Delia’s Gift (14 page)

“There you are,” my nurse cried when Fani wheeled me out of the elevator. “You have to tell me if you’re leaving the floor.”

“We couldn’t find you,” Fani said.

The nurse looked at her askance and indicated that she should wheel me into my room. I got back into bed and took my pills.

“Even though he’s tiny, he’s a beautiful baby, isn’t he, Fani?”

She laughed. “
Sí,
Delia. Although I have dolls so much bigger that it’s hard to think of him as a real baby.”

“Oh, he’s real, all right.”

“Okay, you call me if you want anything. Oh,” she said, returning from the door. “You probably don’t know. Edward and your aunt had one helluva fight, apparently. He left college.”

“What? Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Jesse doesn’t know, either. One day, he just upped and walked out. You come from one crazy family. Your cousin Sophia has already been asked to leave the College of the Desert. I heard she was caught stoned in one of her classes. Best thing that happened to you was your moving in with my cousin. Don’t get him upset. He’s your meal ticket as well as every other ticket.”

I said nothing.

She smiled and fixed my blanket. “See you later, alligator,” she told me, laughed, and left.

I stared up at the ceiling. I wanted to think more about all she had told me. I was very worried about Edward, especially, but I felt so exhausted, and the pill was starting to kick in. I fell asleep quickly and didn’t
wake up again until it was dinnertime. The nurse’s aide brought up the back of my bed, and I was given my tray. Just as I started to eat, Señor Bovio entered my room. I held my breath in anticipation of hearing him express his anger. For a long moment, he simply stared at me.

“
Hola,
Señor Bovio.”

“I didn’t want to see you until you were strong enough to talk,” he said, unsmiling. “How could you do such a thing, Delia?”

“What do you mean, Señor Bovio? This isn’t my fault.”

He shook his head and walked to the window.

“
Señor
?”

“I did everything in my power to make things easier for you, didn’t I? I stood up for you against your aunt. I provided you with the best possible care.” He spun around. “I put you in my wife’s suite, my wife’s bed!”

I started to cry. “Señor Bovio, the doctor—”

“Is as disappointed in you as I am,” he quickly said, and returned to my bedside.

I looked down rather than up at him. His eyes were blazing with so much anger I thought they would burn my face.

“Why,
señor
?” I asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Why? Why? Dr. Denardo is a good doctor. I told you he was one of the best. He was so surprised at your condition that he had to get to the bottom of it, Delia. He insisted that the lab do the work, and I’m surprised you were so foolish as to think he wouldn’t.”

I looked up. “What are you saying, Señor Bovio? I
don’t know what you mean, and you are frightening me.”

“You should be frightened. Your blood had evidence of what you teenagers,” he said, making the word “teenagers” sound like profanity, “call Ecstasy.”

“No,
señor
. No, no.”

“There wasn’t much, I’ll admit, but enough to show you had used it. Did you use it every night, every other night?”

“Never,
señor
. This is not true.”

“You can’t argue with scientific results, Delia. Were you not worried about our baby?”

I shook my head, my tears literally flying off every which way.

“Was this how you avoided being bored? You complained a great deal about it to Mrs. Newell. She told me she was ready to quit us, that you were so disobedient she couldn’t deal with you anymore.”

“That’s not fair, not true. None of this is true, Señor Bovio.”

“I should take no pity on you, Delia. You nearly killed my Adan twice,” he said.

I felt all of the blood in my face rush out when he said that. My head felt ten times as heavy. The room started to spin. I struggled to remain conscious. I couldn’t keep myself in a sitting position and fell back against my pillow, shaking my head.

“No,
señor
. It’s not so. No…”

He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “You can come back to the
hacienda
to recuperate. I will do all I promised. I will get you what you need to go to a school, and you will go and live your own life, the life your fate decides for you. I don’t want you returning
to the hospital to see Adan while he is here struggling to live. Mrs. Newell will take care of you and see that you grow strong and healthy again. If you disobey her this time, I’ll send you packing.”

“These are all lies, Señor Bovio.”

“Don’t try my patience anymore, Delia. There’s no point in your continuing to deny what you’ve done. Besides the laboratory results, I have Fani’s confession.”

“What? Fani? What confession?” I asked, looking up at him.

“She admits it’s possible you took some of that drug when you were at her house for your secret meeting with Edward. Edward is not very stable these days. She says she couldn’t deny that you brought drugs back to my
hacienda.
”

I felt my lungs harden, my mouth get too dry for my tongue to move and form words. “I don’t believe she said such a thing.”

