SOL
“Turn on another one. Go ahead and light two more. We’ve been in the dark too long,” Sol whispered to Chiqui, who was closest. She squeezed her hand. “It’s okay to touch me. I won’t be here much longer. We won’t.”
“No, we won’t.” Chiqui returned the squeeze.
“Let me look at him.” Sol raised herself on her elbows and, with Chiqui’s support, sat upright. She peered around Chiqui’s body to where My had fallen asleep with his hand knotted up in Chiqui’s cloth belt.
Sol choked on her tears. “He took that away from me. I should have been better, not cried as much. He wouldn’t have brought you here too.”
“I have always been and will always be your gift. Remember what Cara used to say? ‘I gave you a sister. What more do you want?’ ”
“Everything I’d ever wanted. But not here. Not this. It shouldn’t have…”
“Sh-sh-sh. Don’t. Don’t. We’re getting out.”
“Will he even be able to see by that time? He’s never been to school. He can’t read.”
“He can count.” As soon as Chiqui said the words, she swallowed them back and went silent.
“Cara should be here. Not us.” Sol always referred to their mother by her first name instead of Mama, and Chiqui had done the same.
“She was in her own hell. Who knows what happened in the detention center?”
“At least she had lights, a bed, regular meals, something normal. Hope.”
“We have that now.”
“I’ll freeze to death first.” Sol coughed until she had to lie down again.
“Have some water.”
“Save it for him.”
“You need it more.”
“Not really, love. Not at all. I have no needs. Everything I care about is here dying with me.”
“Don’t say that. We’re going to get out. I’ll make sure he wears sunglasses. The ones he bought him the last time.”
Sol didn’t respond.
“He finally ate the sardines,” Chiqui told Sol as reassurance. “Cara is better suited to this sort of thing.”
As Sol drifted back into the half consciousness of fever, she saw herself sitting on the bed the three of them had shared. Chiqui had not been able to grasp what their mother’s disappearance had meant. No papers. None of them. If Cara had said anything about having children, they would have been scooped up and brought to her in no time.
At fifteen, Sol had known that they’d needed to move. She’d left the super’s place in Washington Heights and found them a bed in Jamaica, Queens, an unlikely place for two “Mexican” girls. But at least it had been closer to work. She’d continued her mother’s roadside purveyance seven days a week. She’d added mangos, keneps, and hard-to-carry green coconuts on the weekends for her Caribbean patrons. She’d brought flowers only on Sundays and holidays for visitors who didn’t want to arrive to family dinners empty-handed, procrastinating suitors trying to impress skeptical brow-cocked parents, and eager-to-please boyfriends of high-maintenance girlfriends who’d demanded hundred-dollars-a-dozen roses on Valentine’s Day. Sol had not had the heart to charge those prices on Mother’s Day. Not when Cara had vanished. She had not been the best, but she had still been her mother.
Sol thought, Cara could hold her own. She tried to piece together the shards of the broken window that had been Cara’s life, things shared during drunken outpourings and angry cleaning binges. If Cara had been drinking and in a cleaning mood, she’d become as frantic, determined, and loquacious as a swarm of bees. She would hold back nothing from her young daughters. Sol followed the vision of her mother wherever it would take her. Anywhere was better than the back room.
“Imaginaté! I was always this short, but always pretty too. With all of this!” Cara would run her small hands over her breasts, trace her waist and hips, and end at her buttocks.
At four feet eleven inches, Cara’s shape had been curvy from the waist up. From pelvis to toe, her boxy shape had given no indication of what bulged above. Her long, wavy jet-black hair hanging to her waist made her flat backside forgivable. Underneath the T-shirts brought to her by repeat tourists, her EEs had sunk and then just sat down at the same time. She would later learn the size bra cups that would accommodate her abundant bosom. Her chubby, round face and wide eyes hid her cunning.
Even remembering her mother’s gestures made Sol blush.
“Gracias a dios! I’ve never had to do the things I did to get us here. Never again! But I’m still that girl from Isla Mujeres. In case we ever get sent back, that’s where we’re from. Like Wonder Woman and the Amazon. Entiendes?”
Sol had always wanted to see the place where she’d been born but had settled for hearing about it during Cara’s buzzing moments. Now she made do with recalling her mother’s story through a haze. She had watched as Cara had cleared the crowded dresser in their tiny tenement room. With the housekeeping bucket close by, Cara would soak tissues with Windex and wipe each cheap glass figurine like a jeweler cleaning precious gems. She’d lay them on the bed carefully, so they wouldn’t touch or break. “We come from the beach. Tourist money was never enough. And the things they would throw away.” She’d carefully lift the lace doilies to reveal a lacquer dresser with barely enough dust on it to require cleaning. “They always liked me. Tourists, family, my compadres, boys.” She’d chuckled. “All of them. I was something.”
Sol could see every bit of Cara’s story. She welcomed the vision of the beach with its sharp sunlight, creamy sand, and soapy waves chasing the shoreline.
