I take a deep breath, focus on the shadows of the boxes in the corner—the ones that have held our clothes ever since Chico first moved in with us and we had to sell our wardrobe to buy him a mattress. It was supposed to be only temporary. It’s been over two years.
The fan moves hot air around the stifling room.
“Pulga?” I can hear the tears welling in his voice.
“No,” I answer finally. Truthfully. “Your mamita looked peaceful. Like she was sleeping.” The fan whirs away from me.
That part is a lie. But it’s a lie I have to tell.
“I thought . . . you told me there was a lot of blood,” Chico whispers. “Around Mamita.”
“Yes,” I tell him. “But not like that, Chico. She didn’t look like that.”
I hear him take a deep breath and let it out. And in the silence, I finish the truth.
She looked worse, Chico. She looked like the kinds of monstruos that appear in your worst nightmares and haunt you for the rest of your life. If you’d seen, you would never be able to forget. And you might forget the way your mamita really looked. And how on the bus that day, just before we got to the market, she looked at you with so much love, in that last hour of her life.
I was thirteen years old and Chico was eleven and we’d been friends for a whole year the day we took the little white bus to the market together. His mamita gave us money to get horchata and we ran off to the woman selling some. The day was so hot, and I remembering squinting at the orange blaze of the sun as I tipped the cup and drank the cold milky rice drink. Sweetness filled my mouth. And then we heard three loud pops.
Someone screamed and someone yelled and a motor scooter zoomed past. Chico and I stared after it, then in the direction it came from.
The market was crowded that day, and we had to shove through people. At thirteen, I was still as small as I’d been when I was ten, and could move through the crowd more easily. That’s why I saw her first.
Chico’s mom lay in the middle of the road, blood soaking through the white blouse she wore, embroidered with red and pink roses. A single white, papery onion had rolled out of the green mesh bag she carried and lay next to the long striped skirt that was now up around her thigh. Her small brown legs poked out, splattered with blood. Her sandals lay scattered on the other side of her, revealing bare, dusty feet.
Pulga! Chico was calling for me and I turned and ran back. I tried so hard to block him from the horrific image of his mother.
Don’t look! I yelled. It was the only thing I could think to say. Don’t look don’t look don’t look!
What is it? he said, trying to get around me and past people.
No! I screamed, and I was crying. But he wouldn’t let up. And I couldn’t let someone else tell him.
It’s your mamita, Chico.
All color left his face. And then someone, I don’t know who, helped me hold him back.
Chico tried to fight his way to her, he kicked me and yelled for her, his mouth so close to my ear I thought I would burst an eardrum. But we held him back. And I told him, No, don’t look.
In the past few years, the only time Chico didn’t speak to me was the whole week after that.
“You didn’t let me say goodbye to my mamita.” That was what he said when he finally spoke to me. “I could’ve whispered it in her ear. She could’ve heard me tell her I love her. I could’ve said goodbye.” The words came out choked, between sobs.
“I’m sorry” is all I could say. How could I tell him his mamita would’ve never heard his words? That those words would have never made their way past his lips if he’d seen what I saw. That only screams would’ve come out of him. And that’s what his mother would have heard. Chico. Screaming.
No. I couldn’t let him see her that way. I couldn’t let that image be what haunted Chico for the rest of his life—her eyes staring blankly at the sky, the whites made whiter by the blood that covered her face like a slick wet veil. Sometimes, I am jolted out of my sleep by that image and the echoes of Chico’s pained voice from that day, even as he lies sleeping a few feet away.
I almost told him then—when weeks went by and the police did nothing and answers never came about who killed Chico’s mamita and she became just another body—I almost told him then, Let’s go. Let’s leave this place.
I was almost ready to pull out from under my mattress all my notes, the routes and maps I’d googled and printed from computers at school. I was almost ready to tell him we should strike out together, go to the United States. But I knew we wouldn’t get far. I knew I needed to gather more information. And the truth is, I was too selfish. With Chico weeping for his mamita every night, falling asleep to his sobs, I couldn’t bear to leave my own. So I waited. For another day.
“Do you think they know we saw?” Chico whispers now. The fan whirs.
“We didn’t see anything,” I remind him.
“Right, I know . . . but do you think—”
“Nothing. We saw nothing, Chico. You got it?”
“Pulga . . .”
Silence fills the room.
“Go to sleep,” I say, and stare out the closed thin curtains and into the blackness of night. I try to push away the image of Chico’s dead mother, of Don Felicio’s lifeless body. I force myself to picture other things—like the explosion of fireworks in the night sky when we celebrate Noche Buena. Or a crowd waiting to hear me and my band play. But I can’t.
“Pulga?” Chico whispers.
“Yeah?”
“It was Rey, wasn’t it?” Chico says. “Rey and Nestor.”
“Cállate, man. Don’t say those things aloud.” I keep my eyes on the thin curtains separating us from the night. The black looks like it will absorb everything. And hear everything. And whisper our secrets into other people’s ears. “Don’t even think those things,” I say.
“But . . .” Chico whispers.
“Go to sleep.” I need him to stop talking.
