Help Wanted (15 page)

"How about hot chocolate first?" Maria asked.

Angela's arms fell from her chest. She nodded.

As Angela crawled into her father's lap, thumb in her mouth, Maria went to the refrigerator and brought out a carton of milk. She splashed a cupful of milk into a saucepan and then heaped three spoonfuls of chocolate into a cup.

Angela looked over at Maria, who was watching the milk come to a hissing boil. "I want to use Mommy's cup," she snapped.

"It's Mama's cup, Angela."

"I want to use her cup!"

"Stop it! Quit acting like that!"

"Mommy's dead! She don't care!"

"
¡Cállate!
" their father cried angrily, turning Angela toward him and shaking his daughter so that the stuffed whale fell from her arms. Angela began to cry and wiggle from his arms. She collapsed to the floor, a bundle of grief.

Their father sighed and picked up his daughter, cooing his
Sorrys
into her hair.

"Okay, you baby," Maria said, a frown on her face, and took the cup from the hook. When she turned over the cup, she discovered a smear of lipstick on the rim. She crossed herself and muttered "
Ay, Dios
" under her breath, a zipper of fear riding up her back.

Maria fixed her little sister her chocolate and then brought out frozen waffles from the freezer. She dropped two waffles into the toaster and looked inside the toaster at the fiery filaments. She thought,
Hell's like that—all red and hot.
When the waffles popped up, Maria stabbed them with a fork and set them on a plate. She laced the waffles with syrup and left the kitchen in a hurry.

"
¿Qué pasa?
" her father called as he looked up from his newspaper. His eyes were the color of newsprint, and as small as the letters he was reading. "What's wrong, Maria?"

"Nothing," she answered. She ran to her bedroom and closed the door. She sat on her bed, with her knees to her chest and cuddling herself. She tried to warm her body that had grown cold with fear as she remembered her mother's words: "
Mi'ja,
I will never leave you. I will always be with you." She rolled over onto her stomach, buried her face in her soft blankets, and started crying. But she stopped crying when she heard a crinkling sound, like the sound of paper being crushed into a ball.
Is it Mother?
she wondered.
Has she come back?
She turned and looked through her tears, scooting into the corner of the bed in fear.

It was her kitten walking on her homework on her desk.

She wiped her eyes and muttered, "You stupid thing. You scared me!" She flung a sock at the cat. It
meowed and jumped from the desk, begging for attention. The cat leaped onto the bed, and Maria took it into her arms.

"Are you sad?" Maria asked the cat. "We never got to say good-bye to Mommy."

"Maria,
ven acá!
" Maria heard her father call from the living room. She could hear his heavy work boots ringing on the floor. She pushed the cat aside and jumped off her bed. Angela came into the bedroom. She was sipping from their mother's coffee cup, a mustache of chocolate staining her upper lip.

"I want some more," Angela said, holding up the cup like a chalice.

Ignoring her sister, Maria slipped on a sweatshirt, combed her hair in big long rips, and stomped out of the room with Angela trailing behind, begging for more than chocolate.

"I want some more," Angela whined.

"All right!" Maria yelled as she stopped and wheeled around, hair whipping her shoulders. She hesitated at first in taking the cup from Angela, but finally reached for it. She weighed it in her palm like an orange, thinking that it would weigh no more than a feather. But it was heavy as stone.

"
Me voy
—I'm off," her father told them. His face was shaved and his hair slicked back. "I want you two to stay home today. Tomorrow you can go to school." He gave them each a hug, squeezing love from their
small bodies and whispering that they should be good. He gave them each a stick of chewing gum and trudged to the front door, swinging his heavy black lunch pail. The screen door slammed and he was gone.

Maria looked down at the cup in her hand, then at her sister, who was scratching a mosquito bite on her thigh.

"What's wrong?" Maria asked.

"It hurts."

"Put some spit on it."

Leaving her to scratch her bites, Maria went off to the kitchen to fix her sister another cup of hot chocolate.
I should be good to my little brat sister,
she figured.
It'll make Papi happy.

