ROSALBA
Ambition makes poverty hard to handle; men get mean; women fret. Or like Rosalba they do something about it. That can get exciting.
Rosalba is a friend. That’s not her real name. Real nice lady, not flirtatious or coy. Five-feet-sevenish and maybe 110 pounds after a heavy meal. Curves all over. The hair down her back billows and is black-glossy; deep-set, wide-apart eyes that flash when she’s excited; high cheekbones and a dimpled chin like Ava Gardner’s.
I met her when she was still cleaning houses for Yuma's Social Elite. I had gone to Jody's place to get some signed Burkhardt prints for the art center; I didn't know Rosalba was there. I was helping Don (and that's not his real name either), the curator at the art center, prepare the last show of spring.
It was May, meaning hot, and big fans in Jody's Victorian ceilings stirred refrigerated air. The living room was nearly as cold as Jody's self-centered heart. She gestured graciously as she sipped white wine and fingered her laquered, brassy hair. She wore a pink squaw dress with silver rick-rack. She wore silver high-heeled sandals. I eschewed her refrigerated wine and peevishly sprawled in jeans and flip-flops.
Anyhow, there was a sketch on the coffee table, a simple penciled scene of manzanita with an ocotillo against the horizon. It was the kind of thing you see hung around here, artists idealizing the desert. But there was something about the assurance of line, and the composition with the ocotillo on the left high and out of frame, and the proportion of the mountains on the horizon. It was deft and dramatic.
I had picked it up five or six times as I listened to Jody circle the point of her generosity. First she had to describe her husband's mistreatment at the hands of his principal (he teaches high-school bookkeeping), then how difficult it was to sell Art to the county board of supervisors, and how much High Culture could bring to Yuma's future. Her Navajo-red fingernails tapped irritably on the stem of her wine glass. I finally got the prints and found the sketch in my hand again.
"Did you do this, Jody?" I asked.
She said, "Oh, that? No. My girl did it."
"Your girl? You don’t have a daughter.”
That was petty and I didn’t care; I knew and she knew I knew that she had to be referring to her cleaning woman. So Jody said, "No, no. Rosalba did it, the girl who does for me."
"She drew this?"
"She doodles when she's on the phone."
"May I take it?"
Just then Rosalba came in, that elegant body only half disguised by pea-green workman's coveralls. She was barefoot. Her hair was twisted onto the top of her head and accented the length of her neck. She might have been a goddess; Venus, maybe. At sight of me stiffening snuck up her spine and her long fingers played with a string at her throat.
Jody said, "Rosie, you don't care if my friend takes this doodle of yours, do you?"
Rosalba flicked me another look, then quirked the corners of her mouth. "No. She wahn it?"
I measured her, piled hair to slender feet. "Lo me gusta. Quiero comprarlo cuando tengo dinero. Como se dice in Espanol talent?"
At the mention of money the look on her face changed from sardonic to sudden friendliness, her greatest failing, and she smiled a big, generous smile. She said, "Gracias. I do it all the time."
"Do you have more like this?" I asked.
She shrugged, admitting it. "I do it all the time."
"I would like to have more. I have a wall where I think they would be perfect."
Jody was looking at us like a mad bull at a bastard calf. Rosalba said, "Seguro. I'll bring you some." I gave her my address near Los Algodones. When I told her how to find it she flicked me a look that said “yeah-yeah-yeah.” She couldn't deliver any sketches during the work day, but she would drop by next week.
She went back to housecleaning, and I took Jody’s prints with effusive thanks. I assured her that Don would be delighted by her extreme generosity and include a special bordered statement to that effect in the show's pamphlet. Then I went to the art center. I forgot about Rosalba and left the sketch on the passenger seat of my old Mustang.
Now, the only reason I knew Jody had the Burkhardts is because when I was broke I traded with her; five of them for my back rent in her extra bedroom. That was my lean period, before I bought the row of cabins that feeds me now. Jody got a local reputation as an art collector, and I kept a dozen prints for emergencies.
