Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer

by Jamie Figueroa

  For the next couple, in the man’s shadow, Rafa sees a prince. Instead of a crown, a woodpecker stands on top of his head. Near him is a firepit, long cold; it’s a pink-and-salmon-colored dawn. “When are you going to tell your father?” Rafa says. “About what you stole? Before he dies?”

  “Come on now,” the man says quickly, as if he’d just touched something too hot.

  Strangely, the crowd leans in closer. They both want him to do it to them and don’t want him to do it to them. They want to watch him do it to everyone else. Cut through. Expose. Money begins to drop into the basket.

  Rafa is not invested in the questions he asks, or the couples. He doesn’t care if he’s right, if he’s helping them or not. There’s no feeling for him that goes along with it, just like when he performed as a boy. It’s simply a game for him to play with his thoughts, pass time as he is watched, a way for him to invert the attention.

  Officer Armijo notices Rafa at the microphone. Hears the collective gasping and sympathetic moans from the crowd. Knows this is where it will happen today. Feels the crowd churning. How close to a boil? Knows he will again use his phone, dispatch backup, but he hesitates. The last time he witnessed a sight like this was when Rosalinda stood on the ledge of the faux orno in the hotel lobby of the Dancing Sun Bear as if it were a stage. Nearly every guest had gathered as she called out the secret images, the questions that unraveled them. By the time she had finished and slipped out of the crowd, there were couples weeping, couples screaming, whole families on their knees, begging, wrestling, and pinning one another to the ground. He isn’t close enough to know if Rafa is as good as the mother, but surely he learned it from her.

  The couples in the crowd are now at the center. More passersby gather along the outer edges. They are transfixed. What will he say next? What will he divulge? Fistfuls of money land in the basket.

  There is a cacophony of sounds. It is a tremendous, embarrassing time. When Rafa runs out of husbands and wives, he starts in on the teenagers who are coupled, then the mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, the pairs of friends. Never would he have imagined himself as a grown man without his mother in the plaza of his hometown, begging for money as if that would stop him from wanting to kill himself.

  He is a kind of prophet-clown, a seer of what has tried so hard to remain unseen. It’s as if he’s entertaining the mother. He is fourteen, he is nine, he is three. He has learned how to keep her attention.

  Five

  “Why do you have to act like this?” Rufina says to the angel.

  The angel looks past Rufina. Her wings twitch. “Like what?”

  “Like a fucking kidnapper.”

  There are knots in the angel’s hair; her headband is missing beads. The white leather beneath exposed. She looks at her watch:

  1:49 pm

  Sat. 5.30

  “You’ve grown out of Baby.”

  “I have not,” Rufina says. Rufina is on the verge of kicking her one good, strong leg. As if she were a child again, the one who had been told that the baby who’d been growing inside her wasn’t alive anymore, and that there would be nothing for her to keep, nothing for her to hold on to. And that the Explorer had gone and would never return. “Baby belongs to me. Baby will always belong to me.”

  When Rufina pushed, she forced another life into the world. There was the cord to cut. Baby not making a sound, Baby not breathing. Even though Baby’s life returned to where it had come from, her hip had come undone and would never return to its proper placement. As she grew, the distance in her hip grew as well, forever a loose doorknob refusing to hold itself in place. Inside her, the wasted space for what was once there, promising life.

  “You’re not a mother,” the angel says, slipping her long fingers into the band of her left sock, and then her right. “Baby didn’t make it. You didn’t birth life.” She removes a half-smoked cherry Colt. “But you made it. You’re still among the living.”

  Rufina struggles to push from her mind Baby between her legs, caught and wrapped by the Grandmothers to All. There was no crying out. No trembling in the light of the room and the cold air. She prefers it her own way. Baby placed on her chest. Baby feeding. Baby breathing.

  “Speaking of mothers. What did you do with her? Did you hide her, too?”

  As if on cue, there are mothers everywhere on the plaza. They walk in small packs with their children in various shapes and sizes. Their voices seem to fill the space with song, not unlike morning birds praising the sun.

