HER GRANDMOTHER DIALED THE NUMBERS, AND LUZ PUT THE cordless phone to her ear and listened to it ring in another country. Her lungs constricted. Her pulse quickened. When her father answered he stuttered, said hello twice. Someone was shouting in the background, shouting in Spanish. It sounded like preaching. She could hear traffic, too. Car engines. Somebody honked. Luz knew where her father was—outside the home improvement center, in the heat and the sun, hoping for work.
“Hi, Papá.”
“Luz,” he said. “Thank God. One moment.” And he was breathing and walking, the background noise receding. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Papá.”
“What happened, Luz? Something must have happened.”
“Everything is going to be fine,” she told him.
“Luz—”
“I love you, Papá,” she said, and she held the phone out to her grandmother, covering the mouthpiece. She said to her, “You tell him, it’s okay.” She placed a hand over her stomach. “I can’t.”
Her grandmother took the phone. Her father’s voice was quick and frantic in miniature. Luz lifted her rolled sweatshirt and the concealed knife from the tabletop and walked down the hallway. “Moses,” her grandmother said into the phone.
Three doors at the end of the hall: her grandmother’s bedroom, a bathroom, and the room Luz had shared with her mother and her father, when he had been around.
She shut the door behind her, muting her grandmother’s voice. The room was warm, sunlight filling the lone square window. The walls were painted a peach color, but she couldn’t remember if they had always been. A bed with white sheets. A crucifix on the wall. A wooden wardrobe. Nothing more. They had shared this bed.
Luz set her sweatshirt down atop the wardrobe and opened the doors. There were women’s clothes hanging inside it. Luz went weak in the knees. She lifted out a white linen dress. Something nice and light. Something she saw her mother wearing in the spark and flare of remembrance. Luz held it out in front of her, and the sunlight made it glow. She held it against her own body. It would fit. In life Luz was the same shape as the memory she held of her mother. She sat hard on the edge of the bed, the dress across her lap, and she put her face in her hands and cried.
The bedroom door opened. Luz wiped at her eyes and sniffed and got up and put the dress back into the wardrobe.
“I thought—” her grandmother started, “I thought you’d like to have them. I thought—I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Thank you, Abuela.” Luz went and hugged her. “Thank you. I am not upset because of them.”
They sat together on the bed. Luz asked how her father had taken the news.
“Your father,” her grandmother said, shaking her head and trailing off. Now she looked at Luz. “Did you see any stray dogs on your way into town?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you remember when Las Monarcas was overrun with stray dogs?”
“Not really.”
“Well,” her grandmother said, “it was. But there are fewer strays now, and this gives me hope.”
“Abuela. What are you talking about?”
“A growing willingness, perhaps, to see choices through.” She smiled wistfully. “Nevertheless. Your father, as a boy, went out to play, and he returned home with a stray puppy. Something small and precious he found near the walking market. Have I told you this story before?”
Luz didn’t think so.
“Okay. So. Your father brought the puppy home. I was furious. Your father had already named the puppy—I forget what—and he kissed it on its snout and begged me to keep it. I told him he did not understand how much work it would require. Feeding and training and watching. I said, Sometimes you will not be able to go play with friends because you will need to stay home with your dog. He pleaded, he promised. I understand, Mamá, I understand. And so I told him, Okay, Moses, but you must understand one thing. I said, You must remember that if you have this dog, you are responsible for it. You are responsible forever.” Abuela waved her hand and made a sorrowful sound.
“The poor dog. He was very good to the puppy at the start. But the best intentions always fade, hmm? Moses would come home from school, and I would tell him, You cannot go out right now, you need to feed and walk your dog. It became a chore, you see? Your father would groan.” She paused, clasped her hands together. “One day I came home from the market, and the puppy didn’t greet me at the door. So I asked Moses. Your father said the dog ran off, the dog got away from him outside and ran off. But I had seen that puppy with him. It would not run away, not back to what he had rescued it from. I said, Moses, you are telling me the truth? And he swore it. He swore he was telling the truth. But later that night I passed by his room. Well, this very room, I suppose. And I heard him crying from within. Not crying like he merely missed something. Do you see?” Abuela looked at Luz. “I never told him I heard him crying like that, that I knew he was lying.”
The dresses hung in the wardrobe in silence. Luz rubbed her eyes.
“My mind,” her grandmother said. “I was certain I’d told you that story before. It is an important lesson.” She patted Luz’s knee. “I will get started on dinner.”
Luz sat there alone, something sticking in her mind. The story, in the end, had seemed very familiar. Perhaps her grandmother was right. Perhaps Luz had heard it before.