Something She's Not Telling Us - Darcey Bell Page 0,68
find out. They all do.
Crossing the courtyard, she hears the front door slam. Has someone come in? She stands still, listening. But there are no other sounds. No footsteps, no motion, nothing.
Someone must have gone out. Probably Luz, finally going home after cleaning up the last of the mess. Unless Rocco or Ruth—or Rocco and Ruth—has gone for a walk. But it’s late, and they’d seemed as tired as Charlotte.
Charlotte finds Eli in their bed, snoring, louder than Daisy, not as loud as Mom. Charlotte’s still angry at him for being passed out when she and Daisy needed him. But she decides not to wake him. They’re leaving tomorrow. She’s glad to be going home.
ELI’S AWAKE BEFORE Charlotte, complaining of a headache, which annoys her. A headache! She tells him Daisy had an asthma attack last night. She lets the word attack linger until she adds that Daisy is okay. They got through it without him.
Eli says, “I’m sorry.”
Before Charlotte met Eli, she’d been surprised by how many men found it impossible to apologize. How easy it is to say I’m sorry, how little it costs, how effectively it smooths everything over. Or almost everything.
Charlotte isn’t angry now. She’s listening.
Someone is screaming. A woman. Then another woman.
Mom and Luz. Charlotte runs into the kitchen.
Daisy!
Mom and Luz are talking streams of English mixed with Spanish, peppered with words, in both languages, for violence, injury, damage.
“Where is she? Where’s Daisy?”
“Huh?” says Mom. “Daisy? Last time I looked, she’s sleeping in her bed.”
“What’s going on?”
Mom says, “Reyna got beaten up last night. In the park. Right beneath the statue of Porfirio Díaz. They think she’s going to be okay, but she’s in the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness.”
“By the boyfriend?” Charlotte asks. “The crazy abusive boyfriend?”
“Her mom thinks so,” Mom says. “But no one knows. The doctors say she got hit on the head from behind.”
By now Eli, Rocco, and Ruth have come into the kitchen.
Ruth says, “That is the worst thing ever.”
Rocco gives her a funny look.
Of course. She’d been upset when she’d caught him talking to Reyna. But now she seems on the edge of tears.
“Should we go see her?” Rocco says.
Eli says, “We’re leaving today, remember?”
“You wouldn’t be much use here,” says Mom.
They’ve been dismissed. Charlotte had expected a moment like this. Mom’s known for her frosty goodbyes. She gets argumentative, sulky. Charlotte likes to imagine that Mom’s sad when they leave, but she suspects she’s relieved. Her real life can continue without her annoying children.
Daisy stumbles into the kitchen, still in pajamas, rubbing her eyes. Charlotte’s weak-kneed with relief. She feels that familiar sense of having survived a near escape, though no one in her family has been in danger.
“Good morning, Mom. Good morning, Dad, Grandma, Uncle Rocco, Ruth. Good morning, Luz.”
“How are you feeling?” says Mom.
“Fine,” Daisy says. “Why are you asking?”
Charlotte doesn’t want Daisy to hear about Reyna. “Come on, Daisy. Let me give you a bath and finish packing.”
“I’m hungry,” Daisy says.
“I’ll make breakfast,” says Luz.
“Pancakes?”
“Certainly,” says Luz.
Rocco says, “I could go check on Reyna . . .”
Everyone notices that he’s said I, not we. He hasn’t included Ruth.
“Paco’s driving,” says Mom. “You’re all going in the same van. And there’s nothing you can do to help Reyna.”
Charlotte says, “Let’s all meet here in the kitchen at nine. Mom, can you tell Paco to come at nine fifteen?”
“I can tell him,” says Luz. “He’ll be waiting for you outside.”
19
Ruth
All the time I was in Mexico, I felt like one of those teensy animals we studied in high school biology, those creatures writhing on the glass slides as we peered at them under the microscope. That was how Rocco’s family studied me, wondering what it would take to remove me forever from Rocco’s life.
No one believed me about the driver who steered me into that swarm of starving kids. Why would I make that up?
Rocco’s mother disliked me. Probably she hated me before I even got there.
It was like working at the start-up: frustrating and useless. You can’t make people stop seeing the person they think you are. I hate being misunderstood, maybe because some childish part of me assumes (wrong!) that people will understand me the way my grandparents do.
When Rocco’s mom arranged for us to visit Chef Basil, I knew she was just getting me out of the house. I felt sorry for the old guy, losing