Back home, the old man in cabin three had a tale about his rotten window air conditioner. I had to tell him again not to turn the thing on and off to save electricity because it kills the motor, and he had to tell me again about his electricity bill, then we had a wary discussion about who would pay to fix the machine. Rosalba’s sketch got blown or shoved under the seat, because I didn't see it again for weeks. It magically reappeared under the glove compartment when I had to trash the car.
Rosalba and I lived in the jog where Arizona, California and Mexico come together. It contains Los Algodones, Mexico; Yuma, Arizona; Winterhaven, California; and the last muddy gasps of the Colorado River. For mad-money Yuma has winter visitors; Winterhaven has poker; Los Algodones, bilingual dentists. Traffic in Los Algodones back then was so scarce I saw a dog lie in the main street for hours without having to budge. Rosalba was born on the bank of the river there, back of and below a line of small stores and auto repair shops. The smelly beach had huts of corrugated tin and wooden crates where people lived. Indian curanderas and juju held out against progress; they offered love, or children, or even wealth, in pouches to wear on a string around your neck. Toward sundown women and kids and dogs wandered among the huts cooking and playing and barking amiably at one another. When you showed your pale face the men came out of the huts, the women and kids shut up, and you wisely walked away.
Anyhow, Rosalba was born there, and has never lived more than a few miles from it. I tease her about being a real wetback; she grins and pointedly fingers the pouch on that string. Doesn't say much. She's never bothered to learn enough American to become articulate beyond "I got a check today; you wahn dinner wit us?" "I brought some beer; you wahn one?" I have about as much Spanish as she has American, so we make out.
Once I asked her what was in the pouch. Her eyebrows lifted. “Portune,” she said.
I don't know why she stayed so long in this dump, with three kids to feed. Her dead husband was a drunk who liked to hit her, and there are other ugly memories. I think she’s been lazy, like me; the hope that sprouts in our beautiful winter gets baked out by the nine months of heat.
Anyhow, Rosalba came by my place four days after we met, a Tuesday. She brought her two youngest kids--and about seventy of the most perfect scenarios of desert that I have ever seen. They were all done with crow-quill and a No. 2 pencil on a pad of watercolor papers with a lot of tooth. They reeked talent. And dignity. And restraint and power.
I don't know if she's been beyond the Gila Mountains. She periodically goes to Calexico for fabric from the flea market. But whatever she sees, she draws. She drew the Imperial Valley asparagus fields with the herons and the leftover eucalyptus windbreaks and the tired old Victorians with their deep porches. She drew the manzanita like no one has ever drawn it, and the ocotillo and sandy washes with buzzards hanging above them waiting for something to die. She drew the Tinajas Altas from very far away. She drew sidewinders; she drew river reeds peopled by egrets; she drew big, bare, Pilot's Knob with Salt Cedars at its feet. She drew a mountain goat from a photograph, her only failure. Everything else was authentic; the sweep of the monsoons trailing dry rain and crackling with lightning. Those miles and miles of tilted, table-flat land. She drew and you could see the reds of a sunrise as its mirages built hillocks into buttes. Each of the drawings, every last one of them, was breathtaking. I didn't know what to say.
But I'm ahead of myself. When she came in, little Hugo, "Oogo," she called him, was two and a half, Marta was four, and they were dressed up like they were going to church. You never saw such slicked-down hair on a little boy, such tight braids on a little girl. You never saw such big eyes in such solemn faces. Hugo was in a navy-blue business suit, Marta in piles of ruffles and ribbons; a gesture to la gringa, me. Rosalba was wearing another pair of pea-green coveralls with running shoes. With a swiftness and authority she had those kids on my couch sitting with their hands in their laps and quietly observing us. She perched onto my other easy chair, eyes so glittery they seemed avian. I backed onto my old recliner amazed by the thick sheaf of drawings she had stuck into my hands. "I brought them," she mumbled.
I started leafing through the pile. When I saw what I had, I began to spread them around on the floor so I could see more of them at once. I sat and thought, and forgot the kids staring at me from the couch. I forgot Rosalba, who continued to perch in a chair designed to caress and fold you into its lap. Finally she asked, "You got a beer?"
I looked up. She was lighting a cigarette, leaning into the chair with her legs crossed, I guess reassured by my absorption. I was a little surprised.
