“Expecting what?” Rafa says. “Overpopulation?”
Rufina remembers her last day of school. Never again would they be their threesome, Rafa and Rufina, Lucio orbiting them. Her belly had grown too big to sit at the desks, just like a handful of other girls that year, as happened with a handful of girls every year at the high school in Ciudad de Tres Hermanas. The day came she quit showing up for class, and then Rafa left with a scholarship for the private school in the next town—he had impressed the school board with his dexterity with languages. It was the way in which he had learned to duel with the Explorer, compete for his mother’s attention. They promised him college, internships, a life of constant international travel. Lucio Armijo went on to date and marry Candelaria Armijo, no relation, because that was always how it was meant to be. Ask any of Candelaria’s aunties who had leaned in with all their weight during the courting season. They had four sons as if they were counting down to something, or counting up, neither of them can remember anymore. And here was about to be number five, another son.
Rufina’s eyes are closed. The sun pools in the bowl of her lap, warming her hip. Quieting the raw, sharp sensation of the aggravated nerve. She listens for any sound of Baby. Tries to conjure all the places she didn’t look that morning. Including the bed of the thirty-year-old Nissan pickup abandoned at the edge of the backyard. She pictures it in her mind. Her concentration is cut by the passing of traffic; the rock studded in the tread of the front tire clicking against the pavement. Again, the computer beeping.
As they round the next corner and climb farther into the canyon, Rafa begins shouting. Never mind the pain in his head, the nausea he’s still burping from. He has spotted his hat and the one who stole it.
“No way! No way!” Rafa’s voice is ricocheting off the interior of the car. “There’s that fucking kid!” His own yelling is more than he can bear.
“He’s the one that did that to your face?” Lucio asks.
“I know that hat,” Rufina says. Her eyes are open now. Her vision sharp. She sees the soft young face of boy attached to the bulk of a man, tall and wide. Sees his braids, the bandana beneath the hat. His thick glasses melting down his face. His mouth is open. Everything about him seems to require space. Everything about him seems to be an apology for this requirement.
Armijo whoops his siren for a moment, turns on his light. There’s no telling what the Kid Thief will do. But the mass of him is nothing short of a burden. His breathing is heaving; they can all see it.
Lucio reaches for his speaker, says, “You. There. Hold up.” Then pulls over, puts the car in park. The Kid Thief does exactly as he is told.
Outside, a couple yards in front of the car, on the sidewalk next to the arroyo, under a demanding elm and tiny half-broken liquor bottles, the boy shifts forward and back as Lucio talks. Rafa and Rufina can’t hear what they’re saying. Rufina notices Lucio keeps his hands at his sides.
“He’s telling that kid that he can give him a ride home. That he’ll buy him a meal,” Rafa says. “I bet you.”
“How much was it?” Her chest is tight. She wants home. “Enough for a plane ticket?”
“Looked like it.”
“How is it again that you cannot have any money?” Since her brother had left for college nearly a dozen years ago, Rufina had imagined him with multiple accounts all brimming with funds. Being in high demand as a translator for NGOs across the globe meant, to her, continuous income, endless opportunities.
“Goes fast.” What Rafa is unwilling to admit, and always has been unwilling to admit: the investment he has made in lovers. “Mommy! Daddy!” one lover used to say to him after Rafa paid his rent, all his bills, filled his metro card, crowded his kitchen with food, his closet with clothes. There were the frequent trips home to Rosalinda, as well. Whenever she needed her son close to her, he appeared.
“Is that the crystal?” Rufina says, seeing it clearly in the Kid Thief’s grip.
“Surprised he didn’t take the basket, too.”
As Lucio opens the back door, Rafa spits, “You’re not going to put that back here with me.”
“You’re welcome,” Officer Armijo says to Rafa as he guides the Kid Thief into the backseat.
Rafa swipes the hat off his head, dents it even further. He flinches as if Rafa’s aiming to retaliate.
“Where is it all?” Rufina says.
“It, uh, it flew. Away.”
