|
by
Anne Guidry Winning story of the 2005 Nick Adams Short Story Contest |
|
Return to: ... Nick Adams Contest ... Winning stories and authors ... ACM home page Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
|
|
|
On the last rainy afternoon she will have to walk home from Martinez Fashion Clothes where she works as an assistant clerk, Emmanuel's mother finds a discarded Billie Holiday tape on the sidewalk. Holiday ... she knows what this means, but what is Billie? The Billie Holiday? What is the Billie Holiday? She tucks the tape inside the pocket of her rain jacket, and when Armando comes home she shows it to him. He doesn't know either, but he knows of a tape player they can borrow. A man he works with just bought one as a Christmas present for his seven-year-old daughter, and already it is scratched and sticky, but supposedly functioning. So they sit on the sofa, tucked under a rudely knit red-orange blanket after Emmanuel has gone to bed, and stare placidly as nothing but crackled static greets their ears. It's calming, a little, or at least they leave it for a while. Maybe the tape is ruined. Emmanuel's father reaches forward and clicks the volume to 7 then 8 then 9. They can hear something. On 10 they can hear a voice. On 12 they can hear she is singing. On 14 they can hear her celebrating this Billie Holiday. Fast pianos, saxophones, clarinets tap and flitter through the Fisher Price red speakers. And a funny vibrato, very distant, not a word understandable to them, slides from low notes to high ones and back down again. It's like reaching for the moooon, it's like reaching for the staaaaaars! Reaching for youuuuuuyour so high abooooove meeeee, how can I get this angel to love me? Though my hopes are slender, in my secret heartyouuuuuu surrender tooooooo, though it's like reaching for the moooon. They do not know what the Billie Holiday is, but it makes them smile. There's a kind of warmth in the distant crackle of the old record, a kind of comfort in knowing it had miraculously survived. Did I remember to tell you I adore you? Did I remember to say I'm lost without you, and just how mad about you I've grown? And soon they are lulled to sleep. When Emmanuel delightedly discovers them the next morning, he pats their knees and crawls into their laps, eagerly demanding where the headphones are that belong to the tape player. He knows there are headphones. Where are they? It is his favorite thing in kindergarten -- the Music Corner. * * * Armando says he likes walking to work -- to the factory where he has recently been promoted from an assembler to a supervisor, or to the Boulevard where he recruits new arrivals to do the temporary jobs like unloading new merchandise or cleaning the site. Walking is one of the few parts of the day he has to himself, he says. Maybe this is partly true. Or maybe, she thinks, he likes walking because he does not know how to drive. Why do you need a car? he asks his wife. Where are you going to go? In this he was right -- she didn't have far to go. But where she would go was not the question. She was sick of buses and trains and other transports that carried her from one place to another without her having a thing to do with it. She wanted to control how hard she pushed the accelerator, where she would turn, when she would stop. She wanted to press a button and know just how many miles she had traveled. For the past few months, she had been getting driving lessons from Alice Martinez, the manager of her workplace. Alice would take her to the parking lot beneath the I-35 bridge to practice. They started with simple steps like shifting gears and using the turn signals. Eventually, however, it became clear that Alice was much more interested in confiding (rather too generously) the strife and frustrations with her home life than in helping her employee learn how to drive. On the day of Alejandra's license exam, her instructor had only a few words of advice: "You know how to press the gas, you know how to stop and turn. Already better than my ex-husband, the bastard. I tell you what he did? The bastard. "Well," she leaned over and patted Alejandra's knee, "don't worry, m'hija, when you fail the parking. Everyone takes that test, they fail parking."
