Chapter 12: His Mother's Boss

Beatriz Armijo was making tea at ten o'clock at night when her son set a brass altimeter on her kitchen table.

She had her back to us.

The kettle began to sing.

Eloy did not say a word.

I stood just inside the door with my hands in my jacket pockets.

He had asked me to come.

I had not asked why.

His mother turned the kettle off, slowly.

She saw what was on the oilcloth.

For a long moment she did not move at all.

"Where did you get that?" Beatriz said.

"From Adelina's hangar. Her husband left it in a drawer."

"Her husband."

"Nestor Gurule," Eloy said. "You dropped a fork when she said his mother cleaned houses."

Beatriz folded her hands in front of her cardigan.

She was very small in the yellow light, and her face had no color in it.

"Sit down, both of you," she said.

Eloy pulled out a chair for me.

I sat.

He did not.

"Nine years," Beatriz said. "That woman kept this kitchen for nine years."

She looked at the stove.

"She was twenty-two when she came. She made the best red chile I ever tasted."

"Mamá," Eloy said.

"Let me say it in the order it happened."

Nobody spoke.

"In the spring of 1993 I found out she was carrying a child," his mother said.

"I was thirty-two. You were five years old and asleep upstairs."

She paused.

"I did not need anyone to tell me whose it was."

Eloy's hand closed on the back of the chair.

"I did not make a scene," Beatriz said. "I went to the bank and drew out five thousand dollars."

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