Irises (28 page)

“It's not even close.” Renata reached over and tapped Jaime on the shoulder. “Could you turn that down? We're trying to have a conversation back here.”

Jaime turned it down a notch. “Don't push it,” he said, “or I'll drop you right here in the middle of the street.”

“You do that, and I'll tell Gracie you-know-what,” Renata said. Gracie was Jaime's girlfriend. Now Mary understood why Jaime had agreed to drive them. “And don't listen, either. This is private.”

“Like I care,” Jaime responded.

Renata continued where she had left off. “She can go to college here and take premed and become a highfalutin doctor or whatever. It's not like she'd be giving up
that.
”

“You should have seen her when she heard she was accepted. Going to Stanford and being a doctor are part of the same dream. I've never seen her so happy as when she got that letter.”

“Yeah, well, we don't always get what we want. I'd like to get that hunk Marcos interested in me instead of you, but instead I'm going to prom with Lalo and his dumbo ears.”

“Will you stop it with Marcos?” Mary elbowed her.

“Yeah, I know you. Little Miss Spiritual. I bet you'd like to paint
him
,
wouldn't you? Maybe you can get him to model naked for you and you can invite me to the session.”

“Who's getting naked?” Jaime asked, and Renata and Mary laughed.

The social worker's office was in a five-story building that looked like a cinder block with windows. Jaime dropped them off in front and told them he'd pick them up in an hour. Renata reminded him about Gracie.

They told the receptionist who they were, and soon the social worker, Mrs. Fresquez, came out to greet them. She led them up an elevator to the third floor and then through a maze of cubicles overflowing with different-colored folders. Mary got the impression that thousands of people were drowning with problems and there were only a couple of life jackets. The lone visitor's chair in Mrs. Fresquez's cubicle was full of black plastic binders. She put them on the floor and then went next door to borrow another chair.

Mrs. Fresquez was a heavy woman whose legs made a scratchy sound when she walked. Mary couldn't tell whether she was wearing a red wig or her own hair had been overly dyed. Every few seconds her tongue would come out and lick her upper lip. Renata and Mary looked at each other, and each knew what the other was thinking:
This was a big mistake.
There was no way this woman was capable of helping anyone.

But Mary soon realized her initial impression was wrong. As soon as they were all seated and Mrs. Fresquez had asked Renata about her mother, she turned and looked at Mary in a way that made her feel as if she were the only person who mattered in the whole world.

“Lucy told me about you. I'm very glad you came to see me. I heard about your dad. I'm sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I know about your mother and I know you and your sister are all alone. You don't have any family?”

“We have an aunt in San Jose, California.”

Mrs. Fresquez scribbled something on a pad of paper. “And your sister, how old is she?”

Mary had a feeling that she already knew everything she was asking, but needed to hear it from her. “She turned eighteen in February.”

“You're sixteen, right?”

“Yes.” Renata was looking around the cubicle with a bored look on her face. Mary saw her zero in on the picture on the desk. It showed a teenage boy next to a woman dressed i
n white.
Mrs. Fresquez recognized the object of Renata's attention.

“That's my cousin Aurora and my son Albert. She's a nurse in Las Cruces. He's a good-looking boy, huh?” She smiled at Renata.

“Nice,” Renata answered. “How come Mom never told me about him?”

“She probably wanted to protect him.” Mrs. Fresquez winked at Mary.

“Ha-ha,” Renata muttered.

Mrs. Fresquez grinned and then got serious. “Tell me in your
own words,” she said, looking at Mary, “how I can he
lp you
.”

Mary told her about the deacons asking them to leave, about the insurance money falling through, about Aunt Julia's cancer and her not wanting to stay with them or have Mary and Mama live with her. She hesitated to tell her about Kate wanting to go to Stanford because she didn't want to lump that in with all the bad things, but Renata poked her in the arm and told her to tell Mrs. Fresquez everything.

“My sister got accepted to Stanford. She really wants to go there.”

Mrs. Fresquez sat back in her chair and seemed to be trying not to look surprised. “She's going to go?”

“Yes. I want her to go too.” Renata frowned, and Mrs. Fresquez rubbed her forehead with her hand as if she had just been presented with a puzzle she couldn't solve. But then she snapped her head upright, and Mary saw that she knew exactly what needed to be done.

“Okay. Let's look at what we have here. The best option is for you and your mama to live with your aunt, but I understand why that's not possible at this moment. The second-best option is for you and your sister to stay here in El Paso. I think I would be able to get you into affordable housing, get help for your mom and money and food stamps for you to live on. We
'd h
ave to make your sister your legal guardian, but that's not hard. If your sister goes away, we would need to get you
a gua
rdian appointed. If we can't find anyone, I could be your guardian.” Mary smiled at the prospect of having Mrs. Fresquez be her guardian. She'd be a kind of earthly guardian angel
— though never in a million years would she have imagined her guardian angel to look like Mrs. Fresquez. The social worker went on, “You say your sister wants to go away to college, so let's assume we don't have that second option. Where does that leave us? I think we'd have to place you in a foster home and find a facility for your mother.”

