“Sí,” I said, smiling, happy he finally understood. But why hadn’t mi tía Isabela at least told him and his sister? She implied that if and when I learned English well enough to go to school, she would let people know, or was that just another lie, an empty promise? How did she explain my appearing here to the other help? Maybe she didn’t feel she had to explain anything to anyone, except Señor Baker.
He shook his head.
“Cómo?” he asked, stepping into the room.
“Cómo? Mi madre es la hermana más joven que su madre.”
“Más joven? Oh, but I thought…we thought…” He pointed to his temple. “Su madre ha muerto.”
“Sí, muerto,” I said, and he shook his head, now looking even more confused. Again, he put up his hand and went out. I returned to the window. I saw him get the worker and start back with him. The two returned to my doorway.
“Mr. Edward is confused about you,” the worker said in Spanish. “You told him you were his cousin, daughter of his mother’s younger sister, but he was told she died when she was a child.”
Now I was more frightened. Maybe I would be forgiven for telling my cousin who I really was, but here I was telling one of the workers. Maybe my aunt wouldn’t send me back to Mexico. Maybe she would do something worse. How should I balance the truth with my own safety?
“Lies multiply like rabbits,” my grandmother used to say. “No matter how small they seem.”
I hadn’t been here a day, but I was already tired of living a lie.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This is not true. My mother and my father were just recently killed in a car accident with a truck. This is why I’ve come here to live.”
He translated for me, and Edward’s eyes grew wider. He wanted to know if his sister knew who I was.
“No. If she does, she pretended not to know,” I added.
He told the worker to tell me he would return, and he left. The worker, who introduced himself as Casto Flores, wanted me to know that this family, the Dallas family, was loco. He had been an employee of the Dallas family for nearly twenty-five years and had liked Señor Dallas, but, he said, Señor Dallas took ill not too long after he married my aunt Isabela. The other workers thought she was too much for him, he added.
I understood that he meant too much woman. He said she made him age quicker, and soon an illness took him over and turned him into an invalid. He said there were long periods of time when he didn’t see Señor Dallas at all. He was a prisoner of his illness.
“Señora Dallas did not let that stop her from living a full life,” he added. I was not too young to hear what he was saying between the lines.
He wanted to know what exactly had happened to my family in Mexico and why I was there. I told him everything. I could see he felt very sorry for me. Before he left to return to work, he asked when was my day off, and I realized I had never been told I had a day off. He said he would speak to Señora Rosario about it, and when I had a day off, perhaps he would introduce me to his daughter Nina, who was about my age.
“You’re not going to school here?” he asked.
I told him what I had been told. First, I had to learn enough English, or I couldn’t be admitted to the school.
He shook his head.
“Not so,” he said, but I could see he didn’t want to say too much more.
It wasn’t until he had left and Edward had left that I remembered I hadn’t eaten anything. The tension and the disaster at the dinner table had taken my mind off my own pangs of hunger, but now that I was more relaxed, they returned with a clamor. I was very thirsty, too.
I wasn’t sure what I could do about it now. I was afraid to return to the main house kitchen. The only solution, I thought, was to try to sleep, so I prepared myself for bed. There was no sign of Señor Garman in the building. When I went to the bathroom to take a shower, I realized there was no lock on the bathroom door. Consequently, I showered and got into my one nightgown faster than ever.
However, when I returned to my bedroom, I was surprised to discover Edward had returned again. This time, he had brought me a plate of food. In what he had obviously just learned and memorized from one of the other Mexican employees, he recited the following: “Sabía que usted tendría hambre y hice que el cocinero preparar este plato para usted.”
He knew I’d be hungry and had the chef prepare the plate for me.
I thought he had pretty good pronunciation. I wanted to tell him that no matter what his mother wanted, he couldn’t disguise his Latino heritage, but I knew he wouldn’t understand, so I just thanked him and took the plate. He stood up and watched me eating.
“How old are you?” he asked. “Años?”
I flashed my hand three times.
“Fifteen? You’re Sophia’s age.”
I nodded. I remembered my mother once telling me I was about the same age as my cousin Sophia.