A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Grief

“Whatever can those two be talking about all the time?” Mrs. Wacher asked her husband at breakfast.

Across the open-air, thatched-roof dining room by the sea the sisters forgot their papaya, their huevos rancheros, talking, talking. Later, as they walked by the edge of the sea, their heads were bent toward each other. Talking, talking. Waves would catch them unawares, soaking them, and they would laugh. The younger one often cried … When she cried the older one waited, comforting her, passing her a tissue. When the tears stopped they began talking again. She didn’t look hard, the older one, but she never cried.

* * *

For the most part the other hotel guests in the dining room and in beach chairs on the sand all sat quietly together, occasionally commenting upon the perfection of the day, the turquoise blue of the sea, telling their children to sit up straight. The honeymoon couple whispered and teased each other, fed one another bites of melon, but most of the time they were silent, gazing into the other’s eyes, looking at the other’s hands. The older couples drank coffee and read or did crossword puzzles. Their conversations were brief, monosyllabic. The people who were content with each other spoke as little as those who bristled with resentment or boredom; it was the rhythm of their speech that differed, like a lazy tennis ball batted back and forth or the quick swattings of a fly.

* * *

In the evening, by lantern light, the German couple, the Wachers, played bridge with another retired couple from Canada, the Lewises. They were all serious players so there was a minimum of conversation. Snap snap of dealt cards, Mr. Wacher’s hmms. Two no trump. The sizzle of the surf, ice cubes in their glasses. The women spoke, occasionally, about plans for shopping the next day, a trip to La Isla, the mysterious talking sisters. The older one so elegant and cool. In her fifties but still attractive, vain. The younger one, in her forties, was pretty, but frumpy, self-effacing. There she goes, crying again!

Mrs. Wacher decided to tackle the older sister during her morning swim. Mrs. Lewis would speak to the younger one, who never swam or sat in the sun, but waited for the other, sipping tea, holding an unopened book.

* * *

That evening, while Mr. Wacher fetched the score pad and cards and Mr. Lewis ordered drinks and snacks from the bar, the two women pooled their information.

“They talk so much because they haven’t seen each other in twenty years! Can you imagine? Sisters? Mine is named Sally, she lives in Mexico City, is married to a Mexican and has three children. We spoke in Spanish, she seems Mexican really. She recently had a mastectomy, which explains why she doesn’t swim. She starts cancer therapy next month. That’s probably why she’s crying all the time. That’s all I got, before the sister came up and they went to change.”

“No! That’s not why she’s crying! Their mother has just died! Two weeks ago! Can you imagine … they have come to a resort?”

“What else did she say? What is her name?”

“Dolores. She is a nurse from California, with four grown sons. She said that their mother recently died, that she and her sister had a lot to talk about.”

The women figured it all out. Sally, the sweet one, must have been taking care of the invalid mother all these years. When the old mother finally died Dolores felt guilty, because of her sister caring for her mother, and she never went to visit them. And then her sister’s cancer. Dolores was the one paying for everything, the cabs, the waiters. They saw her buying Sally clothes in the boutiques downtown. That must be it. Guilt. She’s sorry she didn’t see her mother before she died, wants to be good to her sister before she dies too.

“Or before she dies herself,” Mrs. Lewis said. “When your parents are dead your own death faces you.”

“Oh, I know what you mean … there is no one to protect you against death anymore.”

The two women were silent then, pleased with their harmless gossip, their analysis. Thinking of their own deaths to come. Their husbands’ deaths to come. But just briefly. Although in their seventies both couples were healthy, active. They lived fully, enjoying each day. When their husbands pulled out their chairs and sat down for the game they entered it with pleasure, forgetting all about the two sisters, who were sitting side by side now on the beach, under the stars.

* * *

Sally wasn’t crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn’t ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her.

“They can just wait until I die. I’ll be dead soon, probably next year…” Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound.

“You’re not dying. They said the cancer was gone. The radiation therapy is routine, a precaution. I heard the doctor say that, that they got all the cancer.”

“But it will come back. It always does.”

“That’s not true. Cut it out, Sally.”

“You are so cold. Sometimes you are as cruel as Mama.”

Dolores said nothing. Her greatest fear, that she was like her mother. Cruel, a drunkard.

