“I don’t care what you do,” she said, “long as I get the money for my papi.”
On the day of the robbery, Gabriela had to go to work for the Seidlers, another family in Forest Hills. Carlos didn’t want her to call him all day, or even later on. He’d said, “Don’t do nothin’ stupid, just sit by the phone and wait for me to call. Cops track calls and shit. We don’t want them seein’ we been talking the day the house got robbed. Comprendes?”
Not talking seemed like the right thing to do, but it was hard, working all day long, keeping all the wondering and worrying in her head.
Later, she came home and had dinner with Manuela and called her parents at the hospital in Ec ua dor. Her mother said that papi wasn’t doing very good, and then she put Gabriela on the phone with him. Gabriela could hear it in his voice, how sick he was. He just didn’t sound like the papi she knew. She kept telling him to hold on, that she was gonna get the money for him real soon. He told her don’t worry, he was gonna be fine, but she heard the lying in his voice. That’s the way her papi was, always wanting to be strong.
Manuela spoke to her grandfather, too, and after she was crying and said to Gabriela, “How come you told him you were gonna get the money soon? Where you gonna get it from?”
Gabriela hugged her daughter and said, “God is going to get us the money. You’ll see.”
Around eleven Manuela was asleep and Gabriela was alone, waiting for Carlos to call, even though they weren’t supposed to rob the house till the middle of the night, like two in the morning. She didn’t know how long it was gonna take to rob a house, but she didn’t think it would take too long. Maybe by three they’d be all done, but then how long would it be before he called her? Knowing Carlos, he’d want to do drugs after. She wished she had some heroin right now; that stuff used to keep her very calm.
She tried to watch TV, but it was too hard, so she spent the whole night just walking back and forth in her living room. She’d never seen a clock move so slow. It seemed like it took forever till midnight came, and then one and two o’clock came even slower. But finally it was time- the house was being robbed, and soon, hopefully tomorrow, she’d have her money and her papi would be having his operation and everything would be okay.
The only problem was she had a horrible empty feeling in her stomach, like something was gonna go wrong. She kept telling herself, Don’t think about that. That’s stupid. Nothing’s gonna go wrong. They’re gonna get the ring and the necklace and all the jewelry and sell it, and soon you’re gonna have the money for papi. She kept telling herself this, but she didn’t believe it. The bad feeling was still there; it wouldn’t go away.
At three thirty, she knew it should be all over by now. They should be out of the house, back at Carlos’s or wherever. Then how come he wasn’t calling her? He’d said he’d go to a phone booth after the house was robbed and call her with a calling card so the police couldn’t find out. Maybe he didn’t have a chance to make the call yet. Maybe he was just making sure they were safe and everything was okay; then he’d call her.
But when four o’clock came, Gabriela didn’t believe that Carlos had forgotten about anything. He and his friend were ripping her off, that’s what was happening. They weren’t going to split the money three ways. That had just been more of Carlos’s lies. They were going to split it two ways, and one of the ways wasn’t going to be hers. She didn’t know how she’d been so stupid, trusting a man who’d already lied to her so badly, getting her so sick and ruining her whole life.
A few times, she was about to call him on his cell, but each time she stopped herself at the last second. She knew if he was going to steal from her, he wouldn’t answer his phone when she called, and she was still hoping she was wrong, that something happened, like he didn’t have a chance to get to a phone yet to call her, and everything would turn out okay.
Then, at five in the morning, she was still in the living room, waiting for the phone to ring, when Manuela came out and said, “Mami, what’s wrong?”
“I just been worried about your abuelo,” Gabriela said.
“I thought you said God was gonna save him?”
“I don’t know anymore, baby,” Gabriela said. “Maybe God’s too busy today.”
Gabriela made Manuela breakfast and lunch, then kissed her good- bye. She was so glad she had such a beautiful daughter, and she knew if it wasn’t for her daughter she probably would have killed herself a long time ago.
