A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Mijito

I want to go home. When mijito Jesus falls asleep I think about home, my mamacita and my brothers and sisters. I try to remember all the trees and all the people in the village. I try to remember me because I was different then, before tantas cosas que han pasado. I had no idea. I didn’t know television or drogas or fear. I have been afraid since the minute I left the trip and the van and the men and running and even when Manolo met me I got more afraid because he wasn’t the same. I knew he loved me and when he held me it was like by the river, but he was changed, with fear in his gentle eyes. All of the United States was scary coming to Oakland. Cars in front of us, behind us, cars going the other way cars cars cars for sale and stores and stores and more cars. Even in our little room in Oakland where I’d wait for him the room was full of noise, not just the television but cars and buses and sirens and helicopters, men fighting and shooting and people yelling. The mayates frighten me and they stand in groups all down the street so I was afraid to go outside. Manolo was so strange I was afraid he didn’t want to marry me but he said, “Don’t be crazy, I love you mi vida.” I was happy but then he said, “Anyway you need to be legal so you can get welfare and food stamps.” We got married right away and that same day he took me to the welfare. I was sad. I wanted to maybe go to a park or have some wine, a little luna de miel party.

We lived in the Flamingo Motel on MacArthur. I was lonely. He was gone most of the time. He got mad at me for being so scared but he forgot how different it was here. We didn’t have inside bathrooms or lights at home. Even the television frightened me; it seemed so real. I wished we had a little house or room that I could make pretty and where I could cook for him. He would come with Kentucky Fry or Taco Bell or hamburgers. We ate breakfast every day in a little café and that was nice like in Mexico.

One day there was a banging on the door. I didn’t want to open it. The man said he was Ramón, Manolo’s uncle. He said Manolo was in jail. He was going to take me to talk to him. He made me pack up all my things and get in the car. I kept asking him, “Why? What happened? What did he do?”

“No me jodes! Cállate,” he told me. “Mira, I don’t know. He’ll tell you. All I know is you’ll be staying with us until he goes to court.”

We went into a big building and then in an elevator to the top floor. I had never been in an elevator. He talked to some police and then one took me through a door to a chair in front of a window. He pointed to a phone. Manolo came and sat down on the other side. He was thin and unshaven and his eyes were full of fear. He was shaking and pale. All he was wearing was some orange nightclothes. We sat there, looking at each other. He picked up a phone and pointed to me to pick up mine. It was my first telephone call. It didn’t sound like him but I could see him talking. I was so afraid. I can’t remember everything, except that he said he loved me and he was sorry. He said he would let Ramón know when he’d go to court. He hoped he’d come home to me then. But if he didn’t, to wait for him, my husband. Ramón and Lupe were buena gente, they would take care of me until he got out. They needed to take me to the welfare to change my address. “Don’t forget. I’m sorry,” he said in English. I had to think how you said it in Spanish. Lo siento. I feel it.

If only I had known. I should have told him I’d love him and wait for him always, that I loved him with all of my heart. I should have told him about our baby. But I was so worried and too frightened to talk into the phone so I just looked at him until the two policemen took him away.

In the car I asked Ramón what had happened, where did they take him? I kept asking him until he stopped his car and said how did he know, to shut up. My check and food stamps would go to them for feeding me and I’d need to take care of their kids. As soon as I could I had to get my own place and move out. I told him I was three months pregnant and he said, “Fuck a duck.” That’s the first English I said out loud. “Fuck a duck.”

* * *

Dr. Fritz should be here soon, so at least I can get some of these patients into rooms. He should have been here two hours ago, but as usual he added another surgery. He knows he has office hours Wednesdays. The waiting room is packed, babies screaming, children fighting. Karma and I’ll be lucky to get out of here by seven. She’s the office supervisor, what a job. The place is steamy and hot, reeking of dirty diapers and sweat, wet clothes. It’s raining of course, and most of these mothers have taken long bus rides to get here.

When I go out there I sort of cross my eyes, and when I call the patient’s name I smile at the mother or grandmother or foster care mom but I look at a third eye in their forehead. I learned this in Emergency. It’s the only way to work here, especially with all the crack babies and AIDS and cancer babies. Or the ones who will never grow up. If you look the parent in the eyes you will share it, confirm it, all the fear and exhaustion and pain. On the other hand once you get to know them, sometimes that’s all you can do, look into their eyes with the hope or sorrow you can’t express.

