Each house on Duvet Drive was unique in its grandness featuring imposing doorways or inviting porches. Most offered colorful flowerbeds arranged as though for competition. As she walked under the shade of majestic trees, Gabriela spotted a discarded watering can and a bike left carelessly on the grass. It was what she would have imagined of America if she could have imagined such peace. As a child in El Salvador, she could not envision pristine houses sitting on expansive green lawns, the continuous hum of distant lawnmowers, or children splashing in pools.
Gabriela worked two jobs and her husband worked three. Despite their efforts, paying their debts on time felt like an attempt to cover a queen-sized bed with a twin-size sheet. She stood on her feet cooking and cleaning for a family in Lynbrook, then took the bus home and cooked and cleaned for her husband. On Saturdays, she cleaned offices after people who sat on their asses all week. They tossed their garbage into little pails close to their desks. Still, they managed to miss. They dirtied the stalls in the bathroom as though they were children.
Several office workers kept framed pictures on their desks of smiling families in Florida or the Caribbean. Some displayed photographs of their pets. Gabriela could not imagine taking a photo much less displaying a picture of Castano, the stray emaciated dog who followed her home from school when she was a child.
Gabriela was relieved to be out of the midday sun when she reached her employer’s house. The wife greeted her with an overly gracious welcome as though she’d arrived for a party.
“Buenos Dias,” the Mrs. sang.
This was a fairly new practice. When she and Edwin first arrived in the States, they were treated with disdain. Now they were offered multiple thanks for their services although tipping hadn’t improved.
“Bobby is home from school and he’s just dying for your tamales.”
“Of course, Senora,” Gabriella said, eyeing a pile of dirty dishes.
Other than a few short exchanges, that would be the last of their conversation. Soon the family would forget she was there as she faded into the background like music from a neighbor’s yard. For the remainder of the afternoon, she was a silent witness to the exchange of tender gestures or voices tinged with irritation as she removed the dirt produced by the family.
She shook her head at the irony of her obscurity, bloated as she was from the American diet. Others looked right through her as she mattered little in this country. She would have been a treasured matriarch back in El Salvador except her throne would be made of dirt, and all five of her children were dead and buried.
She didn’t mind her obscurity as her clothes were ill-fitted and often mismatched. Although she and her friend Marisol enjoyed shopping at the Goodwill, she longed to wear something that inspired her, something in colors of her choice.
In the evening, Gabriela returned home feeling as worn as the cleaning rags she’d wrung out over a bucket. She and Edwin lived behind a laundromat. Other peoples’ preferred music filled their tiny dwelling. Overstuffed washers pounded against the wall while overtired babies wailed in discontent. However, after 10 pm all was quiet. That was when the business owners secured their stores for the evening and went home. All that remained was the smell of clean laundry.
The couple ate their meals at a small table with two mismatched chairs. They slept on a sunken sofa bed and readied themselves in a cramped bathroom. After she cleared the dishes Gabriela lit the candles on the corner table next to a photograph of the children. The photo was worn from the passage of time and the treacherous trip to America.
“Are you still certain?” Edwin asked.
Gabriela smiled vaguely. Her husband was in the habit of discussing things long after solid
agreement.
“Six or twelve,” she shrugged her shoulders.
“Que?”
“Six or twelve” she snapped.
“Six of one, half dozen of another? Is that what you mean?” Edwin laughed.
“What’s the difference? That’s what I mean,” she hated to be teased about her English.
“Ok, ok,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I was just checking.”
Edwin turned on the radio for the baseball scores and reviewed the day’s disappointments. Like most mornings he’d stood on the corner with the other men for day work. It was just before sunrise. Night clouds, the color of bruised skin, retreated under the emerging sun. A man pulled up in a pick-up truck and pointed to his selections. Edwin eagerly walked toward the truck when the owner shouted, “Not you, old man.”
Edwin’s face was carved with lines as deep as his grief. He walked with a limp caused by various untreated injuries. A recent heart attack had further aged his face and turned his body into a sluggish weight he dragged around with considerable effort. The doctor who told him he needed a triple bypass seemed truly burdened when he could not recommend a hospital that would treat him without insurance. Yet, he warned that another “cardiac event” would most likely result in death. Edwin did not doubt his prediction.
Gabriela began lighting an additional candle for Edwin next to the ones she lit for the children at Sunday mass. As with most mornings, her friend Marisol knelt next to her. After making the sign of the cross she whispered, “It’s the last day.” Her friend had been hounding her to get her “ta tas” checked ever since the mobile health clinic started parking outside of the church several weeks before.
Today she had to relent as Marisol took her arm after mass and walked her directly to the mobile clinic. They stood face-to-face as the sun warmed the tops of their heads. “It’s air-conditioned,” Marisol offered with raised eyebrows.
