Red Light (16 page)

My EMT card came in the mail about three days later, and it took about that long for the lightest of those first marks to fade.

Nina winced every time she glimpsed a bruise, and her eyes would flash silver at the sight of the scratches on my face because they looked worse on the second and third days than they had on the first—thankfully they were the ones that faded quickly. Samantha could barely look at me, and when our eyes did catch, she’d glance quickly away but not before I’d catch the grim line her mouth would set in. All in all, it made me feel pretty bad, and I was glad it was cool enough out that I could wear turtlenecks.

“Mail for you.” Samantha pointed with her chin when I popped into the kitchen after another long day of smiling at too many people, making correct change, and dropping singles into the safe for the other cashiers at the supermarket.

“Thanks,” I said to her back and poured myself a cup of coffee.

“Sure.” She sat at the table to review the sheaf of papers she held and had nothing else to say to me, for which I felt a vague sense of guilt. Ever since that morning, night, whatever it was with Trace, this stilted feeling had existed among all of us.

I took a sip of my java and sighed. Maybe I could talk with Nina about it, I thought as I thumbed through the mail.

Credit-card offer, magazine offer, bank come-on. No, no, no, I told each envelope as I neatly shredded them with my fingers. Cell-phone offer, student-loan-consolidation offer—I had enough of those. A plain, white, legal-sized envelope. The upper left corner said “New York State Department of Health” in black letters. The envelope felt weighty, like it held more than one piece of paper.

Surprised, even a little scared to see what it contained, I stared at the paper in my hand. Yes, Bob had said I’d passed, but still, what if something had gone wrong, what if I’d screwed up a major section? I held a tremendous part of my future in my hands.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It
was
here, it
was
in my hands, and I had to know if everything I’d worked so hard for had been worth it. If I hadn’t passed, if this wasn’t my license, I would improvise and adapt. I would absolutely overcome. But first, I had to know.

My fingers went numb as I split the envelope’s seam and pulled out the paper, a thin cardstock, really.

Victoria Scotts
, I read, along with my social security number,
test score: 98
.

Please tear off this card.

Victoria Scotts, EMT-B.

Expires on…

“Hey, whatchya got?” Samantha’s voice sounded so suddenly behind me I jumped. I still don’t know how she always managed to move so silently.

I held the paper and its attached card before me as I faced her. “This.” I couldn’t help but beam as she took it from me to read for herself.

“Tori!” she exclaimed, a smile breaking out across her face. “That’s just too cool!” She clapped my shoulder. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” and I laughed because I couldn’t help it—I really had done it. “I’m official.”

“You sure are.” Sam grinned at me. “So, what are you gonna do now?”

It was a good question that deserved a good answer, and I’d given some thought to it for a while, especially since I’d broken up with Kerry.

“Find a job until I get called for the academy, take a leave of absence from school to try to catch up on some of my loans, find a place, and pay you guys back,” I said in an almost breathless rush.

“Sounds good,” Samantha nodded, “except you don’t have to pay us anything, and you don’t have to be in a rush to go anywhere. This is your home, Tori.”

My breath caught on a huge weight I hadn’t even acknowledged existed in my chest, and I stared at the ground.

“Hey…hey, Tori.” Samantha touched my chin lightly and raised my face to hers. “Tori, you don’t have to go anywhere—did you think we wanted you to?”

Her eyes were wide and brilliant blue, and they looked at me with such care that I could only nod as my eyes sparked.

“Aw, man, I’m sorry.” Sam pulled me into her arms. “I’m really sorry, it’s just…sorry.”

I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but the moment Samantha had me enfolded, I started to cry. Oddly, I’d been on the edge of tears for days, and I never, ever cried, except for those rare occasions when I dreamt of my grandmother, and even then, I banished the tears as soon as the dream dissolved.

I was still crying when Nina got home, and I couldn’t stop when she had me tucked up at her side on the sofa, head held securely against her shoulder while she kissed it and stroked my back. She held me with the same loving firmness my grandmother had, murmuring soothing words, and the sound of her voice reached through the nameless hurt and transported me back to the first time she’d spoken to me like that.

My father had come bursting into the house, screaming and yelling, demanding to see my mother, and I don’t know what possessed me, at nine years old, to defy him, to attempt to forbid him from speaking to my mother that way, but I did. He cuffed my head so hard my ears rang, and between the time he’d hit me and drawn his hand back to do it again, Nina had run in and snatched me up.

“She’s just a baby, Edward,” she said over her shoulder, omitting the
tío
or “uncle” honorific, a deadly insult in and of itself. He chased her as she carried me in her arms. I buried my head into her shoulder, my safe spot, until she was in a corner, and she put me gently down, her body between me and my father as I clung to her waist.

“She’s just a baby,” she repeated, and stroked my hand in a soothing gesture where it gripped. “You’ve done enough.”

“
Cobarde!
”
Coward!
my grandmother said, more contempt in her voice than I’d ever heard, and as I peeped from behind Nina’s waist, I could feel my eyes widen as she smashed the broom she wielded on my father’s head.

“Take Victoria to your room, right now!” my grandmother ordered as she rained more blows on my father and he danced away from her and toward the back door she was obviously herding him to.

Nina obeyed and once again scooped me up. Up in her room, I suddenly felt the shock of my father’s anger and the pain in my head, and I started to cry.

She gathered me onto her lap and into her arms, her head over mine as she spoke the same words she did now.