The first two are post-ops. I set out gloves and suture removers, gauze and tape, tell the mothers to undress the babies. It won’t be long. In the waiting room I call Jesus Romero.

A teenage mother walks toward me, her infant wrapped in a rebozo like in Mexico. The girl looks cowed, terrified. “No inglés,” she says.

In Spanish I tell her to take off everything but his diaper, ask her what is the matter.

She says, “Pobre mijito, he cries and cries all the time, he never stops.”

I weigh him, ask her his birth weight. Seven pounds. He is three months old, should be bigger by now.

“Did you take him for his shots?”

Yes, she went to La Clinica a few days ago. They said he has a hernia. She didn’t know babies needed shots. They gave him one and told her to come back next month but to come here right away.

Her name is Amelia. She is seventeen, had come from Michoacán to marry her sweetheart but now he is in Soledad prison. She lives with an uncle and aunt. She has no money to go back home. They don’t want her here and don’t like the baby because he cries all the time.

“Do you breast-feed him?”

“Yes, but I don’t think my milk is good. He wakes up and cries and cries.”

She holds him like a potato sack. The expression on her face says, “Where does this sack go?” It occurs to me that she has nobody to tell her anything at all.

“Do you know to change breasts? Start off each time with a different breast and let him drink a long time, then put him on the other breast for a while. But be sure and change. This way he gets more milk and your breasts make more milk. He may be falling asleep because he’s tired, not full. He also is probably crying because of the hernia. The doctor is very good. He’ll fix your baby.”

She seems to feel better. Hard to tell, she has what doctors call a “flat affect.”

“I have to go to the other patients. I’ll be back when the doctor comes.” She nods, resigned. She has that hopeless look you see on battered women. God forgive me, because I am a woman too, but when I see women with that look I want to slap them.

Dr. Fritz has come, is in the first room. No matter how long he makes the mothers wait, no matter how mad Karma and I get, when he is with a child we all forgive him. He is a healer. The best surgeon, he does more surgeries than the others combined. Of course they all say he is obsessive and egomaniacal. They can’t say he is not a fine surgeon though. He is famous, actually, was the doctor who risked his life to save the boy after the big earthquake.

The first two patients go quickly. I tell him there is a pre-op with no English in room 3, that I’d be right in. I clean the rooms and put more patients in. When I get to room 3 he is holding the baby, showing Amelia how to push the hernia in. The baby is smiling at him.

“Have Pat put him on the surgery schedule. Explain the pre-op and fasting carefully. Tell her to call if she can’t push it in when it pops out.” He hands her back the baby. “Muy bonito,” he says.

“Ask her how Jesus got the bruises on his arms. The ones you should have made note of.” He points to the marks on the underside of the baby’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him. When I ask her she looks frightened and surprised. “No sé.”

“She doesn’t know.”

“What do you think?”

“Seems to me that she’s…”

“I can’t believe you’re going to say what I think you are. I have calls to return. I’ll be in room one in ten minutes. I’ll need some dilators, an eight and a ten.”

He was right. I was going to say that she seemed a victim herself, and yes, I know what victims often do. I explain to her how important the surgery is, and the pre-op the day before. To call if the baby was sick or had a bad diaper rash. No milk three hours before the surgery. I get Pat to come set up a date with her and go over the instructions again.

I forget about her then until at least a month has gone by when for some reason it occurs to me she never brought the baby for a post-op. I asked Pat when the surgery was.

“Jesus Romero? That man is such a retard. No-show for the first surgery. Didn’t bother to call. I call her and she says she couldn’t get a ride. O-kay. So I tell her we’ll have a same-day pre-op, to come in really early for an exam and blood work, but that she has got to come. And hallelujah, she shows. But guess what?”

“She feeds the baby a half hour before surgery.”

“You got it. Fritz will be out of town so next slot I have is a month away.”

* * *

It was very bad living with them. I couldn’t wait until Manolo and I would be together. I gave them my check and food stamps. They gave me just a little money for things for me. I took care of Tina and Willie, but they didn’t speak Spanish, didn’t pay me any attention. Lupe hated having me there and Ramón was nice except when he got drunk he was always grabbing me or poking at me from behind. I was more afraid of Lupe than him so when I wasn’t working in the house, I just stayed in my little corner in the kitchen.

“What are you doing there for hours and hours?” Lupe asked me.

“Thinking. About Manolo. About my pueblo.”

“Start thinking about moving out of here.”

