by Jacqueline W. Siglin, Contributing Writer

Lupita rubbed the thick yellow soap into her husband’s jeans, kneaded the cloth on a flat rock, then leaned forward to rinse out the suds in the river. She swirled the pants in the cold running water. Carlos whistled from somewhere down the path, and her children, playing in the lower orange grove, answered with shouts. The guests were coming.

She wrung the jeans out, her strong brown hands twisting the denim, and placed the coil of damp cloth on top of the other washed clothes piled in a white plastic bucket. Carlos and his brown mule emerged through the brush on the other side. Behind him on another mule sat a woman, dressed in khaki pants and a bright red blouse. Carlos held the yellow lead rope of her mule, as well as the rope for a single pack burro.

Only one.

Lupita sighed as she stood to greet them. She’d already made a large batch of dough for tortillas and had instructed her oldest daughter to start a big pot of soup. Hadn’t Carlos told her after the last visit that he was bringing five men? Five at 150 pesos a day for two days would have meant a good increase in the stash of money she had set aside for the trip to Chihuahua to have the baptism. The baby was already a year old and still without a name.

“Buenos días,” Carlos called, a big smile on his face.

“Días,” she answered. “¿Solamente una?”

“Sí.” He shrugged. “Pero por cinco días.”

Five days.  Lupita calculated the amount in her head. Half as much as she would have earned for the men, but better than what she had thought when she saw the single woman. She looked at the guest a second time as Carlos led the mule and burro across the river, then up the rock path toward the hacienda. Her long legs hugged the mule’s sides and her feet fit firm on the stirrups, but she made no effort to hold the reins or smile. Lupita picked up the bucket and followed them.

“Washing her clothes in the river. Can you beat that?” Marjorie Simmons spoke to the thick whitewashed walls of her guest room.  She touched a manicured fingernail to the collar of the red sport blouse. “Poppy” – that was the color. She’d been trying to remember all day.

She took off her wide-brimmed hat, hung it on the hook underneath a picture of a saint in a tin frame. Her duffel had been left in the center of the wooden bed, but other than three hangers dangling on a pole mounted across the far corner, there didn’t look to be a place to put anything, unless she used the freshly swept dirt floor. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through her blonde highlighted hair.

Lupita stoked the fire under the soup pot with a small stick of wood, then began to roll the balls of dough into tortillas. Carlos sat on a chair on the porch. “Aquí tiene su dinero,” he leaned forward to hand her a roll of pesos.

She wiped her hands on a towel, then counted. “Cinco días,” she said.

He nodded.

“Es el doble.”

He yawned, stretched his arms over his head and spoke in accented English “Non-refundable cancellation policy. There were supposed to be two people.”

Lupita looked at him.

He repeated the last sentence in Spanish. “Debían ser dos personas.”

Marjorie poured hot water from the fire-blackened tea kettle into the Nescafé crystals at the bottom of her cup.  She stirred, added a spoon of sugar. Why couldn’t they make a decent cup of brewed coffee and serve something beside beans with everything? She pushed her breakfast plate aside. And speak English. You’d think a place which wanted tourists could do that.

At least there was freshly-squeezed orange juice. She picked up the glass and drank. The house sat in the middle of citrus groves and the trees were loaded with fruit. What a grand place this must have been in its heyday.

She stepped to the screen door of the dining area. One of the daughters was washing last night’s dishes in the ditch that flowed off to the side of the house. She tried not to remember which plate had been hers.

Lupita watched as the woman headed up the path toward the groves, a book in her hand. What a strange person. No Spanish and no appetite. She picked up the breakfast plate and shook her head. Why had she wasted an egg on her? It would be better to have those five men. More work, for sure, but they might be loud and fun and pay some attention to the children. This woman was like a ghost.

¡Dios mío! What a thought. Lupita crossed herself. The woman had paid good money, even extra money for the person who didn’t come, and asked for nothing. Lupita looked again at the figure disappearing into the groves. Something was different today. No red blouse. It was about time. Mrs. Simmons had worn nothing else on her top since she’d arrived. It must be stinking by now.

Hush, she told herself. It was the woman’s business what she did with her clothes. On her way past the guest room door, Lupita paused. Instead of thinking bad thoughts, she ought to do something nice, something to make Mrs. Simmons feel she was getting her money’s worth, especially the nonrefundable part. She entered the room, snatched the red shirt off the back of the chair and put it in her laundry bucket.

“Robar. Robar las ropas, la blusa. Robar, robar.” Marjorie ran screaming into the front courtyard.

Startled, the baby sitting on her sister’s lap began to wail and one of the sleeping dogs jumped up on his spindly legs and began to bark his head off. Over the racket, the daughter assigned to roll dough balls into the evening’s tortillas ran for her mother.  

Lupita hurried up from the river. Marjorie charged toward her. “Robar,” she yelled. “Las ropas, la blusa.”

It took a minute. Lupita knew this was Spanish, but it made no sense. To steal the clothes, the blouse? What was she talking about?

Marjorie thrust an English/Spanish dictionary at her, pointed at a word.

“Sí, Lupita nodded her head, “robar. ¿Por que?”

Marjorie’s face was red with effort. “La blusa,” she said, flipping frantically through the pages. “Roja.”  

The light dawned in Lupita’s head. “La blusa roja está ahí.” She pointed toward the clothesline stretched across the far side of the courtyard and walked over to get the garment.

“Está limpia,” she said as she handed it to Marjorie.

“You washed it?” Marjorie said. “In the river?” She clutched the blouse to her chest. Tears ran down her cheeks. She stumbled. Lupita caught her.

“Señora,” she said as she helped her sit on the porch. “¿Qué pasa?”     

Marjorie wiped at her eyes. “It is,” she fumbled with the dictionary, “my daughter’s, mi hija’s.”

“La blusa?” Lupita touched the shirt.

“Sí,” Marjorie said. “She was supposed to come here. She wanted to see this place, and I said I would go with her. It is so hard. We made all these plans.” She crumpled the soft material of the blouse in her hands.

“Señora,” Lupita picked up the dictionary. She pointed out the words one at a time. “¿Dónde está su hija?”

Marjorie took the dictionary back, slowly thumbed through the pages. “Muerta,” she said as she lowered the book to her lap, “in Iraq.”

“¡Madre de dios! Lupita pulled Marjorie into her arms and held her tight. A slight breeze ruffled through the clothes on the line.