Cara had sold fruit on the beach with her sisters and mother. There had been enough wandering tourists to sustain a healthy trade. But Cara had refused to imagine remaining in a place with no hope of anything better. She had not seen the true wealth of the tourists, so hers hadn’t been envy of the material. It had been the idea that these visitors had left their homes, the places where they’d been born, and had come to see somewhere different, somewhere they’d considered better, if just for a moment. Many of them had claimed they wanted to stay there on the beach forever. To Cara, the homes of these tourists had become a distant other place, a paradise that was the opposite of her own, where she wanted to go and stay forever. The idea that she could eventually have enough money to support herself, eat regularly, spend on vacations, had appealed to her. But it had been the freedom, the vision of choices, that had made her salivate.
The Belizean ferryman who brought foreigners to Isla Mujeres from Cancún and Mérida had seen Cara’s mouth watering for something better. He promised her passage to other places far away from the Yucatán. She fell in love with that promise and months later gave him a daughter and naming rights as a firm down payment. He tried to provide for his Solange, but Cara wanted to leave the island. She wanted him beheaded when he refused to take a job in California picking whatever crop was in season. Since he wasn’t man enough, she decided to leave their infant behind with him. Her large milk-filled breasts would never be enough to feed a family of three, let alone her mother and sisters. She had been responsible for the survival of many, not just her own. She wasn’t trying to get to America simply to satisfy her wanderlust.
Cara had brooded over the missed opportunity to leave Isla Mujeres. Even after her milk dried up, her breasts felt heavier than ever. If her ferryman couldn’t get her to America, she would bed every tourist until she made one of them fall in love with her. Her cleavage had easily convinced men that she wasn’t bright enough to take advantage of them.
Cara had not managed to secure a suitable American suitor because she had been too quick to take what she wanted from them without permission. She didn’t have the patience to persuade them that she could fall in love, if they brought her back home with them. It was her stance, shoulder blades pinched behind her to hold up her breasts, feet planted as if she feared toppling forward, that made her posture like t
hat of an alert cobra. She would start out alluring, then still, and after deciding that her target had no intentions of supporting her immigrant ambitions, she would strike with a request, an offer, or an insult that pushed her further away from her goal.
Weary of her indiscreet infidelities—prostitution, really—her ferryman had paid an American woman $1,000 to get them to Mérida and then to Mexico City or as far north as possible. At the last minute the American insisted that she had room for only Cara and the little girl. Once in Mérida, the woman ditched both, leaving Cara to sell herself for cheap to pay for every mile northward. Cara resented her daughter, not so much because she was a slow toddler, but because she was never coquettish or cooperative enough to woo potential suitors with her cuteness. Solange refused to smile or tolerate touches no matter how innocent, friendly, or solicitous her mother’s companions.
By the time Cara had sold everything worth anything and arrived in New York with a six-year-old and an infant, she had been too exhausted to be a mother. A provider? A survivor? A hustler? Yes, she had always been expert at these roles. A mother? With two unsellable children in tow, and absent the flexibility to quickly learn enough English to get a housekeeping or nanny job, Cara had spent more time caring for her one room than her children. Sol barely missed her when the greatest fear of every illegal in America came true.
Sol felt something approximating longing for Cara now. Everybody misses her mother when she’s in irreversible pain or when she’s dying. She missed their bed more, the room too, even Cara’s tacky dresser with the cheap little white-glass ballerinas and fragile lambs. She grinned at what had been Cara’s orderly process of caring for these things. After wiping the dresser with Pledge, she’d lay the doilies in their places and then rearrange the glass ladies and animals around a small statue of the Virgen de Guadeloupe. Cara had cared as much for the flowers she had sold on North Conduit, even the fruit she washed and cut up every morning in preparation.
Sol had barely missed a day before settling into selling after Cara had been taken into INS custody. She’d stared at the sky above JFK, knowing she was meant to be there, was, in fact, already there but hadn’t yet been able to see her spirit self, disembodied and dispersed throughout the universe.
She had not seen Lucien, who she later learned had been watching her for years. He had only once looked up trying to deduce what she had been staring at. She hadn’t known that, to him, she had been the treasure, down there, on the ground. She had not surmised his desire to force her to lower her eyes.
Sol got lost in visions of her sky. She knew that that was her true home. Isla Mujeres was merely a small place where her mother’s small dreams had been formed. The sky was everywhere. Even when it hid the sun with its clouds, even when it rained.
Sol remembered how the sky had forced her to look down. But it wasn’t the downpour that had made her get into Lucien’s van. It was her memories of getting in and out of crumbling cars northward from the Yucatán through the whole of Mexico. Her height, intellect, and years of watching Cara take on all manner of men had given her a false sense of invincibility. And she’d known Lucien for years. Had told him that her name was Solange when he’d asked. She’d stuck her hand into his van and practically ridden in it. She’d felt protected on the North Conduit whenever he’d approached, not knowing that he’d spent hours watching her with and without Cara, before creeping up to a red light to make a purchase. He had been the harmless cheapskate who’d counted coins into her outstretched palm and taken back even an extra penny when he’d overpaid. She hadn’t needed to see him in his taxicab to know that he could afford to give her a few extra cents. She’d been able to tell by his always-full gas tank that she’d peeped while waiting for his mumbled counting to cease.