Ramón had to work on the court day so Lupe took me. She could be nice sometimes. In the court we sat in the front. I almost didn’t know him when he came in, handcuffed and with chains tying his legs together. Such a cruel thing to do to Manolo, who is a sweet man. He stood under the judge and then the judge said something and two polices took him away. He looked back at me, but I didn’t know him with that face of anger. My Manolo. On the way home Lupe said it didn’t look good. She didn’t understand the charges either but it wasn’t just possession of drugs, because they would’ve sent him to Santa Rita. Eight years in Soledad prison is bad.

“Eight years? Cómo que eight years!”

“Don’t you go lose it now. I’ll put you out right here in the street. I’m serious.”

Lupe told me I had to go to the clinica because I was pregnant. I didn’t know she meant I should have an aborto. “No,” I told the lady doctor, “no, I want my baby, mijito. His daddy is gone, my baby is all I have.” She was nice at first but then she got mad, said I was just a child I couldn’t work, how could I care for him? That I was selfish, porfiada. “It’s a sin,” I told her. “I won’t do it. I want my baby.” She threw her notebook down on the table.

“Válgame diós. At least come in for checkups before the baby is born.”

She gave me a card with the day and time to come but I never went back. The months went by slow. I kept waiting to hear from Manolo. Willie and Tina just watched the tele and were no trouble. I had the baby at Lupe’s house. She helped but Ramón hit her when he got home and hit me too. He said bad enough I showed up. Now a kid too.

I try to keep out of their way. We have our little corner in the kitchen. Little Jesus is beautiful and he looks like Manolo. I got pretty things for him at the Goodwill and at Payless. I still don’t know what Manolo did to go to jail or when we will hear from him. When I asked Ramón he said, “Kiss Manolo good-bye. See if you can get some work.”

I watch Lupe’s kids while she works and keep their house clean. I do all the wash in the laundromat downstairs. But I get so tired. Jesus cries and cries no importa what I do. Lupe told me I had to take him to the clinica. The buses scare me. The mayates grab at me and scare me. I think they’re going to take him from me.

In the clinica they got mad at me again, said I should have had prenatal care, that he needed shots and was too small. He was seven pounds I said, my uncle weighed him. “Well, he’s only eight now.” They gave him a shot, said I had to come back. The doctor said Jesus had a hernia, which could be dangerous. He had to see a surgeon. A woman there gave me a map and wrote down the bus and BART train to get to the surgeon’s office, told me where to stand even to get the bus and BART back. She called and made me an appointment.

Lupe had taken me, she was outside in the car with the kids when I got in. I told her what they said and then I began to cry. She stopped the car and shook me.

“You’re a woman now! Face it. We’ll give you some time till Jesus is okay, then you’re going to have to figure out your own life. The apartment is too small. Ramón and I are dead tired and your kid cries day and night, or you do, worse. We’re sick of it.”

“I’m trying to help out,” I said.

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

We were all up early the day I took him to the surgeon’s. Lupe had to take the kids to day care. It’s free and they like it better than staying home with just me so they were happy. But Lupe was mad because she had to drive so far to child care and now Ramón had to take the subway. It was scary, the bus, and then the BART and then another bus. I was too nervous to eat so I was hungry and dizzy from being frightened. But then I saw the big sign like they told me and I knew it was the right place. We had to wait so long. I left home at six in the morning and the doctor didn’t see Jesus until three. I was so hungry. They explained everything real clear and the nurse told me about feeding him different to make more milk. The doctor was nice with Jesus and said he was bonito but he thought I hurt him, showed her blue spots on his arms. I didn’t see the spots before. It’s true. I hurt my baby, mijito. It was me who made them last night when he cried and cried. I had him under the blankets with me. I held him tight, “Hush hush stop crying, stop it stop it.” I never grabbed him like that before. He didn’t cry any less or any more.

Two weeks went past. I marked the days on the calendar. I told Lupe I had to go to the pre-op one day and for the surgery the next day.

“No way, José,” Lupe said. The car was in the shop. She couldn’t take her Willie and Tina to child care. So I didn’t go.

Ramón stayed home. He was drinking beer and watching an A’s game. The kids were taking a nap and I was feeding Jesus in the kitchen. “Come on in and watch the game, prima,” he said so I went in. Jesus was still drinking but I had him covered with a blanket. Ramón got up for more beer. He hadn’t seemed drunk until he got up but then he was falling around, then he was on the floor by the sofa. He pulled the blanket down and my T-shirt up. “Gimme some of that chichi,” he said and was sucking on my other breast. I shoved him away and he hit the table but Jesus fell too and the table scratched his shoulder. There was blood running down his little arm. I was washing it with a paper towel and the phone rang.

