Gold for the Good - Page 4

Leona walked halfway toward their bedroom, stopped and asked, “Can I sleep in your bed, mom?”

“No. You’re no longer a baby. Also, sometimes you wet the bed, so...”

“I don’t do it anymore,” Leona murmured. She sneaked a glance at her uncle to see if he looked embarrassed for her. He seemed to be totally focused on his meal.

“I’m not taking any chances,” Susi said. “Unless you agree to wear a diaper.”

“No! I don’t need a diaper. I’m not a baby anymore.”

“OK then. Bed!”

 The girl begrudgingly went to bed. She had a cute wood frame bed with a heart-shaped headboard decorated with angel stickers. It was warm and snuggly, but she couldn’t sleep very well that night. She kept waking up because her mother and her uncle were yelling at each other in the kitchen.

“First of all, this is not your house,” Joel said to his sister. “This is a rental, we’re just tenants. I pay for sixty percent of the rent and other bills. I’m the one who puts food on the table. I sleep on the living-room couch. So, I have a say in how things are done here.”

“Thank you for your support, and sorry for the lack of adequate accommodations in my teeny tiny home,” Susi replied with a dose of sarcasm. “But life has been easier for you than for me. Were my husband, God bless his soul, still alive, I wouldn’t need a roommate. But no, not only was the poor boozer flattened by a bus, but he also left behind our young daughter for me alone to feed, and a bunch of bills for me alone to pay.”

“I’m happy to help you, you’re welcome! I’ve been your right arm since my brother-in-law passed away. I’m a father figure to my niece. And she learns a lot from me; that’s why she’s so smart.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Leona doesn’t need a phony father. She already has a parent: me. And she already has a teacher: Miss Norma.”

“Quite reactionary mentors, both of you.”

“You’re a bad influence on my daughter!”

“Look who’s talking! You shouldn’t allow your daughter’s teacher to use her as a prop in that right-wing Gold for the Good of Our Country scam.”

“Mind your own business!”

“The girl said that you told her to donate her gold ring. The little ring that I gave her as a birthday gift!  What kind of mother does that?”

“Everybody in the whole country is making donations. A small personal sacrifice, considering the results.”

“Poor people, the working class, are not making donations. They know better. And they need the little gold they have, if they have any at all. Sure, there are a few that are making donations because they’re disoriented or feel coerced to donate. But the great majority of donors are ill-informed, reactionary, sycophantic middle and upper-middle class elements… although I grant many of them are well-intentioned.”

“Who cares? At the end of the day, the whole country will benefit.”

Joel sneered. “The people will never benefit. It’s the new fascist regime that’s benefitting. The campaign is legitimizing it! And it’s legitimizing the military coup.”

“By coup you mean the removal of the left-wing president.”

“I mean the military coup that overthrew the president.”

“Because he was a leftie.”

“He was not, really; he was a rich bourgeois nationalist. He just wanted to do some reforms, like land reform and nationalizations, and he was OK with diplomacy with Cuba and the Soviet Union. But rich capitalists here and in the United States wouldn’t have any of it.”

“They don’t bother me.”

“Think again. Anyway, all that gold will end up in the coffers of far-right politicians and their ilk. And probably in the pockets of some American imperialists too.”

Susi yawned noisily. “I hope you don’t keep saying those crazy things in public, Joel. I heard that some factory workers are actually CIA spies who snitch on their communist co-workers to the police.”

“Workers don’t even have to be communists to be snitched on and persecuted.”

“What if you get fired? You could be kidnapped, tortured and disappeared! Call me reactionary and disoriented if you want, but I care about your safety.”

“There are things that are more important than a job and one’s personal safety.”

“You’re out of your mind!” Susi yelled, heading to her bedroom.

Joel finished supper and got ready to retire. He spread a sheet and a blanket on the couch in the living room, which his sister had refurbished into a hair salon.

Half-asleep, half-listening to the grownups’ squabble all along, Leona had taken a mental note of the words reactionary, imperialists, and middle class. She was determined to ask her uncle their meanings, the following day. Early in the morning, however, when she got up, those words, carefully herded at night, had escaped her, vanishing like a dream.