* * *
—
SOL STARED into the darkness with the imagined sky in her eyes. “I am not Zero!” she shouted, startling Chiqui, Cocoa, Asante, but mostly My. Thinking of him had always made her nervous, but she’d tried not to show her fear to the others. Instead, she’d crawl inward to remind herself who she was. She needed to after incalculable years in the safe room. Time was hard to determine.
I am One. I am here where the sky is not. I am not hungry. I will not break. Not for food. Not for anything he has to offer. I am rage. Biting, kicking. I am not lying down. I am not quiet. I will kill. Myself after I kill him. I am not darkness. I am inside of it. This is another box with sixteen wheels. I am riding. Far, far with Cara. Chiqui is still inside. We are still inside Mexico. Far from where Cara wants to be. I won’t break. I won’t be like Zero. I won’t bend over or open. Mouth, legs, eyes. I stop seeing everything. Red sky, colored carnations, green keneps, white buckets, metal cart, highway, and planes. I stop hearing too. But I refuse to be Zero. In the box I make myself everything he hates. I shave my head. I refuse to wash. I do not eat. I scream.
And then I stop. No more kicking, biting, screaming. He brings Chiqui as a gift for me. So I stop.
I become everything he wants. I am smiling, sucking, riding. So he won’t hurt her. I beg, “Put my gift back where you found her!” Better wherever Cara is than here.
I am knowing that we will go from here. But when we leave, will I disappear into Zero? Will I be One? My self? Or him?
Five
LUCIEN
Lucien leaned against the frame of the back door and watched Dieuseul open the one leading to the main floor. He waited for Dieuseul to disappear into the darkness before he hopped up the one step to get his body into the house. He paused in the dark stairwell to get his bearings before closing the door behind him, shutting out the icy air. The fingers of his good hand fought to hold the gallons of water. His partially numb claw miraculously managed to hold on. Somehow, he stabilized himself to go down the six brittle steps to the basement. He held the tips of two loaves of bread in his teeth. He thought about bringing peanut butter later and possibly sardines. They didn’t like them anyway. Weakened, he dropped the heavy load, and everything toppled down the stairs. The gallons of water hit then split against the basement door before him. The water quickly iced over, making that area more slippery.
He could hear the door behind him creaking as it hung partially off its hinges. He turned around and jacked it upward and slammed it as if to spite the recalcitrant house. He ignored the house’s laughter at the cold air and predawn light bleeding through its cracks around the door. He looked so pitiful hobbling down the steps. Tears from cold and fatigue streamed down his face, freezing everything from his lashes to his gray mustache. His hands were too frozen to wipe them. He didn’t care what his face looked like. It was always too dark in the back room for them to see him. No one wanted to see him. He stopped and searched for the two required keys. He cupped his good hand and blew into it, warming it just enough to grip the key to the first door. He would get the second key, the one that unlocked the safe room, out of his pocket when he got to that door. He started to climb down the steps but lost his balance on the iced-over stairs and slid all the way down to the bottom. Breathlessly, he paused to orient himself. He struggled to stand up and tried by holding on to the stairwell walls that seemed to press inward toward him. In one motion, he stood straight up and pushed against the first door with his shoulder. It wouldn’t budge. On his second, more forceful attempt, he slipped again, landing on the steps behind him. Although he was hurt, he didn’t scream. He’d always preferred to surprise them. From where he sat, he tried kicking the door with his strongest foot. He knew why it still would not open. His collection had toppled over on the other side.
He knew that his neighbors could not have imagined the incredible mess in the basement or what he’d collected in the back room. If they could have, every ounce of pity they’d held for him would have evaporated. They’d always resented the unkempt houses on the block, the ones with more than one broken-down car in the driveway. Their absolute wrath against him had been quelled only by h
is tenure in the neighborhood, his past and present kindnesses toward anyone needing help, his grief after his wife’s passing, and his having had not one but two strokes. They’d ignored his hoarding as long as he’d kept his mess contained in his house, garage, and van and never left the doors of any of these open, especially in warm weather.
Thinking of the junk that was keeping him from getting to his captives, Lucien considered how and when, but not why, his hoarding had begun. It had started a few years after he’d begun driving the night shift and escalated when his daughters left for college. Having lost the better part of his harem, he’d first started storing his street finds in his garage, then in the girls’ closets, under their beds, in the drawers of their girlie dressers and armoires—anywhere Marie-Ange had been too sick to search.
The stuff barring his entry was an endless collection of worthless and redundant electronics. However, he’d found a few valuable items over the years. A collection of eighteenth-century first editions of Shakespeare’s complete works that had been discarded by its dead owner’s housekeeper who’d been unaware of their value. A pair of genuine ivory statues chiseled before poaching had been illegalized. Two antique Tiffany timepieces, a clock and a platinum pocket watch, presumed fake by their inheritors. His favorite had been one of the first gramophones ever made in America. Most of the original owners of these tragically discarded items had been dejected, unloved wretches. He’d always feared he’d end up the same way, which was why he’d escalated to collecting women who might care for him in his old age the way he’d cared for them in their youth.
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