Armijo throws his legs over the bench, then walks the Kid Thief to the edge of the parking lot. Debates about whether to guide him across the street, as if he were only a toddler, pitching forward on incapable feet.
The Kid Thief adjusts his bandana and nods.
“What’s your name?” Armijo says.
The Kid Thief hesitates as if he’s forgotten his own name. He looks right and then left at the street, trying to gauge when to cross. “Alejandro,” he says, finally.
The cars driving past drop their speed. One stops for the kid and then another stops. Soon, there is a row of cars on either side halting for him. He shuffles across the four lanes, looking toward the mountains. Makes his way down the unpaved shoulder, throws up a hand behind his head as if waving good-bye.
Ten
There is no baby. There is no mother. In the canyon, in the house, Rufina is still in her ruined dress. She crashes around the kitchen, desperate.
Soon, she’s breaking glasses, then the plates, then the ceramic bowls. Hurling them against the kitchen window, which shatters, against the counter, the walls. Throws all the tulip arrangements to the floor. The blue kitchen walls glisten as if imagining rain. The house shifts, sighs, holds her tighter.
“Fuck you,” Rufina screams. She locates a bottle of mescal in the back of the pantry. Sucks down too much, too soon. It fires down the length of her midline.
“No matter what you do,” Rufina says, addressing the angel, who is nowhere to be seen, “I can pretend it any way I want.” As she swallows more mescal, her body surges with heat. Fire pulse. The whole of her burning. She continues to drink from the bottle. “I can make it so.” There are two, then three of the objects in front of her, two canes, three couches, two hallways, three beds.
Rufina strips the sheets from her mattress. They catch around her ankles as she takes a step and turns. She falls forward, dragging herself to her closet, where she digs through the mess on the floor. She is a derailed force crashing again and again. She overturns all the drawers, opens the basket lid on her hamper; flips it upside down. Crawls halfway under the bed and out again. Her uncles are hopeless in their portraits lining the wall. Their lips melted blobs, their eyes unfocused. So much black ink for the shadows around their mouths and down their necks. She throws the mescal bottle against the wall. It is a fantastic crash. The frames swing loose from their nails.
At last, she stands in front of the trunk at the foot of her bed, two trunks, three trunks, two trunks, three. Slowly grabs the top and lifts.
Nothing.
As she steps into the trunk, she collapses herself, pulls the top down. With it closed, her breath recirculates. She feels the rapid thumping of her heart. Scarves, Baby’s pillows, the smell of alcohol. The force of her pulse, booming. Her hip a siren, wailing. All of her in need of rescue. She is in the trunk that was made in Spain, that traveled by ship, then by horse to a thick, wet overgrown jungle at the base of a volcano. This is what the Explorer had explained. He was the one who gave her this gift. As a girl, she would retreat inside, measure how long it took for someone to notice her absence, call for her, search for her. When they didn’t, she’d emerge from it feeling at once the cool, fresh air about her, the light and the crisp audible sounds, as if she’d just been birthed. Later, on the plaza, for the Explorer’s live installations, she’d stand on the trunk as tourists passed by and studied her, but didn’t see her at all, throwing money in her direction.
She slides in and out of consciousness. The Explorer’s hands are on her breasts, on top of her head, keeping her from inching away. In the trunk, among the scarves and Baby’s pillows, Rufina’s breath, heartbeat, and the smell of alcohol, suddenly is the angel. As if the trunk were a tiny boat and there, squeezed inside of it, they sit.
“There’s not enough room,” Rufina says. It had been the angel who bundled Baby, placed her in Rufina’s arms. Saw to it that Rufina didn’t die from the blood she lost. Stayed.
“But I’m in here, aren’t I,” the angel says. “With you.” Her watch glows:
6:27 pm
Sat. 5.31
The smell of copal sticks to the back of Rufina’s throat. The twigs of the angel’s legs are pressing against Rufina’s thighs.
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” the angel says.
“I know,” Rufina says.
“You have one day left.”
“I know,” Rufina says. “I’m the one who made the bet.”
