Oscar Casares Page 13

  Yolanda kept getting a ride to work with my mother, and Frank kept bringing her home in the afternoons. My mother had offered to drive Yolanda to the DPS office and let her borrow our car for the driving part of the test, but Yolanda said she’d changed her mind and didn’t want to talk about it. I heard my mother telling my father what she’d said, and they agreed it probably had something to do with Frank. El Burro, my father let out when they didn’t have anything else to say.

  It was the Fourth of July when I got sick that summer. I remember my mother wouldn’t let me go outside with Lonny He kept yelling at me from the street that night to stop being a baby and come out of the house so I could pop some firecrackers. We’d been talking all week about shooting some bottle rockets in the direction of Frank’s house. It didn’t feel like anything at first, just a fever, but the next morning we knew it was the chicken pox. My mother had to miss a few days of work, staying home with me until I got over the worst part. After that, Yolanda volunteered to come look in on me when she wasn’t working. But I told my mother I didn’t want her coming over when I still looked like those dead people in that Night of the Living Dead movie. My mother said Yolanda would understand I was sick, and if she didn’t, that’s what I’d get for watching those kinds of movies. So for about a week she came over in the mornings and we watched The Price Is Right together. Yolanda was great at guessing the prices of things, and she said it was from working in a grocery store and having a good memory. I told her I thought she should go on the show. She laughed and said she probably wouldn’t win anything, since she’d be too nervous. What I meant to say was that she should go on the show and be one of the girls who stands next to the car, smiling. She was prettier than any of them, but I never told her that, because I got embarrassed whenever I thought about saying it.

  If Yolanda came over in the afternoon, we’d watch General Hospital together. She said she’d been watching it for years. There wasn’t anything else on at that hour, so I didn’t really care. Once, she brought over some lime sherbert, and we played Chinese checkers in my room until she had to get home to Frank Castro. Each time she left she’d reach down and give me a little kiss on the cheek, and each time her hair smelled like a different fruit. Sometimes like a pear, sometimes like a strawberry, sometimes like an apple. The strawberry was my favorite.

  This was about the time when Frank said that from now on, he would take Yolanda to work in the morning—no matter how out of the way it was for him, or the fact that he and my mother were always pulling out of the driveway at the same time. A week or two went by, and then my mother told my father that Frank had started showing up at the store in the middle of the day, usually during his lunch hour, but sometimes also at two or three in the afternoon. He wouldn’t talk to Yolanda, but instead just hung out by the magazine rack, pretending to read a wrestling magazine. Yolanda tried to ignore him. My mother said she had talked to her in the break room, but Yolanda kept saying it was nothing, that Frank’s hours had changed at the airport.

  There was one Saturday when he was off from work, and as usual, he spent it in his front yard, sitting in a green lawn chair, drinking tallboys. He had turned on the sprinkler and was watching his grass and half the street get a good watering. Lonny and I were throwing the football around. Frank sat in that stupid chair all afternoon. He only went in to grab another beer and, I guess, take a piss. Each time he got up and turned around, we shot him the finger.

  That night, I heard Frank’s voice loud and clear. He wanted answers. Something about a phone number. Something about a customer he’d seen Yolanda talking to a couple of days earlier. Did she think he was blind? What the hell was so funny when the two of them were talking? How many times? he wanted to know. ¡Desgraciado! Where? Goddammit! he wanted to know. What game show? ¡El sanavabiche! Something shattered against the wall and then a few seconds later Yolanda screamed. I sat up. I didn’t know if I could form words if I had to. What the hell were you doing listening anyway? they would ask me. There was another scream and then the sound of the back door slamming. I looked out my window and saw Frank Castro chase Yolanda into their backyard. She was wearing a nightgown that came down to her knees. Frank had on the same khakis and muscle shirt he’d worn that afternoon. He only ran a few feet down from the back steps before his head hit the clothesline, and he fell to the ground, hard. Yolanda didn’t turn to look back and ran around the right side of their house. I thought she’d gone back inside to call the police. Then I heard footsteps and a tapping on my window. It was Yolanda whispering, Open it, open it.

