Life and Times of a Little Gringa, Part 2
When Mama Nona came back from her holiday trip to Mexico, we announced that she was about to have another grandchild.
This was my second pregnancy. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage in the second trimester; it was particularly horrifying because I began to hemorrhage in my sleep and my mother, who was visiting, found me the next morning in a pool of blood. The hospital staff said that I might have bled to death if I was found much later.
So this time I went to the plant supervisor and asked for a less-strenuous sitting job. He was less than sympathetic and I found myself unemployed by the end of that day. Then I got to spend hours each week in the vast, urine-stinking Bureau of Unemployment, where I tried to keep my morning sickness under control while waiting for my benefits and proving I was looking for a job.
Since I was unemployed, I spent every day with Mama Nona. This terrified me. I was unbelievably shy and could never understand what she was saying to me, even with elaborate arm gestures. She’d get frustrated and say it again, louder, with bigger gestures. I’d look wildly around the room – what is she pointing at? Chair? Stove? Mango? Her voice would get more strident, until I’d say, “I don’t know! No - No comprende!” and run back upstairs.
Carmen and her two boys fled her abusive husband and moved in with us. Carmen and her mom shared a room and the boys took the third bedroom – Fugi’s childhood room. Laundry was one way I could contribute without having to know any Spanish, so I took on the washing for the family. And I was sorry I did.
You got to the basement through a door in the bathroom, one that I made sure was locked before ever taking a shower. Because as soon as you turned on the basement light, a terrible skittering noise would begin. Once it grew quiet, I’d carefully descend the old plank stairs. Two sides of the basement had old brick walls, but the other sides looked like they were carved out of sheer rock with a backhoe. City water and sewer pipes came through holes in the rock, and so did the city rats. Most of them hid when they heard humans, but I could see their eyes gleaming in the dark corners. If you were quiet for any length of time, they would begin creeping back. I made sure to bang around and talk loudly to myself whenever I was down there.
Mama Nona had no clothes dryer; we hung the clothes outside in nice weather and in the second chamber of the basement during the winter. This second room was entirely carved out of Illinois granite, rounded and womblike. This was also a storage room for boxes of dishes, old clothes, furniture that people forgot to claim, and housewares. There was even an old handcrank washing tub. She didn’t like to throw things away.
Fugi worked days at a factory that was an hour away. He got home in time to wolf down some dinner and drive to Mechanic’s school in west Chicago. I soon found that Fugi’s family severely disapproved of women having friends outside the family or of women going anywhere by themselves. Because Fugi had the car, I had to ask an English-speaking family member for a ride anywhere. My only friends became the nieces closest in age to me – the high school girls who taught me about Selena and Menudo and showed me how to achieve the stylized makeup look so popular among Hispanics. The rest of the time, I watched HBO, tried to crochet baby clothes, and watched my belly grow.
Fugi only got four hours of sleep each night. On the weekends, all he wanted to do was relax and watch TV. I was dying to get out of the house, but usually after a bowl of whatever Mama Nona cooked, eaten on the floor of our little room, he fell asleep. Sometimes I’d look out the window and down the quiet street, thinking that somewhere people were laughing and talking and having a good time together. The whole world was rollicking by while I wasted my life in a little room at the top of a house.
I was twenty years old.
Published by angelawd on August 12th, 2008 tagged My Ex-Life
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:00 am
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