All evening, the same tired argument has buzzed back and forth between Papá and me like a fly you can’t swat.
“Look,” I whisper, “I get it. It’s not safe here. But if we had a cell, it would be better.”
Papá rubs his eyes. “Francisco—”
“Give me a week. If we aren’t in a cell with a lock on the door by the weekend, I’ll take Pilar to Abuela and Abuelo, whether they’re ready for her or not.”
My father sighs. But he doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t argue anymore.
October 13
On the way to school, Pilar’s head hangs so low I can’t see any part of her face.
I bump our clasped hands against her shoulder. “What?”
She shakes her head.
“What is it?”
Pilar chews on the side of her lip. “Do you think Mamá misses us?”
Shit. I should have known this was coming.
“Probably. Yeah.”
“Then why doesn’t she come back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s afraid she can’t, now that she’s done this. Maybe she thinks we’ll never forgive her.”
“I could,” Pilar says quietly.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t.”
Pilar looks up at me finally, and her eyes are her whole face, round and brimming and so sad. “I miss her, Francisco.”
I don’t know what to do. I squeeze her hand, but she just starts crying. Okay. Honesty, then. “I miss her too, Pilar. And I hate that more than I hate her.”
Pilar grabs my arm with her other hand and rests the side of her face against my forearm. We walk that way, her leaning against me, all the way to school.
I’ve always been strong. I’ve always been fast. And even if I’m not tall like the rest of the guys, no one ever calls me little. But that’s how I feel right now. Like a puny skin-and-bones weakling with all the blood and juice and all that was me seeping out onto the concrete.
Profesor Perez is talking about the War of the Pacific, how when our country lost its sea coast, we became isolated from the rest of the world. But that’s ancient history, right? What’s the point in getting all upset about something that happened a hundred years ago? It’s the kind of thing me and my ex-friends would roll our eyes and laugh about between classes, if I were still talking to them, that is.
He segues into border disputes and the current state of diplomatic relations between Bolivia and Chile, and I stop even trying to listen. I don’t need to know this stuff to open a fútbol shop. And nothing he has to say will fix the disaster that is my life now.
I kick the desk in front of me, and everyone turns around to stare. I shrink down in my seat and cover my eyes with a hand.
Mamá had a temper too. She always said I was too much like her for my own good. But what does it matter what she said? She gave up her chance to say anything to me. She didn’t stick around long enough to get a say.
I go outside between classes to get away from the crowd. I’m tired of pretending I don’t notice my ex-friends ignoring me.
My back is to the door, and my face is tilted up to catch the sun where it floats, alone, in the middle of the sky. For a second, I could be anyone, anywhere. Just me and the wide-open sky.
Behind me, feet scuff against gravel, and before my mind registers what’s happening, I get two quick jabs in the side. My eyes fly open, and my lungs seize. Whoever it is has a ring on.
I shouldn’t have let my guard down. The guys go for my back and my ribs and my gut. They don’t say why. They don’t have to. I’m a prison kid now. I’m just trash to them.
My ribs are on fire, and my stomach has caved in on itself. But a fight has been coiling inside me tighter and tighter all week, just waiting for a reason to bust out—I’m almost glad they came at me now, when no teachers are around, and no one’s here to stop us.
It’s three on one, so anything goes. I aim for the nose and the jaw and the crotch and the knees, and I’m kicking and punching, and everything hurts. I’m slamming my fist into the meat of their faces and darting around like a bloodsucking mosquito so they can’t pin my arms behind me. Watching the spit fly and their eyes go wide is like blood and bone and breath and life. They pummel me, and I beat the shit out of them, and for the first time since Papá was put in prison, I feel alive.
It’s never worth it. The rush of the fight is gone the minute the adults pull you apart, and all you feel is empty.
For a few moments, I was alive. The prison, Papá, Pilar, Mamá—it was all gone. And then, as soon as the fight is over, everything goes flat, and the hurt on the inside is back. Only now, everything on the outside hurts too.
The worst thing, though, is knowing Papá will look at me with those eyes—so disappointed—like, how could this be my son? This violent, thinks-with-his-fists animal?
Why? he’ll ask.
And I’ll just shrug, because how can I tell him maybe this is all I’ll ever be?
Papá doesn’t want us hanging around in the prison while he’s working and can’t look after us. That’s fine with me—I don’t want to be in that place if I don’t have to. But I still haven’t figured out what to do with the hours after school and before the prison gate closes.
“Maybe I should take you to that day care place,” I say to Pilar as we walk slowly along the sidewalk, me trying to hide my limp. “At least you could sleep—”
“No!”
I hold my hands up—ow. Beneath my shirt, my stomach is covered in blotchy purple and red bruises. I tuck my hands back into my pockets. “Okay, okay. I’ll think of something.”
