After her father has a stroke, Carmen Morales is summoned back to the Kern County home she was kicked out of twelve years before, by the Grandmother – “Abuela” – who refused to intervene. Over the course of the weekend, as Carmen attempts without success to determine whether her father — Padre — has insurance, she reconnects with several members of her extended family. Carmen stays with Kelsey, the only family member who had known she was trans, but the situation is complicated by Kelsey’s boyfriend Dace. Dace treats Kelsey poorly; he also reminds Carmen of his younger brother Diego, Carmen’s first crush.

At the end of the weekend, Kelsey tries to make a nice Sunday night dinner for Carmen and Dace, but Dace stands them up. She invites their cousin Inés (“Innie”) to join them instead. Innie is hostile at first, holding long-term grudges against both Carmen and Kelsey. But after a tequila-filled evening, the three of them manage to come to terms and rekindle their old friendship.

Chapter 9: Resolutions

I wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging legs to chest, trying to be small and inconspicuous. Trying to keep them from hearing my sobs. Padre’s clenched fists were pounding the heavy table so hard I thought it might crack, and he shouted to be heard over Momma’s tirade.

I wasn’t processing the words. I never did; they didn’t matter.

I only need . . . .

I desperately needed to pee, but was too terrified to make any move that might direct their anger at me. A dinner plate, still dripping with suds, flew across the room like a frisbee, missing Padre by a country mile but slamming into the wall with more than enough force to shatter, sending shards ripping across the room. As he rose, his face flushed, I couldn’t suppress a whimper.

I startled awake, pulling out of a dream that might or might not have been a memory, only to find that my need to pee was all too real. As was, unfortunately, the sound of intense argument coming from the master bedroom. To make the morning still more perfect, the smell of weed was back with a vengeance.

Unlike the argument in my dream, the one down the hall did not appear to be violent; Kelsey’s voice was low and venomous, Dace’s slurred and deep, but neither were shouting or throwing things. As long as it stayed that way, I intended to mind my own business – starting with a few minutes sitting on some porcelain.

Primary business accomplished, I took a look in the mirror and decided I’d better have another shower. Three nights of less-than-great sleep left me looking, and feeling, washed out. I might be able to get by without washing my hair again, if I could tame the tangles with a brush.

Bueno. I went back to the living room to get what I would need for the day, tuning out the argument that was happening on the other side of an uninsulated interior wall. That was muscle memory, first learned at home, then strongly reinforced on the street. I don’t need to know what they’re saying.

I only need to know . . . .

I’d forgotten to zip my bag, which wasn’t like me. Thinking about the day, I pulled out black pants in some wrinkle-free poly blend and paired them with a conservative top. I would probably need to go to Padre’s workplace in person, and I would definitely need to go back to the hospital. So, a reasonably professional look. Something I would wear to work.

The thought made me chuckle. I might be the only analyst getting up on Monday morning and wishing she could be going into work.

But the chuckle caught in my throat as I noticed something I’d missed when I rolled off the couch to make my bathroom door dash: The ash-tray by the chair facing the couch had been used, and I knew for a fact it had been clean when I went to sleep. Drunk or sober, I would never have gone to sleep with that smell around.

He’d been sitting there, just a few feet away, smoking pot and watching me?

My skin crawled, just thinking about it. God, I can’t let myself drink like that! I should have woken up!

My need for a shower now felt almost as urgent as my earlier need to pee. I made my way to the bathroom, even more determined to ignore the spat that was increasing in intensity if not volume. I can’t hear what you’re saying. I don’t need to know why you’re angry. I only need to know . . . . Am I safe? Can I hide, quietly? Can I walk away?

Or, do I need to run?

The hot water and soap somehow didn’t leave me feeling any cleaner, and even the faint smell of weed on the towels made it worse. Pinche pendejo!!!

At least the argument wasn’t still active when I left the bathroom. Kelsey was in the kitchen, in far more practical sleepwear than I had seen her a few hours earlier — just a light-weight pair of cotton shorts and a sleeveless, racerback top that proudly displayed both muscles and her tats.

