North of Montana

Mrs. Gutierrez gives an impatient tch-tch. With a dark and sorrowful look, Teresa lowers her eyes. I squat down and touch her hair.

“Your birthday’s coming up. I’m working on a Barbie doll, how does that sound?”

Her whole face lights up with a beautiful smile. She looks like a different kid. Unable to express herself, she runs around in a circle of pure glee, then grabs her brother’s hand and just as randomly runs into the doorway of Tienda Alma.

“She is such a pretty girl,” Mrs. Gutierrez observes. “Just like her mommy.”

She is wearing lipstick and today, perhaps to visit the spiritualist, all white: an oversize white T-shirt, white leggings, and white mules. She looks the most together I have seen her.

“Mr. Monte wanted me to talk to you.”

“I already tell him that I write to the grandmother to see what she want to do. I waiting to hear.”

“Until the family is contacted, the children will have to be cared for.”

“I caring for them.”

“You leave them alone in the apartment.”

“Only one time, when I have to go to the store.”

“Teresa doesn’t even have a bed.”

“In my country we sleep on petate mats on the floor. What is more important — the bed or the love? Why you not understand about family?” she demands. “These kids are your family, but you don’t think so. You are too Anglo.”

‘What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just like Mrs. Claire,” Mrs. Gutierrez goes on. “Her kind don’t understand. If Mrs. Claire didn’t fire Violeta from that job, the children would have a mother today.”

I take a very deep breath.

“Mrs. Eberhardt fired Violeta because her daughter fell into a pool and almost drowned while Violeta was jabbering with another housekeeper and not paying attention.”

Mrs. Gutierrez shakes an angry finger.

“What you say is not the truth and a disgrace to the memory of your cousin.”

“I have noticed there is always more than one truth, Mrs. Gutierrez.”

In answer she spits on the sidewalk and stalks into Tienda Alma.

The children are gathered around a cardboard Christmas tree studded with lollypops. I wander deeper inside, lured by the smell of spices. A rack holds packets of arnica, cinnamon stick, chile postila, anise, te de yerhabuena. There’s not much stock — a few coconuts, oranges with green spots, two kinds of bananas, pineapples, and flowers. Rickety shelves are stacked with cans of guava nectar, hominy, sardines, menudo, and corn masa and old gray plastic sacks of rice and flour. The lights are off.

Mrs. Gutierrez is pulling the children outside.

“Is it okay if I buy them a lollypop?”

She only glowers. I give them each a dollar, then notice that behind the lollypop tree is a picture of a saint laminated in plastic, resting on an overturned blue milk carton.

“What is that?”

Mrs. Gutierrez isn’t talking. A young woman comes out from around the counter.

“El Nino de Atocha.”

She moves the rack aside to reveal a painting of a young boy surrounded by heavenly objects and animals. In front of him there are candles and a dish filled with loose change, small plastic cars, rubber balls, and candy.

The girl, wearing a USC sweatshirt and silver star earrings down to her shoulders, speaks without an accent.

“El Nino is a saint who comes from a lake and helps drowning people, or those who are lost. We have a festival in Guatemala where every year we take him out of the lake and parade him through the streets in a big procession.”

“People leave him things?”

“For good luck.”

“Why the toys?”

“Because he’s a little kid. Roberto, next door, told my mother to make this for El Nino. Every other store on the street has been broken into except us.”

“You go to USC?” She nods. “And you believe in this stuff?”

“My mother has faith on Roberto. I didn’t used to believe, but people come to see him from Las Vegas, Texas, San Francisco.… He has a very great gift. They come sick and they leave calm.”

I drop some change into the dish.

“Isn’t that a funny place for a shrine?”

“A shrine can be anywhere. A lot of Spanish people make shrines in the place where someone has died, like in Baja, you see them along the road where people have been killed in car accidents.” She moves the lollypop tree back in place. “We keep ours here so people won’t steal from El Nino.”

Some saint, I think, following Mrs. Gutierrez outside.

The children have trailed the sounds of the rooster to a tiny pet store crammed with aquariums and rank with the smell of tropical fish in stagnant water. Two roosters blink suspiciously from cages on the floor.

“Are those fighting cocks?” I ask the man.

He nods. Cock fighting is illegal, but the hell with it. The children are fascinated by a pair of parakeets. Although Mrs. Gutierrez is keeping her back to me, I lay a hand on her shoulder.

“I want to know the truth about my cousin.”

The two of us step outside where the long hot afternoon sun smacks our faces with a direct hit. Mrs. Gutierrez pats her white vinyl pocketbook several times. She is still seething.

“Your cousin was fired because she saw Mrs. Claire with a man who was not her husband.”

“When was this?”

“Violeta came back from a walk with the baby and a man was with Mrs. Claire inside the door.”

I remember Warren Speca telling me that he saw Violeta one time when he went over to Claire’s near the end of their affair. This must have been the time.

Mrs. Gutierrez waves a hand in disgust. “They were doing bad things.”

I can see Warren Speca surprising Claire, emboldened by the fantasy that she will leave her marriage, pushing her up against the wall of her husband’s house and trying to make love right there, standing up, underneath the crystal chandelier.

Violeta came in. They were surprised but they no care. The man leave right away. Violeta is very angry. She is a religious person—”

Mrs. Gutierrez’s voice breaks. She wipes her eyes.

“ ‘You have a husband,’ she tells Mrs. Claire. ‘You sin against God.’ ”

The pocketbook opens and the pound-size roll of tissues comes out.

“Violeta says, ‘I love your children like they are mine. I leave my own children to work for you. I no lie to you but you lie to me. You are sleeping around like a whore!’ Mrs. Claire fires her on the spot.”

“She was afraid Violeta would tell her husband about the affair.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Gutierrez blows her nose savagely. Her manner turns cold. She is going to tell me the facts of life:

“Mrs. Claire spreads this terrible lie that it was Violeta’s fault the little girl almost drowned. Violeta cannot get a job. She does not have a reference. She cannot pay the rent. Teresa has a bad ear infection and the clinic takes only cash. Violeta is terrified that she and the children will end up on the street or in a church basement with the homeless, or maybe the welfare people will take the children away. After many weeks she finds work at night, washing the laundry in a big health club in West L. A. Her children sleep in my apartment until she comes home at six in the morning. Only one night, she doesn’t come home.”

The crime scene photos tell the story. Violeta gets off the bus on a destitute corner before dawn, trudging past hustlers and dealers. By now the route is habitual. She’s almost home, she’s tired, her guard fails.

“This is why I say it was the fault of Mrs. Claire.”