Jorge and his brother, Guillermo, were quick to size him up as a loser devalued further by the mestizo cast to his features. Needless to say, they disapproved of the match.
“Edita,” they said. “You don’t have to marry the first man you meet.”
“Why not?”
Why not, indeed? After all, who was she to meet in this county of Anglos and Indians? Dominguez was the first Hispanic to come to Vanadium in a long time. There was no telling when the next one would breeze through in an emerald AMC Gremlin. In the end, her family would be worn down by her mopiness and her silence around the dinner table. They agreed to let them marry. Despite their nagging reservations, they took Dominguez in and taught him the family business. Then he was found, soon after the nuptials, drunk at the High Grade, Vanadium’s only café and bar, bragging about how much money his new family had. Guillermo Cantante, Edita’s uncle, dosed Dominguez’ tequila with a maggot he had harvested from a two week-old road kill. That night, Dominguez ran a fever of one hundred and seven degrees and dry-vomited and shat for eleven hours straight. When the concerned Edita stepped out of the room to empty his chamber pot, Carlito was given some friendly advice. He was told he was never to drink and talk about the family’s money again. After that, he didn’t. And when Carlito was found having an affair at the Geiger Motel with a divorcée who worked at the cooling and heating store, once again, Uncle Guillermo stepped in. A large and powerfully built man, he grabbed Dominguez through the window of his truck before he could pull out of the parking lot and drove him to a far out location on Lame Horse Mesa. There, Guillermo staked him five feet from a red ants’ nest and painted his genitalia with clover honey. When Guillermo returned three hours later after meeting friends in town for coffee, Dominguez’s bitten member had already swollen to the size and color of a Chinese Emperor’s coy. Once again, Uncle Guillermo gave him some friendly advice. Don’t be unfaithful to Edita. After that, he wasn’t. Years passed, and the old Cantantes eventually died off leaving Dominguez as head of the family. His ascension to the tile throne was soured by a daily reminder of his treatment at the hands of the Cantantes. His son Cookie, by some cruel genetic twist of fate, had grown into the spitting image of his old nemesis, Guillermo Cantante.
Enter Buster. He went from being an orphan to the center of attention with his three brothers and two sisters. Cookie, the eldest, did not take part in the joy of having a new baby in the family. Instead, he observed from the shadows. While technically still a child, Cookie already had the personality of a dyspeptic adult soured on the world. He was scary-looking to begin with. Even before he got diabetes, even before he was on his own and became bloated and puffy from alcohol, cheese sticks, and TV trays of Banquet fried chicken, his eyes—two malevolent drips of Bosco—looked swollen shut in a wince of unspeakable pain; pain that, when the time was right, Cookie Dominguez would make sure the world came up with the balance due.
One day, completely out of the blue, Cookie asked sweetly if he could feed the baby. Edita was heartened by his, request—pleased that Cookie had finally accepted his new little brother. Patiently, she instructed Cookie on how to lift Buster into his high chair, how to tie the bib around his neck, and make up his little food tray with a little dab of mashed peas, apple sauce, and pureed carrots, and how much food he should put on the spoon. Then she put the spoon in Cookie’s hand and stood back with her hands on her hips waiting for Cookie to begin. He put the spoon down.
“What’s wrong?” She said.
“I want to feed him by myself.”
“Can’t I stand here and watch, bollito?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to be alone with him.”
Edita hesitated. Her initial reflex was to say no, the loss of her last baby still haunting her.
“Well, what’s it gonna be?” Cookie said, “I don’t have all day.”
But then, she thought, perhaps it was time to lay her fears to rest.
“All right, Cookie. If you think you can do it by yourself. I’ll be in the next room.”
He waited with his hands at his sides until she left. Edita stood and listened before setting to work at the ironing board where a three-foot pile of Dominguez’s shirts awaited. She turned off the iron’s steam function to better hear. It was quiet in the next room, so she began to iron. A few minutes had passed when she thought she heard a choking sound. Or was it a baby chortling? She stopped and cocked an ear. No, that was choking! She threw the iron down and ran to the kitchen where she saw Buster, red-faced and desperate, trying to put his fingers in his mouth to clear his throat. His brother, meanwhile, sat impassively across from him, doing nothing. Edita pushed Cookie out of the way and quickly yanked Buster from his highchair, laid his stomach across her knees and began pounding his back. No good. She sat him up and performed what she could remember of the Heimlich maneuver that she had seen in a restaurant. Two violent contractions of her fists in Buster’s solar plexus sent the obstruction flying from his windpipe across the room where it smacked against the wall. Now being able to breathe, Buster managed a laugh and playfully reached lovingly for his brother’s face, but Edita held him tightly to her hip. At first glance, the object that Edita found near the wall, looked to be a Hershey’s Kiss. In that scenario, Cookie, out of affection for his brother, imprudently gave him a piece of hard-to-swallow candy. On closer examination, however, the object in question turned out to be a moving piece from the family’s popular board game.
“Sorry,” Cookie taunted as if playing the game.
“How did he get this?” Edita demanded.
“How the fuck should I know?”
Edita, slapped him so hard she turned his face sideways like a movie stuntman’s.
“Can I give him a bath?”
“Go to your room!”
How was it possible? All of her children were raised the same way, given the same amount of attention and yet, while the others were thoughtful and obedient, helpful around the house—even talking about the colleges they wanted to attend some day—Cookie was pen pals with a man by the name of Richard Ramirez—who, Edita later learned, was a serial killer on San Quentin’s death row.
She expressed her misgivings regarding Cookie’s moral turpitude to her husband, since he spent more time alone with Cookie than anyone else.
“Entender algo. I am not his father. His father is the Devil.”
It was clear that Buster’s security would rest solely on Edita’s shoulders. To her husband’s growing frustration, she moved the baby’s crib into their bedroom where it stayed for four years. During the day, while she cooked, did the laundry and the vacuuming, Edita carried Buster in a sling on her back. She bore him in this fashion until he weighed nearly sixty pounds—it having the welcome side effect of correcting her congenital scoliosis a doctor in Denver told her would never improve without surgery.
When Buster was finally placed on the ground, he was only allowed to play with his sisters. They fussed over him—cornrowing his red hair and dressing him in their clothes. This went on until he was eight—despite a constant barrage of sissy name calling by Cookie. Buster’s sequestration with his sisters came to an end when he was ten and already a foot taller than Cookie—who was a paddle-footed, squat and corpulent nineteen. Still somewhat fearful, Edita felt Buster was now physically capable of protecting himself.
“I’m thinking of letting you play with your brothers.”
“O-kay!!!”
