America's Dream (39 page)

“It’s such a dreary day,” She says, “I baked a torta.” She giggles. Once the empleadas had a great laugh over the meaning of the word in their respective countries.

“I have too much to do here,” América explains. “They had a party yesterday.”

“You poor thing! Another time, then.”

América wouldn’t have gone anyway. Frida has probably told Mercedes about her call yesterday. She doesn’t want to talk about it, to reveal her life to anyone, not even these women who consider her a friend.

I have no friends. I only have Correa.

Cesaron para mí

el placer, la ilusión,

¡Ay de mí,

que me mata esta fuerte pasión! y tú ángel querido,

no has comprendido lo que es amor

Somehow she gets through the day, drags herself from chore to chore, the same song playing in her head whenever she’s not attending to Meghan or Kyle. When Karen Leverett comes home, the house is clean, the children have been picked up from school, driven to their swimming lesson, fed and bathed and readied for bed so that all she has to do is read them a story and tuck them in, kiss them perhaps, on the forehead before curling up on the leather couch in the den, her papers strewn all over the brightly polished granite coffee table.

She has forgotten there’s another man in her life, but Darío calls her just as she’s drifting off to sleep.

“Did you get your call?” “Call?”

“You said you couldn’t come this weekend—” “Oh, right. My call. Yes, I did.”

The silence that follows is not like those of a few days ago. Those silences were filled with expectation. This one is empty, nothing but a low electric hum.

“Are you all right?” Darío is tentative again. She can almost see his hurt puppy expression. She wants to reassure him, but she resents this feeling that she has to take care of him.

“Darío, I’m really tired—”

“Okay, I see.” Another awkward silence in which she imagines he’s trying to understand what she really means. “Do you want me to call you tomorrow?”

“Yes. Tomorrow. Call me earlier, okéi? I’m just really tired now.”

“Good night, then. Get some rest.”

She falls asleep almost the minute she hangs up the phone.

Correa calls at two in the morning, professing his love but really checking up on her. He’s in Vieques. Rosalinda told her that’s where he went when he left Estrella’s house yesterday morning. Rosalinda, her daughter, who she now thinks of as Correa’s al- cahueta. She had once asked herself whose side Rosalinda was on, and now she knows.

And they say, América broods, that a daughter never leaves you. It’s not true. They leave as soon as they can get away with it, as soon as they’re weaned. They leave you physically, but first they leave you spiritually. They pry the child in themselves from your grip the minute they realize they’ll never have you the way they did when they suckled at your breast. Then they want to get away from you as fast as they can, to find another to cleave to—a man, always a man.

And it’s Tuesday. She didn’t sleep well after Correa’s call.

“Did you get a present for me?” he asked, and she didn’t know what he was talking about. But then she remembered. He wanted her to talk to him the way she did a few nights ago. She didn’t want to, but he kept asking if she loved him, if she was bringing him sweet honey, and hot with shame, she had to say yes.

“Are you all right?” Karen asks when América drops and breaks a mug.

“I’m okéi,” América says, smiling, and Karen doesn’t press her. Her head feels wrapped in gauze. “Can I have my toast now?”

Kyle asks, and she sets it down, not remembering how long she held it over the plate.

“You look tired,” Karen suggests, and América smiles and says she’s a bit tired, but she’s okéi. No worry.

They leave, and she’s alone in the house again. This house that’s not hers that she takes care of as if it were. Better.

Seven days left. Correa will be waiting for me at the airport. She picks up Meghan from school and takes her to the play-

ground, but it’s damp again today, and there are no other chil- dren. Meghan stands in front of her, forlorn.

“But there’s nothing to do, América,” she complains.

“Go slide.” América points toward the plastic orange tunnel leaning against a wooden platform.

“But there’s nobody here.” Meghan looks around as if to make sure. “See?”

“You want go home?”

“Yes. It’s cold.” She presses herself into América’s arms. “Okéi, baby, we go home.” América holds her tight, so tight

Meghan cries out. “You’re squeezing me!”

“You América baby, yes?”

Meghan doesn’t answer, and América doesn’t ask again. They drive home in the drizzle, listening to a tape of children’s songs. “Willoughby wallabee woo, an elephant sat on you.”

