by Mira T. Lee
Unlucky.
Cursed.
• • •
Then they did not speak any more about children. She lay in bed whole days, morning till night, walled in by the mosquito net, and would not answer when he asked what was wrong. She made appearances at family parties but mingled only with the teenagers, and she did not dance and never stayed for long.
She has a hole inside of her. Gigante. Susi’s words.
“Lucia, please, you need to eat something,” he said.
She shook her head. She no longer worked in the garden or commuted to Cuenca or wrote in the evenings in her spiral notebook. From time to time she went for walks by herself up the steep slopes behind the casita, through the grass to the woods, though she stayed away from the old shaman now. He watched as she set off, tall rubber rain boots marking her ascent up the hillside, two bright pink dots growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared. Only when she was completely out of sight could his tension transform into sadness.
One day, as she lay sleeping, he noticed a single silvery strand of hair on her head. He could not remember how old she was. He had to think of his own age, then calculate hers.
One day their neighbor, Roberto, came to the door. There was a letter, he said. For Lucia. It had been delivered next door by mistake. A letter? What letter? They rarely received letters. Only the occasional package for Essy from Switzerland, with books or a sundress or a wide-brimmed hat, boxes of chocolates shaped like shells.
“Lucia?” he called. She climbed out of bed.
It was a large white envelope, thick and square. Embossed with fancy gold type.
“What is it?” asked Essy.
“I don’t know,” she said. She sat upright in the high-backed rocking chair in the corner of their bedroom. “Hija, you read it to me.”
Essy took the envelope, ran her fingers over the fine linen paper. “It’s beauuuutiful,” she said.
“Is it, hija?”
“New York University,” said Essy. “Twenty-fifth re-un-ion . . .” She glanced at her mother, who was resting again. “What’s that for, Mama?”
Lucia’s eyes opened slowly. She rose from her chair. “How did they find me here?” she whispered. Without opening it, she threw the envelope into the trash.
• • •
“Why is Mama so sad all the time?” asked his daughter.
“Sad?”
“She doesn’t laugh anymore.”
“Yes, hija. She is sad right now. But one day, she will feel better.”
He cooked breakfast, chorizo with eggs, while Lucia slept. Essy set the table, went to the garden, returned with a papaya and two granadillas, perfectly ripe.
“When?” she asked.
He kissed the top of his daughter’s head.
“Soon, hija. She will feel better soon. I promise.” He said it to believe it. And because, well, in spite of everything—Lucia, their Lucia, had always come back.
And then he felt a knot in his stomach, a strange remorse. He remembered still, that promise he’d made all those years ago. For my daughter, I will try. He had kept the promise a long, long time. He had stuck by Lucia. This was love, or this was duty, he could no longer tell the difference.
• • •
That year, he finally laid the foundation for their new house, sixty meters to the right of the old one. Lucia sat on the front stoop of the casita, watching quietly. “Come, Mama,” said Essy. A few weeks passed and Lucia would help sometimes, hauling or shoveling or setting down joists. Then they mixed the mortar, then they stacked cinder blocks, then they pieced together the Spanish-tiled roof, sawed and framed and hammered and drilled. Two bedrooms. A bathroom with a proper toilet and tub. A kitchen with porcelain tiles. They sanded and painted, installed windows and doors. One day he watched her wind up the dirt path carrying three reams of cloth: pink and orange and blue. She went to the old sewing machine Mami had passed on to her years before, showed Essy how to sew a curtain. Like this. Like this, Mama? Not like that, like this! He listened to them laugh.
And then one day in the dry season, she came to him. She said, “Manny, I am going to America to visit my friend. He is dying.”
She said it simply but he could sense her distress. Her clavicles tensed. He did not need to ask which friend.
He watched her take out her large, red plaid suitcase, as ugly now as the day she’d brought it home from Orchard Street. She unzipped it, pulled out a small duffel bag. This was what she packed.
“How long will you be gone?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
He did not need to hear more but she said it: “I’d like to stay until the end.”
She inhaled, exhaled, long, deep breaths. Her clavicles relaxed. Her voice sounded stronger, determined. Cancer. A few days. A few weeks. A month or two at the very most, if one had to guess.
