IN THE KTICHEN of her stucco bungalow in Hollywood on the morning that had begun when she saw the silver cross in the sky—imagined it—Amalia prepared her morning coffee, automatically setting another cup for Raynaldo on the table covered with red-and-white checkered linoleum. She always tried to avoid looking at the tiny mounds and streaks of gray borax that lined the edges of the room to ward off cockroaches, indomitable in summer. But her eyes could not keep from lingering over the chair Manny had claimed as his—it had one leg shorter than the others. She had removed the chair from the kitchen after his death, but its absence became more painful. It was kept, unused, against the wall.
This remained out of her sight: Teresa’s La Dolorosa. Amalia had put it in the closet even before taking off the black dress she had borrowed from a neighbor for her mother’s flowery funeral. “A woman should have as many flowers when she leaves the world as when she married in church—if God granted her the blessing of a white wedding,” the old woman had told Amalia. Even surrounded by decorated chrysanthemums, and lying in the coppery coffin with her hands crossed over her rosary on her chest, Teresa had managed to look sternly at her daughter.
After the funeral, one day—it seemed that it had occurred in one day—the deep trance within which Amalia had existed for months, in which only Manny’s death was real, lifted. She awakened one morning and felt reassured by Raynaldo’s protective arms about her; they had never been withdrawn, she had merely not felt their warmth. That weekend, she agreed to go dancing with him. At dinner she laughed at some nonsense or other of his. She knew that all her life she would be haunted by memories of her dead son and that the hurt and missing would always be there; but she also realized that the course of her life—which had included death instead of the peace she had thought might occur—must now continue. The Holy Mother would be with her—was with her—as she always was. Amalia had felt a saddened peace after that.
But it was soon broken by the tension that developed—or did she just begin to notice it when she came out of the long trance?—among Raynaldo, Gloria, and Juan, the tension Raynaldo must have carried with them to El Bar & Grill last night when he stalked out angrily because that young man named Angel—she would not think of him; never again!—was admiring her. And how was that her fault?
Was she missing Raynaldo so soon, and even though she knew he would come back? Amalia wondered in her kitchen now. This period with him had been one of the best. Not once had a utility been disconnected…. Well, she would miss his arm about her later this morning—but he’d be back by then—when she would watch her semanal, her weekly television drama, “Camino al Sueño.” On Saturdays, when he wasn’t working and after they had their coffee, he would follow her into the living room—the beds would have been folded away—and he would share a highlight of her week, that week’s installment of “The Road to a Dream.”
On the kitchen table were stitched pieces of lavender material for a dress Amalia was making. She was an excellent seamstress and cut her own patterns out of newspapers. She had not decided whether this dress would be for her or for Gloria.
When they entered the kitchen, Juan was wearing his pants, no shirt, Gloria was in a thin lemony dress she often put on before she made herself up. Both were barefooted.
Amalia wanted to tell them—
How beautiful they were!
Juan kissed Amalia lightly on the cheek, as he always did in greeting. “I got something for you,” he said to her.
Gloria walked to the refrigerator.
To avoid kissing me? Amalia wondered, and wanted to order her to kiss her.
Juan sat at the table. He held out some earrings to Amalia. They were large, with lots of glittering things, the kind she loved.
Why this gift now? Amalia was immediately suspicious. Juan had never given her anything. “Where did you get the money for them?”
Juan withdrew the earrings. “I’m working after school, man.” He bounced the earrings from hand to hand.
It infuriated her when he called her “man,” although she knew it was just an expression. She had begun to notice that he used the word when he was trying to disguise something, hide something, by sounding tough.
“Where are you working, Juan?” Amalia felt tense just to ask that question.
“At a video rental store.”
