by Cyn Vargas
“Let’s proceed.”
MYRNA’S DAD
My younger cousin Myrna came out of the womb asking questions. Why does a dog bark? Why is the sun hot? Where is my daddy?
I was four years older than her, so I could tell her why dogs barked or why the sun was hot, but I had no answer to where her dad was. Tia Concha never spoke about him.
Once while Tia Concha was driving us to church, a five-year-old Myrna muttered, “Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
From the backseat I could see one of Tia Concha’s hands grip the wheel tighter, and the big old car jerked a little.
“He’s a clown with the Venezuelan circus. Hey, how about some ice cream before mass?”
This was the first I heard there was an actual clown in the family. I guess it made sense, since we never saw him. Myrna giggled, clapped her hands then said she wanted vanilla.
After that, Myrna started telling everyone that her dad was a clown. She’d hit herself on the nose and make a high-pitched sound. She even asked for big red shoes for Christmas. She had super curly hair that looked like our neighbor’s poodle, and both her front teeth had fallen out. She’d skip around in a rainbow wig that was so big it dwarfed her face. The plop-plop of Myrna’s oversized plastic shoes drove my Tia Concha crazy. I could tell by the way her shoulders scrunched up like she was about to sneeze, but she never did tell Myrna to take them off.
At seven, when Myrna and Tia Concha moved in with my parents and me, she walked up to my dad, who was very focused on his lunch and said, “Tio Ernesto. Do you know where my daddy is?” As he choked on his tostada, my mom said, “Myrna, want Sonia’s doll?” and they gave her my favorite doll that cried, drank milk, and burped.
I found this out later when Tia Concha and I got home from the market. I went to my room and there on my bed, on my pillow, was nothing.
“Mama, where’s Gertrude?” I asked, entering the kitchen where she was at the sink washing dishes.
“I gave it to Myrna. You’re much too old for dolls, mija,” she said, not looking at me.
“I’m eleven, Mom. You still have the same doll from when you were a kid sitting on your dresser.”
“Go do your homework.”
I heard Myrna ask again about her dad, and Tia Concha said, “No, he’s not with the circus anymore. Now, he’s an astronaut with the Venezuelan version of NASA. They don’t have good phone reception up in space.”
“What?” I said. I had never heard about Venezuelans in space. In science class we were learning about the different countries that had space programs, and Venezuela was not on the list. I was going to ask about it but Mom coughed, and when our eyes met I saw the look she gave Dad when he had one too many drinks with the compadres. It was the look where her eyes lowered and her lips tried to touch her nose. I decided to keep quiet.
That night and for a few weeks following, Myrna drew pictures of jagged stars and crooked planets on paper, on napkins, and one time on my forehead with an orange highlighter when I had fallen asleep on the couch. Pluto was right above my left eye. As I scrubbed my forehead hard with a wet towel, I told Myrna there was no way her dad was in space. She started to cry, and Mom yanked me into the kitchen.
“Sonia, you don’t say anything about her father, you understand? You let poor Myrna have her dreams.” She told me never to bring it up again, and sent me to my room.
When Myrna was nine, I caught her crying in the hallway in front of her classroom as my eighth grade class made our way to the gym.
“What’s wrong?”
She thrust a paper flyer at me. Daddy/Daughter Dance was printed at the top in some fancy, curly font.
“All the other girls’ dads are going,” she cried.
“When we get home, we’ll ask your mom to tell us where your dad is now, OK?”
She nodded and sniffed.
That night at dinner as we all ate frijoles again, I took the flier out of my pocket and opened it.
“Tia Concha,” I said as she finished slathering sour cream on her plate. “Myrna wants to go to this, so can you tell her where her dad is please?” Everyone stared at the flier.
“Sonia!” Mom cried, slamming her glass down and making the table shake. Dad dropped his fork, which hit the plate with a thump. Tia Concha exhaled so loudly I thought everything on the table was going to blow away, and Myrna’s frown was so low, I thought her face was going to droop into the arroz con gandules.
