Magnolia

Modesto, California, 1976

Magnolia Mendoza couldn’t catch sleep. She didn’t even try to chase it. It was pointless. Sleep was always a few steps out of her reach. Still, her teacher, Mr. Lynch, had told her more than once, especially when he caught her resting her head on her desk, that she needed to “catch some shut-eye.”

From her bed, Magnolia could see the iron arrows on the wood clock above the kitchen sink. The short one pointed to the number two. She had four hours before she had to get up for school, but her eyes were wide and had grown accustomed to the dark. 

She twirled a chunk of her long, dark-brown hair against the side of her round cheek and over her thin lips. The lock was soft and silky. The feeling comforted her. If her mother saw her playing with her hair, she would shriek: “Get your hair away from your face, cochina! That is dirty!” Magnolia wondered what it would feel like to have her mother stroke her hair. Would it lull her to sleep? She pushed the thought out of her mind. Her mother, Lily Mendoza, would never do a motherly thing like that.

Magnolia reached out her arm and smoothed the cool sheets beside her with the palm of her hand. Her mother would sleep in that space later this morning, after she finished her shift at the motel.

Magnolia wondered how long she would have this job as the Best Lodge Motel’s night cashier. It was one of the many thoughts Magnolia stuffed into every corner of her 11-year-old mind. Was her mom ever in danger working at night? Her mother welcomed all sorts of “interesting people” from truck drivers to salesmen passing through, heading north to Sacramento or south to Los Angeles. The people her mom didn’t talk about, the ones she whispered about in Spanish to friends on the phone, those people took up the most space in Magnolia’s head.

If her mom quit that job and relied only on her second job at the laundromat, could they stay in this apartment? It wasn’t much different from the other places they’ve called home, but she liked the residents in this place best. If they moved again, would she have to change schools? If she could stay at this school a little longer, maybe she’d find friends she liked. Maybe not. 

Magnolia sat up and took a deep breath. She brought her legs into her chest to hug them and rested her head on her knees. What would it feel like to wrap her arms around sleep? Would sleep delicately lay its cotton-like digits on her eyelids to keep them shut? Would it give her a long stretch of dreams she could remember instead of the time gaps of  her brief naps? Would sleep sweep away the thoughts that ran like a ticker tape unspooling in her head? She thought about the black and white films she saw in school showing ticker tape parades for war heroes. She envisioned herself in those films, on the top floor of a tall building, tossing her thoughts out the window and watching each float to the reveling crowds below. Let one of those happy people catch one of her thoughts. Let them keep it for a while.

A cool breeze floated across the second-floor apartment, entering through the 3-inch sliver of open window in the living room and exiting through the bedroom window in the rear. Magnolia’s mother described their home as a “one-bedroom” to friends, which confused her. It was just one large room, smaller than some motel rooms. Half a wall separated the living room and kitchen from the bedroom. Metal hinges were the only signs that a door once divided the space. Her mom said they lived in a “one-bedroom” because it sounded more impressive than the cajita, the little box, it was.

Magnolia’s belly was heavy from dinner. Mrs. Sousa from the apartment next door had taken away her plate of burnt chicken and mushy canned asparagus that her mother made and replaced it with a steaming hot piece of cod bathed in a cream sauce with potatoes and butter-soaked carrots. Magnolia once said she would never eat fish, but that changed when she met Mrs. Sousa. 

“Yes?” Mrs. Sousa had asked Magnolia.

Inhaling the butter and seasonings, Magnolia smiled and responded, “Yes, Yes.”

Magnolia caught the smallest lift of the old woman’s left cheek, a sign that a smile was fighting to escape. 

Her mother paid Mrs. Sousa to check on Magnolia after dinner. The round woman with short white hair pinned at the sides stopped by in the evening to see that Magnolia had eaten, washed her dishes, and got ready for bed. She only spoke Portuguese and a few choice English phrases. It didn’t matter. Magnolia could understand what she was thinking with just an expression. Most of the time, the woman could criticize something with a single raised eyebrow. Mrs. Sousa often cringed at Magnolia’s dinners — bologna sandwiches on white bread, hot dogs and eggs, and her mother’s specialty, overdone chicken. 

When Magnolia finished her dinner, Mrs. Sousa stood outside the front door and waited to hear the girl slide the lock on the front door and wedge a metal bar in the window well. She angled the bar so she could leave the window open a couple of inches, but no one could open it wide enough to climb in. Each time Magnolia placed the bar in the window frame, she thought of how disappointed a thief would be if they risked breaking into the apartment and found nothing worth stealing. Even their television wasn’t worth the trouble of carrying it out.

Through the window, Magnolia watched Mrs. Sousa waddle to the folding chair outside her door. She hooked her cane on the second-floor walkway’s metal railing and lowered herself to the seat. 