“The fuck it did,” Rufina says as Lucio eases back onto the road. The kid jumps at the volume in her voice. He’s more afraid than any of them. His criminal behavior was out of character. The upward tilt of the expression on his face; the tip of his chin tilted down toward his throat; the way his shoulders are pitched so far up and forward all clearly state he’s trying to shrink his mass. As they continue toward the house, he asks where they’re taking him. He pushes up his glasses. His mouth hangs open. He waits for someone to answer him. When no one does, he leans toward the door. He’s afraid of accidentally touching Rafa.
Rufina feels each stone under the cruiser’s tires as it rolls up. The house appears tired, sad. She wonders how it looks to Lucio. If it’s changed for him, too, now that the mother is gone.
Tulips dot the front and side lots. Multicolored mouths gaping, full throats revealed. The couch under the trees is soggy, the foam inside exposed. The porch is littered with candles all tucked inside colored glass jars. Scrap metal forged into stars and squares, moons and arrows rust against boulders and planks of wood. Old carved pews huddle around the firepit. Buckets of seeds and nails haphazardly placed. Beyond the house, the hills rise up to meet the mountains, beyond the mountains, the mesas. Everything crude and endearing as if made by hand.
“Nice place,” the kid says, nodding in approval. “I like the painted parts.” He’s squinting through his glasses at the trim stenciled around the windows and doors. Vines, flowers, birds circling, trees expanding, a silhouette of the volcano—all of it appearing lush—and the monkey posing, as if the trickster, the deity no one has yet recognized. All of it is faded now. It had been the mother’s work once the tiny stitches of hand sewing became too much effort. The house already knew what would happen next and soaked up the paint. Enjoyed the feeling of her hands—the stroke, the brush—as soon those same hands would be no more. It was a kind of therapy that kept her moving. Coat after coat, the mud surface of the house drank up the pigment and extended the time it took her to complete something that would stay and could clearly be seen. This was after she stopped wearing the costumes left by the Explorer, stopped loitering around town, stopped whispering to the wives, “Does he still taste as good as he used to?” And to the husbands, “Does she even notice you anymore?” This was after the countless times Officer Armijo had to escort her to his cruiser—more complaints of public indecency—and drive her home into the canyon where the quiet of earth and the embrace of the house would settle her down. “Ridiculous. Tourists. Not one of them wants to hear the truth.”
“No one wants to be insulted,” Lucio would say to her. For a time, it was a weekly event for the two of them, as if they were keeping an unspoken appointment.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Lucio says, turning off the engine.
“Not now,” Rafa says. He tries to open the door, but it’s locked. His fingers flip at the handle, a furious popping noise. Hot, sour liquid burns at the back of his throat. As if Lucio could relate to the mother, to what they were feeling.
“Irreplaceable.” A generic sentiment and Lucio knows it. He means more but is unaccustomed to expressing himself. “Hard without her,” he says, trying again.
“Open the door,” Rafa says; he’s feeling territorial, trapped.
“I don’t remember my mother,” the Kid Thief says. It’s a quiet comment no one notices.
Then, louder, Rafa’s mouth against the grill, “Let me out, cabrão!”
Rufina is barely there. She can hear Armijo and Rafa and the Kid Thief, a medley of men’s voices. There�
��s the trunk at the end of her bed and what she will not find. Her throat itches. She turns her head to the side, opening the funnel of her ear to catch all the hidden things. Hears nothing.
Officer Armijo goes around opening all the doors. The kid gets out as if it’s his house, too.
“What are you doing?” Officer Armijo asks him.
He is at once a puppy, lost, his bulk deflating. Yes, where is it he has to go? Where did he think he was going? His stomach growls.
Cousin, he thinks. Cousin, listen. It almost worked.
Rafa’s out and pacing. His face is bruised. It’s a bruise that will spread and deepen in its shading until it covers half of his face, as if a birthmark, intense purple and red. His nose is swollen. Not broken but close. He pinches the remaining tips of feathers on his hat. Waits for something. Then lunges at the Kid Thief, grabbing the crystal out of his hand.
Two of the Grandmothers to All ride past. They ring bicycle bells once. Then break their pace. Stopping at the end of the drive, they watch and listen with their inner eyes and inner ears. They see the crumbling in Rafa’s commitment to live—in his joints, in his spine—the young man’s awkward shape, Lucio’s fight to take care of them all.
