The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  “She fell out of a car!” the taller boy exclaimed.

  “No! He pushed her!” piped the younger one.

  “Be quiet!” their mother scolded.

  “This car,” explained Mr. Gómez. “It was some distance ahead of us. The passenger door flew open and it swerved off—”

  “Right off the road!” the taller boy finished.

  “I said, ‘Look at that pig, throwing garbage,’” Mrs. Gómez began.

  “I thought he was dumping a dog,” Mr. Gómez cut in.

  The youngest child, excited by the drama of it all, chimed in with her version. “I said, ‘Stop, Papí! It’s a girl!’ He said I had an overactive imagination. But he stopped.”

  “We couldn’t believe it was a person. Not when the car kept going!” Mrs. Gómez perched nervously on the edge of a chair, hands fluttering in the manner of a person who wants to be helpful but has no idea what to do.

  Celia glanced at her. “Bring me some water, please. Take a pot from the kitchen.”

  “It was a new car, like tourists drive,” Mr. Gómez offered.

  “And it didn’t even stop,” the younger boy repeated.

  The little girl leaned closer to Liliana, awed by the blood and the damage. When the child’s face came into Celia’s frame of vision, she said, “Bring me a washcloth and a towel from the bathroom, please. That’s a good girl.”

  “The skid marks showed where the car went off and came back onto the road. I thought it was going to roll,” Mr. Gómez continued. “The bank was so steep. I wouldn’t have stopped except Gladys—that’s our daughter here—was so sure it was a person.”

  Mrs. Gómez returned with the water and set it at Celia’s elbow. The girl Gladys put a washcloth in Celia’s hand. “My brothers climbed down first, but they couldn’t get her up, so Papí and Mamí went to help them. They all got scratched all over.”

  “It took forever to get her up the bank,” Mr. Gómez explained. “She was conscious when we found her. She gave us her address, yours, and said you were a doctor, otherwise we would have taken her straight to the hospital.”

  “You did the right thing, bringing her here,” Celia assured him, still unaware that they were having difficulty perceiving her as a doctor. “There are no lumps on her head and I am not finding any broken bones.”

  “But her face! It’s so messed up!” Gladys gazed in fascinated horror at the blood caked on nose, lips, brow, and cheeks. “Is she going to have scars?”

  Celia ran the washcloth over Liliana’s face. The skin was more scraped than gashed, and her cheekbones felt intact. For the most part it was surface damage. Speaking in her calm, doctorly voice, she said, “She is badly bruised. And some thorns have penetrated quite deeply. When she has rested a bit I will take her to the hospital for a checkup.” She stood, for the first time acknowledging the family who stood in a semicircle around her. Eyes brimming with tears, she said, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Not at all. I mean, it’s what anybody would have done!” Mr. Gómez assured her.

  “Anybody might have left it for others to cope with. You abandoned your own plans to help her. You brought her home. You probably saved her life.”

  “I do hope she’s okay.” Mrs. Gómez herded her brood toward the door. “Please give us a call and let us know. Ignacio Gómez. We’re in the Santa Fe phone book.”

  “I will, Mrs. Gómez. I promise.”

  It was difficult for Celia to walk away from Liliana, even the few steps it took to show the family to the door. But she forced herself to do it, to shake hands with father, mother, and sons, offering (and glad when they declined) to treat their thorn scratches. She hugged little Gladys and whispered, “Gracias, niña. Gracias, gracias, gracias! Estás mi heroína.” She smiled with more gratitude than she had ever felt toward anyone, until they understood her need to attend to Liliana and urged one another out the door.

  Then she rushed into the bathroom for more hot water, fresh towels, scissors for cutting off what was left of Liliana’s clothes, and antiseptic for a more thorough cleaning of the wounds. She was not sure why Liliana had fainted, whether it was from shock, pain, or relief, but she hesitated to move her more than was necessary until she was awake and could answer questions about where she hurt. The two steps Liliana had taken on her own made it unlikely that she had a spinal injury or a broken leg, although ribs or internal injuries were another matter.