I will my body to sleep, too, but my head won’t let me. My mind keeps filling with more images of dead people. Of Rey and Nestor. Of so much darkness. I don’t like the way tonight feels like we can’t even trust this room, these walls that have always kept our secrets, our dreams—us—safe.
Dreams like how maybe I could go to the United States one day, buy a guitar and become a musician just like my father. Dreams like how Chico would go with me and manage my band. Dreams where one day we’d each find a girl to love, a girl to take a picture with in front of a cool car—one who’d look at me the way Mamá looked at my father in my favorite picture of them, so old the edges are ripped. They’re standing in front of his El Camino, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, and they’re looking at each other as if seeing some kind of golden future.
Mamá never wanted to waste money on a guitar. She didn’t like the idea of me following in my father’s footsteps. But if I made it to the States, I promised myself I would. And I made a promise to Mamá too—that I would never just abandon her. So I’d bring Mamá to the States, too, and buy her a house. And someday Chico and I would accept some kind of award on a big stage, and we’d tell everyone that we were just a couple of kids from Barrios. And we’d look into those cameras and speak to all the kids from Barrios and tell them to dream—because dreams do come true—before we put our arms around each other and walked off the stage.
We’ve told each other that dream a thousand times.
But tonight it doesn’t feel like dreams exist. And my body is prickly and crawling with fear.
“Pulga?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m . . . scared,” Chico says.
Outside, I think I hear a rustling. And moments later, a soft whistling. I tell myself I’m being paranoid. I tell myself I’m imagining things. But I see Chico sit up and stare out the window.
“Did you hear that?” he s
ays.
My throat and tongue feel like they’re swelling. My mouth is dry.
“No,” I tell him. “Go to sleep.”
“Pulga,” he whispers, his voice saturated with fear.
“Everything will be okay,” I tell him. But all night I stare at that window.
Waiting.
Waiting.
* * *
~~~
In the morning, through thick humidity and the fog of a sleepless night, Chico and I lug a large pot to Doña Agostina’s house at Mamá’s request.
Several women are in the kitchen starting on the tamales that are always served at wakes. Each neighbor has brought different ingredients—masa, carne, chiles, aceitunas, ojas de banana—and together they cook and assemble, whispering quietly about what happened.
Doña Agostina sits outside. Alone.
Chico and I sit on the couch, surrounded by the lime-green walls of Doña Agostina’s living room, watching television and dozing off to the sounds of the women in the kitchen, and the clattering of cooking.
The room gets hotter and hotter, pressing down on us.
And then a pickup truck arrives, with Don Felicio’s coffin.
Everyone gathers around as he’s carried inside, as he’s situated in the middle of the room. The neighbors look, pay their respects, go back to helping.
“Come on,” I tell Chico, but he shakes his head and refuses to move from the couch. So I go alone, look at a face that isn’t Don Felicio’s anymore. A face that’s gray and ashen, bloated and serious. A body in a sharp black suit, a red tie around the stiff white collar of a shirt. It reminds me of the red blood that spilled from Don Felicio’s neck yesterday. I look up, at the walls. I think of the sweet limeade Mamá makes, the green feathers of a parrot. But the walls look sickly, and I feel nauseated and each breath I take makes me feel like I am breathing in death. I go outside and sit on the ground just on the other side of the front door.
Doña Agostina hasn’t moved. She’s still in the chair, looking exhausted and shell-shocked. But then she turns and notices me.
“¿Cómo está, doña?” I ask her how she is before I realize the stupidity of my question. “Can I get you some water? Something to eat?”
She shakes her head. “No, gracias, hijo. Escúchame,” she says. And so I do—I sit and listen.
“You know what I dreamed last night, Pulga?” she asks. Everything about Doña Agostina looks grief-stricken. Her face droops, her clothes hang, her body is slumped in the chair. And when she turns her gray eyes on me, they are dull and lifeless.
“What did you dream?” I ask.
She turns her gaze back toward the street and says, “I dreamed I saw Pequeña, riding away from here on a bloody mattress. All I could see was the back of her, but I know it was Pequeña.”
I stare at Doña Agostina, confused, but she goes on.
“And then I saw you. And Chico. Both of you were running and you looked so scared.”
My heart drops into my stomach; my mouth goes dry. I know she is telling me one of her visions, the visions that have earned Doña Agostina the reputation of being a bruja—and which make her words hard to ignore. There were always stories of things she knew. Some women even went to her to have their futures told.
“I knew . . .” she says slowly. “When I married him. The moment I met him, this dark shadow seemed to engulf him and I knew what it meant: I’d lose him in a terrible way. Year after year I waited. That’s why we had Gallo so late. I wasn’t going to have children. But he wanted one. And I agreed, to just one. As the years went on, I convinced myself I’d been mistaken. But . . . I am never wrong about these things.” She takes a deep breath. “That’s why you must listen.”
My blood runs cold as the old woman looks back my way. “He came to me last night,” she whispers. “It was . . . horrible.” She takes another deep breath. “He could hardly talk, but he managed to say, ‘Que corran.’ Run, Pulga. He wants you and Chico to run. Pequeña, too.”