  I didn’t say anything for a long time. Yolanda had climbed in and let down the blinds. We were lying on the bed, facing the window. She was behind me, holding me tight. I finally asked her if she wanted a glass of water or some Kool-Aid. I made it myself, I told her. It’s the orange kind, I said. I didn’t know what else to talk about. She said no, and then she told me to be quiet. I kept thinking, This has to be a dream and any minute now my mother’s going to walk in and tell me the barbacoa is sitting on the table and to come eat because we’re going to eleven o’clock mass and don’t even think about putting on those blue jeans with the patches in the knees ¿me en-tiendes? But that wasn’t happening, and something told me then that no matter what happened after tonight, this was something I’d never forget. There would always be a time before Yolanda crawled into my bed and a time after. As she held me, I could feel her heart beating. Then I felt her chiches pressed against my back. And even though I couldn’t see them, I knew they were perfect like the rest of her. I knew that they’d fit right in the palms of my hands, if only I had enough guts to turn around. Just turn around, that’s all I had to do. I thought back to when she was tapping on the window, and I was sure she wasn’t wearing a bra. I was sure there was nothing but Yolanda underneath her nightgown. I could have sworn I’d seen even more. I’d been close to a woman’s body before. But this wasn’t like when my tía Gloria came into town and couldn’t believe how much I’d grown, and then she squeezed me so hard my head got lost in her huge and heavily perfumed chiches. And it wasn’t anything like the Sears catalog where the girls had a tiny rose at the top of their panties. No, this was Yolanda and she was in my bed, pressed up against my back, like it was the only place in the world for us to be.

  I could go on and tell you the rest of the details—how I never turned around and always regretted it, how we stayed there and listened to Frank crying in his backyard, how Lonny’s dad finally called the cops on his ass, how Yolanda had a cousin pick her up the next morning, how she ended up leaving Frank for a man who worked for one of the shampoo companies, how it didn’t matter because she’d also been seeing an assistant manager and would be having his baby soon enough, and how it really didn’t matter because the assistant manager was already married and wasn’t about to leave his wife and kids, and how, actually, none of it mattered because she’d been taking money out of the register and was about to be caught—but that’s not the part of the story I like to remember.

  In that bed of mine, the one with the Dallas Cowboy pillows and covers, Yolanda and I were safe. We were safe from Frank Castro and safe from anybody else that might try to hurt us. And it was safe for me to fall asleep in Yolanda’s arms, with her warm, beautiful body pressed against mine, and dream that we were riding off to some faraway place on an Appaloosa.

  Mrs. Perez

  Her name was engraved in black cursive letters an inch above the finger holes: Lola. The ball’s cherry red color and gold swirls made it look as if it were catching fire when she released it down the lane. People stopped to watch when she was up. First, she tugged on her wrist brace to make it snug. Then she dried her fingers over the air vent before she lifted the ball from the tray. Once she was on the floor, she stood absolutely still, her gaze locked on the pins. She was in no hurry. Approaching the foul line, her stride became more fluid as she bent her right knee slightly and trailed her left leg around the back with the grace of a young bride dancing with her new h
usband for the first time. The ball spun toward the left edge of the lane, held its position, flirted with the gutter, then hooked sharply to the right, exploding into the pocket between the number one and two pins. The destruction echoed through the bowling alley. Her compact size was the source of her power. She measured five feet two inches and weighed 164 pounds, most of it concentrated in her thighs and hips. The ball weighed fifteen pounds. While other sixty-eight-year-olds were slowing down, her body seemed to recover lost years each time she lined her feet up with the dots on the floor. Her living room was a testament to her God-given talent. Every space on the coffee table, windowsill, bookcase, and television held a trophy: Brownsville Ladies’ Invitational, First Place; Rio Grande Valley Open, Most Valuable Player; Alamo City Ladies’ Classic, Second Place; Blue-bonnet Queens Tournament, First Place; Chicago Queen Pins Invitational, First Place; Las Vegas Women’s Senior National Championship, Honorable Mention. But this was before the cherry red ball was stolen.