He remembered that hospital in Westchester. They had shaken hands. But now he felt none of the animosity he’d felt back then. He felt inexplicably sad.
“Mama, why do you have to go?” asked Essy.
“It’s only for a little while, hija. A week or two, maybe. Fourteen days. Is fourteen a lot, sweetheart?” She reached for her daughter.
“It is,” said Essy. She threw her arms around her mother’s neck.
• • •
He drove her to Cuenca in their pickup truck. Watched as she boarded the bus to Quito. She waved. He waved. She pressed her palm to the window. A lump popped into his throat. On the drive home, his head filled with memories of America: the Big Apple Laundromat. Maurice. Angel fountains spraying water from their penises. Mindy Griffin and the Vargas boys. Mrs. Gutierrez. The fires. Snow. And once more he remembered those nights with Susi, entwined inextricably with his daughter’s birth. He closed his eyes, heard the clang of the radiators, low muffle of the television tuned to channel 9. The sirens wailed, he smelled smoke. He listened for Susi’s footsteps, and when she came to him he let her ride until he exploded. Those days, imprinted upon him, the uncertainty and fear wore him down. But now, in the darkness, from his safe place in the campo, with his daughter sleeping soundly down the hall in her own bedroom—in the soft light of nostalgia, he could long for it now, ache for the frenzy of youth.
Where was Susi? That encounter with Nele Hernandez resurfaced in his mind. Susi flourished in his imagination. Again, he fantasized a life with her the way he’d once dreamed of a life with Lucia, with half a dozen children and hot meals around a large table.
• • •
Several weeks later, he found himself sleeping on a bus ride to Quito. It seemed the deepest sleep of his life. He did not notice the bumps or jolts or the driver’s sharp swerves to avoid slamming into cows in the road. When he woke, he watched the dirt cliffs zoom by, the petrol stations and car dealerships and banana plantations, open-air taverns with dry, thatched roofs and men playing pool inside. In Quito he boarded another bus. Construction and rubble and yellow machines, iron gates and billboards, stray dogs, plastic bags, telephone poles, graffiti-plastered cinder block walls, cement buildings spray-painted with notices and signs. Rubble, dirt, cement, trash, and then mountains and valleys, the blue-gray sky. In Esmeraldas he asked the driver for the way to the barrio. Its name, stored for years in a corner of his mind, titillated as it rolled off his tongue. He was directed to another bus.
By the time he arrived, it was dusk. One dusty main road, quiet, lined with low buildings, palm trees, telephone wires. He walked, glancing back over his shoulder every few seconds. The light was fading. His stomach growled. He had eaten nothing but candy all day. He needed to find dinner—a chicken cutlet or a piece of fried fish, cabbage salad and rice or plantains. He smelled cooking from an open-air restaurant ahead. It was ramshackle, dimly lit, but he didn’t care. There wasn’t much else around.
As he approached, he saw her.
At a rickety table outside, in plain sight, as if she’d been set there to wait for a man just like him. She wore a tight black dress. Several rings on her fingers. He looked down at the ground, shoved his hands in his pockets, headed for a large dumpster next to the low cement building. He squatted. Hid. No. It was impossible. But yes, it was really her. It was Susi. With the same too-small eyes, the dimpled smile. And a boy with her, maybe eight, maybe nine? They sat, licking Popsicles—the boy in school uniform, navy blue trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt. The brown face, with Susi’s small, wide-set eyes. The grin spread from ear to ear.
He froze.
Calculated quickly in his head. No. But it was possible. Or it wasn’t. Was it?
He observed them, sick with doubt and disbelief and fascination. He could’ve stayed in that spot by the dumpster and watched them all night, the way they waved their hands as they spoke, the way the boy’s dimples flashed as he laughed.
He could stand up, walk, go to her. But he stayed, squatting. Suddenly he could not think what good it could do to move. Would he say hello, casually? Feign surprise? Apologize? Introduce himself to the boy? Would he pretend the encounter was an accident? Offer to buy them dinner? Invite them to live in the campo? About that boy, he didn’t know. Couldn’t be sure. But to step out would be to unravel a thread he could not sew back into place. So he stayed behind the trash, hidden.