  Once she got the clothes off, Celia focused on parts of the body she could see and did not try to turn her. It was Liliana herself who moaned and rolled over, face against the back of the sofa. Celia began cleaning the wounds on her back, trying to visualize the trauma that had caused them.

  She could imagine the car swerving, the door flying open, and Liliana spilling out as it jerked back onto the pavement. She had landed on her right side, shoulder first, perhaps in soft sand; this Celia deduced from the sand she found under the strap and in one bra cup of the halter top when she cut it off. Momentum had carried Liliana down the slope, where she stopped in, or was stopped by, thorn bushes. She had not been knocked unconscious because minutes later, when the Goméz family arrived, she had been able to tell them where she lived.

  As Celia attended the visible injuries, none of which appeared life-threatening, she looked for clues that might reveal more serious damage. Liliana’s breathing was shallow but regular. Her colour had improved and her pulse was strong. She did not seem to be in severe pain. However, two things puzzled Celia.

  One was skin tone. Liliana was wearing the same shorts and halter top she had been wearing when she disappeared, so there should have been a clear differentiation between parts of her body always covered and skin regularly exposed to the sun. But the tan line was indistinct. Previously tanned skin was pale, closer to the colour of skin never exposed to the sun. Had she been indoors the whole time?

  The other thing that caught Celia’s attention was a wound different from the others. It had not been made that morning; in fact, it was practically healed. What struck Celia about it was its neatness. It crossed the throat in a thin semicircle from ear to ear. It had not been deep but what could have caused it?

  By the time she finished cleaning all the wounds, she was certain that none were life-threatening. Her greater concern was the girl’s silence. Apart from gasping when Celia pulled a thorn or cleaned a raw wound, Liliana communicated nothing.

  Celia knew that physical traumas were often matched by emotional traumas, and she also knew that the emotional responses of adults and children were not the same. Adults in need of medical attention tended to blame whoever they perceived as the cause: the husband who drove too fast, beer drinkers who had left a broken bottle on the beach, or the cook whose food had caused gastric distress. Children blamed themselves. Maybe it was because they’d been told, “Change into dry clothes or you’ll catch cold.” Or “Don’t run out into the street without looking.” Indeed, many parents, in an attempt to shed their own guilt, lashed out at the child with “I warned you!” Because children blamed themselves, their anger was turned inward. Yet it was not so simple as that. At some deeper level they seemed to know that they were not entirely to blame, that they had a right to be angry at the driver of the car that hit them or the parent who made them go to school when they said they were not feeling well. But it was a helpless, hopeless kind of anger that, in Celia’s opinion, often hurt the child more than the physical injury.

  Celia gazed at Liliana lying nude on the sofa, at the full womanly breasts and the slim girl’s hips and legs, and did not know whether the battered body was that of a woman or a child.

  FIFTY-THREE

  CELIA dozed in the rocker. Sounds from other apartments, neighbours shouting off balconies to friends below, and children playing in hall did not disturbed her. Yet her head snapped up each time Liliana moaned or shifted position. Seeing that Liliana was still asleep, Celia again fell into a doze. Not until the apartment was flooded with the hot sun of late afternoon did
Celia open her eyes to find Liliana awake.

  “That’s the dirtiest shirt I ever saw,” Liliana said. “You look like you’ve been working in a cane field.”

  Celia smiled. “You look like you were in a fight and lost. How do you feel?”

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  Celia’s instinct was to help, but she waited to see how Liliana managed on her own and what movements seemed to cause her pain. Liliana coughed, stood up, and hobbled toward the bathroom. She had not shown pain when she coughed, so there were probably no cracked or broken ribs. Afraid she might faint again, Celia followed closely. “Are you hurting any place in particular?”

  “All over.”

  Celia trailed her into the bathroom. Turning her back while Liliana tinkled, she tossed the dirty towels into the laundry and reached for clean ones. Liliana rose to wash her hands and screamed.

