Red Glass (19 page)

“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!”

—T
HE
L
ITTLE
P
RINCE

Stairway to Heaven

Something entered me like a wave. Tenderness, seeing his eyes closed, without sunglasses. His neck naked without piles of gold chains. His hair with no baseball cap. A simple blue T-shirt. Bruises speckling his face, a stitched-up gash across the forehead. His left eyelid swollen and purple. His arms under the thin white sheet, one folded over his chest, the outline of his body.

He slept. Or maybe he was in a coma. But there was no monitor screen with beeping heartbeats. Didn’t they have to do that if he was in a coma? A single tube was taped to his hand and attached to a plastic bag of clear liquid hung from a pole. My chest tightened. What if he was in a coma? What if he never woke up? He hadn’t heard my knock. But the knock had been soft.

“Ángel,” I whispered. No answer.

Well, he
was
a sound sleeper.

But this was midday.

I took a step closer. His chest was moving; he was alive, breathing on his own.

I sat down and watched him, marveling at the slightest flutter of skin. I watched the pulse at his neck, felt grateful for its rhythm. Grateful for the little creases at the edges of his eyes, for the skin that curved over his cheekbone.

I noticed three more bandages on his neck. And thin, dark lines of scabbed blood. I pictured how this had happened and felt furious at the guys who had hurt him, and helpless that I couldn’t undo it. But most of all, I felt amazed at how delicate life was, like a petal underneath a hovering fingernail. And at the same time, life was strong, almost stubborn in its insistence that a body could be so battered and still heal. For a long time, I watched his chest rising and falling, rising and falling, as though my eyes controlled its rhythm.

After a time, I took in the room. It was weird. Sculptures of large breasts hung from the cinder-block walls, perfect white half-spheres with pink nipples, and signs that said
MOTHER’S MILK, THE GREATEST GIFT
. And next to them hung pictures of bottles and cans of formula with a big slash, like the slash through a cigarette on a
NO SMOKING
sign. Other signs were piled in the corner. This seemed to be a kind of large storage closet, with metal folding chairs stacked in the corner and two stretchers pushed against the wall with sheets and towels piled up. A bandage with dried blood lay abandoned on one of the stretchers. A broom and mop leaned in a pail in the corner. Over a second bed, a small window looked out to a scrawny tree. Sunshine spilled through the window, lighting up a rectangle on the tile floor.

I pulled one of the mangoes out of my backpack. Peeled the skin back, and took a bite. Ángel moved slightly. His eyes opened.

“Hi,” I said, suddenly shy.

He stared.

I didn’t know what to say. After two days of bus rides, how could I have nothing planned to say? “Want some water?” I handed him the glass from the bedside table.

He drank three long gulps, still staring.

“Hungry?” I offered him my mango. Why was I so nervous?

“Lime-girl?” His words were slurred, his tongue thick in his mouth. He bit into the mango. “This is a dream, right?” He brought his hand up to my neck. He moved my face toward his and kissed me. It tasted like mangoes.

At that moment, the door swung open and the stout nurse poked her head in. “Good! You’re awake. Who wouldn’t be for a pretty girl?” She winked at me and said, “He just woke up yesterday. He was unconscious for days, you know. His father went out to get some food. Very nice man. Imagine—he doesn’t like our food here.” She chuckled. “Now, don’t you worry,
gringa.
He’s just groggy from the painkillers. He’ll be fine.” The door swung closed behind her.

Ángel turned to me. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“No.” I laughed. “I brought you the visas and money.”

“How’d you get here?”

“By bus. People looked out for me. They gave me a place to sleep and food to eat. There are lots of nice people in your country, you know.”

He pulled me down so that our faces were close on the pillow. “I didn’t find my mom, Sophie.”

I felt a mix of relief and disappointment. Maybe the corn had been wrong.

“I found the jewels,” he said. “I dug them up but then the guys stole them. The guys who did this to me. They stole the money too. And my chains and glasses and even my shoes. They took my shoes.”

“What happened?”

He spoke in a slow, hoarse voice, as though his mouth was out of practice. “I was going to come back to you, Sophie. When I dug up the jewels, the first thing I thought was,
I want Sophie to see these. I want her to wear them.
”

We kissed again and looked at each other, so close our faces were out of focus and we could see our miniature faces in each other’s pupils.

“How did this happen, Ángel?”

He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “It was the night before me and my dad were gonna leave. My dad went to say goodbye to some old friends and I went out to buy some food for the trip. I didn’t think my box would be safe in the motel, so I carried it with me in my backpack. I put our passports and money in my backpack, too. So I buy a bag of tamales, and on the way back, I hear noises behind me, and voices, loud and drunk. Six guys. One of them says to hand over my backpack, and I say no. That’s when they start hitting me. I put up a good fight for a while, but there are too many of them. Once I can barely stand, the leader tells them to stop. Two guys are holding me now, one on each side. Up close I see tattoos on their cheeks. Cross tattoos. The leader says, ‘Look, you’re a good fighter. We could use someone like you. What do you say? Join us?’

“I shake my head. ‘Never.’

“‘Wrong answer.’ The leader grabs a board with nails and whacks me. The guys are holding me and he’s whacking me with the board. Then another guy breaks his beer bottle on a rock and starts beating me. Then, I’m on the ground, all curled up like this, and the leader gets out a knife and moves it to my throat. This is it, I’m thinking. This is the end.

