—What do you take me for, a machine? Cleaning up last week’s dining room disaster alone was a huge task. Enormous. Monumental. You have no idea of the labor. I’m only flesh and bone, God help me, and what with that lazy Oralia, how am I supposed to handle so much for so many, tell me? And did I mention the expenses? We’re not rich, you know. Thank God for your father’s pension and tlapalería, and your sister’s handsome salary. But remember, we’ve lost the income from the two apartments this summer; because I asked the tenants to vacate and leave the rooms for you all. No, I’m not complaining. Of course, I’d rather have my family near. What’s money compared to the joy of having one’s family close by? You have to make sacrifices. Family always comes first. Remember that. Inocencio, haven’t I taught you anything?
The Awful Grandmother complains daily even with the two younger sons and their families gone. To make matters worse, because of the Grandmother’s rages, Oralia has threatened to quit.
—If you don’t like my services, señora, you can go ahead and fire me.
—So that you can run off while you still owe me for the cash advances I gave you? Not even if God commanded it! Don’t make faces. Look at me, Oralia, I said look, don’t interrupt, look at me. I’ll find another girl to help you, te lo juro. Listen, do you know anyone we can trust? Ask around. See if you can’t find some poor thing from the country. The ones from the country are always more decent and hardworking. I don’t like the idea of people I can’t trust sleeping under my own roof.
But in the end it’s just Candelaria who is finally sent for and delivered washed, scrubbed, and scoured the following week. A cot is set up in the same rooftop room as Oralia’s, so that she doesn’t have to travel the hours back and forth to her mother’s, except on her one day off. The girl Candelaria is to live in the house of the Grandmother!
—Not for always, don’t you get any illusions, missy, but for now. And you’re to bathe every day and keep your hair very clean, understand? This isn’t the ranch.
So that she might rest a little, so that the dining room repairs can take place without the children running underfoot, the Grandmother insists Father take his family to Acapulco for eight days. It won’t cost much. We can stay at Señor Vidaurri’s sister’s house. Acapulco is only a few hours away. We can drive.
Mother, who never agrees with the Grandmother, begs Father this time:
—Every time we come to Mexico it’s the same old crap. Nothing but living rooms, living rooms, living rooms. We never go anywhere. I’m sick and tired, do you hear? Disgusted!
Finally, Father gives in.
At first the trip to Acapulco is only to include Father and Mother, the six brothers, and me. But the Grandmother sighs so much Father has to ask her to come along.
—Why the hell did you insist on bringing her? Mother hisses while she’s packing.
—How could I say no to my own mother? Especially after she was kind enough to loan us the money for this trip.
—Oh, yeah, well, I’ve had it with her damn kindnesses.
—Shhh. The kids.
—Let the kids hear! Better they should find out sooner than later who their grandmother is.
On the morning we are to leave, Aunty Light-Skin and Antonieta Araceli are packed and coming too. The Grandmother has gone herself to the secundaria to inform the Mother Superior about my cousin falling ill with la gripa.
Even Candelaria is coming along!
Because just as the final suitcase is being lifted to the luggage rack, the Grandmother whines to Father, —Bring her, poor thing. She can help with the babies.
So at the last minute, Candelaria is sent to her rooftop room to fetch a plastic shopping bag filled with a few raggedy clothes. But Candelaria’s village is in Nayarit. She’s never seen the ocean. Before the eight days are up, she will be sent back on the next Tres Estrellas de Oro bus to Mexico City with the Awful Grandmother’s address pinned to her underslip to prevent her from becoming one of the countless unfortunates seen hiccuping terrible tears on the television’s public announcements … If you recognize this young lady, please call … since she is new to the city and can neither read nor write, because a huge Acapulco wave will knock her over, and the ocean will come out of her mouth and eyes and nose for days when it is discovered Candelaria can’t take care of the babies without someone first taking care of her.
It’s no use. El destino es el destino. A person’s destiny is her destiny. The little note pinned to her slip with the house address is lost. Who can say where it went? And Candelaria does appear on television crying and crying telenovela tears. Who would’ve thought! Salty water like the ocean running out of her eyes, the servant Oralia shouting for the Little Grandfather to come see, and the Grandfather having to send Oralia downtown to fetch her, and her mother Amparo the washerwoman will beat Candelaria badly for giving her a fright, and then come and ask permission to have her removed from her job at the Grandmother’s because her daughter is already of an age, and a mother can’t be too careful, can she? And the Grandfather will say, —Well, yes, I suppose, I imagine so. And both Amparo and the girl Candelaria will disappear back to their village somewhere in Nayarit, because by the time the Grandmother returns, it will be as if the earth swallowed them up, the washerwoman and the washerwoman’s daughter both gone, and who knows where, and nothing to be done about it.
But this is before Candelaria swallows the Pacific and is sent back to Mexico City on the next Tres Estrellas de Oro. We are on our way to Acapulco in Father’s red station wagon, all of us. Father at the wheel. The Awful Grandmother sitting where Mother usually sits, because her feelings get hurt if she isn’t given this seat of honor. Antonieta Araceli seated between them on the bump because, —I always get carsick when I sit in the back. Mother and Aunty Light-Skin and Candelaria take the middle each with a “baby” on their lap—Lolo, Memo, me. Rafa, Ito, Tikis, and Toto claim the best seat, the one that faces backward.
—Why do they get to sit in the back and not us?
—Because they’re a bunch of malcriados, the Grandmother says. —That’s why. She means “badly raised,” though it’s only Mother who notices when she says this.
We wave good-bye to the Little Grandfather, to Oralia, and Amparo standing at the courtyard gates.
—Good-bye! Good-bye!
—If we don’t stop, maybe we can get there in seven hours, Father says.
—Seven hours! Not even if God willed it! We just want to get there alive. Don’t you worry who’s honking, Inocencio. You just take your time, mijo. Take your time …
Pulling shut the green iron gates with a clang, the washerwoman Amparo in the trembling circle of side-view mirror.