  “My face is ruined. Oh, the bastard!”

  Celia, trembling from the shock wave sent through her system by Liliana’s scream at such close quarters, put her arm around her shoulders and said in a controlled voice, “Once your mother was standing close to where a grenade exploded and her face looked a lot worse than yours. A year later you would never have known. There was just this one little moon-shaped scar that your dad liked to kiss.” Celia touched a crescent-shaped cut on Liliana’s brow. “Like that one. Of course, you could let your hair curl down over it. But Carolina never did.”

  Liliana leaned forward to examine the cut more closely, then groaned, put her hands to the small of her back, and hobbled back to the sofa.

  “Since you are able to walk, we should run over to the hospital for some X-rays and a couple of tests,” Celia said casually.

  Liliana gave her a suspicious look. “What kind of tests?”

  Celia simply looked at her.

  “What kind of tests?” There was an edge of hysteria to Liliana’s voice.

  “To see what else the bastard did to you,” Celia said tightly.

  Liliana folded her arms tight across her naked breasts, squinched her eyes shut, and shook her head violently. “No! They’ll ask a bunch of questions.”

  Celia sat back down in the rocker and studied her niece. Her own theory about sexual abuse, rape, and the like ran counter to the popular belief that it was best to talk about it. She felt, especially in the case of children, that letting it fade like any ordinary memory might be less damaging than having to repeat the details over and over to a string of doctors and therapists until there was no possibility of erasing the incident from one’s mind. On the other hand, there was no dealing with any trauma without knowing some of the gory details.

  “If you want to tell just me,” she said finally, “I will see that nobody else questions you. But you must be tested.”

  “You’re talking about tests for STDs, aren’t you?” Liliana accused her.

  “Sexually transmitted diseases, yes. And pregnancy.”

  “I can’t be pregnant!” Liliana screamed and broke into hysterical sobs.

  Celia pulled the naked girl into her lap, draped a towel around her shoulders, and rocked her as she might a five-year-old. It was a good twenty minutes before Liliana ceased to sob, but she continued to cling to Celia, alternately sobbing and hiccupping. Celia rocked on. Finally tears and hiccups faded. But the child remained.

  Liliana lay back down on the sofa. A thin skim of sweat beaded her upper lip but Celia knew from having held her that she was not feverish. Her eyes said that the pain was coming from inside. Briefly, Liliana had allowed herself to feel anger toward whoever hurt her. Now she was turning the blame back on herself.

  For several minutes Celia felt as helpless as she had ever felt in her medical career. Then the fragments of information she had been collecting all afternoon coalesced into a diagnosis, and with it, a course of action.

  “You need not go for tests this afternoon,” she decided.

  Liliana looked at her dully. “No?”

  “Tomorrow will be soon enough. Today you must talk to the police.”

  Liliana’s swollen lips parted in disbelief. “Are you going to—?”

  “I am not going to anything. You are going to give them a description of the man who did this to you. Not just for your sake, but so they might be able to catch him before he does the same thing to other girls.”

  “I can’t talk about it!”

  “You do not have to talk about ‘it.’ You must tell them what you know about him. They can take it from there.”

  Liliana shook her head. “It’s no use. He’s a foreigner. He’s gone by now.”

  “Maybe,” Celia conceded. “Or maybe not. Finding him is the responsibility of the police. Your responsibility is to give them something to go on.”

  She wondered if she was heaping too much responsibility on the girl in her frail condition. Then thought, No. No burden is heavier than guilt. I will not have my child carry the guilt for this, not now or ever. Her mother was a fighter. She will be a fighter.

  “If he has left the country there is nothing to be done. But if he is still here—well, I ask you: do you want him roaming around Cuba doing the same thing to other girls?”

  It seemed a long time before Liliana answered. “No.”