Rufina is sipping air now. She knows what she will not find when she goes inside. She pulls her hair and thumps her stomach. Grinds her teeth. Thrashes. When her throat opens, it is a wailing that makes the men want to duck and cover. The Grandmothers to All hear Rufina’s screaming and they know all that has been buried within her is so close to surfacing, will soon erupt. They begin to understand how severe the situation has become.
The mother did not tell Rufina it was her fault. She did not tell Rufina it was not her fault. She did not tell Rufina that she, too, was expecting a baby. She simply did not say anything to Rufina as Rufina’s abdomen grew and grew and grew. Rufina has always thought that the mother asked the Grandmothers to All to search for the Explorer, to return him. The mother did no such thing. He never did return. Dead. Not dead. Dead. It was not discussed. The mother disappeared him. Then she disappeared what grew inside her, the start of a third child.
Lucio is wasted at the sight of her in his car. He’s not sure how to comfort her, or if he should. Not with Rafa there, guarding her. Later, when he remembers this moment, he sees himself reaching for her. Sees himself carrying her to the house. Sees himself making it better.
The Kid Thief tears up. Turns his back. They all think they should be mourning what they’ve lost. For Rufina, it’s the same and different. Mourning what could never be.
The hills look like strangers from this perspective to the Kid Thief. Mountains. Beasts with their backs turned to him. He’s never been this close. He can almost hear them breathing.
Armijo remembers his wife crying last month in the same way that Rufina is now, attacking him and the boys with her arsenal of pointed emotions. She didn’t have anything left to give. The same thing happened to him then that was happening to him now. Any capacity of feeling, numb. His ability to feel his own pulse, gone. All of it frozen.
“Can you see her?” Rafa says, standing next to the passenger door. He thinks he can smell the mother. “Is she here now?”
Rufina will not move. The zipper on her dress has burst and there’s a gash up the side of the material bearing her skin as if the dress refuses to hold her in anymore.
“Rufina,” Rafa says, grabbing her cane. “Don’t lie.”
He bends down next to her. He is rubbing her arms and brushing back her hair with his palms. His sister isn’t supposed to act like this. This is the mother’s behavior. Rafa fights to hold back what he hasn’t yet released. The whole, unending, consuming wave of it.
His touch reminds Rufina of Baby. She collapses.
“That’s enough,” he says. “Get out of the car.” She is larger than him, and yet, he has a man’s strength, which is enough. He pulls her up, stumbling the entire way, whispering into her ear, “Where is she? Tell me where she is.” The Kid Thief shifts on his feet, makes an effort to follow, his hands out as if he can help somehow. They don’t notice this. The house watches, though, knows how broken they are, takes them in.
“Hey,” Armijo says to the Kid Thief. “Put your arms down. Get in the back.”
Lucio Armijo watches Rafa shut the door, then, slowly as he can, drifts back to the cruiser. Helplessness threatening to drown him. The Grandmothers to All wait for him to drive by them.
“Looks troubling,” one says to him.
He leans through the open window as if this will provide privacy from the Kid Thief in the backseat. “I’ve got a feeling,” he starts to explain. “That something is coming.” He goes for his badge but then instead grips the back of his head. He struggles with the ways in which he can know what is yet to be known. “And it’s not good,” he finishes.
The Grandmothers to All nod, each at their own pace.
“We’re not far,” one says, while the rest continue to nod. Which is to say they will return to the compound up to the road and prepare. They will be ready in the way only they, as women, can be. Ready for the unknown as it draws closer. Its presence in their bellies and hips. Sensations that will intensify. Life may be taken or given. Either way, their careful attention is required.
Nine
On the way home, Officer Armijo stops at El Gallo y La Luna and buys a dozen chicken tacos for the Kid Thief. He could hear his stomach growling for miles. They sit at a picnic table next to a coyote fence, behind which run four lanes of traffic. Daffodils hug the fence line. They match the yellow wrapper of his tacos. He does not speak while he eats. His knuckles are shredded, open, raw. Nearby, a local couple wonders what the boy has done to be tagging along with an officer, wonders why it looks like he’s getting a free meal.
