by Mira T. Lee
• • •
One day he dug into his jacket pocket and found a wrinkled bus schedule, Quito to Esmeraldas. He tossed it into a garbage can. The paper fluttered.
• • •
They spoke, occasionally, about having another child. He had always wanted more children—half a dozen, maybe more. She seemed fine. Perfectly fine. He wanted to believe it: that she was cured. Those darkest images would fade, supplanted by new memories, but the knowledge of her illness haunted him still. They made love, occasionally. He still saw Luna from time to time. Fabiana and Guadalupe had gotten married. And then Ricky, too, and Juan a few months later, to Guadalupe’s younger sister, and he could not help but wonder about her pepa, whether it was stubbly or smooth. Soon, he would have two brand-new nieces.
One day he came home to find long yellow streamers billowing out from every window of the casita. Essy had found the rolls of crepe paper in a drawer, spent the afternoon carefully hanging them with clear tape. “Hair, Papi!” she proclaimed. “Our casita has hair!” But the sight of streamers brought the Vargas house to mind. Susi. Was she still living in Esmeraldas? The thought needled him, like the splinters lodged in the palm of his hand.
He believed they were content, most of the time. Most evenings they ate dinner, played cards outside, or slipped over to Mami’s house to watch futbol on the new LCD television. Some nights Lucia still leafed through her narrow-ruled notebooks, carted out her old laptop. “What are you working on?” he asked. She had her own column now at the paper, could do as she liked, so it was ecotourism this month, an interview with the director of the senior center the next. “And the book?” She shook her head.
Four years passed. The dry season went. The wet season came. The animals grew and wandered and multiplied. When rains were severe, mud bubbled in through the seams of the casita and they lay down flattened cardboard and wore rain boots. Each time the tin roof started to leak again, he felt guilty for not having started work on a new house. There was always something else in need of his immediate attention. The future would have to wait.
Essy was nine years old when it happened. A cloudless spring day, ripe with lilac and chickweed and manzanilla. Essy, as tall as Mami, gangly, lithe, with a shining brown face and dark teardrop eyes. On her ninth birthday, she had insisted on cutting her hair short. It reached just below her ears.
She and Fredy were playing by the river, as they often did in the afternoons, building mud castles, digging moats, populating them with minnows and other small fish they could catch with their hands. It was one of the dogs who alerted her with its yelps and howls: Fredy had tumbled in. It wouldn’t have mattered, had it not been the wettest rainy season in thirty years, turning the river into waist-deep chocolate rapids. And it shouldn’t have mattered, because Fredy, though slow and thick as a dunce, was tall and knew how to swim. It was a trick, Essy thought, Gordito was playing a game, and would burst out or wave his arms or grab her by the legs and yell, “Shark!” But as she waded around, his lumbering body did not surface. She screamed for help.
Manny was close by, close enough to dive in, but the mud and sand and sediment were thick and opaque and he couldn’t see. “Dónde? Dónde?” He screamed at his daughter as she pointed this way and that, until he stepped on the soft, bulky mass. “Go get help,” he yelled. “Run and find your mother, Abuelo, Abuela, tell them to go get help.” It took all his strength to drag the body out. Fredy’s lips were purple. His skin was white. He lay his brother on the grass, shook him by the shoulders.
Papi arrived first. He cleared Fredy’s mouth with his fingers, tilted his head, blew air into his lungs. Listened for the breath to return, and when it did not, he pumped hard on his youngest son’s chest.
It seemed a lifetime that the small crowd stood gathered, watching hopelessly, Mami clutching Tía Camila’s hand. Manny could see the whites of her eyes, pupils grown black, mouth gone slack. When she sagged by Fredy’s feet, he ran to her, gathered her in his arms as her shoulders began to heave. Alamar was all she said.
He was a boy again. They were picnicking by the sea. It was not a day for mirth, but he was happy to be alive. He was a boy on the beach, belly full of fish and bread, skin hot and salty and crusted with sand. He found an orange starfish washed up by the waves. When Ricky pulled off one of its spiny arms he wailed like it was he himself who had lost a limb. “It’ll grow back,” Mami had said.
He wrapped his hand around his brother’s ankle. The skin felt cold.
“Come back,” he begged.
Come back. Come back.
Essy sank to the ground, reached over to pat Fredy’s bloated belly. Please come back, she whispered. Gordito, I promise, I’ll be the shark next time. She clenched her teeth. She would not cry.
And then a miracle. Fredy sputtered back to life.
It took four men to carry him home, an old door covered with towels as their stretcher. Fredy was placed in his bed, warmed with lamps and blankets and hot water bottles. He shivered. Mami lay next to him, cradling his head in her bosom. Essy refused to leave his side. She told him jokes, made faces, anything to make Gordito laugh. Papi drove to Martez to find the doctor. Tía Paula peeled potatoes for soup. In the tense, uneven quiet, even Tía Camila had no words.