One look told me I needed to tread softly. “Hey . . . you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fucking perfect.”

I sat across from her at the small table. “Is there anything I —“

“No.”

“Do you want to —“

“No.” A bit more forceful, this time.

We sat in silence for a few moments. She drank her coffee and I tried to come up with something to say. Nothing came to me, though.

Finally I reached over and put a hand on top of hers. “Kels . . . I’ve gotta go, and if I get everything done today I’ll head back home. But I’m only a phone call away, okay?”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything.

I gave her hand a squeeze, got up, collected my bag, and walked out, feeling hollow. But I hadn’t gotten half way to my car when she stomped out of the house and said, “Hey.”

I turned around and she caught me in a death grip of a hug. After a second’s surprise, I managed to return it.

“Call me before you leave this time, okay?”

“Kels —”

“Not now,” she directed, interrupting again. “I can’t deal right now. Just . . . call me later?”

I had no better option than saying “of course,” so I did. Then she let me go — abruptly — and marched back into the house.

~o~O~o~

I wasn’t surprised that Kern Cotton’s telephone was still running its horrid automated telephone system. Lots of businesses found it easier to deal with the public that way, and chances were good that the owner and his sons gave their private numbers to their important customers. I couldn’t blame them, since anyone hired to answer the telephone would mostly just be dealing with computerized spam calls. Better to let the recorded voices babble at each other. AI foreplay.

The upshot, though, is that I needed to drive out in person. Kern Cotton was up near Wasco, just twenty minutes away over two of the long, ruler-straight roads that make up much of the San Joaquin’s infrastructure.

Unfortunately, Wasco was also the home of Central Valley High School. With only a couple hundred households, Buttonwillow was nowhere near large enough to have its own high school, so we all got bussed to CVHS. Padre usually dropped me off in the mornings since it was on his way to work, but I got out hours before his shift ended and would take the bus home.

I didn’t need more memories banging on my skull, but every sight, smell and sound seemed like a trigger. Here was the roadside stand that had great produce; there was the place the bus went off the road when tule fog caused an early morning collision between a pick-up and one of the big dump trucks headed for the Shaftner landfill. There was the Catholic Church that looked like an overgrown Taco Bell.

And there they were — the low, mustard-brown buildings with the dark brown trim. In front of the buildings, seemingly larger, stretched the football field where so many of my childhood friendships were tested, and failed. Where the chavos I had known since grade school, the boys I had played baseball with, turned on me. Tomás, Santi, all the rest. I’d maybe hoped for better, but I’d always known their friendship was soft. Provisional. They only tolerated me because Diego did.

I had thought so much more of Diego. He’d treated Innie with respect, but I was barely worth his contempt.

“Chill, girl!” His laugh was patronizing, but he needed both hands to keep Innie at arm’s length. “You want the puto? You can have him.”

She didn’t stop swinging, and her voice was a battlecry. “You’re gonna eat that shit, cochino!”

“What do you want it for, anyway?” Tomás sneered. “Puto’s not into your kind.”

She spun out of Diego’s grip to clip Tomás on the side of the head, hard enough to make his ears ring. “You don’t fuck with a Morales – ANY Morales! – or we will Fuck! You! Up! Got it???”

“Leave it, Compas.” Diego looked down at me, as I struggled to get back to my feet. “Just stay away from us, Puto,” he spat. “Far away.”

It was not so easy to stay away, when you see the same people every day. Wherever I went, the whispers followed. I would be tripped in the halls; my locker would be defaced. My books dumped in trash cans.

I thought I deserved it, back then.

It would be easy to say that I have no idea how I survived, but that wouldn’t be true. I know exactly how. My secret “girl time” with Kelsey. Abuela’s uncompromising demand that I excel in school. And one extraordinary teacher who saw something in me when no-one else did.

He was half-sitting, half-leaning on his big, squat, metal and formica desk, his long legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles. Despite the setting, he somehow managed to look like a Seventeenth Century grandee in a Velázquez painting. The same impossibly high forehead and cheekbones; the long, narrow face; the dark, intense eyes over the eagle’s beak of a nose.

