Fragile Night by Stella Pope Duarte

Author:Stella Pope Duarte
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-931010-95-5
Publisher: Bilingual Press

PENGUIN’S MOTHER

As far as anybody knew, Penguin's mother had never committed a mortal sin. She went to church faithfully every Sunday. Her dark hair hung in glossy waves down her back, and her simple dress, caught at the waist by a faded black belt, showed her trim, shapely figure. She commanded admiring looks from the men, and suspicious glances from the women.

“I've never been one to fool around. God is everywhere,” she told her neighbor Esperanza. “Just because that worthless run-around of mine took off with another woman is no reason for me to go crazy.”

The bitter herbs life served Penguin's mother eventually made her forget she had ever tasted anything sweet. Her huge, tragic eyes found fault with everything. And faults were easy to find in the dismal housing project where she lived with her children. Bleak yellowed lawns, sagging rooftops, and broken windows proclaimed more than poverty. There was hopelessness in the air, thick as the locusts buzzing away in the trees.

“You're not to open the door to anyone,” she told her children every evening as she left for work at the meat packing company. “Do you understand?” Six-year-old Penguin smiled, showing one tooth already missing in the front.

Katrina, already in the seventh grade, half listened with one ear glued to the phone receiver. She played mom to Penguin because she was older than he was and knew better. It was understood that Katrina would help Penguin with all his first-grade work while she struggled alone with the demands of homework from the junior high. Besides the homework, dinner had to be served at the kitchen table that sprouted a concrete leg. One wooden leg had cracked beyond repair, and Penguin's mother solved the problem by creating a new leg. She supported the warped table top on two concrete blocks stacked in the space vacated by the deformed limb.

The rest of the crowded apartment showed as much order and cleanliness as time and money allowed. Cheap prints from the Goodwill store hung on the walls, and a calendar from St. Isidro's church took up space next to the refrigerator. Important saints' days were noted by a star drawn in blue ink, and birthdays were colored in with a crayon. The living room and kitchen windows boasted handmade curtains that Penguin's mother had sewn from material found at a rummage sale. The bedroom windows were covered by pull-down shades, and nothing else.

Every morning Penguin's mother walked her two children to the school-bus stop, standing back while they waited with other children for the seven o'clock bus. Looking at her son, she silently prayed that he would gain strength in his legs and not have to wear the braces the doctor had suggested.

The way his feet turned outward made him walk like a penguin, which was how he got his nickname. Try as she would, Penguin's mother couldn't make the children stop calling him by his nickname. Then again, she didn't like his real name either. Everytime she heard the name Roberto it sent a message of hatred from her head to her toes.

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