She was Latina, knew pain, and the worth of the American dollar. They called her Dolores. I met her one evening in her South Bronx apartment. Bedridden by then, she was in her seventies. One look at me and she was mad, immediately.
Walking into her apartment was like wading through a polluted marsh. Strewn everywhere were magazines, old clothes, water bottles, take-out containers, brushes, plastic bags, hair bands, pizza boxes, rollers and bobby pins, tomato-sauce stained tupperware, cardboard boxes. Boxes upon boxes. I strolled in without my manners, mouth ajar, wondering how my then-boyfriend could have offered to let me keep some things at his family's place while I was gone.
"I should charge you rent for keeping all these things in here!" Dolores shouted after me, as I disappeared down the hall. "And don't think you'll find all these nice hangars when you come back after the summer! Those are nice! And I'm keeping some. As . . . as tax! You hear me?"
She was his grandmother. Had intestinal cancer and told me later that she sang to Jesus every morning to express her thanks for being alive. Dressed in a hairpiece and a nightgown, thick skin hung slack against a once expressive body. She told me that she never disliked any of the photographs that she had seen of herself. She always liked the way she looked, she grinned and said again for emphasis. With that, she dug into the mattress/couch and produced a wad of fingered pictures that I presumed she used to remember. One featured her in a negligee, smiling bold into the camera. Beautiful. Dangerous. Defiant.
I heard that she faded into that couch one winter. I imagine her death and know that the cold became too brisk . . . found its way to her, finally, through the maze of boxes and clothes and unrented belongings of other people housed in her home; wrapped its gnawing fingers around her and stole her last breath in one triumphant grab. Folding into the cushions like a pressed flower between pages, she resigned herself; was lost, finally, to the litter of the room.
Dolores never learned to like me. Never feigned to be blinded by the guise of my supposed feelings for her grandson or my feeble attempts to fit in. She heard how the neighbors cat-called me and laughed. Knew they looked at me and saw the same thing she did: a rich girl looking for street cred and acceptance. At every turn of the page--at every meeting--she took it upon herself to remind me that I had gained weight, bought something for more than I should have. And if I lied--told her my pants were just tighter than usual, or that I had spent less than I had on something as trivial as chapstick--she would throw back her head in one great gesture of recline. Reveling in her capture, she would laugh, mouth open, taking her time as she'd compose a reply.
"Really? You got it for that cheap?" she'd say. "How 'bout I give you some dollars and you pick me up some just like yours. And keep your receipt, 'cause I'm pretty sure they don't sell it for that little even out here by me."
No, she never liked me like my boyfriend's mother did. His mother who would braid my hair--include me among her women--while she crooned over and gawked at how "good" my hair was . . . how she wanted to do it "how the Spanish girls do," Dolores watched from a not-far-enough distance and scowled, balls out, recognizing at first hand my trite trick.
Dolores, the evil oracle.
She smiled at me the day I came to gather my belongings, smelling her grandson and my breakup on the impending horizon like a promise. I left, having nodded at her a thank you, though she didn't speak a word.
And after the inevitable crumble of our relationship, after the climax of angry phone calls that decorate the demise of all mismatched affairs, I buried my face in my closet as was my custom in punctuating my sorrow and noticed, to my chagrin, that--in fact--a few hangars were missing, as promised.