosses your path.

“You’re really considering it, aren’t you?” Ester and América face each other over dinner, rice with cuttlefish, fried sweet plantains on the side.

“I guess.”

Ester chews for a minute, gesticulates with her fork. “What about Rosalinda? Would you take her with you?”

“It’s probably better if I send for her once I’m settled.”

“Are those people going to want your daughter in their house?” It occurs to América that Mrs. Leverett hasn’t asked her if she

has children. Maybe she doesn’t care. Or maybe Don Irving told her about Rosalinda. “Maybe I can rent a place for us both near where I work.”

Ester takes another forkful, chews quietly, looks down at her plate, picks out the tiny gray tentacles, distributes them so that each forkful will have a piece of meat on it. América watches her, waiting for the inevitable question, knowing it’s lurking in the back of Ester’s mind but she’s afraid to articulate it, or, perhaps, is waiting for América to say something.

“If you want to come too,” América says, “you can.”

Ester looks up, eyes watery, whether from liquor or emotion, América can’t tell. “Nah. I don’t like cities,” she says, as if she’s traveled extensively.

“But you might like to visit. You haven’t seen Paulina in years.” “Bah!” Ester waves her fork as if it were a magic wand and all the things she doesn’t like will disappear with the right move. “What about Correa?” It’s a threat, not a statement, as if Ester

were testing her resolve.

“He doesn’t have to know where I am,” América says, eyes twinkling, repeating her mother’s words of a few weeks ago.

Ester smiles mischievously. There is still a bit of child in her, América notes. There is still spirit.

“I’m not going to tell him,” she says with a chuckle. “Just don’t tell me where you’re going, in case he…” she stuffs a forkful in her mouth as if to shut herself up.

“He wouldn’t dare hurt you, Mami. He’s never tried, has he?” Ester shakes her head. “He threatens.”

“We’ll tell Odilio to keep an eye out. This is your house. If he tries anything, you can have him arrested.”

She wonders where these words are coming from. Arrest Cor- rea? Five times Officer Odilio Pagán has shown up at her house when Correa is beating her, because the neighbors have com- plained about her screams. Five times Rosalinda has stood on the porch screeching at her father to stop hurting her mother. Five times Odilio Pagán has wrestled Correa outside, has

told him he has to take him to jail. Five times América has run out and told Odilio to leave Correa alone, that he didn’t do any- thing, that the bruises on her face and arms are self-inflicted. “I fell off a chair when I was hanging curtains.” “I fell down the steps at La Casa.” “We were just arguing. The neighbors should mind their own business.” “And you, Rosalinda,” América has yelled at her daughter, “get back to your room and stop making trouble for your father.”

Five times Odilio Pagán has pulled her aside, has told her she’s within her rights to have Correa arrested. Five times she’s said no, it was nothing, he’s just had too much to drink. “You know how he gets when he drinks.” Countless times Odilio Pagán has told her she’s a fool to let Correa get away with it. And many more times América has wished she weren’t so scared of what Correa would do to her if she pressed charges against him, if she caused him the embarrassment of spending a night in jail.

Ester smiles sadly, all the mischief gone out of her. “Yes, of course. I can have him arrested.”

She writes her questions on a piece of notebook paper that she folds and keeps inside her bra. How much will I make a week? How many hours will I work? How many days? Do I get a vaca- tion? Do I have my own room, or do I sleep with the kids? She writes the questions down as they occur to her, not sure if she will ask them, using them to organize her thoughts, to make herself focus on the job, not the opportunity.