America's Dream (2 page)

Nilda’s obsequious smile is replaced by a resentful tightening of the lips. “I’m just trying to help.” She sulks, but Ester ignores her.

América gently guides Nilda by the elbow to the door. “Don’t take it personally. You know how she is.” She opens the door and stands aside to let Nilda pass. “Thank you for your kindness, but you’d better get back to the hotel, or Don Irving will fire us both.”

“Yes, I should go,” Nilda agrees reluctantly. “I’ll drop by later to see if there’s anything I can do.”

América smiles thinly. “Don’t worry about us, we’ll be all right.” She pulls herself up straighter, stands solid at the threshold looking down at Nilda.

“Well, all right, take care.” From inside the house, Ester snorts in disdain.

América all but pushes Nilda out and closes the door behind her.

América leans her hack against the door and breathes a sigh of relief. On her right is Rosalinda’s room, its walls papered with posters of rock and roll and salsa singers. She enters it stealthily, as if afraid to wake up a sleeper. Rosalinda has taken most of her clothes, her boom box and CDs, the gold jewelry Correa has given her over the years, and the stuffed blue pelican Taino won for her at the midway in last year’s patron-saint feast days. There is no letter telling them where she has gone, but it’s clear she’s left with no intention of coming back. She’s taken the Cindy Crawford wall calendar on which she charts her menstrual cycle.

América sits on the edge of her daughter’s bed, neatly made as if she hasn’t slept in it. The dressing table has been stripped of mousses and gels, pimple creams and hairbrushes, blow-dryer, colognes. How long was she packing, América wonders, im- pressed with how well her daughter must have planned her es- cape to be able to take so much. She’s probably been taking things out of the house for days, and no one has noticed. Ester, whose room is on the other side of the wall from Rosalinda’s, sleeps, soundly, especially when she’s been drinking. Her snores are loud and hearty, and Rosalinda could have left in the middle of the night and no one would have heard a thing.

América stands up, smoothes the edge of the bed, as if to erase all trace that she’s been there.

“I made breakfast for her, as usual,” Ester says when América comes back to the kitchen, “but when I went to get her, she wasn’t there.” In the compost pail she has dumped Rosalinda’s Rice Krispies with sliced banana.

América dries the dish Ester has been washing. “Was Taino here yesterday while I was working?”

“He was here a couple of hours. They sat out on the porch doing their schoolwork. I made them sandwiches.” Ester takes the dish from América’s hands, puts it away, goes to the refrigerator for a beer.

“It’s too early for that, Mami,” América warns.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Ester snaps. She pulls out a frosty Budweiser and goes into her room.

América stares at the closed door, stained with grease, the knob hanging uselessly from the lock. The muted hiss of a beer can opening feels as if air were being let out of her.

She splashes water from the kitchen tap on her face, dries it on her apron. It smells like ammonia. She leans over the yellow porcelain sink, fingertips massaging her temples. She’s exhausted. It’s an exhaustion she feels at times like this, when the whole world seems to have collapsed beneath her feet, leaving her at the bottom of a hole with sides so steep she can’t climb out. It’s the exhaustion of having attempted and failed so many times to crawl out that she’s just going to sit on the bottom and see what happens next. But she only gives up for as long as it takes tears to roll down her cheeks and plunk into the dirty dishwater, one two three.

She crosses the house to her own room in the back, switches on the overhead light as she enters. A neatly made bed takes up most of the space. There is a phone on her bedside table, but ser- vice was disconnected long ago because she couldn’t afford to pay the bills.

When Correa built this room out of a back terrace, he left space in the concrete wall for a window but never put one in. The rec- tangle where a window should be is covered with ply-wood. América leaned a mirror against it and keeps her cosmetics and hair preparations on the unfinished sill. At night she sleeps with her door ajar and a fan on for air. Correa didn’t put in a closet either, so her clothes hang from nails in the concrete walls or are folded inside two mismatched dressers.

América changes out of the nylon uniform Don Irving

makes them wear. It’s green, with a little white apron, also nylon (“so you can wash it easily”). In the humid days of summer the uniform feels like a sausage casing, tight and sticky. She hangs it up against the wall, in its usual place near the door. On days she doesn’t work she sees it every time she goes out of her room.