“You can continue to be friends with her. I don’t care what you do with yourself now.”

“Friends with her? She is lying if she said that.”

“Yes, everyone is lying but you, Delia. The doctor and the laboratory are lying. I’m afraid your aunt Isabela was right about you, right about what I should and shouldn’t have done. Maybe you should seriously consider returning to Mexico. It would be easier to keep your deceptions unknown, and you could start again. But not with my Adan.”

“Nooooo.”

“Whatever you decide is fine with me. As I said, I am an honorable man. I will live up to my part of this bargain we made, even though you have not been hon
est with me. I do it for my son, who saw something good in you. I do it for his memory. However, once you are gone, you are gone,” he said. He stood up straighter and shook his head at me. “You make me ashamed of myself, of how I shared my innermost feelings about my wife and my son with you.”

“Please,
señor,
” I begged. “Do not think these terrible things about me.”

“I won’t think of them, Delia. It’s my hope and prayer that eventually I will forget them and you altogether. But for now, we’ll do as I said. The doctor tells me you can be released tomorrow, since Mrs. Newell will be attending to you, anyway. It’s an unnecessary expense to keep you here. Stevens will come by when you are discharged and take you back. I am having Teresa move you out of my wife’s suite, of course, to another bedroom in the
hacienda
. What clothes of my wife’s and things of hers, except the jewelry, of course, that you have used will be moved out with you so you can have something of a wardrobe. I have also asked her to take your own things, the things you came with to the
hacienda,
to your new room. Your aunt says she has some things to send over as well. She doesn’t want them even in the help’s quarters. Stevens will take you for your doctor visits.”

I felt as if I were sinking into the bed, disappearing. Another urgent thought rose to the surface, however. I reached for Señor Bovio’s hand.

“Ignacio,” I said.

He pulled his hand away. “You have betrayed him as well, Delia. I can do nothing for him now.”

He turned and started for the door. I tried to call him back, but he was gone before I had even pro
nounced his name. My crying brought back my pain. The nurse came in, ordered my tray taken away, and then, confused about why I was so upset, decided to give me some more pain medication. She thought it would be better for me if I slept. I thought it might be better if I slept forever.

Whatever she gave me wore off by the middle of the night. I woke with a start and looked around my room, dimly illuminated by the light that came from the hallway. Had I dreamed all that had happened? Was Señor Bovio really here, or was it a hallucination caused by the pain medication? How I wished that were true, but his words echoed too loudly in my brain.

I sat up to think. It was possible he had fabricated all of this, I thought. He had wanted me to go off and live an independent life without Adan Jr., hadn’t he? Wasn’t he always talking about it, suggesting it, telling me how he would make it all possible? He was going to buy me a car, pay for college, set me up with money. He knew I did not want to leave my baby behind. I had told him it would be too soon, and I had recently told him I would be better off out of the area. Surely, he was afraid that I would carry through with my plans.

The doctor and Fani were his allies and would say anything he wanted, as Mrs. Newell certainly would. The premature birth of Adan Jr. triggered this vicious new plan. How could I fight him? What could I do?
Mi tía
Isabela would even be on his side. She would see her revenge. What had happened to Edward, and what would happen to Ignacio and the Davila family? Look at me, I thought. I could barely get myself to the bathroom, much less do anything to help anyone else.

The thought of my having to leave and never seeing my baby again sent a sword of ice through my heart. I took deep breaths to keep myself from crying and crying. Then an idea came to me, and I went to the wheelchair. I wheeled myself to the door and gazed up and down the corridor. It was very quiet, the very walls looking asleep. I did hear some muffled noise coming from the nurses’ station, but I saw no one. As softly as I could, I wheeled myself to the elevator, entered, and pushed the button for the NICU floor. When the door opened, I saw a corridor just as quiet and empty as mine. Again, I wheeled softly to the NICU doors. This late at night, there was no one at the reception desk. I went around to the intercom. After a moment, a nurse inside answered. It wasn’t Nurse Cohen.

“I’m Adan Bovio’s mother,” I said. “Please, can I see him?”

She was quiet a moment and then said, “Yes.”

The doors opened, and she met me and had me wash my hands.

“It’s late,” she said as I washed.

“I had a bad dream,” I told her.

She nodded with understanding. “He’s okay. Come along,” she told me.