“How much money do you need?”
“What do you think?” Rufina says. “All of it.”
“Things change,” the angel attempts to explain. She does not mention anything about what is hiding under the rock at the base of the mulberry tree.
“There’s not going to be enough, is there?”
“You’re stronger than you can imagine.”
“I’m not strong,” Rufina says.
Rufina tries to turn her head. There is nowhere to turn it to. She lets her chin drop. Tries to shut out the angel.
“You’re incredibly strong. You gave birth to a dead baby. You’ve endured.”
“That doesn’t feel like being strong. That doesn’t feel like anything.”
“See how easy being strong comes to you? You kept Baby alive all these years for yourself when everyone else knew better. You chose not to accept this loss. Even when you dug away the dirt beneath the mulberry tree while your own mother rocked in her chair on the roof. Rafa had comforted her instead. It was Lucio who was there, standing behind you in all his strength, as the dirt covered Baby, sealed Baby. The Grandmothers to All encircling you.”
Rufina shakes her head. This is the way it had been, the memory lodged so thoroughly in her she’d nearly forgotten it. She’d meant to forget it. She’d done everything she could do to forget it. But there is Lucio. And the dirt marking her hands. And the circle of old women. The chanting. The smoke. She says to the angel, “I don’t want to be strong; I want to be happy. If I’m happy I won’t have to be strong.” Her voice is not the voice of a woman. “I was happy when the Sotos came. I was happy when I was pregnant.”
It’s as if Rufina is not a grown woman at all. It’s as if she’s the girl she was before she started her cycle. The Explorer has not peeled her dress from her yet, while Rafa lay asleep in the mother’s bed. She has not begun to swell, yet. Her stomach rounding and pushing skin. “I was happy when I wasn’t alone.”
“If you want to be happy—” the angel starts.
“We won’t make enough for him to leave,” Rufina interrupts. “If he stays, he’ll die, and that will be my fault, too. I make everyone go.”
“It’s you who has to go,” the angel says. “If you want to be happy.” As she stands, she throws open the lid of the trunk. “You’re going to need all your strength for that.” Her wings unfold, springing up and out. She gives them a vigorous snap as if they were a sheet. “Happiness, you should know, is just another way of remembering who you are.”
Rufina grips the sides of the trunk. The wood under her fingers has worn smoother than her own skin will ever be. Her hip is searing. “What?” she says. “What are you saying?” She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to stand. The mescal is wearing thin.
This is what happens when the angel tries to communicate—resistance, a barricade. She’ll only make it worse, the harder she tries.
“Summon your strength,” she says. “It is life coming for you. Your own future is coming for you, charging toward you with all its thundering force. Be ready.”
Eleven
The Explorer was the kind of man who, after pulling into the drive that first time, got out of his car and followed the mother and her children inside the house. Even though, mind you, there was no official invitation. The house took note of this. This was one of the Explorer’s attributes. He knew when to follow.
Once seated at the kitchen table, he began to take inventory of what was not there.
“No curtains. No paint. No dishes. No pottery. No record pla
yer. No plants.”
Rosalinda, Rafa, and Rufina all looked around the kitchen and saw not what was there and had been there, but what had been missing all along. With the Explorer’s naming of what was not there, everything seemed to be lacking. Where were the curtains? Why didn’t they have paint on the walls?
Rosalinda had never felt so studied. Her veins seemed to swell in response. Her temperature became significantly warmer. She poured him a glass of water from the faucet. Placed it in front of him. When the Explorer’s eyes paused from darting about the room, they landed on her. He was seeing her lack, too. That was obvious even if he wasn’t calling it out. Rosalinda’s heart rate was excessive. You should know that what she heard, in addition to the Explorer’s listing of what was wrong, was the possibility of him making it right. In effect, what she heard was a list of promises. When the Explorer said “no paint,” she heard that he would be the one to do the painting. That “no record player” meant he would be the one to locate such a thing, install it, and produce the records needed to fill the house with sound. In this way, she grew more and more excited as he continued with what was not there: sewing machine, rugs, candles, tapestries. Art!
