“It was eye opening,” Julián said bitterly and stepped out of the car.
“I often find myself when I am at sea,” Dante answered unruffled. “Either I am adrift, or anchored in that discovery when I get back to land.”
Julián went into his house without looking back at us.
“It’s not your fault,” Dante said. “He was already succumbing. Did you get a load of that sermon this morning?”
“Will you please just stop torturing me?”
“Sweetheart, I haven’t done anything to you, every choice you have made has been your own. You are smarter than Father Julián. He makes his own choices and then blames them on God. Some day when he finds his own culpability he won’t need Heaven anymore. He kissed you back there on the caye, not the Devil not God, a man’s mouth on a woman’s mouth and honey, nothing in all the millennia has ever been stronger than that.”
Pierre was waiting when we got back to the house, his hat in his hands, his eyes large and red. I thought at first he might be drunk but he walked steadily to me and took my hands in his. “Wehpaat Matilde?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“No ai, no any de.” His Kriol pidgin was so strong in his agitation I could not understand him.
“No one in de village, no one in de town. Alawii certain she is in bad sometin someweh. Her own husband say dey children’s cry fu her.”
“She left her children?”
He nodded vigorously. “An ai, an her husband. Fu chroo she is dead.”
Dante appeared behind me on the stairs and Pierre went rigid and pale. “Dis fu ju. Ju fault. Ju have done sometin to her, ai know. Ai feel in ai’s bones.”
I turned helplessly toward Dante who looked both amused and irritated. “You people are no concern of mine. She probably just found another man. She had a taste for them you know.”
Pierre lunged toward him his fist raised to strike a blow, but the end of Dante’s pistol stopped him. It pressed into his ribs while his fist hovered in the air. Pierre was considering that a bullet hole might be worth one punch.
Slowly he lowered his arm. “Her told ai wat ju are doing here, wat ju make Isabei do. Ai noh ju fu wat ju are man.”
“Then know that what you know will most likely get you killed.” Dante left his gun trained on him as Pierre backed away down the steps and hurried off on foot down the driveway, desperate to escape. While Dante was watching Pierre, I too fled, down the steps, around the back of the house. I flung myself into the bushes and crawled along the ground waiting for a bullet in my back. Finally I stopped to listen, too unnerved by my uncertainty of being chased to continue. The world was silent around me. Dante had not followed in pursuit.
I continued to scramble on my hands and knees until I was clear of the house, and then I ran, cutting across the thick forest surrounding the plantation and bordering the road. I ran into the village wearing only Julián’s shirt and my swimsuit, scratched and cut by branches, my bare feet stone-bruised and scraped. I crept into Julián’s yard carefully, making certain that Dante had not scented me and come here. The sun was going down, reflecting back to itself off the smooth panes of the glass windows. I pressed my face into all that lava and looked through the window for Julián.
The sculpture lay on the floor in chunks and meaningless pieces, unformed, destroyed, sent back from whence it came. Beside it Julián was on his knees, his hands flung out to his sides, his throat exposed to Heaven. Thin rivulets of blood ran from his lips, his ears, his eyelids. He pleaded for his sacrifice to be accepted, he was trying to let the sin from his body, to bleed my lips and hands from his soul. My tears streaked the glass leaving imprints of my vigil in the dust. The fine edge of my pain pressed into me, made me cry out. I turned to go, there was nowhere for me but back to my just punishment.
I turned and looked back once in the dying sun and saw him at the window tracing the imagined contours of my face with the tip of his finger, leaving a smear of blood mingled with the sunset on the window.
I was steady when I returned to my house, the shaking pressed deep into my body, hidden away.
The stele stood at the foot of my bed, lording itself over me. I kicked it with all my strength and watched it topple backwards. It should never have broken, but some flaw, some crack, some aberration that had been eroded by the centuries gave way, cloven, it fell to the floor in pieces. A small chunk large enough to sit comfortably in my hand had broken off and I gripped it fiercely, noticed with detached interest that it had the pattern of bird on its unmarred side. I faced the door as it opened with the rock raised above my head, all my jungle blood boiling.
