Emilie Richards - Endless Chain

Fernando toddled over and raised his arms to be lifted up. Elisa settled the little boy on one hip and finished dusting with the other hand.

“The good thing about a small house is that it takes no time to clean.” Adoncia pulled the plug in the sink and let the dishwater drain out. “I should be grateful for poverty, huh?”

“After Diego moves in, you can save enough to buy a little house of your own. As hard as you both work, it shouldn’t take too long.”

“That’s what he says, only he says big house. He wants a big house for all the children.”

Wisely, Elisa said nothing.

“Many children.” Adoncia began to rinse and dry the dishes she’d washed. “A hundred children.”

“Probably only ninety-five.”

Adoncia laughed. Whenever she did, the responsibilities that weighed so heavily on her twenty-four-year-old shoulders seemed to disappear. Elisa thought her friend was beautiful. She was too plump by this country’s anorexic standards, but she had black hair that curved around her face in shining layers, and warm brown skin she enhanced with bright cosmetics and clothing. It was no surprise to Elisa that Diego Moreno had fallen in love with Adoncia the first time he’d set eyes on her.

“He would keep me pregnant until I’m an old woman, if he had his way. I tell him ‘one baby will show the world what a big man you are, Diego,’ but he doesn’t see it that way.”

“You think he’s trying to prove his manhood?”

“You know a man who isn’t?”

Elisa thought about Sam Kinkade, who twice last Wednesday had been forced to prove his. She doubted he had wanted or relished either experience.

“No,” Adoncia continued, “Diego is determined to show everyone he is a big man. In every way,” she added slyly.

Elisa laughed. “And you’ll be a big woman if you have all those children.”

“Bigger.” Adoncia pulled the elastic band of her pants away from her waist to illustrate. “Much, much bigger.”

Elisa genuinely liked Diego, who often complained of missing his extended family in Mexico, just as Adoncia missed hers. “I don’t really think he wants a large family to prove anything. I think he wants a family to love.”

“The effect is the same. Me, pregnant. Over and over. And he wants it to happen soon.”

This was new information for Elisa. Adoncia had enough stress in her life, and although she was an exemplary mother most of the time, her temper was already too short by the end of the day. “Soon?”

“Marry him, have his baby the next year. No compromise.”

“But you have your hands full, Donchita,” Elisa said, using her pet name for her friend. “He doesn’t see that? Working, taking care of two small children?”

“He says once we’re married I can quit my job, that he makes enough money to keep us happy. But I know better. We will struggle. We need a year, two, maybe even three, to make things right, to save for a house, to get Nando out of diapers. Then maybe we could have a baby of our own, even two. But no more.”

Elisa was sorry to hear that her friends were locked in disagreement about something so fundamental. “Is birth control the problem, do you think? Because there are ways that the church approves of. Not perfect ways, but better than nothing.”

“One of the problems, yes.”

“I hope you and Diego can agree about this.”

“So do I. He wants to marry just as soon as—” Adoncia stopped. “As soon as we’re able,” she finished after a moment.

Elisa realized what her friend hadn’t said. Until Elisa moved out of the mobile home, there was no room for Diego here. Right now Adoncia shared the master bedroom with her children, while Elisa slept in the tiny second bedroom.

“I’m going to look harder for another place to stay,” Elisa promised.

“You are a good friend, and I am in no hurry.”

The debate was interrupted by a crash, then a wail, from the corner by the toy baskets. Elisa spun around to see Maria surrounded by shards of the ceramic lamp that had once resided on an end table.

“Don’t move, Maria,” Elisa commanded, reaching her in three strides. She scooped the little girl against her vacant hip and away from the broken lamp.

“I’m...I’m bleebing!” Maria looked down at her hand.

Elisa whisked her to one of two old armchairs crowded in the corner. Adoncia had reached them, but instead of taking Maria, she lifted Fernando into her arms so that Maria had Elisa all to herself.

“Let me see now.” Elisa gently pried the little girl’s fingers away from her wounded palm. “Oh, it’s not so bad. Just a little scratch.”

“It hurts!”

“Well, yes, that’s good. If it didn’t hurt you might not know you had scratched yourself.”

Adoncia had turned her back on them, supposedly to jiggle the whimpering Fernando, but in actuality Elisa knew her friend got queasy at any sign of injury. Once they had seen a dying robin by the roadside, and Adoncia had nearly passed out.

“Let me get the first-aid kit,” Elisa told Maria. “Then you can help me clean the cut and put on the Band-Aid.”

“I’ll get it,” Adoncia said. She returned from the bedroom she shared with her children and presented it to Elisa, turning her eyes to her daughter’s face. “Ah, Maria, you are very brave. A good brave girl.”

Maria stopped sniffling.

“How did you break the lamp?” Adoncia asked.

“Don’t...know.”

“I bet she got her foot tangled in the cord,” Elisa said. “It would have been easy to do.”

Adoncia addressed her daughter. “I will make you an ice cream cone. Would you like that?”

“Choc-late,” Maria said.

“And one for Nando, too.” Adoncia headed back to the kitchen.

Elisa had the kit open now. She lifted Maria in her arms and carried her to the bathroom to wash her hand with cool running water. Then, back in the living room, she let the little girl guide her as she put antibiotic ointment on the shallow cut and covered it with a glow-in-the-dark SpongeBob Squarepants Band-Aid.

She finished just as Adoncia returned with an ice cream cone in each hand and the broom tucked under her arm. “I will just clean up the mess now.”

Someone knocked on the front door before Adoncia could begin. Elisa got to her feet and swung Fernando into the chair beside his sister. Then she went to answer the door, expecting to find Diego.

Sam Kinkade was standing on the porch. He wore dark pants and a gray T-shirt bearing three monkeys and the words: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good people to do nothing.”

“Amnesty International,” he said, as she silently read the words. “Once I join enough organizations and buy enough T-shirts, I won’t have to give sermons.”

For a moment she didn’t know what to say, but his warm smile—all too rare when last she’d seen him—made him more approachable. “I like it.” She stepped away from the door and motioned him inside. “Please come in.”

“I don’t want to bother you. I just thought—”

“No, please come in and meet my roommate and her children.”

As he stepped inside, she saw the trailer through his eyes. It seemed more cramped, dilapidated, even more crowded with furniture Adoncia thought she could not afford to throw away. The last occupants had knocked a hole in the paneling, which Adoncia had covered with festive strips of adhesive-backed paper. The curtains had been intended for different sized windows and pinned to fit, since Adoncia had no sewing machine.

Elisa made the introductions and explanations, and Sam gravely examined Maria’s hand, despite the fact that it was now sticky with melting ice cream.

“You were obviously a very brave girl,” he said.