The Lucky Ones
Page 14
I don’t waste time; I head straight for the barbecue pit under the mango tree, just like my father described in his stories. The air is quiet and hot, filled with buzzing insects that circle curiously around my face. Part of me wants to freeze in the long grass, keep my head bowed low, the position my father taught us to keep us safe from enemies. (Not that you’ll ever meet any, he said, his clawed foot pushing my face even deeper into the dirt, crushing my whiskers. Our enemies are gone. Vanquished. There’s no one left now but us.) The thought of his claws against my face makes my heart pound even harder. It sounds like it’s saying go, go, go, so I keep moving, keep dragging myself forward. I go past it all, everything he described to us, every step of his journey: the empty concrete hole that was the swimming pool, the moss-covered fountains and angel statues. The swing set dotted with yellow butterfly eggs and misty with spiderwebs, the rotting wooden birdhouse and enormous rusting lion cage that still stinks faintly of rotten meat. I drag myself through the grass, past the dried-up pits of long-decayed mangoes, the field surrounded by a half-collapsed fence. It’s just like my father’s stories, the ones he told us in the dark, the only light coming from his trembling eyes. The outhouse with the collapsed door, the acacia tree covered in fungus. And soon enough it’s waiting up ahead. The garage.
The doors are still open, leaning against the wall, dotted with dozens of holes as though they’ve been pecked by a thousand birds. I take a deep breath as I duck inside. Even after all this time—it’s still here. Just like he described it. The crusty barrels and stained metal buckets. The black plastic tarps spread over the floor, where the men would spread the leaves. The swirling stains on the cement floor, left behind by the chemicals. Even their sickly smell is still heavy in the air, making my eyes water. It feels strange to walk around, ducking under the metal tables and navigating among the crumpled yellow gloves, like I’m moving through a picture that’s come to life, an image that previously existed only in my head.
Everything he talked about is here. Except for one thing. No leaves. Not a trace. Not even empty black bags, crumpled like shed skin. I hop around and sniff everywhere as hard as I can, but my nose has gone numb; the only smell is the chemicals, thick and burning. The fluttering in my chest has come back. My rib cage is vibrating, and all of a sudden I can’t help myself anymore, I can’t hold it back, I start jerking, and it takes all my strength not to start scratching away furiously, tearing each and every single hair out of my skull until I’m left clean and empty and smooth.
General. What happened to your ears?
It comes out of nowhere. A dry whisper, cracking like leaves. I turn around sharply, but all I see is trash, a metal hutch in the corner, dirty yellow gloves, piles of crumpled paper. Then the paper twitches, and that’s when I see the rabbit. He’s slumped on the floor, head leaning against a glass tube. His fur is white like mine, his eyes the same color as the Pastor’s, but instead of pools they’re more like holes in his sockets, as though his eyeballs were scraped out. As I crawl closer he begins bobbing his head from side to side in peculiarly slow circles, as though searching for something I can’t see. Over and over again, never stopping. It makes my stomach feel queasy just watching him, like I’m the one who’s getting dizzy instead of him.
His eyes widen when I sit next to him, and his head slows to a stop.
General, he says again, voice cracking. What did they do to you—
No, I say. I’m his son.
He stares at me, then presses his mouth against the end of the glass tube and inhales deeply. The end of the tube is filled with pea-colored rocks, some the size of tiny pebbles, others big solid chunks.
I came here, I manage to say, because I was looking for leaves.
They’re all gone. They’ve been gone for ages. All that’s left are the rocks.
He nods in the direction of the glass tube. He’s still bobbing his head from side to side, eyeballs jittering in their sockets, as though frenetically scanning the floor, searching every inch of it.
I think there might be some tiny rocks under your feet, he says, where you’re standing. Would you mind bringing them here?
He wraps his lips around the glass tube and presses a paw down on a black stick on the tube’s side. There’s a clicking sound, and then he begins to inhale steadily. The inside of the glass becomes smoky and unclear, like it’s filling with the vapor that used to rise from the swimming pool on hot days.
