Delia's Crossing (Delia 1)

“And you told all that to Edward?” Sophia asked.

“Sí, and what Bradley did to me the day before. I had to tell him,” I added.

“Did to you the day before? I thought you said he just drove you home. That’s all you told my mother at the dinner table.”

“I was ashamed,” I said.

“Well, where did you go with him?”

“He took me to where his father is rebuilding a house. There was no one else there working, but he said he wanted to look at what was done.”

“He took you to that house?” Her mouth opened and closed. “That’s where he tried…and what happened after you got there?”

/> “He forced himself on me,” I said.

Señora Rosario didn’t translate. She just stared at me, and then she asked, “Él le violó?”

“Yes, I was raped,” I said, crying.

“What did she say? What did she just say?”

Reluctantly, Señora Rosario translated.

“That bastard, liar. I knew it.”

Sophia shook her head, looked at Señora Rosario. Then, mumbling to herself, she walked quickly out of my bedroom, slamming the door behind her. It was like a firecracker.

Señora Rosario looked after her and then turned back to me. She still wore a look of amazement and shock.

“I am sorry to say it, but maybe you should return to Mexico, Delia,” she said. “Maybe that would be the best thing for you now.”

“Don’t be sorry. There is nothing I want more, Señora,” I told her. I looked toward my pillow, under which was Abuela Anabela’s letter. “Nothing.”

12

Hospital Visit

My grandmother had a saying whenever tragedy struck someone again and again. Un clavo saca otro clavo. One nail removes another—one grief cures another. I didn’t understand it then, but now I thought I did, because after learning what had happened to Edward, I soon put aside grieving over the terrible thing that had happened to me. This sorrow, this tragedy, diminished my own. It did not cure it, but it caused me to put it aside, to stop thinking about poor me and think about poor Edward shut up in this darkness, his beautiful, promising young life perhaps cut off at the knees, as my father might say.

I thought now it was certain that Tía Isabela would send me back to Mexico. I waited in my bedroom, anticipating her arrival any moment. Sometime after midnight, I heard the voices of some people talking below, and then I heard footsteps outside my door. I was sitting on my bed, my hands in my lap, my head down, when she opened the door and entered. There was no longer any pretext, any airs of superiority, in her demeanor. She looked tired but, more important, like someone brought down to walk the earth with us mere mortals. Tragedy had sent her reeling back to her origins. As if to underline all of this, she spoke Spanish as if she had never learned how to speak English.

“You have heard what happened to Edward?”

“Yes. I am so sorry. How is he? Is it true that he is blind?”

“He has retina damage to both eyes caused by the airbag. He will need eye surgery, and the doctor doesn’t guarantee anything. They never do,” she said dryly. “Both retinas were torn badly.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Yes, well, instead of worrying about himself, he insists on my bringing you to see him first thing tomorrow morning, so you will not go to school,” she said.

“Me?”

Her eyes grew smaller as she stared at me. “Yes, you. He wouldn’t tell me why he was chasing after Bradley like that, driving so recklessly, and Sophia has locked herself away in her room. Some people are blessed with children. I am cursed with them.”

I shook my head. I wanted to say it wasn’t possible to be cursed with children, but I recalled how my mother had described her father’s feelings about Isabela. Surely, he had felt cursed, too. He was very bitter, and when she had left them and he had considered her dead, he justified it by saying, “Cuando el perro se muere, se va la rabia.” When the dog dies, the rabies are gone.

It would be too cruel to remind her of all that, I thought, even though it was on the tip of my tongue to say, As ye sow, so shall ye reap.