Tree of Sighs by Lucrecia Guerrero

Author:Lucrecia Guerrero
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-939743-06-0
Publisher: Bilingual Press
Published: 2014-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

I told Kenny to take a seat at the dining room table while I went to the kitchen for dessert. “A special cake,” I said, and he furrowed his brow trying to remember what anniversary he’d forgotten.

When I returned, he grinned. “OK,” he said, “I give. Why’s a cake sitting in a pan of milk?”

“I got the recipe from a Mexican cookbook,” I said. “It was my favorite when I was a kid. Tres leches, that’s what the cake’s called.” I’d practiced my speech announcing my real identity, but words were tumbling about helter-skelter inside my head the way they tended to do whenever I was upset.

“That so?” Kenny put his forearms on the table and leaned forward.

“I used to be Mexican,” I said, fast before I could censor myself.

“What?” Kenny glanced around the dining room, as if he half-expected a hidden camera to pop out.

“Remember that phone call? Way back in late October? You came inside, told me I looked like I’d seen a ghost?” I rattled on. “You asked me who called, I said it was someone I used to know?”

“What’s that got to do with you saying you’re Mexican?” He stared at the cake as if the answer might be floating on the milk.

“Used to be,” I said. But I didn’t feel Mexican. Home is where the heart is, Violet used to say when she’d talk about her childhood in Kentucky. Where was my heart? I giggled nervously.

“If this is supposed to be a joke, Grace, I don’t get it.” Kenny studied me as if I were an escapee from a mental institution.

I swallowed hard to force down another giggle. “Here’s the thing,” I said. “Violet—the woman who called—she’s Molly Carol’s sister. That’s who Grandmother gave me to when I was a kid, an adolescent really. To Molly Carol. Not Violet.” I shook my head, as if I could force my thoughts to fall into some order. “Let me start from the beginning.”

“Yeah, maybe you’d better,” Kenny said. He was trying to appear calm, but I could see the splotchy-red flush spreading up his throat and into his face.

“I was born in Mexico. My name is … Altagracia Villalobos.” I pronounced my name with an American accent, but even with the English mushiness, it sounded foreign. I didn’t want to watch the blood drain in and out of Kenny’s face, so I closed my eyes. Just as I had when I lived in the basement of Molly Carol’s house, I brought my life onto the screen of the backs of my eyelids. In spurts and pauses, I described to Kenny what I saw, giving only the main points of my life from the day of my parents’ death, my days with Molly Carol, moving to the streets, years of surviving.

As I spoke, Kenny breathed shallowly, as if he were afraid to miss a word, but his breath soon became ragged, quick with anger. Every once in awhile he’d mutter, “Shit,” or, “I don’t believe this.”

“I have false documents,” I said finally.

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