“Can I just go home?” Luz asked.
“No.” Maria Josie breathed. She pulled a pipe from her coat pocket and lit her tobacco with a match. The air turned sulfuric. “I’m not leaving you in the apartment with some man, a man we don’t even know.” She chuckled. Attractive wrinkles appeared around her eyes. “Are you crazy?”
Luz stared, unblinking. Her eyes watered. “What if he’s stealing from us?”
“Well, he ain’t stealing you, and you’re the most valuable.”
“I’m not a child,” Luz said sternly, and then, under her breath, “Dammit, I hate it here.”
“Don’t let Big Cheryl hear that. She prides herself on keeping this place up.”
“Not here,” said Luz. “I mean, here. Inside myself, in this life.”
“This is a gift,” said Maria Josie. “It’s all we have.” She exhaled her tobacco smoke, considering the shapes of her breath. “You don’t feel it now, but someday you’ll know. You have very much, Luz.”
“I want to feel in control of my own life now, not someday,” said Luz. “I just want to feel safe, like I can do as I please.”
Maria Josie inhaled quickly and exhaled slowly, watching her smoke turn inward on itself like time collapsing into the past. Luz watched her auntie’s breath disappear into the factory lights.
“I know, Little Light,” she said. “I want that, too.”
ELEVEN
We Should All Be as Happy as Kings
In the morning, Luz set out for the streetcar with her hair curled and her lips a soft pink. Her winter coat showed signs of wear in the elbows and collar, so Luz figured she’d draw attention upward, toward her face. She was going to look for work in the Eastside—where the money was. She waited on the corner for the Green Line, a streetcar she seldom took, as they didn’t allow her and Lizette to ride with laundry sacks.
When the car came over the hill and juddered to a halt, Luz climbed inside, avoiding eye contact with the driver as she paid her fare. She swayed down the aisle toward the Spanish and Colored section. Sometimes, if she was alone or the car seemed particularly empty, Luz stood closer to the middle. Her skin was light enough from her father. But on this morning, the car was full, and every white-dish face stared as Luz scrambled to the back, where another girl not much older than Luz sat with a sack of colorful yarn balls in her lap. She looked up when Luz stood beside her and gripped the brass handle. The girl gently pointed at Luz’s hair. “Pretty,” she said. Luz thanked her and turned toward the window for fifteen long minutes.
The neighborhood eventually eased out of the short stacks of downtown factories and office buildings. Luz rocked side to side as the streetcar climbed past the courthouse and capitol until they arrived at the vast mansions with stone balconies and widow’s walks. Luz pulled the chain and exited through the rear. Against the cold wind, she walked for several sandstone blocks, arriving at the Rose Dixon Library just before noon. The building was constructed with beige bricks and red Spanish shingles while marble lions adorned the dead garden. Those lions scared Luz with their white eyes, as if warning her to stay away from their kingdom.
Inside the library, Luz stomped sleet from her boots and studied the expansive hall, the waxed floors. An orb of sunlight, constantly shifting just out of step, beamed down from the stained glass windows. The room smelled vaguely of incense, and Luz tilted her face to the high ceiling, where a mural depicted a gathering of bears with tint-black snouts and padded paws. They danced on a table piled with meats, and beneath them were the words: THE WORLD IS SO FULL OF A NUMBER OF THINGS, I’M SURE WE SHOULD ALL BE AS HAPPY AS KINGS
At the front, behind a wide oak desk, a busty librarian sat beneath the light of a lime-green lamp. She had copper hair with a pencil behind her right ear, and was reading a copy of the Rocky Mountain News. She shuffled sections with her arms waving like an accordion player’s before settling on a page. She set the paper down and smoothed the center fold with both hands. It was a crossword puzzle, and the librarian vigorously worked the first lines as Luz, with trepidation, approached her post.
“May I help you?” the librarian asked, keeping her face to the paper.
“I’m looking for the community board,” said Luz. “For jobs and such.”
The librarian sighed. She dropped her pencil onto the paper and searched behind Luz. There was another librarian, an older man with a melon of a stomach. He had a thin mustache and striped suspenders. He cleaned a stack of leather-bound books with an orange cloth.
“Excuse me,” Luz said, her voice louder this time and seeming to come from somewhere lower than her throat, a place closer to her heart. “The community board?”
The librarian looked straight at Luz. She had a blank face with an unflinching mouth. “Do wait here,” she said, and rose from her seat, her heels click-clacking as she walked across the shining floor. Patrons glanced up from their reading materials. A white-haired woman stared at Luz. She had glasses hanging around her neck by a string of pearls. There was a dog in her lap, some sort of purebred with a ratlike face, and it looked at Luz, too. They let dogs in here?
The librarian approached the older man cleaning books. He stopped his task and leaned down as the librarian whispered something in his ear. The older librarian nodded, draping his orange cloth over his left shoulder. He then walked over to Luz. He had watery blue eyes with gobs of sleep in each corner. His mustache fluttered like curtains as he spoke. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a community board.”
Luz felt disoriented. She looked around, keeping her body rigid. She squinted and pointed past the man’s shoulder to a corkboard near the water fountain. Flyers for concerts and dances had been posted with pushpins. “What’s that there?” she asked.
The man didn’t turn around to look. He scratched his neck beneath his yellowing collar. “I apologize, again, but we don’t have a community board for you.”
“But that’s a community board, isn’t it? That’s all I needed to know, thank you,” Luz said, beginning to walk over.
“It’s a community board for our other guests,” he said, quickly holding out a hand, halting her.
“It’s not in Spanish,” blurted the other librarian, who now stood beside the man, fixing the thin belt around her lilac sweater. She’d spoken as if delivering a Sunday sermon.
Luz felt heat on her skin, from her face to her feet, an ugly rising fire. For a moment, she stepped outside of herself and pictured Lizette in the library, her vast personality swarming the stacks. I’m speaking to you in English, ain’t I? Luz thought to holler.
“If you don’t have any more questions,” said the older librarian, “kindly be on your way.”
Luz stood there for a moment. The other patrons watched, their faces beaming with something like pity or hatred or minor inconvenience. There were many places she had been told she wasn’t allowed. Denver Dry Goods, Elitch Gardens, over the dead in Cheesman Park, and now, here, some rich neighborhood’s library.
“I just need to look for jobs,” she said.
“We have our own people who need jobs. I suggest you try your own neighborhood.”