Juan resented menial jobs. When he had worked during other times, and even before his recent moodiness, he would come home and say, “That Mickey Mouse job is shit, just shit.” He had not sounded like that now. “Where is the store?” Amalia forced another question. She spoke to her children in a combination of English and Spanish, sliding from one to the other in the same sentence. They would answer her like that, except that they had no accent in English, that she could detect, except perhaps now and then. She had begun to notice that, in anger, her son and daughter would shift to English when they spoke to her. With each other they almost always talked in English, with slang words that annoyed her.
Juan looked at her in exasperation. “In Hollywood, man, where else? I told you.”
“He’s in the movies, Mom. A big star. He’s sure good-looking enough,” Gloria said, still not looking at her.
And he was good-looking enough, Amalia knew. But you never saw young Mexicans in American movies. “You didn’t tell me you were working, Juan.” She would have remembered.
“Yeah, Mom.” Gloria faced her finally. “He did tell you, I heard him.”
Mom! Again that despised word that made her feel fat and ugly. “Maybe he told you,” Amalia could not keep accusation out of her voice, “you talk late every night.”
“We hear you and Raynaldo, too,” Gloria said. She scratched one bare foot with the other. “Talking, I mean.”
Amalia insisted Raynaldo keep his sex sounds low, sometimes quieting them herself by kissing him only for that purpose. She wanted to confront her daughter’s insolence. What are you holding against me? What could Teresa have told them? Amalia remembered Teresa’s whispers, prayers—out of that time of blackness, they had become like muffled curses.
Juan placed the earrings carefully on the table. He touched his forehead, brushing his hair over the recent bruise there.
“It’s almost healed, m’ijo,” Amalia soothed him. He had explained it only vaguely—a fight at school, he’d fallen.
“Fuckin’ bastards,” Gloria cursed.
Juan looked at her quickly.
A cautioning look. Amalia did not know what to react to immediately: Gloria’s apparent knowledge of what had caused the bruise, Juan’s signal to stop her, or to the filthy word. “Don’t use that word around me, Gloria, not here or anywhere else!” she demanded.
“Fuck? That word? You never heard it before … Mom?”
Yes, last night! “Never!” Amalia looked down because she thought her face might be flushed with shame.
“Most people have,” Gloria said. “I bet Raynaldo has.”
“He’s never used it in my presence,” Amalia was certain.
Gloria shrugged. “You love him, Mom?”
The easy words were like shots at Amalia. “Of course I love him. He’s my husband!” And even if he isn’t, how do you think we manage even this well? How do you think I can keep you in school? She wanted to ask them both that, remind them of her insistence that they must finish school, make something of themselves. Instead, and to halt these moments, she explained his absence, “He’s on one of his overnight hauls,” and she almost believed it herself.
“He must’ve left late,” Gloria said. “Because he came back last night. When you were still out.”
Returned here? To wait for her? After she stayed in the bar and—Amalia looked at Juan for verification.
“I wasn’t here,” he said.
“But he left right away because I told him to get the hell out of our house,” Gloria said. She touched her lips as if only now discovering she had not applied lipstick.
“Gloria—” Juan seemed about to rebuke.
“How dare you!” Amalia answered her daughter. Was it possible that she—and Juan—had pretended, all these years, to accept, yes, to like, Raynaldo? “You’re lying,” Amalia said, and wondered, Why? “And you remember that he’s been more of a father to you than—” She stopped. She tried never to mention Gabriel; only that he “had left.” Juan didn’t remember him, Gloria had never seen him—and it saddened Amalia to realize that.
“Yeah, Mom?” Gloria goaded. Then she laughed. “I was just joking. What did the letter you got yesterday say?”
Amalia had come in with it when she returned from work. She had placed it on the table—and they had both been there—before she put it into her purse. “I haven’t read it.” Despite the abrupt question, she could answer that quickly. There was nothing more the letter from the public attorney could say to her about her son, nothing.
“Cops lie all the time,” Juan said.
“Man, do they,” Gloria said. “Like at school—”
“Yeah, they busted a lot of the vatos and said they were selling drugs,” Juan finished.
