Give It To Me. Ana Castillo

pets went, hers were loyal only to meals. That made them ideal for Palma because it was about as far as her commitment went. Pepito had bitten her tongue and it blistered. It was the one undeniable sign that she had not imagined their shenanigans in the hotel. There was more evidence about the trip. When Palma went into Abuela’s closet she got out the suitcase her grandmother had carried from Mexico as a young bride. Among other Abuela-deemed tesoros it held were the letters and postcards Palma sent from her own travels. She confiscated them, stashing them inside her bag. Back in Albuquerque, they went in the top bureau drawer. One day the ramblin’ granddaughter would tell her life story.

      Ursula called. She was coming over later with Dog. I’m bringing some Chinese, Ursula said. Okay, Palma said. Do they have papers? Pause. You are most hilarious, the other woman said. Why don’t you audition at the comedy club and stop wasting your talents on a tired-ass dancer like me? Her ass was hardly tired but yes, she really was stripping her way through nursing school. It was Ursula’s night off and she came over with takeout and the dog. What’s that? Palma noticed something different about the mongrel rescue right away. Oh, I took him for his shots, she said. He’s got tags. No, that other tag, Palma said. Yeah, she said. I named him. Romeo? Palma said fingering the brass, bone-shaped tag. Yes, she said. He’s our loverboy, is he not? Why someone would adopt a dog and refuse to name it I haven’t figured out, hon’, Ursula said. She was in a tight exercise top and Spandex shorts. It was hot in the desert. Palma’s lover was slim and well formed with reddish brown hair all gathered up on top of her head. She looked like she had been out on a run, sunburned and sweaty, and pulling off her top she started making her way to the shower. Her boobs were pale compared to the rest, and while Palma was old school and did not approve, the implants looked good. Almost real. Not too big. Palma didn’t mind them small or hothouse tomatoes like her own. Ursula’s were a business investment for the time being, she said. Once she had her nursing degree she’d have them removed.

      Palma caught up to her. She kissed her mouth, moved down to her neck and then each nipple. Her lover had large areolas. They showered together and made love. (Two women making love required a whole lot of patience. More when they were standing up.) Afterward, the couple took their Chinese to bed and watched the latest broadcast of 48 Hours on the laptop. Why do you like to watch that morbid stuff? Ursula said, sleepily. Palma didn’t know. Those murder investigations fed the latent state prosecutor inside her, maybe. Half the time she’d get freaked out and couldn’t stop thinking about how many shows centered on wives who had been killed by their prominent doctor husbands or ministers, proverbial pillars of the community, telling herself that Abuela was right, you couldn’t trust nobody. Especially not among los gringos. Yankees. Gabachos. Gachupines. Güeros. Palma turned off the light.

      I’ve got something to tell you, Ursula whispered. There’s good news and bad news, actually. Which do you want first?

      I could use good news. Palma opted.

      I’m quitting my job, Ursula said.

      Dancing? Palma said, as if her lover had another job.

      Uh-huh, she gave an earlobe nibble and stretched her taut body against Palma’s. That was in fact, super news. Then she said what sounded at first like details about the good news. My mom has offered to pay for my schooling.

      Your mom in Houston? Palma said. It was unlikely that Ursula was talking about any other mom so the fact that she said where Ursula’s mom was revealed that her subconscious guessed the bad news. Her lover was lost without family in Albuquerque. Yes, that mom, Ursula said, the one who said she’d pay for my schooling if I came home. Palma rolled over and Ursula hugged her back, I’ll miss you, she said. Palma patted the other’s hands at her belly, I’ll miss you, too. The truth was she liked Ursula a lot, but unlike Snowball, Palma knew that when she was gone Palma would not love her.