  Baby alive. Baby dead. Baby alive.

  Mother alive. Mother dead. Mother alive.

  Death was not a permanent condition when it came to those Rufina loved. Despite their hearts stopping, they still surrounded her, engaged her. And then there was Rafa.

  “I’m not the only one who pretends,” Rufina says. “You’re nothing like a woman.” It’s meant to be a surprise attack, but it’s obvious and lacks the ability to puncture.

  “Fair enough,” the angel says, adjusting her crotch, unbothered. She touches her breasts. They’re almost there.

  Notice Rufina does not say, “I’ve had enough of you.” Does not say, “You’re a curse.” Does not say, “What are you waiting for?” To say any of this would mean she’d be ignoring the angel’s devotion to her for the past fourteen years. Her presence constant.

  “Haven’t you learned anything by having your prayers answered?” the angel says, hiccupping. Hiccupping happens only when the angel might cry.

  Rufina remembers praying for a family, a father, her mother’s steady attention, some kind of never-ending love. She prayed for the Explorer to return. She prayed for her baby to grow. She prayed for her mother to not be sick.

  “I’ve been listening to you all along,” the angel says.

  “Have you?” Rufina says. “Listening to everything? All along? Or every other conversation? Or occasionally to requests?”

  “Requests?” the angel asks.

  “Please?” Rufina asks.

  “Begging sessions,” the angel says, finally, as if it were an answer to stop Rufina’s expectations. “You, begging. Begging for everyone, anyone, to wholly dedicate themselves to you.”

  “You’ve never prevented anyone from being taken away.”

  “Since when was that a requirement for this experiment called living? Hmm? Being protected from loss?”

  “You took away all my chances to have a family.”

  “The Explorer had to go. Your mother wanted it that way, and if you want to list someone’s losses, try listing hers. That should make you feel better.” The angel’s ribs are visible through her T-shirt. She refuses to wear a bra. Clearly, her nipples are those of a man.

  “He didn’t know what happened to us,” Rufina says.

  “He did it, to both of you,” the angel says. “Your mother got to choose.”

  “He loved us both. That’s what he did. He loved us both but he didn’t know we were pregnant. He couldn’t have known. If he knew, he would’ve come back. I know he would’ve.”

  This was the force of Rufina’s make-believe.

  “Please,” she says. “Don’t take everything away. She didn’t lose everything. She got to keep Rafa. She’s always had Rafa.”

  “What they’re doing doesn’t concern you.”

  “How could that even be possible?”

  “Stop pretending, Rufina,” says the angel, whose hiccups have gotten away from her. Who, in this confronting Rufina, has become more upset than is reasonable for any being not of this earth. “Stop pretending that you could possibly know another’s pain like you know your own. Your ability to feel for anyone else has been compromised by the restriction in your own heart, by your own wounding.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “Then what is right, if not that?”

  “I can feel everyone’s pain because of mine.”

  “Brilliant. That sounds brilliant.” The angel pauses. “But is it true?”

  The pain in Rufina’
s body, the burning in her chest, which is not her lungs at all, but the inflammation of her own heart—this is what keeps her from answering. What does this condition actually provide? Restriction or potential?

  “Are you going to let your brother win?” the angel says. She does not say, “At least you still have him.” She does not say, “For a little while.” There is what she will say and what she will not. The cigarillo between her fingers wags in the air, begging light. “Do you have a match?” The angel knows better. Nowhere on Rufina’s person is such a thing.

  “They’ll return,” Rufina says. “I won’t be alone.”

  The angel searches the crowd. “What will return and where that leads—certainly that’s cause for curiosity.” When the angel spots Officer Armijo, she says to Rufina, “Now, there. Him.”

  Officer Armijo has trouble inserting himself among the tourists. He’s pacing wide, trying to predict what Rafa’s effect will be. The froth of the crowd seems to be settling. He can see Rafa’s focus wavering. He keeps pausing and stuttering, throwing up his arms. He’s not as talented as Rosalinda.