Vatos! Cholo talk, gang talk. Amalia knew cops lied.
“They’re real shit, Mom,” Gloria extended her contempt. “Know what they did? Enrolled in school, for months, pretended they’re students, right? Then they bust the guys they made friends with, say they bought drugs, sold drugs—lie, lie, lie.”
“But they didn’t get everyone,” Juan seemed to enjoy that.
Had he been arrested in that raid? Or had he been one of the ones they didn’t get? Was that how he was bruised? Had that happened around the time he had sheltered that Salvadoran boy in the garage? Was he Salvadoran? Had Juan told her that only to disorient her? Or were her son and daughter only concerned for her, about the sadness the letter from the public attorney might arouse again? Amalia welcomed a sudden tenderness toward her son, her daughter. “Give me your present, m’ijo,” she said.
Juan held the earrings to her.
“Put them on me.”
Juan tried.
Amalia finished for him. Manny would have known how, so tenderly, the way he had placed the flower in her hair, that distant day. Softly, she thanked her suddenly shy Juan.
“They look beautiful on you,” Gloria’s voice softened. She touched the delicate coppery fringe on the earrings. “They glitter, just the way you like.”
My little girl again! And my son! Amalia thought exultantly. Suddenly the mood of separation and closeness collided, overwhelmed her. She wished she had enough money to give her daughter a quinceañera’s coming-out. Girls her age dressed in white, vaunting their purity, carried flowers into a dance they presided over, escorted by a handsome young man—like Juan!—wearing a suit and tie. When as a girl she had worked for a wealthy Mexican-American family in El Paso, she had watched in fascination as the fifteen-year-old daughter fluttered like a bird in her frilly white dress, and—Now Amalia frowned, the memory blurring, leaving only a terrible, cold desolation…. “I’m sewing this dress for you,” she responded to Gloria’s softened tone; she had decided, that very moment, that the dress would be for her.
Gloria held the stitched portion up to her chest. “Too big. I think you’re making it for yourself, Mom.”
How frail closeness could be! Amalia felt. “What was that!” Had the house trembled?
“It’s not an earthquake, ‘Amá,” Juan laughed. “Just a truck idling.”
“Well, this is earthquake weather, so hot and still.” Amalia wanted to hear their usual denials.
“Superstitions, ‘Amá,” Juan reassured. “There’s no such thing.”
Amalia had what she had wanted: reassurance that there would be no earthquake, and being called “‘Amá” by Juan.
The vibrating sound had turned into the growl of a motorcycle.
“It’s Mick.” Gloria had peered out the barred window. She ran out of the room.
To make herself up, Amalia knew. She was relieved that there was no earthquake, but it didn’t please her that Mick was here. Why did there have to be either?
Mick walked in, swaggered in.
With shiny black pants! In this heat? He was about Juan’s age. He might have been good-looking, Amalia allowed herself to think—if it weren’t for that… costume. What else to call it? All that black, and the shirt without sleeves and slit open at the sides, and the silvery belt and that wristband with studs. And those boots!—the kind gringo cowboys wore in Texas when she was growing up. If that’s what he was attempting, he had succeeded in looking ominous, rough, although—who could miss this?—he was somewhat scrawny. And that single earring!… Was he a Stoner?—Amalia didn’t want even to wonder about that, about his being one of the new breed of Mexican-American gangs who adopt Anglo ways, their drugs, their music.
“Ésele” Juan greeted him.
Ésele!—gang slang for “guy”; but, Amalia constantly reminded herself, many young Mexicans speak like that and aren’t in the cholo gangs.
Mick nodded at Juan.
Amalia was glad to detect a tension between the two.
“Hi, Am-al-lee-ah,” Mick drawled.
Amalia winced at the familiarity, and his pronunciation of her name. “Hello—” She stopped deliberately, frowning deeply, as if attempting to remember his name. “Hello—”
“Mick,” he reminded her.