I dried my hands, and she pushed me to his pod. He was moving more than when I had first seen him. I put my hand in and touched his hand, and he turned his head in my direction so firmly even the nurse had to exclaim.

“They say a baby knows its mother,” she told me.

“And a mother knows her child,” I said softly. “Forever and ever.”

I sat there gently touching him until the nurse
thought I should return. She had called down to my nurse, who was very upset at how I had snuck up.

“She’s waiting for you just outside the door,” the NICU nurse told me.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “Good-bye for now Adan. I will not lose you. I promise.”

“Why would you lose your son?” the NICU nurse asked, curious.

“You’d be surprised,” I said, “how easily we lose the ones we love the most.”

She didn’t respond.

She wheeled me out.

I didn’t look back. I looked ahead. Whatever I had to do, whatever maze I had to go through, whatever challenges awaited me out there, I would meet and I would defeat.

Abuela Anabela would have it no other way.

D
r. Denardo stopped by in the morning to discharge me. He told me that Mrs. Newell was filling all of my prescriptions.

“Don’t neglect the antibiotics,” he warned. “You’re still in some danger of infection. I’ll see you in my office exactly one week from today. Mrs. Newell has the time for the appointment.”

I listened but said nothing.

He noticed my silence, of course, and sighed. “I’m sorry for your troubles, Delia. I’m sure Adan Jr. will be all right despite everything.”

“I did not take any recreational drugs, Dr. Denardo. I would swear on my parents’ graves.”

“Yes, well, we’ve got to think beyond all that now, Delia. Let’s concentrate on your recuperation.”

It was clear that he still didn’t believe me or didn’t want to believe me. He turned and walked out to sign the discharge papers. My nurse came in to help me dress, and then, when the time came, she got me into the wheelchair and took me down. No one suggested that I go up to my baby to say good-bye. It was as if the entire hospital staff had heard the stories about me. I could feel it in the air, see it in their faces. Stevens was waiting at the hospital entrance to the parking lot. He had brought Señor Bovio’s limousine as close as he could to the entrance and then met me and my nurse. She helped me to the automobile and wished me luck, but she also looked as if she couldn’t wait to get away.

“Comfortable, Miss?” Stevens asked.

Comfortable? When would I ever be comfortable again?

“Yes,” I said. There was no point in complaining to Stevens.

I looked out at the hospital and up at the windows of the floor where I knew the NICU was, where Adan Jr. lay connected to all sorts of machinery. He knows I’m leaving, I thought. He feels it. I sat back and closed my eyes, dozing all the way to the estate. When we arrived, Mrs. Newell stepped out of the front entrance and waited. She made no effort to help me out of the car or up the steps. Stevens held my arm instead.

“You’re downstairs now,” she told me. “Toward the rear,” she added, nodding at Stevens. I could see he looked surprised.

I was in no mood to say anything or even care. I had never been in that section of the
hacienda,
but I knew
it was where Teresa stayed. She came down the stairs when she saw me enter and immediately asked how I was.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“How frightening it must have been.”

“I’m sure you have something better to do than stand here and keep her from lying down, Teresa,” Mrs. Newell said. Teresa nodded and quickly walked off toward the laundry room. “I’ll take her from here, Stevens,” Mrs. Newell told him.

“Right,” he said, let go of my arm, and left.

She held me at the elbow and firmly guided me down the corridor and around to the rear of the house. When we reached an opened door, she paused.

“This is it,” she said. “All of your things are already hung up or in the dresser.”

I entered the small bedroom. I would share a bathroom with Teresa, who was two doors down in another bedroom. The window in my bedroom looked out at the rear of the estate. At least I could see clearly to the stables, where I thought I saw Amigo grazing in the corral. Then I looked around my new room.

It wasn’t a dirty or dingy room, nothing like the help’s quarters at
mi tía
Isabela’s estate. It was clean and simple, with two dressers, a double bed, a rocking chair with a standing lamp, a small chandelier at the center of the ceiling, and plain light-blue curtains on the two windows. There was a Spanish tile floor with a small oval dark-brown area rug by the bed. On the nightstand by the bed were a pitcher of water, my medications neatly lined up beside it, and a glass.

“Normally, you would be in the hospital at least another day or so,” Mrs. Newell said when I sat on the
bed. “So, except for your going to the bathroom, I’d like you to remain in bed or not go any farther than that rocking chair. I expect you will listen to me this time when I tell you what to do and what not to do,” she added, smirking. “I’ll have Teresa bring you the magazines and books still up in Señora Bovio’s suite. Make sure you go to the bathroom, however, when you need to go. I don’t do bedpans.”

