Red Sky at Morning (13 page)

"Steenie," Marcia said, "you lie better and more often than anybody I know. I don't think you'll ever make it to medical school. You're going to be a career grocery-bagger at Safeway, and get a testimonial dinner after forty years of putting the lettuce and the eggs at the bottom of the sack, with the cans on top."

We walked Marcia home, and then I walked Steenie home. His father was asleep, fully dressed, on the living room couch. Mrs. Stenopolous shushed us and we tiptoed into the kitchen. "Your father's been delivering babies since six this morning," she told Steenie. "Why do these women always wait until the snow's three feet deep before they have labor pains? He delivered four at the hospital, two at home and one in the drunk tank at the Police Station. Then an hour ago a police car radioed in to headquarters and they telephoned him to hustle out to the Texcoco Road and deliver twins in the back of a pickup."

"It sounds like a very exciting life, Mrs. Stenopolous," I said.

"Oh, God!"

"Can Josh and I go into Dad's study?" Steenie asked.

"Sure," she said. "Go look at the gruesome pictures. Go look at photographs of breech deliveries. Why can't you get your sex education in the gutter like the other boys?"

The
Handbook on Obstetrics
was a revelation, and I learned a number of new and useful words, but I didn't see how Dr. Stenopolous could look at that sort of thing all day and remain interested in Mrs. Stenopolous at night.

It was good, later, to get back to a house without Jimbob Buel in it. Mother was on the telephone, talking to someone at the hospital, and saying, "You mustn't forget that Mr. Buel has asthma, too, and finds breathing difficult under any circumstances."

"And don't forget to send the bills to you," I said.

"Oh, yes," she went on, "and send all the bills to me, Mrs. Francis Arnold, Seven-Nineteen Camino Tuerto."

After she hung up, she turned to me and said, "You think this is all very funny, don't you? Of course, you've been blessed with good health. You don't know what it's like to have pneumonia."

"I'm from the South myself," I said, "but I know better than to go stomping around in the snow with bedroom slippers on. I'm surprised Amadeo didn't bean him with the snow shovel."

"Amadeo," she said, "seems to be forgetting that he's a servant and not a member of the family. Your father's always been too lenient with both of them. He seems to lose all perspective whenever he comes to Sagrado, and forgets his class distinctions. Class distinctions are extremely important, because without them nobody knows where his place in life is. A stable society is a society in which everyone knows his situation."

"And anything else is Red Communism, right?"

"Don't you dare be sarcastic with me. Don't you dare be snotty. You're already picking up a lot of filthy manners from those tacky trash you go to school with, that Greek boy and that Davidson girl. Do you know that she's Jewish?"

"I thought her father was the Episcopal minister," I said.

"He is," she said. "That's just the point. That's the first thing they do, become Episcopals."

"Well, if they're Episcopals, how can they be Jewish? I mean, if you switch from being a Baptist to being a Methodist, you're not a Baptist any more."

"I don't care how Episcopalian they pretend to be. I don't care if one of them becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury."

"Okay," I said. "First thing tomorrow I'll go out and paint a swastika on St. Thomas's."

"You just shut your mouth, Joshua M. Arnold, or I'll come over there and slap it shut for you. I'm going to write your father about your behavior."

"You might mention in the same letter that Jimbob's got pneumonia. Dad might need some cheering up."

She got up from her chair and walked three or four steps and slapped me on the cheek with her right hand. I didn't even have time to flinch; she'd never slapped me before. It didn't really hurt, but it stung, and it made me sick to my stomach. I felt as though I'd been hit by a crazy stranger. I wanted to hit her back, to slug her a good one, so I locked my hands behind my back to be sure I wouldn't. She cracked me another one, backhand, on the nose, and it made tears come to my eyes. I could feel my nose starting to bleed. There wasn't anything I could do. I just stood there with my hands behind me, wondering what was happening, and what was going to happen. I was much bigger than she was, and heavier and stronger. I'd never noticed before what a little woman my mother was. I looked at her face closely while she was hitting me, and it was a stranger's face. Her cheeks were fuller than they'd ever been, and her skin was gray. There were tiny grape-colored lines in her cheeks near her nose, and the whites of her eyes were pink, as if she'd been swimming in a chlorinated pool. Each time she slapped me I caught a whiff of sherry.