“Pero cual es tu nombre verdadero?” Amalia asked.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t speak Mexican, never learned it.” Mick emphasized his drawl.
Amalia said in English: “I said, What’s your real name? Mick’s no Mexican-American name.”
“Huh?”
He muttered that sound constantly, as if everything baffled him—and it annoyed Amalia. “I said, Mick’s no—”
“Oh, yeah, well, my dad’s name was Miguel.” He pronounced it Mi-goo-ell. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes,” Amalia said. “Are you ashamed of being Mexican?”
Mick glanced at Juan, as if gauging whether to contain his anger. He smiled, a crooked, rehearsed smile. “Naw, but—” Then he shrugged Amalia’s question away. He said, as if repeating an explanation to himself: “All you gotta do is look around to see who’s on top, and if you wanna get there—”
“You wanna get… where?—ésele?” Juan asked him.
Amalia laughed aloud, welcoming Juan’s sarcasm, even his calling Mick “ésele.”
“Sure is hot,” Mick shifted away. “Earthquake weather.”
“That’s a stupid superstition,” Amalia was glad to say. “And those pants make you hotter.”
“Huh?” Then Mick laughed suggestively. “I’ll say they do!”
“You real hot shit—huh?—ésele?” Juan taunted. “What if—?” He stopped when he saw his sister.
Dressed now in a short, tight skirt and a blouse that left a strip of her flat stomach exposed, Gloria stood at the door, as if undecided where she belonged within the room.
Incredible to believe that both skirt and “blouse” had once been one of Amalia’s ruffled dresses, converted—how?—into this by her daughter. Well, she wouldn’t be surprised if Gloria used only the ruffle for a skirt!… Amalia stared at her pretty daughter, in admiration and astonishment. How could she have put on so much makeup so quickly, and how could she make her hair do all that in such a short time?—piled and teased about her face.
After moments, Gloria walked over to Mick. He kissed her, lazily nuzzling her face, glancing triumphantly at Juan and Amalia.
Amalia looked away. Juan stared at them.
Suddenly there was a crashing metallic sound outside.
“Fuckin’ shits were following me!” Mick stood up, tense. “Probably knocked my bike over.” He did not go out to see.
He looks like a terrified boy, Amalia thought. There were boys like him killing and being killed now all over the city, and so she, too, felt afraid.
Juan had run out of the kitchen, into the front room.
Gloria answered Amalia’s look: “Mick thinks some dudes are following him ‘cause he’s going out with me.”
“Just crazies.” Juan was back. “They’re gone.”
“Motherfuckers,” Mick muttered.
“Hey, man—” Juan warned him, indicating Amalia.
There was no word Amalia detested more than the one Mick had just said. Juan had used it in a rage when he was fired from an after-school job clearing tables at Denny’s Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. “Motherfucker thought I was after his girl,” he’d said, “and who the hell wants her, man?” Amalia had expressed her outrage at the word; it made her cringe when she heard it tossed on the street, on buses. Juan had apologized. Imagine!—that there could be such a word. She could not even think it. Her anger allowed warm blood to return to her body, easing the abrupt fear the shouts had created, the tension of violence—eased, too, by the fact that Juan had “protected” her; she loved that.
“They didn’t do nothing to your bike,” Juan told Mick. “Just made lots of scary noises.” He jangled his hands at Mick. “Just some crazies passing by—did they scare you bad, eseleT
“No,” Gloria answered firmly for him.
“Hell, no,” he echoed.
“Just locos, ‘Amá,” Juan reassured Amalia.
So many questions to ask. Had she been so overwhelmed with grief after Manny’s death that she hadn’t become aware that Gloria was involved with gang members? Were they trying now to reclaim her? Amalia knew of the bitter fights over “home girls.”
“We’re going riding, Mick, remember?” Gloria asserted.
He seemed reluctant. “I’m not sure—”
“I’m not either,” Amalia said. She was apprehensive because of what had just occurred outside, but also because she had seen girls on the back of motorcycles, hunched over the drivers, bodies pressed.
