by Mary Morris
When my coffee goes cold, I’ll head upstairs. I’ll pause at my daughter’s room. The dog is asleep with his head on her pillow, and she clutches him in her arms. The dog looks at me and, knowing it isn’t time to get up, puts his head back down again.
I’ll go over, shove the dog aside. I’ll slide between the covers on her bed, putting my body where the dog had been. I’ll lie close to her and smell her milky breath, touch her soft skin. Unblemished. Perfect. I’ll place my head down on the warm pillow and fall asleep.
A blaring telephone wakes me. I hear Todd’s voice on the other end. “I think I should come down,” he tells me. “This is taking too long.”
Actually I have no idea how long it is taking. The days seem to melt into one. “I’m sure I’ll be out of here in the next day or so.”
“Maggie, it’s been four days. Are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell me?”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”
“It shouldn’t take this long,” he says. “Tell me. The last time you were there, what happened? What did you do?”
For two years now I have been silent. I have not told him a thing. He has no idea how close to the brink I came, how I teetered, then came back again.
“Nothing happened,” I tell him, “nothing at all. But maybe you should come down.” I am weeping into the phone.
“I’m going to,” he says. “I’ll be there. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
Thirty-one
FOR SEVERAL DAYS after our night at the Club Tropical I did not hear from Isabel. I did not try to find her after our fight and she did not try to reach me. I was making my way through the list of things I had to review. I had finished restaurants and museums. Hot spots and clubs were done. I had one or two joint-venture hotels on the north and south of the island to check out, but those were easy day-trips.
The historic walk through the old city was basically done and I had an afternoon walk to complete to the fortress by the sea, the site of the victory over the Spanish. If my work continued at its present pace, I would be done in three or four days. I considered going to look for Isabel but I had a great deal to attend to and found myself almost hoping that she would drift back into the shadows of my life as easily as she had appeared.
Just when I had resigned myself to this, I found her sitting in the lobby of my hotel one morning as I was heading out to do the walk to the fortress. I wasn’t surprised to see her appear like this. She gave me a little nod when she saw me and I noticed that she looked pale, worse than she had when I first met her. Haggard, with deep circles beneath her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept or eaten in days. I was surprised by the change that had overcome her. She was visibly altered, her eyes duller and dreamier than I had seen them, like someone who cannot recall who she is or what has happened to her. “You look terrible,” I told her.
“I’m all right,” she said, “no worse than usual.” But she seemed despondent, downcast. “I have just got to get out of here. I have to get away.” She grabbed me by the hands. “I really think,” she said, “I think I will die if I have to stay.”
“Come,” I said, taking her by the hand over to the restaurant, where I ordered a glass of orange juice and a sandwich for her, though she assured me she couldn’t eat. I sighed. “There must be something I can do for you.”
“We scarcely know each other,” she went on. “There is no point in you getting involved.”
I reached across, stroked her hand. “I already am involved.”
“Well, there is something. It is just that it is so much to ask …”
“You can ask,” I said.
Her face shone. There was suddenly almost something beatific about her features. “You see, I have prayed for help,” she began. “I have prayed for someone to come and deliver us and I have been beginning to think that no one would ever come. I have thought about this for such a long time now. It is almost all I do, but recently I have begun to think that perhaps it was you.”
Now it is clear to me that when I saw her at the Church of the Apparitions, she was praying for my help. Perhaps she had even told me to go there so that I would see her pray. I am not a religious person, but suddenly I felt that I had been sent, that it was my mission to deliver her. “What is it?” I said, leaning forward, our bodies almost touching.
She took a deep breath. “Well, this is what you could do, if you were willing. I’ll just say it. Tell you what it is. You can listen and think about it. You could lose your passport and plane ticket. Three days later you will report them missing. During that time I will leave the country and your new passport and ticket will be issued. Manuel will make sure all this happens smoothly. If it costs you anything, I will repay you in the States.”
I have blue eyes and coppery hair and I must weigh twenty pounds more than Isabel, but she says she has friends who will take care of these details. “You know who I am,” she told me, “and you know who my father is, and there is no other way for me to go.”
I have never lived particularly close to the edge. I like balanced meals, I put on my seat belt when I get into the car, even in the backseat. But suddenly I found myself tempted, not only because I wanted to help Isabel leave, but also because I wanted to stay. Not forever. It wasn’t that I wanted to stay on la isla forever. Just for a little while—to dance until I forgot who I was and what I was doing there in the first place.
She would buy a sandy-colored wig and leave the country as me. And then who would I be? It was almost as if for a time—though I knew there was no logic in this—I would be Isabel. It makes no sense, but somehow I was being asked to trade places with her. This was something I knew how to do. It was a game I’d played before.
“What exactly would I have to do?” I asked as we sat in a café near the Miramar. Isabel wore her hair pulled back in a bun that made her bones stand out even more than they normally did. She sipped unsweetened lemonade and smoked a cigarette, which I had only seen her do when we first met.