She puts on a flowered dress cinched at the waist with a wide belt. Ester appears at the door of her room.

“Es muy Ilamativo,” Ester says, “too festive for the occasion.” “What do you want me to do, dress in mourning?” She slips

her feet into a pair of low-heeled sandals. “At least show some respect.”

“Like the respect she’s shown me?”

“She’s a kid. She’s supposed to be disrespectful.” “Since when are you an expert on teenagers?”

Ester harrumphs. She turns a stiff back on América, retreats out of the kitchen door to the rear garden.

América adjusts the bodice of her dress, runs her hands over her breasts, down to her waist, cinches the belt a little tighter. She’s not about to dress in black so the whole vecindario will know how she feels. Let their tongues wag if they want to talk about her. And besides, Ester knows what Correa does if she leaves the house looking unkempt.

The soft crackplink of pigeon-pea pods being dropped into a metal bowl counterpoints the shuffle of Ester’s slippered feet on grass.

América powders her face and hurriedly applies blusher and lipstick. She takes one last look in the mirror, fixes a stray curl by her left eye, and rummages in her dresser for the appropriate purse to carry with her sandals. She puts her things into a shiny black one that Correa gave her three Christmases ago.

“I’m going,” she calls out the kitchen window at Ester, whose arms reach delicately among the curving branches, seeking out the plumpest pods. Ester looks toward the window, pouts in her direction, then continues her rhythmic chore as if the interruption had been a pause in a subtle dance.

América dodges the rose branches arcing over the cement walk, sneezes, closes the gate behind her, pats down her hair one

more time, and walks the half block down Calle Pinos toward the children’s park. A dog looks up from his spot under a tamar- ind tree, yawns listlessly, then settles back, a paw over his eyes. She crosses the street in front of the Asambleas de Dios Church where Reverend Nuñez, his tie askew under the open collar of his white shirt, prunes a hibiscus bush that has encroached on the parking space for the church’s van. He nods in her direction, and she nods back, quickening her pace as she turns left onto Calle Lidos. A rusting car rattles past. Its driver eyes her, slows down, sticks his head out the window to stare at her and to comment under his breath that he’d like to eat her. She responds that in her current state he’d die of indigestion, and turns left onto Almendros.

She has to find Correa before someone else tells him Rosalinda has run away from home with a boy. It’s his duty to find them, to bring them back from wherever they’re hiding. But she doesn’t know what will happen after that. Taino has probably told Ros- alinda he’s going to marry her, but at fourteen she’s too young to get married. It’s probably illegal for her to be having sex. The thought of Rosalinda entangled with Taino enrages her. How dare he take advantage of them! She trusted him, believed that the serious, hardworking boy would be a good influence on her spirited daughter. She had forgotten that Taino was like other boys, after the same thing all men are.

Her rage increases with every step, and by the time she exits the alley leading to the main road, she’s seething. If Rosalinda were to appear in front of her right now, she’d be sorry she ever set eyes on Taino. Both of them taking her for a pendeja, sneaking behind her back for who knows how long, while she slaves her life away scrubbing toilets and mopping floors. She assumed Rosalinda was smart enough not to repeat her mistake. Doesn’t she see how my life has turned out, América asks herself, and has to fight the tears that threaten to ruin what composure she’s been able to manage.

Up the road, a girl walks a baby. From the back she resembles Rosalinda. Same shoulder-length hair gelled into a lion’s

mane around her face. Same tight denim shorts worn with heavy boots. She wears a denim jacket like the one Correa gave Ros- alinda for her birthday, with gold braiding around the arm-holes, the back lined with pink lace. She turns onto an alley leading to Calle Lirios. América follows her, but the girl feels someone be- hind her and speeds up. She looks over her shoulder fearfully. It’s a schoolmate of Rosalinda’s. She starts when she sees América, smiles guardedly, wraps the jacket around her bony shoulders, picks up the little boy, and goes into her yard. América follows her to the gate.

“Carmencita!” she calls as the girl reaches the house.

Carmencita sets her brother on the porch, takes her jacket off and throws it inside, then comes timidly up to América.

“Mande.”

“Have you seen Rosalinda this morning?” “No.”

“How about last night? Did you see her last night?”

