I was working as a waitress at a diner in Coalinga when I first met him. I’d been clean just over a year and most of the young men I knew through church were working as laborers for the farms in the area. They were rough and ordinary men who only wanted a wife because they had never learned to cook and clean for themselves. But your father was different. He was educated. He was successful. When I saw the car he was driving and how expensive his clothes looked, I figured he must be someone important. And when he took an interest in me, when he asked me out on a date, it made me feel like the girl in a movie, who catches the eye of a rich man who takes her away to a better life. It felt like my sins had finally been forgiven and good things were starting to happen for me again.
But it all started to feel very different once we got married and moved out here to run a farm. Faithless as they were, your grandparents were devoted to each other. I don’t think I ever saw them spend a night apart. That was the example they set for me of married life, of how a husband and wife should be together. Then I get here and, as soon as the farm’s up and running, your father announces that he’s going away, and that I can only expect to have him home again two or three times a year. Business, mijo. That’s the reason he gave for why he was away all the time. To make more money for us, to find the best prices for our crops, and to provide us with a better way of life. Even then it sounded suspicious to me, but I accepted my burden the same as if I had married a traveling soldier or migrant worker. I told myself it was the way it was done, that my parents had been an exception to the norm. But in my heart I knew better. I knew he was keeping something from me. What it was, if I’m to be honest, I admit I didn’t really want to know. It had to be something bad, and I’d already had more than enough badness to last me the rest of my life. All I wanted was peace and security and a home to call my own, and if that meant being alone for months at a time, then so be it. I thought I could learn to accept it.
Having children changes everything, though. You no longer think of your own needs alone, or even first. One by one, I found myself with three boys to take care of and no man in the house to help me bring them up. A boy needs a father in his life to teach him what it means to be a man. I could never do it on my own, mijo, for you or any of your brothers. It’s just not how God made us. That’s why it made me happy when you started spending time with the men of the farm, and when you became interested in hunting and being out of doors. These are good things for a boy to spend his time learning. It upset me that your father wasn’t here to help you learn, that he never had time to give to us except when he was passing through, and that even then it was always about business. The business of the farm, the business of keeping an eye on his sons, the business of making me pregnant. That’s all that brought your father home to us year after year. It got to the point where I would lash out at him sometimes when he was here. I was careful to hide it from you and your brothers, but there were times when I would beat my fists against his chest and curse him for leaving us alone for so long. I wasn’t strong enough to hurt him, of course, and so he never really got angry. He used to laugh at me, in fact, and hold me by the wrists to watch me struggle. That’s another way your father was different from other men—only words could ever really hurt him.
There was a night some years back, mijo, when I was pregnant with Karina. You remember how worried we were then. We were all expecting him to come in January, but he made us wait a month because he said he had important business on the coast. On top of the pregnancy hormones, that was the final straw. I waited until you and the boys were asleep and asked him to follow me out to the packing shed. It was cold and empty that time of year, so I knew no one would walk in one us. I didn’t yell so much that time, I had carried the anger inside of me for so long. I told him if he didn’t make an effort to be home more often, if he didn’t show through his actions that he still cared for us, then sometime when he was away I would pack up the house and take you and your brothers far away from here. I promised I would find another, more loving man to be with. For all he knew, I said, I had already been with other men who were better lovers than him. I said that last part just to be cruel, just to make him angry, and it worked. It worked too well. Before I understood what was happening, he was coming at me through the dark, and the next thing I knew he had me by the wrists again, and I was lying with my back pressed to the cold, hard ground. I was seven months pregnant, and still he forced me to the ground. I hope you know I wouldn’t lie about something like that, mijo. I swear to God that’s what he did. Then he held his face over mine, with his hot breath beating down, and he said that if I ever tried to leave him he would find me. He would find me and he would take you and your brothers away. He said he knew lawyers and judges all through the valley, and that getting full custody would be no trouble for him. Not after he told them about my past.
And then he told me, mijo, and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he spoke, he told me that if he ever had real reason to suspect I’d been with another man, and that one of my children wasn’t his, he would find out about it. And then he would kill me with his own two hands. And then he would kill the child.
In the dead silence and the dead darkness of the room, Mom raised the glass of wine to her lips and drank until the glass was empty and then set the glass on the nightstand beside the jug. She lay breathing and holding my hand. Why are you telling me this? I asked. I was begging her to make sense of it for me, because my own brain was all but petrified from all I had heard, and because even with a clear head I doubted I could piece it together by myself.
I know I said some shocking things just now. That was so you would understand me better and know where I’m coming from, and what I’ve been dealing with all these years. Your father wasn’t the man you thought he was. He wasn’t even who I thought he was either. The woman who called this afternoon, who gave us the terrible news, that woman was his wife, mijo. His first wife.
Alarm bells and papal condemnations rang in my ears. Dad was divorced?
She drew her lips inside her mouth and shook her head. No, Anthony. He was still married to that woman, the same as he was to me, and he had three other wives on top of that. Your father was an arrogant sinner, like pharaoh in Egypt, or the pagan emperors of Rome. He died with five wives, five farms, and so many children I’m still trying to find out the exact number. You have brothers and sisters you’ve never met. Some of them have light skin and blond hair. You even have a sister who’s named after your father. Elliot. How is that a girl’s name?
Neither one of us tried to answer the question, it was just one of so many that seemed to hold no answer and could only vex us with its infernal mystery. I took the wine jug up by the handle and filled Mom’s glass to the brim. She took a drink and looked down at me from the vantage point of where she lay. I didn’t have to ask permission. She pressed the glass to my lips and tilted a small drink down my throat. I didn’t care for the flavor, but I did feel a bit calmer.