  Rufina remembers sitting next to Lucio Armijo in seventh-grade homeroom. She remembers the pastillitos made from honey and the quince in his family’s backyard, how happy it made him to have something to offer her. In eighth-grade homeroom, he brought her sopapillas with apricot-ginger jam, and then in ninth grade, handfuls of cherries. Always something to eat, as if she were a stray dog. He was convinced he could lure her with enough kindness and sweets.

  “You want to ask him?” the angel says. “About his pain?” The angel is not devious, and yet. A man can love a woman and never touch her. A man can be more devoted to a woman who will never be his wife and save her in ways she will never know. Like this, every time Lucio Armijo thinks of her, he sees her in all her light, and guards that light, in his own mind. Even this can make Rufina safe, help her remember herself, ease the force of her shadow. This is not something the angel would be able to make Rufina understand. That the portraits in her room the night the Explorer abused her were not the only witnesses, that if she would’ve been able to see around the Explorer pressing himself into her, she would’ve seen Lucio in the panes of glass, watching. Unable to save her from a man easily twice his size and pale as unearned protection. Lucio will never leave his family and he will never not love Rufina with the whole of his aching heart. Which is to say, he has been trying to do anything to save everything, to atone for that one act he didn’t commit. That night at her window, a conquest he couldn’t find the courage to interrupt.

  “You want to ask him what his pain has done?” the angel says.

  Rufina glares. The hard point of her cane digs into the concrete of the sidewalk. She could do damage with that, as if it were the point of a high heel, the kind she has never been able to wear. She tilts it up as if aiming it at the angel’s crotch.

  “Suit yourself,” the angel says. The cigarillo pops on its own, begins to smoke. The angel inhales until the red eye burns bright. The stink of artificial cherry pollutes the air.

  “You’re not being fair,” Rufina says, returning the point of her cane to the ground with a whack.

  “That’s not meant to be a weapon,” the angel says about the cane.

  The angel grins. Her eyes appear glossy. She’s about to tear. Her teeth are crowded in her mouth, tilting, chipped. “Your brother,” she hiccups. How could she ever begin to explain fairness and divine chaos to Rufina? Death? Life? There never has, nor will there ever be, a language adequate enough.

  “What are you planning?” Rufina says.

  To those passing, Rufina and the angel appear as if actors in costumes rehearsing a scene. One is crying. One is about to cry.

  “It’s worthwhile practice, saying good-bye.”

  The angel exhales above Rufina’s head. The smoke shifts about her, prayers lifting.

  Six

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the plaza, because he isn’t doing it properly, Rafa is drained by the act of reading shadows. His own shadow seethes with the residue from what he names in others. Because he isn’t doing it properly, he gains in darkness. His own shadow doubles, triples in size. Flu-like symptoms begin to take hold. It’s hard for him to distinguish between what he sees and what is actually before him. The light and the dark are becoming more difficult to tell apart. Projected images in the shadows and the concrete elements of reality around him merge. The softened edges of the adobe storefronts are muddled with the presence of snakes. Kings and queens huddle while pelted by hail. A hawk dives. Children follow parents, husbands follow wives, lovers meander hand in hand. Tourists follow vendors. Smoke clutters the air from unseen fires.

  He’s burping. There’s bile in the back of his throat. He feels as if he’ll soon vomit. The noise from the crowd is scrambled, side conversations, accusations, confessions. He sees a single hummingbird darting from shadow to shadow, piercing the edges of darkness, poking holes. He sees the people before him. Their bottom halves melting. Their mouths moving at impossible speeds.

  Rafa feels himself funneled into memory. There’s his mother saying, “Come play with me.” It’s an afternoon in late June and she’s situated herself in the center of the living room floor. Papers spread out around her, small squares, not unlike a collage about to be constructed. She has soft-leaded pencils she’s kept sharp by nicking the tips with a paring knife. A squat jar of black ink sits within her reach. Brushes stand at attention in a repurposed coffee can. Instead of settling down next to her, Rafa crawls out through the yard and into the garden. He’s nearly ten years old, crawling instead of walking because he wanted to be a four-legged thing for the day. He wouldn’t be a man for years, but he could be a beast, a powerful, powerful beast.