He didn’t leave once it became dark. They continued to sit around the table. Rafa on his mother’s lap, Rufina the closest she’d been to reaching out and touching the large carved wooden cuff on the Explorer’s wrist. Curiosity kept them pinned to their places. Who was this man? Where did he come from? What was he doing here?
Finally, the mother said, “If you’re not going to leave, then you’re going to need to sleep.”
“I suppose,” he said, his smile opening with all his bright teeth.
“Outside in the yard, there’s a couch.”
His smile turned loose. He nodded.
“Dreams are best sleeping out there,” Rufina said.
“Don’t tell,” Rafa said. “He’ll take them all.”
“Will you?” Rufina asked. “Steal all the dreams?”
“I don’t know how I could,” the Explorer said. “When there are more than could ever be counted.”
“That’s not how it works,” Rafa said, turning toward his mother. “Is it?”
Rosalinda did not respond. That the Explorer seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and had nowhere to go made Rosalinda feel a kinship with him. She was imagining the house filled with things, she was imagining him doing it. A man who could make things appear was a magician of sorts, after all, and she wasn’t so burdened with her own devastations that she couldn’t remember the possibility of magic, especially when it was seated across from her.
“Will you leave some dreams for us?” Rufina said, trying again.
The Explorer lifted the glass of water to his lips and emptied it without pause.
Later that first night, Rafa and Rufina watched the Explorer from the living room window. As he moved the couch so that it faced away from view of the house, and managed a makeshift tent around it, Rufina bet Rafa that the Explorer would never leave. Rafa bet Rufina that he’d be gone as soon as the rains came. The betting continued. Rufina—that their mother would fall in love with him. Rafa—that their mother would chase him off with a machete. Rufina—that he’d become their father and they’d be a family. Rafa—that the memory of the Explorer would become so small that they’d step on it like a cockroach and forget he had ever existed. Isn’t it something how they both were wrong and they both were right?
The first week, the Explorer baked bread, collected wild spinach and dandelion greens from the yard, and assembled salads. With the strawberries he purchased at the market, he made pies. Whipped cream with a fork until it firmed, added powdered sugar and vanilla. Let Rufina put her hands in the mixing bowl. All the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen had been rearranged by the end of the week. Utensils Rosalinda could not comprehend cluttered the drawers. Cloth napkins and towels appeared, table linens, cutting boards, an assortment of knives, pots and handmade dishes filled a glass-fronted cabinet he’d put at the far end of the kitchen, along with a sewing machine.
When he was through with the kitchen, he moved to the dining room, then the living room, even the small spaces at the front door and back door were filled with tiles and mirrors, milagros and cut flowers—irises, roses, daffodils, peonies. Rosalinda watched as he painted the walls deep tangerine, periwinkle, and mint. Clay pots bursting with herbs hearty as bushes multiplied in every room.
The house knew seduction. Knew very well this was what the Explorer was doing. And still the house sighed, still the house softened into a home for him, too.
By the end of the first month, the Explorer had begun to accessorize the mother. Just as he had done with the house, he selected items that matched his idea of her. Pink and turquoise dresses embroidered in red thread with blue and yellow hems. A red shawl embroidered with pink and purple thread. Everything embroidered. Saffron-colored scarves. Flowers in her hair, more flowers, more, until she was covered in roses and carnations, gardenias and mums. He propped her up in the dining room on a stool, a collection of small lamps surrounding her, arranged just so, as if she were a still life. He went through rolls of film when photographing her.
“Your people,” he told her, the shutter clicking. “They could be from anywhere. Greece, India, Palestine, Bolivia, Polynesia. Such rich heritage.” He had endless ideas about how to position her, how to frame her. Her beauty was dark and miniature. He loved the possibilities of her. To him she was a nugget of raw material waiting for him to shape, to mold into something far more exotic than she’d been able to create on her own.
