This is a research paper. It’s not supposed to be emotional. But this isn’t just an essay I have to get done to finish school. This is my life I’m writing about. It’s my father’s life on this page.
The Tránsito officer said Papá needs a lawyer. Well, we can’t afford one. We can’t afford it because he had access to only a couple of years of school. So what—he’s stuck in prison forever? If he’d been the one with a chance to graduate secondary school, he would have made the most of it.
No matter how I perform the ablutions, the bead-by-bead recitations, it won’t ever be enough. I could climb the steps to the Cristo every day on my knees, and still I’d never be half the man my father is.
If Papá had a diploma, he would have gone to university, for sure. Maybe not for poetry—he had to pay the bills, after all—but he could have been a teacher, or an engineer, or maybe even a lawyer.
And it all comes together, like boulders dislodged in a rockslide tumbling to the ground. Someone at the university should know about the 1008, or how to get a lawyer, or how to help us.
It’s something, finally. Something I can do.
• • •
Profesor Perez stops me again, and I step out of the stream of students rushing for the door. The other students bump and press past me, jeering at my bad luck.
“Francisco, where’s Reynaldo? He hasn’t been at school all week.”
I shrug. “I don’t know, Profesor.”
“And what about you—have you thought about what I said?”
I shrug for a second time.
Profesor Perez starts muttering under his breath, and I take the chance to slip out the door.
I drag Pilar with me to Reynaldo’s after school. The university will have to wait until tomorrow, even if I have to cut class to get there.
I ring the bell at the gate, but nobody comes outside. Pilar sticks her head between the bars, and the steel rods dig into her collarbone. We’re just down the street from our old house, but she doesn’t mention it, so neither do I. I don’t want to know who lives there now, who dreams in my bed.
Whoever it is better know normal is no guarantee.
We wait for an hour or so—on the dirt in front of Reynaldo’s house is as good as any place to kill time. But nobody comes, so we start the long walk back to the prison.
We pass the market on the corner with ads covering the whole awning, where Rey and I would always stop in for a Coke, thirsty and sweaty after playing fútbol all afternoon. The electric poles that line the street string dozens of wires between them, and they drape shadows like tiered necklaces on the walls behind.
We pass the pharmacy where I’d have to run in the evenings to buy a roll of chalky pills after Papá put too much pepper in his soup. He did it every time, no matter how much Mamá scolded him, and every time, he paid for it.
I’ve done this before, walked through the streets that used to be ours and rounded haunted corners thick with memory, but Pilar hasn’t. She hasn’t even asked to go back since that first day after Mamá left, and I went home without her. Nothing I say now will make it any better. And I can tell in the way Pilar’s whole face seems to sag—weighed down by things a kid shouldn’t have to see, or try to understand—she’s haunted by the ghosts of our old life too.
The last time she was here, life was this whole other thing, with good days and not-so-good days. But even on the bad days, another good day was just a sleep or two away.
It’s the biggest thing prison has taken from me—from us: the idea that there’s something good waiting just around the corner.
The cars that whiz by us don’t care that Pilar’s tired, that her head has begun to droop and her shoes scuff against the concrete. A stray dog lopes back the way we came, his head low to the ground, sniffing.
I see a figure duck around the corner, and I think maybe it’s her—that girl from school. But what would I do if it was? She probably thinks I’m just another one of them.
We pass food carts made up of a tower of stacked crates and plastic coolers. Without meaning to, I turn my head away and hold my breath as we walk past. It’s not seeing the food that gets to me. It’s the smells.
They make me think of Mamá. They make me ask myself if things would have been different if I had even tried, just once, to make Mamá’s burden a little lighter. They make me miss her, dammit.
Mamá hated cooking, and she wasn’t very good at it. Her own mother had never cooked a day in her life. And I think Mamá always hated that after a long day at work she only had more work to do at home. So now, roasting meat smells like resentment, potatoes simmering in a stew of peppers and garlic are like missed opportunities, and chicken marrow broth is bitter as wasted dreams.
• • •
When we finally get back, I sit on the sun-warmed courtyard steps while Papá and Pilar buy some pork for tonight’s soup.
The prison is crumbling all around us. The cracking plaster and ancient bricks die a little more each day, and the rubble sifts down the walls to the courtyard floor. Pebbles. Chipped paint. Bits of brick crushed underfoot. Someday the whole place is going to come crashing down on top of us. I roll the grit beneath my shoe in rough circles, around and around and around.
I take Pilar by the hand, climb the stairs to the second floor, and lock us in our cell. I grab my notebook and lean into the corner. We used to have our own room, just the two of us, and Pilar was always in my business. Now, with nothing to divide the space and not even a shred of privacy, she gets it. She turns the other way and leaves me to my thoughts.
It takes a few stops and starts, but I get them down on the page.
All my life
I’ve been surrounded by walls.
