Who knew it would be so easy? English and the abecedario share 26 letters. Most sentences are built on the same Subject-Verb-Object scaffold, and the vocabularies of both geographical hombres boast Latin origins: Spanish, a direct descendant, and English, poaching Latin by way of the French. At least, that’s what Mr. Pinkwater said.
And Lupe had always been good at languages. In Santos des Rosas, when she and her mother traversed the rocky desert hillsides of Oaxaca by bus, cleaning the homes of the rich, Lupe understood all of the variants of Spanish encountered among the gardeners, governesses, and maids, easily migrating from Nahuatl to Yucatec Maya, from the dialects of Mixtec to the tongues of the Zapotec, with the ease of a trained linguist.
“You’re bright,” they told her. “Go to the U. S. Make something of yourself.”
Mama said, “Yes, Lupe go!”
A woman made fat from years of eating the packaged junk they called food in the local bodegas and made weary from scrubbing tiled floors on wrecked knees, Mama sought beauty, luxury, something she could touch and smell and wear in the dreary village she had always known with its bone-dry landscape, its barren womb which produced nothing to eat. She and Lupe, glued to American television in the lavish haciendas as they lunched on greasy chorizo and stale tlayudas, had developed an appreciation for western fashion.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a favorite of the matrona at their best cleaning job, blared rerun after rerun all day long with a robust stream of breathtaking garb, a kaleidoscope of color and design draped upon the toned, tanned figures of beautiful celebrities, including Kyle Richards prancing into Bib Gourmand bedecked in a Vibrancy blood red silk slip dress embroidered with gold chains snaking their way from hem to bosom, and Dorit Kemsley stepping out of a sleek black Bentley in front of Mambo Craze Cabaret adorned in Schiaparelli’s cape-styled gown of crinkled silver, cinched at her tiny waist in lush black velvet.
“You go, Lupe,” her mother urged. “Learn English. With no English, there is no money in America. Make money. Send money. And a Tom Ford cross-body bag… and an Alex Perry blue satin robe.”
And Mama was right about the English. She had watched more than the Wives, Telemundo had shown her the great divide in living color. The largely silent underworld of the overworked and undocumented in America was filled with the chronically poor. They were a permanent underclass, a people without the key to upward mobility – English. English was the way out of cleaning houses, delivering pizzas, and minding children for the gringas. It was the way to move up, up, up, like Lupe’s successful Latina sisters in their Dolce & Gabbana suits who planted sandwich boards on the lush green lawns of pricey listings, or strolled through the doors of gleaming high rise corporate headquarters in Manolo Blahnik pumps, their Brazilian blowouts gleaming and streaming.
Each week, Lupe typed new English words on her tablet, preparing for Mr. Pinkwater’s contests in the ESL class at the YMCA. Class members had to bring three new English words to school and use them correctly in sentences. The winner won a $10 Visa gift card. So far, Lupe had amassed four of these cards, which she was saving for her first Hermès Birkin bag. Song lyrics filled her ’92 Saturn as she did deliveries for DoorDash, and Lupe sang along, working to moderate her accent: “Start me up” and “Another one bites the dust…”
One balmy Friday night, Lupe’s last dash was to a solitary house with glass walls and lots of steel and wood, a masterpiece of modern architecture sprawled across a hilltop. There is something bold about a house with glass walls, its shades rolled up to exhibit long, sleek monochrome sofas and chairs draped in swaths of chenille; dark, oiled tables bearing objets d’art of the modern masters that shone in the light-washed air; and splashes of bright accent in Gaudi-inspired lamps. The eggshell walls created an appropriately bland backdrop to Nicole Eisenman works with their startling shifts in pigment, shape, and character. It was a kind of showing-off, a dare to would-be thieves. Lupe cleaned several such homes, taking feather duster to crystal, microfiber cloth to mahogany.
As she trudged back down the driveway to her Saturn after dropping off Enchiladas de Roberto, Camerones Diablo, and Pollos Hermanos on the doorstep, a burst of Merengue rhythm fell across the air as a sliding door opened and closed. Her gaze was summoned to a section of the low stone wall hugging a large pool area, bright red canopies of giant umbrellas flapping in a breeze. She climbed into her car and texted: “Your Dasher has arrived”. She was about to close the door and start the engine when a woman’s voice, deep, rich of tone, carried through the tranquil air:
“What’d you do with the body?” It was a cold-blooded question. Who would ask such a thing as if it was a normal occurrence to dispose of a body?
