The Veins of the Ocean

by Patricia Engel

  “No,” I said, though it hurt me since we had half an hour left and it would be lost time we would never have the chance to make up.

  He looked to the guard to signal that he was ready to leave me. This guard was an extra rigid one, so instead of hoping for a contraband hug, I kissed my fingertips and quickly pressed them against my brother’s cheek before the guard could pull him away and reprimand me for making physical contact with a death row case.

  A few days later, he called me. I’d just gotten home from work and kicked my shoes off in the foyer. The house was quiet, lonely but familiar, and after a day of making conversation with clients, I longed for its muteness. But then I heard the noise of the prison behind Carlito’s voice and all I wanted was more of his chaos, more of him.

  “I only have a minute but I wanted to tell you, in case you’re still wondering, and so you never wonder about it again, there is nothing to forgive, hermanita. You’re my Reina. You’re my guerrera. Your brother loves you. Remember that when I die.”

  He hung up the phone, probably because he knew I would say he wasn’t going to die, not as long as I had anything to do with it.

  He could rely on my denial. I was the only one who listened when he said that even if he deserved to die, the state didn’t deserve to kill him.

  The only sort of death that seemed possible for my brother was his execution, but maybe by then he already knew he would take care of things himself.

  He used to ridicule other inmates who took their own lives, calling our father spineless for slicing his own throat rather than facing the rest of his days in prison.

  “And he wasn’t even in solitary,” Carlito said, like Hector’s life sentence was some kind of vacation.

  Carlito thought of himself as a prisoner of conscience, victim of legal prejudice, saying there were gringos who committed way more heinous crimes who got out in fifteen years or less.

  Sometimes he said if he’d really meant to kill anyone he would have just gotten himself a gun and gone after Tío Jaime, who Carlito always suspected of being the original guilty party: the one who lusted after our mother so much that he deliberately infected his brother Hector with the jealous psychosis that sent him to the bridge that day with baby Carlito.

  “I would have made that motherfucker get on his knees and sing for his life,” Carlito said. “And then I would have killed him anyway.”

  Carlito and I were both in high school when some delinquents started a trend of jumping off the bridge into the bay at the very spot where Hector had launched his son into the ocean. Groups of teenagers gathered by the railing to see who was brave enough to climb the wall at the bridge’s highest point and jump over. People claimed it probably wasn’t high enough for a person to be instantly killed by the fall. In most cases, people were known to shatter a bone or be so shocked by the impact they forgot to breathe and others would have to dive in after them before they drowned. It was part of the thrill, seeing if you had the instincts for survival.

  For a while, I tried to convince Carlito that we should try it. I thought it might undo his trauma and get him over his aversion to water. I thought there was something poetic about it—Carlito returning as a grown man to the location of his almost-murder.

  I pictured us climbing over the railing one leg at a time, finding our balance on the slim concrete ledge of the bridge, hands on the rail behind us, our bodies dangling over the ocean.

  We could throw ourselves off the bridge as a pair, and when we came up through the waves, taking our first breaths, we’d each see the other waiting, and find our way back to land together.

  Carlito refused.

  I knew he went back to the bridge on his own though, walking the length of it. He knew that bridge well, long before he returned to it with the baby in his arms.

  Witnesses said she was crying desperately. She’d loved Carlito like he was her own father, but that day it was as if she knew he was stealing her from her mother forever, and the thick hands that held her would soon let her fall.

  When they found Carlito dead in his cell, his prison suit was rolled down around his waist. That’s what they told us anyway. Carved across his chest in a fine and shallow yet bloody line was an arc he only could have dragged through his flesh with a pen because Carlito wasn’t allowed to have any sharp objects in his cell. The line bowed from his rib cage up to the base of his collarbone and back down on the other side. The prison people first described it to my mother and me as a mutilated attempt at a rainbow, just another improvised inmate tattoo. But when we arrived at the prison morgue and were given a few moments alone with Carlito, gray and cold, his soul departed, we saw for ourselves the bloody bend he’d scrawled across his heart and knew we were looking not at a rainbow but at the bridge.

  I still have her phone number. I’ve come close to dialing it many times but always stop myself, unsure of what to say. I know the white house with the brown door she grew up in with her parents, where she and I sat on her bedroom floor as girls and traded secrets, where Carlito would later sneak to at night because she always left her window open for him. She’s remarried now. She must live somewhere else with her new husband and new children. I sit in my parked car long after my mother drives off, until I finally have the courage to call.

  I don’t know if she recognizes the number but she answers quickly.

  “Isabela. This is Reina Castillo.”

  I wait for her to respond but she’s silent.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I know you must be busy. I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

  “We’re talking now,” she says gently.

  “I moved away but I’m in town today. I was wondering if we could meet in person, if it’s not a problem for you.”

  “We can do that,” she says slowly. “I have my kids with me. Can you come to my house?”

  I tell her yes and she gives me the address, just a few blocks from her parents’ place.