“My name is Alfonso Filipe Olivares y Cortez. It is my duty and privilege to try to get all of you to learn something about the past. And you will tell me – if you find the courage! – that you don’t care.” His knowing smile and the lift of a thin, aristocratic eyebrow challenged the room to contradict him, but of course no-one did. “You will tell me that the past does not matter.”

All traces of amusement vanished in an instant, replaced by intensity and conviction. “I will respond with the words of a wise man, that you would do well to remember: ‘The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.’”

He lit a spark that morning, that first day of my sophomore year. He spoke with passion and poetry about an idea as abstract as the relevance of history, and I found myself, for the first time in my life, wanting to be educated. Wanting, with all my heart, to imagine a world beyond Buttonwillow, beyond Kern County, beyond farming. To see it, experience it. Live it. From that day forward, I didn’t just study to keep Abuela off my back.

One good teacher. That’s all it took.

I realized with a start that I’d been stopped by the football field, oblivious to the passage of traffic or time. I shook my head and got the car back on the road.

The past is not even past.

The last few days demonstrated the wisdom of Faulkner’s words, which Señor Cortez worked so hard to hammer into our thick, adolescent skulls. I was a twisted lump of metal caught between the hammer of Abuela’s relentless, immigrant ambitions and the anvil of my parents’ broken dreams. I had no power to outrun my dark memories, nor any way to keep them buried. They were part of me.

But that idealistic, inspirational teacher was a part of my past, too. I needed to remember that.

~o~O~o~

Like Buttonwillow itself, Kern Cotton seemed unchanged, even as the people I associated with both places aged — sometimes radically. The squat, low building that housed the office remained near the entrance. Someone had installed a ramp to the front door by the side of the stairs. At a guess, this had nothing to do with complying with disabilities law. Old man Cavallaro probably needed it, these days.

I recognized the woman who was in the process of making coffee in the front office area, though I doubted I’d ever known her name. Anglo, mid-fifties. Running a little plump. She looked over as I walked in. “Be right with you, Hon.”

“No problem,” I replied, stopping at the counter that separated the working area from visitors. Not, “no hay bronca;” not here. Everyone out in the fields would speak Spanish as a first or second language . . . maybe as their only language. But here, in the office, things would be different. They would understand the casual Spanish expression, but using it would send other signals as well. Ones I did not want to send.

She quickly finished getting the coffee machine going and came over, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Sorry about that — nothing moves around here until the coffee’s flowing! What can I do for you?”

“I need to speak with someone about my father, Juan Morales.”

Her expression immediately transformed. “We were so worried about him! Will he be alright?”

“It’s too soon to tell,” I said cautiously. “He’s still in the hospital, and he isn’t conscious yet. They can’t figure out his insurance coverage, and I was hoping someone here could help.”

“Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry! Let me see if Mr. Cavallaro is available.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“Sure thing, Hon. Just have a seat and I’ll be right back. Can I get you a coffee while you wait?”

I assured her that I was fine, and took one of the vinyl-covered chairs as she hustled to the back of the building.

She looked a bit distracted when she got back. “He’ll be a couple minutes. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some coffee?”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

She went back to her desk and started working on something that apparently took all of her concentration.

After ten minutes had passed, I was having trouble controlling my impatience – and my uneasiness. I returned to the counter to ask if there was a problem.

“No, no. Mr. Cavallaro was just in the middle of something. I’m sure he’ll be right with you.”

“Okay, but . . . .” I decided to play the only card I was holding. “I really do need to be getting back to the hospital.”

“Oh! Yes, of course. I’ll . . . I’ll just go check, okay?” And off she went again.

I stayed at the counter and waited.

After another five minutes she came out again, and this time she looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. Mr. Cavallaro says that he has no recollection of Mr. Morales having any daughters. He can’t discuss personnel information with just anyone.”

Much as I wanted to be angry, it should have occurred to me that Padre never told anyone. However, there were conversations I didn’t want to have out in the open with a secretary. “I understand. Listen, I’ve been gone for twelve years, but I have met Mr. Cavallaro on several occasions. If he could spare five minutes of his time?”