Magnolia wondered if Mrs. Sousa also chased sleep. She was awake at odd hours. A few nights ago, well past midnight, she heard Mrs. Sousa on her second-floor balcony shouting at the teenagers congregating loudly on the street corner. 

“Shut up! Go home, hooligans!” she had yelled, her anger stripping away any hint of an accent.

From the window, Magnolia watched the teens slowly limp down the street like they had tamarindo de fruta candy stuck to the soles of their shoes. One kid, a cholo in a Pendleton shirt and baggy pants, had shouted back, “Fuck you, old lady!” 

Unfazed, Mrs. Sousa dismissed them with a wave.

The teens were older than Magnolia, probably in high school — if they went to school. She didn’t know them and likely wouldn’t be friends with them even if they did. These kids walking the streets at night were cool kids—or bad kids—but not her kind of kids. Magnolia didn’t know what her kind of kids would be. She hadn’t met them yet.

---

Tired of lying down, Magnolia got out of bed to watch TV. She found her father sitting on the couch. 

“Daddy! I didn’t know you were here!” she said, slightly louder than intended. She ran and jumped on the center cushion of the couch. 

Mrs. Sousa knocked on their shared wall, signaling to Magnolia that she needed to get to bed. She looked at her father and giggled. 

Her dad only visited when her mother was at work. Magnolia savored their nights together. She told him everything about her life — the things she loved, feared and kept secret — and he was always willing to listen. 

“Yesterday, the Hernandez kids came home from church with a piñata! It wasn’t filled with candy, but it wasn’t broken either,” Magnolia said. 

Her father smiled.

“Did you know the Hernandez family has four adults and six kids living in that three-bedroom apartment downstairs?” Magnolia asked. “Oh, you knew that. Every Sunday, the whole family piles into Mr. Hernandez’s light blue and white van to attend services at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church. When the kids come home, they always tell stories of Jesus, his father, God, his mother, the Virgin Mary, and the blessings they received from answered prayers.”

Her father nodded in agreement. 

“I think their church must be like a huge party,” Magnolia said. “They always leave neat in their fancy clothes — the girls’ hair perfectly combed into braids and the boys’ hair slicked to the side. But they always return in the afternoon messy and laughing and carrying foil-wrapped plates of food. And today, they came home with a piñata.”

Magnolia hesitated but decided to share her questions about the church. 

 “I asked mommy about going to church with the Hernandez family, just to see what it’s like, but you know what she said.” The conversation replayed in Magnolia’s mind. 

“We don’t go to church,” her mother had snapped. “If there is a God, we won’t find him in a Catholic church. That is the Hernandez family’s God — definitely not ours.” 

Magnolia didn’t want to share what her mother said. She never wanted to bring up anything that might prevent her dad from coming home to stay. 

Instead, she whispered, “She said no. I wanted to ask her why she’s so angry with God or the church, but I’m going to wait until she’s in a better mood.”

“That’s smart,” her father said, nodding in agreement. “You look sad. Are you sad that she said no?”

“No, that’s not it,” Magnolia said. 

“Something else?” he said. 

“Mike Trujillo made me cry,” she confessed. “He made fun of my new light blue pants. He called them hospital pants in front of everyone. He said they were the kind doctors wore in hospitals for crazy people.” Magnolia’s face felt hot recalling the taunts from the fat-faced boy. She could see her father’s kind eyes and gentle smile melt into a scowl as if he was thinking of ways to beat up the kid. 

“Mommy is going to be so mad, but I don’t want to wear those pants anymore,” she said. “You know she only buys me two pairs of pants at the beginning of the school year.”

“You don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to,” he said, his voice reassuring. 

She placed a pillow on the couch and put her head on it. She could feel fingers lightly stroking her hair. 

Her father looked as he did in the black and white picture of him she kept in a drawer with her school supplies. She didn’t know if her mother knew she had the picture. Her mother doesn’t like to talk about him. In the photo, he’s leaning against an old Chevy, wearing a crisp white shirt and a dark, thin tie. His wavy black hair topped a round face with high cheekbones emphasized by a wide, toothy grin. His eyes were the shape of half-moons, just like Magnolia’s, but her eyes were almost black. His eyes were “like the color of caramel—and just as sweet,” her mother once said when she came home slightly drunk from a night with her girlfriends. On the back of the photo, he wrote: “Rigoberto Chavez, February 1964,” the year Magnolia was born. 

“What does your mom say when you tell her about that kid?” he asked. 

“Nothing.”

Magnolia wanted to change the subject, but she wanted his sympathy more. 

 “She doesn’t have time to listen to me,” Magnolia said softly, realizing it stung to say it out loud. “She’s always saying, ‘Please be quiet. Turn the TV down. Don’t stomp when you walk. Be gentle when you put your dishes in the sink.’ Sometimes, I feel like just breathing is too noisy for mommy.”