Here, General, he says when he’s done, his voice tight from the breath he’s holding. You can go next. Just like we used to.
Despite the tightness in my stomach I take a step closer. It would be so easy. I can see myself already, slumped beside him, our mouths taking turns on the tube.
Come on, he says. You remember, don’t you? The Men would bring in the Women, make them put their mouths on the dogs, and we would sit here and watch. They brought us the leaves and that was good, but then they brought us the pipe and rocks, and that was better. They’d watch us and laugh the same way they laughed at the Women and the dogs, but it didn’t matter. We didn’t care. We didn’t eat. We didn’t sleep. We didn’t need to. We didn’t need to do anything.
His tongue darts out, like he’s trying to lick the smoke as it drifts away.
But then you took us to the warren. I wanted nothing to do with it. Dragging bags? Like we were dogs with sticks? Unnatural. Sick. Just not something we do. So I came back here. I’ve been here ever since. But you—you were so scared—
The words fly out of me with spit: My father wasn’t scared. Come here. Say that again, and I’ll fight you.
Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not young anymore.
He exhales steadily, a thick cloud of smoke circling his head as though something inside the cage has caught fire. A sweet and musty smell fills the air. That’s when I see it, a creamy white liquid leaking between his legs. I’m about to open my mouth and ask if he’s all right when I realize that he’s ejaculated.
Maybe you can come back, I finally say, only because I can’t think of anything else. Maybe we can help you.
And your children, General? Who’s going to help them?
I don’t speak. Instead I take a step back, then another. He doesn’t say anything either, doesn’t even turn to look at me. The last I see of him is his head turning toward the glass pipe again, his lips wrapping around the end of it, and as I turn away I hear the clicking sound of the igniting flame. It sounds like a voice in my ears, and the question that it’s asking sounds like When? When did it get too late? At what point was there no going back?
When I exit the garage doors I have to stop and rest. I’m shaking hard. I can’t control where my eyes are going anymore. Following every glint of sunlight that shines off the jagged glass running along the walls, every brown leaf fluttering down into the empty pool. I curl up into a tight ball, paws folded over my ears, pressing them against my face. If I’m careful, my claws won’t get snagged in the jagged holes, won’t touch the patches of raw muscle, brush against exposed bone where I’ve scratched away the skin. When I close my eyes, it’s like I’m sprawled at my father’s feet all over again. Resting before the Platform, everyone’s bodies warm and snuggled against me. The images flicker through my head, crowding into my skull, squeezing in behind my eyes. Everything’s clear, a coherent story I can understand, like something I once heard in my childhood that made perfect sense. In my mind’s eye, we’re in the burrow together. All of us, nothing but rabbits as far as the eye can see, jammed in shoulder to shoulder. Even though I can’t turn my head to look, I know that the exits behind us are blocked, filled with layers of crumbling black earth, dirt-encrusted roots, tiny pebbles, glittering rocks. I somehow know that even if I were to scratch and dig until my claws fell off and my mouth filled with dirt, there would be no other way. The only way out is forward, and together that’s what we’re all doing, slowly but surely: squeezing ahead, moving steadily toward something in the distance that we can’t see but that we’re eventually g
oing to reach, whether we want to or not.
I can feel my heart beating in my chest, that insistent pounding. When I open my eyes, they’ll be there: the Children, faces crinkling as they smile, small hands reaching toward us, fingers wiggling. “Hey, little guy,” they’ll say. “How are you doing? You sweet little animal, darling little thing. Sweet little bunny.”
