Delia’s Gift Read Free Page B

him with renewed hope. How could I run off and leave him like some rich fruit dying on the vine? How could I be so cruel? How could I be so selfish, especially when he was doing so much to make me comfortable and to ensure the health and welfare of my baby?
    No, Delia, I told myself. You must learn how to take advantage of good fortune when it comes to you and not dwell on memories of sadness and defeat.
    I thought of heading to the bathroom to take a shower, freshen up, and get into different clothing. Because of all there was to choose from, I was sure I would find something to wear. For a while at least, as I went back to the closet and sifted through some of the garments, my attention was taken off everything else. I felt like a little girl in a candy store told to take whatever she wanted.
    But then I heard mi tía Isabela’s unmistakable voice. She was just at the bottom of the stairway, arguing with Señor Bovio. I stepped out of the closet and moved closer to the double doors that had been leftslightly open and heard her say, “Are you mad, Ray? Why would you bring her here? The girl had a nervous breakdown and was in a clinic.”
    “I am not bringing only her. I am bringing my son’s child.”
    “Oh, that’s ridiculous. Let me send her back where she belongs and get her out of everyone’s hair once and for all. I should never have sent for her after her parents died. She doesn’t belong here.”
    “My son’s child does not belong in some backward Mexican village to grow up uneducated and live like some peon,” he countered angrily. “You didn’t think you did, and you were willing to defy your father to pull yourself up and out. Should I remind you of the things you told me? How you described this village to which you want me to send my grandchild?”
    Those words and his tone obviously took the wind out of her sails. She mumbled something, and the next thing I heard was her coming up the stairway. She was wearing one of her pairs of sharp, high-heeled shoes that gave her the staccato footsteps I knew all too well. They were usually the drumbeats of her anger and rage. I backed away from the door.
    Despite quickly feeling as though I had been taken to a fortress because of the walled-in property, the gates, and the security guards, and despite all the ways I was being insulated from the outside world, the arrival of mi tía Isabela was still terrifying.
    When she had found out from the clinic doctor that I was pregnant, it seemed to please her and to justify her sending me off. Her big threat was that she would not arrange for an abortion. She was surprised when I told her that was fine, that I didn’t want one, but shelooked happy about that as well. She knew that being an unwed mother would make my life even more miserable back in Mexico.
    “Fine. Be pregnant. I’ll make arrangements immediately for your return. Get yourself prepared for your life as a peasant. Go back to speaking Spanish,” she had told me.
    She had started to leave when I stood up and defiantly replied, “The truth in any language is still the truth, and the truth is that you are the one who suffers, Tía Isabela. You have no family. You will suffer all three deaths the same day your body dies, but don’t worry, I’ll light a candle for you.”
    I was referring to our belief that we die three times, once when our bodies die, once when we’re interred, and finally when we’re forgotten.
    She had just walked out after that. And then, before she could have me sent away the following morning, Señor Bovio had come to see me and had taken me off to be here with him.
    Now she was back, surely frustrated and annoyed, which made her more of a threat, more like a scorpion. She was coming to sting me in whatever way she still could. I could hear it in the clacking of her footsteps on the hallway’s marble floor.
    I retreated to the chair at the vanity table, and a moment later, she stepped into the bedroom suite. She was dressed as