RUBIO Y MORENA
whenever he put on his clothes in the morning he would find his
pockets lighter of money than they had been before. At first she took
only silver, but as the earnings of his novel increased she began to
increase the amount of her thefts, taking one dollar bills, then five
and ten dollar bills. Finally Kamrowski had to accuse her of it. She
wailed miserably but she did not deny it. For about a week the
practice was suspended. Then it started again, first with the silver,
increasing again to bills of larger denomination. He tried to thwart
her by taking the money out of
his
pockets and hiding it somewhere
about the apartment. But when he did this she would waken him
in the night by her slow and systematic search for it. What are
you looking for? he would ask the girl. I am looking for matches,
she'd tell
him.
So at last he humored her in it. He only cashed small
checks and let her steal what she wanted. It remained a mystery
to him what she did with the money. She apparently bought nothing
with it and yet it did not seem to linger in her possession. What did
she want with it? She had everything that she needed or seemed to
wish. Perhaps it was simply her way of paying him back for the
infidelities which he was now practicing all the time.
It was late that winter of their residence in the large southern
city that the
ill
health of Amada became apparent. She did not speak
of her suffering, but she would sometimes get up in the night and light
a holy candle in a transparent red glass cup. She would crouch beside
it mumbling Spanish prayers with a hand pressed to her side where
some pain was located. It made her furious when he got up or
questioned her about it. She behaved as if she were suffering from
some disgraceful secret. Mind your own business, she would snarl
back at him if he .asked, What is it? Hours later she would waken
him again, crawling back · into bed with an exhausted sigh which
told him that the attack of pain had subsided. Then moved by pity
he would turn to her slowly and press her to him as gently as possible
so that
his
pressure wouldn't renew the pain. She would not go to
a doctor. She said she had been to
.a
doctor a long time ago and that
he had told her she had a disease of the kidneys the same as her father
had had and that there was nothing to do but try to forget it. It
doesn't matter, she said, I am going to forget it.
She made an elaborate effort to conceal the attacks as they be–
came more frequent and more severe, thinking perhaps that her
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