  “Conejito, venga aqui,” she called out to him. Three pencils of varying softness and a single sheet of paper waited for his return. Meanwhile, he growled and scuffed the soft dirt with his unharnessed strength. This was the world he was charging at. He burrowed his face into the plants, consuming whatever he wanted. He tore into the tender leaves of chard and arugula. Bit into the tart tomatoes still ripening. Once he had eaten enough, he continued chewing on everything he could find, marigolds, cucumbers, peppers, green onion shoots, the tendrils of weeds in between—all miniature and delicate. Then he spat it out. A wet, green slobbery mess trickled down his chin and arms. In between the narrow rows were the tracks of his hands and knees, as he had dragged them, his feet knocking over and bending the plants. The garden territory was a wasteland, wrecked. He was the beast that was capable of changing the world by exerting his force.

  While the mother worked, she did not know what was happening to the vegetables she had planted. Did not know that as she stumbled through the darkness of her mind, creating ink and charcoal images, her garden was being ruined by the son who should’ve known better, but instead thought himself the most powerful force in the house, more powerful than the Explorer. Instead, she sat on the floor, sketching faces from the dark pools of her unconscious mind. Her imagination overrunning any evidence of memory. In the blanks in her mind, she renders what could have been. They were one and the same to her, what could have been and what was—remembering and imagining, imagining and remembering.

  All of it real.

  On the paper, the brush soaked with ink, whispering, not unlike the way the wind whispered, ancestors’ voices hushed, in the dark beneath the banana leaves, hidden far from city lights, as the military approached her village, the smell of gardenias so thick in the air it seemed the cruelest thing of all.

  Rafa continued to pull up seedlings. Peppers, garlic, and squash shoots, the fanning of new growth. He uprooted each one, and even after he grew bored of it, he continued in his destruction.

  Now, in front of the crowd as Rafa throws up his arms, questions turn into accusations. He does not see loitering in the back, with his arms piled over his chest, a fifteen-year-old boy the size of a grown man. Does not see the way the boy’s feet beg
in to move faster and faster until he is launching himself, missile-like, through the group despite his heft, aiming for a direct hit, Rafa’s face. While this boy is unaccustomed to using his hands to do harm, once the first fist makes contact, he can’t stop.

  Squeeze. Aim. Strike. Release.

  The force of his hand pushes into the surface of skin, stops at the stubbornness of bone. The quiet inside him is surprising and spreads down his legs. He knows where he begins and ends. The separation between victims in this moment is trigger thin.

  Squeeze. Aim. Strike. Release.

  His energy, endless. It was the last question Rafa hurled into the crowd that set him off. He didn’t hear what Rafa had said just before, which was, “We seem to have an army of inept magicians lurking here with us today.” He only heard the question “You ever get tired of being so pathetic?”

  Rafa surrenders to the beating, relieved. His hat spins off his head, twirls away from him, tipping over the curb. The feathers flying loose. His knees aiming for his chest. His toes pointing. He’s smiling. The fist coming at him, a blur; all the pairs of shoes stepping away from him, a blur; the shield of his own forearms, a blur; the mother cradling his head. Is that her voice now welling up in his ears?

  When Rosalinda found him in her garden, curled nose to tail, belly bulging, she pinched him in the soft place under his arms. Flicked him in the nose with her thumb and forefinger as if he were a cat that had jumped onto the dinner table. Slapped the back of his head. She had gone out to smoke, to stand by the well, to stretch her neck and close her eyes at the sun when she made the discovery, her garden, him sprawled out in the middle of it. The carnage.

  She tied his hands behind his back, which meant he couldn’t flap them, which meant he was earthbound even in his pretend escape. This kind of behavior was something she would not tolerate. She had been betrayed. She wrapped her shawl around his waist and used it to fix him to the apple tree beside the well.