It was Pat the lady from surgery real mad because I didn’t call and didn’t go. “I’m sorry,” I told her in English.

She said there was a cancellation tomorrow. I could get the pre-op on the same day if I for sure took him real early. Seven in the morning. She was mad at me. She said he could get real sick and die, that if I kept missing surgeries the state could take him away from me. “Do you understand this?”

I said yes, but I didn’t believe they could take my baby away from me.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I told Ramón that the next day I had to take Jesus for surgery, could he watch Tina and Willie.

“So I suck your tit you think you get something back? Yeah, I’ll be here. I’m out of work anyways. Don’t get any ideas about telling Lupe nothing. Your ass would be out of here in five minutes. Which would be fine with me, but as long as it’s here I mean to get me some.”

He took me in the bathroom then, with Jesus in the living room crying on the floor and the kids hitting on the door. He bent me over the sink and banged and banged into me but he was so drunk it didn’t last long. He slid to the floor passed out. I went out. I told the kids that he was sick. I was shaking so bad I had to sit down, rocked mijito Jesus and watched cartoons with the kids. I didn’t know what to do. I said an Ave Maria but it seemed like there was so much noise everywhere how could a prayer ever get heard?

When Lupe got home he came out. I could tell the way he looked at me he knew he had done something bad but he didn’t remember what. He said he was going out. She said terrific.

She opened the refrigerator. “Asshole drank all the beer. Go to the Seven-Eleven, Amelia, will you? Oh Christ, you can’t even buy beer. What good are you? Have you even looked for a job or a place?”

I told her I had been watching the kids, how could I go anywhere? I said tomorrow was Jesus’s surgery.

“Well, as soon as you can, you get started. They have ads for jobs and houses on billboards in groceries, the pharmacy.”

“I can’t read.”

“They have ads in Spanish.”

“I can’t read Spanish tampoco.”

“Fuck a duck.”

I said it too. “Fuck a duck.” It made her laugh, at least. Oh how I miss my pueblo, where the laughter is soft like breezes.

“Okay, Amelia. Tomorrow I’ll look for you, I’ll call around. Do me a favor and watch the kids now. I need a drink. I’ll be at the Jalisco.”

She must have run into Ramón, they came back together really late. There was only beans and Kool-Aid for the kids and me to eat. No bread, no flour for tortillas. Jesus was fast asleep in our corner in the kitchen but the minute I lay down he started to cry. I fed him. I could tell he was getting more now but after he slept awhile he was crying again. I tried to give him a pacifier but he just pushed it out. I was doing it again, holding him so tight whispering, “Hush hush,” but then I stopped when I realized that I was hurting him but also I didn’t want the doctor to see blue marks. The shoulder was bad enough all scraped and bruised, pobrecito. I prayed again to our mother Mary to help me, please to tell me what to do.

It was dark when I left the next morning. I found people who helped me get the right bus and BART and another bus. At the hospital they showed me where to go. They took blood from Jesus’s arm. A doctor examined him but he didn’t speak Spanish. I don’t know what he was writing down. I know he wrote about the shoulder because he measured it with his thumb and then wrote. He looked at me with a question. “Children’s push,” I said in English and he nodded. They told me the surgery would be at eleven so I had fed him at eight. But hours and hours went by until it was one o’clock. Jesus was screaming. We were in a space with a bed and a chair. I was sitting in the chair but then the bed looked so good I got on it and held him to me. My breasts were dripping with milk. It’s like they heard him crying. I couldn’t bear it and I thought just a few seconds of milk wouldn’t hurt.

Dr. Fritz was yelling at me. I took Jesus off my breast but he shook his head and nodded at me to go on ahead and feed him. A Latina nurse came in then to say they couldn’t do the surgery now. She said they had a big waiting list and I had screwed them over twice. “You call Pat, get another date. Go on now, go home. Call her tomorrow. That child needs the surgery, you hear me?”

In my whole life at home nobody ever got mad at me.

When I stood up I must have fainted. The nurse was sitting by me when I woke up.

“I ordered you a big lunch. You must be hungry. Did you eat today?”

“No,” I said. She fixed pillows behind me and a table over my lap. She held Jesus while I ate. I ate like an animal. Everything, soup, crackers, salad, juice, milk, meat, potatoes, carrots, bread, salad, pie; it was good.

