Ariel Gore: Santa Fe Noir

The floor of the Laundromat is cold.

The man feels Ramona’s eyes on him and looks her way. “What?”

“Oh, I need some change,” Ramona tells him as she walks toward the door.

At Lil’ Dragon, Ramona orders a small pepperoni pizza, pays, and gets her change. “I’ll be right back,” she tells the pizza guy, and walks back to the Laundromat to start her wash. Very convenient to have a pizzeria next to a Laundromat , she thinks. She expects to see the half-naked guy with the long braid standing by his washer when she gets back, but he has disappeared.

Back for the pizza, she decides to eat it there. The booths are clean and comfortable — much better than eating in the Laundromat. The pizza is good — hot, spicy, and greasy, with a soft crust. Ramona thinks this might be a good place to work. Maybe she’d get free pizza too. Her unemployment is about to run out and she’ll need a job. But not now.

It’s snowing again, softening the sharp edges of this small city. Ramona returns to the Laundromat to dry her clothes. The place is now filled with young Latino women and children. Good thing the stripper left , she thinks. The kids run around playing games. The mothers wash and dry and fold, wash and dry and fold. I never want to go there , Ramona tells herself. She drops quarters into a dryer and takes a seat by the window. She’s leafing through the Rio Grande Sun when her cell phone rings. It’s her mother calling.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Mija, where are you?”

“I’m at the Laundromat.”

“In town?”

“Yeah, just a few blocks away from you.”

“Can you come over, mija? I need your help.”

“Okay, Mom, but my clothes just went in the dryer.”

“When they are done, then.”

“Okay.” Ramona hangs up.

She wonders what kind of help her mother needs. She could have called her brother Tony. Why me? She waits for the clothes to dry then stuffs them back into her laundry bag. I’ll fold them later , she tells herself. Tony’s a coward. Maybe their mother needs something only Ramona can manage.

Her mother lives alone in a trailer at the Cottonwood Village Mobile Home Park off Agua Fria. After Ramona’s dad died in the car wreck when Ramona was twelve, her mother never remarried. Just had a series of boyfriends. Some were good and she let them live with her; others were bad, like her most recent “old man.” Juan’s a mean drunk. One night when he was drinking, he busted up the trailer. He threw furniture around and broke an antique clock that had belonged to Ramona’s grandmother. He said he’d burn the place down. He tried to attack Ramona’s mother, but she threatened to cut his balls off with a kitchen knife and he backed off.

Her mom is a tough cookie. She called the cops and they hauled Juan’s ass off to jail. Turns out he was in the country illegally and so they deported him back to Mexico.

So Ramona knows it’s not Juan her mother needs help with.

Snow keeps falling. They don’t plow the roads on the Southside. It’s the Eastside and downtown where the rich people live that this city takes care of — forget the people behind the tortilla curtain.

Ramona pulls her Chevy into her mother’s driveway. So much snow, she thinks she might get stuck here for the night. She slides to a stop, feeling the ice under the snow.

The stairs leading to her mother’s double-wide are ice-covered and slippery. She opens the door and walks in, then stops to take off her snow boots. The smell of beans and chile lures her into the kitchen where she finds her mother making tortillas. Even though she isn’t hungry after her pizza, her mouth waters.

Ramona walks over to greet her mother and gives her a quick hug. Must be Friday , she thinks. Her mother’s long gray hair is damp and smells of rosemary. Like clockwork, her mother always washes her hair on Fridays. In a room adjoining the kitchen, a fire blazes in the fireplace and the smell of piñon and cedar draws her in. The fire’s heat feels good on her cold hands and feet.

Ramona grew up in this trailer. She remembers how much her dad loved the fireplace. He’d go to the mountains and cut wood every fall. Most times, the whole family piled into his old Ford pickup to go with him. Her mom packed homemade tortillas, fried chicken, and beans. Ramona’s dad had special places where he cut his wood and everyone was sworn to secrecy. He’d find dead pine and piñon and his chainsaw would take them down then cut them into fireplace-sized logs. Tony, Ramona, and their mom loaded the wood into the bed of the truck. Now that he’s gone, Ramona’s mother has to buy firewood.

“Where’d you get this wood?” Ramona eyes the split wood on either side of the fireplace.

“Oh, from los Martinez up on Acequia Madre. They give me a good deal and the wood is nice and dry this year.”

“So what’s up, Mom? You said you needed help.”

“I’m almost done with these tortillas; then we’ll talk, mija.”

Ramona pulls her chair closer to the fire. Cedar pops and crackles — the fire’s soothing song. After a few minutes, her mother pulls up a chair next to her. They sit warming by the fire for a long time. Ramona hasn’t visited her mother in a few weeks. She hasn’t watched her mother lose her glow as her olive skin begins to gray. She hasn’t noticed her mother losing weight. She hasn’t seen the blood seeping from her.

Ramona faces her mother now and suddenly sees the changes. All at once, like a flower that’s been hit by frost, her vibrant mother is fading.

“I’m dying, mija, and I need you to help me through it.”

Outside, the blizzard is passing, but an arctic cold bears down from the mountains and freezes the land. Nothing moves. Everything is held in place. No snow melts, but the indomitable New Mexican sunshine returns.

Ramona’s mother reluctantly tells the story of her progressing illness. At first she had thought it was a flu that had taken her energy. “You know I’m never sick,” she says. “Strong as a mule. But everything changed and I was tired all of the time. Then the bleeding started. Just a little at first, so I ignored it. But it got worse and I finally called Dr. Maez. She told me to come right in and that I shouldn’t be bleeding after ten years of menopause. So I went for the tests and now they want to operate, then maybe radiation or chemo.”

Ramona feels fear enter her bones. She tastes the bitterness of grief. She tries to swallow, but can’t. Instead, she goes to the bathroom and vomits into the toilet. But the grief won’t leave. Her mother, her rock, the anchor that held her close in every storm, will maybe leave her. She can’t shake the terrible taste of terror.

Ramona returns to the fire and sits at her mother’s knees. She lays her head in her mother’s lap and lets her run her fingers through her long hair. Maybe her mother can comb away the terrors that tangle in her thoughts. Ramona is overcome by the terrible desire to weep. And she does.

Ramona spends two days and nights with her mother, then she needs to clear her head. They have talked it all out: the visit to the doctor, the diagnosis, the blood work results, even alternatives to surgery. Now it all needs to settle in. Ramona needs to absorb her mother’s words: “Mija, I am dying.”

Ramona drives into the sun, and when she approaches a hairpin turn in the road, she thinks: I’m dying too; everyone’s dying after all . Maybe her mother is overreacting. But Ramona knows by the sight of her mother that she is sick. Maybe it won’t be fatal, though, maybe she got an STD from that no-good asshole Juan. Who knows? Maybe she should be tested for HIV. But Ramona knows that’s her head talking. In her gut, she knows her mother is very, very sick.