'Nothing. Jesus, Domino, you could have told her what I am. She's going to be really disappointed.'
I shrugged. 'I couldn't think of a good way to tell her you're a piskie. Better she just sees for herself.'
'You don't think it's going to freak her out?'
'It's not like she's never met a spirit before, in her line of work. She met Mr. Clean, once. Didn't care for him much.'
'She probably won't like me, either.'
'She'll like you fine. You might want to glamour up some clothes, though, just this once. Mom's pretty conservative.'
'You're a gangster and she accepts you.'
'Yeah, but I'm her daughter, so I have to work pretty hard at it to do anything wrong. Besides, the way Mom sees it, living a life of crime and violence is one thing. Naked women are something else entirely.'
'That doesn't make any sense.'
'Well, maybe you want to explain that to her. Just let me know so I can go somewhere else.'
Honey sulked most of the drive out to the barrio, but she dusted up a pretty little floral sundress before we pulled up outside the well-kept bungalow. Mom was waiting for us at the door when we stepped onto the porch.
'I've been waiting for you, Dominica,' Mom said.
'You can see the future, Mom. I guess you knew we'd be late.'
Gisela Maria Lopez Riley was fifty-four years old, but she looked at least ten years older. Life in the barrio raising a juvenile delinquent tomboy as a single mother will do that to you. There was as much silver in her hair as black, and the deep creases in her face spoke of hard years. But she was still just as slender as she'd been as a young girl when she met my father. They'd been the kind of Roman Catholic couple that ordinarily has at least eight kids, but then Dad took off. I had the feeling Mom would have gladly traded her figure for another half dozen ninos.
'Where is your friend, Dominica?' Mom asked, as she led me into the house. The living room was where she conducted her business, and it was filled with the trappings of the Mexican bruja. Portraits of Jesus and the Madonna shared space on the darkly painted walls with crucifixes and indio art. Statues of the saints and candles of all sizes and colors huddled on every horizontal surface. A dramatically hideous beaded curtain set off the room from the rest of the house.
'She's here, Mom.' I turned and looked behind me, but there was no sign of the piskie. I patted the front of my jacket and lifted the lapels to look inside. Nada. 'Honey, come on,' I said. 'This is ridiculous.'
Honey dropped her invisibility glamour and materialized right in front of my mother. She'd brought a tiny flower from her garden, and she offered it shyly. 'Hello, Mrs. Riley. It's very nice to meet you. I'm Honey.'
Mom's eyes grew wide, and for a moment I feared cardiac arrest was imminent. Then she laughed, and it was a sound I recognized very well from my childhood-the sound of simple delight in small things. She took the flower and set it carefully in her hair.
'Thank you, Honey,' she said. 'It's a pleasure to meet you, too, and welcome to my home.'
After that, I didn't get in another word until we'd finished dinner. I helped clear the table and then went out on the porch to smoke while Mom and Honey took care of the dishes. Yes, I offered to help. No, they didn't let me because I'd just be in the way. Both were familiar with my housekeeping skills.
When they were finished, they came out to the porch to join me and enjoy the cool evening. We sat on the swing together, with Honey perched between us. They chatted like they'd lived next door to each other all their lives. Mom was telling Honey about a client of hers, an elderly widower who had-to hear my mom tell it-more or less ignored his wife for the fifty years of their marriage. Now that she was gone, he was distraught and desperate to contact her in the Beyond. The overall theme seemed to be the general pigheadedness of men.
After an hour or so, they'd said all they could say about that. Their attention turned to me.
'Why are you so quiet, Dominica?' my mother asked. I thought about mentioning that I couldn't get a word in edgewise, but I didn't think about it long. I generally keep the sarcasm holstered when I'm talking to Mom.
'I'm fine,' I said. 'Great dinner, Mom, thanks.' I'd never found a better tamale, and I'd been all over L.A. looking for one.
'She's not fine,' Honey said. 'But she'll never admit it. She's very stubborn.'
'She certainly is that,' my mother agreed. She looked at me, and covered my folded hands with one of hers. 'Your world is changing, Dominica, and you're not sure about your place in it anymore.'
I nodded. There wasn't any point denying it-you give up a certain amount of privacy at a young age when your mother is a fortune-teller. Besides, this was why I'd come. I needed her. Chavez was pulling everything together in Crenshaw, and this was my last chance for a reality check before I went to war.
'It's the magic. I'm not sure I can handle it. I'm hurting people, Mom, you know? I don't mean to, but I do. But it'll hurt people if I stop, too.'
My mother was silent for a time. I was afraid of what she would tell me-I wasn't expecting any sympathy. Finally, she spoke. 'Every night, when I was a little girl, I prayed to the Madonna and begged her to take this burden from me. Surely what I do is a sin! Am I not interfering in God's plan? Who am I to look into the future, to try to change it by telling others what I see? When I commune with the spirits, am I damning my soul and those of the petitioners who come to me?'
I started to speak, but Mom shushed me. 'No, let me finish, Dominica. The truth is, I don't know. I can't know. But when someone comes to me, and they are in pain, is it a lesser evil to just let them suffer, even though I have the power to help them?'
I shook my head.
'No!' my mother said, and there was strength and conviction in her voice. 'What do I know of God's plan? The real arrogance is in thinking I could interfere with it. The universe, God's plan-these things are too big for me, Dominica. I am just a woman and God has given me a gift. I don't know why. I don't know why He chose me. But if one of His children comes to me, and I have the power to help them, I will do it. And now when I pray to the Madonna, I thank God for His gift and I praise Him for allowing me to serve Him in my way. Everything else-all these big questions-I leave that to Him.'
'You help people, Mom. I'm not reading palms and telling fortunes. I kill people. It's not the same.'
'Your path is harder than mine, Dominica. Your burden is heavier. I won't lie to you. What you do puts your soul in peril of Hell.'
'Thanks, Mom. I feel a lot better now.'
'The question is, are you willing to risk damnation for what you do? Is it that important? And if it is, do you have the courage to sacrifice your soul to do what must be done?'
At first, it didn't make any sense to me that God would expect that kind of sacrifice. If you were doing something that doomed you to Hell, you probably weren't doing God's will, whatever that might be. Then I remembered Mr. Clean's account of Lucifer's Fall. Was this the sacrifice the Morning Star-the most exalted of God's angels-had been expected to make? What if God's plan really did require some to be damned in order to serve it? And even if that were true and not just the heretical ranting of a spirit with a questionable pedigree, what did I ever do to deserve the short fucking straw?
I shook my head. 'I don't know, Mom. I hear what you're saying, but it sounds like a rationalization. It's just 'the ends justifies the means' wrapped in convenient theology.'
'Of course it's 'the ends justifies the means,' Dominica!' Mom seemed agitated. 'Grow up, girl. Life isn't fair, and the right choices aren't always easy to come by, especially for a woman. If the ends we seek don't justify what we do, what else possibly could?'
I didn't have a good answer for that, but then I'm a gangster and not a philosopher. I was a little out of my depth. I didn't really care about the philosophy, anyway. What mattered was that it made sense to me. I was a criminal, and a killer. I had power that other people didn't, and using that power meant I would affect the lives of others in ways I couldn't even guess. Should I choose to wield it anyway?
It depended entirely on what I was wielding it for. It depended on what I was fighting for. Was it important enough?
I realized the gangster code wasn't going to cut it anymore. I couldn't take a life and then shrug it off because of my victim's choice of profession. That was just rationalization. It always had been, and I'd always known it. If I was going to call myself a soldier, I'd have to start acting like one. I didn't believe I was an instrument of God's