“You need to eat well every day while you’re nursing the baby,” she said. “Will you be all right, going home?”

I nodded. Yes. I felt so good, the food was so good.

“Come on, now. Get ready to go. Here are some diapers for him. My shift was over an hour ago and I need to lock up.”

* * *

Pat has a hard job. Our office of six surgeons is in Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Every day each surgeon has a packed schedule. Also every day some get canceled, others put in their place and several emergencies added as well. One of our doctors is on call every day for the emergency room. All kinds of traumas, chopped-off fingers, aspirated peanuts, gunshot wounds, appendixes, burns, so there can be six or eight surprise surgeries a day.

Almost all of the patients are Medi-Cal and many are illegal aliens and don’t even have that, so none of our doctors are in this for the money. It’s an exhausting job for the office staff too. I work ten-hour days a lot. The surgeons are all different and for different reasons can be a pain in the butt sometimes. But even though we complain we respect them, are proud of them too, and we get a sense that we help. It is a rewarding job, not like working in a regular office. It has for sure changed the way I see things.

I have always been a cynical person. When I first started working here I thought it was a huge waste of taxpayers’ money to do ten, twelve surgeries on crack babies with weird anomalies just so they could be alive and disabled after a year spent in a hospital, then moved from one foster home to another. So many without mothers, much less fathers. Most of the foster parents are really great but some are scary. So many children who are disabled or with brain damage, patients who will never be more than a few years old. Many patients with Down’s syndrome. I thought that I could never keep a child like that.

Now I open the door to the waiting room and Toby who is all distorted and shaky, Toby who can’t talk, is there. Toby who pees and shits into bags, who eats through a hole in his stomach. Toby comes to hug me, laughing, arms open. It’s as if these kids are the result of a glitch God made answering prayers. All those mothers who don’t want their children to grow up, who pray that their child will love them forever. Those answered prayers got sent down as Tobys.

For sure Tobys can crack up a marriage or a family, but when they don’t it seems to have the reverse effect. It brings out the deepest good and bad feelings and the strengths and dignity that otherwise a man and a woman would never have seen in themselves or the other. It seems to me that each joy is savored more, that commitment has a deeper dimension. I don’t think I’m romanticizing either. I study them hard, because I saw those qualities and they surprised me. I’ve seen several couples divorce. It seemed inevitable. There was the martyr parent or the slacking parent, the blamer, the why-me or the guilty one, the drinker or the crier. I’ve seen siblings act out from resentment, cause even more havoc and anger and guilt. But much more often I have seen the marriage and the family grow closer, better. Everybody learns to deal, has to help, has to be honest and say it sucks. Everybody has to laugh, everybody has to feel grateful when whatever else the child can’t do he can kiss the hand that brushes his hair.

I don’t like Diane Arbus. When I was a kid in Texas there were freak shows and even then I hated the way people would point at the freaks and laugh at them. But I was fascinated too. I loved the man with no arms who typed with his toes. But it wasn’t the no arms that I liked. It was that he really wrote, all day. He was seriously writing something, liking what he was writing.

I admit it is pretty fascinating when the women bring in Jay for a pre-op with Dr. Rook. Everything is bizarre. They are midgets. They look like sisters, maybe they are, they are very tiny and plump with rosy cheeks and curly hair, turned-up noses and big smiles. They are lovers, stroke each other and kiss and fondle with no embarrassment. They had adopted Jay, a dwarf baby, with multiple, serious problems. Their social worker, who is, well, gigantic, has come with them, to carry him and his little oxygen tank and diaper bag. The mothers each carry a stool, like a milking stool, and sit on the little stools in the exam rooms talking about Jay and how much better he is, he can focus now, recognizes them. Dr. Rook is going to do a gastrostomy on him so he can be fed by a tube through an opening in his stomach.

He is an alert but calm baby, not especially small but with a huge deformed head. The women love to talk about him, willingly tell us how they carry him between them, how they bathe him and care for him. Pretty soon he’d need a helmet when he crawled because their furniture was only a foot or so high. They had named him Jay because it was close to joy, and he brought them so much joy.

I am going out the door to get some paper tape. He is allergic to tape. Look back and see the two mothers on tiptoes looking up at Jay, who is on his stomach on the exam table. He is smiling at them, they at him. The social worker and Dr. Rook are smiling at each other.

“That is the sweetest thing I ever saw,” I say to Karma.

“Poor things. They’re happy now. But he may only have a few more years, if that,” she says.

