Mamá warned me, “Whatever you do, don’t fall in love. Love’s the worst thing that can happen to a woman who wants something more than babies.”
No amount of warning would have mattered.
My memories dissolve as the cab lurches to a stop, startling me into the present.
“We’re here, Señorita.” The driver slides into Neutral and throws his arm over the back of the seat, turning to me.
The hotel is a massive corner building, more French in style than Spanish, with wrought iron balconies and miniature pillars flanked by arched windows. People move through the revolving glass door looking elegant and busy and important, and it occurs to me that I can’t possibly stay here. Chu Chu is sure to have the whole city watching for me, and if you want to be invisible, the Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico is not a discreet place to stay.
“Can you recommend something smaller? Off the beaten track?” I ask, sorry to lose what I am sure is a heavenly soft bed.
“Not your style, Señorita?”
“No.” I smile, and he smiles back.
“Mine, either.”
A short ride later we pull up in front of a modest, stucco building in a residential section of the city where I have never been. Three barefoot children sit on the curb kicking glass bottles into the gutter, and a man, lingering in the open doorway of a small grocery store, watches them with a wistful smile as if remembering his bottle-kicking days.
“Is this it?” There’s no sign of a hotel.
“You said ‘off the beaten track.’” My driver is already out of the car and placing my suitcase on the sidewalk.
I climb out after him. “Is it safe?”
“Maybe safer, for you, than the Gran Hotel?” He raises his eyebrows, and I pay him quickly, paranoid in my exhaustion that Chu Chu has every taxi driver in the city on the lookout for me. I don’t know what Chu Chu will do if he finds out I am in Mexico City. Hide you, my girl, in a place where I’ll never find you? He may have done that already.
I watch the taxi merge into the traffic before dragging my suitcase through the front door of the building that does, once inside, look like a shabby motel. Keys dangle from a nail behind a low counter and I can see a small, open kitchen in the back where a very pregnant woman with hard lines around her mouth presses tortillas, a cracker-thin stack beside her, creamy yellow and steaming. I ring the bell on the counter, and the woman looks up, her hands balling dough, her face unreadable. She turns back to her work as a man enters through a door behind her.
He looks me up and down. “Hola, Señorita.” His dark face is wide and round, his black hair cut short to his head. “Are you looking for a room?”
I press my sunglasses hard against the bridge of my nose. “Yes.”
“How many nights?”
A simple question, and it stupefies me. The realization that I have no idea collides with my exhaustion. I lean against the counter staring at the man in silence.
He glances at my suitcase. “You want to pay for one night now, more if you need later?”
“No, no, I’ll pay for seven,” I decide and snap open my purse.
Tiny creases appear at the corners of the man’s eyes. His grin is delightful. “If you say so, Señorita. Three hundred and fifty pesos.”
I count out an exact amount, relieved I had the wherewithal to exchange my money back in LA. I also brought my checkbook, but that won’t do me any good here. The man folds the bills into his pants pocket, takes a key from the wall and comes around the counter. He is only a foot taller than I am, with a broad chest, sturdy arms and large hands, one of which he extends. “Miguel Espino.”
“Estelita Rodriguez.”
His wide palm consumes mine, and I remove my sunglasses as he gives a gentle squeeze that sends a tingle up my legs. I feel disoriented and annoyingly attracted to this stranger. Mamá accuses me of being attracted to the first man I meet the moment I am without one. She might be right, I think, watching Miguel throw my suitcase up onto one shoulder, the arm he latches over it a ridge of muscle. If there was ever a time not to be thinking about a man, this would be it.
Not bothering to divert my eyes, I follow him outside and around the building to an open courtyard set with metal tables and chairs. The circular edges of the tables are rusted with chipped red paint. Off the courtyard, Miguel wiggles a key into a door that falls open and hits the opposite wall with a thud. The room is stiflingly hot and smells as if it’s been shut up for an age, but it’s clean. The speckled tile floor is polished, and there is a brightly embroidered coverlet tucked around a double bed. Nightstand, lamp and dresser appear dust free, and the single window where the curtains have been drawn against the sunlight look freshly washed. A fan rotates from the ceiling with a slow, clacking noise as it pushes the hot air around.
Miguel sets my suitcase at the foot of the bed. “Is there anything else you need, Señorita Rodriguez? My sister opens the restaurant at four, but I’m sure she’d make you something now if you’re hungry.”
“No, thank you, I’m all right.” I should eat, but all I want is to lie down and sleep for an eternity.
When Miguel leaves, I kick off my shoes and stand on the bed, teetering to keep my balance as I pull at the cord to stop the fan. I’ll take heat over that sound. The fan moves slower and slower as I collapse on the thin, hard mattress, its clack, clack, clack quieting as I think about how Miguel said sister not wife, chiding myself immediately. I need to put him out of my head. I am not going to let myself get distracted by a man.
Regardless, I fall asleep thinking about kissing the tiny creases around his eyes.