Manuela went back to sleep, and Gabriela turned on the TV, just to keep her mind busy. She watched Cada Dнa on Telemundo for a while and then switched to an English news channel, hoping to find out something about the robbery. She didn’t think there’d really be anything about it on TV, she thought she was just being crazy, so she couldn’t believe it when she saw the reporter standing in front of the Blooms’ house.
It was very hard to understand what was going on. Not because her English wasn’t good enough- she didn’t speak fluent but she could usually understand most of the news on the TV- but because she didn’t believe that a house getting robbed was such a big news story, on the TV news, it just didn’t make any sense. But then she heard what the lady was saying, how one of the men who’d broken into the house had been shot and killed by Adam Bloom. Mr. Bloom himself was on TV, talking about why he used his gun. Gabriela still couldn’t believe it- she thought she had to be asleep, having a bad dream. Then she heard the reporter saying,“Police are identifying the dead man as thirty- six- year- old Carlos Sanchez of Queens.”
Sitting on the couch, she stared at the TV for a long time- maybe for seconds or minutes or hours, she had no idea. Finally she was able to think. She couldn’t understand how this could have happened. The Blooms were supposed to go away; the house was supposed to be empty. And why did Mr. Bloom shoot Carlos? She knew he had a gun- she’d seen it in his bedroom closet when she was cleaning, and sometimes he even left it out on the little table near his bed- but she couldn’t imagine that kind man killing somebody even if his house was being robbed. It just didn’t make any sense.
Then it hit her, what this really meant, and she started crying like she was at a funeral, but she wasn’t crying for Carlos. She didn’t go to church very much lately, but she still believed in Jesus Christ and that even bad people like Carlos had some good in them somewhere. But she still couldn’t feel bad that Carlos was dead, not after all the bad things he had done to her. The one she was crying for was her papi. Carlos wasn’t the only man Mr. Bloom had killed with his gun, because now her papi was going to die, too.
Gabriela was still sitting on the couch crying when Beatrice called and said, “Did you hear what happened at the Blooms’ house last night?” Beatrice said she was in Forest Hills, at work in another house, and everybody was talking about it.
“Yes, I saw it on the news,” Gabriela said.
“The guy who was killed,” Beatrice said. “They said his name is Carlos, Carlos Sanchez. It’s not your old boyfriend Carlos, is it?”
“Don’t tell anybody you know that,” Gabriela said. “Please.”
“Why?” Beatrice asked. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Gabriela said.“I just don’t want the police coming, asking me questions, when I’m so worried about Papi.”
“You okay?” Beatrice asked. “You don’t sound good. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Gabriela said, crying. “But please, please don’t say anything to the policнa. I’m begging to you.”
Gabriela was scared, even more scared than she was when she found out she had HIV. At least there was medicine she could take for HIV, but she couldn’t think of any way to make this okay. So many people knew that Carlos was her exboyfriend. The Blooms and the other people she worked for didn’t know because she never wanted them to find out about the drugs and the HIV, but Beatrice and her whole family knew, and Manuela knew, and neighbors in Gabriela’s building knew. And what about all the times over the last couple of weeks that Gabriela had talked to Carlos on his cell phone? There was no way the policнa wouldn’t find out.
Gabriela was thinking about killing herself again- she could jump off a bridge or take pills. Pills would be very easy. She had a new bottle of sleeping pills and could take all of them and be dead very quickly. If she was dead it would probably be better for Manuela, too. It wasn’t going to do her any good having a mother in jail. Beatrice could raise her good and give her a happy life.
At seven thirty, after Manuela left for school, Gabriela got the sleeping pills out of the cabinet. She was planning to text- message Beatrice, to tell her what she was going to do, so Beatrice could discover her body and not Manuela. She just hoped that she died before Beatrice arrived at her apartment. The worst thing would be if she woke up alive in some hospital bed.
She was about to type the text message when the doorbell rang. She looked through the peephole and saw
