She takes up most of the seat, but I manage to slip on behind her. The sun blares above us. She hands me an umbrella and waits for me to open it. After some fits and starts, the motoconcho peels onto the road, leaving a cloud of dust behind us. For a long while, we’re alone on the narrow road, miles of cane fields on each side. I hug my mother, press my head against her sweaty back and taste the ocean on her skin. You would think we’re close.
Then suddenly the clamoring of tin pots, the tooting of the ships, the stink of sedentary water inside the numerous potholes hits us. Cars and scooters compete for every inch of the city streets. The Malecón bursts at the seams, people shopping, hanging, talking, drinking. Selling lottery tickets and coconuts. Men whistling and hissing at Mamá, whose skirt hikes up, exposing her thick brown thighs, even thicker next to all my bones.
Cochino! she yells back at the gaping mouths.
Not a good one in that bunch, she says, and demands I hold on tight as she pushes through the traffic, around the park in the city center, the only refuge, shaded from the blazing sun by palmettos and almond trees.
Mamá pulls up to Carmela’s house, the only one on the block made with concrete. Once painted red, now a faded pink, with dwarf palm trees cluttering the front yard.
Carmela! Mamá yells through the iron gates.
We peek into the house. Through the window, I make out a headless dress form and back away. Mamá glares back at my watery eyes and chin pressed against my neck.
Cheer up, she says when Carmela comes out to greet us. Her hair tightly wrapped around her head in a tubi. A smile that takes up half her face. This is the beginning of great things for you. For all of us!
Carmela leads us to her bedroom. There are a few reams of fabric on a shelf. A black metal sewing machine sits on a small table by a window. A bald bulb hangs from the ceiling. A loud standing fan turns to and fro near her work chair. A rope extended from one side of the room to the other displays pinned fabric pieces and magazine photos of dresses ordered by past customers.
Bad news, Carmela says, there’s not an inch of white fabric in town. The communion ceremonies are in two weeks, and every girl between six and eight is dressing up like a bride.
Mamá fans herself with a McCall pattern she found on Carmela’s table.
I smile to myself. Maybe this is a sign that the marriage will be postponed—or better yet canceled.
What other colors do you have? Mamá asks.
What? flies out of my mouth, startling them.
Other colors, Carmela? my mother repeats.
For a bride? Carmela sucks her tooth in disapproval but pulls out three possibilities. A shiny gold lamé—a definite no—black linen, and a roll of red cotton.
Mamá fingers the red fabric on the sewing table.
It’s more pink, a flaming pink, Carmela says. She turns around and pulls out a large piece of white lace from her storage cabinet. She stands behind me, placing the lace on my chest so that Mamá gets the effect.
There are no mirrors in the room for me to look at myself. I’m supposed to be in school. Gabriel, my only friend, will wonder where I am. I can’t go off to America without saying good-bye.
Mamá scrutinizes the flaming pink and white lace.
It’s so bright. Don’t you have anything else?
I have black, but she’s not going to a funeral. Carmela pauses here and I sense she’s been saying otherwise behind our backs.
I like the black, I say.
Mamá shoos my hand away. Carmela, make her something pretty in the pink. And put on as much white lace as you can. I don’t want anyone thinking my daughter’s indecent.
* * *
We walk out into the midday sun. Mamá opens the umbrella. She locks her arm into mine. Pulls me over to sit on the cement-block ledge of Carmela’s house. The waft of fried fish and plátano makes me hungry. Ants march over a fallen apricot. Songs from radios, playing inside of living rooms and kitchens, compete for my attention. Across from us some men have set up cardboard over stacked crates to play a domino game. Women line the wash in their front yard. Two boys play catch.
Mamá reveals a cigarette she has hidden in her bra.
You smoke?
Only on special occasions.
She stops a passerby and asks for a light, then waves him away. After taking a drag, she passes the cigarette to me. I make a face of disgust.
Lesson number one to survive this life, she says through the acrid smoke, learn to pretend. You don’t need to smoke if you don’t want to, but you can use it to act like one of those movie stars.
I’m not that way.
She leans her head back, takes a drag and exhales. The sun behind her draws her silhouette. We have the same lips and eye shape, large and wide. The same coarse hair at our napes.
When she comes back for air, she winks and smiles at me.
They’re gonna eat you alive in New York if you don’t change that pendeja face. You need to toughen up, Ana. You think I like being the way I am? But your father has no backbone. Never fought for anything in his life. Not even me.
But you always say he came after you.
Ha. You better open your eyes before someone else opens them for you. You hear me?
That day, Mamá was a wolf pushing away her pup.
You go to America and pretend you don’t care about what he and his brothers are talking about, but you listen carefully and take notes. He comes from a family of hard workers, good men, entrepreneurs. We can learn from them. The Ruiz brothers started poor like us. But they work together. Not like my family or your father’s family, a bunch of uneducated and greedy idiots only out for self. And now the Ruiz brothers are going to be our family too. Ramón wants to build on our property, and with this marriage we’re now bound. This is important for us—your father especially because soon all our fruit trees will be barren. The cherries are already rotten, the mangoes mealy.
But every fruit tree has had a bad year, I remind her. Some years they don’t bear fruit at all.
And you’d count on that? These people own a restaurant in the capital right by the sea. I bet it’s a fancy one, with cloth napkins on the tables, chandeliers in the main room, bathrooms with bidets and tiled floors. And in New York, Juan is working with his brother to start not one business but many. They are detailed people. Organized people. People with intelligence. You want to study, don’t you?
Yes, I want to study, maybe have my own business. I fight to hold back the tears.
Mamá takes the last drag from her cigarette and puts it out on the ledge. She picks up my chin so tenderly, she takes me by surprise.
I promise nothing bad will happen to you. You go to New York and you clean his house and cook him the kind of food that will make him return home every night. Never let him walk out of the house with a wrinkled shirt. Remind him to shave and cut his hair. Clip his nails so women know he’s well taken care of. Demand he send us money. Demand he take care of you. Make sure you sneak some money for yourself on the side. Women have necessities. And whatever you do, stay strong. Don’t allow yourself to be tempted or derailed by anyone. The city is filled with predators, and you’re just a girl. My innocent little girl. I’ll come to America as soon as you send for me. We’ll all go to New York to be with you, and together we’ll build something. I swear to God who’s my witness.