A couple of years before he died, Bert tried to apologize for beating me up so much when I was young. He blamed our neighbor, Phil Ferrini. When Phil Ferrini, who lived up the block on Blue Jay Road, had fallen on hard times, my father helped get him a job at Potashnik in the sales department. On their drives into work together, they liked to talk about their problematic children. Phil Ferrini had a temperamental, beautiful daughter, Michelle, and one of the boys she went out with for a bit was Ian Brown. After she stopped coming to school, there were whispers about a secret late-term abortion. On their drives to work, Phil Ferrini advised Bert that the only way to handle kids today is to beat the crap out of them. Beat the crap out of them, that’s how to get their attention! brayed my father that Sunday afternoon years later, reclining against stacked pillows on his bed like an old-man emperor. That goddamned Phil Ferrini, I wish I’d never listened to that goddamned son of a bitch! Gisela used to enjoy even the most violent of my Bert stories, but the uniquely Gisela place inside her where cruelty, empathy, and comedy merged especially relished the story of my father’s apology. Whenever she needed an excuse for anything, she loved saying: But Phil Ferrini told me to do it!
Years later, when I was in my thirties, a published novelist and journalist, when even Bert was proud of me, I came home on a visit to introduce my parents to my then-serious girlfriend, Camila Seabury. Bert took Camila out into the yard on the pretense of showing her his rosebushes but really so that he could get her alone. Frankie always gets hurt by his girlfriends, he told her. Promise me that you’re not going to hurt him, too, or else end it now, before it goes too far. I’m begging you, dear. That conversation so freaked her out she kept it secret from me for years, until long after our relationship had ended and we were friends again.
But I’m not like you, Daddy-O. Oh no I am not. If there’s one thing I’m especially sure of right now, it’s that I’m not like you, at least not in the way that, after what Feli told me, seems most crucially definitive. In Pénèlope Myint’s grad student penthouse apartment in Cambridge, only a couple of months into our relationship, she did something so uninhibitedly and joyously erotic that my dick wilted in terror. Too much woman for me. Futilely flopping against her, soaked in anxiety sweat, the scarlet fish fin of shame rising from my spine. It lasted a couple of weeks, frantic failure repeated over and over, but impossible to give up, to creep away and curl up in some dark corner forever; the terror of going for it again every night and day, though, was like a virus of anguish and humiliation digging down into every part of me, infecting every organ, vein, and nerve ending. But Pénèlope was incredibly patient. Ohh, no fun, she’d pout, never anything harsher. So, Pops, here we can draw the significant distinction. Never felt a flash of anger toward Pénèlope, instead took it out on myself, getting out of bed and punching the wall until my knuckles throbbed and bled. Finally something happens to unblock the cognitive processing of sexual stimuli and hush the horrible, panicked inner voices, letting the divine spark fly: lying in bed one evening, she casually lifted a knee up through the opening of her white bathrobe, revealing a glide of inner thigh so supple and soft it looked never before exposed to light or air, spontaneously drawing my lips to it, and I was cured.
You see, Daddy. Not like you. Was never even close to tempted to hit her. I, despite my humiliation, the nonstop hurt and disappointment of it, the fear that I was being revealed not just to her but to myself as a ruined man, instead went forward, kept trying, trusted the love I had inside me, not only for Pénèlope but for what I wanted life to be and desperately believed it could still.
No. Not ever like you. If I can feel sorry for you, it’s because you weren’t more like your own son. Well, that’s been clear to me since I don’t even remember when, maybe from that moment when I socked you in the face, left you on the ground squealing Yoli Yoli. What’s unforgivable is what you did to your young foreign wife, your captive, my mother. Though I know it’s really for her to forgive you, not for me.