She looked dubious and sounded even more so. “Well . . . I’ll ask him.” Back she went. Two minutes later she returned, followed by a large man with jet-black hair who looked more than a bit annoyed.

I’d never met him in my life.

He walked to the counter briskly. “I’m very busy this morning. Mrs. Ivers said you know me or something?”

I shook my head, a bit confused. “I’m sorry; she said she was getting Mr. Cavallaro. I thought she meant the owner?”

“I am the owner. And I don’t recall ever meeting you.”

My brain was working slowly, but it caught up. “It’s my mistake; I must have met your father. I was here a few times when I was in high school, but that was thirteen, fourteen years ago.”

He nodded, not unkindly. “He passed three years ago, rest his soul. Now, like I told Mrs. Ivers, I can’t release personnel information. I’m sorry you drove all the way out here, but I can’t help you.”

I opened my purse, pulled out my wallet, and showed my ID. “My name is Carmen Morales, as you see, and Juan Morales is my father. My grandmother called me on Friday and asked me to come back and help with the insurance issues.”

He looked at the ID and shrugged. “‘Morales’ isn’t an uncommon name, especially around here.”

“My Uncle Augustin can vouch for me. I’d call him, but he is stubborn about getting a cell phone. Still, he should be here by now.”

“Ah.” He looked uncomfortable and uncertain – expressions that did not seem natural to his face. But he appeared to reach a decision and turned to Mrs. Ivers. “See if you can get someone to track down Augustin and ask him about Ms. Morales. I’ll be in my office.” He left.

Mrs. Ivers made a call.

I didn’t move from the counter. Too bad if I make you all uncomfortable.

Another ten minutes passed before a call came in that Mrs. Ivers forwarded to the owner. And then, finally, he emerged from his office and waved me in, looking distinctly unhappy. “Please have a seat. I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

I nodded, not saying anything, and perched on the end of the offered seat, my back straight.

He glanced down at a file on his desk. “You were asking about insurance?”

“Yes. He didn’t have an insurance card in his wallet, and I haven’t found one in his papers. I’m pretty sure we were on Kaiser when I was living here, but the hospital said you’ve switched to an employee choice plan?”

He nodded. “That’s right. I checked our records, and it looks like your father took the option to go off the Kaiser plan back in 2018.”

Something felt wrong, but I decided I’d play dumb. “Okay, that’s helpful. Was he required to inform you of the name of the plan he selected?” You’d better say “yes” to that one!

An unhappy nod. “Yes. We have his election form.”

“Great,” I said brightly. “Can I get a copy? That should have everything the hospital needs.”

“Ummm . . . look. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what we’re allowed to give you, and what we aren’t. All this privacy stuff is a headache. I’m really not comfortable handing over personnel documents.” He again looked down at the manilla folder on his desk and rather deliberately rested his clasped hands on top of it. “I just don’t think I can do that.”

“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word while I thought about his response. “Can you at least tell me the name of the provider? And maybe the group and member numbers? I don’t need the actual document.”

He squirmed in his seat. “I think I’m allowed to tell you he selected an Anthem Plan. But I’m not comfortable providing any other information. I hope that helps.” Rising, he held out his hand. “Again, I’m sorry about your father.”

I smiled, shook his hand and thanked him for his assistance and well-wishes before departing. He was Padre’s boss and Uncle Augustin’s as well; I couldn’t afford to piss in their sand box. But once I was outside I felt an overwhelming desire to wash my hands.

Something’s not right.

I got in the car and headed South and east. Back to Bakersfield, and the hospital. When I got there I spoke with the folks in billing and told them what I knew, but when they ran it through their systems they didn’t get confirmation of coverage.

“I’m really sorry,” the woman said sympathetically. “It doesn’t necessarily mean your father isn’t on the Anthem Plan. They may just need more information to make a definitive match.”

So I went up to Padre’s room. He was alone, and to all appearances his condition hadn’t changed since Saturday morning. Still hooked up to oxygen. Abuela’s angry cry echoed in my mind. “My son can’t breathe without a machine!”

