Los Angeles, 1943
Collateral Damage
Something in Señora Lupe died the day we heard that Vince had been killed in action. She didn’t stop breathing or moving, but her soul left her body.
Don Gabriel read her the telegram, a terse government communication: “We regret to inform you...” Vince’s wife, Julie, had brought it over in the morning, but Don Gabriel waited until his own tears were dry before taking his wife’s hand in his and telling her the news. She hardly cried. Instead, she went outside and sat on the front porch and stared into the night sky as if she could see her first-born son rising up to heaven.
Lolly and Gabi took it like adults.
“Uncle Vince was killed in action,” I told them simply. They both had school friends who had lost fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins. They seemed to think it was inevitable.
“They’d better not lay a finger on Daddy,” Lolly said after a long pause.
“Or what?” murmured Gabi. “You’ll grab a gun and go kill a bunch of nasty Germans?”
Later, I heard Gabi sobbing into her pillow.
The little ones didn’t even try to act brave. Nine-year-old Lupita burst into tears. “Uncle Vince!” she screamed. “Uncle Vince!” Six-year-old Lexie, who always took her cues from her older sister, followed suit.
I sat down and lit a cigarette. We were all thinking what only Lolly had dared to say: What if Gabe was next?
I have to admit that I was close to tears most of the time. Whenever I heard about an Allied offensive, even in a place far away from where Gabe was...where I thought Gabe was, because you could never be sure... I would break down. For example, when the Americans invaded Guam, I had nightmares for weeks about snipers aiming for Gabe, even though I knew he wasn’t in the Pacific. I started to smoke. The doctor wanted to give me some kind of barbiturate to calm me down, but I was afraid. I’d seen what drugs had done to Orson.
In the afternoons, after work, we visited Señora Lupe. She was drifting backward. “Hurry and get ready for class, Vicente!” she’d call. “You don’t want to be late!”
“What shall I do about the little ones?” I asked Don Gabriel. “Señora Lupe is in no state to take care of them after school, and Tía Emi is busy with her sewing all day.” I didn’t want to say: Tía Emi isn’t fit to look after them.
“I can take care of them,” said Don Gabriel.
“Vicente!” called Señora Lupe. “Wash your hands! It’s almost time for dinner!”
She’d set a dish for him at the table.
“But you’re still working, Don Gabriel,” I said. “How can you take care of them?”
He shrugged and looked away. “I’ll make a space for them in the workshop. They can play or do homework. They’ll be safe. I won’t let them near the tools.”
“Vicente!” Doña Lupe called again. “Wash your hands and comb your hair for dinner! ¡Ese niño!”
“Why doesn’t she set the table for Gabe?” I asked quietly.
“She knows he’s still alive.”
Somehow, I felt comforted.
In the end, I didn’t leave the girls with their grandfather. I didn’t want them in the workshop, with sawdust everywhere and nails lying all over the floor. Tía Emi agreed to pick them up from school and take them to Madame Isabelle’s. It wasn’t ideal, but in hard times, you have to rely on family, and Tía Emi was the only family I had.
With time, Señora Lupe began to think that Vince and she were both children. “Vicente!” she would yell. “Give me back my doll.”
“What’s the matter with Abuelita?” asked Lexie. “Why is she talking funny?”
“She’s ill,” I explained. Lexie nodded and went out to play.
Sometimes Señora Lupe would open up the refrigerator and peer inside. “There’s no ice cream!” she would scream. “Vicente, you ate it all! You’re so mean! Not like...not like my other brother...what’s his name?”
“Gabe?” I’d ask gently. “Do you mean Gabe?”
“Ah, yes, Gabriel. Do you know him?”
At first, I’d try to explain that I was his wife, but she didn’t understand. “Let it go,” said Don Gabriel. “She’s happy in her own world. Don’t complicate things for her.”
“Who are you?” she asked Lexie one day. “Are you in my class? Do you want to play with my toys?”
Lexie burst out laughing.
“You’re mean!” screamed Señora Lupe. “You don’t want to play with me! You broke my doll!” She stamped her foot, then turned to me. “Who are you?” she cried.
The newspapers talked of collateral damage—unintended deaths: people caught in the cross fire; civilian victims of a raid on an enemy stronghold. They printed the numbers: Allied deaths, 54; Axis deaths, 112; collateral damage, 198. But those numbers didn’t include people like my mother-in-law, Guadalupe Estrada: women whose grief over the death of a son sinks them so far into depression that they emerge in another dimension, in a world where they’re little girls again and don’t have sons who go to war.
