Mario Alberto Zambrano - Loteria

“I think I just got a job.”

The way she said it, maybe it was her face, maybe it was how excited she seemed. She hadn’t had a job. It wasn’t that she couldn’t speak English. She spoke fine, better than Papi, but it never came up, her having a job. Now she was going to work for Dr. Roberto, the man who said I didn’t take care of my wrist the way I was supposed to.

“How did he know you needed a job?” We were listening to María Castro on the radio. I remember because I thought Mom looked like her, the way she was driving, her back off the seat, leaning forward. She looked like María Castro. She said they were talking and she mentioned that she didn’t have a job, and now on top of the house bills she had to pay medical expenses. That’s when he offered. He told her she could clean his house.

“Did he give it to you at the beginning or at the end?”

“What do you mean give ?”

“After you were laughing or before?”

“What do you mean laughing, Luz?”

“I saw you laughing. I heard you.”

“He told me right before I left. He gave me his number and said I could start next week.”

“You’re going every day?”

“Not every day. Maybe three times a week.”

“Where does he live?”

“Somewhere on the south side, past the highway. He said he has a garden and doesn’t have time to take care of it.”

“A garden?”

“Yes, Luz, a garden!”

There was a hat she never wore on the floor of the passenger side, made of white straw with a blue ribbon around it. I grabbed it and put it on, pulled the top down over my eyes and thought of Dr. Roberto’s “garden.” I could see Mom clipping whatever bushes and plants he had. The sun beating down on her skin. The droplets of sweat sliding down her face. And Dr. Roberto calling her from the back door, “Cristina, come inside. Take a break. Have a cold drink with me.” Mom turning around, her back straight, looking like María Castro.

Papi would go hunting on weekends and ask me if I wanted to go with him. He’d grab the rifle from under his mattress, where he kept it, and take me to the backyard so I could practice. “Hold it like this,” he’d say, with his right arm wrapped around it. He’d point to the melons on a stump against the fence at the far end of the backyard and say, “Shoot like if it were the head of something you hate.”

The rifle was too big. When I’d wrap my arms around it Estrella would stare at me like if I were a jackass. But eventually I found my way, which wasn’t the way I was supposed to do it. Instead of holding it with my arms I tried holding it against my body. But when I pulled the trigger the force knocked me down. And when I put my cheek against the butt, so that I could look at the pointer and center my aim on a melon against the fence, it’d knock me down. My cheek would puff up like if I’d been punched, and Papi would laugh and help me up, telling me to try again. “Ándale, otra vez.”

I had to keep my legs open. That’s what it was.

“Keep your elbows up también ,” he said. But the rifle would slip out when I did that. It was too heavy, and the only way I could do it was if I held it against my body, so that it’d become a part of me. I had to push into it. And when I figured that out, all of a sudden those melons exploded. The pins and needles in my fingers were nothing compared with being knocked down. I learned to lean into it and not pull away. Pushing into it is what kept me from getting hurt.

But there you go. That’s how it is.

My arms and legs were open like a star facing the sun. That’s how I used to lie under the tree when Mom was cleaning the house and Papi was either working on the truck or mowing the yard. Back then my hair was long, down to my waist, and for some reason, the bangs around my face were always curly like a bad perm. I’d try to comb it after I came out of the shower, but when it dried it would bunch up. So I just let it run wild and do whatever it wanted. Estrella would comb it down and I’d have to use my neck muscles to keep my head straight. Mom said I should let it be, that maybe when I got older it would unravel. Maybe when I got older I wouldn’t seem all over the place. “I’m not all over the place,” I’d tell her. But she said I was. She’d say sometimes I was easy because I was quiet, but sometimes I wasn’t because I wanted attention. And if no one gave me attention I’d keep bothering them until they’d listen. Muy cabezona , she’d say, like your father. Stubborn as a mule.

But whatever.

Mom used to say Pancho Silva had a good ear but I remember them the size of waffle fries. His voice sounded rough and broken, and if he started telling us a story it would take him forever to shut up. Like when he’d tell us about Pedro Infante or how someone discovered him as an actor in Mexico City. He was drinking at a bar in the middle of the day taking a break from a job at a creamery. A woman in a red suit with a bun over her head the size of a pomegranate noticed him. She told him he looked like Pedro Infante, that the similarity was remarkable. Even the build was the same.

From then on Pancho started working as Pedro Infante’s double.

But then Pedro died. He was in a plane crash, somewhere in the mountains, and it took them a long time to find the pieces of the plane because they were lost under trees. The search patrol never found the metal plate that was inside Pedro’s head from a previous surgery. So of course, people think he’s still alive, hiding in a cave somewhere. Life as a movie star was too much for him. The story of the plane crash was a way to be left alone.

Pancho said Pedro would visit him in Magnolia Park in the middle of the night, and he’d tell him that he was living in a small town outside of Puerto Vallarta. They’d sit on the porch and talk in the dark and strum the strings of a guitar until morning, then Pedro would say good-bye and tiptoe out through the front gate.

None of us believed him.

Gastón would ask, “Really, Pancho? Pedro Infante was here last night and you didn’t take a picture?” He explained why taking a picture would’ve been a bad idea. If someone found out Pedro was alive and in Magnolia Park his cover would’ve been blown. It’d be on the cover of a magazine like National Enquirer .

“Cállate ya, Papa,” Tío Daniel would say, and Pancho would storm out waving his hands in the air. He’d go to the back patio where his barbecue pit was, because that’s where he went to calm himself. Tío Daniel would say he was losing his mind, already at sixty-eight years old, and he felt sorry for him.

Estrella was in the kitchen with Mom:

“I could have two tiers on both sides, all white with stairs and the tiara on top, but not on the cake. I want it next to the music box.” “You want the music to be playing the whole time?” “Yeah, the whole time.” “And if no one can hear it?” “Maybe we could put a small microphone somewhere?”