She went to my pills.

“You’ll take one of these now. I have your schedule and will see to it that you follow it correctly, so pay attention.” She handed me the pill and poured me a glass of water.

I took it and swallowed and drank. She put the glass down and started out, but then she stopped at the doorway.

“I’m sure you can get yourself undressed and into bed. Your nightgown is in the top dresser drawer.” She stared at me a moment. “Have you experienced any leaking from your nipples?”

“No.”

“You might.”

“Shouldn’t we use my milk? Adan Jr. could—”

“Of course not. Who knows what remains in your body?”

“Remains? But—”

“Do not concern yourself with what the baby will be fed and not fed. It’s all well taken care of. Concern yourself with yourself.” She blinked her usual smile and then said, “In a way, you’re lucky this happened to you. I would have been long gone after you so blatantly disobeyed my orders and not here to help you recuperate.”

I said nothing, but I thought that if being happy had anything to do with recuperation, I would never recuperate. She waited a moment and then left. Leaving the hospital, the trip home, and confronting all of this had exhausted me. That, with the effect of the pain pills, quickly put me to sleep. When I woke up, there was some lunch on a tray on the small table and a pile of magazines and books on the dresser. I laughed at the food I was now being given. There was a large cheese and ham sandwich, a Coke, potato salad, and a rather large piece of chocolate cake. Apparently gone was any attention to my so-called nutritional diet. Whether I gained too much weight was no longer Mrs. Newell’s worry.

I was hungry and did eat most of it. Then, like some prisoner in solitary confinement, I began to walk in a circle around my small room. I knew that exercise was important, and I was determined to get as strong as I could as quickly as I could. Teresa was surprised to see me shuffling along when she came to get my tray.

“Hi,” I said, happy to see a friendly face.

“Mrs. Newell sent me for your tray, but she said that after today, you have to go to the kitchen yourself for your meals.”

“Good. At least she’s letting me walk that far,” I said. “I’m not afraid of making my own food and caring for myself, Teresa. I didn’t have someone else doing that for me until I was treated like a member of my aunt’s family and not one of her servants.”

“I’m sorry for your troubles, dear. I’ll help you as much as I can.”

“Don’t put yourself in any jeopardy for me, Teresa.
I’ve managed to cause harm to enough people as it is,” I said.

“I’m sure you don’t cause anyone harm, Miss.”

She smiled, took the tray, and left. It amused me to know that part of my hard existence now was to be caring for myself. Did Señor Bovio and his favorite private-duty nurse really believe I had become that spoiled?

Back to walking, I thought, and circled the room until I had to go to the bathroom. Having so much time to myself permitted me to think more and more about what had happened. Why was Fani so two-faced? When I had first met her, she seemed quite independent and unconcerned about anyone’s opinion of her. And what about all that business with her own parents? Why did she confide in me if she would betray me like this? These questions and my disappointment in her buzzed like angry bees in my brain.

Although I was still weak and even groggy from my pills, I decided to go out to the phone in the kitchen and try to call her.

The
hacienda
was very quiet. It was that time in midday when everyone could take a rest. I shuffled along and entered the kitchen. There was no one there, but a chicken was in a pot defrosting for the evening’s meal. I didn’t imagine it was for me. Of course, Mrs. Newell and Señor Bovio would have to be fed, I thought. I tried Fani’s home number first, thinking she might still have not returned to college. To my surprise, she picked up on the second ring.

“It’s me,” I said. “I’m back in the Bovio
hacienda.
”

“Good for you. I was just putting my stuff together. I’m driving back to Los Angeles; otherwise, I’d stop by.”

“I don’t want you to stop by, Fani.”

“Huh?”

“Why did you make up that lie about me? Why did you say I might have taken drugs at your home?”

She was quiet for a long moment. I thought she was deciding whether or not to hang up on me. “Who told you that?” she asked.

“Señor Bovio.”

“I didn’t say that exactly,” she said. “All I said when he asked me was that I couldn’t swear one way or another about you.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know if you had done something with Edward when you and he were alone. I couldn’t swear to your not doing it, could I? I knew he was doing some drugs at college.”

“You never told me that.”

“I told you he was depressed about Jesse and everything.”

