it, Magda.” Tonio nods vigorously and starts coughing. Magdala jumps off her stool and shoves the letter and envelope into the pocket of her apron. Silent, she hands over a fresh handkerchief, waits to see how bad the fit will be, then walks to the other side of the bed to shut the blinds, the missing slats like empty spaces in an old smile.
“I was crawling in the dirt and …”
“Tony, the war is over.”
No, he tries to tell her, no, no. He can’t get it out; only the coughs. The fire swells in his lungs. Tonio wants to build himself a shelter in the garden, beside the zucchini, the firm and large vessels almost as tall as the stakes, wants to become one of them, wrapped in tough wax, plucked ripe. He has a plan, wants to tell Magdala he has a plan, if only he could just finish his dream uninterrupted. If only he could have wind, maybe the sheets would move and someone would see he has already surrendered. When things move, people notice them, he thinks. Let me dig my hole.
Magdala picks up the plastic meal tray and turns to leave. “You need anything, Papa?”
“A hole in the dirt.”
Madgala stops at the door, her back to Tonio. “Don’t say that Tony, please …” She closes it behind her.
Tonio wants to see the girls today, but knows that he won’t. He said too much and said it all wrong, and he curses the dreams that keep his words away, hoarding them, shoving them deeper inside his body. The little bombs are like my words, he thinks, shooting inside all hot, fiery, and useless, poking me in the ribs and thighs, making me feel but not tell. Rosa and Teresa. He wants to see them. They are good girls to their papa, but Teresa’s too pretty and Rosa knows about the dreams. He can tell. She dreams, too, but he doesn’t know what she dreams of, and neither of them could ever find the right words to share them. She always says, “Sweet dreams, Papa. Sweet ones today,” and Tonio wants to take her in his arms and kiss her, even though she is too big, and sometimes he can’t control his hands so the girls aren’t supposed to touch him in case they get hit. So, instead, they wave to each other, nod, and once in a while Rosa combs his hair. Tonio tells Magdala what to say to them, especially if he thinks they’re in trouble. He tells her to warn Teresa about boys and Rosa about crossing the street. “Teach Rosa how to do things for herself,” he says. “Soon you’ll need her.” And Magdala has been teaching her all about the chores. She’s a good woman. She knows about these things.
Tonio never sees the girls in the dreams, but thinks that sometimes they can see him from the window. Maybe they want to see what he’ll do, if he can make it, and when he thinks this, he can feel their eyes on him like rays. Sometimes the girls hang the shirts on the line for their mamma. They help out, see the stains, wash them out. All have been passed the recipe. They know the things he can’t help doing. Know about the laundry. Some days he can smell the sting of all that salt as they pass by his door. But he doesn’t see their hands in his dreams, rubbing out his shirts and sheets, cold under the water. The hands that need to work are his own. He is the one in charge of getting out.
Good shirts, all white and strong, no holes. Tonio holds on to the one he is wearing, stripping the front off his wine-sweaty chest, crunching his hands into fists. Pulling, rocking on the bed, he tries to rip it. The top, he notices, has a stronger stitch than the bottom, so he switches his mode of attack, yanking the cloth down and up, until his fingernails hurt and he can’t catch his breath. The shirt is swollen but undefeated, and he is coughing hard again. Rosa knocks. By the height of the sound, he can tell that she is using her leg to hit against the wood.
“Papa? Papa? You need Mamma?”
He waves her away, but the door is between them. Alone. He wants to be alone. Alone with his white shirt. But he can hear Rosa’s uneven walk shuffling down the hallway, and soon she is calling for Mamma, Mamma. Magdala charges in, shutting the door on Rosa.
Tonio starts to cry.
“Have you had an accident? Don’t cry, Papa. I can wash the sheets.” Nodding, he lets her lift his frame, bend him, and turn him sideways until all the corners of the sheets are untucked. Then a hard tug and a quick smell, her nose like a small animal’s. Opening the door, she then hands the sheets to Rosa, the white middle stained yellow, the left corner red. Rosa trudges downstairs and Tonio knows she will start the rigourous rubbing before placing the sheets in the washer. He also knows he won’t be given any more wine to sip.
Tonio holds out his arm. He wants to touch Magdala, tell her everything is fine, that she doesn’t understand, the dream will end soon. Wants to feel her strong cheeks, bury himself in the grey ribbons of her hair. She walks over, kisses him on the forehead, wipes away her own sweat underneath her nose. Upset that he has failed to keep everything white once again, he turns his head on his pillow and pretends to fall asleep. Magdala gives the rest of the room a quick inspection, checks the wastebasket, then the four corners, lingering for a moment on the photographs on the wall as if deciding whether or not to move them, then exits, shutting the door. Tonio stares out the cracked blinds to the garden, wonders where all the fire and water will go, what they will take with them. One day, perhaps soon, in his fits of coughing, he’ll know, and rid himself of both dreams.
Rust Stains: Apply lemon juice and salt; then place in oven.
She is surprised it hasn’t died yet. Endlessly, every day, it turns and turns; then rests its weary frame at night, though it seems to be on its last legs, moaning and trudging along, wide torso churning.
Having insisted on helping with the wash, Teresa waits for the spin cycle to stop. With Mamma’s back trouble it’s getting difficult for her to carry the loads herself, even if the stairs are few to the basement. Soaking in salt in the metal basin are Papa’s sheets, turning the white water pink. She will scrub them with more detergent before inserting them in the next load. Soon the wash will be entirely Rosa’s job, when Teresa marries and leaves the house, although this will not happen before Papa dies. But she has her ring, her promise, her simple silver band and four-karat diamond, in the bottom drawer of her dresser, in the pocket of her good pair of black pants that she wears only to funerals. Until she wears those pants to bid Papa a final goodbye, it helps him to have his girls in the house.
She showed Mamma the ring a month ago, two weeks after Wilhelm proposed, when they were out drying the laundry. But she hasn’t shown Papa the ring, or Rosa. Rosa wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut, they decided, and Papa still likes to think of the girls as the little children they were when he was first confined to the bedroom. No one wants to upset Papa. Mamma does the dirty work, dumping the pan if Papa is able to warn her in time, or else cleaning his underwear. Lifting his frame, she arranges him into positions for eating and sleeping, and reads letters from back home out loud to him until they are both choked up and Papa coughing. There is blood sometimes, too, that Mamma tries to hide. Teresa worries about where the blood comes from, which part of Papa hurts the most. At first she thought it was blood on Papa’s sheet, like on the clothes she threw away, and she was prepared to throw out Papa’s sheets, too. However, upon closer inspection, the sweet linger of the smell informed her otherwise. So, she filled the basin with hot water and now watches it swoosh in waves beside the rumble of the machine.
When Teresa is alone in her room, she likes to hold the engagement ring in her hand, but then returns it guiltily to the darkness of her drawers when she hears Papa’s coughing. No dreaming yet of what is to come. Not that she’s anxious to leave exactly either. Wilhelm is a nice man, it’s not that. And handsome. They met at his restaurant, House of Rio, a diner where she and her friends sometimes stopped for coffee and cake after school. Wilhelm was washing the countertops and offered her an extra slice of carrot cake. Then he started picking her up from school. Lots of her friends knew about it, about her romance with this man almost ten years older, and then a man at the restaurant, a regular customer — the one she won’t name