“She just works too much,” he said. “You don’t have to be quiet for me, but you might have to be quiet for Mrs. Sousa!”

She buckled over in laughter, squeezing the soft center of her tummy. Her dad didn’t mind if she was loud and animated. Magnolia loved that. He always took her side, no questions asked. She loved that even more.

Firm knocks on the wall shared with Mrs. Sousa’s apartment silenced the room. Magnolia covered her mouth, and then walked to the wall. She listened briefly before responding, “I’m going to bed now, Mrs. Sousa.” 

She didn’t go to bed. She returned to the sofa and whispered to her dad for so long that she fell asleep and continued the conversation in her dreams. 

---

Magnolia woke up to daylight. Her mother was on the front balcony talking to Mrs. Sousa and Mrs. Sousa’s teenage granddaughter, her unofficial translator. By then, her dad was gone. She only caught a bit of the conversation. 

Her mother said, “I don’t know why she talks to him…I’m so worried…Thank you for telling me.” 

Magnolia heard the key enter the front door lock, and she ran to the bed and slid under the covers. She shut her eyes and listened to the door open and the clink of her mother dropping the keys on the kitchen table. The apartment seemed to vibrate with every step her mother took until she sat on the bed’s edge. 

“I know you’re awake,” said her mother, a short woman with a tiny frame and curvy hips. She had a round face framed by wavy hair that rested on her shoulders. A bit of light blue eyeshadow remained on her eyelids. Smudged black eyeliner surrounded her small almond-shaped eyes.

Magnolia pretended to slowly wake up, lifting one eyelid and looking in her mother’s direction. With a hint of surprise, she said, “Oh, morning mommy.” 

Her mother looked at her suspiciously. 

“Mrs. Sousa said she heard conversations last night. Who were you talking to?”

“I don’t know,” Magnolia said quietly. 

“Were you talking to your dad?”

Magnolia remained silent.

Her mother inhaled deeply. 

“Baby, you know your dad isn’t here,” she said softly. “He left a long time ago. He left and he hasn’t come back in the 11 years you’ve been alive.”

She rubbed Magnolia’s ankle a little too vigorously as if trying to shake sense into her daughter, starting with her leg. Magnolia thought about the curve of her father’s smiling face. She wished she could see him in the flesh. 

Her mother reached to smooth her daughter’s long hair. 

Magnolia flinched at her attempt to soothe her. Her mom’s touch was mechanical and cold, something she could not bear to feel at this moment. To Magnolia, her mother didn’t show affection the way television mothers fawned over children. Or the way Doña Julia Hernandez downstairs hugged and kissed each child on the forehead when they left the house. Or the way Gina, from the apartment next to the Hernandez family, cuddled with her niece and nephew when they stayed over on the weekends to watch movies. The three would pile onto a single lounge chair outside their apartment and watch the television through the front window. 

Magnolia’s mother would never show affection like that. It didn’t come naturally. Her mother showed affection because she had to. Magnolia would like to believe her mother loved her. She just mothered differently. Maybe she never learned how to mother. Magnolia often wondered what her grandparents were like. What kind of parents were they to her mom? What kind of grandparents would they have been to her? She would never know. They were gone before Magnolia was born, and her mother doesn’t talk about them. She doesn’t have aunts, uncles or cousins, or any type of blood relations to ask. 

“We don’t need him, we have each other,” her mother said. “I wish he wanted to be part of our lives. I really loved him. But, you can’t force someone to do something they don’t want to. I couldn’t make him stay. And pretending he’s part of our lives doesn’t make it true, mija.” 

Magnolia slid her eyes in her mother’s direction briefly. 

“It’s like he vanished,” Lily said. “He talked about going to a big city like Chicago or New York City and traveling to other countries. Wherever he is, we aren’t a part of that life. I don’t want you waiting for him or pretending he’s here.”

Lily continued speaking, but Magnolia forced the words to evaporate before she could hear them. Magnolia stared out their only bedroom window. The autumn sky was a cloudless light blue. Could her father see the same sky, wherever he was today? She pulled the blanket close to her chest. Feeling her eyes water, she blinked hard several times. 

Magnolia thought about all the times she wished her mother would to talk to her. She desperately wanted to bask in the light of her mother’s smile and feel the warmth of her voice. She wanted answers to her questions, especially about her dad, without her mother avoiding them with excuses of being tired or busy or late. 

Her mother spoke as if she cared, but her words had nothing to do with her daughter and everything to do with her desire to erase her daughter’s dad from their lives. Magnolia understood she had a better chance of feeling her mother’s warmth if she never spoke about her dad again. She could not do that. 

She closed her eyes and prayed silently to the Hernandez family’s God, “Please make my mother be quiet.”