way she deserved to be treated. Gabriela just wanted her daughter to have a good, happy life; it was the only thing she cared about.
Then one day Gabriela was riding the bus home from work when Beatrice called her and was screaming and crying. It reminded Gabriela of that terrible day Juan had died, and she was afraid something bad had happened to Manuela.
“ No mi hija!” Gabriela screamed. “No mi hija! No mi hija!” Gabriela screamed so loud that everybody was looking over, and the driver even stopped the bus.
Thank God, Beatrice wasn’t calling about Manuela, but it was still very bad. It was their father in San Juan. He was very sick and needed a new kidney or he was going to die, but the doctors in Quito said he was too sick to get a new kidney from the hospital, so the only way was if they bought one on the black market.
Crying, Gabriella asked, “How much do they need?”
“Twelve thousand dollars,” Beatrice said. “That’s crazy money. What’re we gonna do?”
Gabriela didn’t have money to send him. The money she made from cleaning houses was just enough to pay for rent and bills and food. Sometimes she didn’t even have money to buy new clothes for Manuela.
“How much money you have?” Gabriela asked.
“We only have two thousand in the bank,” Beatrice said, “and we need it for rent and bills.”
Gabriela had no idea what to do. Twelve thousand dollars was more money than she’d ever seen.
When she got back to her apartment, she called home and it was sad to hear her mother crying and her father sounding so sad, and she felt so bad, knowing there was nothing anybody could do to help him. They just had to let him die.
“How much time does papi have?” Gabriela asked her mother.
“If they don’t do nothing, maybe a month or two,” she said.“They don’t know.”
Gabriela spent most of the next few days crying. She and Beatrice were planning to go to Ec ua dor, to be with their father for the last time. They wanted their whole families to go, but they didn’t have the money for the plane tickets.
Everything seemed so bad, and she didn’t know what to do, and then she was cleaning the Blooms’ house one morning when she saw a little piece of paper in a drawer in the dining room. The paper had some numbers on it, and on top she saw the words code new alarm.
Mrs. Bloom was home, right upstairs, and Gabriela heard footsteps in the hallway. Gabriela didn’t even think about it and put the paper in the pocket of her apron.
Later, at home, she felt bad. She didn’t even know why she took the paper, because the Blooms had been so good to her and there was no way she could ever steal from them.
Then, in the middle of the night, she woke up and thought: What if she gave Carlos the code? She didn’t ask about where he got his money, but she knew he probably knew how to rob places. And if he stole from them it would be different than if she stole from them. She didn’t want to do something bad to the Blooms, but she didn’t want her papi to die, either, and she didn’t know what else to do
She called Carlos and told him to come over.
After she told him about the code, he said, “You got the key to the house?”
Gabriela hadn’t even thought about this. She was so worried about her papi and getting money that she hadn’t thought about anything else.
“No, but I can get it,” she said.
The next day, at the Blooms’, when she went out to get lunch, she took the keys from the drawer in the kitchen and went to a locksmith. She found out she couldn’t copy the keys to the front door because they were some kind of special locks they couldn’t copy without some kind of card.
She thought that was it, her papi would die, but then the locksmith told her she could copy the keys to the back door. This was okay, maybe even better, because it was darker in the back of the house and nobody would be watching.
Everything was looking good, but not for long. When she got back to the Blooms’ she remembered that Carlos still had the paper with the code on it. She’d been so busy talking to Carlos and thinking about the keys that she forgot to ask for the paper back.
When Mrs. Bloom went out to do something, Gabriela called Carlos and asked him to bring the paper to her apartment later on.
“Too late,” Carlos said. “Threw it out.”
“Why’d you do that?” Gabriela said. “I have to put it back in the drawer.”
Again Gabriela felt like the whole plan wouldn’t work. They wouldn’t be able to rob the house, and her papi would die.
“I thought the paper was yours,” Carlos said. “I thought you copied the shit down. I thought that’s why you gave it to me.”
Gabriela, starting to cry, said, “Why’d you have to throw it away, Carlos? Why’d you have to do that?”
“I didn’t wanna be walking around with the code to the alarm of the house I’m gonna rob in my pocket. So I just memorized it, got it all up here now.”
He touched his head with his finger.
“Where’d you throw it out?” Gabriela said. “Maybe it’s still there.”
“I don’t remember,” he said, “near the subway or whatever. Garbage man probably picked it up already.”
“That’s it,” Gabriela said, crying. “We’re going to have to forget the whole thing now.”
Carlos laughed and said, “Damn, you gotta stop all your worrying ’bout everything and shit. Let me do all the worrying, all right, baby?”
“But if they see the paper is gone they’ll know I took it.”
“Why they gonna know that? Use your head, baby. You know how many people they probably got coming into their house? Big house like that, they probably got people coming and going all day.”
This was true, Gabriela thought. Men were painting the downstairs bathroom and were in the house all day long, and sometimes the plumber and the electrician were in the house, too, and what about all of Marissa Bloom’s friends? Why would the Blooms think she took the code when she’d been working for them for so many years and they had so much trust in her? Maybe not putting back the paper was even good because maybe they’d think for sure that some stranger must’ve taken it.
She didn’t know if this really made sense or she just wanted it to make sense, but it made her feel better anyway.
That night she and Carlos talked about the rest of the plan. The Blooms were going to be leaving for Florida next Tuesday, all three of them, so it would be a good time to rob the house. Gabriela knew where the Blooms kept all their expensive things, their rings and jewelry. After Carlos stole everything he was going to sell it to somebody called a fence.
“Is the fence okay?” she asked.
“Hell yeah,” Carlos said. “My man’s Freddy’s cool, know him forever, gonna give us a good price, too. Third what the shit’s worth.”
“And then you’re gonna give me half the money, right?”
“Nah, we’re gonna split it three ways,” Carlos said.
“Three?” Gabriela didn’t know what he was talking about. “How does it make three? Me and you’s two, not three.”
“You think I’m crazy?” Carlos said. “I ain’t gonna rob the place alone. That’s the way you get caught, wind up back upstate and shit. I ain’t goin’ in there without no backup.”
Gabriela didn’t like the way this sounded at all. She’d already been feeling very bad, stealing from the Blooms who’d been so good to her. But it seemed more okay when it was just her and Carlos because she knew Carlos, and even though he’d gotten her sick, she felt like she could trust him. But she didn’t like trusting some man she didn’t even know.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“You don’t gotta know,” he said. “If the cops come around, it’s gonna be better that way. Can’t talk about what you don’t know.”
She still didn’t like it, but she knew nothing she said was going to change Carlos’s mind.