  I drive south, ahead of the rain, through our old neighborhood, though I avoid the lot where our house once stood.

  When I arrive at Isabela’s, I see evidence of her family’s world: small bicycles in the driveway behind a minivan, balls and toys scattered across the front lawn.

  This, I can’t help thinking, could have been my brother’s life.

  I step out of my car and ring the bell. I hear voices within, then see her silhouette behind the frosted glass of the front door. She opens it and we take each other in for a moment. Isabela, as beautiful as ever, though thicker in her face and body, luminous even with her mussed wavy hair and none of the makeup she used to wear so much of.

  “Reina,” she says, stepping outside with me, closing the door behind her. “What a surprise to hear from you. You look good. So where did you move to?”

  I see that she’s barefoot, hear the kids laughing in the house behind her.

  “Down south. The Keys.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “It is.”

  “We’re always talking about taking the kids down but we never make it.”

  I remember Christmas when I saw her at the hotel.

  “Have you been down there at all lately?” I try to sound casual, despite the strangeness of our being face-to-face.

  “Not in years.” She looks suddenly wistful. “Not since Carlito took me down there when I turned twenty-one. We rented Jet Skis. I kept falling off.”

  I study her hair, the way she still tilts her head for no reason, and I am sure it was Isabela I saw that day in the spa, though I realize now, it couldn’t have been.

  “So what is it? What did you want to talk to me about?”

  I take a deep breath, as I would before a dive with Nesto watching me on the line to make sure that I’m safe, that I come back up for air without blacking out.

  “I have to tell you I’m sorry. For everything.”

  “I
know you are. We’re all sorry.”

  “No, there is more you don’t know. I’m the one who told Carlito you were cheating on him and who made him go crazy that day. It’s my fault he took Shayna from you. I didn’t tell him to do it but it’s my fault. I’m the one who started everything.”

  I can’t face her. I stare at our feet but feel her eyes on me. Then her hand grazes my shoulder, soft as a feather.

  “I knew that. I’ve known for a long time.”

  I look back up at her. Her face hasn’t changed. Still calm, full of mercy.

  “How?”

  “Your brother told me.”

  “When?”

  “I tried to visit him in prison. It was a while after the trial ended, after the sentencing. I didn’t know visits had to be planned in advance and you had to be approved. I just showed up so they turned me away. I wrote to him and asked if I could come see him, just to talk to him, just to see if he was okay because I worried about him being in there all alone. But he never answered me. I kept writing to him anyway. A few times a year. For his birthday, Christmas, things like that. A few weeks before he died he called me. He said it was you who pushed him to do what he did to my baby. I always imagined it was something like that. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “It’s my fault,” I say, though my voice has gone faint.

  “No, it’s not. You’re not the one who took her to the bridge. He did.”

  A small boy opens the door behind Isabela and pokes his head out from behind it.

  “Mami,” he says. “Who’s that?”

  “This is my friend, Reina. Dale un besito.”

  He steps toward me, also barefoot, in his small blue jeans and T-shirt, and I bend so he can kiss my cheek. This child and the one inside, babies whose innocence Carlito stole before they were born because there will be a day when their mother will have to explain to them what happened to the older sister they will never have the chance to know.

  “This is Rafaelito,” she says, slipping her hand onto his back. “Go inside and watch your sister for me, papi.”

  When her son is gone, Isabela sighs.

  “I knew how you felt about me, Reina. When Carlito and I got together you thought I was going to take him away from your family. He said you were jealous. But I was the one who was jealous of you. I never had a brother or a sister to love me the way your brother loved you. I felt so alone in my childhood. But Carlito would do anything for you. He told me so many times.”

  She lowers her voice and steps in a bit closer.

  “I blamed myself for a long time too. I told myself that if I hadn’t let him take my baby girl with him that day, if I had just kept her home with me, she would still be alive. I thought if it was anyone’s fault it was mine, because I am the mother, I’m the one who was supposed to protect her, and I am the one who let my daughter go.”

  She looks around and checks the door behind her to make sure it’s shut tight.

  “I found out I was pregnant right after Carlito was arrested. He never knew. Nobody knew. Only my parents. They said God wouldn’t want me to have his baby, and they were afraid that if I showed up pregnant to the trial it would influence the verdict. They even took me to see a priest and he said my case was an exception because nobody should have to give birth to the child of a murderer. They made me get rid of it. I didn’t want to. I tried to fight them but I was so weak in those days. I thought I would die of sadness. I was sure I wouldn’t live through the pain of it all. And the trial hadn’t even started yet.”

  Both of us have tears in our eyes. She pauses, draws in her breath, and looks all around us, as if searching for someone to stop her from saying more.

  “I can never tell this to anyone except you. I still love your brother. He killed me along with my daughter. He broke my soul into pieces. He destroyed the happiness of my family. But I still love him because I remember the boy I knew, the Carlito I fell in love with.”

