Where We Come From Read online

  “You know him?” Orly asked.

  “Nah, I thought he was somebody else, this guy I went to high school with.”

  “But he waved and you waved back.”

  “So, you don’t need to know somebody to say hi. There’s no law against it.”

  When the light changed from red to green, his dad took a left and then a few miles later a right that led them into Nina’s neighborhood, past the dollar store and raspa stand and self-serve car wash. A mound of brushwood, higher than the mailbox, lay at the curb in front of one of the houses. Next door a man was in the driveway changing his oil, only his feet and hairy legs extending from beneath his car. Nina’s house was at the end of the block and easy to spot with the aloe vera plant fanning out from the front corner of the lot and the bougainvillea blossoming above the barbs of the chain-link fence.

  She’d left the driveway gate open and parked her car on the street. His dad pulled the Suburban all the way into the carport and Nina came out the back door before he turned off the motor. She and his dad were hugging at the gate now and calling for Orly to get out of the car already so she could give him the biggest hug ever, show how much she loved him and how she had been counting the days until his visit. But he knew his three weeks in Brownsville would officially start as soon as his opened the car door and he wanted just a second to take it all in. The baby blue house, the long ramp from the front door, the tire swing, the faded sheets on the clothesline, and beyond all that, the barking dog chained to the little pink house.

  III

  La madrina

  8

  After dropping Orly off near the field, Nina makes a huge U-turn, stops twice for a pair of speed bumps and another time for a gaping pothole brimming with yesterday’s rain, and finally parks at the other end of the lot beneath the wispy shade of a mesquite.

  He carries the ball under his arm, careful to sidestep the still muddy trail, until he reaches the gravel track. A young couple is taking turns running and pushing their little boy around the track in a stroller that can’t go any faster than a fast walk without a pebble choking the caster on the right front wheel and bringing everything to a skidding halt. So the man jog-walks a lap while his wife pushes the stroller, and when he catches up to them again they switch places. The man, skinny with a slouch to him even when running, is wearing blue-jean shorts, black socks and running shoes, and a wife beater, which down here is just an undershirt, mainly to be worn in that manner, under a guayabera or any other dress shirt, for church or work or a night out, but also, depending on the weather, worn alone if the man happens to be cutting the grass or barbecuing on the weekend or even taking an early-evening jog around a high school track. His wife is twice as heavy as he is and has on spandex tights, a loose T-shirt, and pink high-tops; the little kid, maybe three at the most, sits in only his Pull-Ups, his plump legs, pecked with mosquito bites, dangling over the edge of the stroller. The boy has his father’s face, same broad forehead and chinito eyes, a mini version of him except for not having a faint moustache draping the edges of his little mouth.

  When Orly has crossed the track and reached the soccer field, Nina honks to let him know she’s still there, watching him, and he responds by dropping the ball and shielding his eyes with one hand and with the other, raised high, waving back. She tapped the horn only once because she’s afraid of startling her mother. The dark green tint of the wraparound sunglasses the ophthalmologist gave her at her last visit makes it impossible to tell if she’s gazing in the opposite direction, out toward the tennis courts, or resting her eyes, as she calls it whenever she dozes off throughout the day. She hasn’t uttered a sound since her last “Ay Diosito” when the boy was wheeling her out the front door and down the long and angled ramp and she claimed he was going too fast and she didn’t know what all the hurry was for—if the house was suddenly on fire—if she was having a heart attack and didn’t know it—or if they were just trying to give her one, here on her own ramp—and then he finally helped her stand and position herself between the car and the door, preparing her for her slow, precarious descent into the front seat.

  Nina wants to turn off the engine, but the sudden lack of cool air from the air conditioner might disturb her mother. Mamá Meche’s breathing is steady and she looks comfortable. Then again, she’s liable to wake up complaining that it’s too cold, ask if Nina’s trying to freeze her to death by making it like an icebox in here, the same as it is everywhere else, the house, the grocery store, the pharmacy, the lobby of the cardiologist’s office, the elevator to the urologist’s office, the bathroom of the rheumatologist’s office. There is no lack of places where she might feel a chill, and so regardless of the weather outside they don’t leave the house without her brown knitted cap, her purple fleece jacket, and at least one of her rebozos draped over the backrest of the wheelchair.

  The little boy has begged off his stroller so he can run onto the field where Orly is kicking the ball. His mother is trying to put shoes on him, but he insists on running barefoot.

  “He can play with you?” the father asks.

  “I’m just kicking it,” Orly says, pulling the ball from the goal and rolling it to the boy.

  “He likes to give kicks to the ball and yell, real loud.” Then the kid demonstrates, kicking it once, twice, and on his third kick makes the ball go far enough to piddle into the net.

  “Goooool!” the little boy yells until he falls down and his father laughs.

  Orly scoops out the ball and the boy does the same thing a couple more times, yelling a little louder with each goal and running down the field a little faster.

  “Like I said, no?” the father gushes.