“But…”

“My cousin said the lab report on you showed some traces of X, so I just assumed that was where or how you might have gotten it. I told him I didn’t search you before I brought you home. Besides, I didn’t care if you did take it or not. I’m not going to say I haven’t,” she added, laughing.

“But he thinks that was the same as your telling him I did.”

“I can’t control what he thinks, Delia, especially after the doctor told him about your lab report. You don’t have to put on this act for me. I told you that I don’t care. It doesn’t affect my feelings about you one way or the other. In fact, I don’t know anyone who
hasn’t tried it, and I told you about your cousin Sophia being tossed out of college.”

“That’s Sophia. It’s not me. And she wasn’t pregnant at the time.”

“I wouldn’t say yes or no to that, either. I bet she’s had an abortion or…two.”

“I never took any drugs, Fani.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your cousin is just trying to get me to leave my baby and go,” I said.

“Delia, face it. Where would he be better off? Struggling in some Mexican cow town with you or as a Bovio living with Ray? He’ll be treated like a little prince. Don’t you want that? And besides, you want to get back out there in the playing field and find yourself a decent man, if there is such a thing. I have an idea for you,” she said excitedly. “Try to go to a nursing school in Los Angeles, and you and I will be able to hang out together. It will be like old times again.”

“You don’t have children and then just desert them as if they were nothing more than some out-of-fashion dress, Fani.”

“Really? You have a lot to learn about modern parents. In sociology class last week, the professor said there are now upward of fifty thousand new foster children a year here. If you want to think like that, you might be better off returning to Mexico. Families still mean something there.”

“You’re just bitter about your own family.”

“Whatever. Look, Delia, you can do what you want. All I can do is give you some advice. If I were you, I’d grab what I could get from Ray and move on. It’s going to end up being that way anyhow. You’ll just
skip all the turmoil and nastiness. You’ve been through enough of it, haven’t you? Smarten up before it’s too late. Ray’s not going to want a public fight, either. Negotiate hard. There’s a big payoff waiting for you, I’m sure.”

“I cannot sell away my own baby, Fani!”

“So, don’t think of it as selling him. Think of it as renting him to Ray for about twenty years or so. Didn’t you tell me you felt you owed him something and that was what got you into this situation in the first place? It was truly as if you were giving him a gift. Delia’s gift. Well, just continue thinking that way.”

“I can’t,” I said, crying now.

“Rest on it for a while,” she said. “Look, I’ve got to get my pretty little buns on the highway before the traffic gets too thick. I’ll call you during the week. Maybe I’ll come down again next weekend. I’ll see what’s doing on campus. There is this guy in my psych class who’s been drooling over me. He’s pretty good-looking, and he plays a mean guitar. I heard he was writing a song for me. Maybe he’ll serenade me under my window tonight.”

I was sobbing now but doing it quietly.

“Delia?”

“Good-bye, Fani,” I said, and hung up.

I made my way back to my room and sat by the window, sucking back my tears.
Mi tía
Isabela’s words when she had first visited me at the Bovio estate haunted me, especially when she had said: “No matter what Señor Bovio tells you, no matter how rich and expensive the gifts he lavishes on you are, make no mistake about it. He still believes his son is dead because of you. He thinks you bewitched him. If Adan
hadn’t come back for you, he would never have been on that boat that day, and if you hadn’t lost control of the steering, he might not have suffered such a terrible accident. In the days following Adan’s death, Señor Bovio muttered all these things to me repeatedly. And don’t think his priest talked him out of them. There’s no forgiveness in him. He has a bloodline that goes back to the Aztecs. He lives for vengeance. I know him through and through, Delia. You are in for a terrible time. Go home before you suffer some horrible fate.”

Was this the horrible fate she had accurately predicted for me?

Mrs. Newell interrupted my thoughts. “It’s time for your medication,” she said.

“Is this the antibiotic?”

“Of course.”

“It makes me tired, Mrs. Newell.”

“It can, but you’re not going dancing tonight,” she replied, and opened the pill bottle to spill out a pill.

“Shouldn’t I take it after I eat dinner? I have to prepare my own dinner.”

She stood there glaring at me. “You don’t learn quickly, do you? You’re either very stubborn or very stupid. I haven’t decided. Maybe you’re both. If I thought you should take the pill after dinner, I would have you take it after dinner, wouldn’t I?”

She held it out.

I plucked it from her palm and put it in my mouth, or at least that was what she thought. I drank some water, and she nodded.