He brought Essy crackers. He brought corn to the hens, scraps to the dogs. He wandered in and out, bedroom to kitchen, kitchen to yard, trying to find a place to stand still. Tía Camila offered him a cup of hot coffee. He was just sitting down to drink it when a knock came at the front door.
“Quién-es?” called Mami.
His legs buckled as he stood.
It was Lucia, out of breath. She had run up the hill to call for help. Now, before him stood an ancient abuelo, face like an old record, carved with lines. He wore a crown of bright, multicolored feathers. A garland of beaded necklaces hung from his neck.
The old shaman.
“Manny,” said Lucia, still huffing, “where is Fredy? I’ve brought help.”
The shaman looked at him with bloodshot eyes.
“Quién-es?” called Mami, again.
He tried to block the doorway with his body. “It’s nothing,” he said.
But Mami had already padded out from the bedroom. One glance, and her complexion paled. “Please send that man away,” she said.
He saw Lucia’s confusion, her naked shame. That evening, on the front stoop of the casita, under the spring moon, holding hands, he recounted to her the story of Fredy’s birth. The round, wooden tub. The shaman’s words: At best a dunce. That child is a curse. Lucia’s hands trembled. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. I thought maybe he could help.” She closed her eyes, fought back tears. The whole of her body shook.
He pulled her head to his shoulder, pressed his cheek to hers. She smelled like grass. He loved her then. He loved the goodness of her.
• • •
The doctor in Cuenca said it was Fredy’s heart—it was getting too weak to circulate the blood through his body. Fredy had been born with this heart, a defective heart. It was a heart for a boy, not a man.
“He will need an operation.”
“And if not?” asked Mami.
“If not,” said the doctor, “I’m afraid he will die.”
Papi was stoic. Mami, incensed. It made no difference that she’d known all her life that her son was doomed for this.
“When?” she asked.
The doctor shook his head. “Soon.” But they could not perform this type of operation here in Cuenca.
“Why doesn’t he go to Quito?” said Lucia. “Surely in Quito there are doctors who can perform such an operation.”
It was true, things in Ecuador had changed in the two decades since Fredy’s birth. Better hospitals, better technology, skilled surgeons who could fix things once thought unfixable.
“Lucita is right,” sai
d Mami. “Of course, we will try.”
• • •
A rush of phone calls, appointments, and soon it was decided: Mami and Papi and Tío Remy would go with Fredy to Quito. Tío Remy’s daughter, the nurse, would meet them there.
“I want to go, too,” said Essy.
“No, hija, you stay,” he said.
But he let her ride with them in the back of the truck, an hour and a half to the bus station in Cuenca. Fredy climbed on board first, pressed his nose to the grimy window. Mami sat beside him. Papi and Tío Remy behind. Essy jumped up and down, waved and waved until the bus disappeared out of sight.
He bought his daughter a soda. They sat down on a curb.
“Papi. Is Gordito going to die?” she said.
He swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said.
“But he can’t die. He just can’t. He’s the only one of us who stays the same.”
“What do you mean, hija?”
Her sigh made him feel obtuse.
“Well, he’s bigger now. Much bigger than when we first came, I think. But inside, he’s the same. He laughs when I tell my jokes. He loves the animals. We play the same games. I love Gordito, Papi.”
“I know,” he said. “We all do.”
She nodded, pensive.
“And the rest of us, we’re not the same?”
She shook her head. “Abuela is worrying all the time now. She forgets things, like how much flour she’s already put in when she’s measuring the flour for honey cake. And Mama doesn’t talk the way she used to. She’s much more serious now.”
“And me, hija? Have I changed, too?”
She nodded. She pointed to his belly.
“That’s all?” he said, laughing.
“You’re heavier,” she said. She scrunched up her nose. “But not just on the outside, Papi. Inside, too.”
He studied her face, wondered how much she knew. Or if what she said was true, or if it was only that she was growing up and saw the world differently now. He had never spoken with her about her mother’s illness, though he told himself he would. One day. But not now. For now, he would drink a soda with his nine-year-old wonder, and the past would stay in the past.
“Should we go to the candy store?” he said.
She grinned. Slapped him an emphatic high five.
That night he and Lucia made love in the hammock outside the casita. After, they looked up, the fronds of banana trees swaying above them. They admired the stars. “You have to believe,” she said. He nodded. He prayed. He tried to believe.
Two days later, Fredy returned from Quito with his entourage. He ran to greet them.
“Can they do it?” he asked.
Tío Remy nodded.
“Yes?”
“There is a procedure,” said Tío Remy.
Papi stared at the ground.
“So they can do it. That’s great, right?”
“Yes,” said Mami. “It’s possible for the doctors to do it. But hijo, it’s too expensive.”
He hadn’t even considered it, the cost, but of course, everything cost. Well, they could sell the animals. He could fix up the old tractor, sell that, too. He could find extra work in Cuenca, construction, painting, whatever it would take.
“Hijo, they say we don’t have time,” said Mami.
“They could be wrong,” said Tío Remy.
“Doctors are wrong all the time,” said Papi. But his voice held no conviction.