Soon they were finished. Susi paid the bill. She stood and her dress hugged her heart-shaped ass. Her head lunged a split second ahead of her body, like a giraffe. He was not ready to let them walk away, so he followed down the main calle, every gland excreting sweat. Once, he thought she sensed she was being followed. She grabbed the boy by the elbow, raised her voice. They turned down an alley, disappeared into a concrete building with an iron gate.
He did not know what to do. He wanted to wait. To see them both again. He could go find a hotel, return in the morning, but his head felt too thick, his feet too heavy. He pressed his back against a wall, sat. Drifted, not quite to sleep.
He wished he had come sooner. That encounter with the sister, Nele, how long ago had it been? The boy, how old was he really? What was his name? He should’ve tried harder to track down Susi after she’d disappeared. Though if he’d found her, what would he have done? This was his way. All those years, bound by Mami’s wishes. Terrified of migras. For what, he couldn’t remember anymore. He had returned to his country. On his own terms. But no, they had never been his terms—they had always been Lucia’s. All these years, bound by Lucia, bound to the sister who was not even around. And now here, in this alley, finally here, and it was only because Lucia was away. If she had not gone, would he have come? Was this loyalty or laziness? He could not be sure.
The clang of the gate woke him. Morning. The boy was leaving the building, so he followed him to school, studied every aspect of his gait. It was nothing like his. Was it? The boy was too young. Wasn’t he? His mind, flip-flopping this way and that and he could not be sure—or perhaps, rather, it could possibly be, he was not yet willing to release it because he needed this now, wanted it desperately, to prolong the story, to cling a moment longer to this piece of another life, the life of Manuel Vargas not lived.
In the afternoon the boy reemerged from school. He trailed him to the same rickety table outside the same dingy restaurant, and there was Susi again. They ate lunch. He could not hear her words, only the breath of her voice. The boy stood, wiped his chin with a napkin. Susi stood, smiled. And one tiny sliver inside him knew—knew, already, even as he wrestled with himself still—he would do nothing now.
There was a word for this feeling; a Portuguese word he’d once learned from Lucia: saudade. A vague longing for something that cannot exist again, or perhaps never existed.
He cried into his hands.
He returned to the campo. It felt peaceful there. He made peace, for now. He had gone and come back and made peace. He enjoyed the quiet, for now. And the comfort of his bed in his newly painted blue-gray bedroom in his newly built house. Ricky came to visit with his wife and two daughters. Juan came to visit with his wife and daughter and son. He enjoyed their company, their jokes, their allegiant admiration. He enjoyed this time with his daughter.
Days later, he would begin his worry. Weeks later, he would receive the news. In shock, he would lumber down the hall to Essy’s room, raise his fist, knock-knock. Sprawled on her pink bedspread, chin propped in one hand, she chewed bubble gum while reading a book.
“Hija,” he said. He had to say it to believe it. “Your mother is not coming back.”
Part Three
9
Yonah
It was a long time ago Lucia said she’s gonna come for a visit, maybe six or seven years. I wait for her to call me but she doesn’t call. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t hear from her anymore. I think, okay, she changed her mind. I try not to think about it. I don’t take it personally. People say things, people do things, these two are not the same, I know that. I hope she’s happy, that’s all.
I could’ve told her when I first started having pain in the balls. But why should I tell her, I think? She lives in South America with her family, I’m not gonna make special phone call just to tell her this, and anyway if she hears it she’s gonna tell me to go see a doctor and I hate doctors, and when I really need doctor I call Jie in Switzerland. Jie’s husband is doctor. So Lucia doesn’t come, it’s okay. I know if something is really wrong, I hear from Jie.
But then the day comes when I have to pee like crazy all the time and I run to the bathroom and there is nothing, always nothing, so finally I go and get the tests. The doctors, they say I’m a man, it’s prostate, and this number is very bad, this number is a little bad, and maybe I do some procedure and maybe it’s gonna help me or maybe it’s not, or maybe it’s only going to change the numbers. I say I don’t care about any stupid numbers, I want to know, will it kill me, and if so, when, and what can they do so I don’t have to pee so fucking bad all the time.