My heart thumps faster in my chest. And I look in through the doorway, into the living room where Don Felicio lies in his coffin.
Terror fills my body, rushes my veins. Mamá stares out the door, at Doña Agostina and me, a strange look on her face. I try to smile at her, but my face won’t comply.
I’ve never let myself be a believer in visions. Mamá told me once that Doña Agostina warned her about going to the United States. And what if I hadn’t gone, Pulga, Mamá said. I wouldn’t have lived the happiest year of my life. I wouldn’t have you. No, you can’t live your life on other people’s visions.
Mostly, I thought what Mamá said made sense. But there’s something else, too, something about the visions—the revelation of some kind of unchangeable truth—that scares me. So it’s easier not to believe in them. To brush them away like Mamá says we should.
But what if Doña Agostina told Mamá about her vision for me? What would Mamá do? Would she believe in them then?
I don’t know how to respond to the old woman’s revelation.
But it doesn’t matter. She turns her gaze back toward the street and lets out a loud, painful wail, as if she had been on the shores of grief for just a moment, and now the ocean has come to take her back to the deep again.
Sometimes, it feels like the ocean won’t rest until it takes every last one of us.
Pequeña
He comes to the door this time, while everyone is at Don Felicio’s wake.
I watch him from the window; his knock is hard, hollow, incessant. The sound of it fills the whole house and makes me feel cold and empty. I want to ignore him, but then a flash of him climbing in through the window, finding me anyway, fills my mind. So I turn the knob and open the door, just as he is saying, “I know you are home.”
I forget he knows everything.
“Hi, sorry,” I say, meeting the glare that expects some kind of explanation. “It . . . takes me a while to get up.”
“Oh, of course.” His expression changes almost immediately. “I’m sorry.” He leans over and kisses my lips. I hold my breath, trying not to breathe him in, trying not to shrink back.
“I know your mami is not home,” he says in a singsong voice, wagging his finger at me. He comes into the living room uninvited, looks around, taking it in. “Come here, how about a little fun . . .” He smiles and the glistening of his saliva disgusts me. My body tenses. A small amount of throw-up fills my mouth. I swallow it.
“I’m . . . bleeding,” I tell him. “I’ve just given birth . . . I can’t . . .”
He twists his lips, and studies me. “Of course. But soon.” And then, as if it’s an afterthought, he walks toward the bassinet and peeks in.
“Look at him. I can’t believe he’s really mine.”
“Of course he is,” I answer. But something in the way I say it makes a strange look pass over his face.
“I didn’t ask,” he says. “I said I can’t believe it. What? You have a guilty conscience or something?” He smiles, but his eyes study me. He is always studying everything. Observing everything. He is someone who can sniff out anything you try to hide. But on this I have nothing to hide. And only more to lose.
“Of course not. I just mean . . . I can’t even look at him without seeing you.”
He stares into the bassinet and studies the baby there. For a long time, he stands there searching, before he suddenly smiles. “Yeah, that little fucker does look tough.” He laughs. “Yeah . . . there’s a resemblance. But you, too. You’re a tough one, too.” He turns and looks at me now. “You know, I know about the girls around here, right? I know who wouldn’t give the guys the time of day. Who is impossible to conquer.” He locks eyes with me. “I knew as soon as I saw you.”
He comes toward me, leans in, kisses my neck. His hand reaches for my waist and he pulls me in close to him. “I knew you and I would be perfect tog
ether,” he whispers. “I knew you would love me. Say you do.” I look down, notice the leather strap of the knife he keeps in his waistband.
“I do,” I lie.
“Say it, say you love me.” I force myself to wrap my arms around him.
“I love you,” I tell him. He forces his tongue into my mouth. And I fight my gag reflex. I try not to breathe. I try to fill my mind with black night, searching for a door in that darkness.
A cry fills the room.
He pulls away. Laughs. He walks over to the bassinet, reaches in, and retrieves the small bundle.
Something electric travels through my body, makes me want to grab that baby from his dirty hands. I can’t explain it. I fight that urge. I fight that feeling, whatever it is.
“Be a good boy,” he says. Then to me, “Come here, hold him.”
I do, even though I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel this baby, or know him. I don’t want to hate him. Or love him. I fight all the things inside me as I hold this baby I never wanted.
“I’ve always had dreams of better things, you know. I knew someday, I’d have better. I was going about it all wrong, though. But now . . .” He smiles, taps his temple. “Now I know better. You and I, we’ll have a big house, maids, fancy cars. We’ll live somewhere much better than this. And we will take what we want along the way, because that’s how you have to do it. I’m working on all that. You’ll live better than the president’s wife. And you know what? It’ll still be more honest than those políticos sucios. Dirty and corrupt. All of them.”
I don’t know what demented world he lives in.
“My mother will be home soon.”
He laughs again. “Okay . . . I know. You’re a good girl. Mami’s girl.” He walks toward the door. He pulls me along. He makes me kiss him. “I’ll follow some of your rules for now. But don’t forget, you’re really my girl,” he says. “And you’ll have to follow mine.”
I close the door behind him and lock it, even though I know locks mean nothing here.
We Are Not from Here Page 5