“It’s OK,” Tia Concha said, putting down her fork. “It’s time you know the truth, Myrna.”
Myrna and I leaned in so we could hear every word, though the table was really for a family of four and not five. (Most of the time plates touched and elbows collided.)
“You’re going to tell her everything?” Mom’s eyebrows jumped toward her scalp.
“Concha, do you really think this story is one for kids to hear?” Dad asked.
“Myrna deserves to finally, really know.”
It turned out Myrna’s dad was neither a Venezuelan clown nor a Venezuelan astronaut. He was a Venezuelan undercover agent. For the past nine years, almost all of Myrna’s life, he’d been disguised as a coca plant in the Amazon rainforest, trying to catch drug smugglers. He couldn’t contact anyone for fear of putting his family in danger.
When Tia Concha was finished, my parents both shook their heads. Myrna’s face was like a spotlight, bright and round.
“Wow, my dad is cool,” Myrna said before going to bed that night.
“That is cool,” I said. The coolest job my dad ever had was filling vending machines; sometimes he’d come home with expired Cheetos or M&Ms.
That night, I thought about Myrna’s dad hiding in some jungle, covered in green and brown paint to make him look like a plant. It didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t he able to send word home that he was all right? Had he really been on assignment for nine years? Even in the FBI shows I watched on TV, the characters never seemed to be gone for that long. It didn’t make sense. I figured next time it came up, I would ask.
A few months later, we all moved to a building over on Cicero Avenue where Tia Concha and Myrna had their own place on the first floor, my parents and I on the second. My grandma, who wanted to be near her two daughters and grandkids, moved into the basement.
Our new school was only two blocks away, next to a used car lot. There was a sign with a rabbit driving a Corvette on the sign, which made no sense to me because there were never any rabbits or Corvettes in the lot. Grandma started walking us to and from school. She usually gave Myrna and me a couple of bucks from the slim stack she kept folded in her bra so we could buy cookies that our parents didn’t want us to have from the lunchroom.
Once after school, I saw this tall, tan guy with curly hair wearing pants that were too short at the used car lot. He stood on the porch of the office, which was the size of a port-a-potty, holding a weathered sign that read Making your dreams come true for only $500 down. He smoked like he was trying to look cool, like one of those guys with black glossy hair and a matching mustache in the black-and-white movies Mom liked to watch. He was staring at Myrna as we walked past with our matching book bags and gym shoes—the dark-skinned old ladies at the flea market gave our moms a discount if they bought two or more of the same item. Myrna didn't notice, and we just kept walking.
One afternoon, I asked, “Grandma, why is that man looking at us?” He stood between two rows of beat-up rides, leaning against a station wagon with rusty wheel wells. He took a long drag of his cigarette and kept his eyes on Myrna.
Grandma turned and saw the man, then grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me forward. “Aye, Dios!” She rolled her eyes. “Home. Now.”
“But—“ I said, but she hushed me. Myrna was too busy singing to herself to notice anything.
When I was supposed to be asleep that night, I heard the adults talking in the kitchen. I tiptoed to my bedroom door and put my ear up to it.
“That’s enough. I�
�m going to bed,” Dad said.
“I knew it was him right away,” said Grandma.
“Out of all the neighborhoods,” Mom said.
“This isn’t good. It’s in a safe place, right?” Tia Concha asked, her voice worried. “Yes. You can check for yourself,” Mom said. I heard what sounded like pots and pans shuffling around.
“Do you want me to move it? I could put it in my bedroom,” Mom said.
“No. It’s fine. This way, I can look at them whenever I want when I’m over. Anyway, I better get back. I told Myrna I was getting some tortillas. Give me some tortillas,” Tia Concha said, and then I heard footsteps scatter, the old wooden floors squeaking.
Once everyone went to bed, I opened my bedroom door enough to slip through. I carried the flashlight I kept under the bed in my hand, but didn’t turn it on. I made my way to the kitchen in the dark, using the glowing green clock on the oven as my only light.