Gloria walked toward the door, waited for Mick.
Mick moved hesitantly with her.
“Gloria—” Amalia called.
“What?”
“You don’t have to go out, so early,” Amalia quickly substituted new words for the ones she had been about to speak.
“I don’t have to, Mom, but I am—and it’s not so early. You just slept late.”
Because—“Gloria!” Amalia called out more urgently.
“What!” Gloria waited impatiently.
“Kiss me.”
Gloria stood beside her mother. Then she kissed her lightly on the cheek, and then—suddenly—firmly on the lips. “It’ll be all right with Raynaldo, ‘Amá, I promise.” She left quickly, touching Juan in good-bye.
Amalia put her hand on the place where her daughter had kissed her; it was warm. They did love her. How could she doubt it? She heard the growl of the motorcycle as it faded. “Gloria isn’t in danger from a gang,” she said aloud, wanting her words to affirm it.
“I told you, man,” Juan said impatiently. “Those were just clowns outside.”
Those … clowns—she had seen them clowning on the streets just like kids—could become dangerous, killers.
“Sorry, ‘Ama, I didn’t mean to call you ‘man.’” Juan misinterpreted her silence.
She would say this for him: He relented in his defiance, especially when Gloria wasn’t around.
Juan stood silently before her, as if deciding something.
“M’ijo—?” For a moment she thought she knew what she wanted to ask him, but in the next moment the question was lost. All she knew now was that she wanted to push that strand of his hair back so she could see it fall again to his forehead. He couldn’t be in a gang, with hair that long. He didn’t even wear the uniform of khaki pants, loose T-shirts. But gangs were changing.
“‘Amá, I was—” Juan started.
She looked away quickly. The tone of his voice had alerted her to disturbing words—and wasn’t there enough, enough? But she knew he was waiting for her to react. After moments—he still waited. She said, only quietly, hesitantly, “What?”
“Nothing!” He started to walk out of the kitchen. “I was just going to remind you not to forget to check the winning Lotto number.” The angry note was gone.
“I never win anything,” she told him. She bought a lottery ticket each week only because Raynaldo insisted.
At the door, Juan said to her, “Whatever that letter says, remember, cops lie.”
Again that concern with the letter from the public lawyer; didn’t they know nothing it said would mean anything to her now? She heard the door close. He had gone out, without a shirt, no shoes. So he would be back.
Amalia sat alone in her iron-barred kitchen crammed with artificial flowers. She didn’t bother to warm her coffee. She drank it cold.
Then it was almost time for her Saturday morning serial. She went into the living room. The beds had been pushed and rolled away. On a mantel in this room there was another cherished picture, of John F. Kennedy—and another Sacred Heart of Jesus, the heart in this one bleeding beautifully. In the most prominent place, Amalia had located a small statue of the Holy Mother. She had decorated this one with paper flowers to look the way she remembered the Blessed Madonna had appeared to Bernadette—except that she had given her more flowers to stand on, and hers were colored, red and blue.
Amalia looked about this room and she felt poor. But, she thought quickly, others were much, much worse off. Today that did not alleviate her depression. It saddened her even more, that others were worse off. Rosario had said something like that once. Today her friend’s voice was echoing more than usual.
She heard a car. She looked out the window. Juan was leaning into the shiny new car that had just driven up. From here Amalia could not see the driver. There was someone in the passenger seat. A dark young man? She had the impression that she had seen him before. No. She saw Juan take something—exchange something? Then he looked back toward the house, spoke into the car, and retreated from it. The car slipped away from Amalia’s vision. It was just someone asking directions. Amalia saw Juan look at something in his hand. Money? A packet? Drugs! Who had received what? No, her suspicions were all wrong. Juan had just forgotten to return the slip of paper with the address the driver had inquired about. But why was he still waiting? For the car to park somewhere else? Now he walked out of her range. Amalia waited for him to return. He did not.