“Worth it. Even if they had today and no more. It’s still worth all the pain later. Karma, their tears will be sweet.” I surprised myself saying this, but I meant it. I was learning about the labor of love.

Dr. Rook’s husband calls her patients river babies, which makes her furious. He said that’s what people used to call such babies in Mississippi. He is a surgeon with us too. He somehow manages to get almost all the surgeries with real insurance like Blue Cross. Dr. Rook gets most of the disabled or totally nonfunctioning children, but not just because she is a good surgeon. She listens to the families, cares about them, so she gets a lot of referrals.

Today there is one after another. The children are mostly older and heavy. Dead weight. I have to lift them, then hold them down while she removes the old button and puts in a new one. Most of them can’t cry. You can tell it must really hurt but there are just tears falling sideways into their ears and this awful unworldly creaking, like a rusty gate, from deep inside.

The last patient is so cool. Not the patient, but what she does. A pretty red-faced newborn girl with six fingers on each hand. People always joke when babies are born about making sure it has five fingers and five toes. It’s more common than I thought. Usually the doctors schedule them for an in-and-out surgery. This baby is only a few days old. Dr. Rook asks me for Xylocaine and a needle and some catgut. She deadens the area around the finger and then she ties a tight knot at the base of each extra little finger. She gives them some liquid Tylenol in case the baby seems to be hurting later, tells them not to touch it, that pretty soon, like a navel, the finger would turn black and fall off. She said her father had been a doctor in a small town in Alabama, that she had watched him do that.

Once, Dr. Kelly had seen a little boy who had six fingers on each hand. His parents really wanted the surgery but the child didn’t. He was six or seven years old, a cute kid.

“No! I want them! They’re mine! I want to keep them!”

I thought old Dr. Kelly might reason with the boy, but instead he told the parents that it seemed to him the child wanted to continue having this distinction.

“Why not?” he said. The parents couldn’t believe he was saying this. He told the parents that if the boy changed his mind then they could do it. Of course, the younger the better.

“I like how he sticks up for his rights. Put her there, son,” and he shook the kid’s hand. They left, the parents furious, cursing at him, the child grinning.

Will he always feel this way? What if he plays the piano? Will it be too late if or when he changes his mind? Why not six fingers? They are weird anyway and so are toes, hair, ears. I wish we had tails, myself.

I am daydreaming about having a tail or leaves instead of hair, cleaning and restocking the exam rooms for the night when I hear a banging on the door. Dr. Rook had gone and I was the only one there. I unlock the door and let in Amelia and Jesus. She is crying, shivering as she speaks. His hernia is out and she can’t push it in.

I get my coat, turn on the alarms and lock the door, walk with her down the block to the emergency room. I go in to be sure she gets registered. Dr. McGee is on call. Good.

“Dr. McGee is a sweet old doctor. He’ll take care of your Jesus. They’ll probably operate on him tonight. Don’t forget to call to bring the baby to the office. In about a week. Call us. Oye, for God’s sake, don’t feed him.”

* * *

It was crowded on the subway and the bus but I wasn’t afraid. Jesus was sleeping. It seemed like the Virgin Mary answered me. She told me to take my next welfare check and go home to Mexico. The curandera would take care of my baby and my mamacita would know how to stop him from crying. I would feed him bananas and papayas. Not mangos because sometimes mangos give babies stomachaches. I wondered when babies got teeth.

Lupe was watching a telenovela when I got home. Her kids were asleep in the bedroom.

“Did he get the surgery?”

“No. Something happened.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. What dumb thing did you do? Huh?”

I put him down in our corner without waking him up. Lupe came into the kitchen.

“I found a place for you. You can stay there at least until you find your own place. You can get your next check here and then tell Welfare your new address. Do you hear me.”

“Yes. I want my check money. I’m going home.”

“You’re crazy. First place, this month’s money is spent. Whatever you have is the last of it. Estas loca? It wouldn’t get you even halfway to Michoacán. Look, girl, you’re here. Find a job in a restaurant, someplace they’ll let you stay in the back. Meet some guys, go out, have some fun. You’re young, you’re pretty, would be if you fixed yourself up. You’re as good as single. You’re learning English fast. You can’t just give up.”

“I want to go home.”

“Fuck a duck,” she said and she went back to the tele.

I was still sitting there when Ramón came in the back door. I guess he didn’t see her on the sofa. He started grabbing my breasts and kissing my neck. “Sugar, I want some sugar!”