I stood for a while, looking down at his unresponsive form. Trying, somehow, to connect to the person I’d known. Trying to feel something, whether it was positive or negative. “Why is it,” I finally asked him, “that everywhere I go in this frickin’ county I see or hear or smell something that triggers a memory, but when I look at you, I draw a blank?”

Naturally, the figure in the bed did not respond.

I sat and, with a sigh, pulled out my phone and prepared to do battle with the Leviathan that is the American insurance Industry. It’s part of my job, and I’m good at it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I pulled up some of the photos I’d taken while going through his papers, so I had potentially useful information like his Social Security Number and Kern Cotton’s Tax ID number at my finger tips.

After getting through all the different options on the telephone tree, I was eventually able to connect with a person. I explained the situation and asked if they could confirm insurance coverage for Juan Morales, employed by Kern Cotton. I was transferred to another department, where I repeated the story. And then to a third. Then I was transferred to a “manager” who likewise knew nothing.

After two full hours of transfers, music on hold, chirpy recordings asking if I knew I could find “almost everything I need” on the company’s website, and being asked multiple times for the same basic information, I was finally able to speak with someone who had actual information. The woman was able to confirm that Juan Morales enrolled with Anthem in 2018 and paid premiums. Yes, indeed, he had.

For exactly one year.

After that, he stopped, and his insurance was cancelled, after numerous efforts to reach him had failed, sometime in 2019. The woman was “so very sorry” she couldn’t be more helpful.

Son. Of. A. Bitch! At least he had waited until Joaquim was employed and off his plan!

Again, my eyes drifted to the silent figure beside me. “You just had to leave me a steaming pile of crap to clean up, didn’t you?” I shook my head. “Abuela thought you were the smart one. You’ve got to be a super special kind of stupid to pull this!”

California is a generous state. There are programs for people who can’t afford insurance. There are even programs for the inevitable idiots who don’t get insurance until they have a health emergency. “But you have to apply for them, damn you! You didn’t, and no-one can apply for you. Not without an appointment by the Probate Court! And, they’ll need proof of your income and assets, too.” I wanted to pound my fists on something – or better still, someone! – and restrained myself with difficulty. “Just once, couldn’t you have done something right?”

His chest moved up and down. The monitor made noises. The oxygen continued to flow.

And the man in the bed gave me nothing.

“What else is new?” I asked him, my words bitter. “I guess I ruined your life — the one you wanted to make, somewhere far, far away. But I wasn’t the one who decided to have a wild time during summer break, was I? Do you know how much fun I got to have, when I was a year out of high school? All the great parties I went to, when I was sleeping behind a pinche dumpster? When I was stealing clothes and begging for food, and going fucking nuts???”

Crickets.

“You could have aborted. Gone your separate ways. Had nice lives. Did you talk about it? If all you were going to do was blame me for being born, why the fuck didn’t you?”

The figure on the bed blurred as tears of rage overflowed and seeped down my checks. “Why?” I asked, my voice choked to a whisper. “Why bring children into the world, if you can’t love them?”

I wanted to weep, to rage, to scream bloody murder. I wanted to rip the oxygen mask off and slap his expressionless face until he woke up and, for once in his pinche life, gave me answers.

And, somehow, I still just wanted him to love me.

I closed my eyes tight. They weren’t helping. My fists, clenched around the arms of the hospital’s occasional chair, were lost causes for now. I focused on breathing. On clearing my mind. Feeling the frenzied hammering of my heart, and willing it to return to a normal, steady beat.

I don’t know how long it took before I opened my eyes, but when I did they were clear and free of tears. I looked at the figure on the bed, the man who bore no resemblance to the father I recalled.

He slept on, oblivious to my pain. Oblivious to my life.

“All right,” I said conversationally. “I got the life you dreamed about, and the education you abandoned, so I actually know how to clean up your mess. Amazing, isn’t it? Except I expect you’d hate me for that, too.”

I rose and got my purse. At the door I paused, shooting him a parting look that wouldn’t get any points for fidelity to the Fifth Commandment. “Probably as good a reason as any to do it.”

— To be continued

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