When I wake, I am still heavy with exhaustion, as if I’ve only slept for a tantalizing few minutes. My neck perspires against the pillow, and moisture has collected under the seams of my tight girdle, sweat stains seeping into my dress. The curtain flutters, and a breeze shifts the hairs on my arm. It is strangely quiet, and I wonder if you feel this same breeze, if your room is as silent in this city as mine.
I picture you in the yellow nursery with the rocking horse and dollhouse set under each window as if Chu Chu has been waiting all this time to snatch you back. At first, I convinced myself that your father kidnapped you out of impulsive anger, that he had no intention of keeping you for good. Now, I worry that for good is exactly what he intends.
Doubt and fear wash over me, and I struggle out of bed and over to the window for a breath of air. What if I can’t find you? I pull back the fabric of the curtain and stare into the courtyard. In the dark, the tables look like hunched men about to spring off of skinny legs. Chu Chu is a rich man, which makes him a powerful one. He will have the airports guarded, the bus stations, every corner of this city.
Even if I find you, how will I ever get you out?
Chapter Eleven
* * *
The Taste of Tequila
Mother,
My room is a creepy baby’s room frozen in time. The walls are pale yellow, and everything looks aged and smells faintly of rose water. Past the faded orange curtains there is a park filled with trees and pathways where people walk and bike and stroll with baby carriages. I am not locked in; I just don’t want to go outside.
When I’m not in school, I sit on my floor peeling thin strips of paint from the walls, snaking white veins through my solid, lemon-yellow room. I like that it doesn’t come off in whole chunks but in ribbons that I pile under my bed like Christmas wrapping. If things get bad enough, I can eat it and it will make me sick, and then you will have to bring me home.
The night we arrived here, Chu Chu stood in the doorway of this room with his too-tight hand on my shoulder and told me that, other than the twin bed, the room looks exactly as it did when I was a baby and you and I lived here with him. You never told me I lived in Mexico City. This makes me wonder what else you haven’t told me.
It’s a stupid room for a twelve-yea
r-old. There are no books, just a chest of dolls, a rocking horse and a dollhouse, mementos clearly not saved on account of me. Chu Chu has two other children with a woman who is no longer his wife but demands his attention more than his current, childless wife. His current wife is named Florinia, and she wears wide dresses with cinched waists and big hats. She is beautiful, with brown hair that waves over her shoulders and eyes slit at a sharp angle. Her voice is faint, her laughter fierce. She pretends to be coy and childish, but she’s mean. I can see it in her eyes, even though she mostly ignores me.
She and Chu Chu are almost never home. They have another house somewhere near the ocean that they prefer over this one and have never taken me to. They’re only here on the weekends when the beaches are busy and Chu Chu has nightclub performances in the city.
Chu Chu says I will meet his other children, one day, when he sees fit. One day makes it sound like I will be here forever. I have thought about running away, but how does one run away from a foreign country? I don’t have money for a plane ticket or cab fare. And even if I did, I’d have nowhere to go. I have gone through all of the scenarios of why you would send me away, and the only thing that makes sense is that you lied about leaving Alfonso. It was him or me, and you chose him. At other times, I am certain it was Grandmother’s idea to send me to live with Chu Chu. There are wicked men in the world, she’d said. Sometimes we stumble into their path, and there’s nothing we can do but hurry on out of it.
Maybe she was the one who hurried me on out of it.
When I first came, the phone rang over and over, and I was sure you were calling to check on me. But there is only one phone in the house, and Señorita Lucinia Perron, my niñera, stands guard over it, and I don’t dare cross her. She’s a thick-chested, dark-eyed woman with legs like a squat bulldog who fires guttural Spanish at me. When I asked Chu Chu why I wasn’t allowed to talk with you, he said long-distance phone calls were too expensive.
“I’ll send a telex, then.”
“Still expensive,” he said. “But you can write a letter.”
I’ve tried, but all that comes out is Why?
Eventually the phone stopped ringing. Now, I try not to think about you, or why I am here, or what is going to happen to me. Whenever despair tightens its fingers around my throat, I think about the painting above the fireplace back home and picture myself separated into sharp angles, each body part in its own box, my heart and brain disconnected, beating and thinking in isolation.
This calms me only a little. Most of the time I feel as if I’m on a ledge about to be pushed from behind with no ground in front of me.
The house is big, filled with high windows and brightly colored tile floors. There’s a woman named Chara who comes in the mornings to cook and clean and do laundry. She reminds me of you, petite and attractive with dark hair and little hands. She moves about the house like a swift bird. She doesn’t say much, glancing at the clock, working as if she always has somewhere urgent to be, or maybe she’s just anxious to get away, like me.
I wish Chara lived here instead of Señorita Perron, whose only job, it seems, is to watch over me. She sleeps in the room next to mine and keeps the adjoining door open so I can hear her snoring all night. Once, when she was down in the kitchen, I snuck into her room, a bare, white space that stank of body odor. There were empty hooks on the walls, a single bed with a fringed, embroidered blanket, and a bare-topped bureau. The only decoration was an altar displaying a statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by candles and rosaries.