“Ya estuvo,” she said. To Ramón she said, “Go soak your head, you stinking fat pig,” and shoved him out of the room. To me she just said, “You’re out of here. Get all your shit together. Here’s a plastic bag.”

I put everything in my bolsa and the bag, picked up Jesus.

“Go on, take him and get in the car. I’ll bring the things.”

* * *

It looked just like a boarded-up old store but there was a sign, and a cross over the door. It was dark but she banged on the door. An old Anglo man came out. He shook his head and said something in English but she talked louder, pushed me and Jesus through the door and took off.

He turned on a flashlight. He tried to talk to me but I shook my head. No English. He was probably saying they didn’t have enough beds. The room was full of cots with women on them, a few children. It smelled bad, like wine and vomit and pee. Bad, dirty. He brought me some blankets and pointed to a corner, same size as my kitchen corner. “Thank you,” I said.

It was horrible. The minute I lay down, Jesus woke up. He wouldn’t stop crying. I made sort of a tent to keep the sound in, but some of the women were cussing and saying, “Shaddup shaddup.” They were mostly old white wino women but some young black ones who were shoving me and pushing me. One little one was slapping me with tiny hands like quick hornets.

“Stopit!” I screamed. “Stopit! Stopit!”

The man came out with the flashlight and led me through the room into a kitchen and a new corner. “Mis bolsas!” I said. He understood and went back in and brought my bags. “I’m sorry,” I said in English. Jesus nursed and fell asleep, but I leaned against the wall and waited for morning. I am learning English, I thought. I went over all the English I knew. Court, Kentucky Fry, hamburger, good-bye, greaser, nigger, asshole, ho, Pampers, How much? Fuck a duck, children, hospital, stopit, shaddup, hello, I’m sorry, General Hospital, All My Children, inguinal hernia, pre-op, post-op, Geraldo, food stamps, money, car, crack, pólis, Miami Vice, José Canseco, homeless, real pretty, No way, José, Excuse me, I’m sorry, please, please, stopit, shaddup, shaddup, I’m sorry. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us.

Just before light the man and an old woman came in and started to boil water for oatmeal. She let me help her, pointed to sugar and napkins to put in the middle of the lined-up tables.

We all had oatmeal and milk for breakfast. The women looked really bad off, crazy or drunk some of them. Homeless and dirty. We all waited in line to take a shower, by the time it was Jesus and me the water was cold and just one little towel. Then me and Jesus were homeless too. During the day the space was a nursery for children. We could come back at night for soup and a bed. The man was nice. He let me leave my bolsa there so I just took some diapers. I spent the day walking around Eastmont Mall. I went to a park but then I was scared because men came up to me. I walked and walked and the baby was heavy. The second day the little one who had been slapping me showed me or somehow I understood her that you can ride all day on the buses, getting transfers. So I did that because he was too heavy and this way I could sit down and look around or sleep when Jesus did because at night I didn’t sleep. One day I saw where La Clinica was. I decided the next day I’d go there and find somebody there to help me. So I felt better.

The next day though, Jesus started to cry in a different way, like barking. I looked at his hernia and it was pooched way out and hard. I got on the bus right away but still it was long, the bus then BART then another bus. I thought the doctor’s was closed but the nurse was there, she took us to the hospital. We waited a long time but they finally took him to surgery. They said they’d keep him for the night, put me on a cot next to a little box for him. They gave me a ticket to go and eat in the cafeteria. I got a sandwich and a Coke and ice cream, some cookies and fruit for later but I fell asleep it was so good not to be on the floor. When I woke the nurse was there. Jesus was all clean and wrapped in a blue blanket.

“He’s hungry!” she smiled. “We didn’t wake you when he got out of surgery. Everything went fine.”

“Thank you.” Oh, thank God! He was fine! While I fed him I cried and prayed.

“No reason to cry now,” she said. She had brought me a tray with coffee and juice and cereal.

Dr. Fritz came in, not the doctor that did the surgery, the first doctor. He looked at Jesus and nodded, smiled at me, looked over his chart. He lifted the baby’s shirt. There was still a scrape and a bruise on his shoulder. The nurse asked me about it. I told her it had been the kids where I was staying, that I didn’t live there no more.

“He wants you to know that if he sees any more bruises he is going to call CPS. Those are people who might take your baby, or maybe they will just want you to talk to somebody.”

I nodded. I wanted to tell her that I needed to talk to somebody.