  Orly nods, unsure whether to answer him in Spanish, which he suspects might be easier for him but might also suggest he doesn’t think the man speaks very well. If he switches over, the man might think Orly’s Spanish isn’t so good either, even if it’s no worse than the man’s English. It’s complicated. He probably doesn’t think Orly knows Spanish. He has his mom’s light skin, and so most people assume he doesn’t. And if it weren’t for his last name being Diaz no one would expect him to speak anything other than English.

  His godmother says his name in Spanish, calling him “Orlando, mijito,” like she’s speaking to someone else, another Orly, a shorter and darker version of this one who all along has been following right behind him, lurking in his shadow, but who only she can see.

  She and his tío Beto are always saying he should speak Spanish, but as soon as he does someone is correcting him, saying he mispronounced a word or messed up the conjugation. It happens enough to make him not want to respond in Spanish and sometimes not even in English. Like when he goes up to his dad’s office in the evenings and the cleaning people wave to him and he waves back. He could be friendlier, but he keeps his headphones on even if he has the music turned off. If it wasn’t for his dad saying hi to them they might not be so friendly. The guy vacuuming the conference room might be from Michoacán or he might be from the Northside. He might have showed up just last week or it might be his great-grandfather who showed up first. Does it mean something that he’s named Orly and the janitor guy probably has a name like Javier or Servando? Or that they might have the same last name? Sometimes he wishes they didn’t say hi to him and that he didn’t feel like he had to respond. Hola or Hello? ¿Qué tal or How’s it going? Buenas noches or Good night? Better to wait and let them make the first move.

  * * *

  —

  Nina wants to honk again just to make sure he’s okay and the man and his little boy aren’t bothering him. Her mother is still dozing behind the dark glasses, her breathing altered now and then when her nose twitches like she has an itch or might need to sneeze.

  “For that reason, if you would listen,” she says, recovering some frayed thread of a distant conversation. “Nobody listens anymore. They forgot how to listen, how to open their ears.
”

  “Mamá,” she says, tapping her knee. “Mamá, can you hear me? It’s me, Nina.”

  She lowers her sunglasses. “¿Y quién es Nina?”

  “Tencha,” she corrects herself.

  “Then say it right and stop trying to fool me with other names.” She nudges the sunglasses back onto the bridge of her nose.

  It’s true. Nina’s not her real name, it’s just what Orly started calling her back when he was learning to talk and couldn’t pronounce “madrina,” the proper word to say godmother. His father calls her Tía, or says, “Your Nina called today,” or “It’s your Nina’s birthday today, we should call her.” Or even “I bet your Nina would like it if we called her for Mother’s Day.” After a while, Nina was the only name Orly knew her by, and even if she isn’t his brother Alex’s godmother, he calls her Nina too.

  She was happy to be a Nina. She had never been happy being an Hortencia, an old family name handed down from her great-great-grandmother who had arrived as a baby when Texas was still Mexico. Even shortened to Tencha, the name fit like a borrowed dress that was tight in all the wrong places. “Nina” to her sounded younger and more fun to be around, the type of woman who sometimes forgot to use her seat belt and had her hair done once a week, maybe even colored it, the type who had been married but was also happy alone, who had traveled to other countries and had a home full of trinkets and photos, each with its own story, the type of relative a young boy would be eager to see around the holidays or his summer vacation.

  “And the time?”

  “Still early—look at the sun.”

  She leans toward the dashboard for a better look, but the seat belt’s locking mechanism restrains her. She tries to press the release button and undo the buckle.

  “Ya, we’re leaving in a little while.”

  “In how much?” her mother says. “Because your little always comes out longer than my little.”

  “I told him seven thirty.”

  “All day waiting and you want to make me lose my program.”

  “Only for a little more, until the boy finishes and we can go back.”

  Her mother stays silent, thinking of the few boys, if any, she knows the names of. There has been a young one in the house the last few days. He comes every morning to give her a kiss and say Buenos días, and later, after her novela, Buenas noches. Earlier today she played a game of Lotería with him. She couldn’t believe it was his first time ever playing. She had to show him how and after the first game, which she won handily, she let him read the cards for the next two games, just to hear him say more in Spanish.

  “Orlando,” she says suddenly, as if a leaf with his name written on it has just floated in through the crack at the top of the window and landed on her lap. “The one who is the son of Eduardo?”

  “Yes, his boy,” says Nina.

  “Because there is also a Rolando they call Rolly, verdad?”

  “That one that belongs to Ramiro, in Michigan.”

  “Michigan,” she repeats. “Mich-i-gan,” like it’s another name to remember.

  “Far away.”

  “You think I don’t remember? I was the one who was there, not you. We went every year to work in the fields until when you were born. After so many years I told your father, ‘No more. Find other work to do or go alone, but no more working in the fields, living like animals in those shacks.’ You should thank me that you never had to live that way.”

  “I tell you each time you say it.”

  “You could have brought him, este Orlando, and left me at home to watch my novela.”