As she was pouring the steaming milk into the cup, Maria noticed a new smear of red lipstick on the cup. "It's Mom," she whispered to herself, and gazed around the kitchen. Her eyes came to rest on the table, where her mother would sit in solitude admiring her backyard and its flush of flowers. "Mom!" she called in the direction of the table. "Mom, you can't come back!"

There was no answer, no sign, other than the kitchen faucet dripping and a fly beating on the windowsill.

"Mom, are you really here?" Maria asked in a hollow voice. She pounded the table with her fist, and the salt shaker fell over, raining grains of salt.

Angela came into the kitchen. "Who are you talking to?" she asked. "Did Papi come back?"

Maria didn't answer. She stared tenderly at her sister and for a moment thought of hugging her. Instead, she pointed vaguely at the cup of hot chocolate and told her, "It's hot. Be careful not to burn your lips."

Angela picked up the steaming cup of hot chocolate. Turning it around in her small hands and examining it, she asked with a smirk on her face, "Have you been using Mama's lipstick?"

"No," Maria said.

"The cup is all red."

"I didn't use her lipstick. Now, quit it!"

Maria left the kitchen and hurried outside, letting the screen door slam behind her. The sun was dime bright and hot for early May. The sky was blue and marked with a cargo of white clouds in the east. Mexican music drifted over the fence from Señor Cisneros's yard.

Maria climbed onto the tire swing that hung from the mulberry and rocked it slowly, her shoes dragging and scraping the dirt under the swing.
Why?
she thought.
Why has Mom come back?
She remembered an argument they had had the day before she died, an argument about Javier, a boy she liked, a boy with green eyes who was always phoning her. Maria bit her lower lip and felt bad about having snapped at her mother.

She looked at their house, which was pink stucco with a runner of green AstroTurf. Mama hated the fake
grass but her father said it wore well, longer than a straw welcome mat.

"Hi!" Angela called from the side of the house. She was holding the coffee cup.

Maria looked over her shoulder. She got off the swing and approached her sister.

"You're not done with your chocolate?"

Angela took a sip and smacked her lips, trying to annoy her older sister. "It tastes good."

Maria noticed that Angela's lips were red. She took Angela's chin roughly into her hands and examined her mouth. "Are you wearing Mom's lipstick?"

"No," Angela answered, pushing away hard and almost losing her balance and falling. Some of the chocolate spilled on the front of her blouse. Mad, Angela looked down at the stain. "See what you've done, stupid!"

"It's nothing. And don't call me stupid."

"I'm going to tell Papi when he comes home," she cried, and stomped off, careful not to spill her remaining hot chocolate.

Maria sat down on the front steps, raking her hand across the AstroTurf. She thought of her mother, gone eight days.
What does she want?
she thought to herself.
Should I be nice to Angela? Should I take care of the house? Of Dad?
Mom had never demanded much, but maybe she was asking for something now.

When a sparrow swooped and settled on the handrail, Maria jumped to her feet and cried, "
Ay, Dios.
" To her the bird appeared to be the messenger of death. "What do you want? Get outta here!"

The sparrow locked a gaze on Maria, and after a moment of silence flew to the neighbor's roof, then over the house.

Shaken, Maria returned inside the house. Angela, who was in the living room watching television, made a face and said, "I'm gonna tell Papi on you for dirtying my blouse." She muttered under her breath, "Stupid."

Maria passed her without saying anything and went into the kitchen. She looked around slowly as she listened for sounds. The faucet still dripped and the fly now buzzed the overhead light. A ceiling beam creaked, the floor creaked. The water heater in the closet popped and hissed, and the clock on the wall whined its seconds.

"It's Mother," she told herself. "She's telling me something." Maria's gaze fell on her mother's coffee cup on the counter. She walked over and took the cup and poured herself some coffee. She stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar and a splash of milk, and sat down at the small table near the window, her mother's favorite place in the house. She gazed out the window at her mother's garden of tomatoes and chilies, sunsparking pie tins tied to the vines and banging softly in the breeze.

"What do you want, Mama?" she said after a chill touched her shoulder. "Are you here, Mama? Are you?"

The floor creaked, the ceiling creaked, and the fly that had been buzzing the overhead light beat against the window.