A tattered crimson awning over the door, aleph laundry in faded but legible white letters in the front fabric. Aleph, really, like in the Borges story? María Xum comes out from behind her counter to greet me between the rows of washing machines and dryers. Her obvious excitement makes me think she must not have thought I was really going to show up. She’s a smaller woman than I remember, but I recognize her unguarded smile, her plump lips, though if she were sitting directly across from me in the subway, I wouldn’t have known it was her. With gray-streaked black hair falling loosely to her shoulders, wire-rimmed glasses, and jeans and a thickly knit comfortable gray sweater, she could be a long-tenured professor of Marxist theory. After we’ve embraced, with a proud sweep of her hand, she says, This is my laundromat. The machines are old but they are still good. You mean you’re the owner? I ask. Yes, she is the owner. Careful not to sound too surprised, I say, That’s wonderful, María. Her smile widens, evidently she agrees. She says, Yes, thank you. But now her expression has turned solemn. She looks at me and says, Of course, in this story there are reasons to cry too, Frankie. She holds my gaze, until I respond, I’m sure there are, María, and she says, Pues sí, with a sad little half-smile. She turns to step back behind her counter. I stand a little awkwardly, hands shoved down into my pockets, across the counter from her, as María begins to tell me the story, her English animated by the energetic pronunciations of her native Mayan language. She’d been working here for sixteen years when the original owner, el señor Alberto Markowitz, an Argentine, committed suicide. With her savings, she bought a half share from the widow; the other half was bought by Alberto’s younger cousin, Alicia. The widow returned to Argentina with the twelve-year-old son. Two years ago, María bought Alicia’s half, so now she’s sole owner. María tells me she raised her own son, Harry, alone. Her first marriage to the Mexican, Juan Camacho, was brief, and she never remarried. Harry is an Afghan war vet who lives out on the West Coast now, but she doesn’t live alone. For years, through her church she’s been involved with the local Central American community. Several times, she says, she’s taken people in who needed help getting settled in Boston. But Rebeca has been with her five years now; she’s from Quiché, like María herself. She’s graduating from high school in the spring. Rebeca comes in on Sundays to help out, María tells me. But I think she had too much fun with her friends last night. Pues, that’s how the teenagers are, fiesta, fiesta, says María, making loose pom-poms of her fists. You know, Frankie, she says with a wry little smile, for the churches and laundromats, Sundays are the busiest days. I can tell by the shine in her eyes that she’s delighted that I laughed out loud over that nearly aphoristic remark. Of course I’m eager to hear what she has to say about all kinds of things, about her life since leaving our house and about her son who was a soldier in Afghanistan, but I especially want to find out why she said it was urgent that we speak. María leads me over to one of the long tables for folding clothes, gestures up at a lone shelf on the wall above. It holds a small collection of books that belonged, she explains, to el señor Alberto, who loved to read. Cortázar’s Rayuela, a book of his short stories; a Borges anthology, too, undoubtedly including “El Aleph”; Sabato’s El túnel; a non-Argentine book De perfil, by José Agustín, the Mexican “La Onda” writer from the sixties; Manuel Puig’s El beso de la mujer araña. Damn, there’s my first novel, an orange remainder Band-Aid across the spine. My face flushes with embarrassment, so this is why she led me over here. María brings it down, says, I always take books from the library, but I bought this one. Oh yes, Frankie, I liked it very much. Please sign it for me? The book does look as if it’s been read, the spine creased. I can’t help but ask, María, did the mother in the book remind you of my mother?
Doña Yoli? she says, with a surprised expression. Oh no, she says. I never thought that.
Thank you, María, I say. Because my mother has always worried that people do think it’s a portrait of her.
Doña Yoli is much m
ore nice, pues, she says. In your book, the father is the kind man, and María looks at me knowingly, her eyebrows skeptically hiked.
This María Xum really is kind of a gas. Who would have suspected? And I say, You’re a good reader, María.
I do enjoy to read, Frankie, she says.
After signing the book and handing it back, I ask how old Señor Alberto was when he took his own life and she says, He was forty-three, six years ago. He’d be my age. Then María, in a new tone of seriousness, says, Death Comes for the Bishop I also liked very much. We read it in our church reading club, and I think we all did learn many things about Guatemala, but oh, it is so terrible what happens in our country.