“I saw her day before yesterday when she…” Carmencita looks away, “If you want the jacket back, my mother said you’d have to return me the money.”

“What money?”

“She sold it to me. I saved up for it. I know it’s worth more than ten dollars, but that’s what she asked.” Carrnencita’s eyes fill with tears. From inside the house, the baby screeches, and Carmencita runs to see after him.

América waits a few minutes, but the girl doesn’t return. A neighbor conies out of the house next door to water her plants. “¡Buenos dias!” she calls out. América returns the greeting but doesn’t stop to chat. It’s clear that for the next few weeks she’ll be seeing her daughter’s clothes on the girls and women of the barriada.

She retraces her steps toward the guardhouse outside Sun Bay, where Correa will be sitting in his pressed uniform checking IDs. She walks briskly down the asphalt road, stepping into the weeds whenever a vehicle passes. Several times she’s offered rides by neighbors, who look at her curiously, doubtless wonder-

ing why she’s not at work. But she refuses them, not wanting to talk to anyone about her daughter’s whereabouts.

Her mouth feels dry. She stops at La Tienda Verde and takes a Coke from the refrigerator. Pepita dusts cans of tuna fish and boxes of unsweetened cereal flakes that only the Yanquis who rent houses in the village buy.

“How are things going?” Pepita asks brightly, moving behind the counter to take América’s money. Pepita is always cheerful, which América attributes to the fact that she’s never been married and doesn’t have children.

“Okéi,” América answers, popping the can open, avoiding Pepita’s gaze. She takes a long draught of the cold soda. It makes her hiccup.

“Not working today?” Pepita asks, making change for América’s dollar.

“No, hic, I’m hic…” She stops, covers her mouth, takes a deep breath, and holds it for a count of ten. When she lets the air out, a rumbling burp relieves the hiccups. “¡Ay, sorry! Soda always does that to me.”

Pepita laughs. “That’s why I never drink it. I prefer water.” “Thank ypu.” América steps out of the shaded coolness of the

store and looks down the road, which already ripples with vapor. She finishes as much of the soda as she can, spills the rest against a tree, and throws the can into the bushes. She crosses to the shady side of the road, past the ruins of the Central. A hurricane fence encrusted with weeds circles the property of what was once a complex of buildings for processing sugarcane. Beyond it, the road curves toward the sea. Thick-branched flamboyants and alrnendros lend intermittent shade, cool the air where butterflies flit among wildflowers.

Correa sits inside the guardhouse at the entrance to Sun Bay. Near him, a radio is tuned to a salsa station, and he drums the counter and sings along with Willie Colón while he waits for something to do. His job is to sign in and out anyone who comes in or leaves the public beach and parking area. This time of year there are mostly Jeeps rented by Yanquis who want to drive to the naval-base beaches hidden in the jungle at the end

of rutted roads accessible only by all-terrain vehicles or horse- back. They always come to this one first, however, its long crescent dotted with palm trees reminiscent of the advertisements that lured them to the Caribbean in the first place.

An orange Isuzu passes her, driven by an Américano with skin pale as clam meat. A young woman sits in the passenger seat. She’s wearing a bikini top and shorts. In the backseat, three chil- dren jostle to be first to see the ocean. In their wake América smells the oily scent of sunscreen. They stop at the guardhouse as she nears it.

Although he sees América, Correa doesn’t acknowledge her. He turns down the radio, walks to the driver, clipboard in hand. The tourists are always surprised that the guard has to see Il) even at the public beach and has to write down their names, ad- dresses, and license numbers. Once she asked Correa why he has to write so much information on the sheets attached to a clipboard. “It’s in case something happens on the beach, we know who was there.”

It seems stupid to América, since the road and parking area are not the only ways to get to the beach. You can walk to it from other beaches, from the town, and, on horseback, from the wild vegetation surrounding it. She thinks the tourism office goes through all the trouble of taking down people’s information to make tourists feel safe.

She stands in the shade of the guardhouse, her profile to him, looking toward the sea. Correa eyes her, lingering on the curve of her buttocks. He talks in English to the people in the Isuzu. “Jur licenss plis.”

The man hands him his license, and Correa writes down the information, points to the woman and the kids with his clipboard. “Deir neims too, plis.”