Dante surveyed the wreckage of his most recent artifact without expression
“Is it true?” I demanded. “Do you know what happened to Matilde? Did you do something to her?” I waited for him to deny it, to correct my stupidity, my native superstition.
He rubbed the barrel of the gun fondly, pushed his little finger into the hole and then sucked the tip. He said, “Women that cannot keep their mouths shut get silenced.”
I raised the rock higher and in response he laughed and pointed the gun at me. “Bam,” he said.
With the gun idly held on me, he kicked his toe at the broken pieces and raked his eyes up to my face. He watched my expression a moment and then turned his back on me and went to the door. I held the stone ready to throw, but I could not release it, it had become part of me.
He stepped over the threshold. “You can no longer be trusted,” he said.
And he locked the door.
Chapter Eleven
WALLS
The first day I did not panic, though I found it inconvenient to be dirty, and hungry, hot and unable to do anything about it. I thought perhaps by nighttime he would let me out, but the door stayed locked.
I could hear him wandering around the house, could smell dinner cooking. The day in the sea air had whetted my appetite and I sniffed through the keyhole, trying to eat the scent of onions.
When it grew dark I lay down and attempted to appreciate the solitude, the lack of expectation, this enforced inertia.
I did not think he wanted to harm me, only to scare me, to teach me a lesson. He had after all warned me that if I told, there would be consequences. I had disobeyed.
I wanted to believe that he had not killed Matilde. She might be with anyone right now, as for leaving her children, perhaps she had come to harm some other way. I thought it too precarious for Dante to murder her here under so many watchful eyes. And he seemed a menace not a murderer. So much of his sinuous charm was in unfulfilled threat.
Sleep came at last, filled with dreams of jaguars and black faced angels that held all my secrets written in a large book.
In the morning there was a pan of water placed just inside the door, as one would set out for a dog. I was thirsty, but worse, I had to go the bathroom even more. I banged on the door. “Alright Dante that’s enough, you’ve made your point. I have to use the bathroom and I’m hungry!”
Outside I could hear the men beginning another workday. The burning was done, and though the stink was still in the air and a certain thick heaviness had not dissipated in the humidity, there was promise of a breeze. I contemplated calling out for help but realized that would do nothing. They took their cues from Dante, and I would disgrace myself in front of my workers if I made a scene.
I paced the room restlessly, my full bladder becoming an insistent dull ache that argued for attention with the rumbling of my stomach and the dryness in my mouth. The shutters were open, but the air was coming from a different direction and the room was growing hot. I picked up a piece of the stele, witness to my indiscretions and pounded on the door with it, leaving gouges and scratch marks but little else. I beat on the handle hoping to break it off and in my anger and discomfort managed to get my finger between the rock and the handle and hit it hard enough to break the skin.
A sudden panic enveloped me, helplessness so total it immobilized me. “Dante!” I s
creamed. “Let me out…please.” I heard nothing.
I went to the window and used my rock to break out the shutters and the screens. I hoisted myself up to a sitting position and had one leg up over the edge ready to escape onto the veranda when Nacho appeared smiling, a knife held in one hand. He was blacker than I remembered, and shirtless, his muscles and darkness more frightening to me than Dante. He was the personification of brute strength and remorselessness. Here was a man that would do whatever he was paid to do without regret or hesitation.
“Weh ju goin little lady?”
‘You can’t keep me like this, I’m not an animal. I have to use the bathroom, I need something to eat.”
“Ju will not starve witout food fu a bit an a bit. Ai know. Ju can go long time witout many tings.”
“Just let me use the bathroom.”
“One room gud as anudder ai say.” He stepped toward me.
