Chapter 11
Celia sat on the far-left side of the metal bleachers, wearing sunglasses and keeping her swollen left eye turned away from the crowd at the soccer try-outs. In the future, she would avoid asking André where he had spent the money she had earned. It was one more thing she couldn’t ask him about, and she hoped that after he made the soccer team, he would be too tired to throw a punch when he came home at night. Then after a while, she might look decent enough to introduce herself to some of the other players’ family members.
She yawned, placing a hand over her mouth as she had seen other Americans do. To her right, a group of Spanish-speaking women cheered for their husbands, boyfriends, and sons. Every once in a while, she understood a few sentences they yelled out—their language was so close to Portuguese. The English speakers that sat above her were harder to understand, but she repeated their words to herself in whispers, trying to catch the meaning of each phrase.
It was just like Manny had told her when he visited her in São Filipe, and she wished, not for the first time, that they lived in Boston, where more people spoke Portuguese, and she could tell someone about her problems with André.
Of course, it was harder to make the soccer team in Boston. She had heard story after story of Cape Verdeans who failed. Even here in North Carolina, André could only try out for the U-23 team, which prepared players to become professionals . . . and didn’t come with a paycheck. Then he would have to wait another year to try out for the professional team.
At least, though, once he made the U-23s, he would feel like he was progressing. He would have practices and games to keep him busy, and, in the evenings after her job ended, Celia would go back to sitting in the stands, cheering. Just like the old times. When they were happy together.
Closing her eyes, she was back on her island, where the bleachers were concrete instead of metal and the field was black dust instead of green grass. She could hear the soft thud of someone kicking the ball across the field, the cheers of the crowd, and the whistle of the referee.
Today was as hot and sweltering as it had been when they arrived in America ten months ago, definitely too hot for the long sleeves she wore to cover the bruises on her arms. After the frigid winter and spring, summer was finally returning.
When she opened her eyes, André played goalkeeper. Finally. After three days of try-outs, she had begun to wonder if he would ever get a chance to try for his favorite position. While the other players sped up and down the field like vultures, she gripped the sides of her skirt, praying the other team wouldn’t score, but she could barely keep her eyes open.
If André weren’t depending on her to cheer him on, she would lie down across this bench and indulge in a nap. Lately, since she’d been waking early to make André breakfast before he left for early morning soccer practice, she never seemed to get enough sleep, and she had a sick feeling in her stomach most days. Was she coming down with something? Or . . . was she pregnant? She had been so busy working and trying to learn English that she hadn’t stopped to consider that she might be pregnant.
Thinking back over the last few weeks of fatigue and nausea, she guessed that’s what might be happening to her—she could be having a baby.
She smiled. If she were pregnant, it ought to make André happy. Maybe he would treat her better, and she wouldn’t have to escape to Boston all on her own.
André blocked every attempted goal as she waited for a break in the game, hoping he would come to the sidelines. When he did, she stood up, ready to ask him if they could buy a pregnancy test on the way home, but a wave of dizziness knocked her back down to the bench. She could tell him after the tryouts. He would still be in a good mood. He was always in a good mood after a game.
Even now that the coaches had switched him back to right forward, he grinned. So far, he had played every position and done well—offense and defense. He was fast with the ball, aggressive in his attack.
Except for the one time she made the mistake of asking him about money, these last few weeks, leading up to the tryouts, had been happy, and she hoped André was finally emerging from his funk.
He was now on his fourth job in America. It had taken him four months of looking before someone hired him to paint buildings. It was something he had done before on the islands, and the men he worked with spoke Spanish, so he understood a little better than he had at the other jobs.
André seemed to be coming along with his English, as well, though. She could tell by the way he talked with the other players in between plays that he knew more than she did.
After the tryouts ended, and the other men gathered up their belongings, he still stood, chatting with a few players. He didn’t look her way as she slowly stood and descended the metal stairs.
She waited at the edge of the field for a minute before he noticed her and ran to meet her. “The other guys invited me to go out to eat with them,” he said.
“That’s nice, but I was hoping we could go home together. I have something to tell you.” She wanted to tell him she might be pregnant before they got home, where Teresa could overhear. “I brought along some food we can eat at a park.”
Earlier, while Teresa drove her here, she had seen flowers in abundance at the park—large, fluffy white blooms on bowed stems, bushes covered with fuchsia blossoms that reminded her of bougainvillea, and majestic purple bird-like flowers that rose tall and straight. That was where she wanted to tell him.
His mouth turned down in an irritated frown. “I can’t miss this opportunity to get to know my teammates.” He peeked around to the side of her glasses, scrutinizing her bruise. “If Grandma’s not home, Sofia upstairs has an extra key. Do you have money for the bus fare?”
She held her hand up to block his view of her face. “No.” She felt a wave of exhaustion, realizing that since Teresa drove her, she didn’t even know the routes to get home.
André’s friends approached, and he slipped back into charming mode, introducing them to her. Most of them had women with them now, pretty, fashionable women without bruises on their faces. One of the women spoke to her in Spanish, offering to give her and André a ride. “Come on,” she said, linking arms with Celia. “I’m starving.”