They sat at the picnic tables outside Mami’s house. He watched Fredy toss watermelon rinds to Princess and Pea. Essy sprayed their snouts with the hose.
It was Lucia who asked: “How much?”
Mami glanced at Papi. They shook their heads.
“Please, how much?” said Lucia.
To him, it sounded like a staggering sum.
“I have some money,” she said.
• • •
That night he and Lucia lay in the hammock, he did not want to make love. He did not notice the stars. “Are you sure?” he said, a pit in his stomach.
Lucia nodded.
“You have this kind of money?”
“I can get it,” she said.
The next day she asked him to go with her to the teléfono cabinica in town.
“Why?” he asked.
“I need you to talk to my sister,” she said.
He did not understand. To ask for money? No, no, he could not do that.
“Not about money. I need you to . . .” She bit her lip, fidgeted with her fingers.
He understood.
They went by motorbike, bumpy and loud, reeking of petrol and kicking up dust. He sat beside her in that cramped, airless booth, on a metal stool so hot it burned his thigh.
She handed him a slip of paper with the ten-digit number, but he knew it already by heart.
Hello? Manny?
Fear, locked inside those two simple words. This was what he represented to Lucia’s sister.
Is everything okay?
“Lucia is fine,” he said. His voice sonorous, confident. “She’s perfect. She would like to speak to you.”
He handed Lucia the receiver.
It was a brief conversation. Lucia did not bother with pleasantries or attempt to mince words. This is about Fredy, she said. Her tone terse, restrained. And when she hung up the phone she did not cheer or high-five as he might have expected of her, but said only, quietly: “Done.” He felt the contradiction: on one hand, elation; on the other, Lucia’s coldness, which saddened him. But these were family matters, and he would not pry.
The funds were wired the next afternoon.
• • •
This is how Fredy went to the hospital in Quito and got an operation for his heart. The eight-hour procedure was completed without complication, allaying Mami’s lifetime of worry, at last. Fredy arrived home to a quiet celebration. Tía Camila baked his favorite pineapple cake. Tía Paula hung streamers. Essy added a perfectly painted red heart to his portrait on the south-facing wall of the casita, next to the cow named Victoria. And though Fredy had never fully understood what was happening, now he clung to Lucia and wouldn’t let go.
“Thank you, hija,” said Mami.
He squeezed Lucia’s shoulders.
Finally, the whispers stopped.
And then one day she announced it: she was pregnant again! And when she said it her face lit up and his lit up, too, because he hadn’t thought it was possible, because she was too old for this. “Yes, but I am blessed,” she said.
She was buoyant, giddy. Essy, the same, bouncing on the bed, overjoyed that she would become a big sister. She pressed her ear to her mother’s belly, still flat.
“What should we sing to the baby, Mama?” she asked.
“You choose,” said Lucia.
He listened as they sang, their voices interwoven, almost indistinguishable now, in unison or in harmony, lullabies or boleros or American spirituals.
I’ve got peace like a river in my soul
I’ve got a river in my soul
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul
I’ve got a fountain in my soul
Even Mami glowed. She plodded up the dirt path in her woolen shawl, carrying tamales or llapingachos or locro de papa. Then again her reprise, the one she’d started almost a decade earlier: You will ask her now, hijo. For the baby, you must ask her.
So one day, he asked her. And she had a funny look on her face, but she said yes.
Mami clapped her hands, squealed like a girl. “I will tell everyone this happy news,” she said. She kissed Lucia. She kissed her granddaughter. Then she pulled out her yellow measuring tape. “I will make you a dress. A wedding dress. With sheets and sheets of lace and a beaded veil. Oh, Lucita, it will be beautiful.”
It sat
isfied him, too, the three of them together, outside after dinner, heads close and clucking like gallinas.
Then the doubts seeped in again—her health, the health of the baby, her health after the baby’s birth. He’d kept those pamphlets given to him by that social worker; they were stored away in a trunk. He’d stored away the old yellow enamel pot, too, purchased a new one, stainless steel. But it had been years since he’d jumped out of bed to spy on her in the kitchen; he no longer knew where the orange bottle was kept. She saw the look on his face. Kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry, Manny. I am taking care of this niña.” “How do you know it’s a girl?” he asked. “Well, wouldn’t it be nice for Essy to have a sister?” She saw this doctor, that doctor. “I’m old,” she said, laughing. Her effervescence was contagious. She hummed a bachata and asked him to dance.
She was perfect, like the girl he’d first laid eyes on at the laundromat. That girl, the Chinita with the perfect calves and perfect tetas, now this woman once more carrying his child. It felt like a dream. Each night she brewed herself a cup of herbal tea, took her vitamins, stretched to relax. She went to bed early. She rubbed her belly. And for nine more weeks they basked in each other’s hazy glow, contemplating who this new creature might be who would join them, and then one night she sat in the outhouse for six hours, doubled over, and the next day the glow was gone.
She did not cry or swear or holler out in grief. She made no sounds at all.
Mami put the dress away in a closet.
Such a shame.