I opened up the cabinet door and very carefully took out the pots and pans without making a sound. Only when I turned on the flashlight did I see a shoebox all the way in the back. I took it out, put it on my lap, and took off the lid. Underneath some tiny baby shoes and a pink plastic rosary, I found two photographs wrapped in tissue.
The one on top was of Tia Concha. It was a close-up photo of her kissing a man on the cheek. She looked younger, her hair was much longer, and I could clearly see the mole on her face. The picture was gray, as if it had faded. The man wasn’t smiling. I couldn’t even see the slightest hint of his teeth. His hair was curly and his eyes were light, and his nose almost stuck out of the frame.
The other photograph was of the same man holding a baby in the crook of his arm, like he was holding a sack of potatoes. He wasn’t smiling in this one, either. Yo Amo Venezuela was written on his t-shirt, the baby covering the la with its chubby hand. They were in front of a White Castle drive-through. I held one photograph in each hand as the flashlight leaned on my legs.
The man in the pictures looked like the man at the car lot, only with less wrinkles and a smaller belly. He had a long nose and crazy curly hair that looked like Myrna’s. Her hair never agreed where to go, and her light eyes were bright green in the middle, the color of crab apples.
Why would Tia Concha want to hide these photos? Was that man really the guy at the car lot? Was the baby really Myrna?
I put the pictures back and crawled back into bed.
The next morning on the way to school, Myrna said she was going to do her geography report on Venezuela so that she could learn about the country where her father was. When we passed the car lot it was closed, but I still felt Grandma was hurrying, more of a waddle at her old age. School went slowly that day as I thought about finding out if that salesman was really Myrna’s dad.
Grandma picked us up after school and we went to Chino’s Candy Store. As we exited with our lollipops, Pop Rocks, and gum, I asked Grandma again, “Why does that guy from the lot look at Myrna every time we pass by?”
I thought she must have swallowed all her Pop Rocks at once because she started coughing really loud. She reached into her purse and handed a five to Myrna, who was too focused on getting to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop and hadn’t heard what I said. “Myrna, go get Grandma some chocolate, and you get more candy. Take your time.” She tapped Myrna on the elbow. Myrna smiled at me as though she had won something and went inside.
“Ay! Ay! Ay!” Grandma cried, and put both her hands on my shoulders. “You ask too many questions! He is no one.”
“Grandma, I saw the pictures.”
Her mouth gaped then she puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. “Look, your ma and Tia Concha are going to be mad. I’m telling you this because you’re old enough now. What are you, sixteen?”
“Thirteen.”
“Same thing. That car guy is Myrna’s dad.”
“Tia Concha said he was an agent in Venezuela.”
“Ay, that is bullshit!” I had only heard Grandma swear once before, when her Avon order didn’t arrive. “That’s her dad. He ain’t no Venezuelan agent. He a Venezuelan asshole.”
Myrna came out of the store, a red rope of licorice sticking out of her lips like a tongue.
Grandma lowered her voice as Myrna strolled over to us. “Don’t tell Myrna. Her dad never wanted her. Your Tia Concha was the other woman.”
Tia Concha was “the other woman?” I had seen the other woman in telenovellas, and they all seemed so evil, with their drawn-on eyebrows and their massive boobs pushing out of their shrunken fruit-colored dresses and their big hair. Tia Concha wasn’t like that. Why would she be with someone like him? You know, someone married?
Myrna handed me some blue cotton candy on a stick and handed a pack of Rollos to Grandma, who stuffed them in her purse. The day was very sunny and the cotton candy began to make my fingers sticky. We were coming up on the car lot. Grandma looked across the street, but there were these huge concrete barrels and construction guys with their orange hard hats everywhere. Grandma shot me a look and shook her head. She continued to walk forward.
“Grandma, do you know what Stephanie did in school today?” Myrna began telling her a story that involved vomit and gym shoes, but I stopped paying attention. Instead, I watched the pigeons as they hopped in front of us from place to place, eating crumbs off the sidewalk.
Then I saw him, the salesman, leaning against a yellow van with dark windows. He wore sunglasses and a cream-colored suit with what looked like food stains down the front.