Celia watched André, waiting for him to open his wallet and give her money for the bus. Instead, he kept chatting with his friends. Did he want her to come with them? Even with the bruise?
The woman tugged at her arm, but she stood still. “I’ll need bus fare, André, unless you want me to come celebrate with you. I’m happy you made the team.”
His smile faltered for a moment, but it came back wider and more confident. “We don’t find out who made the team until tomorrow. They’ll post my name online.”
She shook her head and reached for his hand. “It’s no question you made the team. You were the best.”
He grasped onto her and they followed his new friends to the parking lot. The guy was Puerto Rican and had a mustache. His girlfriend wore tight jeans, high heeled sandals, and a red blouse covered in zippers. André explained that his friend had only been here in the United States for a few months, but he already had a car and a license. It was a nice car too—a little red machine that started as soon as they got inside. Soon they were all driving through busy city streets while Celia sat beside André in the back seat, her face toward the open window. She still wasn’t used to driving in cars, but at least Teresa had taught her a few tips to avoid car sickness.
The restaurant they chose served burgers and steaks, mostly. Celia put all her effort into translating the menu items.
Half the team seemed to be there, sitting together at a long table. André laughed at his teammates’ jokes, and though Celia didn’t understand why they were funny, she took her cue from him and laughed too. Sometimes, with half the players speaking English and the other half speaking Spanish, the conversation was more pantomime than anything else. Celia smiled across the table at the Puerto Rican woman, who said something that Celia couldn’t understand.
André leaned over to translate. “She wants to know where you got your earrings.”
Celia fingered the dangles that she had made from discarded plastic bottles. She answered André in Creole because she couldn’t explain as well in English. “I cut circles from plastic and painted them. Then I strung them on wire rings that Teresa helped me find at the craft store.”
He paused, thinking. “We can’t tell her you made them,” he whispered. “Do you know of any shop that sells earrings like that?”
She shook her head. It wasn’t like she knew where to buy jewelry. What she had, she made.
“She got them at a shop in Raleigh,” André told the woman.
The woman nodded, her mouth straight. Everything about her seemed glamorous and expensive—her painted nails, her false eyelashes, and her fancy, braided hair—but watching her eyes so focused on Celia’s black eye and then how she noticed her long sleeves, Celia could tell she knew her secret, and not just the secret about how she had made her own earrings. This woman knew André beat her.
Celia looked away, glad to place her order with the waiter—making sure to request the least expensive item on the menu—a bowl of soup. When she turned back to the table, the Puerto Rican woman still watched her. Maybe she thought Celia was an incompetent wife or a weak partner.
“Excuse me,” Celia said, standing up from the table. “I need to use the restroom.” She rushed from the table without knowing which way to turn, but she found the sign soon enough. It was the first word she’d learned in America. Restroom.
After pushing open the door and making her way past a white woman, she stood in front of the mirror, pretending to wash her hands. A dark-skinned woman stared back at her from the mirror. How had she never noticed how incredibly brown she was? All her life, people had told her she had light skin. Now, here in America, she saw the truth.
But her skin still wasn’t dark enough to hide the bruise beneath her eye.
It had been a mistake going out in public with bruises on her face, and it wasn’t going to happen again. She slipped the dark glasses onto her face, remembering Crazy Maria from Fogo Island. She didn’t want to become that woman—with scars on her forehead and ragged earlobes where her husband pulled out her earrings over and over again until the police threw him in jail. Celia’s neighbors would not see her slumped on the street in front of her house, crying. She would not become Crazy Maria, especially not now that she might be having a baby.
She spent another few minutes in the bathroom, trying to cover up the bruise with some make-up, but it was no use. The makeup Teresa bought her was too dark. She finally wiped it all off and pushed the door open.
There, leaning against the wall, stood the Puerto Rican woman. “He beats you, doesn’t he?”
Celia swallowed.
The woman held a piece of paper out to her. “You don’t have to pretend with me. My last boyfriend was the same way. This is the address for the women’s shelter. They can help you.” She pointed out the address and then ran her finger over some numbers at the bottom of the paper. “And this is my number. I can take you there.”
“Thank you.” Celia took the scrap of paper, folding it over just as she’d done years ago with the scrap of paper she’d received from Manny’s mom. “But things are getting better.”
No sooner did she get it in her pocket than André appeared, and the Puerto Rican woman rushed into the restroom. “What’s taking so long?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
Celia shook her head. Now was as good a time to tell him as any. She stepped back, placing both hands on her belly. “Nothing’s wrong. In fact, I think we might have something else to celebrate tonight.”
“What’s that?”
“I think I might be pregnant.”
He swallowed, staring into her eyes as his Adam’s apple bobbed, and his eyebrows fell. “Already? I thought we were going to wait.” So many mothers and babies died in Cape Verde, it was understandable that he would worry—if that was the reason for his worry.
She reached for his hands. “Everything will be fine. Remember, we’re in America now. And I don’t know why you say already.” Her voice quivered. “We’ve been married for a year-and-a-half now.”
He grasped her fingers. “But you haven’t taken a pregnancy test yet?”
“No.”
“You might not be then.” He didn’t seem happy, but that was often André’s way. He needed to think everything through before he felt comfortable with new situations.