  Celia reached for the telephone.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  LUIS sat at his desk reading the alternative energy report. One of his skills was the ability to plow through the most boring reports, identify key points, and remember them in sufficient detail to discuss them intelligently later. Since the relationship with Celia had blown up in his face he seemed to have lost that ability. Exasperated, he flipped back to the beginning of the report and began skimming it for relevant points he had not absorbed the first time through. He tried to memorize statistics on recent increases in solar-generated energy and made a mental note to find out what components Cuba was manufacturing and which ones must be imported. How many scientists did Cuba have working in the field of solar technology and doing what exactly?

  The report also noted an increase in wind-generated energy, but the overall percentage of power being supplied by that method was infinitesimal. Not much hydro power either, but what could you expect? The island hardly had an abundance of big rivers rushing down mountainsides and through narrow canyons where dams could be easily built as, for example, had been done in México’s Sumidero Canyon. Too bad North Korea’s economy collapsed before its government got around to providing the aid promised to realize the Río Toa hydroelectric project. Luis stopped reading and sat tapping his pencil. What about small hydro-power units that could be installed on any creek with a year-round flow? What about methane gas? Did it have to come from animal manure? If so, it would not be practical because animal manure was needed for fertilizer. Could methane be produced from vegetable matter? Damn! He hated reports that raised more questions than they answered.

  The phone rang. Grateful for the interruption, he picked it up and identified himself. When Celia’s cool, familiar voice came over the line, his heart, he was sure, skipped a beat.

  “Luis? Liliana is back.”

  “Bueno, bueno! Is she okay?”

  “Not entirely. She was assaulted. It was very serious and must be reported.”

  Luis barely repressed a sigh. Surely Celia did not have in mind reporting that Liliana had been raped—even though that was probably what Liliana had told her.

  “You rejected the idea of bringing in social services before,” he reminded her. “Why report it now?”

  “Not to social services. Or the police. This is outside the scope of their resources. The Ministry of the Interior. It involves a foreigner.”

  “MININT?” Luis could not believe he had heard right. “Celia, they deal with matters of state security. Not crimes against individuals.”

  “I expect that rather depends on the crime,” she said crisply.

  “Well, yes, I suppose, but certainly not rape or—you said assault, right?”

  “Attempted m
urder.”

  Luis had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew she was asking him to make the necessary contact in MININT because he could move laterally, to someone in the ministry at his own level, whereas she would have to work her way up the bureaucratic ladder, which would take forever. He did not want to do it because he did not believe a word of what she had just said. When the truth came out, whatever the truth was, he would look the fool for having asked for the investigation of an incident in which the only “criminal” behaviour would turn out to be that of a manipulative teenager skipping school and fucking a foreigner for her own financial gain. Luis felt like putting his head down on his desk and crying because as surely as he knew that participation in this charade would hold his reputation up to ridicule, he knew that he could not say no to Celia Cantú.

  • • •

  Leandro Quevedo had changed little in the decade since Luis had last seen him, other than that his hairline had receded to midway on his head. The loss of hair made his face seem more round, and in it his hooded eyes were humourless. He was a serious, unflappable sort of person. Under the circumstances, Luis found that reassuring.

  Quevedo’s companion, Gloria Muñoz, was one of those women who, while not really plump, seemed so because there was little difference between bust, waist, and hip size. An attempt to give herself a figure by pulling the belt of her uniform extra tight caused hips and breasts to push more firmly against the khaki fabric. She had a dimple in her chin that Luis would have found appealing if he had been less nervous about the errand they were on. They did not speak on the drive to Celia’s apartment. It was his glum conclusion that the less said the less the officers would remember later, when there would be every reason to want the incident forgotten.

  • • •

  Celia must have heard them coming because she was in the hallway outside the apartment when they reached the top of the stairs. Luis was surprised to see her in crisp hospital whites. He knew she had not been to work that day because he had called the hospital earlier. Besides, she usually shed her work clothes the minute she entered the apartment. He guessed that she had dressed as a doctor deliberately, in order to be taken more seriously. He introduced her with the formality her attire invited. “Dr. Cantú, this is Capitán Leandro Quevedo and Lieutenant Gloria Muñoz, from MININT.”