Luisito looked quickly from his mother’s eyes to Señora Manuela’s. With both hands on the wheels he pushed his chair to where the old woman lay sprawled. He held out his hand, offering her a handkerchief.
“Here, Manuela. You’ve hurt your forehead.”
“Thank you, but don’t get yourself in trouble over me. Go back to your mother. Look at the terrible way she’s staring at us.”
“It doesn’t matter. Please forgive me.”
“But for what, child?”
“Every time I go out to the vacant lots and see how they treat the dogs, I feel good.”
“But, Luis, child.”
“I think to myself, if it weren’t for them I’d be the one getting the beating. As if the dogs stood between those boys and me, suffering in my place. I’m the biggest coward of all, aren’t I, Manuela?”
“Who knows,” the stunned woman murmured as she dried the blood from her head with Luis’s handkerchief; who knows, as laboriously she struggled to her feet, placing one hand on the ground and the other on her knee, then crossing them over her bulging belly and then on the arm of the wheelchair, rising like a statue of rags fallen from the highest niche of the Sagrario; who knows, is there anything you can do to make the dogs forgive you?
I’m fourteen, almost fifteen, I can talk to them like a man, they always will call me little Luis because I’ll never grow very big, I’ll be stuck in my chair getting smaller and smaller until I die, but today I’m fourteen, almost fifteen, and I can talk to them like a man and they’ll have to listen to me. He repeated these words over and over that night as before supper he pored over the photographs and postcards and letters stored in the trunk that now served as a chest, since everything had to do double duty in these tenements that used to be palaces and now sheltered down-on-their-luck families who lived there with former servants, they who’d been wealthy in Orizaba, and Manuelita, who had never been more than a servant in a wealthy house. Little Luis repeated those words to himself, sitting at his usual place at the table that was used for preparing and eating their meals, as well as for schoolwork and the extra accounting his father brought home so as to pay the bills every month.
Sitting in silence, waiting for someone to speak first, staring intently at his mother, daring her to begin, to tell here at the dinner table what had happened to Doña Manuela that afternoon, so yes, the gossip would begin here and tomorrow everyone in the building would know: they beat her and chased her from the Cathedral along with all her dogs. No one was saying anything, because, when she wished, Señora Lourdes knew how to impose an icy silence, to make clear to everyone that it was no time for joking, that she was reserving the right to announce something very serious.
She directed a bitter smile to each of them — to her husband, Raúl, to her two older sons, who were waiting impatiently to go to the movies with their sweethearts, to Rosa María, who could hardly keep awake — but she waited until everyone had served himself the simple rice with peas to tell again the same story, the one she always dragged out to prove how bad Doña Manuelita was, how she’d made her own daughter, Lupe Lupita, believe that when she was a little girl she’d had a bad fall and that she’d been crippled and would always have to be in a wheelchair, nothing but lies, why there was nothing wrong with her at all, nothing but the selfishness and evil of Doña Manuela, who wanted to keep the girl with her forever so she’d never be alone, even if it meant ruining her own daughter’s life.
“Thanks to you, Pepe,” Doña Lourdes said to her oldest son. “You suspected something and convinced her to get out of the wheelchair and try to walk, and you showed her how, thanks to you, my son, Lupe Lupita was saved from her mother’s clutches.”
“For God’s sake, Mother, that’s all over now, don’t keep bringing it up, please,” Pepe said, blushing, as he always did when his mother told the story, and stroking his thin black mustache.
“That’s why I’ve forbidden Luis to have anything to do with Manuela. And now, this very afternoon…”
“Mother,” Luis interrupted, “I’m almost fifteen, I’m fourteen years old, Mother, I can talk to you like a man.” He looked at his father’s face, drained by fatigue, at the sleepy face of Rosa María, a girl without memories, at the stupid faces of his brothers, at the impossible pride, the haughty apprehension of his mother’s beautiful face, none of them had inherited those high, hard, everlasting bones.
“Mama, that time I fell down the staircase…”
“It was an accident. No one was to blame.”
“I know that, Mother, that isn’t the point. But what I remember is how everyone in the building peeked out to see what was going on. I cried out. I was so afraid. But everyone stayed right where they were, staring, even you. She was the only one who came running to help me. She hugged me, she looked to see if I was hurt, and ruffled my hair. I could see all their faces, Mother. I didn’t see a single face that wanted to help me. Just the opposite, Mother. In that moment, everyone wanted me dead, everyone wished it, I guess, out of compassion — poor little fellow, take him out of his misery, it’s better that way, what can life offer him? Even you, Mother.”
“That isn’t true, Luis, how could you make up such a vicious lie?”
“I’m not very bright, Mother. I’m sorry. You’re right. Doña Manuela needs me because she lost her Lupe Lupita. She wants me to take her place.”
“Of course she does. Have you just realized that?”
“No. I’ve always known it, but I couldn’t find the words to say it until now. It’s good to know you’re needed, it’s good to know that if it weren’t for you another person would be terribly lonely. It’s good to need someone, like Manuela needed her daughter, like I need Manuela, like you need someone, Mother, everyone does … Like Manuela and her dogs need each other, like all of us need something, need to do something, tell something, even if it isn’t true, write letters and say that things haven’t been going too badly for us, in fact that we’re living in Las Lomas, isn’t that right, and that Papa has a factory, that my brothers are lawyers, and that Rosa María is in boarding school in Canada, and I’m your pride and joy, Mother, first in my class, a champion horseback rider, yes, me, Mother…”
Don Raúl laughed quietly, nodding his head. “That’s what you always wanted, Lourdes, how well your son knows you.”
The mother’s eyes, proud and despairing, did not leave little Luis’s face, denying, denying, with all the intensity her silence could muster. His father was shaking his head: “What a shame that I couldn’t give you any of that.”
“You’ve never heard me complain, Raúl.”
“No,” the father said, “never. But once, way back at the beginning, you told me the things you’d like to have had, only once, more than twenty years ago, but I’ve never forgotten, though you never said it again.”
“I never said it again, I’ve never reproached you for anything.” And Señora Lourdes’s eyes were on little Luis, in wild supplication.
But the boy was talking about Orizaba now, about the big house, the photographs and postcards, he’d never been there, so he had to imagine it all, the balconies, the rain, the mountains, the ravine, the furniture in that once-opulent house, the friends of a family like that, the suitors, why do you choose one person over another to marry, Mother, aren’t you ever sorry, don’t you ever dream what life could have been like with another man, and then you write letters to make him think everything worked out, that you’d made the right choice? I’m fourteen, I can speak like a man …