  I can’t manage any words so I reach for her hand, as if asking permission to hold her.

  She takes me into her arms and I feel her tremble against me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper into her hair.

  We pull apart and she gathers her breath, her eyes drying and brightening as I wipe mine with my hands.

  “I forgive you for everything, Reina, like I forgive your brother and I forgive myself. You and I are the ones still standing. We’ve outlived our penance. I’m free. You’re free too.”

  “I don’t feel free.”

  “But you are.”

  Rafaelito pries the door open again and checks on his mom. She looks back at him and then to me.

  “I have to go. It’s almost time for the kids’ dinner. My husband will be home soon.”

  She reaches for me and we embrace again for a long time.

  “Take care of yourself, Reina. This time, when you leave, don’t look back.”

  The long blazing days of summer grow shorter. Nesto and I take in what they call an acoustic or electrical storm. A song of thunder with no rain. Torches of lighting ignite the black night. Fiery veins rooted in both sky and ocean.

  We’ve already lost power in the cottage. We open the windows to let air through and sit on a mound of eroded beach. These storms are our night symphonies. We watch sparks and flashes thread the horizon, traveling along the water, knowing there are others who also watch and wait for Changó’s strikes from the other side of the sea.

  I dig my toes into the soft sand, eyes on the ocean like a blanket covering the earth. Nesto reaches for me, and leads me by the hand to the water’s edge where he raises his palms to the white light of the moon, both of us stepping sideways into the shallow tide.

  I feel the Atlantic pool at my ankles, soft sand cradling my feet, embracing my legs and torso as the water pulls us in. I lean into Nesto’s arms and he dips me under the tide, seven times, whispering an orikí to Yemayá, protector of maternity, asking for her blessings. Then we swim together as the ocean floor drops out from below.

  All my life I have wondered if I am the true abikú, as predicted and as marked by my father with the cut in my ear, unworthy and inhospitable to life.

  I wondered it as recently as yesterday, before I learned that within me I’ve been carrying a hidden being, something I didn’t know I could want this much.

  It was this temporary magical state, this biological trick, that, as suspected, likely made the wild dolphin look to me with recognition and led her to follow me out of her pen to open water. I thought I was special that night though I didn’t yet know how.

  Of course there were signs all along. But we didn’t see them, because they weren’t the signs we were looking for.

  When I found out, I couldn’t stop myself from offering Nesto a way out, but he wouldn’t take it. He said we belong to each other now.

  He told me he knew from the first time he took me out to the blue—when I showed him the sea horses in the water, because they’re solitary creatures and to see them in courtship is extremely rare—that we would be together for a long time.

  Maybe I wasn’t aware of it, but I think I knew then too.

  I hear Nesto’s breath, the sound of his body breaking the waves behind me as I swim ahead, and I know he will never let me go too far.

  It’s no longer just the two of us out here in the water.

  He watches as I give myself to the current, the way my mother taught me to do when I was a child in her arms, and let the water ease me back to shore, back to him.

  A few nights ago, Nesto called me out to the beach. He pointed to the turtle nest he marked months ago with coconuts and shells, and that he’s looked over to make sure it remained undisturbed. The sand was beginning to move. We watched from behind the dune as hatchlings climbed their way out of the nest their mother made for them, following the path marked by moonligh
t, leaving behind them a tiny trail of prints like stars in the sand, dipping into the tide, struggling to swim against it until finally carried out by the ocean.

  Nesto and I were quiet, amazed at their instincts, the way the celestial compass of nature and the night guided them home.

  Nesto stands on the edge of Lolo’s boat, hands on his hips, afternoon sun burning his back. When he gets that look about him, I wonder if one day he’ll carry out the fantasy he’s told me about, sailing a boat across the Straits to collect his children himself.

  He reaches into a bag we’ve brought along and pulls out a round watermelon, a hole carved in it, filled with molasses meant to hold his deepest wishes and plugged with white flowers. He places it carefully in the water below.

  He lifts his palms to the sky in alabanza, watching the offering roll above the waves away from us.

  I wait for him on the back of the boat so we can fall into the water together.

  He comes to me, giving me his hand, and we toss ourselves into the ocean, feeling ourselves sink into the current, heavy yet weightless.

  I take my time coming up for air, even as the water wants to push me to the surface.

  There was a period during my brother’s years in prison when I’d wrestle with the long nights by walking aimlessly along our neighborhood streets.

  Many times, police cars pulled over asking if I was lost or needed a ride.

  I’d tell the officers, most of whom knew me by name or by face from Carlito’s trial, that I was just out for a walk and they’d urge me to go home.

  “You’re a girl alone,” they would say, as if I were unaware. “Ask yourself how many hours or days or weeks would have to pass before anybody notices you’ve disappeared from this earth forever.”

  I never had an answer for them, but the question has always remained with me.

  I take too long to come up for air and Nesto reaches down into the water and pulls me up to him.