An Uninterrupted View of the Sky

by Melanie Crowder

  “No. I was right here. She signed out and just walked away.”

  “But the children—she didn’t take Francisco and Pilar. Why wouldn’t she take our children with her?”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize we lock the gate at six,” the guard says, “and she’ll be back later tonight.”

  Pilar tugs Papá’s hand. “Maybe she went out to get us dinner.”

  Papá pats Pilar’s hand, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the guard. I don’t either. Something about the way the guy said that last part wasn’t right. Like he didn’t believe his own words.

  “The truth, please,” Papá says softly.

  The guard twists the barrel of the rifle in his hands. “It happens sometimes. A man ends up in here and . . . it’s all too much—too hard to raise the kids alone on the outside. The wife leaves.” The guard shrugs again. “It doesn’t happen often. But sometimes.”

  Now he looks guilty? Now?

  “Look, the kids can stay here with you until the boy turns eighteen. Then just the girl.”

  “Here?” I think Papá has stopped breathing altogether. “My children, living here?”

  “The prison director prefers they be transferred to an orphanage, but those facilities are currently above capacity—”

  “My children are not orphans!”

  The guard holds up a hand, and Papá takes a step back.

  “It is best if they can stay with family outside the prison. But if there is no one who will take them, then yes, your children can live here with you.”

  I can’t feel my fingers. I can’t feel my legs. “Let me go,” I say to Papá. “Let me go find her—it must have been a mistake. She wouldn’t just leave us here! Let me talk to her.”

  “You can’t,” the guard says with another shrug. “The gate is locked for the night. No one leaves again until morning.”

  Papá stretches his arm across my chest to hold me back. Pilar’s head is bobbing up and down as her breath comes out in raspy gasps.

  I thought Mamá was just angry. I thought she didn’t stay with us and try to comfort Papá because she was worried about the money and how she was going to take care of us all by herself. I thought last night Mamá was packing things for Papá, so his time at the prison wouldn’t be so hard, and so he could have a little of home with him here.

  Seventeen. Almost a man. How can I still be so stupid?

  “I’ll go get her in the morning, Papá. I’ll bring her back.”

  The words are slow to leave him. “If it makes you feel better, Francisco, go to the house and look for her tomorrow. But I think if your mother could leave you in this place for even one night, then she is gone. There’s no one left for you to find.”

  The sun dips below the prison walls. Two guards come inside, and a voice crackles over the intercom. Papá nudges us back against the interior prison wall, and he walks to the middle of the courtyard. Above and all around us, doors open, and feet shuffle across the concrete and down the ladders and stairwells from the upper levels.

  Men flood out of the hallways and into the courtyard until they are lined up in tightly packed rows. They keep coming until the courtyard is full, their bodies blocking what little light is left in the sky. I don’t know what’s worse, the noise or the stink. I pull the corner of my shirt over my nose. Pilar claps her hands over her ears and sidles behind me. Her whole body trembles.

  Papá’s eyes meet mine, and what I see there rips open something inside me. He’s not hard enough to survive this place. Neither is my sister.

  After about twenty minutes, the guards seem satisfied and they leave, locking the gate behind them. The prisoners head back to their cells or begin claiming pieces of the ground on the balconies or between the railing and the doors to the cells for the prisoners who can pay. Beneath the stairs is best, or under a table in the courtyard so no one will step on you in the middle of the night. Some have a blanket to roll up in, or a mattress; others, like us, have nothing but the clothes they’re wearing.

  Before all the space along the wall is taken, Papá pulls us into a corner. He puts Pilar against the wall, with his body and mine between her and the rest of the men.

  A prisoner goes around to everyone planning to sleep on the ground and collects a boliviano from each one. Papá digs in his pocket and hands it over, like he’s not even surprised that we have to pay to sleep on the concrete. How much more money does he have? And what happens if he runs out? What more can they do to us?

  • • •

  Soon, the day sounds of the prison fade and the night sounds take over: snores, bodies shifting on the ground, insects rubbing their serrated wings together.

  I lie on my back in between Pilar and Papá, our shoulders staggered so the three of us fit in the tight space. My eyelids become heavy, but they don’t close. They don’t even blink as the sky turns from blue to gray to suffocating black.

  October 9

  In the morning, we peel ourselves off the concrete and dust the worst of the dirt from our clothes. My eyelids are like sandpaper, and my mouth is gritty, as if I rolled in the stuff all night long. I can’t turn my head to the side without the muscles in my neck and shoulders locking up.

  The front gate to the prison opens with a groan, and I jump to my feet. Papá catches my wrist. “We will figure this out, Francisco.”

  “She’s there. She has to be.”

  “Okay.” It’s obvious he’s just saying that. He doesn’t believe it. “But if she isn’t, you can’t stay in our house. The rent is due in a couple of days, and if we don’t pay, someone else will move in. I don’t want you there when the landlord comes.”

  He releases my hand. “I can start work Monday in the wood shop. You and Pilar will go to school, just like always. I’ll save up for rent and get us a cell as soon as I can.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I mumble and start to walk toward the gate. Pilar runs after me.