"Yeah. You like Dos Equis dark?"
"Si."
So I got a couple, and some lemonade for the kids, and asked her if they could have it. They quietly accepted, and drank without spilling. Then I began talking to Rosalba as if all the real talk I hadn't spoken for years were bursting my seams. And I told her what I thought of the pictures, what I saw in them, that I wished to God I could draw that way. She sat and drank her beer and chain-smoked.
When I finished and had picked up all the drawings and didn't know what to do with them, she said, "They're yours." When I stared she said, "Take them."
I knew a lot wasn't being said, so I tried Spanish. "No puedo," I said. "Valen a lot of money, and I know what Jody pays for a housekeeper."
Rosalba snorted and butted her cigarette out. "Si. But I did these for love." It surprised me to hear that word, but I knew what she meant; she likes to draw. She went on, "You love the pictures; they're yours."
After a while I said, "Thank you. I accept, if I can I try to sell them for you, or find someone who can do that. Okay?"
She just laughed, meaning "You're crazy." I told her she'd have to sign each drawing. She pulled a face, so I got a couple more Dos Equis and the whole pitcher of lemonade. I found a No. 2 pencil and shoved the drawings at her.
Have I given the impression that Rosalba is a primitive? I hope not. Before she married and started having kids, she got her American GED---no mean feat, with her bad English. When she married, she work-studied at the university in Mexicali. She's not typical, but I've met a lot of Mexican ladies in the U.S. who operate almost like her. They're tough and smart, without enough English for good-paying jobs. They marry and Stand By Their Man, earning whatever they can to help out.
Anyhow, as she bent over the coffee table to sign the drawings, her loose sleeves pulled up. Around each wrist and forearm were ugly green and yellow bruises. They should have told me; they didn't.
After a spell of signing she reached for the beer bottle with her left hand, shaking her right. "Me duele," she said.
"Yeah. It's writer's cramp," I said.
The children continued to sip quietly from their plastic glasses, returning them carefully to the same water rings on the coffee table and ignoring the coasters. They watched me, feral angels.
About that time Hugo fingered his crotch. Rosalba saw it and took him to the bathroom.
"Como estas, chica?" I asked Marta.
"Bien," she whispered, and giggled.
By the time Rosalba finished signing the drawings Marta was snuggled deeply into my lap and Hugo stood at my knee. I was thinking moonily about finding a stud for some kids like this of my own. I got Rosalba's address and thanked her for the drawings. She thanked me for the beer and took her angelic critters into the sorriest-looking, most lopsided Toyota I'd ever seen.
There's an economic pattern to our two seasons. There's the summer season, and the snowbird season. During snowbird season all the merchants, who close down rather than pay the air conditioning bills in August, open back up. They make a year-long living from the six months of northern visitors. Then everybody has jobs and money and all the bills get caught up. There's even money enough for pretty things, like beautiful drawings. So I hotfooted it next morning to Don at the art center.
The Yuma art center was a remodeled Southern Pacific Railroad depot. There was a great, two-storied central waiting room for parties and a few partitions to display choice pieces. Two wings, north and south, made really good standard galleries. Beyond the north end was a big space for storage and a workshop. The permanent collection, the pedestals, the tools and old flats waited in there to be used. On the west end of the work space was a smaller room with workbenches and bins. An east room was locked to protect more valuable pieces like the fake Giacometti, a strange-looking bronze egret as tall as a man, and some smaller bronzes. The whole thing was Don's little demesne, and he ruled it with tight-fisted penury that kept the center open for ten months of the year.
I showed him Rosalba’s work and told him my plan, that he should give her a one-man show in September. He agreed enthusiastically, but had problems about mounting and framing. I told him I would strong-arm a deal for plexiglas fronts and mounts. (That took some wrangling, but Cath is a good head and I finally got them. I owed her for about the next three years.) Then Don pulled some strings and booked the show for Scottsdale and Los Angeles after the local show.