She sat down on the sofa bed, trying to force herself not to conjecture anymore. She fixed her full attention on the television. Raynaldo had bought it on credit at Circuit City, $15 a month to be paid forever. She waited through interminable commercials, refusing all the questions ganging up on her, about Juan, about Gloria. Where was Raynaldo? What if he had returned here last night only to verify that she hadn’t left El Bar & Grill right away? What if the bartender, who was jealous because she had rebuffed him several times—what if he told Raynaldo about—?
That bastard Angel! Amalia thought—and wished her serial would hurry up. She tried not to curse aloud, only to herself. Of course, God would still hear, He heard everything, didn’t He? So He must have heard Angel arouse her sympathies last night, and He would know that she responded with compassion—and Rosario would have approved, too. But first Angel had said, in his deep, oddly mournful voice:
“Eres una mujer muy linda, una verdadera mujer.”
A beautiful woman, a real woman! She had laughed in a way that resounded strangely to her. How old was he—twenty-eight? Difficult to gauge; you keep looking twenty-five until you’re past thirty. The extra beer must have already begun to take effect, because she had felt a tingling sensation—she would be the last to deny that. She was savoring the beer he had brought her, but she made a face to indicate she wasn’t used to three, in case he’d noticed she had already had her two with Raynaldo. It was then that he broke her heart—God and the Holy Mother would attest to this—when he told her in a lowered, hurt murmur about being forced to flee his country—Nicaragua—dangers, confusions, dislocated loyalties, new enemies … Amalia had been amazed that he had been able to survive it all, that anyone could survive all that violence. “You have to survive, bonita Amalia,” he told her, “there’s nothing else.” Her heart broke again. She agreed to take a walk with him, that’s all, perhaps with her company to soothe, at least attempt to soothe, his painful memories. Of course they would leave the bar separately so that no one would misunderstand. Then, outside, at the corner, she would thank him, courteously, for the extra beer, the compliments, his shared memories. And for the beautiful flower. Then she would wish him well—and walk home, alone …
Damn the whole night!
And most of all, damn that extra beer! In her Hollywood bungalow unit as she sat before the television screen, Amalia welcomed the throbby ballad about the endurance of dreams that introduced her serial. She leaned back. She forbade all worries. She surrendered to her semanal—so what if Raynaldo’s arm wasn’t about her? She concentrated on her cherished Saturday serial:
CAMINO AL SUEÑO
Antonio Montenegro adores his beautiful wife. He’s a successful architect in Mexico City—“la capital.” He is a loyal son and a devout Catholic—he was once honored with a private audience with the Holy Pope. His adoring servants call him “El Señor Arquitecto.”
So handsome, Amalia thought, and so kind. There was a combination. That man would never beat his wife. Nor walk out on her in an unjustified jealous fit at El Bar & Grill.
Antonio and his wife, Lucinda, of the prominent Soto-Mayor dynasty, have a perfect home, all chrome and glass and staircases.
Amalia touched the armrests of the sofa bed. The covers she had sewn slipped off every night. She felt the matted cotton underneath.
In the household of Antonio Montenegro, Lucinda has changed, becoming cold. “Una extranjera,” he confides to the oldest retainer, an old woman, perhaps Indian, part Indian, dark brown, as wise as she is devoted to the Montenegros. She dresses in black even in summer—
Like Mick! Amalia almost crossed herself at the irreverent thought.
—and wears a huge crucifix on her chest. She invites Antonio to sit down in her servant’s quarters—“although they are much too humble for you.”
“What do I care about worldly possessions when I am losing my beloved wife, Ti’ita?” He calls the old woman “little aunt” because she raised him.
Ti’ita looks sadly at her beloved Antonio. “Tienes que ser muy fuerte,” she exhorts, demanding his strength. “Remember that the Montenegros have a most noble heritage.”
