He’s waving both hands in the air now, gesturing emptily. The stumps of his missing fingers look redder than ever. “You think I like this?” On the street, the music has been turned up even louder and the flimsy windows of their room are shuddering from Sean Paul’s thunderous raps. “You think I don’t want it to be quiet, like it is in the States? You think I don’t want the laws here to work?”
“They were laughing at me,” she says. “All of them. And you didn’t say anything. You didn’t even try.” Her hands are trembling. He stares at her. She heads to the bed and roughly snatches up the pillows, not leaving any for him, yanks the comforter up and gathers it in her pillow-filled arms. The laptop falls with a clatter onto the floor, but he doesn’t make a move to catch it.
She heads to the bathroom, doesn’t look back as she closes the door. She dozes on the floor, curled up on the tiles, waking up every hour or so. At four A.M. a neighbor starts playing Christian sermons on the radio and pouring buckets of water into the street. She cries for a bit, then wipes her nose off on the pillowcase. Runs her fingers through her hair and looks at the strands she’s gathered in her palm, as though wondering what to do with them. In the end she rubs them into a giant knot between her thumb and index finger and throws it into the toilet, flushing it away.
When she opens the door she heads straight for the bed, leaving the comforter and pillows behind in the bathroom. He’s lying on his back like a corpse, staring up at the ceiling. She slides her icy-cold feet up his legs. Tucks the back of her skull beneath his chin, as smoothly and easily as a key inserting itself into a lock.
“Do you want me to get a pillow?” she whispers.
His chin scrapes against her hair as he shakes his head. Or maybe he’s just shifting his position, making room for her on the mattress. Not answering.
As the room slowly fills with light from the rising sun, she tells him the rest of it, the part she left out. How the very best thing about Mariela’s birthday cake, what everyone most looked forward to (even more than the candy), was the rumor that there was a coin hidden deep inside, buried under the frosting. A silver two-hundred-peso piece, or even the five-hundred-peso one with its shiny golden tree. They all whispered about it together, nudging each other by the swimming pool, murmuring under the mango tree. It was a custom that they’d only ever heard about at Mariela’s party, never at any of their own. They all wanted to be the one to find it—pick their slice apart with their plastic forks and spoons, search through the mess of crumbs, prove that it was really there and not just a rumor, not just a lie. She never found it, though. She never even got a chance to try.
So today’s the day she’d like to do it. Her birthday outing. They have one full day left in Cali before their flight back to D.C., so today is basically their only chance. Despite what the Norwegian blogger recommends, she thinks that taking a cab will be easiest. She can cover most of the cost herself by going to the ATM and withdrawing more pesos with her Bank of America card. The drive shouldn’t take more than two hours; she’ll take some Dramamine to make sure she doesn’t get carsick on that endlessly winding road; he should remember to bring his painkillers in case his stumps start bothering him in the heat. It will be an amazing trip, the opportunity of a lifetime. Seeing a place like that in person, with that kind of history. Seeing it with their own eyes.
“That’s good,” he says. “I’m glad, lover, that we’ll get to do something that’s so important to you.”
He’s still staring at the ceiling. She waits with bated breath.
“I’m the worst person,” he says, “in the world.”
“No.”
“Yes. I didn’t protect you. I can’t protect anybody.” He closes his eyes.
“Mouse Pilot,” she says, “that’s not true.”
“It is,” he says. “And don’t call me that anymore. I’m not Mouse Pilot. I’m nothing.”
He shuts his eyes even tighter, as if that will prevent the thoughts from rushing in. The wave of feelings that she can’t keep him safe from.
“Eduardo,” she says. “You’re not the worst person in the world. I saw somebody way worse under a bridge in D.C. He was picking his nose and smearing his boogers against the wall, and when I walked by he catcalled me and said, ‘Hey, pretty flower, why don’t you give me a smile?’ ”
He’s silent for a beat. “He does sound worse,” he admits. “Who else?”
She thinks about it. “In third grade,” she says, “my friends and I were mean to this girl in our class.” She hesitates. “Mariela.”
“The birthday girl?”
She nods, even though his eyes are still closed. “I think we were maybe a little afraid of her. She was really smart, even if she was a bit intense. We started teasing her—we got everybody in the grade to start calling her Fatty.” She doesn’t say anything for a moment, then says the next part in a rush, as though she can’t help it: “She wanted to be our friend, and we wouldn’t let her.”
He opens his eyes. “Lover,” he says. “That doesn’t make you the worst.”
She looks down at his chest, at that space of skin she’s come to know so well, every patch of hair, every blemish and freckle. “It was a wrong thing to do,” she says. “And we shouldn’t have done it.”
He tucks his hand down the skirt she still hasn’t changed out of, pressing his stump against her crotch. She hasn’t changed her tampon in hours; she could be leaking blood all over him. Disgusting, he could say. That’s gross. He could push her away, frown at her: I can’t believe that you did that. That you’re like that. But he doesn’t move away, and neither does she. Instead he says, “Tell me someone else. One more.”