Lupe grabbed her tablet, but her fingers went to jelly and she dropped it. She wrung her hands, cursed, and pried the device from between the seats.
“Dumped him in the marina,” said a man’s voice, like a rake dragging concrete.
Their speech was rapid, but clear. When she didn’t know a word, Lupe typed it phonetically, glancing up to be certain she hadn’t been spotted. Her mouth went desert dry, her heart knocked.
“Food’s at the front door, babe.”
“I’ll get it, honey.”
Lupe released the parking brake, shoved the car into neutral, and drifted downhill. At the bottom, she sat in stunned silence, the windshield awash in the blood red of a rising moon. A man had been killed. Murdered. And they spoke of it as though it was a normal event. Murderers. She had just delivered food to murderers.
That night, she thrashed about, tormented by visions of floating hair, a bloated body rising and falling in gloomy, dark currents while fish greedily feasted on the flesh of this nameless soul. What of his family?
In class, Lupe was the first to share new English words with her ESL classmates.
Mr. Pinkwater: “Piling.”
Lupe: “I chained him to the bottom of a piling.”
Mr. Pinkwater: “Wedged”
Lupe: “He’s wedged under a ton of rock.”
Mr. Pinkwater: “Dredger.”
Lupe: “By the time the dredger gets there, he’ll have sunk another ten feet.”
Her classmates snapped to attention and studied Lupe with narrowed eyes. Who was this crazy chica?
Mr. Pinkwater’s gray face brightened. “Reading a page-turner, Lupe? In English? Brava!”
Just like that, Lupe became a celebrity in ESL class. Everyone knew her name. Everyone smiled and jockeyed for the seat next to her. She felt the weight of that status, and understood, for the first time, the responsibilities of The Real Housewives in the face of their popularity. But her status had come from the sacrifice of a man’s life. Was it wrong to continue to deliver meals to killers? Should she go to the police? But what would she say? “I heard them talking about killing a man and burying him in a marina.” She would need more than that.
The following Friday, she delivered Burritos Mole, Mariscos Rancheros, and Tacos el Poblano. The sounds of slow, rhythmically lapping water and the shaking of a carafe spilled over the stone wall, along with the strains of Aldo Rodriguez’s manic rap. This time, Lupe parked halfway down the steep driveway. After summoning Honey and Babe to their meal from her car, she crept up the hill on foot with her tablet and hovered behind the stone wall. Was she crazy? Maybe. But Lupe was both terrified and captivated by Honey and Babe, who she imagined as fat (based entirely on the huge meals they ordered), tattooed generously (surely they’d been to prison), with smiles that flashed the gold-grilled teeth of hoods and professional football players. Certainly, they draped themselves in heavy, garish jewelry as well.
At the next ESL class, a Hindu priest from Mumbai named Amir asked Mr. Pinkwater if Lupe could go first again.
Mr. Pinkwater: “Renegade”
Lupe: “Nobody’s looking for a renegade wetback, Babe.”
Mr. Pinkwater: “Extinguish.”
Lupe: “The next mule fucks with us, we’ll extinguish him too.”
Mr. Pinkwater: “Fentanyl.”
Lupe: “Fentanyl, Babe. Fetty. Apache. China White. Tango & Cash. It’s all Fetty.”
Three classmates asked Lupe for the name of the novel she was reading. A girl from Beijing brought her pork buns. A shoe repair man from the Philippines offered to resole her boots for free. While the image of the dead man flitted through the crevices of her brain, and she sometimes made herself sick thinking of what must have been a violent death, there was also a secret, shameful thrill that washed through her, especially when she shared her words with the class. Lupe knew she should be struck dead by lighting – or by the hand of these monsters.
On the following Friday night, Honey and Babe dined inside. Lupe crept up to the stone wall opposite the dining room, peered into the window, and dropped her tablet in a bed of swirling fescue. To her surprise, Babe looked like one of those skinny blondes parading into the fancy yoga place in the mall with the vegan pizza shop and the aromatherapy store. And Honey looked a lot like Timothée Chalamet, but with bigger biceps and hair cut short and neat as a new recruit’s. Astonished, Lupe watched Babe lay out the Enchiladas Carne Asada, Empanadas Venga, and Queso Fundido on a Chihuly glass table, where Honey had positioned two glasses of red wine. They then navigated opposing directions, circling the table like planets moving around the sun, reading from identical thickly paged books, talking, and scribbling with pens grabbed from behind their ears, pausing to take a bite here and a sip there. Who strolls around the table, reading, writing, talking, and eating?