August glazed everything over except the streets, which smoked. September approached. I felt good. I called Rosalba's house and got through three layers of visiting children to reach her. Yes, she wouldn't mind taking a look at the installation the Saturday of the opening. No, she wouldn't mind if I picked her up, because her Toyota didn't have air conditioning. Ten in the morning would be fine.
Now, I had always figured Don to be gay. I mean, he had the delicacy of gesture and tentative understated quality about even his vehement opinions. His coiffure and toilet were elegant. You know. He was tall, fair-haired, and expressed contained enthusiasm about Meaning and Truth and Beauty. I'll elaborate; slacks and bare feet in catalog moccasins and pale mauve shirts without ties. Occasionally a lapel pin of striking simplicity and taste, with a green braided belt. You understand my assumption.
I picked up Rosalba, again in her coveralls and running shoes. She wore a red bandanna tied around her throat, very dashing. I tried to tell her what to expect as I parked at the art center. She seemed not to understand me, though I put in enough Spanish to be certain that she did. There would be a reception that night in her honor; wine, punch, cookies and veggie trays with dips. Mariachi singers. All of Yuma County's Social Elite looking at her drawings in the north wing, and an installation of Hopi kachinas in the south wing. I told her the press would probably be there, and that she must come.
I got out of the car; Rosalba did not. I walked around and opened the passenger door. She rose like a snake coiling to strike. Her eyes spit venom. "No!"
"No what?" I demanded, and slammed the car door before she could slither back in. "What do you mean?"
She went into a long spiel, mostly in Spanish, about Motherhood and Wifehood and Dignity. I didn't get it all, but it sounded old-fashioned. And phony. She was going to stay home that evening in the Bosom of Her Family. She was not a Career Woman. She drew pictures, yes; but she was not an Artist. She went on and on.
Finally the sunlight ricocheting from the car into my eyes and the heat coming from every direction, my shirt stuck to my back and my tin bracelet burning into my arm, I said, "All right, all right! But at least meet the man who is getting money for your children."
She softened; she retied the bandanna at her throat. I noticed the bruises on her neck, and she saw that I saw and understood why she lied about not wanting a career. There we were, in that half-baked tableau, and I was mad so I said, "You married a pig. Un jabali." It was the wrong word in Spanish, but she understood the English.
"Si."
"Why don't you leave him?"
"No puedo." And she by-God led the way past the bronze maidens dancing on the walk and into the cool, elegant waiting room. A magenta partition faced the double glass doors; on it were grouped four of her drawings.
Rosalba was stunned. It had never occurred to her that her sketches were art, but there they were, and they were gorgeous. She turned her head as the first tear splashed from a beautiful cheekbone onto her coveralls.
Then Don came out of his office.
As I say, I had figured him to be gay; but one look at her was all it took; there wasn’t even a process. For her part, Rosalba seemed overwhelmed by his elegance. I made introductions, awkwardly; they shook hands and acknowledged one another's names. Television cables and ultra-bright light lurked dangerously in the north gallery. The show would open Tuesday; on Monday all the TV stations would run features about the local artist who rated a one-man show her first time out. I edged into mid-distance to mask the view. Don was speaking cultured Spanish, and he and Rosalba were quickly chattering too fast for me to follow. I heard "supreme" and "honor" and demurrals from Rosalba. But Don had her, and he knew it. Despite the moony look in his eyes, his glance to me was sly.
By damn if he didn't take her right into the lights in the north gallery, sit her down and ease her into a relaxed series of interviews for press and media. Smoothly he described his plans for the show and the tour. He expressed his conviction that Rosalba's is a great talent and predicted her bright future. Rosalba was collected, dignified, and charming, seldom fingering that string or its pouch. Like they say in Psych 101, you can't ever tell.
I don't know much about what happened after that. The show opened and nearly half the drawings were sold by the end of the month. Rosalba tells me she saw Don nearly every day. He always had a question or detail to finesse about the tour. He would call in the early evening, endure the neighborhood kids' questions and delays, and finally talk to her until she hung up. Or he would come for her and the kids, and they would go to the center. Sometimes her husband was there, sometimes not. If he wasn't there, he was drinking in Red's Birdcage. If he was, he was bitching about his wife's "career." In Spanish; he spoke no English at all.