Pilar takes my hand, but gently, so maybe I’m not hiding the fact that I got into a fight as well as I thought I was. We buy a couple of salteñas for lunch, and we eat slowly, to make them last and to trick our bellies into feeling full. We follow a pack of kids without uniforms—dropouts, street kids, walking like they know where they’re going. They veer around a corner and under a low, crumbling arch, into an open courtyard. Dozens of kids sit on blankets in little shacks made of corrugated tin or around cookstoves on bare stone. It’s like a little broken city filled with kids.
I don’t know what this place is, but the hair rises at the back of my neck and I hustle Pilar away. We go to the cancha, even though staring at the stalls full of food we can’t afford to buy makes my mouth water and an angry gnawing begin in my gut.
We walk past vendors displaying pyramids of ripe fruit or handmade llama wool sweaters or slaughtered animals hanging from the ceiling. Around the edges of the cancha, cholitas with tiered skirts, twin braids, and little hats sell food and handcrafts. Some of them carry babies in aguayo slings, while others heft cages of squawking hens or push wheelbarrows full of bananas.
There are always a few tourists hanging around the artisans’ booths or taking pictures with cameras that cost more than my parents make—or, I guess, made—in a year. Their pale skin and tall frames stick out like flagpoles above the work-bent backs of the smaller, darker-skinned people all around them.
The cancha is every bit as crowded as the prison, and just as loud. But it doesn’t have that cloud of hopelessness that hangs over San Sebastián. And as long as we keep moving, nobody bothers us.
That’s about the best we can hope for now.
When we get back to the prison, Papá is waiting, and Pilar runs into his open arms. When I follow a few steps behind, still limping a little, Papá’s head ticks to the side, and a long, disappointed sigh blows through his lips.
“It wasn’t my fault, Papá.”
His eyes fall closed, like it’s too much to bear. Like this is going to be the thing that breaks him. Not prison, or his wife leaving. Me.
“They jumped me at school, while the teachers were inside. You have to believe me.”
He nods, like he was expecting me to say something like that. While his eyes are still close
d, other prisoners look me up and down as they pass. Some of them seem pained, like Papá, while others give me this look that’s—I don’t know—sizing me up.
I don’t want respect from them, the prisoners who make a living running drugs. Or the ones with shifty eyes who know they’ve earned their place here, who know the outside world isn’t anywhere they deserve to be. When I look at them, I understand why Papá would give up all he ever cared about just to get us out of this place.
October 14
For our next poetry lesson, Profesora Ortiz talks about cacophony and euphony and the soul of a word hiding in the sounds it makes leaving your lips. And, yeah, I roll my eyes with everybody else, but maybe living in the prison is messing with me—cracking open something I sealed shut a long time ago, because when the room falls into a silence thick with unwritten words, this time I find a few of my own.
Papá is the poet in the family
not me, not anymore.
It’s like he’s dreaming
the whole time he’s awake.
When I was young,
we traded poems like kisses
on the cheek.
It’s maybe half a poem. Is half a poem enough? I flick my pencil between my thumb and forefinger like the blades on a helicopter. Papá used to say poetry was like breathing, that each moment has its own cadence, and its own weight. Some moments are for little gasping breaths, and others for deep, gulping ones. He said the mountains breathe and the sky breathes and the ground beneath us breathes.
Okay. I look around the room, and everyone is writing, even the always-scowling girl at the back who doesn’t usually bother with schoolwork.
Poetry is like breathing. Right.
I don’t think like that anymore.
But some days I almost pick up a pen
to tell Papá the things I can’t say out loud.
Breathe.
The night before the night
he didn’t come home
I had all these things
I wanted to tell him—
but I didn’t.
It’s harder now.
I don’t know how to be that soft anymore.
I don’t think
I have any of those kinds of words left.
On a hill overlooking the city, there’s this massive white statue—the tallest Cristo in the world. Usually, the only people on the wide stone steps leading up are tourists and penitents, but today Pilar and I go too, just to have something to do after school. To keep the prison at a little bit of a distance.
We don’t talk on the way up. The rasping feeling in my lungs, and the burning in my quads is better than the empty ache under my ribs. It shuts up my mind, so at least for the climb, I can almost forget how sad Pilar is all the time now. I can almost forget about Mamá leaving and Papá stuck in San Sebastián, how there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about any of it.
Halfway up, Pilar misses a step and bangs her shin.
“Here, let me carry that for you.” I lift her backpack onto my shoulders. Pilar rubs the spots where the straps dug in, where her white uniform is damp with sweat.
It doesn’t come easy to me—thinking about her and what she needs. It’s not something I ever did before. I never had to. She was just my little sister, always in the way, always in my space. She had my parents to take care of her. It wasn’t all up to me.
“You okay?”
She nods.
“We’re going to get through this, Pilar. I don’t know how, but we will.”
She doesn’t look up; she just keeps climbing the rocky steps. She probably doesn’t believe me. I don’t know why she would.
The higher we climb, the more the air below us grows hazy, and the sky sort of glows. When we get to the top, we don’t bother with the statue that towers over us. Instead, we sit on a low stone wall and share his view of the city. Everything below seems tiny—just a mess of orange roofs and crisscross roads.