I hung on the edge of the window, my vulnerable bare leg out. Did he have permission to hurt me or just frighten me? I held my ground and he advanced, closing the distance between us, the knife’s edge pressed into the tender part of my inner thigh. He pressed hard enough to cut and I cried out flinching and driving the point a bit farther. Now I only wanted to retreat back inside, but that tiny burning spear held me in place. He let up with the blade and scratched a red mark down to my knee before pulling the knife away.
“Ai don’ care bout ju lady. Ju just anudder piece of meat to cut if de big man say so, ju understand?”
I nodded, tears filling my eyes breaking him into blurry fragments. I fell backwards into the bedroom and curled up on the floor trying to hold myself together. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, to escape my ailments and humiliation.
The blunt knock of a hammer wrenched me from my sleep, and I let go of my taxed and bloated bladder, and sat shaking in a puddle of my own urine. Nacho was boarding up the window from outside, taking away the light and air in chunks and blows.
I took off Julián’s shirt and my bikini and cleaned myself and the floor as best I could, leaving the soiled shirt in the corner. My head ached and my throat burned. I walked over to the pan of water and lifted it carefully, trying not to spill it over the sides. I emptied the pan realizing immediately I had started the vicious cycle over again. I felt so much better for the moment that it was worth it.
I lay naked on the bed and watched the window disappear until my room became a hovel of murky heat. I closed my eyes and wrapped myself around the hollow ache of my stomach, the only serious complaint I had left. But Nacho was right, it would not kill me and Dante would have to let me out soon.
I did not let my self grow uncomfortable again and I pissed in the corner. I was still thirsty, and so hungry I was beginning to feel sick. I searched my bedside drawers and found a left over package of saltine crackers that I occasionally nibbled as I read in bed. I ate one quickly in three large bites and felt it stick gummy and thick in my dry throat. I was ready to eat the other, but in a moment of reason and uncertainty tucked it under the mattress to save in case I needed it. I bit the inside of my cheeks and swallowed to generate some saliva, and licked the moist inside of the water pan.
Through the muffled hunk of wood I could hear construction, the building of my banana empire. I was the princess in the tower. I tried to remember all of the women held captive throughout history that I had learned of in my lessons. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary Queen of Scots…what did these have to do with me? No, here in sickening cloying half darkness I may as well have been in chains, the slave in the hold.
I could not tell what time it was with only a crack of light to guide me. I went in and out of sleep, turning restlessly to chase the pricking heat away.
Once when I awoke a new pan of water had been placed in the room and I drank this one carefully, on my knees with my head hanging down so as not to waste a drop. I drank about a third and forced myself to stop.
The crack of light disappeared in the borders of my window and I could hear the laughter of men in my house, the fizz of a bottle opening, the slap and shuffle of cards. Meat was frying and it smelled so good it made me cry. I pressed my nose to the door and shed precious water. I sucked the tears from my arms and fingers trying to replace them. I pounded my fist on the door and called through the key hole. “Stop this! You’re insane!” The voices subsided for just a moment outside of the door. “Dante…please…I’m sorry! I’ll do whatever you ask...I won’t disobey again.” My voice was harsh and cracked.
Beyond my captive darkness the men laughed. “The dog is barking ” Dante said. And they laughed again at his wit.
I crawled into my bed, slept again, crying dry tears as I drifted in formless dreams, my arms curved around my cramping belly.
In the morning I defecated in the corner and used a pillow case to wipe myself. A week before the pillowcase had been starched and smelled of the limes Matilde used. I pushed all my stinking bundles into the closet and sat on the floor with my back against the wall. The reek of my sweat and eliminations burned my nose and eyes, making the hard fist of my starvling stomach twist and bend.
I thought perhaps he really did mean for me to die here. I had no hope of Julián coming soon enough. He had every reason to stay away form this place and its evil forces.
On my knees in the dark, naked and weak, I lifted my arms and called out for relief from above. “If you are there Father…help me…I do not want to suffer.”