But I know Rosalba enjoyed being with Don, a man elegant, charming, and attentive. In retrospect I'm positive Don was completely, head-over-heels, madly, stupid in love.
Another thing; sophisticated as he was, as much a connoisseur as Yuma has ever possessed, he was working in Yuma and not Los Angeles or New York. He worked for a board of directors, slit-eyed suspicious cultural primitives who wouldn't allow nudes in the gallery. He was grossly underpaid. He usually worked seven days a week. He was at the bottom of the art-world barrel, and desperate to get out. To stumble onto someone like Rosalba Morales, the cleaning woman with a blazing talent, was a feather in his professional cap which could get him all the way to civilization.
And of course there was Rosalba the woman from northern Mexico; Don loved everything about that country. His occasional day off was invariably spent rubbernecking along its highways.
Anyhow, I didn't spend much time at the center while Rosalba's show was up. There was nothing to do except poke through membership files and send renewal notices; I missed a lot of the action. Once Rosalba's husband came in drunk, determined to rip up the drawings. Got one. Don called the police and watched without comment as Morales ran away.
Don called me one night at home, a thing he never did. How was I? Any word about my ailing father? There was a poetry reading coming up in the main gallery which I might enjoy. His voice was distracted and tense. I told him to meet me at the Imperial China bar, which he did, and I pumped him over drinks and pot-stickers.
It was Rosalba who had him going; I might have known. Speaking as a woman, what did I think of her? About her marriage? He squirmed on the black banquette and fingered the rim of his Gibson glass, consulting its pallid contents for assurance. Unready for marriage, too self-conscious to become a live-in lover, half frightened of Rosalba's husband, Don was in a romantic quandary. I didn't really know Rosalba then, so I couldn't help.
"Talk to her," I advised.
"I've got to have her."
"Talk to her."
He quickly lifted suffering eyes, then dropped them again to his drink. "I wouldn't know what to say."
"Then just make a pass. Have an affair. Her husband's gone a lot at night, isn't he?"
Pregnant pause. "I've got to have her." I drove home amused and smirking.
When October got close it was time to pack the show for the tour to Scottsdale. That's the only time I saw her husband, a squat, burly man in jeans and a tee.
It was Sunday afternoon. Don and I were crating the drawings on the back porch of the center near the wide concrete steps which rise directly to the railroad tracks. We had built the crates with a slot for each piece, and were wrapping the drawings in corrugated cardboard before we eased them in. I was being careful not to scratch the plexiglas. Don fussed about not smudging the drawings. It was hot of course, especially with the glare reflected from the steps.
We heard brakes squeal in the parking lot and then quick footsteps. Morales came wallowing around the corner yelling, "No, no!" Rosalba, white-faced, followed. Morales began a harangue at Don, who became placating, friendly, then confidential. Things quieted down. Don led the couple into his office. I didn't like to watch him work on the locals; I knew they’d emerge with the husband and Don the firmest of friends, and Rosalba dewy-eyed with gratitude. I went off for a six-pack of Dos Equis.
When I got back the rump-sprung Toyota was still in the parking lot. I drove past it to the back steps and started to climb out. Saw Rosalba on a bench in the porch with her head on Don's shoulder. She clutched the juju bag at her neck and cried and snuffled and muttered something indistinct about poor bastardos who don't have a chance. Don hugged her and patted her and looked pole-axed. I looked around for her mate; nothing, nowhere. The crates weren't filled, either. I rounded the Mustang.
"Can I do something?" I finally asked, and went back for the beer.
"Get my children," Rosalba sniffed. "I want them."
"What happened?"
Don waved me away, so I went. It took a little argument with the neighbor, but when she called the center Rosalba gave her permission, so she let them go. I hadn't met Alma before, who was six and bright and asked a lot of questions about me and my husband and my little babies. She couldn't believe I had neither spouse nor child. Marta and Hugo were docile under their seat-belts; Alma squirmed out of hers and tried to see out the windows. I drove to the center feeling certain that I had entered an alien world where something impartial and strong was pulling my strings.