It didn’t last long. In mid-April, Señora Lupe had a stroke and died.
It was a blessing, really, because she never knew about Gabe.
My darling husband, the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known, was killed in action in Tunisia, during Operation Torch, May 1943.
How can I describe how I felt? Like a nail had been ripped from my finger. Like the skin had been pared from my face. Like an awl had pierced my gut. My beloved, my lover, my Gabe. I had no words to express my grief...and my fear. I was alone with four young daughters, no husband, and no money except for a small widow’s pension.
“You’ll manage,” said Tía Emi. “I never had a man to depend on, and I managed.” She threaded a needle with a steady hand. “You have a job. You have a roof over your head. You’ll survive. Women have been through worse.”
What could be worse than losing your soul mate? My Tía Emi was an old maid, I thought, with no understanding of what it meant to bury a husband.
I walked to the telegraph office and wired Lola: “Gabe KIA. I need you.”
She responded within hours: “Pack your bags and come to Mexico with kids.”
“You’ll be free of me at last,” I told Tía Emi. “I’m going to accept Lola’s offer. I can’t stand to be here without Gabe. I need a complete change.”
“Who says I want to be free of you?”
“Well, you took me in for no reason. I was a constant burden to you.”
“Who says for no reason? I promised your mother.” She turned and stared at me. “You can’t go back. It’s dangerous. He killed your mother, and he’ll come looking for you, too. And maybe even your kids.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“He wants vengeance.”
“Who was my mother anyway? I don’t even know her name! Who is this man? I need to know her story. Otherwise, how can I believe you?”
“Her name was María.”
María? I thought. In Mexico, everyone’s name is María. I’m María Amparo. Lola is María de los Dolores. Tía Emi is María Emilia. Even men had names like José María. She’d told me absolutely nothing.
“What are her surnames?” In Mexico, people usually used two, the father’s and the mother’s. “At least tell me one of them.”
Tía Emi hunched over her sewing. The needle went in and out of the cloth, in and out.
“Well, if you won’t tell me anything concrete, I refuse to believe you,” I shouted. “I need to get out of Los Angeles. I can go back to being Lola’s personal hairdresser. The children can go to school there. They know enough Spanish.”
“No!” yelled Tía Emi, suddenly adamant. “I promised your mother!”
“Who the hell are you to tell me no?” I yelled back. “I am nothing to you!”
I thought she wasn’t going to answer me, that this confrontation would end as all the others had, whenever I asked about my mother. But then she said quietly, “You are something to me. You are my niece. Your mother was my sister.”
It took a moment to sink in. I’d always called her Tía Emi, but she’d always said she wasn’t a blood relative.
“So my mother’s surnames were Rojas-Moreno, like yours?”
“No,” she said. “We had different fathers.”
“Then what was her last name?”
Tía Emi squinted at her needlework. Her fingers had grown knobby and rough from pinpricks—she never used a thimble—but they glided over the fabric like a seagull flying low over water.
“Why would anyone want to kill her?” I asked cautiously.
Tía Emi kept on stitching.
She’s talking nonsense, I thought. By the end of the week, I’d made up my mind. I wired Lola: “We’re coming.” I told the girls to pack their bags.
I hadn’t counted on them having their own opinions. After all, they were children. But Lolly resisted. She was in high school, she argued. She had friends. She had plans. I tried to soothe her with promises of a new life, visits to Tía Lola, the chance to meet movie stars.
“I don’t want to meet movie stars,” she retorted. “Papá hated movie stars. He only put up with Tía Lola because of you! Why can’t I stay with Tía Emi?”
“Me, too!” Gabi piped in.
“We’re not babies anymore. We can take care of ourselves! We’ll go to school during the day, and afterward, Tía Emi can teach us to sew.”
I gaped at them. They were babies, not quite fifteen and thirteen years old.
Tía Emi thought it was a wonderful idea. “You shouldn’t go at all,” she grumbled, “but since your mind’s made up, you’ll travel more easily with just the two younger ones. You always were as stubborn as a pregnant donkey.” She scowled. “And don’t get knocked up down there,” she added. “Those men can be real bastards.”
I almost laughed, but the idea of being with another man was too painful.
I’ll only stay for a while, I thought. Just until my head clears and I figure out what to do.
I gave the keys to our house to Tía Emi. “You can live here,” I told her. “You can convert the shed into a sewing workroom.”
“Yes,” she said. “Fewer disruptions that way, and when you come back—if you come back—your house will be here waiting for you.”
“Gracias, Tía,” I said.