  Lola had been at the beauty parlor that afternoon. The girl at the parlor gave her hair an auburn tint that came close to matching its original color. Her hair held a perfectly round shape that rose a few inches and flourished in a curl just above her eyebrows. Women’s league play was starting that night and she wanted to look nice. She drove home and couldn’t help occasionally catching a glimpse of her hair in the rearview mirror. When she unlocked the front door, she thought she heard a noise, maybe footsteps. She had lived alone for the past sixteen years and had grown used to a quiet house. She put down her purse and listened, but the house was silent. And then right in front of her, somebody ran through the kitchen and out the back door. It happened so fast, she thought she’d imagined it, but there was no imagining the loud slap of the screen door. On the back steps, she saw a teenage boy toss her bowling bag over the chain-link fence and then jump it himself.

  “¡Párate! ¡Güerco méndigo! ¡Desgraciado! Somebody stop him! Somebody!” But no one did, and the teenager had enough time to stop in the alley and laugh at the way the old lady was screaming. He was tall and wiry, nothing but skin and bones and a crew cut. His baggy jeans hung extra low on his nalgas. Holding Lola’s bowling bag in his right hand, the teenager sauntered away as if he’d just been paged that his lane was ready.

  Lola was still in shock when she called the police. She had to look at an old utility bill lying next to the recliner so she could remember her own address. After she hung up the phone, she went back to the kitchen. Off in a corner she found two banana peels on her linoleum floor. Then she noticed the back screen window was ripped open. She blamed herself for not having checked to make sure the windows were down. Not locking your windows was an invitation for somebody to rob you. In the bathroom, the toilet seat was up and the commode was full of bright yellow urine. It would be her luck to get a thief without the decency to flush. She couldn’t believe the bedroom when she saw it. The dresser drawers were turned over and the contents were spilled onto the floor in one huge pile. Her underwear and brassieres were mixed in with toenail clippers and costume jewelry. Shoe boxes containing her important documents were emptied on top of this. Old photos that had been stored in a hatbox were scattered in a separate pile. The mattress was turned over and leaning against the wall, as if anyone were idiota enough to still leave her money under a mattress. The only things missing from the bedroom were an old pocket watch that didn’t work and had belonged to her late husband, Agustin Perez, and her wedding rings, which she hardly wore anymore. It could’ve been worse. She made it a point not to keep any money in the house for this very reason. Lola sat in the living room and waited for the police. She thanked God the teenager hadn’t touched her trophies. The twenty-three frozen lady bowlers had witnessed the break-in, but they were all in their usual positions. The only thing that was different about the room was the empty spot where she kept her bowling bag.

  Her daughter Margie would have something to say about all this. She had been trying to get Lola to sell the small three-bedroom house and live with her in Houston. Her two other daughters were in agreement, but it was Margie who would use the robbery to build her case. Eventually, Lola would have to tell her to mind her own business. She’d lived too long to be talked to like a young girl. Nobody told her what to do or how to live anymore, not a daughter who lived more than three hundred miles away and not some cabrón who left banana peels on her floor.

  She was surprised to see such a young police officer knocking on her door. He was maybe twenty-five and a little taller than she was. Her first thought was that she’d been robbed by a teenage boy and now she was reporting the crime to his slightly older brother. The officer walked through the house, letting out a little whistle each time he noticed more evidence of the break-in. She wished they would have sent someone with more experience.

  “How long have you been a policeman?” she asked.

  “Two years, ma’am. Why?”

  “Because I asked them to send Timo Hinojosa, he was my husband’s friend. He lives on this street.”

  “I don’t know, but I think Sergeant Hinojosa is getting ready to retire. He stays at the station a lot, you know. He’s not so young anymore.”

  “¿Y eso qué quiere decir?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Perez. I was just saying that after so many years, he deserves to not work so hard.”

  Lola stopped to think about that. She had never seen her neighbor as an old man, especially since he was a few years younger than she was.

  They sat at the kitchen table so the officer could fill out his report.

  “I saw him with my own eyes,” she said.

  “Did he look like he was in junior high or high school?” the officer asked. “Like a teenager?”