You can’t tell the prison from the other thousands of buildings. Everything and everyone looks the same. Free or not, poor or not, from up here, everybody looks the same.
After a few hours, we head back down to the city. We take our time so Pilar doesn’t fall again, and because it all seems a little better from a distance. I squeeze Pilar’s hand and get a half smile in return.
“I’m going to get Papá’s taxi back,” I say. “I’m going to figure this out.”
And if the look I get isn’t full of confidence, I guess I deserve that. I haven’t been the best brother in the world. I haven’t been dependable or even really all that nice to her over the years. But it’s going to be different now. Everything is going to be different.
• • •
When we get back to the prison, I stop at the guard station between the wooden door to the outside and the gate leading in. They know my face by now—they let me come and go as I want, when the gate’s unlocked, that is. So as we approach, the guard opens the gate with a warning.
“You better be quick. We’re locking up in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir. I just have one question.”
The guard raises an eyebrow and waits.
“My father’s taxi was confiscated when he was arrested, and I need to get it back. Can you help me find it?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because you’re a policeman.”
“Yeah, but I’m assigned here. I’m a police guard—I’m not involved in auto arrests. You need the Tránsito. They’re the ones who patrol the highways.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll ask there tomorrow.” I pull Pilar through the gate with me.
“It’s not going to do any good. Property seized under the 1008 is never given back. That taxi’s gone.”
“What do you mean?”
The guard stares at me through the bars. “Ignorant, stupid indios,” he says to the air as much as to me.
I take a step toward him, but then I stop myself. I shake out my hands.
“You need to back up,” the guard says. “We’re locking up for the night.”
Before he shuts the gate, a figure pushes past us. I don’t get a good look at his face, but there’s something about the way he walks or the hunch of his shoulders that seems familiar. He quickly crosses the courtyard and disappears into a dark hallway, and a few seconds later, reappears on the balcony, unlocks a cell door and steps through.
Pilar runs to where Papá waits, and I relax a little, knowing there are two of us to look after her for the rest of the night.
Instead of sitting in a corner of the courtyard to wait for roll call like we usually do, Papá leads us up the back stair and onto the balcony. With his arm around Pilar, he takes the steps slowly. He asks her about school and where we spent our afternoon, and did we get something to eat? Pilar answers in shrugs and one-word replies, her head pressed against Papá’s side.
Papá stops in front of a narrow door. “The money came earlier today for your mother’s last paycheck,” he says. “It was enough to rent this cell for a few months.”
He unlocks the door and steps back. Pilar walks through the door frame—it’s only big enough for one of us to go in at a time. Papá stops me from following her with a hand on my arm. His voice is low, and pleading. “Just because we have a cell, that doesn’t mean I want you to stay here longer than absolutely necessary. It doesn’t mean prison is a good place for you to live.”
“Papá, we’re safer than we were yesterday. That’s enough for now, no?”
“And what about your sister?”
I step into the cramped space. The cell is so small that a single dingy mattress for the three of us to share takes up the whole width of the room. The walls are chipped, and there’s a space in the corner where someday we might be able to fit a stool, or a bookshelf or something. If we can afford it. There’s a win
dow near the ceiling, with bars, of course. But we can see a little rectangle of sky.
What really matters, though, is there’s a door with a lock on it. Inside the cell, I feel my spine straightening. We shut the door and lock it, and we know Pilar will be safe in here.
Tonight we’ll all be safe.
October 15
In the morning, I drop Pilar at school and walk all the way across town to Reynaldo’s to pick up the boxes. I should be at school too, but we can’t wait until the weekend for the towels and the soap and the change of clothes in the boxes Mamá packed. Not when Pilar’s teacher is all over her. Not when I know how bad Papá needs just a little something good right now.
Reynaldo’s mother lets me in, and she doesn’t try to talk this time. The wheelbarrow is still outside, and the stack of boxes is just where I left it.
I carry the boxes down the hall and out the door as quickly as I can, but not so fast I don’t see the kitchen with a stocked refrigerator or the bowl of eggs and a dish of softened butter on the counter. The bathroom with a door for privacy. The living room with family pictures beside the sofa. All the reminders of what a home is supposed to be like.
I let myself out.
I’m already dirty—I haven’t showered in a few days—and I’ll be completely disgusting by the end of this. It’s one thing to walk from the prison to our old neighborhood, and it’s another to push a heavy wheelbarrow all the way back. The bigger roads have sidewalks but the side roads don’t, and the wheel bumps all over the cobblestones and jolts into ruts. The dust and grit from the city cakes in the creases of my eyelids and elbows and knees.
The hills that have always been there, all around, seem scornful now, and the walls around every building seem a little higher, like it’s me they’re keeping out. Since when don’t I belong in the neighborhood I grew up in?
I’m dripping with sweat and curses by the time I make it back to the prison. I carry the boxes up the stairs and stack them in the empty corner of our cell. There’s no room for the wheelbarrow, so I take it to the cancha where I haggle with a thick-waisted cholita for a few extra bolivianos. I pocket the money and head to Pilar’s school.
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