Troubled, Lupe sat at the bottom of the driveway. Honey and Babe did not look like killers and dealers. They looked like people who would be chewed up and spit out by the traficante. Disappointed and hungry for more opportunities to win Mr. Pinkwater’s gift certificates, Lupe headed home where she ate an entire box of stale donuts and drank a liter of diet cream soda.
The next week, Honey and Babe were eating by the pool again. Lupe dashed to the front door with Ceviche de Camaron, Hildago-style Lamb Barbacoa, and Tacos al Pastor, then returned to the Saturn to retrieve her tablet. Tablet in hand, she started back uphill on foot, stopping short, staring into the soulless eyes of a coyote with an open jaw generously lined with two rows of gleaming canine tusks—not an ordinary coyote like the scrawny docile dogs with ducked heads that slunk down the streets of Santos des Rosas, aware that all pantries were empty and that the humans were as hungry as they were. No, this was a confident, well-fed coyote, expectant of the generously distributed meals offered by American locos who believe in coyote preservation. Yes, he would prefer an easy bowl of scrapped filet fresh off the plates of those misguided moguls in the neighborhood, but he would happily feast on la chica instead.
“Ayeeeeeee!” Lupe screamed, waving her arms, standing on her toes, trying to look bigger, menacing. “Ayeeeeeee!”
The animal glared, contempt in his eyes, a low gutteral moan threatening attack. He sauntered toward Lupe, his eyes locked on hers, his ears stiffly attentive. Lupe crossed herself and looked skyward, backing away, groping for the car door handle that had to be there, somewhere behind her. Beyond the slavering dog with dreams of chica flesh dancing in his head, Honey and Babe appeared, slowly descending the driveway. Babe clutched Honey and Honey clutched a pistol, leveling the black barrel at the back of the canine’s skull. The gun’s safety catch clicked with release and the animal paused mid-step, turning toward the sound.
Lupe sprinted to the Saturn. She hadn’t heard a gunshot in years, not since her mother and father were in the throes of divorce after her father’s affair with Aunt Lucinda. In her shock, Lupe first thought someone had snapped a branch from one of the pine trees that marched down the hill from the far side of the driveway. A glance in the mirror confirmed that Honey and Babe were embracing, staring at the wild dog, felled and bloody at their feet.
It was in the paper. It was on the news. It was on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, everywhere. Honey and Babe, it turned out, were famous, and their real names were Steve and Janelle. They were actors, not killers. Publicists took the reins and the story grew: soon it had not been a single bold coyote, but a pack of rabid killers, and Steve had fired not one bullet from a single-shot pistol, but a round of ammunition from a Glock. Terror had dared to encroach on this peaceful domain, this tranquil sanctuary from the death and destruction rampant in the mean world at large. The three of them, Steve, Janelle, and Lupe, had shared a horrifying trauma. And over the ensuing months of interviews, the trio came to believe the story, to feel the bond prescribed for them, and they held one another as close as crown jewels.
Janelle gave Lupe her first Patek Philippe, the Nautilus 7118 Automatic in rose gold, for her birthday. Steve surprised Lupe with a white Rivian RlT. The two women manicured, saunaed, and yogaed together and the threesome cooked together, laughing in the kitchen, stirring up favorites such as boeuf bourguignon and cassoulet. They golfed, swam, drank, laughed, and cried together. Theirs was a fairy tale come to life.
One year after Lupe had begun secretly transcribing the dialogue of Steve and Janelle, she and Mama, rescued from Santos des Rosas, were installed in a private wing of the hilltop palace. Mama enjoyed fresh fruit for the first time in her life, and Lupe managed Steve and Janelle’s latest side hustle: an upscale boutique real estate firm catering to high rollers in the film industry. In May, the foursome jetted off for the red-carpet premiere of Steve and Janelle’s latest film in Cannes. Together, embraced by an adoring, glittering crowd, they watched through tears of gratitude, sparkling like diamond as the lights went down, as the screen took on a brilliant hue. And there they were, Janelle and Steve, looking out over the waves of a turbulent Pacific from the pinnacle of a treacherous peak.
“What’d you do with the body?”
“He’s buried in the marina, wedged under a ton of rock. By the time the dredger gets to him, he’ll have sunk another ten feet and they won’t find him for years…”
Nancy Smith Harris writes stories in northern California. She holds a graduate degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University.
Image via Unsplash.