“Look, Sally. Just give him a divorce and start taking care of yourself.”

“You don’t understand! How can you understand how I feel after living with him for twenty years? You’ve been alone almost that long! For me it has only been Alfonso, since I was seventeen! I love him!”

“I think I can manage to understand,” Dolores said, dryly. “Come on, let’s go in, it’s getting cold.”

* * *

In the room Dolores’s light was on inside her white mosquito net; she was reading before she fell asleep.

“Dolores?”

Sally was crying, again. Christ. Now what.

“Sally, I go crazy if I can’t read when I first wake up and before I go to sleep. It’s a dumb habit, but there it is. What is it?”

“I have a splinter in my foot.”

Dolores got up, went for a needle, some antiseptic, and a Band-Aid, removed the splinter from her sister’s foot. Sally cried again, and embraced Dolores.

“Let’s always be close now. It’s so good to have a sister who takes care of me!”

Dolores smoothed the Band-Aid on Sally’s foot, as she had done a dozen times when they were children. “All better,” she said, automatically.

“All better!” Sally sighed. She fell asleep soon after. Dolores read for several hours more. Finally she turned out the light, wishing she had a drink.

How could she talk to Sally about her alcoholism? It was not like talking about a death, or losing a husband, losing a breast. People said it was a disease, but nobody made her pick up the drink. I’ve got a fatal disease. I am terrified, Dolores wanted to say, but she didn’t.

* * *

The Wachers and the Lewises were always the first people up for breakfast, seated at adjoining tables. The husbands read the paper, the wives chatted with the waiters and each other. After breakfast the four were going out deep-sea fishing.

“Where are the sisters today, I wonder?” Mrs. Lewis said.

“Hollering! When I passed their room they were arguing away. Herman has no compassion, he wouldn’t let me eavesdrop. Sally said, No! She didn’t want a penny of the old witch’s blood money! That when she had been desperate her mother had refused her, cussing away, that meek little thing! Puta! Desgraciada! Dolores was hollering at her, ‘Can’t you understand anything about madness? You are the really crazy one … because you refuse to see! Mama was crazy!’ And then she began yelling at her, ‘Take it off! Take it off!’”

“Shh. Here they come now.”

Sally was disheveled; she looked, as usual, as if she had been weeping; as usual Dolores was calm and perfectly groomed. She ordered breakfast for the two of them and when it came you could hear her say to her sister,

“Eat. You’ll feel better. Drink all the orange juice. It is sweet, delicious.”

* * *

“Take it off!”

Sally cowered, clutching her huipil to her body. Dolores tore it away from her, made her stand there, naked, the scars where her breast had been livid red and blue.

Sally cried. “I am hideous! I’m not a woman now! Don’t look!”

Dolores gripped her shoulders, shook her. “You want me to be your sister? Let me look! Yes, it is hideous. The scars look brutal, awful. But they are you now. And you’re a woman, you silly fool! Without your Alfonso, without your breast, you can be more of a woman than ever, your own woman! For starters you’re going swimming today, with that hundred-and-fifty-dollar falsie I brought to pin in your suit.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. Come on, get dressed for breakfast.”

* * *

“Good morning, ladies!” Mrs. Lewis called to the sisters. “Another splendid day. We’re going fishing. What are your plans for the day?”

“We’re going for a swim, and then shopping and to the hairdresser.”

“Poor Sally,” Mrs. Lewis said. “She obviously doesn’t want to do any of those things. She’s sick, and grieving. That sister of hers is forcing her to be on vacation. Just like my sister Iris. Bossy, bossy! Did you have a big sister?”

“No.” Mrs. Wacher laughed. “I was the big sister. Believe me, little sisters have their drawbacks too.”

Dolores spread out their towels on the sand.

“Take it off.”

She meant the robe her sister had clutched over her bathing suit.

“Take it off,” she insisted again. “You look wonderful. Your breast looks real. Your waist is tiny. You have great legs. But then you never, ever, realized how lovely you were.”

“No. You were the pretty one. I was the good one.”

“That label was hard on me too. Take the hat off. We only have a few days left. You’re going back to the city with a tan.”

“Pero…”

“Cállate. Keep your mouth shut, so you don’t tan with wrinkles.”