Alejandra first met Alice Martinez when she got lost on the bus system. Number 47. She was eight months pregnant at the time, and employed as a clerk in a drug store where her manager and most of the customers spoke her language. It was a lucky job to have. Almost easy. Which is why she felt maybe she deserved what happened to her that day when she slept steadily through two hours of number 47's route trips. She had awoken to discover she had no idea where she was going, only realizing she was on the highway (certainly not part of the regular route) and suddenly moving too fast for her to even write down the names of the street signs she was passing, except there weren't street signs any longer and she was one of only three people still left on the bus. One was an old man asleep among bundles and bags of suspicious looking bulges. The other, a tired looking middle-aged woman with an abundance of makeup and thick glasses. Beside her on the bus seat, the woman wrapped her arm around a paper grocery bag full of flowers. Although she sat facing the front of the bus, it seemed to Emmanuel's mother she was always smiling -- for on frequent occasions when the woman would turn around and look at her, she always was. From behind her thick glasses. She looked like she meant to be friendly. They drove on for at least ten minutes more until Emmanuel's mother had the nerve to stand up and speak to the woman. She had tried all during this time, but never got further than staring with concentration at the empty bus seat next to the woman with the flowers. Staring at the metallic barrettes plunged deep into full but wispy, faded-orange hair. Staring back at the seat again. She leaned forward as if to stand, then back, then forward and finally stood and resolved that at the end of three very long seconds, she would approach the woman with the bags. One (she stepped to the pole just behind the woman), two (she gathered her words together), three ... "Excuse me," and then it was over, her accent, she was known, "Where we are going?" The woman looked at her, rubbed her eyes behind the glasses and smiled. "That's the question, isn't it?" She laughed heartily, allowing her head to loll over on one shoulder, her enormous arms and thighs quivering. "Frank, where to, huh?" Frank, turning his head to one side and revealing a massive tobacco pouch tucked tightly into his right cheek, called back, "Ohhh take a wild guess, Miz Martinez" -- he stressed each syllable of her name with satisfaction -- "Just where do you think?" "You got a extra passenger back here wants to know." "You tell him his stop is a boot out the door just as soon as he opens his eyes." "Noo, Frank," winking at Alejandra, "not Carver. A young lady would appreciate it if you would bring her to -- where now, honey?" The worst moment. When the talking stopped. No warning, just the eyes, turned expectantly to her, watching and waiting. She clutched the metal bar beside her seat, searching frantically, trying to repeat over and over the sounds she had just heard, trying to process them. She knew some of the words, but they were so close, so fast, so indistinguishable! Just one, if she could just recognize one word -- but she couldn't. So she began to smile, nodding, had to say something ... "Yes." Whatever was it that she had just agreed to? Had she insulted the woman? Was she mocking her? She could feel her face and arms warming, and began to pretend she had said nothing at all. Had not even been listening to the large woman with the grocery bag full of flowers or the short driver with the pouch in his cheek and large, insect-like sunglasses. She had not said yes to anything, she had merely muttered something faintly agreeable and sympathetic, as weren't people always looking for sympathy? And yet "yes" could have been the worst thing possible to have said, not sympathetic at all. She decided she must not say anything more, and instead turned to the woman, smiled apologetically, and returned to her seat, where she clutched her bags and did not remove her eyes from the window. "Frank, turn us around, we missed a stop." "What stop?" "Just turn us around and we'll see if we can find it. Got a lost little girl back here, doesn't speak English. I mean a few words," she turned around again and smiled tentatively at Alejandra, who could feel her eyes beginning to ache and a wave of nausea from the jolting lurches and vibrations of the bus and the acridity of the brown leather seats. "Just turn us around, Frank." The woman then propped her grocery bag in the corner of the seat, and teetered across the aisle to where Alejandra was sitting. "Well, I'm glad to have some company. My name is Alice Martinez," she said and sat down. Alice Martinez knew she was lost, knew she did not understand the language, but had talked to her anyway in a steady stream of unintelligible English (here is the post office, there's a good restaurant, see the store where my daughter works, where I work, this is a dangerous intersection, now that's a decent market, never trust those political billboards, is any of this looking familiar?) until she began to recognize the broken phone booth and one-pump gas station and other such familiarities. It was the first time since she had arrived, the first time the language had begun to acquire some kind of beauty. Some kind of soothing in the sharp and definite edges of its syllables. When they finally reached her stop, Alejandra turned to smile at this stranger, to find someway to express how thankful she was for such kindness, but was interrupted by Alice Martinez who leaned forward and spoke for the first time in Alejandra's language, accented but clear. I know it's hard, m'hija, she whispered. But you can't come all the way here to let some ugly language get the best of you. I have a store on the Boulevard. You come see me. * * * At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Emmanuel's mother pulls up to the blue section of the curb where the Osos Pequeños wait for their rides. It is the first day Emmanuel has not ridden the van home, driven by Mrs. Karena's teaching assistant Chela. By the curb he waits now, looking very much like the other four- and five-year-olds in baggy cartooned apparel and backpacks reaching to their knees. The only difference between him and his classmates is that Emmanuel Dresca is the tallest five-year-old in Mrs Karena's Osos Pequeños section. He is oso grande. Oso enorme His mother imagined he must slightly intimidate Mrs. Karena and her seventeen-year-old teaching assistant, Chela. For