Part 22 (2/2)

”Terezinha, Antonio, go to your rooms.” My mother straightened her arm in the direction of the hallway. ”Now!”

”No!” my father said. ”We all want to hear the truth. Edite is coming from America to tell us the truth because we is too stupid to know.”

”You're just being an a.s.s now.” She slurred the word a.s.s, made it bigger than it needed to be.

”An a.s.s? I think you is right. If a man has to live in his own house and you speak about me to my wife, and you give ideas to my kids so they listen to you and everyone spit in my face, then I am a.s.s.”

”Manuel, please,” my mother urged. ”Calma.”

”Is that it?” Edite's voice got high. ”Does that frighten you? Does it frighten you that when you're not around she tells me things?”

My father knocked the chair over and moved around the table. He tried to make his way past Edite, but he b.u.mped her and she teetered a bit before finding her footing.

”She tells me things she could never tell you.”

”Stop it, Edite!” my mother said.

My father reached the doorway but stopped mid-step. He leaned against the archway that led into the hall. ”You want to talk about secrets?”

”No more games.” Edite grabbed her purse from the back of the chair. She slung it over her shoulder and almost fell over. ”You're a waste,” she said, the look of disgust pulling at her face.

My mother opened the sliding door that led to our backyard. Edite made her way toward the door. My father scrambled to block her.

”No! You come into my house and say things that you want to say and then you leave so you can go for quiet. But my head is like a machine.” My father knocked his head twice, hard. ”It no stop so easy. You think I'm garbage in this country, you no respect me and my family and-”

”That's not what I said!”

”Go! Go ahead and tell me what I should know about my family because I no know what the h.e.l.l you is talking about. All I know is-”

”Your wife, Manuel!” she yelled, taking a couple of steps back and steadying herself on the back of a kitchen chair. ”She doesn't love you.”

My mother took in a big breath.

Terri's hand tugged at my sleeve. ”Let's go,” she whispered.

”I'm not stupid.” My father's voice had softened.

”She's in love with someone else. And Antonio, he ...”

”Antonio, Terezinha, go to bed now.”

”You should leave,” I said. I wanted to rush at Edite, to stop her from telling my parents what she thought she knew about me. ”Go home, now!”

”Antonio, there's nothing to be afraid of.”

”What you want to say about Antonio?”

”Get out!” my mother said, stepping in front of me.

Edite took a couple of steps to the patio door. ”I've got to go.”

My father sprang at Edite, and spun her around to face him.

”Your kids are ashamed of you,” she sputtered. My father let go. My mother stood between him and Edite. Edite seemed immune to the world. ”All these years in this country and you still can't manage to string a proper sentence together. They're all embarra.s.sed by you!” she shouted. My father's eyes blinked as if he'd been sucker-punched.

It was so quiet I could hear my own breathing. My mother steered Edite through the patio doors, out onto the back porch. My father had quietly moved back to the table. His face was streaky red and white, crabmeat. He stared down at his hand, which he opened and closed, slowly. I thought I could hear the air seeping out of him, getting sucked out the open door.

”Edite,” my mother said, just as Edite took a few more steps. Edite wobbled a bit before turning to look at my mother. Terri stood beside me and took my hand.

From her profile I could see my mother's lips quivering. ”It's time to go home-to America.” Her voice was soothing. ”Your Johnny is dead.”

Edite turned away and started walking to our garage. Terri squeezed my hand. Edite walked along the narrow path, the same one I walked almost every day for two months-protector of the limpet, Jesus Boy.

Edite reached for the door of our garage just as my mother flicked on the outdoor lights. She tried to grab the door handle twice before her fingers touched it and she held on. She wasn't wearing a coat and it was cold. She tilted her head to the night sky and into the light that hung above the garage door. I could see the tears streaking down her cheeks.

My mother stepped back inside, closed the door behind her. I heard the lock click. I let go of my sister's hand and she ran up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door.

I went to the window, looked out into the cold. Edite had slipped into our garage and was gone.

- 5*

ON SAt.u.r.dAY, March 4, 1978, the newspaper reported how Saul Betesh had dismissed the twelve-year-old boy he raped, strangled, and drowned with a shrug and a rhetorical question: ”What was Emanuel Jaques? I wasn't thinking of Emanuel Jaques, except possibly before and possibly after. I suppose he was part of my fantasies.” He had smiled.

I sat atop Senhor Coelho's rooftop. My chin nestled in the valley between my knees. I focused on the spot where Manny had landed. He had fallen far, and it was no wonder he had been hurt so badly. Spring was coming. I could smell it. For what must have been the millionth time, I scanned the horizon, skimmed across the surface of worn s.h.i.+ngles and the madness of poles and lines and antennas like steeples reaching up to nothing.

”Antonio! Get down from there!” my mother yelled. My head snapped. I saw her coming through the laneway. I scrambled down from the roof, hand-dropped from the edge. I was dusting myself off when she got to me.

”I told you I don't want you on top of those roofs anymore.”

”But-”

”But nothing. You're not a kid anymore.”

She reached for me and tried to draw me to her. I took a step back. My mother turned to look at James's garage with disgust.

”You stay away from that man, you hear me? I just came from Edite's.” She let her words float a bit, and something in me knew that Edite had told her everything about James and Agnes and Ricky and how it was that James had wiggled his way into our world. I had been avoiding James. There had been no sign of him for five days. I a.s.sumed he had packed up his things and had taken off with Agnes. ”Edite wants to say goodbye to you,” my mother said. ”She's leaving, today.”

Edite's convertible turned into the laneway from the top, near Adam's burned garage. The white ragtop moved down the laneway and turned into her parking s.p.a.ce, where she kept it covered all winter. My first thought was that James might be driving it; maybe he hadn't left yet and he got it tuned up for her before she left on her long drive back to the States. I walked sheepishly along the car's side. The driver's window was half-opened and smoke was coming out.

A large black man sat in the driver's seat, the white of his eyes like bone against his chocolate skin. He sat all bundled up in his coat and scarf, smoking a cigarette, one of those stinky American ones Edite smoked when she first got here. I managed to catch a whiff of his aftershave. The back seat was stuffed right up to the roof with garbage bags.

”You must be Antonio,” he said, his voice deep and strong like wood. He reached out his hand to take mine. I took it and shook. His huge hand engulfed mine and made me feel safe.

”Mr. William?” I felt stupid the moment it came out of my mouth.

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