* * *

“The sun feels wonderful,” Sally sighed after a while.

“Doesn’t your body feel good?”

“I feel so naked. As if everyone could see the scars.”

“You know one thing I’ve learned? Most people don’t notice anything at all, or care, if they do.”

“You are so cynical.”

“Turn over, let me oil your back.”

After a while Sally talked to Dolores about the library in the barrio where she worked as a volunteer. Heartwarming stories about the children and families who lived in dire poverty. She loved her work there, and they loved her.

“See, Sally, there is so much you can do, that you enjoy.”

Dolores couldn’t think of any heartwarming stories to tell Sally about her job, at a clinic in East Oakland. Crack babies, abused children, children with brain damage, Down’s syndrome, gunshot wounds, malnutrition, AIDS. But she was good at her job, and liked it. Or had — she had finally been fired for drinking, just last month, before their mother died.

“I like my job, too,” was all she said. “Come on, let’s swim.”

“I can’t. I’ll hurt myself.”

“The wounds are healed, Sally. There are only scars. Terrible scars.”

“I can’t.”

“For Christ’s sake, get in the water.”

Dolores led her sister into the surf and then wrenched her hand away. She watched Sally flounder and fall, swallow water, be knocked down by a wave. Treading water, she watched as Sally stood up and dove under the incoming swell, swam on. Dolores swam after her. Oh Lord, she’s crying again, but no, Sally was laughing out loud.

“It’s warm! It’s so warm! I’m light as a baby!”

They swam out in the blue water for a long time. At last they came in to shore. Breathless, laughing, they left the surf. Sally threw her arms around her sister and the two women held each other, the foam swirling around their ankles. “Mariconas!” mocked two passing beach boys.

* * *

Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Wacher watched from their beach chairs, quite moved. “She’s not so mean, just firm … she knew the sister would like it once she got in. How happy she looks. Poor thing, she needed this vacation.”

“Yes, it doesn’t seem so shocking now, does it? That they should go on a holiday when their mother died.”

“You know … it’s too bad it isn’t a tradition. A post-funeral holiday, like a honeymoon, or a baby shower.”

They both laughed. “Herman!” Mrs. Wacher called over to her husband. “After we two women have died, will you two men promise to take a vacation together?”

Herman shook his head. “No. You need four for bridge.”

* * *

When Sally and Dolores got back that evening everyone complimented Sally on how lovely she looked. Rosy from the sun, her new haircut curling in soft auburn ringlets around her face.

Sally kept shaking her hair, looking in the mirror. Her green eyes shone like emeralds. She was painting them with Dolores’s makeup.

“Could I borrow your green top?” she asked.

“What? I just bought you three beautiful dresses. Now you want my top? And for that matter you have your own makeup, and your own perfume!”

“See how you resent me! Yes, you give me presents, but you still are selfish, selfish, like her!”

“Selfish!” Dolores took her blouse off. “Here! Take these earrings, too. They go with it.”

* * *

The sun set as the diners ate their flan. When their coffee came Dolores reached for her sister’s hand.

“You realize we’re just acting as we did when we were children. It’s sort of nice when you think about it. You keep saying that you want us to be real sisters now. We’re acting just like real sisters! Fighting!”

Sally smiled. “You’re right. I guess I never knew how real families acted. We never had a family vacation, or even a picnic.”

“I’m sure that’s why I had so many children, why you married into such a huge Mexican family, we wanted a home so badly.”

“And that’s just why Alfonso leaving me is so hard…”

“Don’t talk about him anymore.”

“What can I talk about then?”

“We need to talk about her. Mama. She’s dead now.”

“I could have killed her! I’m glad she’s dead,” Sally said. “It was too awful when Daddy died. I flew to L.A. and took a bus to San Clemente. She wouldn’t even let me in the door. I banged on the door and said, ‘I need a mother! Let me talk to you!’ but she wouldn’t let me in. It wasn’t fair. I don’t care about the money, but that wasn’t fair either.”

Their mother had never forgiven Sally for marrying a Mexican, had refused to meet her children, left her money to Dolores. Dolores insisted upon dividing the inheritance, but it didn’t lessen the insult.

Dolores rocked Sally as they sat on the sand. The sun had set.