they could not whisk him away from the Block Area and plant him in Housekeeping. Couldn't hold him on their laps or hug him to their thighs. He was too big for most of the baby-orange chairs and too tall to have a turn at the tricycle come recess. Yet in spite of his size, he was usually well behaved, and did not threaten his teachers with disrespect or restlessness. The others, used to the luxury of their own private vehicles, do not find it unusual when Emmanuel's mother pulls next to the curb. In fact, only his closest friend, Alan, pays attention when Emmanuel notices his mother driving the car. Emmanuel leans back and points with all the dramatic surprise and glee only a person of five years can muster. He grabs and shakes Alan's arm, points, and shouts to the others in a sputtering stutter he has begun to develop, "M-m-mira! Mira! Es mi coche! Es mi coche!" Alan joins him in his high-pitched bellows, raising his hands in the air and waving his arms in celebration, "Ohhhh!" They begin to jump up and down, still shouting and pointing and waving their arms in the air. Emmanuel then stops and bears his tiny biceps, adopting several superhero poses he has apparently acquired at some point in his kindergarten career. "Hasta la vistaaaa," he lowers both his brows and his voice as low as they will go, speaking through a puckered, oval shaped mouth. "Ehhhhh!" They both lean back and laugh, clutching their bellies until Mrs. Karena finally manages to grasp one of Emmanuel's flighty hands, whereupon she awkwardly leads him, jumping and waving goodbye, to the door of his car. "Ok, Emmanuel, let's go, babe. Ooo look at that new car! Is that your car, Manuelito?" She says all while smiling at Emmanuel's mother watching from inside the car. He nods, wrenches his hand from her grasp, and jumps to the side, performing several karate punches and kicks to the wild acclaim of Alan. "Ohhhkay come on, now, Emmanuel, tu mamá is waiting for you. See her? You better go quick, or else she might drive away with her new car all by herself. She'll say 'I'm so happy I have this new car all to myself.'" He stops jumping and raises his eyebrows, shaking his head vigorously in concern. "No! No! D-d-dees ees my carrr, dees ees mine!" "Well you better go hop in quick, then!" From inside the car, Emmanuel's mother is smiling back at Mrs. Karena talking, or negotiating, with her son. Sofía Karena is in her mid-sixties and looks more or less her age -- excluding the reddish-brown hair dyed regularly, clean to the roots. A widow, she lives with her father who must have been well into his eighties by then. "Be nice to your mami and papi, children," she'd often tell her class, "because you may be stuck with them for a long time." On the first day of school, Emmanuel's mother was relieved to find her son's teacher was Spanish-speaking, and approached her enthusiastically. But when she began to greet her, Mrs. Karena didn't understand a word. She knew only as much Spanish as Emmanuel's mother could claim to know English. Or less. Sometimes, Emmanuel's mother learned, she would insert a few Spanish words here and there while speaking to the children, and when a child had trouble understanding English, her assistant Chela was there to translate. She could also manage a few convenient commands (¡Siéntense, Roberto! ¡Aquí, Hector! ¡Cálmate, Alicia! ¡Cállase, clase!) but could not by any means carry on a conversation. Her stocky figure and raspy voice sometimes intimidated Alejandra, who was always taken aback by the resemblance to her own mother. How frightening to know a woman whose leather-wrinkled skin and broad crescent smile reminded her so exactly of Mamá, and yet who spoke her language only with a thick accent if at all. Now Mrs. Karena opens the car door for Emmanuel and reaches around his head for the seatbelt. "Okaaaay, Emmanuel, let's see, we always ride with our seatbelts, right? Remember how we always ride with our seatbelts on whenever we go on a fieldtrip?" She has to stretch the chest strap behind his head and fit the bottom strap around his tucked knees. "You tell your Mama if she forgets," she winks at Emmanuel's mother, "you tell her how we always ride with our seatbelts on for our safety, because safety is very important. Remember what we learned today about safety?" He nods and stares up at her, his mouth turned down in tight, serious slopes. She pats his head, looks up, and smiles broadly. "Ok, buenas tardes, Señora." She gestures vaguely with one hand, the other clutching the car door as she leans down. "Su coche es muy bonito," she whispers loudly. "Oh!" Emmanuel's mother is always nervous when she is spoken to by Mrs. Karena in Spanish. She is slow to recognize the thick pronunciation and yet anxious to show she appreciates the effort. She has trouble thinking. "Gracias," she smiles, turns the collar down on Emmanuel's shirt, fumbling, nodding. "Muchas gracias." She has more to say. The car is not beautiful at all! It is ugly, old, rusted, loud -- astonishingly, thoroughly used. She smiles more, and laughs too loudly at everything she cannot say about the car. Mrs. Karena laughs with her while Emmanuel begins to look under her arm for Alan who is chasing Devon Andrews all the way over to the Chapulines pickup. Emmanuel's mother takes a breath and holds it, brushes her hair behind her ears, and wipes her mouth. What was it, what was it, what was it... "We see you tomorrow, Mrs. Karena." She laughs a little, fingers fluttering down her throat as if it were to blame. "Sí, adiós, Emmanuel! Adiós, Señora Dresca!" Comes the raspy reply, with a slam of the door and a quick wave from outside the window.
During the drive home, Emmanuel is tirelessly fascinated with his new transport. He rolls the automatic windows up and down, rearranges the air vents, pulls the levers that push his seat forward, backward, and reclining. When his mother asks him if he would like to hear more of the new music tape she found yesterday, he asks her if she can press the horn so he knows what it sounds like. She puts the tape in anyway, lets him roll all the windows down, and doesn't seem to mind that he frowns at the Billie Holiday, sticks his fingers in his ears, and groans when it tells him, Maybe you would call a true confession, an indiscretion on someone's part ... but if I'm to say how madly I adore you, let's call a heart a heart. * * * |
|
Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
|
|
|
Return to: ... Top of page ... Nick Adams Contest ... Winning stories and authors ... ACM home page |