Maria sighed and lowered her gaze on the steam rising from the coffee. She turned the coffee cup around and studied the lipstick marks. She blew on the coffee, raised the cup, and took a sip where the lipstick marks would match her own mouth. Without intending to, she moaned in a different voice, her mother's voice, "I'm here and will never leave you,
mi'ja.
"

Angela was at the dining table drawing a picture with crayons. She asked, "What did you say?"

Maria moaned.

"You sound like Mommy," Angela said. She scratched her thigh, swollen with mosquito bites. With her face scrunched up from the pain of scratching, she asked, "How come you got your hands on your mouth?"

Maria's hands tightened around her mouth as words tried to force themselves from the back of her throat.

"See," Angela said, getting down from the chair. "It's a picture of Mommy." Angela raised the picture
for her sister to see—a picture of the sisters waving to their mother. In the drawing their mother was calling, "I'll never leave you,
mi'jas.
"

Maria's mouth twisted with fear. Unable to stop the words, she let her hands flop at her sides and let their mother have her say. Their mother's spirit was circling the house, their lives, with a last good-bye.

Daniel Rubio lowered the morning newspaper, stared at the muted television showing a monster truck climbing onto the back of a VW Beetle, and then lifted the newspaper back toward his face. His mouth hung open like a sack as he stared at columns and columns of fugitives wanted by the Fresno Police Department. Each one had a photograph and a description of the crime. They were wanted for burglary, passing bad checks, domestic violence, probation violations, grand theft auto, assault with deadly weapons, attempted murder, and in one case, animal cruelty toward a Chihuahua. Most of the faces—all of them, in fact, except one—looked like those of people who should be taken off the street. The photo of Daniel's grandmother Graciela stared at
him with what looked like a smirk. The smirk was saying, "Okay, catch me."

"Dang," Daniel whispered. "Grandma got capped." His grandmother was wanted for passing bad checks. That totally surprised him because Grandma drove a newish car and wore nice clothes. Plus, she smelled of the products she sold—perfume and lotions that promised to rejuvenate aging skin. The lines on her face were filled in with her products, and her lips were red from them, too. Her hair was always in place, and she was a generous grandmother who quickly dispensed her butterscotch Life ¡Savers when she came over to visit.

"Why would she pass bad checks?" he asked himself. Her purse was large as a shopping bag.
She's got to have money in one of those zippered pockets,
he figured. There was a roll of fat on her stomach and hips from all the good eating she'd done. Didn't that prove she was doing okay in life?

"Dang!" he repeated.

Daniel zapped off the television. He set the newspaper aside, stood up, and gazed absently out the window—the winter sky was gray with valley fog. Then he knew why his mother had left early in the morning: She had driven over to her mother's house, his grandmother's house, to see about her problem.

Daniel felt sad as his shoulders sagged. His father had moved out on them two years before and
he hadn't come around once, though Daniel had seen him with a woman in the parking lot at Longs Drugs. His father had been holding a heart-shaped balloon in one hand and pushing a stroller with the other. Daniel was angry with his father. When had he ever given his mother a balloon? And that ugly
mocoso
baby! Now this—his grandmother's face in the newspaper.

Daniel sighed as he headed to the bathroom to take an afternoon shower. He was going to the junior high dance, though he didn't know how to dance and had to admit to himself that he wasn't good-looking. Even if he knew how to dance, where would he get the strength in his voice to ask, "Hey, girl, you wanna dance?" Or some other bold line, like, "
Ruca
, I'm for real!"

"I can't believe it! Grandma!" he shouted in the shower. His face was bearded with foaming bath gel and his eyes stung from the shampoo, two products that his grandmother had sold him. When he had bought them from her, Daniel had suspected that they had already been opened, but he feared saying anything because his mother would find out and lower the boom on him. Plus, he would have felt awkward telling his grandmother, "Looks like someone used them already."

He dressed and cooked himself an egg burrito laced with strips of baloney. He ate staring at the turned-off television, his hand within inches of the newspaper
that carried the picture of his grandmother. He almost cried, and not as the result of eating his burrito in five big chomps. It was because of the newspaper photo. He muttered, "We're messed up."