  “I want to come with you.”

  “No way.”

  “She’s my mother too!”

  I can hear it in her voice—everything that’s churning inside me, ready to spill over. But I can’t. I can’t deal with her heartbreak and mine too. “You’ll only get in the way. Stay here with Papá.”

  • • •

  I retrace yesterday’s steps back to the bus stop. On board, I wrap an arm around the metal bar and shove both hands in my pockets to keep myself upright. Mothers with their hands full and shuffling abuelos smile at me as if I’m doing some great chivalrous thing, not taking a seat.

  But I’m not trying to be polite. My body is a skeleton, clattering around with nothing to hold it together. If I sit down, I might not get back up again. If I don’t keep moving, I might tumble to the ground, just a pile of bones.

  I ride the bus home, if I can call it that anymore.

  I don’t even remember getting off and walking three streets over to the house. One minute I’m on the bus, and the next I’m standing in the shade of our scraggly jacaranda tree, my fingers curled through the bars of the iron gate.

  I want to know if she’s really gone—I have to know. But I don’t go right in. If I can live a few more seconds with maybe, I will.

  I take a breath, or three, then I lift the latch, push through, and walk across the stones to the front of the house. I turn the handle and the door to the kitchen swings wide. The cupboards are bare and hanging open. The lace that used to cover the kitchen table is gone, and a sun-bleached web patterns the wood where it used to lie.

  The bed and dresser are still there in my parents’ bedroom, but the life is gone from the place. Everything that was them is gone. I walk down the hall and into the room I shared with Pilar. Before last night, I had no idea how fortunate we were to have a house with walls between us and the rest of the city. And a bedroom just for Pilar and me to share? A palace.

  In the living room,
three boxes wait on the carpet. Mamá’s handwriting scrawls across the cardboard: Papá, Pilar, Francisco. One for each of us. I lift the lid off mine. Soap. A comb. Clothes. A towel. Some books for school. The chu’lo Papá knitted for me when I was little and a leaning stack of the poems he’s written for me over the years.

  There is nothing from Mamá. No note. No explanation.

  It’s like a tackle from behind that you don’t see coming, that sends you crashing to the ground and knocks the breath from your lungs. And you somehow get up onto your hands and knees, and you gasp and you gasp and you gasp, but it doesn’t seem like any air will make it past your throat ever again.

  I drift into the kitchen. She probably went to her parents’ house in La Paz, to the grandparents I’ve never met, who don’t approve of her indio husband and the children they had together.

  I could go after her. I could make her come back. But the thought sweeps out of my head just as quickly. She doesn’t want us. So what’s the point?

  Besides, there must be a thousand Vargases in La Paz. It’s no good. I kick the cupboard below the sink shut. It bangs against the wood frame and flies back open. So I kick it again. And again. And again. And again. The sound splits the air in the kitchen, and even after the house has gone silent, the noise echoes against my eardrums.

  Breathing hard and limping a little, I lean down and close the cupboard door with my fingertips. It hangs off the hinge, a split tearing through the wood grain.

  Just outside the door, I notice a wheelbarrow propped against the side of the house. Mamá knew I wouldn’t be able to carry all this back to the prison without help. A laugh scrapes past my throat. She thought of everything. Everything she needed to clear the way so her conscience would let her leave us behind.

  I stack the boxes on the wheelbarrow and push it outside. Where am I supposed to put all this? Like Papá said, if we don’t make the payments, someone else will move into this house and then all our things will be thrown into the fire pit. We don’t have a cell at the prison, so it’s no use lugging the stuff there.

  I close the door behind me. It isn’t our house anymore. I’m not sure why I bother. But something won’t let me leave the door open, let dust and litter and bugs claim it so quickly.

  I push the wheelbarrow over the ruts in the dirt road, a few blocks down, to Reynaldo’s. I ring the bell, and his mother answers. When she sees me at the gate, her hands start flapping like wet laundry in the wind—slapping against her cheeks, touching the rosary around her neck, and patting my shoulders. I set the wheelbarrow down with a clunk and follow her into the house.

  Yeah, everybody’s heard about it. Everybody’s so sorry.

  She walks with me down the hall to Reynaldo’s room. He’s lucky—he got his own bedroom after his older brothers moved out.

  I knock and let myself in. Reynaldo stuffs a small bag into the closet and spins to face me.

  “Oh, Francisco, it’s you,” he says, and he slumps down onto his bed in the corner of the room. “I went to your house when I heard, but it was empty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re at San Sebastián now.” It isn’t a question.

  I nod.

  “I’m sorry, man. I asked Mamá if you could stay with us for a while, but you know how it is—nobody wants to give the police a reason to connect them with a drug arrest.”

  “It’s okay.” I mean, it’s not, but what else am I going to say? “Can you keep some boxes of our stuff here until I can come back for them?”

  “Sure.” Reynaldo jumps up and follows me outside. He carries the boxes inside while I prop the wheelbarrow against the side of the house.

  Back in his room, Reynaldo shifts the boxes into a neat stack. “I have to go.” I don’t want to stick around. I don’t want to talk. “I’ll come back for that stuff as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you at school?”