“You would take a walk one night and sit by the seawall at a designated spot. Here you will leave your passport and ticket. Manuel will come by later and retrieve them. After that, we won’t have any contact. You will wait until the day you are to leave and then report your documents missing. The Swiss embassy will provide you with new documents and you will leave as planned. They will consider it a theft. This kind of thing happens all the time here. It should go off without a hitch. I have friends who will make sure you leave and they will help me leave.”
I had no idea why I was having this conversation with her. Why I was even toying with this idea. But there was something about Isabel—that look in her eyes, her hair pulled back like a refugee’s. “If it was just me,” I told her, “I’d help you, but I have my family to think of …” I thought of the tuition payment I had not made and all the responsibilities that I had assumed for myself. Everything suddenly seemed to weigh heavily on me.
Isabel was silent, staring at the table. “You’ll be fine. I have people who will make sure …” I saw that familiar sadness settle over her features. A kind of fatigue, as if she had been through this so many times before. As if she knew she wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Now she took out a cigarette and I stared at the pack. I hadn’t even had the urge for one in years, but I reached across the table. She tipped the pack my way and I took one as Isabel extended a match. Taking a drag, I was surprised at how good it tasted. How it seemed as if I’d never quit at all. It would be so easy to go back to this, I thought. Together we sat, smoking, without speaking. Soon my mouth tasted dry and a slight wave of nausea came. Slowly I put the cigarette out after a few drags. “I’m sorry,” I told her, “but I don’t think I can help you.”
“No,” she said, “of course you can’t.” The sadness like smoke wrapped itself around her again. “I didn’t think you would.”
Thirty-two
MANUEL lived down a few winding streets from my hotel, in the old city where laundry hun
g across the road. He led me along a narrow alleyway to a crumbling building that smelled of cooking oil and urine. The stairway had cats milling about, sucking on bones. His apartment was dark but Manuel pulled up the shade. He had a cot, two chairs around a card table, a sink, and a burner for cooking on the floor. The walls were decorated with fading posters, Miss Marimba 1984, Calle Ocho, the Esmeralda Band, Tito Puente.
Manuel opened the refrigerator, which contained a pitcher of fruit punch and a bottle of fifteen-year-old dark rum, and he began mixing tumblers with half of each, dropping in dirty ice cubes.
Despite the dinginess of the apartment, he had a decent record player and records and he was a natty dresser, with a closetful of silk suits and polo shirts, jeans and leather shoes. Never mind how he afforded them, he had what he needed.
He handed me a drink and motioned for me to sit beside him on the cot, which I was reluctant to do. I sat at the table and chair. “You gringas are all alike. You like to flirt. You tease, but you never really want anything.” With a wave of his hand, he said, “Look at this dump. You have no idea what we have to do to live.” He patted the place beside him on the cot, but I just stood in the center of the room.
“I don’t think I can …” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I can help her.”
“You can do whatever you want,” he said.
That night he took me to the Flamingo Club, for which he wore a lime green suit. We sipped planter’s punch and danced every number. It was hot in the club, but under the strobe light I watched his feet move. They glided, changing as the music changed, and I did the best I could, following clumsily along.
A tango came on and he swept me up from the stool on which I sat. Bracing me with his hand, he led, taking long smooth strides, making sudden spins. Then he dipped me and I bent back farther than I thought I could bend.
“I know someone who can help you decide,” Manuel said.
The Santero’s house was hard to miss because it was freshly painted pink. On the lawn sat a huge carved statue of Santa Barbara and a satellite dish. Lesser saints with amulets, bouquets of dead roses lined the path. Manuel did not knock, but simply opened the door.
The service would not begin until midnight, when the gods change their sexes and Santa Barbara becomes Changó, the santero’s male god of war. Men and women dressed in flowing gowns, strewn with flower petals, sat before dishes of water, honey, egg yolk, and blood. They had sacrificed goats, chickens, and doves for the ceremony and the animals’ remnants lay on the kitchen floor.
Ángel, the santero, would take his seat soon. Space was made for me and Manuel. A woman in flowing purple began to chant and the Babalao appeared. He was dressed in red and his teeth shown gold. His skin was yellow and his hair a mass of greasy curls.
In the center of the room was a stool surrounded by candles. On the stool sat blood-filled plates, plastic dolls, carved wooden ships, statues of the Catholic saints, a crucifix, a bowl of passion fruit, mangoes, and tamarinds. Ángel asked the gods if enough coffee, alcohol, and blood had been offered to satisfy them. He threw four square coconut chips on the floor. If two or more fell white-side up, then the answer was yes. The gods wanted brandy. A bottle was placed in the center of the room. Then Ángel said he was ready.
“Ñangaré, ñangaré, ñangaré,” he chanted. Then the dishes with the swirling liquid were passed and I sipped from the water, the honey, the egg yolk. The blood swirled in front of me in the dish and I glanced at Manuel, who frowned, then gave me a nod of his head and I drank from that dish too, reeling as I felt the warm blood go down.
Ángel dropped sixteen palm seeds into a powder-covered tray and studied the prints they made. For hours he tossed the palm seeds, studying the prints. The women swayed, chanting, and my head was spinning, as if I would faint. I tried to sit upright, but my legs ached and I longed to sleep.