“She’s gone, Sally. She was sick, afraid. She lashed out, like a wounded … hyena. You’re lucky you didn’t see her. I saw her. I called her to say we were taking Daddy to the hospital by ambulance. You know what she said? ‘Could you stop and pick up some bananas?’”

* * *

“Today is my last day!” Sally said to Mrs. Wacher. “We’re going to the island. Have you ever been?”

“Oh, yes, we went with the Lewises a few days ago. It’s perfectly lovely. You’re going snorkeling?”

“Scuba,” Dolores said. “Vamos, Sally, the car is waiting.”

“I’m not going scuba diving. That’s it,” Sally said on the way to Ixtapa.

“You’ll see. Wait until you meet César. I lived with him awhile, twenty-five, thirty years ago. He was just a diver then, a fisherman.”

He had become famous and rich since then, the Jacques Cousteau of Mexico, with many movies, television programs. This was hard for Dolores to imagine. She remembered his old wooden boat, the sand floor of his palapa, their hammock.

“He was a maestro even then,” she said. “Nobody knows the ocean like he does. His press releases call him Neptune, and that sounds pretty corny … but it’s true. He probably won’t remember me, but I still want you to meet him.”

* * *

He was an old man now, with a long white beard, flowing white hair. Of course he remembered Dolores. Sweet his kiss on her eyelids, his embrace. She remembered his calloused, scarred hands on her skin … He led them to a table on the veranda. Two men from the tourist bureau were drinking tequila, fanning themselves with their straw hats, their guayaberas damp and wrinkled.

The vast veranda faced the ocean, but mango and avocado trees totally blocked the ocean from sight.

“How can you cover up such a view of the ocean?” Sally asked.

César shrugged. “Pues, I’ve seen it.”

He told them all about dives he and Dolores had been on years ago. The time with the sharks, the giant peine, the day Flaco drowned. How the divers used to call her “La Brava.” But she scarcely heard his praise of her. She heard him say, “When she was young she was a beautiful woman.”

“So, have you come to dive with me?” he asked, holding her hands. She longed to dive; she couldn’t bear to tell him she was afraid the regulator would break her false teeth.

“No. My back is bad now. I brought my sister to dive with you.”

“Lista?” he asked Sally. She was drinking tequila, basking in the compliments and flirtations from the men. The men left. César, Sally, and Dolores set out in a canoe to La Isla. Sally gripped the side of the boat, ashen with fear. At one point she leaned over the side, vomiting.

“Are you sure she should dive?” César asked Dolores.

“I’m sure.”

They smiled at each other. The years were erased, their communication still there. She had once said wryly that he had been perfect. He couldn’t read or write and most of their romance was underwater, where there were no words. There had never been any need for explanations.

Quietly he showed the basics of diving to Sally. At first, out in the shallow water, Sally was still shaking with fear. Dolores sat on the rocks and watched, watched him clean her mask with spit, explain the regulator. He put the tank on her back. Dolores saw Sally stiffen, afraid he would notice her breast, but then she saw Sally unbend, swaying in rhythm before him as he reassured her, fastened her gear and stroked her, soothed her down into the water.

It took four tries. Sally surfaced, choking. No, no it was impossible, she was claustrophobic, couldn’t breathe! But he continued to speak softly to her, to coax her, smooth her with his hands. Dolores felt a sick wave of jealousy when he held her sister’s head in his hands, smiling into her eyes through their masks. She remembered his smile through the glass.

This was your big idea, she told herself. She tried to be calm, gazing out at the undulating green waves where her sister and César had disappeared. She tried to concentrate upon her sister’s pleasure. For she knew it would be pleasure. But all she could feel was regret and remorse, unspeakable loss.

It seemed like hours before they surfaced. Sally was laughing; her laughter was that of a young girl. Impetuously she was kissing and hugging César while he undid her tanks, took off her flippers.

In the diver’s hut she embraced Dolores, too. “You knew how great it would be! I flew! The ocean went on forever! Dolores, I felt so alive and strong! I was an Amazon!”

Dolores wanted to point out that Amazons had only one breast, but she bit her tongue. She and César smiled as Sally continued to talk about the beauty of the dive. She’d come back, soon, spend a week diving! Oh, the coral and the anemones, the colors, the brilliant schools of fish.