They say, we watch it, so I say okay, fine, we wait, and I go build a house in Meyer, Minnesota. Minnesota, sure, because it’s far away. The land is cheap, the sky here, it’s like crazy forever, you’ve never seen anything like it, so big and clear you can see whole universe. But the winter—the winter! It’s fucking cold like you can’t believe it, you think New York is cold, no way, this place is freezing off your ass, and people ask do I go ice fishing and I look at them—I say, you think a Jew is gonna sit out on the ice eight hours for a fish? So in the winter I go to Israel. I have a big beautiful house there, near Haifa, and it’s sunny all the time. But I can’t take too much of Israelis and all the fucking politics so in summer I come back to Meyer. All the people I know, they make fun of me, look at me like this guy is crazy, and some people ask if it’s near Minneapolis, or a big mall, or Lake Wobegon. No. But when I find out some time later it’s not only prostate, I have testicular cancer, too, it turns out famous clinic is couple hours away.
Two months ago, the cancer shoots to my lungs. That’s when I find her, Lucia, I call and I tell her everything and immediately she comes. From Ecuador.
The lungs? I can’t believe it didn’t start there, she says. Always, she’s hated my smoking.
You see? I tell her. I never do nothing wrong with my balls.
She is a little bit fatter, rounder face, heavier middle, but she is still beautiful. Beautiful dancing eyes, beautiful smile, like a girl.
But now she’s angry. She says, You tell me five years ago I would’ve come five years ago and now you’re like this. You need a machine to help you pee. I laugh and she has to start laughing, too, because this is what me and Lucy do.
I say, Everybody’s gonna die.
She says, You should’ve told me.
I say, You have a daughter, you have family, you have a life. I know how to take care of myself.
And she is crying and I say
, It’s okay, sweetie, hey, you’re here with me now.
• • •
Lucia, she drives to hospital, she’s demanding to know the options. More options, she says. What are the options. She’s trying to save me, but the cancer starts in testicles and spreads to kidneys and lungs by now. So then she flies to New York, only for one night, and she brings back a giant suitcase.
Did you get that on Orchard Street? I say.
She says, No. Orchard Street is different now.
The suitcase is stuffed with two things—pineapple buns from my favorite bakery on Mott Street, and special Chinese herbs. You know these herbs, like dried-up sticks and weeds and bugs, not something to put in your mouth. She cooks the herbs in a special pot, boils them all day and night and the house stinks like worse than rot.
I say, I am not dead yet, are you trying to kill me? Get that shit out of my beautiful house! But I say it like Talking Heads say it, my beau-ti-ful house, and she knows I’m a little bit joking.
Just drink it, she says. She hands me a bowl of black soup, like tar for the roads, but full of twigs and tentacles and worms. I won’t drink it, no way. She calls me stupid and stubborn, she is crying again, so finally I drink it, but I go to bathroom and spit it out.
The next week my son Jonny comes. Jonny and me, we have a lot of rough times for some years. In New York he tried to steal from me so many times, he makes trouble in the neighborhood, he gets his ass arrested. I say to his mother, how am I supposed to help a kid like this? I have to send him away, he’s gonna get himself killed here. She says, you are not sending him back, he is teenager and she is not wanting him in the Israeli army, we have huge fights over this. Why not Israeli army, everyone does Israeli army, even sissies, even girls. But instead of Israeli army, I send him to cooking school. And you know what? He does good. But then he comes to me, he says, Dad, I want to open restaurant. I say, what do you know about running restaurant? He says, what did you know about running a store? I say, every day I work at that store, I know everything going on in the store, every delivery guy, every customer, every worker, what they do. Except Uncle Leo, he says. Jonny, my son, he knows how to hurt me, drive a stick into my balls and twist. You see, Leo, he steal from us, too. My cousin Moishe, he is partner of mine for the store. He learns about Leo, he is pissed, he blames me, he wants me to pay him back what Leo stole, so Moishe and me, we fight. I look for Leo but when I finally find him, of course the money is already gone. Money and family, it’s hard to mix, but somehow we have to keep together in this country, look out for each other, this is what we have to do. So I leave New York. I don’t want to fight, it’s best, I’m sick of it anyway. I want quiet. I want peace. I tell Jonny, you work in restaurant business for ten years, you prove to me you know restaurants, I help you start your own. Now I don’t have ten years. Jonny, I worry about him.