But who was I to plead? The criminal that only asked for clemency when he had been caught. Had I not been punished, I may have continued on my way unhindered and never seeking absolution. If I were saved I would most likely take for granted my savior.
I fell asleep on my knees, my face pressed to the floor, waiting for the voice of the Lord.
“Holy Mother of God,” he said as he pushed the door open. “You stink.”
The only answer to my prayers was my jailor. In my delirium I was grateful to see him.
He hauled me to my feet and averted his face trying to keep from smelling me, or perhaps having to look into my eyes. He walked me naked and trembling to the bathroom and sat me on the commode. He stood in the door watching me with a grimace of distaste.
“I can’t go with you watching.”
“Then you are wasting my time.” He continued to look down at me, an interesting specimen whose behavior he could not predict.
To my shame and relief I found I could go after all, and when I finished I discreetly wiped myself and stood. “I want a shower.”
“In good time,” he said. “You have paid some of what you owe, but you are not forgiven yet.”
He took me firmly by the waist and half carried me back to my room. I wanted to struggle, but the touch of another human was comforting. I lay passively in his grip, thinking that if only I accommodated his desires, he would not abandon me again. He gently pushed me over the threshold back into the gloom and reek.
“But I’m hungry,” I told him.
He said. “Not hungry enough.” and closed the door again.
The next day when I drank the last of the pan of water I had to scoop flies out of it first. They buzzed in purposeful bumbling circuits, bloated and blue and congregating around the closet hoping to breed hatchlings.
Dante returned and took me to the bathroom again and when he took me back me to my cell he brought a bucket of water and a rag. First I drank my fill which sloshed and rested uneasily in my stomach. I ate my second saltine cracker and swallowed some more water. Then I washed myself, letting the cold clean rivulets trickle down my ribs and breasts over and over. I scrubbed my skin until it was warm and red. I used the rest to clean the floors where I had used the bathroom, and the corner of the closet and then I placed the sodden fly crusted fabric in to soak.
I had faith that Dante would return with fresh water for me. I pushed the bucket by the door and then, weak from the exertion, I lay next to the broken stele and traced its remaining grooves until I slid into something that wasn’
t quite sleep, where my eyes were open, but could not see.
The pain began that night, a hollow wracking torture that twisted my bowels and lined my guts with glass. I could not leave my bed and lay in filth and fear until I opened my eyes to find Dante standing over me.
“Do you want me to die?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I want you to live.”
He carried me gently to the bath and washed my wracked and mucky body, and bundled me in a towel. As I sat on the floor of my room he stripped the bed himself and put on fresh sheets, and then placed me on top of the blankets. He went out and locked the door but returned shortly with water in a thick clay mug and a bowl of clear weak soup.
“Eat it slowly or it will not stay down,” he cautioned.
I swallowed the soup quickly against his advice. It was hot and salty and surely the best thing I had ever tasted. It whirled and churned in my belly but stayed put. I sipped the water more slowly and it spread a cool relief through my veins. I thought that my ordeal was over, that I was free again.
Dante held a large manila envelope in his hand, and after I had eaten, he emptied the contents onto my bed. There were photographs, four of them. Two were of my mother’s house from different angles, the boxwoods trimmed, the flag on the mail box up presuming that life would go on, the mail man would come. Pick up and delivery on time. The sprinklers would come on at dusk when dinner was done.
The next was one of my stepfather mowing the lawn, his pipe canted out of his mouth, his brow under the old fisherman’s hat that had been his father’s, furrowed in concentration. The last was of my mother sitting on the porch. She held a cigarette in one hand and her eyes were focused on the distance.
“What do these mean? Why do you have them?”
“Your mother lives at 1020 Crescent Avenue and her phone number is TA33968,
She shops at the A & P on Saturday afternoons and Frank golfs on Sunday after church. Your mother does not attend either.”
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