Sneaking open her drawers, I hoped to discover something fun, like a bottle of perfume or a fashion magazine, but there were only thick bras, cotton underwear and skirts in varying shades of brown. I was reminded of a day last year when you’d stayed home with me playing checkers and eating salted crackers with peanut butter, and how when we’d gotten bored of checkers, we’d snuck into Grandmother Maria’s room looking for the Cosmopolitan magazine with Marilyn Monroe on the cover she’d confiscated for herself. Only, we couldn’t find the magazine in any of those drawers, and you’d gotten to your knees, your pedal pushers tight around your calves, your hair tied up in a scarf, and triumphantly slid the sultry actress out from under the bed.
Thinking of this in Señorita Perron’s room, I dropped to my stomach and looked under her bed. There was no fashion magazine, but I discovered a blue bottle of tequila with Don Julio written on the label. It was the exact bottle I’d seen in the dining-room cabinet. Thievery, at least, made her more interesting. This also explained the stink on her breath.
I pulled the bottle out, large and heavy, and yanked out the cork, taking a swig that burned, making me sputter and cough half of it into my lap. Hurriedly, I recorked it, shoved it under the bed and retreated to my room where I removed my alcohol-soaked skirt and buried it at the bottom of my laundry basket.
After, I stood at the window missing you and Grandmother Maria and wondering how long it would be until I got to go home for a visit, or at least call you. Watching the cars slide by, I pictured Marilyn’s smile on the cover of that magazine, a smile people said was sexy but which always made me sad. I thought about sitting on the couch flipping through Cosmo’s glossy pages, sipping ice-cold Coca-Colas with you, and how you’d said, “I thought your grandmother was smarter than to hide something under the bed. Shame on her; she should have been sneakier!”
You are the sneaky one. You arranged for me to leave your life without my suspecting anything at all. I’d like to be sneaky, but I’m probably more like my grandmother, unable to find a good hiding spot or think up a good lie.
I wait for my father to discover the missing tequila and punish Señorita Perron, but he doesn’t. The bottle hasn’t been replaced, and there’s no way he can’t miss it, which means he doesn’t care one bit about leaving a drunk liar to take care of me.
This thought angers and emboldens me.
That Friday night, sitting at the dining-room table with Chu Chu and Florinia, eating chicken drowned in a spicy, brown sauce, I look up at my father and ask, “Why do you want me here? I know my mother asked, but why did you agree?”
He washes a bite of food down with a swig of wine and shrugs, as if my question is of little importance. “Because you are my daughter.”
At the opposite end of the table, Florinia has finished eating. She leans back in her chair watching me. Tonight, she has thickened her lashes into clumps, painted her lips maroon and curled her hair into waves alongside her face. Chu Chu looks impeccable in his starched, light blue shirt, greased hair and shiny complexion. On your nights off, Mom, you’ve been known to come to dinner in a bathrobe and hair curlers with a mask of cold cream on your face, dismissing Grandmother Maria’s disapproving look with the remark that your face deserves a night off, too. I imagine Florinia and Chu Chu sleep faceup so their pillows don’t crease any lines onto their smooth, shiny skin.
I set my fork down, push my shoulders back in my chair and narrow my eyes at my father. “I’ve been your daughter for twelve years. Why didn’t you want me before now?”
He looks dully at me over the rim of his glass. “It wasn’t the right time.”
My attempt to rile him isn’t working. I want him angry. I need someone to push against, someone to give me a reason to feel something other than sad. Gratitude? Anger? Hate? Love? I have no idea what I’m supposed to feel toward this man.
“I want to go to one of your shows,” I demand, daring him to take me into his world and declare me his daughter.
“Sure,” he says, and I feel something close to pride at how easily he agrees.
Then I notice him glance across the table at Florinia, who has a smirk on her dark mouth. Chu Chu grins back at her.
“What?” I ask, sure I’ve been left out of a secret.
“Nothing, dear.” Florinia’s breathy voice sails out at me, her dear infuriatingly sweet.
“Okay, then, when will yo
u take me?” I persist to my father.
“I’ll have to check my schedule.” Chu Chu’s tone is sardonic, mocking, his eyes locked in a seductive look at his wife.
I can’t understand what they’re playing at or why I’m being made fun of. Anger twists in my gut, and I switch tactics. “Why was now the right time?”
“What?” Chu Chu pulls his eyes away from Florinia, looking at me as if I’ve finally become a nuisance.
“Why was this the right time to bring me here? Why not when I was five or seven? Is it because Mom asked? Why did you say yes? Why hasn’t she ever asked before, and why can’t I talk to her?”
My father straightens, sucking his teeth and looking at me crossly. Now I’ve gotten his attention. He sets his wineglass down. “Your mother’s recent choice of a husband has not proven to be a good one. I won’t have my child turned into a Lolita. After what she let happen, your mother’s phone calls are no longer welcome in this house.”
The air leaves my lungs: he knows about Alfonso. You told him, and then you sent me away because you wanted me here, watched over by a wicked old Mexican lady so I wouldn’t become some kind of temptress, getting in the way of your marriage. How could you choose Alfonso over me? How can you love him more?
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