“It’s okay,
hermanita
, it’s all right…I’ve got you,” she said, over and over. “I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you.”

Like then, I clung to her and cried even harder; it would be a long time before I could puzzle out why.

*

I finally got a job working per diem at a private ambulance company. I’d applied at every hospital first, but University Hospital had a hiring freeze, the local Saint Vincent’s was “full-up” at the moment, and the other ones I went to wanted more experience. I heard “Sorry, outta luck, kid” at least three different times from three different emergency-response coordinators.

I stopped at the emergency room back at University anyway to say hello to Debbie and chat.

“You just keep coming back,” Debbie said and smiled, “because you’ll do well here.”

It took some doing to get my first job at that private company, though.

When I first went and interviewed, Marco, the dispatcher and the one who held the key to my future employment, said, “Sure, no problem. Call me in a week and we’ll get you a start day, probably next weekend.”

That was fantastic, so I gave my notice at the supermarket, happier than anything to give up that apron and cash my second-to-last check.

I stopped by my mom’s to give her the cash for Elena and entered quietly.

After I put the envelope on the table with a little note, I was about to step out again when my mother’s voice surprised me.

“Let me see you.” Her voice may have been sleepy, but it was still commanding.

I hastened over to her sofa and gave her a kiss hello. “Hi, Mom,” I said in Spanish. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

She shifted over and made room for me.

“Sit, Victoria. You haven’t visited in a while. What have you been doing?”

“Work, and I’ve been interviewing for EMT positions.”

My mother grimaced as she sat up, and I helped her because she’d been suffering from back pain the last few times I’d seen her. She worried me; such a sedentary lifestyle couldn’t be healthy.

“Put the light on?” she asked. “I want to look at you.”

I reached over for the lamp, unsure of what she’d look for, but I knew that she’d see a lot, and it usually wasn’t something I expected.

“You seem thinner,” she said finally. “Are you eating,
querida
? Is Nina not feeding you?”

I sighed. “Of course she’s taking good care of me. She and Samantha are wonderful.”

She patted the sofa next to her. “Sit with me,
hija.
I want to talk with you.”

As I sat next to her and she took my hand, it struck me how frail her bones felt, how delicate my mother was. Yet I knew she had once been made of steel, famous for the justice and compassion she showed. She’d been jailed in a stone room with no plumbing whatsoever and nothing to sleep on but her own jacket for protesting military juntas, had refused a police escort when she had received death threats from the drug cartels, and even after my father had left her, she had still walked proudly, at least for a while.

My grandmother had told me about that time, and she’d told me that my mother had never expected my father to really leave forever.

I couldn’t imagine what it had taken for her to move here, to this country she didn’t like, to this house with my uncle she didn’t get along with, just to make sure that Elena and I had something in our lives, to be near our aunt and cousins, to get a good education in a country where being a divorced woman wouldn’t be held against her or her children. But her depression and the U.S. requirement that she basically redo her entire degree, then retake the bar exam on top of that because she was a foreign national, were too much for her.

Yes, it was true, she hadn’t really “been there” all the time for me or for Elena when we’d been children, but she’d made sure that we’d be around people who were, people she trusted: her mother, her sister, her sister’s children. Her family.

It didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do for the last however many years, because I realized in that moment that not merely my father’s remarriage, but the loss of her sense of self, of the profession she loved, topped by the death of my grandmother, had knocked her to the ground, shattered her steel.

Suddenly, I was filled with emotion I could only describe as this: she was my mother, and when she couldn’t do something herself, this once-so-proud woman had sacrificed what was left of that pride and asked for help. I loved her and was proud of her for what she’d done—the best she could.

“You know,
amor
, Nina was always the queen of your grandmother’s heart, even mine. She was the first, and she was always the best at everything. But you,
mi hija
,” and she squeezed my fingers gently, “you were always my princess, my beautiful princess. I wanted such things for you…” She sighed. “Things I’m sorry I couldn’t give you.”

“No, Mom, you’ve done great, you’ve—”

“Hush, Tori, let me say this now, while I’m clear, while it’s just you and me and we have this time, where I can be your mother and you can be my princess.”

She smiled at me, the smile I remembered from when I was very small, and her eyes were bright with tears. Nina’s eyes, I thought, she and Nina have the same eyes, while mine were all my father. I wondered if it hurt my mother to see the resemblance.

“Nina was a queen dethroned, and you a princess in exile, but look at you! Look at what you’ve done. You’ve found a way to do everything, gracefully. My princess has been the man of the house, and for that, Victoria, I am so very sorry.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks and I impulsively hugged her, my mother, her body so frail in the circle of my arms. These moments when she was my mother, just my
mamita
, were rare, and I treasured them.

“I love you,
Mamita
, and you’ve always done your best for us. How could I not do that too?”

I felt a lot better, about work, about Trace, about everything when I went back home. I realized as I drove that the little kid part of me had never given up hope that one day my mother would come back, leave that world in her head that hurt her so much, and take not just comfort, but joy in how much Elena and I loved her. Maybe that day wasn’t too far away, I told the little girl in my head as I sighted into the rearview mirror; maybe, someday, it would come after all.

*

I got fed up after three weeks of Marco’s “Tell her I’ll call her back” every time I phoned. I’d quit my job for this one; I needed an income.

It would take something clever to get him on the phone, and I had a plan as I listened to it ring in my ear.

“County,” a female voice answered.

“Hi, can I speak with Marco, please?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”