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 anymore — offered her a lift. She agreed, but he didn’t take her home, not right away, and she was scared and tried to fight him but … and Mamma saw her get out of the …Wilhelm is a nice man. He has gentle brown eyes and hairy arms and his hands are tender, even comforting on her neck and shoulders, or up and down her legs. He promises to help her open a store, promises to help Rosa. Her friends are excited that she will be the first among them to get married. One even said it’s smart of her to get out of the whole college and university mess by plunking herself right into a family business. And maybe it is, though it’s weird to think that many of her friends will be in school when she’s married and washing restaurant dishes, chopping vegetables, buying cakes, and then, later, having babies. How will she be able to do the things in the restaurant or her store plus all the things Mamma does: cleaning, cooking, changing, gardening? For now, at least, she is just the helper with the wash, her papa’s little girl.
“Good girl,” Mamma said when Teresa produced the silver ring with the small diamond, warm from clutching it tightly in her pocket. “Just make sure you’re not showing before the wedding.”
“Mamma! I’m not pregnant.”
Mamma looked surprised, but obviously believed her, the expression on her face changing from stern practicality to a wan hope.
“Then we can wait, Tera?”
Teresa agreed.
And Teresa can wait, too, wait as long as she has that ring tucked away: her promise. Wilhelm won’t betray her. She visits him every day at the restaurant, and he is, by all accounts, a man in love. “Family first,” he said, when she told him about waiting for Papa. “So many young people don’t understand that anymore. I’m glad you do.” Now she can still go to school, to the dances, shopping with friends, and take Rosa to the park or help her with sewing. And she knows her mother is happy she won’t be going to college or university to make a career for herself. “Girls are silly to want to act like men. They have no idea what men go through. The wars,” Mamma told her, “the wars could happen again, and then who will watch out for the children?” Teresa likes some of the old ways. Yes, she likes the idea of marriage and doesn’t want to be one of those girls, but there are also so many rules: the rule that makes Rosa stay in the house and take care of Mamma after Papa dies, the rule that Mamma can’t put Papa in a hospital, the rules about babies, the many babies she will be expected to have, unless she has one like Rosa.
When Teresa dreams about the wedding, she dreams about how everyone will dance, even Rosa, and the machinations behind her turn into music, the soaked sheet into a massive tablecloth. Mamma will smile, clap her hands, and grab on to a chair, thinking Papa beside her. Then a tall white cake rises to the front of her mind, along with frilly decorations, and proud invitations, especially the ones to Mamma and Papa’s families back in Portugal who won’t be able to come. Her hair will be worn up, in a twist, and she’ll carry white lilies in her hands. Sure, they will have to skimp on a few things, there has never been a lot of money and Wilhelm wants to put money aside for the future clothing store, but traditions are still traditions and the nice thing is she knows she will have all the necessities no matter what happens.