VALLE DEL CAUCA
You are worried about the bird thing but you don’t want to think about that right now, smoking the first of your secret birthday cigarettes. You’re outside the house by the giant concrete sink, laundry covering the surface—today it’s the daughter’s underwear, the wife’s scratchy lace bras, the husband’s tennis shirts with holes in the underarms. Delicate things, white things, things that deserve to be washed carefully by hand as opposed to being thrown into the American-imported washing machine, which will ruthlessly transform anything into a wilted gray smock if you’re not careful about sorting through every single item and removing the ones with even a hint of darkness. The sun’s only just coming up; everyone in the house is still asleep, though the husband’s alarm will be going off soon so that he can escape the Monday-morning traffic jam. He never needs breakfast prepared though; he’ll have a ham-and-cheese sandwich in the office, but as soon as you finish this cigarette you’ll have to head to the kitchen to begin making the coffee. Not yet, though. You still have some time.
You hold the cigarette between your thumb and index finger, like the men sitting on stools you used to see during your childhood. You inhale deeply, enjoy the brief sight of the flame glowing at the tip before tucking the stub under a triangle-shaped rock, where the stiff orange corpses of previous cigarettes are neatly lined up, buried away, hidden. You wash your hands with the thin sliver of blue soap that always leaves your skin terribly dry, the areas between your fingers red and cracking, but there’s nothing quite like it for getting rid of the nicotine stink from your fingertips. This way, you can be sure that nobody will notice.
The last thing you need to do before heading inside is to check on the bird thing, which should take less than two minutes, assuming there aren’t any problems (which there very rarely are). Five quick strides toward the lime tree is all it takes. The banana you nailed to the trunk is still there, black and slimy and already attracting shiny green flies. The peel has been tugged down near the top and a large chunk of the banana is missing. You crane your neck back but all you can see are the rowboat-shaped leaves and limes swaying like tiny green suns. You exhale slowly and take the single slice of orange out of your apron pocket (the rest of the orange sits in the bowl of fruit salad in the fridge, waiting patiently for the wife’s yogurt and granola). You leave it resting on top of the banana, so it now looks like the banana is wearing a tiny festive hat.
That should be enough for now—enough to keep it happy.
—
Men sitting on stools. Hairy men, dark men, men in sleeveless white shirts, legs sprawled lazily as they watched you run past in your bare feet toward the river. Nobody ever wore shoes; the roads in town were only ever made of sand or mud; you never got blisters and never got sick and never stayed out past eight o’clock because that’s when they would ride by on their motorcycles and your mother would tell you in a sharp voice to come inside, stop wandering around the yard like a lost chicken just asking to get its head chopped off and turned into soup. Your father is going to buy you a pair of red running shoes for Christmas, assuming the crop of yucca is good.
—
You’re placing the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice on top of the daughter’s Little Mermaid placemat when you hear a clattering sound in the kitchen. Make sure you swallow all the pulp, love, you say, hurrying back as fast as you can, not waiting to make sure she takes her multivitamin.
The bird thing has just left. You can tell even before you open the door. The pot has boiled over; the stovetop is covered with a strange white crust, the egg cracked open and cooked away into a frothy gray mist. You deal with that first, pouring the water into the sink and tossing what remains of the eggshell into the trash. You quickly clean the stovetop with a damp rag. Put on a new pot to boil; place a fresh egg on the counter. You take the bread out of the fridge along with the parsley leaves you’ve let wilt and go sad (you’ll have to hide them in a soup instead of using them for the salad like the wife requested for this week’s menu). You’ve long since removed the daughter’s lunch box; it now sits in the hallway beside her backpack and thermos—you’ll put in the tiny cup of Alpinito yogurt at the very last second, right before the bus arrives, to make sure it stays chilled long enough for her midmorning snack.
After closing the fridge, you lean against the door for a moment and take a deep breath. The handles press into your stomach in a way that makes you feel slightly sick, but there’s no sign of a headache yet, your mind is still clear, vision unblurry. And there’s no bird thing smell in the air either. No traces of sulfur. Just faint whiffs of orange peel and of scraps in the garbage from the wife’s fruit salad, bananas and apples and grapes.
When you finally bring out the toast and egg (soft-boiled but not watery), the daughter is slumped forward, her cheek resting on top of Sebastian the crab. The glass of orange juice is empty but the vitamin tablet is still there. I’m starving, she says as you place the plate beside her forehead. I’ve been sitting here forever.