  “How did you know?”

  “The bananas,” he said. “Sometimes these kids break in and they spend all their time eating or drinking people’s beer. We got a call one time from a woman whose house had been broken into. She wasn’t going to call us, but then she found one of these boys in the backyard throwing up.”

  He started to laugh at this, but stopped when he saw that Lola wasn’t smiling.

  “It’s good he ran off, Mrs. Perez. Some of them get crazy on spray paint and they think they can do anything.”

  Lola shook her head.

  “Can you tell me exactly what he took, ma’am?”

  “My bowling ball.”

  “What else?”

  “My bag.”

  “Your purse?”

  “No, my bowling bag, with my ball.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s not enough for you?”

  She explained that it was a polyurethane ball that had cost $175, plus an extra $15 for the fitting, $10 for the engraving, and $30 for a black leather bag that had her full name embroidered on the outside. Her shoes were in the bag and they were worth another $35. Then she remembered her wrist brace, which was another $10. The officer wrote it all down, but he didn’t offer much hope. They’d put the word out at the pawnshops. You never know, he said as he was leaving. In all the confusion, Lola forgot to mention the rings or the busted watch.

  She sat in the recliner again and looked at her trophies. Most of them had been won with her cherry red ball, and she tried to remember a time before she had the ball. She had started bowling only after her husband died of a bad heart at the age of fifty-two. All the Perez men had heart problems that were only made worse with their tempers. Lola had to admit that in spite of his faults, Agustin had worked hard and had taken care of his family. The girls had been able to go away to college with the savings he had set aside. Lola lived comfortably now because of how tight he was with money throughout their marriage. Over the years, she and Agustin passed by the bowling alley hundreds of times, but they never entered the building. “Puros vicios, that’s all you’re going to find inside those four walls. People throwing their money away. Parrandeando.” Agustin worked as an electrician for the city and earned a decent living, but he never wanted to
spend more than absolutely necessary. He considered anything other than work and church to be a waste of time and money, something invented to make sure the workingman stayed poor.

  After the girls started school, Lola found a job as a receptionist at a doctor’s office. She worked only until two in the afternoon so she could be home when her girls got out of school. The office was an escape from her life of cooking and cleaning. She learned about illnesses she’d never heard of, talked to the patients and the medical representatives who came by, and even helped out the nurses when they were busy. She admired a nurse named Vangie who had gone to school while she was raising her children. Lola and Vangie were about the same age, but Vangie looked much younger in her crisp white uniform. If there weren’t too many patients, they would sometimes take their breaks together, either in the file room or behind the office, where Vangie could smoke. Except for some María Félix movies, Lola had never seen a woman smoke so freely.

  “You should’ve been a nurse,” Vangie told her one day. She was lighting a cigarette next to the back door.

  “It’s too late now,” Lola said.

  “Not really. You could get your nurse’s aid certificate.”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “Sure you do,” Vangie said. “It takes less than a year. The doctor might even help you pay for it.”

  “I don’t know, Vangie.”

  “Well, I think you should.” She took a short draw on her cigarette and blew the smoke straight up. “I think you would make a good nurse.”

  The possibility of a different life surprised Lola. After her first baby, she had never really considered doing anything other than raising her family. She had been a good student in high school and her teachers were always encouraging her to do something with her future. Maybe this was it. The girls were old enough to help around the house and give her time to study. She spent months thinking it over. Then one day Agustin came home from work with the flu. The next morning she brought him into the doctor’s office. The waiting room was already crammed with other patients, many of them also suffering through the flu. Agustin became impatient the longer it took. Lola helped the nurses as much as she could, especially when it came Agustin’s turn to see the doctor. She couldn’t believe how fate had worked to grant her this moment with her husband. Agustin would be able to see how much she’d learned and how easily it came to her. Studying to be a nurse’s assistant would be the most natural thing for her to do. She weighed him, took his temperature, read his blood pressure, and handed him the glass bottle for his urine sample. She was methodical in how she did it because she wanted to impress him, although she questioned whether he was well enough to notice anything she was doing. A few days passed before he started feeling better.