flashquake Fiction

THINGS WE DON'T TALK ABOUT
by Alvaro Rodriguez

Josefa tried to keep her voice even. She used the muscles in her neck to push out low, unwavering tones, hoping to project a feeling of disinterested calm. But her heart was a rabbit's, long-footed and bounding across the low brush and mesquite.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, standing in the kitchen doorway and willing her feet to grow roots into the linoleum floor.

The glow of the television set washed the small living room in pale blues and greens. Cosimo, her son-in-law, sat wearily in dusty slacks and an Arrow shirt that had been his father's, now yellowed to a faded gouache of sweat stains. His feet were bare, his discarded, thin socks balled up in battered Florsheim shoes tucked beside the sofa. He shook his head no, eyes fixed on the flickering image of the baseball game.

"Because if you are, I could fix something."

"No."

"There's pollo in the fridge. I could heat it up and make some potato salad. The way you like it, with lots of mustard."

"I picked up some taquitos on the way. I'm not hungry."

"That's not enough." She turned toward the open kitchen. "I'm going to boil potatoes."

"I'm fine. Just make for yourself if you're hungry. Don't make for me."

She stopped in the kitchen, holding herself up and letting one hand rest on the table for support. He's going to bring it up tonight, she thought. He's going to ask me to go.

It had been a moment she'd been dreading just as sure as she knew it would come. So many nights, a finite number, like the beads on a rosary, she had cried herself to sleep, lamenting her dead daughter, pitying herself, thanking the Blessed Virgin for this roof, this cama, this vellum nightgown. She knew the roof wouldn't last. It would be taken from her head like the black rebozo of mourning she had worn every day since that terrible October storm had stolen her only child, had tossed Rebecca like a doll in the unforgiving metal confines of her small Chevy.

The seatbelt had been jammed when Rebecca bought the car, used, from a roadside dealership on the main highway. She had never bothered to fix it; the car had only set her back $800, it wasn't worth it to put any more into it. Unrestrained, she pingponged around before sailing through the windshield when the car broke through the low barrier and dipped over the bridge and into the rocky arroyo. When they found her the next day, her head was open and full of glass, the blood drained away in the tide of rainwater. Her left shoe had caught on a wiper blade, an anchor to the vehicle of her death.

Cosimo and Rebecca had been married almost three years when she died, and Josefa had lived with them the entire time. She herself had been widowed when her husband, who was not Rebecca's father, swallowed the barrel of a .20 gauge shotgun and pulled the trigger. Rebecca came two years later, after Josefa had entertained the clumsy attentions of an alcoholic oil field worker from Del Rio. But when the oil ran out, so did he, and Josefa birthed Rebecca into the world alone. After that, there were no more men, and Rebecca had become the hook of meaning she hung her life upon. It had hurt all the more when the doctors told her that Rebecca had been two months pregnant when she'd died.

Without grandchildren, without a husband, without anyone to call Brother or Sister, Josefa cried herself to sleep each night, reciting the mysteries of the Rosary for what comfort they could give. She called them up in no particular order, just whatever came to mind. If she had plotted their frequency on a graph, she might have discovered she shied almost purposefully away from the sorrowful ones, and had a predilection for the glorious. She yearned to share in their glory.

In the kitchen, Josefa filled the mottled-blue camp pot with water and set it on the gas stove. She began to peel potatoes and to pray.

"Josefa."

She didn't answer.

"Josefa."

"Yes?"

He stood in the doorway, muscled yet thin, black-eyed and vaguely handsome. "There's something we need to… Now that… some time has passed."

"I know," she said, still peeling.

"Edelmiro at work has a trailer," he began, then stopped. "You know?"

"You don't owe me anything, Cosimo," she said. "You want me to leave this house. You have a new woman to take Rebecca's place."

"There's no new woman."

"But you want there to be. And I'm in the way. Don't worry. I'll find a place."

"I can give you some money each week until," he said.

"No, keep your money. I'll find a way. I'll be gone by the end of the week."

His face reddened. She guessed he hadn't expected this. Hand-wringing, hysterics, hurt looks, but not this.

"Okay," he said, and returned to the living room.

Josefa finished peeling the potatoes in silence, then diced them and dropped them into the pot of boiling water.

Cosimo slept, mouth open, head cocked back on the rim of the sofa in the cold azure glow of the television set. He shifted in his sleep, his eyes fluttering in the fever of a dream.

Josefa knelt on the sofa beside him, her nightgown opened. She held her right breast in her hand, hovering it centimeters above Cosimo's mouth. Then she lowered it to his lips, lightly brushing them, nuzzling them with a feathered touch. He stirred, but didn't awaken.

She took the mustard then, squeezed a yellow pearl onto her nipple and pushed her breast back toward his mouth. She began to shake, seized by shame, and hot tears came to her eyes.

In the morning, she would go. She would just go, like she had said.

Copyright 2003 by Alvaro Rodriguez

HOME | Contributors | Archives | Contact | Guidelines