HER FATHER WAS RED-FACED AND FUMING WHEN SHE FINALLY got home. She walked past him and Rodrigo to the back of the house so that her father would have to follow. She sat on the edge of his mattress. No longer was she the frightened little girl, and no longer was he the father who comforted her in the night with stories of her mother.
Her father was bellowing in English, demanding to know where she had been, and so Luz said she’d spent the night at Jonah’s and stayed there with him all day. Her father’s cheeks bulged and the vein in his forehead stood out and his skin darkened. He was shouting in Spanish now, and Luz bowed her head and let it wash over her.
She said it quietly, in English: “I’m pregnant.”
Her father shouted for another moment, and then he stopped when he finally heard her. Luz looked at him and repeated herself.
He blinked and his mouth worked. He turned and seemed bewildered. He grasped at the air in front of him like he was blind, and then he pivoted and collapsed to sit on a lower rung of the loft ladder. His shoulders sagged and his arms hung limply. He wasn’t looking at her. “Please tell me this is not the truth.”
“It is true, Papá.”
“Luz.” It was a whisper. He covered his face with his hands. “Luz. Luz.” He asked her how long.
“Six or seven weeks.” The words were like misshapen objects in her mouth.
He shook his head. “And you tell me now.”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
He sighed, said her name again, but wouldn’t look at her.
“It is going to be okay, Papá. It is.” She paused. She didn’t know if she believed this, but she said it to her father again anyway. Her own reckoning was yet to come. Her own reckoning and the reimagining of everything that lay ahead, everything she might hope for. Her father didn’t speak. She went on: “Jonah is nice, Papá. He cares for me. I think, I think one day he will want to m—”
“¡Basta!” her father shouted, standing and raising his hands. He called her irresponsible. Foolish. And how many times had he ordered her to stay away from that boy? “Who have you become, my daughter?” He was screaming. He swiveled and kicked the ladder and it fell, slow like a tree, and Luz watched it falling, and it slammed against the ancient cypress floorboards with a boom she felt in her heels. She pulled her feet off the floor and drew her knees to her chest. Her father stood, back turned, hands on hips, head hanging. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, hoarse. He spoke with resignation: “You will have to go back to Las Monarcas.” He turned and threw his hands up. “You will have to be with your grandmother.”
Luz was on her feet but she didn’t remember getting up. “Papá—”
“Luz,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice but he punctuated with a hand chopped through the air. He turned the hand over and ticked items off with a finger against his palm, beginning with the fact that they were not American citizens. “We have no money. How can we pay for doctors? Raise a child? Look at me.”
Her vision warped, melted, bled away. Woozy on her feet.
“What do I know about taking care of you? How am I to do this? The work is going away from here, this city.” He grunted with disgust. “Do you know how I worry for you, every night you walk home from the streetcar? After the things that have happened to me, to Rodrigo, to the rest of us? And now I must worry about you and your child? No. No. It cannot work. Your grandmother—”
“Papá, no—”
“Yes, Luz. Your grandmother will take care of you. She will help you through this. I will still send her my money after you are back. I will be able to send more.”
“I won’t go.”
“Yes. You will.”
Luz crossed her arms, willed her world to steady. “I am staying in New Orleans.”
He massaged his brow. He pointed to the door. “I am going for a walk.” He said that she would indeed return to Mexico. They would talk more once he was calmer.
“I won’t go!” she cried after him, but he didn’t reply.
She sat again on the mattress. The front door opened, clacked shut. The world dimly trembled. She heard Rodrigo get up and nervously shift his weight before settling down again. Her father was gone a while. Nothing would hold in her mind—words she sought skittered away like pebbles thrown against pavement.