Over my head
no matter how tall I grew,
topped with sharp wire
or shards of glass
so no one would ever think of climbing them.
At school, a wall around the grounds.
At home, a wall around the yard.
In town, a wall around every building.
I never thought twice about it
until I found myself inside of walls meant
to keep people in.
Not to keep us safe,
but to hold us
trapped inside this unsafe place.
Now all I want is to tear down
the walls I have leaned on
all my life.
They’re still there—these thoughts that have been banging around in my head like a fly trapped in a jar. But they’re quieter now.
Papá comes inside after the prisoner count. Shadows rim his eye sockets.
The mattress is our bed and our couch and our dinner table. The three of us sit in a row facing the last of the light that comes in through the open doorway. All evening, the ghosts of my old life have been hanging over my shoulders and whispering in my ears.
I keep stopping and starting the same dense article about educational systems in South America and getting nowhere. I give the rice one last stir and unplug the hot plate from the outlet that hangs from a wire sticking out of a hole in the ceiling. Pilar hands me the bowls one by one, and I spoon out our dinner.
“Have a seat, Papá,” I say as I stick a spoon in his bowl and give it to him. “Eat.”
I pass Pilar her bowl. “Well, are you going to tell him?”
Pilar sets her dinner aside and clasps her hands in front of her, scooting on her knees until she’s right next to Papá. “In December, before Francisco’s birthday on the seventh, he’s going to take me to live with Abuela and Abuelo.” Pilar lifts the spoon to her lips and blows. “But not before, Papá.”
Papá looks between the two of us and opens his mouth to speak, but Pilar raises a hand to stop him. “That’s the deal. We get to stay with you a while longer. And then I will go. I don’t want t
o, but I’ll do it for you.”
Pilar leans over and kisses Papá on the cheek. “I will write you a letter every day. And you will write me a poem every week.”
Papá smiles. “Okay, wawitay. We’ll make it work somehow until then.” He returns Pilar’s kiss and then he leans across her to grip my shoulder. He waits until I meet his eyes. “And you?”
“Someone has to stay in the city, to check on you, Papá.”
“I don’t want you throwing away your life for me, Francisco.”
My life? That’s over. Even if the things I wanted and the way things were before was even still possible, I couldn’t just go off and live my life while Papá is stuck in prison. I couldn’t do that.
Maybe I’m not as much like Mamá as I thought.
October 22
In the morning, after I drop off Pilar at school, I go straight to the university. After all those nights wishing I knew what to do, it’s like, now that my feet are actually moving in the direction of something that might make a difference, I can’t get there fast enough.
• • •
The campus is surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top, and I run halfway around the place before I find an entrance. I find the law building easily enough, but the only person there is a first-year student who barely knows more than me.
“Maybe try the library?” he says with a shrug.
So I head that way, though I don’t really know how a library will help get me a lawyer. I walk up to the clerk at the front desk. He’s probably going to laugh me out of the place, but what do I have to lose?
“Excuse me. I need help finding a lawyer.”
He nods. Maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous question after all. “The law books are right over there.”
I walk over to the stacks he pointed out, and I’m about to go back to the front desk and explain that no—I don’t need to read about the law, I need a lawyer to represent Papá. But then I notice the volumes are organized numerically.
I draw my finger along the spines: 500–510, 950–960, 1000–1010. I flip through the pages until I find the 1008, and the text of the law that put Papá in prison. I read the whole thing, along with some commentary at the end. I read it twice. Three times.
None of it makes any sense. Big words in long sentences that don’t actually say anything. Narco-trafficking. Recidivism. Crop eradication. Pretrial detention. I don’t know what any of it means, but I copy it all down, word for word.
That night, Papá, Pilar, and I sit in a circle on the mattress.
He says, “I stopped chewing coca when I moved down from the Altiplano as a young man. It was a way of ending one life and beginning another.”
Papá opens a plastic bag stuffed with dried coca leaves and dumps a pile on the blanket. “I think you know, coca is not a drug. It’s like coffee—a little stimulant, that’s all. You shouldn’t be afraid of it. It is not a crime to honor your culture, even if the law books disagree. In my parents’ community, coca is a sacred leaf. Chewing coca ties you to those around you and to Pachamama—the earth mother who sustains all life.
“When you meet your abuelos, they will present you with coca leaves. In doing this, they are offering you nothing less than admittance into their community, their ayllu.” He ruffles Pilar’s hair. “Of course, they probably won’t give you any, wawitay, since you’re so young.”
Pilar screws up her face. “That’s okay. I don’t really want to eat a bunch of leaves anyway.”
Papá laughs, and I lean in to whisper in my sister’s ear, “Lucky you.”
Papá pretends not to hear me. “Francisco, when you accept the coca leaves, you must make an offering in return. Like this.” He takes three leaves and pinches them between his fingers. “Then you blow over them and say a blessing. Here, you try it.”