You wipe your hands off on your apron, a few breadcrumbs falling to the floor that you instantly know will be difficult to sweep up later; you’ll have to use the tiny handheld broom instead of the big one. Well, you say, why didn’t you come to the kitchen and get it yourself?
She stares at you like you’ve said something incomprehensible—like you’re suddenly speaking a foreign language. And now it’s the nuns in primary school all over again, shortly after you muttered under your breath a Chocoan expression you learned from your grandfather, and the nun who always smelled like dead flowers took the lobe of your ear between two icy-cold fingers, twisted it sharply, and said, Only Spanish here.
(Somewhere deep within the garden—you can hear it—the bird thing is raising its scabby head and croaking out its bird-thing song.)
You pick up the daughter’s glass and study the streaky trail left behind by the pulp, a single seed on the bottom.
Good job, you say. I’ll strain it better next time.
The school bus honks and the daughter’s eyes widen.
Eat what you can, you say, rushing to the kitchen. When you return with the front door keys the daughter is gone, the toast missing a single bite, orange yolk hardening on the fork. You find her in the bedroom, tearing through the bookshelves, throwing stray papers and plastic ponies over her shoulder. My library book, I can’t find it, it’s due back today! You bring her the backpack so that she can check what you placed inside. No, not those, this one’s different, it has four children on the cover. Now I’m going to have to pay a fine. Sighing heavily, she follows you to the door.
You spot it before she does: a pile of stiff twigs scattered over the tiles. Dusty, thin twigs, the bark peeling away to reveal the pale flesh underneath, the kind of twigs dragged inside by something planning to build its nest—or already starting to. Darting forward, you throw yourself toward the door, dragging the daughter forward. Have a good day, you say, turning the key at the same time that you shove the twigs roughly out of the way with the side of your foot. She looks at you suspiciously, rubbing her arm, but then the school bus honks again. Thank you for breakfast, she says, rising onto her tiptoes and turning her cheek toward you for the usual kiss. It is only when she is clambering up the black rubber steps, the bus doors on the verge of wheezing shut, that you realize you have forgotten the yogurt.
—
That nun always smelled like dead flowers; the other one had terrible breath and never let you wear your tiger-tooth bracelet. But you could wear it on Saturdays, when you got to run to the riverside, slide down the bank, and go swimming or throw stones or try to catch tiny s
ilver fish with your bare hands, then feed them leftovers from lunch. Except when the bodies were floating in the water. Rumor was that men always floated faceup, women facedown. Sometimes there were vultures sitting on them and sometimes not. But if there were bodies, you would just go to the little stream instead and that was better. There the fish would eat rice straight from your hand, grains floating through the water like confetti thrown at a wedding.
—
The wife turns back and forth in front of the hallway mirror, yanking the black cardigan down over her belly (four months now and just starting to show) before slowly unbuttoning it. Leaning against the wall, the other sweaters draped over your arm, you ask about tonight’s dinner, if she wants you to include lentils or eggplant in the vegetarian lasagna. The wife smiles and touches your forearm with her hand, a kind touch, a light touch, her hand always so soft and white you can’t help but be reminded of the puffy bread rolls the husband sometimes brings home from the French bakery. Cook it like last time, she says. It was delicious. Her words produce a swelling inside your chest, a kind of rising heat, and you can’t help but smile and nod vigorously as she tells you she won’t be home for lunch today, she’ll be visiting cousins all morning—Roberto will be driving her, you remember him, the one with the overbite, just so you know he was asking about you the other day. You roll your eyes and run a finger across your throat, and she giggles like the daughter does when you find her during hide-and-seek. And then she has meetings with students all afternoon, but if you could have the table set for dinner by six, that would be lovely.
As she hands over the unbuttoned cardigan she pauses in a way that makes you instantly want another cigarette, a craving so fierce you press your fingers into your palms, as if to prevent your hand from automatically reaching toward your mouth. Do you need, the wife says, some more headache medicine?