Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,37
an office building with picture-window views of Lake Champlain, far from the madding crowd of faces on the street, in grocery stores, waiting rooms, the P.O., the co-op, as well as invisible ones who increasingly enter Antonia’s line of vision and become visible: Estela, José, Mario with a bloody cut in his right palm from the blade of the saw. Even the hulking sheriff with a thistle hooked into a burning eye will soon not have the option of being examined gratis by a kind doctor on his own time but will first have to undergo a formal admission at the ER, a plastic bracelet affixed to his wrist, his information typed into the system, an electronic trail leading directly to that wallet in his back pocket.
Antonia fills a satchel with things Estela might need in the days ahead, next door or at the hospital, if she gives birth before Antonia gets back—what Antonia is hoping for: let someone else take over the problem that has knocked on her door. It’s unlikely that Mario and José will have extra sheets, towels, blankets, or that Roger will come over with a welcome basket of bath soap, shampoo, conditioner. Do men even use conditioner? Sam never did, but then his hair had gotten so thin. What was there to condition? A hair brush, deodorant, baby oil, hand lotion—what to offer an impoverished teenager on the verge of labor? She recalls how Sam’s church, a liberal, well-intended congregation, put together care bags for him and Antonia to distribute when they next went down to the Dominican Republic. In addition to Antonia’s practical suggestions, donors included products Antonia had never used herself—backscratchers, exfoliant foot peel, vitamin boosters made from natural products. Once, a can of feminine hygiene spray, whose function Antonia deduced from reading the instructions.
Strange bread people cast upon another’s needy waters.
On the drive over, Estela is full of questions. When will Antonia be back? Where is Massachusetts? ?Cómo se dice vaca, árbol, sol, nube, conejo, estrella? ?Cómo se dice parir, me duele, tengo hambre, tengo miedo? This sudden endearing need to get the words right in English. Cow, tree, sun, cloud, rabbit, star. The barking-dog ringtone goes off, startling the girl, who looks around the car for el perro. Antonia laughs. It’s just my sister calling. ?Cómo se dice ringtone in Spanish? Antonia pulls over, as they’re almost at Roger’s and she doesn’t want to sit in his driveway talking. She has been waiting for Mona to call back or text with the exact meeting point in Western Mass. She plans to set out after delivering her cargo.
Mona has met with Realtor Nancy. She’s super nervous, like she’s hiding something. A pandemonium of barking breaks out in the background. Not her ringtone gone rogue. Has Mona flown her dogs up from North Carolina?
No, no, no. They’re Maritza’s labs, Mona says, annoyed that Antonia doesn’t already know that her rescues sound nothing at all like that. Shades of Sam’s annoyance when Antonia didn’t automatically know the thoughts and feelings in his head.
As I was saying, Mona says, this woman is, like, totally creepy.
Creepy as in Unabomber creepy? Or just nerdy creepy? You think she’s done something to Izzy?
The mango doth not fall far from the tree, Mona cackles, an expression the sisterhood has Latinized and loves to quote whenever one of them is acting like their mother. Mami Mango was the mother of all sleuths: always suspicious of their friends, figuring out their whereabouts, indiscretions, alibis, sniffing out their pot smoking, discovering their diaphragms, packets of birth control in their sock drawers. There wasn’t a stranger Mami encountered after they arrived in the United States of los Locos de Remate that she didn’t suspect of dubious motives. It wasn’t as simple as gringo profiling. She was equally wary of her fellow Dominicans in exile.
What I think, Mona says after calming down the dog clamor, is that your sister might have paid a hefty cash deposit Nancy is hoping she won’t have to return. Izzy also picked up an application for a loan at the local bank, a loan she’s not likely to get. She told Nancy that, if all else fails, she’d borrow the money from her sisters.
How did Mona find out so much? Baby sister has only been a few hours on the ground. Antonia is filled with a grudging admiration for Mona’s cunning and persistence. But Mona defers. A local investigator Kempowski uses for the Boston area has dug all this