Mary let the words sink as far as they would go.
Foster home
.
Facility
.

“She could come live with us,” Renata said. “We could be her foster family, couldn't we?”

Mary asked nervously, “What kind of facility?”

“It would have to be a nursing home or a facility that accepts people in a vegetative state. Finding one wouldn't be easy. Probably a home with a religious affiliation. Those are the only ones that take someone in her
.
.
. condition.”

Mary was having difficulty understanding what was being said. It was like being on the verge of remembering a dream. “Why?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Why would some facilities not want to take Mama?”

Mrs. Fresquez attempted to inhale deeply. This time she put her hand on her chest. Maybe all of the problems she listened to and all the painful news she had to convey had broken her heart, and now she had trouble breathing. “Well, most hospitals and facilities don't take people like your mom, people being kept alive through a feeding tube.” She hesitated. “They feel they need to save their space and resources for people for whom there is still hope of living.”

“Mama's still alive. Maybe someday she'll wake up. We don't know for sure that she won't.”

Mrs. Fresquez nodded and put her hand up, signaling there was no need to discuss the issue. “If we go with the foster care option, I will find you a place that takes your mama.”

It was the first time since Papa died that Mary heard anyone outside her family call her mother “mama.” It made her feel that Mrs. Fresquez really cared.

“Honestly, Mary, you can come live with us,” Renata said again. “My mom and dad would love it. It's only Jaime and m
e at
home right now and Jaime is joining the army this summer. You can even set up a studio outside, next to Dad's carpentry shop.”

Renata had an enormous, shady backyard full of floweri
ng trees
, and for a moment Mary imagined herself sitting back there painting. But then she thought of Mama. After th
e accident
, Mama had stayed in the hospital until the doctors declared she was in a persistent vegetative state. Then sh
e was
taken to a kind of nursing home where she stayed un
til Papa
was allowed to bring her home. Mary remembere
d vi
siting her in the nursing home. Mama was in a room with four other people. Sometimes the halls were lined with stret
chers because
all the rooms were full. Mama developed bedsores because no one moved her, and rashes because no one changed her diaper. It was almost as if they were trying to let her die.

“I can't leave Mama alone,” Mary said. Renata parted her lips, and Mary could almost hear her start to say that maybe Mama could come and live with her family as well, but then Renata stopped herself. Mary wished she could somehow let her know that it was all right, that no matter how much she thought Mama was no bother, she understood it was beyond anyone else's ability to take her on.

“Why don't you think about all the options we discussed?” Mrs. Fresquez said. “We can talk more later. In the meantime, let's see what we can do.”

Mrs. Fresquez filled out some forms with financial information. She promised to try to find a way to pay Talita and get someone to watch Mama while Mary and Kate finished the school year. Then she said that she would personally contact the insurance company and ask to see all the records used i
n th
e denial of the claim. “Don't worry,” she said, “I'll take one of our lawyers. One of the reasons these small companies don't require medical exams is so they can later claim the least little thing was a misrepresentation. I know one company tried to deny benefits because the insured didn't inform them she'd had her wisdom teeth pulled! Don't worry, we'll get something out of them. We'll at least get back all the premiums your dad paid. You can count on that.”

Mary liked the way she sounded. She had a lot of fight in her, just like Kate.

Jaime was late. Renata and Mary sat outside on a concrete bench next to a group of smokers huddled around a metal ashtray. Renata was unusually quiet. “What are you thinking?” Mary asked her.

Renata made this little pucker expression that she liked to do whenever something was bothering her.“I  was thinking that you're up you-know-what without a paddle.”

“I'm between a rock and a hard place,” Mary added, trying to get her to smile.

“Out of the frying pan into the fire,” Renata said.

“I'm not sure that one applies.”

“Whatever.” Renata took a deep breath and coughed. “You ever smoked?”

“What do you think?”

“I smoked a couple of my dad's Salems once. I thought the menthol would taste good. Yuck! Maybe smoking helps people with their worries, and that's why so many smoke.”

“You think I should take up smoking?”

“You got a load of worries, girl. What the heck is keeping Jaime? I bet you he went to some bar to play pool. Let's go sit over there.” She pointed to another bench farther away from the smokers. They escaped the fumes, but now they were directly in the sun. Renata lifted her hand to shield her eyes. “You've got to talk to Kate. She needs to stay here with you. You got no choice.”

“There's always a choice,” Mary said.

Jaime's truck turned the corner. They stood up at the same time. “Whatcha going to do?” Renata asked.

“I don't know.”

As they climbed into the truck, Mary tried to remember the last time she painted. For a moment she wondered if she would ever do it again. She had told Renata her wanting to paint was like Kate wanting to go to Stanford, but it was not a good comparison. She didn't want to paint. She felt empty. Blank. The world was as drab as the building they had just left. Then she remembered that hidden in the drabness, buried in its midst, there were sparks of light, like Mrs. Fresquez. It wasn't much to go on, but it was something.