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BETRAYED THE WAITING AND WORRYING TOOK A HEAVY TOLL ON Chole. Her blood pressure rose and her body tensed, leaving her edgy and brittle. She felt helplessly locked in a trap, exposed and vulnerable to unrelieved stress. The fruits of the earth no longer pleased her. She ate frugally and without joy, alwaysconscious of the hunger that she knew her son must feel. If the Vietnamese themselves could not afford to eat well, why then would they care for the nourishment of their prisoners? Thanksgiving and Christmas were especially brutal reminders when she spread her table with festive abundance and looked sadly at the place where her son should have sat. Perhaps, Chole thought, he would die little by little. The Vietnamese were so preoccupied with the war that if they gave him any attention it would be scant. And yet, she reflected, if he had survivedthis long it could only have been because he had adapted and was making do with a diet of rice. She was thankful she had only one son to give up for this disastrous war. Meanwhile the foundationsof her own life were crumbling. MaMona died on the last night of 1967, slipping quietly away as Chole and Cecilia flanked the nursing home bed. The sisters had skirted talk of Everett during their regular weekend visits. Only once had they told her he was in the service and stationed abroad. They could not say more because they themselves were in the dark. But they never could tell if their mother had sensed the awful truth because the stroke had robbed her of speech. They buried her in Salinas and cried for the loss of a mother and the passing of a teacher. Tenacity was her hallmark and courage her legacy. Everett, they knew, would be shattered. He had loved her deeply and may even have been her secret favorite. The bereaved sisters decided not to tell him that MaMona was no more. The bottom had fallen out of Chole's marriage and Lalo stayed away from the home more frequently. For a year she had gone to meetings of the Alcoholics Anonymous family program, desperately hoping they would come up with a magic solution to his problem. But he never accompanied her and 202 15 BETRAYED 203 all she learned was that she herself would not be able to change his ways. Sometimes, when Lalo was home and Chole sat quietly knitting, she saw her husband cry for his absent son. But she could not give him the consolation that she herself needed so desperately. However much she regretted the disintegration of her own marriage, she gave her husband credit where it was due. He had been a good father to their children, even though he had at times been as impatient as many others. And he had always been an exceptionally dependable worker. Whenever he returned from an absent weekend, merely to change clothes, he would be off to work on time to give an honest day's labor. But when they were together there was strife and she cowered if he raised his voice. At such moments she would rather clam up, if only to stop him shouting. Anything for peace and quiet in the home. Her doctor advised her to release the tension by crying and screaming or even throwing a few pots and pans, but she could not become what she had never been. So she suffered. And then, in a cruel twist of timing, she felt the hot flashes and melancholia of her change of life. When Everett sent a note to his cousin Al sayinghe had been given a book to read called The Story of a Real Man, Chole had taken it out of the library and read it. When she was through, she wished she hadn't bothered. It was about a Russian pilot who survived the loss of both legs when shot down in World War II, and who flew again with the use of artificial limbs. Though heroic and inspiring, the tale left her even more fretful about his physical condition. Some of her friends suggested she go to a palm reader to divine the unknown and put her mind at ease. But this idea only made her more agitated. She explained that she did not want to be told her son was dead. Deep down she reallybelieved Everett was pulling through. She had an inner confidence in his character. He had always been so...

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