Chapter 13 #4
Perla wishes she could luxuriate in the joy of this lazy morning, but she has chores, and even though the house is still quiet, she rises and washes her face.
When she wanders out of her room and reaches the stairs, Encarnación is rushing toward her with a look of pure joy on her face.
She’s carrying a piece of paper in her hands.
“Perla!” she exclaims, laughing.
“What is it?”
“The most wonderful thing in the world!”
Encarnación reaches the top of the stairs and hugs Perla. Perla hugs her back, laughter bubbling from her lips also. Encarnación’s joy is contagious.
“My friend has telegrammed. I have the job!”
“What?”
Encarnación hands her the paper and giggles like a girl.
“See there? She showed them photos of the work I did, and they want me to join the costume department.”
Perla looks at the telegram, but she cannot recognize the words. The letters are like hieroglyphs she cannot decipher. “I don’t understand.”
“Mexico City. Perla, I’m going to work in the movies! It’s a one-year contract, but I know it’ll be fine. And the money is good, it’ll be enough to support me and Inés.”
“But you just came back,” Perla says. “After leaving me all alone, you just came back. I thought you would stay.”
Encarnación’s joy dims. She rests a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I can’t stay. This town is not…I want something else for myself, for my daughter.”
Perla clutches the banister tight to keep herself from falling to her knees.
“All the way in Mexico City? You don’t have an apartment. You don’t have any money,” she protests.
“I have the money I’ve been saving from the sewing I do in town, and I’ll find a place.”
Her answers are maddening, they anger Perla. “You have a child. Who will watch her while you work?”
“I’ll figure something out. Things are easy when you make up your mind about them.”
Her sister’s blithe smile is like a can of kerosene dumped upon a flame. Perla is about to explode.
“Things are easy?” Perla replies, and the fury makes her voice so low it’s almost a whisper. She cannot scream, although she wishes she could. Her throat is hoarse with rage.
Things are always easy for Encarnación. How swiftly she left their home with her lover, how swiftly she returned, without a word of warning, and how swiftly she now intends to make her escape.
Perla pictures her future. All the days spent looking after their parents, combing their mother’s hair and cleaning their father’s shoes and tending to the guesthouse.
Enduring the summers in the numbing heat of Puerco Ahogado and the winters in its damp, bone-chilling cold, inside this decaying home where everything diminishes.
She sees Encarnación, carefree and wealthy in the city, making dresses for movie stars. She sees Encarnación in her smart hat and her high heels, going to restaurants and making friends. She sees Encarnación laughing that open laugh of hers.
“You’re going to leave me behind with all the responsibilities? You’re going to leave me alone?” she asks, holding her hands to keep them from trembling.
“Perla, I’m sorry. But I can’t stay,” Encarnación says gently, and squeezes her shoulder.
“Why? The town’s not good enough? We’re not good enough for you?”
Encarnación looks at her with a soft smile. She doesn’t say anything. But Perla realizes that this is exactly how her sister feels. Puerco Ahogado is a speck on a map and their house is a hovel and Perla is a joke.
“Perla,” Encarnación says.
Perla feels a loathing that threatens to burn a hole through her heart. She can’t allow her sister to touch her.
“You can’t leave me alone!”
She unclasps her trembling hands and shoves Encarnación away.
It’s a brutal shove and Encarnación tumbles down the stairs.
She does not even utter a cry. The violence and the suddenness of the attack must have rendered her speechless, because she falls silently and lands at the bottom of the stairs with a dry thud.
Perla inhales sharply and climbs down the steps, her hand gliding along the banister until she reaches the ground floor.
Her sister’s body is bent at a strange angle and a trickle of blood spills from her lips. She looks like a mannequin, not a real human being, lying on that floor, and Perla watches her as she shudders and her eyes close.
“Mommy?” Inés says.
Perla notices her niece for the first time, standing there, by the stairs, staring at her mother. Then the girl looks at Perla and her eyes are wide and filled with horror. She clutches a doll in one hand.
She saw me push her, Perla thinks.
“Be quiet,” she tells the child, afraid she’ll cry and wail and say that Perla has killed her mother.
She grips the girl tightly by the arms and for a wild, awful moment she thinks she might strangle her. She might grab her and push her against the floor and squeeze the life out of the child.
A double murder, and why not, two for one, she thinks, and the thought is mad, but then again, she must be a madwoman to do what she has done. She ought to be carted out in a straitjacket, shouldn’t she?
The girl lets go of her doll and stares at Perla with tear-filled eyes and Perla stares back at her. She embraces the child, and she cries.