“Suddenly a guy in a black baseball cap calls out, ‘
¡Ya!
That’s enough. Let’s go. Someone’s coming!’ So the others rip off my backpack and sunglasses and chains and shoes. Then they take off. I’m thinking I’m gonna die. I can’t see anything. And just before I black out, I see the guy in the baseball cap look back at me, and behind him, a woman in a white dress, and I think, She’s an angel and I am going to heaven. Then I think about you and I see the moon and you watching the moon and waiting for me, and then everything goes dark.”

He closed his eyes, worn out from so much talking. I stroked his forehead and watched him sleep. As he drifted off, his muscles tensed for a moment and he called out my name.

“I’m here, Ángel,” I said. “I’m with you.”

When Mr. Lorenzo walked into the room with a plastic bag full of steaming tamales and saw me sitting at the edge of Ángel’s bed, he nearly dropped the food. Once he got over the shock, he gave me the same tune as everyone else. “Oh, how dangerous for you to come here, Sophie.
Gracias a Dios
you arrived safely.”

He took my hand in his, staring at me in disbelief. I wondered if he and Ángel noticed anything different about me, because I did. I noticed that the layer of heavy, thick stuff that used to separate me from the world was disappearing, like mist rising and floating away.

On my way to the bathroom to wash my hands, I heard moaning from behind a door. The pregnant woman’s room. A nurse swished into the room, and I caught a glimpse inside before the door closed. The woman was straining, her face so red it was almost purple. Was she giving birth or dying? I stood for a few moments outside the room, waiting to hear the cry of a new baby, but all I heard were groans and grunts and the nurse commanding,
“Empuje, empuje
.” Push, push.

Back in the room, we ate tamales and Ángel shared his soda with me. Even though the food was mushy, Ángel took a long time to eat because of his sore jaw. The nurse who had taken out his IV said that my company was the best medicine now. Mr. Lorenzo finished first and gave a satisfied smile, patting his flanneled gut. “Thanks to you, Sophie, we have our visas,” he said. “And once Ángel is better, we will go to the embassy and get new passports. Then we will go back to Pablo’s village and then to Tucson.” Mr. Lorenzo missed his work. He worried that the pool wasn’t being cleaned and the appliances not fixed and the flowers not watered. He missed going food shopping at Albertsons, missed his small kitchen and plaid sofa and favorite soap opera.

He looked at Ángel. “See, you’re already healing,
hijo
. Your body is smart like your mind. In a couple days I bet you will be healed enough for us to leave.”

Ángel stopped chewing. “I still need to find out what happened to my mother.”

Mr. Lorenzo breathed out a heavy sigh. “
Hijo
, I’m telling you—”

“And I still need to get the jewels.”

“Forget about that,
hijo.
You are alive. That is the important thing.”

Ángel wiped his mouth with a napkin and folded it. He always folded his used napkins at perfect right angles. “I’m gonna get those guys.”

It took a few seconds for this to sink in. “Don’t, Ángel,” I said. “Let the police deal with it.”

“The cops are corrupt. They’re friends with these
pendejos
.”

I looked at Mr. Lorenzo. He was holding his head in his hands.

I kept talking. “Ángel. They won’t just hand over the jewels.”

“Then I’ll kill them.”

“What?”

“I’ll kill them and find my mother and if she’s alive I’ll take her back with us.”

Mr. Lorenzo looked up at Ángel. He took a breath, full of effort, as if something very heavy were pressing on his chest. “
Hijo
, people did bad things to me. To the woman I loved. And the anger wanted to fill my heart. But I decided that my heart would be filled with light. So much light there would be no room for anger. That’s what you must do. That’s what your mother would want you to do.”

Ángel closed his eyes. I wondered if he was wishing for his sunglasses so that he wouldn’t have to look at us, so that we couldn’t see his eyes. For the rest of the day, he didn’t say anything about the jewels or the gang or his mother. He didn’t say much of anything.

Mr. Lorenzo went back to the hotel to sleep, and I stayed with Ángel. I’d forgotten to bring pajamas, so I wore my white dress, which was as comfortable as a nightgown. Even so, I tossed and turned in the spare bed, thinking about how strange Ángel had acted all evening. He’d hardly spoken to me, and when he had, he’d stared at a spot on the floor. It was as though his face had turned to stone, his eyes hardened, like a statue. The nurse figured he was in pain, so she gave him a sleeping pill and pain medication.

I couldn’t sleep. I got up and wandered into the hallway, down the corridor, which was now lit by flickering fluorescent lights. I stood outside the pregnant woman’s room and listened. No more moaning, but no baby sounds either. Only silence and a strip of light under the door. I headed farther down the hallway, past a few offices, past the darkened cafeteria, quiet in my socks. I stopped in front of the bathroom; I didn’t have to go, but I needed some destination. Just when my hand was on the doorknob, I noticed music playing, American music. Classic rock. A scratchy Led Zeppelin song.

I padded farther down the hallway, and the music grew louder. Around a corner, I discovered a room lit yellow by a small lamp, filled with incubators and a sink and plastic basins. It was an unexpected sight, this secret room glowing in the middle of the night, while everyone else slept. The chubby nurse with the mole was pacing back and forth, holding a little white bundle. Ángel had told me she was the head nurse, Reina.
Queen
in Spanish. And she did seem to be the queen of the hospital. Always there, giving gruff orders with a smile and a wink afterward. I got the feeling she was the hub of the wheel that kept this little hospital going.

She rocked the bundle and swayed her hips, singing along:
“And we’rrre cli-i-mbing da estai-airrr-way to heaven.”
In the shadows, her face looked soft, and I couldn’t see the hair sticking out of her mole. She glanced up and jumped. “
¡Dios mío, gringuita!
I thought you were a ghost!” Her hand flew to her chest.