She said, "Apologize! Apologize! Apologize!" and each time she said it she slapped me. But when I opened my mouth she hit me in it. I don't know how many times she slapped me. My face was getting numb, and the slaps sent little dark red drops of blood from my nose flying around the room. After five or six blows, I realized, in a detached and clear-headed way, that I wasn't angry any more, just bored. So I finally brought my hands around in front of me and grabbed her wrists and held them. They were thin and without strength. I said, as slowly and clearly as I could, "I'm sorry Mother," and dropped her wrists and walked into my bedroom. It was only after I'd sat down on the side of the bed that my legs began to tremble.

I sat in the dark for several minutes, waiting for her to come in and start again, but she didn't. I turned on the light and went into the bathroom and wiped the blood off my face with a wet washcloth, and then I threw up the coffee that Chango's parents had served me.

When I was in bed, Excilda came in with a grilled cheese and chile sandwich and made me eat it. I finished it quickly and she said, "Me and Amadeo just got fired. She just came into the kitchen while I was doing the dishes and Amadeo was having a cup of coffee and said 'You're fired. Both of you. Get out of my house.' What's the matter with her? Is she crazy?"

"I don't know what the matter with her is, Excilda. I don't even think she can fire you. I don't think anybody but my father can fire you, since he hired you, and he's not about to do that."

"So what do you think we ought to do? Write him a letter? He's out there floating on the ocean shooting Germans. There's nothing he can do in Sagrado until he comes back, and he's not coming back for a long time. You can't be a
patrón
when you're some place else."

"Maybe I can talk to her," I suggested. "Maybe she'll be in a different mood tomorrow."

"Me and Amadeo don't want you mixed up in it," she said. "You're just a boy, and we don't need help from any boys." She paused and looked down at her hands. "You know, we worked for your father for thirteen years, since you were a little baby. We talked it over every summer with your father, and every summer him and Amadeo had the same argument, and we always got a raise. And you know, he made me have my babies in the hospital and he paid the doctor for it every time? You know when Osmundo was born with the funny-looking mouth he paid for the dentist and the braces? You know he sent us money in the winter sometimes, and once he even bought us a new cow when the old one died? You know my eight-year-old boy is named Francisco after your father, and he came to the church up in Río Conejo to be godfather to him? How can your mother just tell us we're fired after all that?"

"That's what I mean," I said. "She can't fire you. She doesn't have the authority."

"You want to be the one to tell her that? I don't and Amadeo don't. She says we're fired, and we sure feel fired, so I guess we're fired. Maybe when the war's over and your father can come here and give us the job again, but I don't know if we want to work here any more. There's no pride in working for somebody who doesn't like you."

Amadeo came to the bedroom door, and said, "Come on, Excilda. Let's go." He kept his head down and wouldn't look at me. Excilda took the sandwich plate and said, "Let me wash this up, and I'll come. You come up to Conejo and visit us when you can. I'll teach you how to milk a nanny goat."

I heard Amadeo start his old pickup, and heard the wheels with the tire chains spin in the snow, and then it went off down Camino Tuerto, sounding very loud without its muffler. Amedeo had been planning to get a new muffler with his next pay check.

It was impossible to sleep because I couldn't stop crying. I got up and put on a bathrobe and knocked on my mother's bedroom door. She didn't answer, and by listening closely I could hear her snoring. I'd never heard her do that before, and wondered if sherry did it. Back in my own room, I got one of the Max Shulman books and one of the H. Allen Smith books from the shelf and tried to cheer myself up. The story about the biggest goddamn hippopotamus in the world that sank to the bottom of the lake and never came up almost did the trick, but I couldn't concentrate very hard, and I got sleepy about three in the morning. It was difficult to get up at seven-thirty for school, and when I tried to make my own breakfast the eggs stuck to the pan because I forgot to put the margarine in first. I left the dishes for my mother. When she woke up she'd need the exercise.

