White Oleander

Under the bed, a darker current wove itself into the night. My mother's unread letters, fluid with lies, shifted and heaved, like the debris of an enormous shipwreck that continued to be washed ashore years after the liner went down. I would allow no more words. From now on, I only wanted things that could be touched, tasted, the scent of new houses, the buzz of wires before rain. A river flowing in moonlight, trees growing out of concrete, scraps of brocade in a fifty-cent bin, red geraniums on a sweatshop window ledge. Give me the way rooftops of stucco apartments piled up forms in the afternoon like late surf, something without a spin, not a self-portrait in water and wind. Give me the boy playing electric guitar, my foster home bed at the end of Ripple Street, and the shape of Yvonne and her baby that was coming. She was the hills of California under mustard and green, tawny as lions in summer.

 

Across the room, Yvonne cried out. Her pillow fell on the floor. I got it for her. It was spongy with sweat. She sweated so much at night, I sometimes had to help her change the sheets. I put the pillow behind her dark hair, pushed the soaked strands from her face. She was hot as a steaming load of wet laundry.

 

The guitar unraveled a song I could only occasionally recognize as "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star."

 

"Astrid," Yvonne whispered.

 

"Listen," I said. "Someone's playing guitar."

 

"I had the worst dream," she mumbled. "People kept stealing my stuff. They took my horse."

 

Her felted paper horse, white with gold paper trappings and red silk fringe, sat on the dresser, front leg raised, neck curved into an arch that echoed the frightened curve of her eyebrows.

 

"It's still there," I said, putting my hand on her cheek. I knew it would feel cool on her hot skin. My mother used to do this when I was sick, I suddenly remembered, and for a moment I could feel it distinctly, the touch of her cool hands.

 

Yvonne lifted her head to see the horse still prancing in the moonlight, then lay back on the pillow. "I wish this was over."

 

I knew what Rena would say. The sooner the better. A few months ago, I'd have gone her one further. I would have thought, what was the difference? When she gave birth to the baby, once it had been given away, there would always be something more to lose, a boyfriend, a home, a job, sickness, more babies, days and nights rolling over each other in an ocean that was always the same. Why hurry disaster?

 

But now I had seen her sitting cross-legged on her bed whispering to her belly, telling it how great the world was going to be, that there were horses and birthdays, white cats and ice cream. Even if Yvonne wouldn't be there for roller skates and the first day of school, it had to count for something. She had it now, that sweetness, that dream. "Yeah, when it's time, you'll think it's too soon," I said.

 

Yvonne held my hand to her hot forehead. "You're always cool. You don't sweat at all. Oh, the baby's moving," she whispered. "You want to feel it?"

 

She shoved up her T-shirt and I put my hand on her bare belly, round and hot as rising dough, to feel the odd distortions of the baby's movements against my palm. Her smile was lopsided, divided, delight warring with what she knew was coming.

 

"I think it's a girl," she whispered. "The other one was a girl."

 

She talked about her babies only late at night when we were alone. Rena wouldn't let her talk about them, she told her not to think about them. But Yvonne needed to talk. The father of this one, Ezequiel, drove a pickup truck. They had met at Griffith Park, and she fell in love when he put her on the merry-go-round.

 

I tried to think of something to say. "She's got a good kick. Maybe she'll be a ballerina, ese."

 

The simple melody line of the electric guitar bounced off the hills and fed in through the window, and the mound of Yvonne's stomach danced in time, the tiny bumps of hands and feet.

 

"I want her to do Girl Scouts. You're gonna do Girl Scouts, mija," she said to the mound. She looked back up at me. "Did you ever do it?"

 

I shook my head.

 

"I always wanted to," she said, tracing figure eights on the damp sheet. "But I couldn't ask. My mom would've laughed her head off. 'Your big ass in the damn Girl Scouts?'"

 

We sat there for the longest time, not saying anything. Hoping her daughter would have all the good things. The guitarist had quieted down, he was playing "Michelle." My mother loved that song. She could sing it in French.

 

Yvonne dozed off, and I went back to bed, thinking of my mother's cool hands on my face in the heat of a fever, the way she would wrap me in sheets soaked in ice water, eucalyptus, and cloves. I am your home, she'd once said, and it was still true.

 

I crawled under the bed, pulled out the sack of her letters, some packets thin as a promise, others fat like white koi. The bag was heavy, it exhaled the scent of her violets. I got up silently, not to wake Yvonne, and slipped out of the room, shutting the door tightly behind me.