After that, Luz and Maria Josie made do without a boarder. Maria Josie sold what little furniture Diego had left behind. Luz didn’t blame her. They needed money, and in some ways, Luz was glad Diego’s things were gone. His objects felt charged with a piece of him. Their mother used to say that was part of Luz’s sight, her ability to sense a person in their possessions. Luz could feel Diego on anything her brother had touched, even the letters he sent.
The first letter arrived several weeks after Diego had left. Luz smiled at the sight of his beautiful cursive on the envelope.
Meeting lots of interesting folks. We’re traveling in covered trucks that kinda look like the old-time wagons. They say this place is called Wyoming. Still no steady work until summer, but I’ve managed to make a few bucks off card tricks. The fields up north look like what I imagine the sea is like but gray winter. The cold and wind is something terrible. The money I’ve included should help with rent. I love you and Maria Josie very much.
The envelope included no cash, having arrived torn at the left corner. Maria Josie brought Luz with her to the post office. After they waited in a line of people like ants, the postman said there was nothing to do, especially since there was no way to prove money had been stolen.
“What’s this hole for, then?” Maria Josie had said firmly and loudly, poking her index finger into the envelope, a teakettle tipped on its side, everything poured out. “You think they just peeked inside to see my nephew’s excellent script?” When the siblings had first arrived in Denver, Maria Josie had gifted them penmanship workbooks. You must learn to speak and write as they do, she had explained, or they’ll trick you, the way it’s always been.
The postman eventually accused Maria Josie of putting the hole there herself, and it was clear that her voice, no matter how loud she hollered, wasn’t going to be heard. They left the post office that day in haste, walking past one of the government buildings with marble rams and a white-worded inscription—IF THOU DESIRE REST, DESIRE NOT TOO MUCH.
Some ways down the busy street, jobless men in crinkled gray coats were lined up for free soup, the tops of their misshapen caps stretched into the horizon like stones across a river.
There came a night in early February when Luz woke up with a tingling sensation, her face and neck hardened with cold. Her hair felt frozen in place, a black broom over her pillow. Dim light trailed into the bedroom from the hall. There were sounds of iron on iron, the dings and ticks of some faraway repair. The window was cloaked in scaled ice, deepening the colors of the room. Luz groaned in an elongated yawn and her breath dissipated into fog. She reached over her body for the blankets, surprised to find an extra layer of wool. Maria Josie must have brought it in the night. Luz stood from her bed, the floorboards painfully cold beneath her sockless feet. She spun the blanket over her shoulders, a large, inconsolable moth.
Maria Josie was in the kitchen kneeling at the radiator. A kerosene lamp glowed beside her feet in work boots. She had changed from her nightclothes into blue jeans and her winter coat with a fox-lined hood. The silver radiator’s side valve was unhinged and lay across the floor beside three sizes of wrenches. Maria Josie slightly bled from the topside of her left hand. It looked as though she’d been struggling in the same spot for hours. Her short hair was reddened with lamplight.
“It’s broke again?” Luz asked.
Maria Josie shook her head. “The landlord never fixes a damn thing.”
“I can see my breath,” Luz said, the cold stiffening her fingers and joints.
Maria Josie sighed, her own breath clumped into the air. She vigorously nodded and lifted the largest wrench from the ground. She flung it out of anger into the innards of the radiator. She maneuvered herself on all fours, so that her back was arched and her hips were displayed, resilient and wide. She clunked around for several minutes until she tried another wrench, this one smaller. Maria Josie could fix anything. An automobile, a broken clock, shattered windows, crushed fences. Sure, Diego had once helped, but it was Maria Josie who guided the repairs and knew the anatomy of almost any piece of equipment. She was only thirty-five, but for a moment in that frozen kitchen, Luz worried that Maria Josie was getting old. Her tight mouth was an awful shade of blue, and she wrung her hands as though they ached.
“Goddammit.” She sprang to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping the wrench with the inside of her jacket, her corded arms forceful as they circled the grip. “I don’t have the right tools.”
“Damn Diego,” Luz cursed.
“Stop that. He couldn’t charm a radiator to save his life.”
Maria Josie walked to the front closet and removed her fox-lined coat and sheepskin mittens. She handed them to Luz. She then straightened a wool cap with droopy ear flaps over her niece’s head. “Let’s try to get some sleep. I’ll find a repairman in the morning.”
“It’s too cold,” Luz pleaded.
“We’ll be all right for now.” Maria Josie opened a cupboard beside the icebox. She pulled out a large porcelain bowl. From a kitchen drawer, she handed Luz several candles. “Set these up beside my bed on the floor. We’ll make a heater.”
“What about my side of the room?”
“Body heat, Luz.”
They lay in bed side by side, shivering through layers of clothing and blankets. Her auntie’s breath warmed the nape of her neck and Luz was thankful she wasn’t alone. The makeshift heater glowed like paper luminarias over the oak floor. The bedroom’s hanging sheet was cast in dramatic shadows and Luz lifted her hand into the cold, moving her fingers into a shadow puppet of a wolf. She opened and closed its mouth. The room creaked, as if the apartment was mocking them in its coolness, threatening frozen and burst pipes. Luz moved between hopelessness and anger. Why didn’t they deserve heat? They had paid their rent, struggled for it with pawned necklaces and traded furniture and hands scrubbed raw cleaning white women’s bloody clothes. Luz was red-faced, burning, and for a moment she was gratified with her temper. At the very least, it kept her warm.
That night, she dreamed of nothing—only prayed for morning.
TEN
Heat
“The name’s Avel, Avel Cosme.” The handyman removed his wide-brimmed Stetson as he stepped through the door. It had been several days since Maria Josie had received a note from the landlord. He would not cover the cost of heating problems, suggesting radiator issues were caused by misuse.
“Nope, not as far as I can tell,” said Avel, crouching in his creamy cowboy boots. “General wear and tear. I see it every day.”
Luz sat at the kitchen table with her knees to her chest beneath her wool blanket. Their tombstone radio rested beside the windowsill and was on Leon Jacob’s afternoon hour. Stand up, he was shouting through the airwaves. Don’t let the governor allow your brothers and sisters to starve! Fair wages now. Luz squinted at Avel, who walked tall with a handsome, capable stride. She couldn’t remember the last time any man besides Diego and the potential boarders had entered their home. The ceiling seemed lower with him beneath it.
Avel examined the cast-iron pipes, ran his fingers over the scrollwork. “Did you bleed it?”