Well, the Gómezes had quite a history themselves, Amalia might have said to Raynaldo, who would have laughed appreciatively.
“I have been privileged to serve the Montenegros from before your birth,” Ti’ita reminds Antonio. Her dimming eyes convey the distance of her cherished memories of devotion. “Your sainted father and mother—who now rest in the special place that God provides for such generous people in heaven—entrusted me to raise you under their just guidance. I would have given my life for them, and then for you—and now for our Lucinda.”
“Why has she changed?” Antonio begs.
Not because she knew he would walk out on her—Amalia would attest to that.
Ti’ita shakes her head at the weight of the words she must speak: “Lucinda’s past has caught up with her.”
Antonio is baffled. “She has no past except that which belongs to us both. Our lives began when we found each other.”
“That is what your love assures you.” Old Ti’ita smiles. Then she turns her head in outrage: “Lucinda was forced into a vile marriage before she met you, when she was but a child.”
Like me, Amalia thought.
“It’s not true!” Antonio protests. “Tell me you’re merely testing my strength as a Montenegro.”
“If God would allow me to lie!” the wise Ti’ita laments. “Antonio, Lucinda’s parents were rich—and corrupt. They squandered fortunes in ways that God forbids.”
“Liquor, gambling,” Antonio begins to understand.
“That—and more.” Ti’ita makes a sign of the cross, indicating the enormity of unnamed trespasses.
Antonio tries to understand. “And because of their many debts—?”
Ti’ita speaks the terrible words: “Her parents sold Lucinda to a brutal man who shunned God and his own family.”
“Sold?” Antonio cannot accept the word. “My beloved Lucinda—sold?”
The faithful Ti’ita nods. “Lucinda had no choice.”
No choice, Amalia thought. None. Never.
“But she ran away,” Ti’ita tells Antonio. “God in His infinite kindness led her to you, my son.”
“There has been no happier life,” Antonio asserts.
“But now that evil man has returned.” The old woman slows painful words.
Gabriel came back, Amalia thought. So did Salvador.
“He has come to claim her as his rightful wife,” the old woman finishes her terrible message. “He is her husband. God heard their vows in His holy church.”
“Lucinda and I were married at the altar,” Antonio reminds her. “God heard our vows. My beloved Lucinda wore the purest white.”
And I did not, Amalia thought.
“All of that is rendered unbinding, according to the just strictures of our Holy Church,” Ti’ita says firmly. “Who are we to question?” She looks down, inward. “Perhaps my just God is punishing me for loving you so much I kept this horrible secret—” She dabs at tears.
“God would never judge you, Ti’ita, never!”
“God holds us all accountable,” the wise old woman replies.
“Yes,” Antonio’s devotion tries to accept.
But would God permit—? The question almost formed for Amalia. God was mysterious, even in the semanales.
Ti’ita sighs: “Lucinda has chosen to make you hate her because she must leave you.”
“I would sooner hate my soul!” Antonio vows.
“And she loves you with all her heart,” Ti’ita asserts. “But that evil man has threatened to reveal all if she does not return to him. Antonio, he threatens to destroy you and the whole dynasty of the Montenegros!”
“Destroy my proud family? How?”
Ti’ita bows her head. All must be spoken now. “It was the Montenegros who, in their infinite generosity, lent to that vile man the exact amount he paid to the corrupt Soto-Mayores for—” She gasps the rest of her words: “—for their daughter—for Lucinda, your beloved wifel”
“Then my own family donated to—” Antonio begins to grasp the enormous complexity of his destiny.
“They did not know!” Ti’ita sobs.
“I have a gun! I will kill that godless man!”
“Antonio!”
But he is gone.
The old woman speaks to her clenched crucifix:
“O Dios, O Madre Sagrada! Is there no way out of this nightmare, O God, O Sacred Mother?” She shakes her weary head. “None.” She begins to look up. “None except—” She gazes at heaven: “Only a miracle can save us now! Give me a sign that you understand!”