Lack of sleep made me dopey and depressed all day. Looking at Marcia or the Cloyds, or any of the girls, all I could think about were the photographs in the
Handbook on Obstetrics,
all the blood and pain and stretching. Chango was in class, and being very good. He carried himself gently, and said "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am" as if he'd been a model student all his life. I think that at first Miss Jefferson thought he was being sarcastic. He read aloud "My heart leaps up when I behold" without any accent, and a good deal of feeling. Some of his Native buddies laughed when he sang out "Or let me die!" with a lot of fervor. He gave them an approximation of the old mean look, but it faded into a self-conscious blush. It was a notable change and Miss Jefferson remarked on it. The last time Chango had recited, before the trouble with Tarzan, he'd read in his thickest
pachuco,
in a perfect monotone:

Meeltone! Dow shoos be leeving at dees hour;
Englan'hat needs of dee; shee ees a fan
Of estagnant gwatters.

I had had the feeling then that the door of the classroom was going to fly open and William Wordsworth would come bulling in, yelling, "Stop it!" This time, Miss Jefferson said, "That's quite an improvement, Maximiliano. Will you turn to page three-eighty and read 'Lines, Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey?'" And Chango read the whole bloody business, as if he both liked and understood it, which I sure as hell didn't.

Because of his still fresh scar, he was excused from basketball practice that afternoon, so I couldn't tell if he had completely reversed his character or not. He generally had a way of dribbling that involved leading with his thumb. If you tried to move in on him the thumb got in your eye. Since he wasn't practicing with us, he sat it out on the bench and applauded the bad plays along with the good ones, yelling things like "Nice try!" when someone missed the rim by seven feet.

I thought I saw a trace of the old Chango when Bucky Swenson came up to the line for two free throws. Just when he got set for the toss, Chango yelled, "You can do it, Bucky," and Swenson flinched and missed. On the second shot, Chango just
looked
as if he were going to yell something, but didn't, and Bucky's eye was off because he kept expecting something, and he missed that one, too. Then Chango said, "Nice try, Bucky!" and you could almost hear the flames crackle inside Swenson's head.

I walked home alone, and saw that the frying pan from breakfast was still in the sink where I'd left it. My mother was still in her room; I could hear her humming tunelessly to herself. I washed the frying pan and put it away, and then went down the hill, turning left on Camino Chiquito to go to Romeo's studio.

He had a dirty white bandage wrapped around his head, and a purple bruise extending down his jaw. He pointed to it. "Anna moved out, and left me with this. She hit me with an iron saucepan during a perfectly civil discussion about art, and when I woke up she was gone, along with eighteen dollars and several cans of Vienna sausage, which I'd been saving for when I was really broke. Come in. I want you to meet Shirley."

Shirley was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette, and wearing the same dirty bathrobe that Anna had worn. She was very large and sleepy-looking, and acknowledged my presence by slowly nodding her head. Her bathrobe was untied, and she was naked underneath it. She arranged it around her very deliberately, without changing her expression. "Romeo," she said, yawning, "I'm tired. Can I rest now?"

"Shirley, dear, you've been resting for half an hour. Don't you remember? Look at all the cigarette butts in the ashtray."

"Oh," she said, "half an hour. I'm so-o-o tired." She cradled her head on her arms and conked off.

Romeo took the burning cigarette from between her fingers and put it out. "You want some coffee?"

I nodded, and we walked over to the kitchen area. "Have you been giving her sleeping pills?" I asked him.

"No, it's her thyroid. When she first came three days ago I took her down to my doctor, and he gave her a basal metabolism test. He told me that clinically she's been dead for some time. Has no thyroid gland at all. He wrote a prescription for thyroid stimulants, but I like her this way. If I gave her the pills she might get jumpy and start throwing things, like Anna. This way she's easy to handle."

"Can she model?"

"She's a terrific model. She's like a catatonic. I can arrange her in any position, standing, sitting, kneeling, leaning over, balanced on one toe, and she falls asleep and never moves. Of course, she's not any good as a housekeeper, but she eats very little. It doesn't take much fuel to keep an engine that sluggish moving. All in all, I'd say she was about perfect. She may even be intelligent, but she can't stay alert long enough to let me know."

"I know a girl who'd be a good model," I said. "She has a good figure, anyway."