  “I guess. Yeah.”

  • • •

  I probably can’t even afford return bus fare, so I walk the whole way back to the prison. I don’t hurry. I’m not ready to be back there. Not yet.

  So I walk slowly, and keep my eyes on the sky. The clouds are these shifty threads pulled apart by high winds that can’t decide which way to go. I make at least a half dozen wrong turns. I’m barely looking where I’m going.

  I pass a row of cholitas sitting in a line against the concrete wall, hiding from the sun in a slant of shade cast by the high roof of a government building. Their legs stretch straight out from their bright, tiered skirts. The soles of their feet are black from the grit of the city.

  My feet just stop moving. I lean into the concrete and slide down beside the women. They all look at me, and the one closest to where I’m sitting reaches out and pats my hand. She says something in Quechua, and I don’t even bother telling her I don’t understand. I just sit there. My eyelids peel back and the world goes fuzzy at the edges.

  After seventeen years of raising her son, my mother just takes off one day. I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s true. My mother is gone.

  The carved wooden doors leading into the prison are wide open, and there’s no line to get in, so I go straight up to the guard in the green jacket sitting behind a white plastic table. I didn’t see this one yesterday.

  “Name?” the guard asks.

  “Francisco Quispe Vargas.”

  “Sign here.”

  I do, and he watches me the whole time. What—does he think I’m sneaking drugs in here or something? I’m not that stupid.

  He waves me past, but I can feel his eyes on my back the whole way through the courtyard. I can’t get used to having guards with guns around all the time, just looking for a reason to bust me. It’s got me constantly looking over my shoulder, like I’m being hunted or something.

  • • •

  When I come back through the prison gate, Papá and Pilar are waiting for me. Pilar’s got this look on her face that’s angry and hurt and . . . I shake my head, and there it goes—any hope she was hanging on to, gone.

  I sit beside my father and sister on the concrete and watch the prisoners milling around the courtyard.

  I guess this is home now.

  The prisoners are dirty. No matter what they were in their other lives or who they were before, they are all the same now. Papá was always meticulous about his looks. Combed hair. Trimmed and cleaned fingernails. Pressed pants. He always said, Dress like the man you know yourself to be, not what the world thinks you are.

  Two days in here, and he is as filthy as the rest of them.

  I guess I am too.

  I go to the bathrooms to wash up before dinner. Bad idea. Raw sewage pours out of the faucet and all over my hands. I can’t stop myself—I double over and throw up. My nose runs and my eyes sting from the bile, and dammit—we can’t afford to waste food like that now. I wipe my hands off on a towel but the stink of somebody else’s shit won’t leave me.

  • • •

  Papá, Pilar, and I sit in a corner of the courtyard. The government gives prisoners a few bolivianos to buy food each day. They don’t give Papá any extra money for Pilar and me, just a glass of milk and slice of bread for each of us in the morning. But at night? If we eat, my sister and I are taking the food right out of his mouth. Maybe that’s why all the prison kids look hungry all the time.

  We’ve been given a hot plate that plugs into the wall so we can heat potatoes or boil water for coffee in the morning. Or, at least, we could if we had a pot.

  So instead, Papá buys a bowl of soup from the communal vat. Pilar draws on the ground with a stick. Her cheeks are streaked with tears that dried up hours ago. Papá’s hand rests in the part between her long black braids. They’re lumpy and crooked. Neither of us really knows what we’re doing weaving together sections of her slippery hair.

  I’ve been sli
t down the middle and gutted because my mother left, and I’m practically an adult. What about my sister? She’s only eight.

  Who’s going to be her mother now?

  October 10

  Papá and I used to argue every Sunday.

  Some families went to Mass. Some watched the fútbol games. We argued.

  “Francisco, my son, you are not applying yourself.”

  Every Sunday, the same thing. My weekly homily.

  “Your grandfather worked in the mines his entire life. When he came home at night, the pores of his face were filled with soot.”

  I would just roll my eyes. I’m good at that.

  “His lungs, Francisco, were full of tiny bits of stone. He never, in the whole of my memory, drew in a full breath of air.”

  “Look, Papá, I’m sorry for him. But what does that have to do with me?”

  A sigh. “I came to Cochabamba for the dream of you. I left the Altiplano and our ancestral way of life so that the children I would one day have could know better than a father dying a little bit every day.”

  “You’ve already done that—we’re here. We’re good. Why do I need another year of school, Papá? I can read. I can write. Reynaldo and I have a plan—our shop is going to be great. You’ll see.”

  And on, and on, and on. Every Sunday, the same thing.

  Except this one.

  Today, Papá pulls me aside and says, “I paid a courier to take a letter to the post office; I wrote to your grandparents on the Altiplano. To their neighbors, actually, who can read and write. When they answer, I want you to take Pilar and go to live with them.”

  My head snaps up. No. No way am I living up there. “Papá, I don’t know how to speak Aymara. I won’t even be able to talk to them.”

  “You are a smart boy. You’ll figure it out.”

  “There’s no running water at their house. There’s no electricity. There’s nothing but rocks and llamas and a bunch of poor people.”