César asked them to lunch. It was three o’clock. “I’m afraid I need a siesta,” Dolores said. Sally was disappointed.

“You’ll be back, Sally. I just showed you the way.”

“Thank you both,” Sally said. Her joy and gratitude were pure, innocent. César and her sister kissed her glowing cheeks.

They were at the cab stand on the beach. César held Dolores’s hand tightly. “So, mi vieja, will you ever come back?” She shook her head.

“Stay with me tonight.”

“No puedo.”

César kissed her lips. She tasted the desire and salt of their past. The last night she had spent with him he had bitten all her fingernails to the quick. “Think of me,” he said.

Sally talked excitedly all the way into town, an hour’s drive. How vital she had felt, how free.

“I knew you would like that part. Your body disappears, because you are so weightless, but at the same time you become intensely aware of it.”

“He is wonderful. Wonderful. I can just imagine having a love affair with him! You are so lucky!”

“Can you imagine, Sally. That whole stretch of beach, where the Club Med is? It was pure empty beach. Up in the jungle there was an artesian well. There were deer, almost tame. We spent days there without seeing another soul. And the island. It was just an island, wild jungle. No dive shops or restaurants. Not a single other boat but ours. Can you imagine?”

No. She couldn’t.

* * *

“It’s uncanny,” Mrs. Wacher said, as the sisters got down from their cab. “It’s as if they have totally reversed roles. Now the younger one is absolutely gorgeous and radiant and the other is haggard and disheveled. Look at her … she who never used to have a hair out of place!”

* * *

The night was stormy. Black clouds swept across the full moon so that the beach was bright and then dark, like a hotel room with a neon sign blinking outside. Sally’s face shone like a child’s when the moonlight lit her.

“But did Mama never, ever, speak of me?”

No, matter of fact. Except to mock your sweetness, to say your docility proved that you were a fool.

“Yes, she did, a lot,” Dolores lied. “One of her favorite memories of you was how you loved that Dr. Bunny book. You would pretend to read it, turning the pages, real serious. And you got every word perfect, except when Dr. Bunny would say, ‘Case dismissed!’ you said ‘Smith to Smith!’”

“I remember that book! The rabbits were all furry!”

“At first. But you wore the fur out petting them. She liked to remember you and that red wagon, too, when you were around four. You’d put Billy Jameson in the wagon, and all your dolls, and Mabel, the dog, and the two cats, and then you’d say ‘All aboard!’ but the cats and dog would have gotten out and Billy too, and the dolls fell out. You’d spend all morning packing them up and saying ‘All aboard.’”

“I don’t remember that at all.”

“Oh, I do, it was in the path by Daddy’s hyacinths, and the climbing rose by the gate. Can you remember the smell?”

“Yes!”

“She used to ask me if I remembered you in Chile, going off to school on your bicycle. Every single morning you’d look up to the hall window and wave, and your straw hat would fly off.”

Sally laughed. “True. I remember. But, Dolores, it was you in the hall window. You I was waving good-bye to.”

True. “Well, I guess she used to see you from the window by her bed.”

“Silly how good that makes me feel. I mean even if she didn’t ever say good-bye. That she even watched me go off to school. I’m so glad you told me about that.”

“Good,” Dolores whispered, to herself. The sky was black now and huge raindrops were falling cold. The sisters ran together in the rain to their room.

* * *

Sally’s plane left the next morning; Dolores would leave the following day. At breakfast, before she left, Sally said good-bye to everyone, thanked the waiters, thanked Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Wacher for being so kind.

“We’re glad that you two had such a good visit. What a comfort to have a sister!” Mrs. Lewis said.

“It really is a comfort,” Sally said when she kissed Dolores good-bye at the airport.

“We’re just beginning to know each other,” Dolores said. “We will be there now, always, for each other.” Her heart ached to see the sweetness, the trust in her sister’s eyes.

On the way back to the hotel she had the cab stop at a liquor store. In her room she drank and she slept and then she sent out for another bottle. In the morning, on the way to her plane for California she bought a half-pint of rum, to cure her shakes and headache. By the time the taxi reached the airport she was, like they say, feeling no pain.