It kept pulling and jerking all night. First I heard, with shock, Rosalba tell her babies that their papa was dead. Then I saw the body, sprawled in the back work room. The great big, knife-edged fake Giacometti lay over what had been his head. Then the police came and I answered questions and held one kid or the other while Don and Rosalba described how the sculpture had fallen. Then I fed the kids at McDonald's while their mom was at the police station. Funny; I ate like a wolf.
When I got back to the station Rosalba and Don were free to go. I followed Rosalba's car to her house to be sure she drove safely. She did, but barely. I told her I'd help arrange the funeral, but she said Don would do that. He didn't. He drove the show to Scottsdale and neglected to return. Ever.
A week later I got a call from the president of the art center board, an upwardly-mobile car salesman. Would I take Don's place? Just until they found someone? Of course they would have to advertise nationally, and it might take three or four months, but there would be compensation, and the board, no the whole city, would be so grateful. All the imported shows were already booked, and December is usually devoted to the Christmas Tree show, so there wouldn't be a lot to it. I could get Jody or someone like her to help.
But I didn't want to deal with Yuma's snobs. I thought about it hard, hating it. "Yes," I said. All right, because I owed the center for mounting Rosalba's show. And I worked for a week before I found the envelope in Don’s desk. It was full of checks. All of the checks were made out to Rosalba.
I called her. Got a forwarding number from a recording. Dialed and got Alma, then her. She had moved off the bench behind Yuma's big intersection to a trailer park in Winterhaven. Excuse me; mobile home park. I found it: big metal porch with an aluminum awning, a washing machine beside it, a big cottonwood to cover them, a blue-haired neighbor who peered openly from her window. Inside, warm breeze from a swamp cooler. Everything clean, the kids neat in jeans and tee shirts playing with Crayolas on the dining table. Rosalba, smoking and washing dishes with a big smile for me. "Sit," she welcomed, and gestured at a smallish orange velveteen armchair. "Cerveza?"
"Sure." She fetched a bottle of Pacifico, and Alma brought a red plastic tumbler when her mother finished drying it. "Que tal?"
"I brought some checks for you. From the art show."
Surprise. "No cheet?"
"No cheet. Maybe four thousand dollars."
She got very serious, stubbed out her cigarette and dropped the dishtowel onto the counter. In those days four thousand dollars bought a new Chevy.
"Scoot, ninos. Outside." They straggled out, big-eyed at the thickening atmosphere between us.
Rosalba sort of sidled into the living room, mistrustful and awed. "You said four tousand?"
"Thousand. Plus a couple of hundred. Just from Yuma. You'll probably sell more in Scottsdale and Los Angeles."
"Por my drawings?"
"Seguro."
Her fanny hit the couch and she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, hands dangling. She didn't say anything for a long time. Then, "You know what that means?"
"I have an idea. The funeral cost a bunch, didn't it?" She waved that aside. "And moving out of town cost something."
"Nothing," she told me, and dove back into her thoughts.
I finished the Pacifico, though I think it tastes mostly like weak urine, smacked my lips loudly and waited some more. I lit a cigarette. Decided I didn't like the English hunt print on the drapes. Or the roses-and-violets oilcloth on her dining table.
She began. "You have changed my life. I have to tell you about some things." She rubbed her palms together. "I killed un hombre in Mexico."
I straightened up, not certain what I had heard. I couldn't say anything because of my stiffened lips, and the back of my neck tingled. She decided to go on.
"Un boracho, drunk, stinking. It was like this.” She paused. “I killed him by accident. He was chasing me to...you know. I was muy, er, a very young girl. He pushed I mean pressured me too far. It was in university, when I worked there."
"I see. I think."
"He was a sculpture. Made statues and taught how to do it, and I said I'd sit. Pose. I did it. Then he started to act funny one day and I said no and started to run. There was a statue in the room, big, an Indio with a lot of metal feathers sticking out. The teacher was close behind. I ran around it and my shirt got stuck on a feather." She broke off, remembering the scene; one hand lifted her dangling shirttail and the other smoothed it, demonstrating. She looked up at me. "So I tore it off, my shirt off the sharp feather that was sticking straight out, so." She demonstrated with a yank so fierce I heard the fabric give. Her next words were very fast. "And I pushed, so the feathers went into him, into his neck. And he died."