Officer Armijo thinks of Rufina’s wailing in the car. He can still hear it. His neck tightens. He remembers when she didn’t have a cane. The way in which she stood was enough to win him over. He forever wanted to be standing next to that. Her gait, a move like nothing anyone else could do. He forever wanted to follow that. Her pace, that steady, slow swing of her hips, the call he forever wanted to respond to.
Rosalinda’s voice is in Lucio’s ears. As if she’s next to him and they’re sitting in the patrol car. The last time she was with him she’d asked, “How’s your wife?”
“Fine,” he’d replied.
“You sure?” She waited for him to tell her all the ways it was not fine.
“You’re not fine,” he said. “No reason to go to the bathroom like that in public unless you have no choice.”
She stiffened.
“You sick?” he asked.
She ignored him. Instead, she’d said, “I’ve seen your wife’s shadow. Seen yours, too. Poor in spirit, you. Poor in heart, her. But that could change with time.”
Later, after he’d escorted Rosalinda to her door and kissed Rufina on the cheek, when he was once again at home and in bed facing his wife’s back, he’d heard the echo of it, “fine.” And he’d wished for his wife to roll over to face him, consider him something worthy of touching again. Fine meant what escaped him. Fine meant what was disappearing. The truth was sadder than he could contain. Instead of reaching out to his wife, touching that wall of her back, he’d scooped himself up, felt how small and soft he was in his own palm. Let himself drift closer toward dreaming.
After the kid throws away the last wrapper, he pats Armijo’s arm as if he were Armijo’s grandmother, like he knows how to console a man nearly twice his age. Says, “Thank you.” Sighs. Says, “I can walk home from here.”
Lucio wonders about Rafa’s face, the missing permit, the missing money.
“You think I’m gonna let you go?” Armijo says, his mouth almost grinning. It’s anyone’s guess if he’s serious. And if he is, about what, exactly.
The Kid Thief’s mouth drops open. He tries to close it, but it won’t stay shut. He adjusts his moon pie glasses. His lips glisten from the grease.
�
��I don’t have it anymore,” he says, trying to understand Armijo’s expression, trying to understand the purchase of this meal, trying to understand what the Officer in Officer Armijo means. Tries to understand how afraid he should be.
“How come?” Armijo says.
“Wind came,” the Kid Thief says, “and took it. Didn’t matter how hard I was holding on.”
“And.”
“And,” he says. “There was an angel.”
“A what?” Officer Armijo knows exactly whom the kid is referencing, and yet, he does not let on. He wants the money with Rufina. Now that he has seen, now that he knows her desperation.
Never mind that at this very moment the angel is lifting a rock at the base of the mulberry tree in front of the house, placing the fold of bills—which has been secured inside an empty package of smokes—beneath it.
“She, he—” The Kid Thief does not feel moved to tell the story of when he was six, when he was in the hospital, the fever, the angel he saw then at the foot of his bed.
“You assaulted a man,” Officer Armijo says. He thinks of how close he once came to punching Rafa. Rufina’s last day at school. Her stomach had been arousing suspicion for weeks. Everyone wanted to know whose it was.
“You wish,” Rafa had said to Lucio. “Too slow.”
“Oh,” the kid says. “Yeah.” He licks his lips, chews the bottom one, remembering the food he’s just eaten. He sighs. “I didn’t think I could—do that to someone else.”
Officer Armijo knows the kid’s cousin, and his cousin’s girlfriend, and the woman that does his cousin’s tattoos. He knew the kid’s mother, too, before the overdose. The father, same. Keeping the peace. In the driveway, he wishes he would’ve picked up Rufina and carried her inside. He could have, easily.
“Be careful,” he tells the Kid Thief, watching him stand. It’s not the kid he means to say it to. It’s everyone in the kid’s life. It’s the whole world that doesn’t even notice him. It’s the warden waiting at the Boy’s Home on the south side of town, where the kid will end up in the next couple years because what choice will he have?
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer Page 10