Frida calls that evening.

“I talked to my sister and my daughter. They’ll ask around about a situation.”

“Okéi.”

“Are you all right, América? You sound sad.” “I’m a little tired, that’s all.”

“Hopefully we can take the kids to the playground tomorrow, if it’s nice out.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we’ll see you there?” “Maybe.”

They will all be there. Frida and Mercedes, Liana and Adela, waiting for her, curious to know why she would leave the Leveretts after only three months. But she will not be there. She will not tell them the truth, and she will not tell them a lie. So she will not be at the playground tomorrow, even if it’s a nice day.

He calls at nine-thirty. To make sure she’s there, she knows, but he says it’s to give her information on her flight. “I paid for the ticket,” he says. “All you have to do is identify yourself at the American Airlines desk.”

“Okéi.”

“Do you have a ride to the airport?” “I’ll get one.”

“Who? The man of the house?” He chortles. “My aunt.”

This phone call is like their old conversations. He’s no longer the sweet lover. He’s telling her what to do. Every once in a while he calls her baby. But now that he knows where she is, and that she’s willing to come back to him, he’s the man he’s always been.

Darío calls at ten.

“Is this a good time?” he asks.

“I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to be rude.” “I thought maybe I said something—”

“It wasn’t you, Darío. You didn’t do anything.” She’d like to tell him what’s going on, but why get him involved in something that has nothing to do with him? “I have some…family problems.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” “I don’t think so, but thank you.”

He makes a sound, a hum, the beginning of a song, maybe. But nothing comes after it.

“You know how to reach me at my parents’, if there’s anything I can do,” he finally says.

It’s the concern in his voice that breaks her resolve to keep it all to herself, to not involve him. “I had a call from…from the man I lived with…in Vieques.”

“What did he want?”

To rape me, to beat me, to show me who’s boss. “He wants me back.” Her voice quavers, and she presses her fingers against her lips to keep them from trembling.

“Are you going?” “I don’t want to…”

“Don’t go then. Your life is here now.”

“Some life,” she mutters, but he doesn’t hear her.

“It’s not easy to make a fresh start, believe me, I know…” Is

that a sob she hears? No, it isn’t. It’s his voice, crackly, nervous. “Doña Paulina might have mentioned…or your cousins…I had

some problems—”

“Everybody has problems.” América cuts him off, hoping he’ll stop.

“I…I was just a kid, you know, and got involved with the wrong people…”

He takes a deep breath, and América covers her eyes. She can sense the beginning of a confession, and she doesn’t want to hear it, she just doesn’t want to hear it right now.

His voice drops to a near whisper. “I had a drug habit. It almost killed my parents. It killed my wife…” He breathes a sigh of relief. On her end, América is tensed into knots. How does one re- spond to such an admission? What does he expect me to say? “I

thought she died of AIDS.” “Yes, she did.”

“You said the drugs killed her.”

“She got AIDS from an infected needle.”

He sounds testy, and América realizes this is not what the confession is about.

“Do you forgive me?” “For what?”

“I just told you something…were you listening?” He’s upset, she can hear it in the way his voice cracks.

“You told me you were a drug user and your wife died of AIDS. What’s there to forgive in that?” And then it occurs to her, maybe he killed her.

“You don’t care that I used drugs?” “Are you still using them?”

“No. I’ve been clean for four years. Did you notice I didn’t drink at the nightclub?”

“I don’t care what you did years ago. It has nothing to do with me.” And, she wants to say, I have my own problems, today, right now, that have nothing to do with you. Why am I lying here listening to your life story?

“You’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you, Darío. Why would I be mad?” “You’re not being very kind.”

América is offended by this. “I have to go,” she says. “It’s late.” “Good night.”

He’s the one who’s angry now, she thinks. But what did he expect? I tell him I have a problem, and next thing that happens is he’s telling me his. Like mine don’t matter. Like I’m supposed to forget about mine and worry about his. Who does he think he is?