The sun was coming up when Ángel broke his silence and began to speak. Elegún, the god of destiny, says that you are to help Ochún, the goddess of rivers. This will enrage Obatalá, the son of God, and he will bring Changó upon you, fire and war; Orisha cannot protect you from what you do.
What does this mean? I asked Manuel because I had no idea.
It means that you will help the girl, he told me, but there will be a price to pay.
Thirty-three
YOU CAN’T underestimate the importance of shuttle buses. The traveler needs to feel that someone is waiting on the other end. Like children, we want a parent there when we race out of school. It is, of course, best when the hotel takes care of everything—the luggage, immigration, the transportation. But having the shuttle bus is what’s most essential for me.
It is shuttle buses I am thinking of the morning Major Lorenzo does not show. I have grown accustomed to his punctual visits. The promise of him waiting for me on the other end of the night. The expectation that this day he will have my papers, my documents, an explanation in hand.
But this morning he does not arrive. I am surprised as I sit at my usual table. With every sound of footsteps, the door of the hotel opening, and the breeze blowing in, I look up and expect it to be he. Enrique is there that morning, but he does not wait on me. In fact, he appears to be ignoring me, because this is his usual table but he sends someone else over. I try to catch his eye, but he looks away and I think perhaps it is better if I do not bother him at all.
The usual crew is in the lobby. The Dutch boys are already drinking beer and cavorting with Flora and Eva. The dwarf sits, despondent, in a corner. Why do people want to go where they go? I wonder as I watch them all. I can understand taking the gourmet walking tour of Switzerland or the scenic cruise of the Nile. But why do they need to go to Vietnam after we tore the country to shreds, or to Romania? Do we really need to tell people that while the former Yugoslavia is no longer a possibility, Slovenia is? I grow despondent as I contemplate Jungle Magazine, sending their writer with a machete through the last stretch of virgin forest in the world. Kurt says his readers want to go everywhere, but I think to myself as I sit, waiting for Major Lorenzo, will they really want to come here?
The ceiling fans churn the sultry air as the tables begin to fill up. By eleven Major Lorenzo still has not appeared and all the tables are taken. Perhaps he is getting my papers in order. Perhaps he is just getting the necessary seals of approval, the required stamps, and then he will put me on the next plane. My plane will take off in a day or two and I’ll be home that night. This misunderstanding will be cleared up at some embassy or another. Kurt will say it will make a funny article in a travel magazine. Or a sidebar in a “best/worst travel experience” column. Or he’ll feel guilty and put me on the next plane to France.
The prostitutes spot me now and they wave. María arrived and for a moment the dwarf perked up, but she ignored him and he put his head down on the table, like a schoolboy at his desk. All three of them walk toward me together, María, Eva, Flora—I feel more and more certain these were the names of the birds on my dentist’s drill. They pull over chairs and sit down. “So,” María says, “we want to know everything. About New York. Miami. We want to get a VCR. I’ve got a sister up north. Once a year she sends me underwear, nail polish, and perfume. What’s it like walking about with a Walkman on your head? Here people have got nothing to do so they fuck all day long. The problem is the natives can’t pay us. No business there.” She says this with a wide grin, revealing the space between her front teeth. Eva remains embittered about something and Flora keeps looking for customers. Since they have come to talk to me, business must be slow.
“You know,” María goes on, “I didn’t always do this. I used to be a secretary for a respected cabinet minister. And Eva, she worked for the airlines. Flora, well, Flora’s got kids. I had this real good job, typing, pouring coffee during meetings. That sort of thing. Then my brother goes to the States on a hijacked plane and I have to take care of my mother and all the other kids. She had a bunch of them.
So one day the minister tells me he knows all about my brother and I can keep my job if I wear short skirts to work. I don’t know what to make of it, but I wear a short skirt the next day. Then he tells me if I want to keep working, I have to sit with my legs apart. I think who needs this. If I’m going to earn a living this way, I may as well really earn a living.
“There’s really no point in being a prostitute here because what can you buy? On the black market, a few pairs of jeans, some gold jewelry. You see, what we really want—well, it’s very simple—is someone who will get us out of here.”
“Get you out of here?”
“Yeah, you know, marry us. Take us home with them.”
“Do you really think …” I am astounded that they believe this could happen.
“We heard about a girl. She lived in Santiago and a German businessman took her back to Berlin. Foreigners love us. We are very exotic to them. And they tell us we treat them better than the girls back home.”
“Well,” I say with a smile, “if I could, I’d take you home with me.”
We are laughing at this thought when Major Lorenzo walks in. The girls seem to sense him approaching and scatter like pods to the wind. He gives them a knowing smile, then nods my way. But I can see right away that something is wrong. There is no lilt to his step. His eyes are dull, as if he has eaten pig’s fat or hasn’t bicycled ten miles today.
“Well, Maggie, I am frustrated …,” he tells me as he sits down, “but there seems to be little progress with your case.”