The official word was that Ana was in the process of sneaking out her window when she lost her footing and fell. As much as we’d wanted to be Ana’s heroes and take her away to wherever it was she wanted to go, there were other guys who played that role for her. Several nights a week, various guys—older guys, older guys with cars—would ease to a stop a couple of houses down the street, turn off their lights, and wait. Eventually, Ana would open her window and climb down the oak tree. She’d run to the car and be off and gone for a couple of hours, and when she’d come back she’d be in a state of sort-of undone: Her skirt would be a little twisted, the hem of it not quite lined up right. Her hair would be ratted in the back.
But there were other theories about Ana’s death: she leapt, intentionally, after a fight with her father; she leapt, intentionally, after learning she was pregnant and that the baby’s father was an older married guy; she leapt, intentionally, because she was a sad girl trapped in a sad house.
At Hector’s, it was hard to watch the Torres girls shuffle from room to room and politely receive various words of sympathy because we could see the pain in their faces—the pain of their loss and the pain that comes along with forcing small smiles and pretending that kind words from their neighbors made any kind of difference.
In other parts of the house, there was the usual stuff whispered in corners about Rafe being a tragedy of a man. He’d never been the same since his wife, Rita de la Cruz, had died shortly after giving birth to Rosa. He’d become a shell, helpless. He couldn’t make the most basic decisions, like what to get for takeout or which shirt to wear to church. For a while, he’d taken up with an older widow from the neighborhood named Norma Galván, and after that had fizzled out, he’d been involved with various other women. He wanted them to take care of him; they wanted to take care of him. Unfortunately, none of them lasted for longer than two months, and, in the end, all he could truly rely on, or so he said, were his girls. In this life, family was all there was.
We heard that he’d told his daughters that if they got jobs, the money would have to go to the family—for groceries, bills, house repairs, stuff like that. Once the girls graduated and if they decided they wanted to keep going to school, it had to be at one of the nearby Alamo Colleges, close enough for them to commute from home.
The weight of Rafe’s neediness was heavy enough to crush all four of the Torres sisters, but Ana, being the oldest in a motherless household, bore the brunt of it. She packed her father’s lunches for him in the mornings, made sure his Negra Modelos were poured into frosted mugs when he got home, and went to neighbors’ houses to try to smooth over bitter feelings after Rafe borrowed money he couldn’t repay.
The women gathered in the Garcias’ kitchen on the day of Ana’s funeral shook their heads—pitiful, they said, patètico. Some said it wasn’t his fault, the way he was.
“He was born out of God’s favor,” Kitty Bolander’s mom claimed. “Anda mal. The clouds, they follow him. He walks outside, and it starts to hail.”
Father Canty, who’d led Ana’s graveside service, hadn’t arrived yet, but three other priests from the local parish were there, pinching small paper plates in their large sausage fingers while shoveling down heaping forkfuls of Calvin’s mom’s famous King Ranch chicken.
The priests didn’t notice us lurking nearby. We watched as they spilled sour cream down the front of their robes and dabbed at the little white blurs with their napkins. One of them burped and didn’t even say excuse me. The things they were talking about to each other were like the things we heard people say in mobster movies. One said that Rafe was in a bad spot and that he owed someone named Edgar Rivera Lopez—we’d never heard of him—a boatload of money. The situation had gotten so bad that Rafe was living in a perpetual state of fear. He was marked.
Another priest said, “He will be forced to leave San Antonio and go back to Crystal City.”
Another added, “He cannot hide forever.”
For a moment, the priests were quiet. One of them put his empty plate on a side table and took a long drink from his plastic cup. Then he sighed. “Rafe is overwhelmed,” he began, “and was never equipped to raise four daughters on his own. It doesn’t help knowing now how rebellious Ana was. It’s possible she was also a liar. It’s all because she has no mother.”
The first priest shook his head and muttered something we couldn’t really hear, but by then we weren’t listening. Our attention had shifted to Jessica, who’d suddenly and silently appeared in the doorway. From the expression on her face—blanched white with anger, a familiar sight—it was obvious she’d heard everything the priests had said. She opened her mouth to speak just as her dad came up from behind her and gently gripped her shoulder. Iridian and Rosa were behind him. He leaned down, said something into Jessica’s ear, and started to steer her away. It was time to go. Jessica left with her words unspoken.
The gathering went on. There was still food to be eaten and rumors to be spread about Rafe’s no-good luck and his problems with money and women and life in general, but, in other corners of the house, talk had shifted to the upcoming basketball season and concerns about the neighborhood: rising taxes, petty fines imposed for minor code violations, and families who’d lived in the same house for decades being bought out by developers. There were For Sale signs on almost every street now.
Father Canty finally arrived and joined the huddle of priests. They were on their third helping of King Ranch chicken when Jessica returned. She stormed in through the front door and then right past us, the massive folds of her blue dress swishing around her legs. She smelled like sweat and lawn clippings. She was sisterless, fatherless, alone.
She stopped in front of the group of priests, waiting for them to notice her. When they didn’t, she reached out and tugged on the sleeve closest to her. It belonged to the one who had referred to Ana as “rebellious.”
That priest turned, and the others did the same. Collectively, they wiped the corners of their mouths with their napkins and shifted their expressions to ones of well-practiced sympathy.
“You didn’t know Ana!” Jessica shouted. She spun toward Father Canty. “You didn’t know her, so don’t talk about her like you did!”
If Father Canty was stunned by the confrontation, he didn’t show it. Instead, he stepped forward and bent at the waist so that he was eye to eye with Jessica.
“My dear,” he said tenderly, “I know this is a very difficult time for you, but you are a young woman, and as such, you have to consider that there are many things in life you do not yet understand.”
Jessica lunged. With an open palm, she hit Father Canty in the face. Then she screamed and raked her nails across his cheek.
Hector’s dad rushed forward. He pulled Jessica away, hoisting her into the air, where she continued to kick and thrash, her dark braid whipping around her head. Her dress rode high, exposing the length of her brown legs. Father Canty pressed a napkin against his face and seemed surprised to see, when he pulled it away, that the girl had managed to draw blood.