She’s so agitated that she can’t get comfortable. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I meet normal men? Why do I have to be involved in one place with an abuser and come all the way across an ocean to get involved with a victim? She punches the pillows into shape. Well, I’m not really involved with Darío. Just a few phone calls, a trip to the circus. That’s nothing.

It’s something. I’ve been beat for less than that. Correa has punched me in the stomach for just walking on the same side of the street as another man. For just looking in his direction. If Correa knew half the encounters I’ve had with Darío, he’d kill me.

She covers her head with the pillow, as if warding off a blow. Oh, my God, whatever made me think I could get away with this?

In six days Correa will be waiting for me at the airport, she thinks on Wednesday morning.

She’s picking up in Kyle’s room. She lines up the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers next to one another on the shelf and under them, Lord Zed and his minions. On another shelf she stores the Game Boy next to a stack of games. On the floor, Kyle has left a half-completed puzzle. It’s a map of the United States, with Hawaii floating on the left lower corner and Alaska floating on the left upper. And nothing else. No Canada, no Mexico, no Caribbean. The fifty colorful puzzle pieces are all labeled with the names of the states. Tennessee. Oregon. Nebraska.

What I’ll do, América tells herself, is cash the ticket in and buy one to somewhere else. Arizona, maybe. She doesn’t know where the puzzle piece for Arizona fits, but it doesn’t matter. If she doesn’t know where it is, maybe neither does Correa.

Paulina calls that evening. “Ay, mi’ja, call your mother.” Paulina is poised on the edge of an attack of los nervios. “Ester called. She wanted to talk to you but didn’t want me to give her your number. She said she can’t be trusted with it. What is this all about? Your own mother doesn’t know how to reach you?”

“She thought it might slip out when she’s…like that.” “Like what? What do you mean? She’s your mother.” “She’s not reliable if she’s had a few beers.”

“Oh, dear Lord!”

When América calls her, Ester is as agitated as Paulina.

“I came home from work,” she says as soon as she recognizes América’s voice. No preamble, no how are you. “And most of the stuff was gone. He’s been taking things out of here all day.”

She’s not sure, at first, who Ester is talking about.

“The first thing I noticed was that the rocker was gone from the porch. Then the couch in the living room. I thought we were robbed. I went to my room, but nothing there was gone, thank God. But your room was empty. Your bed and dressers, all the stuff you left. He took the coffeemaker and the vajilla, too.”

“Slow down, Mami, take it easy.”

Ester stops, takes a breath. “He cleaned out Rosalinda’s room. He even took the television.” Querulous, as if that were the greater tragedy.

“Is he coming back?”

“How would I know if he’s coming back or not? That sinver- güenza! He waited until I wasn’t home.”

“Well, don’t let him in if he does.”

“What would he come for? There’s nothing left that belongs to him.”

“Just in case, Mami.”

“That sinvergüenza,” she repeats.

“Maybe you should go over to Don Irving’s.”

“Nah, I won’t bother him. He’s no good at this stuff.” Like she is. “I just thought you should know.”

“Well, thank you,” she says dryly.

“He’s up to something,” Ester speculates. “He’s probably found himself another woman and wants to make you jealous.”

I wish, thinks América. “He won’t bother you anymore.”

“I have my machete, just in case.” She laughs halfheartedly.

On Thursday evening, Karen gives her details of the trip she and Charlie are taking.

“We’re driving to Montauk,” she says. “We’ll leave early to avoid the rush.”

They’re in the family room. The children are in bed. América came down to get a cup of tea, and Karen walked out of the den with a list in her hand.

“This is the number of the hotel where we’re staying, but you can also page us.” In case América doesn’t already have her and Charlie’s beeper numbers in twenty different places, she’s written them down on this list too. “But we’ll also call every night.”

“Okéi.” She will not tell Karen she’s quitting, won’t spoil her weekend. But on Monday, when they come down for breakfast, she will be gone.

“Here’s the money for this week,” Karen says, handing her an envelope, “and some grocery and incidental money. In case you want to take the kids to the movies or something.”

She will take the car to the station early in the morning, will leave a note on the counter, in as much English as she can remem- ber, saying she’s sorry, but she had to go.

“We’ll be home early on Sunday,” says Karen.