Yolanda sees the hermandads scattered through the mountains as pure spots of hope, now that the communities are dwindling and drug-blighted. She’s glad her Aunt Fidelia isn’t here to see her son Elwin’s story reproduced over and over in houses all through these hills. Passing the syringe in a kind of communion. Sometimes three generations at once, slumped in their living rooms with needles in their arms, eyelids fluttering. Grandmothers with naloxone in their purses tucked among the used tissues and lipsticks and EBT cards. The Rio Grande Sun is packed with obituaries of young people: Died suddenly at home. Passed away unexpectedly. Entered Eternal Rest. She has always lived in terror that Amadeo might find himself on that path, is so grateful that he hasn’t yet.
“There was blood everywhere.” Angel’s voice rises. “A kid shouldn’t have to see her dad like that. Why would you let him?”
Yolanda takes in her granddaughter’s soft brown eyes, the stubborn jut of her chin. She’s surprised that Angel has somehow divined her role in the whole business. Yolanda didn’t just let him; she actually begged her Tío Tíve to give him a chance, a detail she prays never gets back to Amadeo.
After his DWI in December, he stormed around the house and tore up all his citation papers so Yolanda had to call the courthouse to request copies, claiming to have accidentally thrown them away. She did it because she loves him and because she’d felt guilty; he accused her of lying about not getting his voicemail when he was arrested, and the fact is that she didn’t hurry down to the police station, that after she got his message the next morning she’d taken an hour to compose herself because she’d been so angry. At the station, she was apologetic and submissive around the police, as though she’d been the one driving drunk.
“Please, Tío.” She stood in her uncle’s living room. Velvet sofa, gold-framed mirrors on the wall, a topless, armless plaster goddess on the sideboard; despite being dead for twenty years, her Aunt Fidelia is still a presence here. Her uncle’s country CDs and insulin vials rest among dusty plastic grapes in cut crystal bowls. She remembered being a child, playing Yahtzee with her beloved older cousin and Anthony in the back bedroom, their patience with her as she laboriously tallied the points. “Amadeo is like his dad, I think. In that much pain. Like Elwin.”
Tíve grunted and pushed at the air in annoyance. “Your boy doesn’t have nothing to be in pain about.”
“Oh, Tío. He lost his father. That’s a trauma for a five-year-old.”
“Well, Elwin didn’t lose his father, and neither did Anthony. Those boys made their own problems.”
“I guess we don’t always know what our kids go through. They were good boys underneath. Like my Amadeo.” She wanted her uncle to remember Amadeo as he once was: his black-lashed eyes and round open face, his easy affection. He held her hand until he was fifteen with such trusting ease. Even into his teens, he spoke to Jerry, his pet corn snake, with the tenderness of a mother. But she couldn’t describe Amadeo without making her uncle think of his own lost son.
“Well,” Tíve grumbled, but then he took Amadeo out for burgers and made him a novicio.
“Your father is a grown man, Angelica,” Yolanda says now. “He makes his own choices.” Yolanda’s tone is harsher than she intends, a tone she’s never, to her recollection, used with the girl before.
Angel flinches, the hurt plain in her face. She stalks off to the living room couch and settles among her papers and folders.
Yolanda begins to tackle the pile of dishes, cramming them into the already-packed dishwasher. She drops a ham in the sink to defrost, enjoys the solid weighty clank when it hits metal. Easter. As a child, she loved the candy and new dresses, the white shoes and short gloves. The hats with their white netting and ribbon flowers. But since then, the holiday has meant work. Eggs to hide, baskets to assemble, heavy dishes to cook.
Growing up, Yolanda had felt rich in family, because she’d had Elwin and that dense network of cousins and aunts, everyone streaming in and out of each other’s houses, rooting through each other’s refrigerators, the women gathering to wrap tamales and sip their whiskey-and-waters. But her generation hasn’t been a productive bunch: a child here and there, dispersed all over the state and country. And Yolanda’s own children actively dislike each other. If not for Yolanda’s dinners, when would Valerie and Amadeo ever see each other? When will they see each other when she’s gone?