  “And if you needed me?”

  “I can get down from the bed and walk to the bathroom without you there to watch me. You just think I need you helping me for everything or I will fall down going from here to there.”

  “If you mean at night, then yes, you need to be sleeping in the bed or call me to come help you.”

  “I could be dead and the noises would wake me up. People coming and going, people walking in circles, talking in whispers.”

  “Remember that Orly stays up later than you do. Maybe you’re hearing me talk to him in the kitchen.”

  “Sí pero, this has been since before el Orly came to stay. And not in English, like he likes to talk.”

  “I used to have dreams where I could hear my father’s voice in the next room.”

  “Now you think I am imagining it? Me lying in bed hearing the voices of strangers, first outside and now like they are inside, there in the very next room.”

  “Then maybe I’m more tired than you are when the day ends.” Nina checks the clock on the console. The couple with the little boy have left the track and are walking toward the far end of the parking lot. “We should ask Dr. Robles, see if he can give you something more to help you sleep.”

  “Your answer for everything,” she says. “Instead of going to his office to get more pills, you should pay Robles the same money to come stand in the yard or outside my door, see what’s making the noises. Pay him for that, not for more pills.”

  Nina will give the boy another minute before tapping on the horn; the fading sun has already made it difficult to see him in the distance. The novela is coming on in less than half an hour and the giant cicadas they know as chicharras have already begun their shrill evening concert. Inside the car, though, all she can hear is the scorn in her mother’s voice.

  * * *

  —

  The other boy knows they are home when the shaft of light passes through the slit between the top of the window and the aluminum foil. He stays crouched inside the pink house, his back flat against the front door, his ear up against the frame. He hears the engine turn off and a moment later one door opens, then a second and a third, and finally the trunk, where la señora keeps the wheelchair that belongs to her mother. He can hear la señora walking in the other direction, toward the front door of the other house, her voice faint like the murmur of a distant river he cannot yet see.

  Earlier in the day there had been barking and then the windows shuddered, as it happens when the mean dog gets excited in the middle of the night and yanks against its chain and the little house begins to tremble. But in between the barking, there was also a pounding on the other side of the wall, as if someone was hammering just outside the window, but slowly, each blow delayed as if the carpenter had dropped his hammer in the grass.

  The boy tried standing on the sill but couldn’t balance himself for more than a few seconds. Then he pushed the old couch up against the window to see if he could reach the crack at the top of the aluminum foil. He was higher on the cushions but only enough to look straight out at the roof of la señora’s house and not into the yard, where the pounding was coming from. Only when he spun the couch around and stood on the backrest was he able to look down and see the one who must be la señora’s godson. He was standing in the middle of the yard, kicking a yellow-and-black soccer ball against the side of the little pink house. He lined it up and kicked it with his right foot, and when the ball came back to him he lined it up and this time kicked it with his left.

  Then, from atop the backrest, the other boy heard the screen door of the blue house and a few seconds later there was la señora in the yard talking to her godson, scolding him for something. The other boy scrunched down on this side of the wall and then dropped onto the sofa, afraid she might have somehow spotted him through the tiny crack at the top of the window.

  He knows the rules. La señora has told them to him for the last two weeks. Do not come out in the day, even those times when she happens to remove the padlock. Do not open the door to anyone but her. Do not be looking out the window. Do not be making any noises. Do not turn on the air conditioner if you hear somebody in the yard. Do not even flush the toilet. Do not let them hear any sounds coming from inside the little house. And no matter what, do not let anyone see you.


  * * *

  —

  Later, after Mamá Meche has watched her novela and gone to sleep, Nina goes to the hall closet and from the top shelf pulls down an old photo album, the spine and cover as worn and speckled with time as her own hands.

  “Mira, Orly,” she says, tapping on the sofa for him to sit with her, “I’m going to show you where we came from.”

  His hair is still wet from the shower she made him take after coming home sweaty from the soccer field. He has on the only pajama shorts and T-shirt he brought with him to sleep in.

  “But closer, mijito,” she says until he scoots over right next to her so she can spread the photo album over both their laps. Then she drapes her arm over his shoulder as if they’re about to go on a ride somewhere.

  The photos are in no particular order, each spread onto a moldy page and sealed with a crinkly plastic cover. There’s one from 1914, next to one from after World War II, next to one from a fortieth-anniversary party in the 1970s, next to one of the reunion he and Alex came to a few summers ago with their dad.

  “He died before you were born, but this one is your great-grandfather, your daddy’s grandpa and my father. His name was Orlando, like you.”

  Orly already knew he was named after him, but the only photo he had seen of him was in a group shot taken at the fortieth anniversary. In the photo that Nina is showing him now, his great-grandfather is standing at the edge of a cotton field. He’s wearing a straw hat with a narrow brim, and the sleeves of his white shirt are rolled up to his elbows. It must be a windy day—the cuffs of his khakis are billowing out from his ankles. Maybe it’s because the image is in black and white that everything looks so clearly defined.