Gabriela wasn’t sure what to expect when she got onto the colorful van decorated in pink ribbons. The nurses were so similar to one another that Gabriela thought they were sisters. Each wore a pajama-type uniform in slightly different shades of purple and comfortable white nursing shoes. Both had significant diamonds on their left hand, unnaturally white teeth, and streaks of blonde in their neatly trimmed hair. They were both friendly and gentle. They spoke slowly and a bit too loudly in an attempt to compensate for the language barrier.
It wasn’t long before Gabriela regretted what she had agreed to. The nurse asked her to strip from the waist up and gave her two round sticky covers for her nipples. She winced at the thought of peeling them off later. She was instructed to position herself beside the tall metal, devise and place one arm around the structure, “Like you’re hugging it,” the nurse smiled. Then she slipped her hand underneath Gabriela’s breast and plopped it on a plastic shelf as though it were a loaf of bread. She pressed a button that lowered another plastic shelf from above that flattened Gabriela’s breast. Her stomach swirled and she let out a small cry. She feared the machine would malfunction and the plastic shelf would continue squishing her breast after the nurse stopped pressing the button. She was reminded of a cartoon featuring a coyote smashing a watermelon with a sledgehammer, the contents squirting in all directions. The worst part of the exam was knowing the process required repeating.
A week later they summoned her back to the van. The nurses still dazzled but appeared solemn. They introduced the doctor who used unfamiliar words such as malignant, tumor, and inoperable.
Gabriela looked over at Edwin who was still listening to the baseball scores and recalled the words the doctor used that she did recognize; death, less than, and one year. Of course, there were various treatments but there was no guarantee of success at this stage of the disease. Surely, she was right not to engage her husband in further discussion about their decision.
Edwin stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers. Gabriela changed into her nightgown. She shut
the bathroom light and checked the lock on the front door.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “After all, you’ll miss the fall.”
“I do like it when the weather changes,” she replied.
“And the pumpkins. You like the pumpkins,” Edwin added hopefully.
“But we won’t have to endure another winter.”
“Hmm,” he nodded his head. “I don’t think I could.”
“You’re not getting raw feet?” she asked.
“Raw feet?”
“No, no,” she said, searching for the right word, “Frio?”
“Cold feet?” He smiled at his wife.
Fear was so steady a companion Edwin no longer experienced its arrival or departure. He never knew the peace and pride of other immigrants who spoke of their children’s acceptance to college. They beamed with pride recalling the field of study their daughter or son had chosen. Chosen! If that were true for him and his wife then it all would have been worth it; the debt owed for crossing over to this country that increased every year with interest, his ailing body, a beloved wife with calloused hands, and a broken heart. He would not mention this to Gabriela any more than he would bring up the names of their children.
Knowing his wife was certain of their decision he walked over to the kitchen area, opened the oven door, and turned on the gas. Why did it have to start so easily this time? Why couldn’t it hesitate as it sometimes did giving me time to fiddle with it or locate some obscure part for the dated appliance to get going again? We’d have time to think.
But what was there to think about? He knew his ailing heart would fail him sooner or later leaving Gabriella the only remaining family member. If only the children, at least one of them …No, he would not let his mind wander into that dark place.
He could not bear the thought of Gabriela living alone or worse, being his caretaker. They must
go ahead. They had endured enough.
He and Gabriela got into bed and pulled the covers up. They lay next to each other and reached for one another’s hand. Edwin began to perspire as his heart knocked desperately like an alarm going off inside him. Doubt seeped into his consciousness, as surely as the toxins that would soon fill their lungs.
Gabriela prayed silently with her rosary beads. She brought them to her lips and kissed them
before gripping them to her chest.
“Mi amor,” Edwin asked.
His wife squeezed his hand to reassure him. He wanted to match her unwavering strength
so he remained silent.
He lay still for some time before stealing a look at Gabriela. He had not seen his wife look so peaceful in many years. It reminded him of when they were young and would sneak off from their village to find a private place to make love. Those were happy days. He used to watch her sleep, waking her at the last possible moment to get her back inside her family’s home before anyone realized her absence.
Edwin settled against his pillow. Images flooded his mind. He thought of the sunsets back home, particularly when the sun went down behind a volcano. It was as if two titans’ competed for the most dazzling display; the volcano in its defiant stance, graceful smoke rising from its opening, a constant reminder of the precarious nature of life versus the brilliant colors produced by the sunset. In all his years in America, nothing had compared.
Gabriela sunk into her pillow and relaxed her shoulders. She too thought of home, the family bonds that still lived inside her. Her life had been a mountain that she climbed every day, effortlessly at first until every step was agony. She felt tethered to the bed. She didn’t know if she could move even if she changed her mind. Then she heard the children’s voices. At first, they sounded far away until she could hear them approaching. Oh, the excitement in their voices! They got closer and closer until she could feel their arms around her waist and she could smell the tops of their precious heads.