Grandma saw him too and started hurrying again. She was so focused on getting past the lot that neither her nor Myrna, who kept on talking, noticed that I lagged behind. I stopped right in front of him and stared up. He was tall. I could see his nose was full of long hairs. I noticed a dull, scratched up, yellow ring on his left hand.
“Hey, I know,” I said, and he glanced down at me. His face twitched.
“What do you know, huh? That you’re annoying me, brat?” His voice was dry and rough.
“Only my dad gets to call me a brat,” I said. I stood very still and straight, like I was supposed to do in church. “I know you’re Myrna’s dad.”
“You know nothing,” he said. He dropped his cigarette and his hand shook as he put it in his pocket. Maybe because I saw one too many movies where people knew stuff they shouldn’t, I stared up those nostrils, at his quivering lip, at his enormous hazel eyes, and said, “Does your old lady know?” I said old lady like I’d heard on TV.
“Hijole!” Grandma yelled. She pulled at my arm.
“What’s wrong, Grandma?” Myrna asked.
Grandma just snarled at Myrna’s dad. He blinked and hurried away.
“Wait ‘til I talk to your parents,” Grandma said to me, and pinched my arm. She was breathing heavily. Myrna kept asking what I had said to the man. I gazed at her. She looked so much like him.
“Nothing,” I said. “You can have the rest of my candy.”
That night while Myrna slept, my parents sat me down in the kitchen.
“So you know what we know,” Mom began. She blew into the mug she held. Steam from the tea rose into the air.
“Now, listen. You should get in trouble for what you did, but you won’t, because you aren’t going to tell Myrna. Understand?” Dad said.
“Yes, I get it.”
“This whole thing with Concha and Pedro should’ve never happened in the first place,” Dad said, and then sent me to my room.
The next day after school, Grandma held my wrist the whole way home. When we passed the lot, the man was nowhere to be found. He was replaced with a lanky white man with hair as yellow as lemon drops. I never did see Myrna’s dad again, and Tia Concha never used the kitchen cabinet for her safe place again, either.
At thirteen, Myrna asked her mom about her dad again.
“I haven’t heard from him, mija, and I probably never will,” Tia Concha said. “He’s gone for good. I don’t want to ever talk a
bout this again.”
Myrna cried for weeks. Sometimes she’d cry alone in her room, but most times she cried in mine, sprawled out on my bed as I rubbed her back, or sitting at my desk, staring out the window as I pushed away the hair that stuck to her wet face.
Tia Concha told me once that she was grateful I kept what I knew a secret.
“I’m rather embarrassed by it all. I don’t want her to think bad about me. I love Myrna very much, and all he wanted was for me to get rid of her. That’s what he said, ‘Get rid of it.’ Every time I reached out to him, he called Myrna the worst things. He only saw her one time when she was a baby because I begged him. Then he told me to leave him alone. I thought it was better to make her think he wanted her than to tell her that he couldn’t care less about her. I know how that feels.”
On the day when Myrna turned eighteen, she and I were lounging in the backyard, the first warm sun of the year warming our skin.
“Sonia, do you know anything about my dad?”
I thought of telling her we should go get ice cream, or offering her those earrings of mine I knew she really liked. I thought of all the times her mother didn’t tell her the truth.
All the times my silence was like a lie.
Her eyes didn’t leave mine, her curly hair like how I remembered his.
I decided to tell her everything.
HOW WE GOT HERE
When I was little, Mom and Dad and I ate at Frank’s Pizzeria almost every Friday night, and then we’d go home to watch a movie at home before bed. After Dad’s car accident, we kept it up. He would have wanted us to. That first Friday without him, just after the fifth grade, Mom and I sat on the couch and watched Dad’s empty recliner instead of the TV, like we expected him to appear there or something.
The Friday before Mom’s 53rd birthday, I waited for her at Frank’s in a booth that faced a family laughing at something I couldn’t hear. I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. The man on the other line said, Your mother has been sexually assaulted. All I thought was: Get the hell out of here. Get to the hospital. Sexually assaulted is just a nice way of saying raped.