This is the kind of thing all my ex-friends would scoff at, something that would make me less in their eyes. But screw them. They’re not my friends anymore anyway.
Besides, Papá is here like he hasn’t been here in days. So I listen, and I repeat the Aymara words over and over until I can do it right.
October 23
On Saturday, Papá brushes the sawdust from his clothes and makes us breakfast. He helps us with our homework like he used to, checking answers and talking us through the ones we missed.
His hands have become callused. His palms are rough when he pats the back of my hand. This place is leathering him.
I shower, comb my hair, and dress in the cleanest clothes I have. I wipe the scuffs from my shoes and tell Papá I’m going to visit a friend. It would be easier if I could run all the way there, but I make myself go slowly so I don’t work up a sweat.
When you’re begging rich people for favors, you want to look your best. That way, even if they kick you to the curb, you can leave with dignity.
Mamá was always too proud to ask for help, but I don’t see what else I can do. I walk up to the front door of a lawyer’s office down the street from the bank where she used to work.
A bell dings as I open the door and walk inside. The receptionist looks me up and down. She doesn’t smile.
“Yes?”
“I would like to meet with the lawyer, please.”
She purses her lips. “And how will you be paying for the initial consultation?”
I swallow, and I make myself meet her eyes. “I am strong. I’m a quick learner. I can work off any fees he charges.”
The receptionist inspects a manicured nail, then goes back to the paper in front of her. “Impossible. Come back when you can pay for the service you are requesting.”
“Please, Señora, I will do anything.”
She doesn’t even look up at me again. “Waste one more minute of my time, and I’ll call the police.”
I back out of the office. Pointless. Why did I even bother?
The night is hot. Too hot to talk. Too hot to move.
Sweat slicks Papá’s hair to his head and slides down his jawline. I watch while he soaks his hands in a bowl of water to coax the splinters from his skin.
I lie back on the mattress and stare at the ceiling, following the cracks in the plaster from floor to ceiling and back again. I stare so long my eyes blur, and the cracks seem to run with sweat, too.
October 24
Sunday afternoon, Pilar tapes a helicopter seed (only split open and missing its seed) to the wall. While Papá sleeps, I pull out my copy of the 1008 and read it again. What do I know about coca or cocaine or how laws work? Nothing.
So what makes me think I could possibly help?
But I keep reading, mostly to understand why the police can put someone in prison before they know for sure he’s guilty. I mean, I know life is rough out there. I know I have to keep my fists ready, because something or someone is always coming at me.
It just never occurred to me that it was the law that made it that way.
October 25
In writing class on Monday morning, I can’t seem to focus on anything. Besides, I’m not going to write a stupid love poem. I’m not going to go on and on about a flower petal, or sparkling sunlight or some shit. There’s nothing sparkling in my life right now. So I stop and I start again, only to drop my pencil for good without getting down a single word.
Everybody around me seems to be having no problem with Profesora Ortiz’s assignment. Pour anything you think and everything you feel onto the page. Like it’s so easy. I look around, and they’re doing it—shaping ideas into stanzas. I glance to the back row where the girl from the prison hunches over her paper.
She looks up, and I look away.
I don’t want to know what she thinks of me.
But I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t shake how I just stood there when she needed help.
When the last bell of the day rings, I wait for her, my hands clasped behind my back and my
weight shifting from one foot to the other. She bangs through the front doors, and I step in front of her.
Her cat eyes narrow to slits.
“I fell asleep in writing class.” This was a stupid idea. I should just forget it. “Can I copy your notes?”
“I don’t take notes.” She keeps walking.
I jog to catch up and stay a full stride to her right so I can jump out of the way if she swipes at me. “Come on, just tell me what I missed?”
There is no way she’ll go for this.
But after a moment, she starts talking about the lesson, and she doesn’t stop me from walking beside her. A block away from school, we pass those same guys on the corner. I can feel their eyes like smacks against the back of my head. I’m glad she’s the one talking, because my mouth is dry and my heart is banging against my chest like I just finished a full-field sprint.
They watch us walk past, and they don’t fall in behind. They don’t leer at her. They don’t jump me. A few streets down, she stops walking, stops talking, and slides her gaze to the empty sidewalk behind us.
She looks at me then, for the first time. Her eyes are dark and set into round cheeks, her hair a round black line around her face. Everything is round, except her mouth. It’s a flat line, turning down at the edges like she’s still deciding how to deal with me.
“I’m Soledad.”
I don’t know what she’s giving me here, but I feel it settle over my shoulders and warm the back of my neck.
“Francisco.”
“You live at San Sebastián.”
I nod.
The sun glances off her hair, like a ribbon of light sliding around her head whenever she moves. She wears her hair in braids and even ties yarn into the ends like a cholita. None of the other girls at school does that. Not one.
An Uninterrupted View of the Sky Page 9