"Jesus." I didn't know I'd spoken until I heard the echo.
Her expression flicked from sorrow to disgust. "I could have got away, but I was so young. At first I thought it was fun, running. You know. Then it was no fun. And he tried to cry when he was hurt. And he took so long to die."
The image became explicit and stuck; I wanted no more, but Rosalba ground on. By now her grip on that little bag at her throat whitened her knuckles. "So when Alfonso came in, that was my husband's name, Alfonso, I cried and told him how it happened. And he made me marry him so he wouldn't tell the police." She sat back with a sigh, staring at the past with her hands braced hard against her knees.
I wasn't keeping up. "And what happened then?"
"And then I had Alma and we moved to Yuma."
"No, I mean about the sculptor."
"Yes." She fetched two more Pacificos, opened them at the sink and took a seat on the other velveteen armchair next to me. Her dark eyes bored into me, looking for judgment. Or lack of it.
"This is hard to say. I wanted the sculpture--sculptor? to die, see. I got angry. I stayed with Alfonso because I murdered that silly man. Seven years of my life I paid for it, to atone."
I had to escape her glare. I wandered to the table, closed a coloring book and looked at the cover. Donald Duck. "So how have I changed your life?" I asked without turning. "Don is the one who really did it. I don't get the connection."
"Pues. The sculptor's wife and children had no money for a funeral. He was buried in lime."
Yuck.
"You see? No mass, no grave, no stone. No flowers or prayers."
"So he's still in purgatory?" I ventured. I reopened the coloring book.
Rosalba nodded. "Si. I saved for those seven years so she could get them. I cleaned and laundered and had the babies, and I hid Alfonso's pay when there was some left over. I could pay his funeral-- no?--with the monies I saved. The man who enslaved me for those years had his prayers. But now I can also pay the widow of the sculptor, and get more atonement. Get her husband out of Purgatory."
I nodded judiciously, feeling stupid. "Could be."
Rosalba relaxed and brightened. "Si," she said, which meant she was relieved that I understood. "And now I am an 'artist', from you. Now I will do more drawings and maybe get more money than I get from your Jodies and Loises and Charlottes. And when I pay the widow I will have seven years of good luck for balance, or maybe fourteen years, to raise my children. My ninos will be grown before I go to prison."
I had missed something. I shook my head and paced to the little window in the door. The kids were whooping it up in the drive which separated rows of trailers, running and skipping around little smiling Hugo. "Whoo-whoo-whoo" the girls chanted, patting their mouths and waving sticks in their other hands. Indians. No feathers, though.
"I still don't get it, Rosalba."
"Jail for the punishment, to pay me for crime! And the time of liberty until then to raise the children, the reward for staying with my husband!"
This was crazy; I hustled over to her and grabbed her waggling hand. "Say it again, Rosalba. What is twice? And what other punishment?" She looked at me as hard as I looked at her, right into my eyes as she freed her hand. Then she drew that little bag from between her breasts, waggling it and demonstrating. She spoke slowly, to a simpleton. I began to understand.
"My children were from God's promise to me. I have it here, since I was a girl. Comprendes?"
Well, sure; she wanted children when she was a little kid, so she made a bargain with God...in the muddy barrio in Algodones...paying a curandera.
"Claro," I said.
"The years to raise my children are also God's promise. For slaving."
"Nooo." I shook my head. "How?"
"Esta aqui." She waggled the little sack again.
"In there? Another bargain with God?"
"Si, after the first man died. After mothering, punishment; for...see? My life por theirs. I will die for it. Me mataran."
"They'll kill you? Who?"
"La policia. Because I made that little Don love me; to not tell when I did it. When I led him and Alfonso back to the little room with the statue. And I killed my husband there, the way I did to that poor drunk sculpture. To get free from Alfonso. And to keep my drawings going to Scottsdale. For the children."
I made for the chair again, fast. Rosalba asked, "Do you really think they will be sold in that big town?"
They did, and the others she’s drawn in the fourteen years she’s had since then. I’ll miss her.
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