Yes, of course, terrible, but thank you, I answer. And before I can think of what to say next, María has to return to her counter, where a short line of customers, some looking back at us with expressions of annoyance, are waiting. She takes payment from one and laundry to be washed from another, hoisting a duffel nearly twice her size onto the weighing scale. In the tip jar on the counter, there is a sole five-dollar bill curled up on a smattering of coins. The door opens twice in quick succession, more customers entering. It really is growing busy, about half a dozen people doing their own laundry, sitting in plastic chairs waiting for their cycles to finish or standing and folding at the tables, others dropping laundry off, picking it up. To most of her mostly female customers, speaking in Spanish and English, María tries to sell Tupperware, pulling out catalogs and samples from under her counter. But she doesn’t offer Tupperware to the few scruffy young men who’ve come in to do their own laundry, every one of them, actually, looking badly hungover.
I glance up at the clock. It’s 12:20 and I’m hungry. I probably should have had more than coffee back at the Starbucks. Should I ask María if she wants a pizza or takeout Chinese? I can go and get some for both of us. Or maybe I should tell her I’ll be right back, find someplace around here to scarf down a burger. I’m standing here in quandariness about what to do when I hear María say my name, and she’s standing right in front of me, and before she can say anything else, out pop the words I’d rehearsed only minutes ago: María, you need to correct your gender prejudices. I bet some of those guys need Tupperware more than the women do, to help them keep their clam chowdah fresh. María looks confused, until her lips part, releasing a tiny cackle like a muffled cough. Ay, Frankie, you never change, she says, smiling. Always joking and teasing! Well, I do like to tell a corny or intentionally weird little joke and get a laugh, though I’m always meeting people who don’t like these kinds of jokes at all. Some even experience them as aggression, yet for others the very same words and delivery ignite at least a small burst of hilarity. Mamita, who loves to laugh, married Bert, who almost never told jokes.
There’s a teenage girl standing alongside María, taller, smiling at me, her cheeks soft slabs. She’s wearing a blue-and-gold East Boston High School Jets hoodie, the very school I wrecked my knee against. María says, This is Rebeca. The girl who lives with her and has come to help in the laundromat after all. Rebeca hoists a brimming plastic laundry basket atop a folding table and for a split second seems terribly flummoxed over what to do or say next. She thrusts out her hand to shake mine, her fingers are icy cold, and she’s saying, even as her eyes, a little bloodshot, shift to María: Nice to meet you. We heard you on the radio. She softly claps María on the shoulder, says, Okay, I’ll go get to work and leave you alone. She turns and hurries back to the counter. What a nice girl, I say to María, who now has her face tilted up to me, her expression almost distraught. She says, Frankie, when I said I had to tell you something important, it was because I spoke to a woman. Her name is Zoila, who escaped Guatemala before the bad people could kill her. I think it is a terrible story, yes, there are too many. But when I heard you on the radio, I thought, I have to speak to Frankie. Zoila’s story will be a new chapter in his book about the murder of our monseñor. If you can write it before the elections, I know you can stop this general Puño de Piedra from being president.
Puño de Piedra is General Cara de Culo’s new campaign nickname, for his rock-hard law-and-order fist. But María, I say, the elections are only a couple of months away. I’m not sure I even want to hear what she’s about to tell me. But of course I do. This trepidation is probably in anticipation of what María might expect me to do about it.
María is explaining that in her church there is a basement office where help is provided to immigrants. Help with the immigration laws, taxes, or a mortgage, all those things, she says, and even to find a lawyer. An elderly priest, Padre Lorenzo, had run the office for years, but he has gone now to the home for very old priests. Padre Rolando, a very young priest, Uruguayan, has taken over. Rolando is the son of a Tupamaro guerrilla who was killed when he was a small boy, María explains. And his mother was imprisoned for many years; he was raised by his abuela. But the padrecito does not know so much about Guatemala, she says. That’s why when Zoila went to tell him her story, he was not sure what to think. So he asked me: María, can you come and speak to your paisana and tell me your opinion?