      5

      The letters and postcards that Palma Piedras sent to Abuela over the years from her adventures were spread out on the bed. Without thinking about it she had brought them out. She told herself she couldn’t sleep because she’d drunk coffee too late in the day. The fact was that it was going to take time to get used to Ursula’s absence. Getting unused to someone around, Palma thought, was not the same as missing them. She noticed there were a few envelopes held together with a rubber band. They weren’t in her handwriting but addressed to Abuela. She picked the bundle up and turned it around a few times. The return address was in LA. Who did her grandmother know in LA? Well, the answer could be anybody. Most likely a relocated pastor from her church or former church member.

      Out of curiosity as to why the old woman would keep those letters, eight with her own correspondence, Palma pulled off the rubber band. It was so brittle it snapped. They dated back to when Palma was a mere Tater Tot. Included were two business envelopes with government return addresses: The Department of Human Services. The others were in letter-size envelopes. Large, loopy handwriting. She opened one randomly. Mami. It was addressed to someone’s mother. Palma skimmed to the end and the signature, in round letters was, your dauhter, Angela. (Daughter was spelled “dauhter.”) Her abuela’s daughter, a.k.a, Palma’s biological mother. Dear Mami, How are you? I hope well. How is our baby Palma? We miss her! Her gaze ran frantically over the page. Her tiny toes with teeny toenails. I love her so much, she read . . . about her. She’s such a good baby (i.e., said baby never cried). She put the letters in order chronologically and began reading about Angela and her boyfriend, Mariano, Jr.

      Apparently, they had Palma when they were both around fifteen. Kids. (So he was Palma’s biological father—not a rogue as Abuela insinuated.) Mariano, Jr.’s family were migrant workers, the letters revealed. Abuela was opposed to the pregnancy, the couple getting married, and most def did not want her daughter to go on the migrant trail picking onions, tomatoes, and fleas off their necks and ankles at bedtime. But Angela went anyway. (It explained why Palma’s birth certificate read that she was born in Indiana.) Angela and Mariano, Jr. left her with her abuela over summer when they were working the fields with his family in that nearby state. When they came back Abuela had begun the process of taking full custody. Those kids had little wherewithal to understand what was going on. They appealed to Abuela’s compassion, which only existed for Christ on the Cross, Jim-Bo, and the Holy Spirit—nothing left for bad girl Angela, who’d gone against her mother’s wishes.

      If only my father were still alive, Angela wrote in her last letter, he would never have taken my dauhter away from me. As far as Palma could tell, her parents married, stayed together, and eventually settled down in Los Angeles. You are heartless, Angela had written to her mother from there. Not exactly a news flash. What Palma didn’t know was how had Mariano, Jr. felt about it all that time. Leaving his baby behind, and with Angela’s “heartless” mother?

      Everything Palma had taken for truth was rearranged.

      If she’d felt sorry for herself her whole life because she believed she had parents who hadn’t loved her, Palma now felt worse discovering that they had. Knowing she was possibly wanted, every corpuscle, capillary, and nerve ending started to quake. She gulped down a glass of ice water and then put the glass against her forehead. Palma’s brain went rat-a-tat-tat with one doubt after the next. Had they tried hard enough to get her back? A Rubik’s Cube of scenes from her entire upbringing shifted around in her head. The day-by-day blows of her upbringing. The kids in grammar school who mocked her for not having a mom and dad. Arrimada, the Mexican kids called her. It meant an orphan freeloader. What would have getting her menses been like had her mother been there, and not an old woman from a village who believed it was one more shameful aspect of femaleness? Silly things came to mind too: the mother-and-daughter tea as a senior in high school with their pretty hats and dainty gloves, going to the salon together beforehand for manicures. Palma never knew if her grandmother would have come, but as a teenager she was ashamed of the old woman—the scant English, the wrinkles, and the tote bag she used as a purse. The fact that around her own—other poor Mexicans—she was a tyrant, but with Alta Mulch or even regular Mulch, Abuela shrank until she became an India watermark on the wall. Totonaca de pata rajada she called herself.

      Would someone have asked the girl to the prom if she’d had a dad willing to lend him the car and made sure the boy got her