* * *

We have had some busy days. Both Dr. Adeiko and Dr. McGee were on vacation so the other doctors were really busy. Several Gypsy patients, which always means the whole family, cousins, uncles, everybody comes. It always makes me laugh (not really laugh, since he doesn’t like any joking or unprofessional behavior), because one thing Dr. Fritz always does when he comes into the room is politely greet the parent, “Good morning.” Or if it’s both, he’ll nod at each and say, “Good morning. Good morning.” And with Gypsy families I suffer not laughing when he squeezes into the room and says, “Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning,” etc. He and Dr. Wilson seem to get a lot of hypospadias babies, which is when male babies have holes on the side of their penises, sometimes several so that when they pee it’s like a sprinkler. Anyway, one Gypsy baby called Rocky Stereo had it but Dr. Fritz fixed it. The whole family, about a dozen adults and some children, had come for the post-op and were all shaking his hand. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Worse than his good mornings! It was sweet and funny and I started to say something later, but he glared. He never discusses patients. None of them do, actually. Except Dr. Rook, but only rarely.

I don’t even know the original diagnosis for Reina. She is fourteen now. She comes in with her mother, two sisters, and a brother. They push her in a huge stroller-wheelchair her father made. The sisters are twelve and fifteen, the boy is eight, all beautiful children, lively and funny. When I get in the room they have her propped on the exam table. She is naked. Except for the feeding button her body is flawless, satin smooth. Her breasts have grown. You can’t see the hooflike growth she has instead of teeth, her exquisite lips are parted and bright red. Emerald green eyes with long black lashes. Her sisters have given her a shaggy punk cut, a ruby stud in her nose, painted a butterfly tattoo on her thigh. Elena is polishing her toenails while Tony arranges her arms behind her head. He is the strongest, the one who helps me hold her upper torso while her sisters hold her legs. But right now she lies there like Manet’s Olympia, breathtakingly pure and lovely. Dr. Rook stops short like I did, just to look at her. “God, she is beautiful,” she says.

“When did she start to menstruate?” she asks.

I hadn’t noticed the Tampax string among the jet-black silken hairs. The mother says it is her first time. Without irony she says,

“She is a woman now.”

She is in danger now, I think.

“Okay, hold her down,” Dr. Rook says. The mother grabs her waist, the girls her legs, Tony and I hold her arms. She fights violently against us but Dr. Rook at last gets the old button out and puts in a new one.

She was the last patient of the day. I’m cleaning the room, putting fresh paper on the table when Dr. Rook comes back in. She says, “I’m so grateful for my Nicholas.”

I smile and say, “And I for my Nicholas.” She’s talking about her six-month-old baby, I’m talking about my six-year-old grandson.

“Good night,” we say and then she goes over to the hospital.

I go home and make a sandwich, turn on an A’s game. Dave Stewart pitching against Nolan Ryan. It has gone into ten innings when the phone rings. Dr. Fritz. He’s at the ER, wants me to come. “What is it?”

“Amelia, remember her? There are people who can speak Spanish, but I want you to talk to her.”

Amelia was in the doctor’s room at the ER. She had been sedated, stared even more blankly than usual. And the baby? He leads me to a bed behind a curtain.

Jesus is dead. His neck was broken. There are bruises on his arms. The police are on the way, but Dr. Fritz wants me to talk to her calmly first, see if I can find out what happened.

“Amelia? Remember me?”

“Sí. Cómo no? How are you? Can I see him, mijito Jesus?”

“In a minute. First I need for you to tell me what happened.”

It took a while to figure out that she had been riding around on buses in the daytime, spending the nights in a homeless shelter. When she got there tonight two of the younger women took all her money from where she had it pinned inside her clothes. They hit her and kicked her, then left. The man who runs the place didn’t understand Spanish and didn’t know what she was saying. He kept telling her to be quiet, put his fingers up to his mouth to tell her to be quiet, to keep the baby quiet. Then later the women came back. They were drunk and it was dark and other people were trying to sleep, but Jesus kept crying. Amelia had no money at all now and didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t think. The two women came. One slapped her and the other one took Jesus, but Amelia grabbed him back. The man came and the women went to lie down. Jesus kept crying.

“I couldn’t think about what to do. I shook him to make him be quiet so I could think about what to do.”

I held her tiny hands in mine. “Was he crying when you shook him?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then he stopped crying.”

“Amelia. Do you know that Jesus is dead?”

“Yes, I know. Lo sé.” And then in English she said, “Fuck a duck. I’m sorry.”