So on a very cold day in February, just weeks ago, María went to meet with her in the church early in the morning before she had to open the laundromat. Zoila, she says, is young but not so, so young. But you can see the suffering has made her older, she says. Her black hair is filled with silver, and she is so delicada, Frankie, and her eyes so full of fright and sadness, how did she ever survive such terrible things? How did she make it alone through Mexico and all the way to Boston, where she came to live with her cousin? I am a small woman, too, says María. I am a K’iche’. Zoila is mestiza, but we small women from Guatemala are always much stronger than the men think. Isn’t that true, Frankie? But when Zoila began to tell her story, María says she was confused, because she thought it must be a story from my book about the bishop’s murder that she’d somehow forgotten, because she mentioned so many people who are in the book. María says, Even that friend of the capitán, Ulíses, who near the end is found murdered in the trunk of a car, he was in Zoila’s story, too.
Ulíses was probably Capitán Psycho-Sadist’s closest friend at the time of the bishop’s murder and later his top lieutenant in the narcotics street trade. It was just assumed that Psycho-Sadist had ordered his murder from prison because of how much Ulíses knew or because he’d run afoul of the dreaded capi in some way or for both reasons. It was one of those murders that barely gets investigated, if at all, because they seem so inevitable, and I’d felt frustrated to be unable to find out more about it. Now María is saying that Zoila had a novio, in whose desk at home she found several receipts for weapons purchases, signed by Ulíses. Arms to bring into the prison for the capitán, she was sure. Zoila’s boyfriend was a warden of the prison where the three military men convicted for their roles in the bishop’s murder had been sent. And now María is saying that Zoila overheard the warden and the capitán talking about and planning a murder in the prison on the orders of General Cara de Culo.
Whoa, what? I interrupt. María, what do you mean Zoila overheard that? How? Who?
We’re sitting in plastic chairs now, facing each other. In her seat, María turns her head and torso, first one way and then around the other, as if to make sure that no one is eavesdropping on us or maybe just to affirm to herself that she is still here in her laundromat, where everything is running smoothly on a busy Sunday.
The warden worked at the prison in two-week shifts, she explains. Two weeks there, two weeks at home. Zoila stayed with the warden when he was at home, and though she’d kept her room in a little house she shared with a friend in another part of the city, he’d recently asked her to live in his house when he wasn’t there too. Zoila assumed that before long they’d be married; for a while it was what she wanted. In the days, Zoila worked in a day care nursery. But when the warden was in the prison, she’d go there almost daily, bringing him food, usually some Pollo Campero, which he�
�d be happy to eat every day of the week, and she’d pick up his laundry too. That’s what she was doing in the warden’s bedroom at the prison, gathering his dirty clothes, when she heard the capitán come into the warden’s office in the adjacent room. From there in the bedroom, Zoila could hear the capitán and the warden in the office discussing and planning a murder. Several times in the conversation, General Cara de Culo was mentioned too. She decided to stay in the bedroom without making any noise until the capitán left and then to pretend she hadn’t heard anything.
Ever since Capitán Psycho-Sadist had become an inmate in his prison, the warden had changed. He had much more money, and was driving a new jeep, one of those like the narcos drive, with bulletproof dark windows. He bought geese to keep in his yard, which in Guatemala City some people prefer to watchdogs and not just because they respond to a nighttime intruder with an eruption of frenzied honking. It’s easy to kill two or three watchdogs. But try to kill a dozen geese with one pistol or machete, María says the warden had told Zoila.
Zoila was already disturbed by these changes in the warden even before she heard about the murder. But after the murder happened, she broke up with him. She didn’t want the father of her future children to be one more corrupt official involved in murders and who knew what other crimes.
Wait, I interrupt. What murder? I think I maybe know the prison murder she’s referring to, one there’d been rumors about, connecting it to Cara de Culo and the men imprisoned for the bishop’s murder. But María says she doesn’t know which murder, because Zoila didn’t tell her. There are so many murders in Guatemala, she says. Look how many murders of witnesses are just in your book, she says. Yes, that’s true, I say. Because María had to be at her laundromat in time to open it, that morning their conversation was a little hurried. She thought she and Zoila would have many other chances to speak. Also, she has to admit, Zoila frightened her. María says, I think Zoila was worried she’d told me too much already, because before I left, she asked me: Please don’t even tell Padre Rolando that I said the general was involved, I only told the padre about the warden and the capitán. But Zoila must have told the lawyers, says María. Because if she needs to argue for asylum, of course she should tell about the general.
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