As Rufina watched her mother and the Explorer, she noticed how the top of her mother’s head reached the bottom of the Explorer’s heart. She noticed that one of the Explorer’s hands covered her mother’s face completely. That when he put makeup on the mother, her features seemed to disappear beneath his movements. Undetected, Rufina watched how the Explorer would stand her mother on a chair, so they could be the same height. From this place, Rufina watched her mother gaze into the face of the Explorer. She imagined being placed on the chair, so she could stand eye to eye with him, too. And in the quiet of sleeping hours, Rufina would stand on that same chair, having got up on her own, trying to understand the sensation of height. Studying the room from that eye level, she glimpsed one of the benefits of this privilege.
“You know I’m here to stay,” he told Rosalinda, kissing her dark-stained lips.
“You know I’ll never leave you,” he said as he hung earrings big as ornaments from her ears, placed rings, then more rings, on her fingers.
“You are the territory I’ve been in search of.” He lifted her off the chair. Twirled her around.
It was his routine to cook for her, for all of them, with what he harvested from the garden. It was routine for him to wash their sheets, sweep the floors. He was their servant, of sorts, and in return they traded their human status for object status, to be conceptualized and arranged by him, put on display. In his servant role, he was hard to resist, and the mother surrendered to the force of his attention, she let herself hope.
After the first year, the Explorer relocated to the mother’s bed. For the momentous event, Rafa stationed himself on the strongest branch of the mulberry tree next to the open window, flapping his arms as he listened to the Explorer moaning, “My muñeca.”
What Rafa could not see was the Explorer’s mouth engulfing his mother’s ear. How very big his tongue was in comparison. The Explorer’s mouth as it devoured his mother’s lips. “Muñeca.” How exciting it was for the Explorer to finally be permitted entry into her smallness, pushing past all of her resistance and numbness, as if finally filling a place that had been declared forbidden.
Rafa, in the tree, held his breath and flapped his arms even harder at the commotion. All the while, Rosalinda tensed. While his fingertips traced her forehead and the tip of her nose, she shook. The Explorer said he loved her. He loved her.
Rafa listened and imagined such a t
hing as love. Nearly eleven, Rafa convinced himself of what it was. Love was being an extension of another body, her body. Love was being ignored. Love was being severed, amputated. Love was being called back again and again. He knew love.
Outside, in the hall, Rufina brought the chair over and stood at her artificial height on the other side of the door, listening to the grunting and the moaning and the whining sounds that emanated. Her hands twirling in the air as if she were the conductor, not the Explorer, as if she were in command.
Over time, the Explorer’s interest spilled over from the mother to Rufina. She’d been waiting for it. It was a kind of comfort to have her turn. He would sit at the table with her, books piled between them, candles on the countertops, his glass filled with wine, and show her the world page after page. For all that she did not know about who she was, he made known the possibilities. In those pages were histories and lands, stories and songs. She memorized these options of who she might be, where her mother might have come from, just as she memorized the way he touched her, his hands rough around the edges of his thumbs. The calluses of his palms catching in her hair. That was a kind of belonging, too, another way of being known. The delicacy of his attention. In this way, she was as important as the mother. Meanwhile, the walls and the rugs and the tapestries all screamed out loud and in color. Meanwhile, Rafa skirted the edges of rooms, watching his mother and his sister, waiting.
It wasn’t long before the Explorer was dressing all of them. Had them staged in the dining room like an interlocking puzzle. After he dressed them, he told them how to stand. He pushed their arms and legs into place. Rafa would never hold still long enough. Hours they had to pretend they weren’t real. It was a kind of rehearsal for what was to come. He had a series he was planning, instead of his mannequins, something much more compelling: live models. Something additionally exciting: new names. “It will help you forget who you were. Instead you’ll just be who you are right now.” He renamed them each weekend, depending on the country and the culture that inspired him. They knew which of them he was instructing based on whom he pointed at. This made the mother relax. There was no past. There was not even yesterday if she was no longer Rosalinda. All trauma momentarily lifted. With the trick of a new name, she could have been anyone.
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer Page 11