This time she’s ready. “Anybody who didn’t support the peace negotiations.”
When he laughs his mouth fills with her hair. “Can’t beat that,” he says.
She wraps her arms around him and squeezes as hard as she can.
“Just pretend,” she says, “that it’s all going to be fine. What’s the harm in pretending?”
He wraps his other arm around her and hugs her back, so forcefully that she momentarily loses her breath.
“None,” he says. “No harm at all.”
“I’ll call the cab,” she says. “We’ll leave as soon as you finish.”
“Yes,” he says. “When I finish.”
—
I went on vacation with my family once in Abejorral, where my mother’s sister’s family lived. Tierra Caliente, the land with all the hot springs and not-quite-extinct volcanoes, and the only peak in the country to have snow on it year-round. We had to make part of the journey on mules. And when we arrived at her house, there was no electricity, and the only light we had came in through tiny windows. If you wanted to, you could stay shut in there for days and never see the light.
One day the whole family went down to the river to swim. My brother impressed everyone by catching a fish with one hand. He was always very agile like that.
What were you like?
Very reserved. Believe it or not, as a child I was very reserved. Then when it was time to walk back to the ranch, it started to get dark and we got lost. “Uy,” my aunt and uncle said. It was a witch who made us lose our way, the one who roams the woods crying, holding her still-bleeding stomach from where the paramilitaries cut out her baby. For whatever reason, in those parts it was typical to always blame getting lost on that one witch. But if you didn’t acknowledge that she was there—or worse, if you ignored her cries, pretending that she didn’t exist—then that was just asking for trouble. It was better to know about her and accept her than to not.
So I remember walking through the jungle on a tiny path in the pitch black. I couldn’t see what was in front of me and I couldn’t see where I was coming from. When I closed my eyes there was hardly any difference from when I had them open. Every time I brushed against a tree branch, a bush, or a vine, it felt like the hand of the witch or even the trees themselves, reaching out to grab me and pull me toward
them, hold me tight. It was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me up till then. I was convinced that I was going to get lost and disappear into the blackness, and that no one would ever find me; no one would even remember my name. The only way I could keep myself going was to pretend I was a knight. Thwack! I cut the branches back with my sword. Bam! I drove the witches away with my shield. One step at a time, I kept moving forward.
And then finally we made it back to the house. As soon as we got inside, the first thing we did was light a candle. I remember that the flame was orange. Flickering. It made it seem as though the air in the house was moving. Of everything that day, it was the strangest thing I saw. I’d never thought of air like that before—as something that was around you all the time, without you ever feeling it or noticing that it was there. I’m so glad that I saw it—that I took the time to look and see.
—
“That’s a good story,” she says.
“I know.” He leans in to give her a wet kiss just above the collarbone.
“I’m glad you guys found your way back.”
“I know,” he repeats. “Isn’t it crazy to think that it could have been different?” He laughs so hard she can see the yellowish stains on the backs of his teeth.
He types for the rest of the day, barely stopping until evening, only pausing to drink papaya juice out of a giant Styrofoam cup, to eat french fries and fried chicken out of a greasy white paper sack that she brings from the food stand across the street. Sometimes he squeezes his stump and winces, but whenever she asks if he needs a painkiller he always shakes his head. Maybe they’ll still be able make it out to the ranch in time and see it again. Maybe they won’t. But the moment he finishes his paper, he reads it out loud to her: every undeniable statistic, every irrefutable graph. He quotes testimonies, lists percentages, stabs his finger in the air when he wants to indicate parentheses. It’s the best story he’s told her yet, the one she’s been waiting to hear for years without even knowing it, filled with so much truth and fantasy it’s hard to know which is better. His paper patiently explains (with precise terms and specific examples) how in present-day Colombia, the decades-long conflict has finally been successfully resolved. Land reform has been carried out in a fair and effective manner, hostages have been released, refugees resettled. Genuinely alternative leftist political parties have been established; union leaders, journalists, and priests can freely express left-wing dissent. Corruption has been eliminated, the War on Drugs considered ineffectual and brought to an end, the wealth of oligarchies and monopolies redistributed. Paramilitaries disarmed and disbanded. Guerrilla fighters reintegrated and forgiven. If a party were held tomorrow, everybody in the entire country would be invited, not a single person made to wait on the other side of a locked door.
Betsy will be there, of course: offering her cheek to everybody who wants to kiss it, never turning away without a greeting. Hi, Stephanie—Flaca—Mariela. It’s so good to see you; it’s been so long. How are you doing; how have you been?
He looks up from the laptop. “What do you think?” he says.
“Perfect,” she says. “Don’t change a word.”
For E,
who read everything
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Muchísmas gracias:
Clare Alexander, Anna Stein, Cindy Spiegel, Annie Chagnot, everyone at Spiegel & Grau, Trezza Azzopardi, Andrew Cowan, James Scudamore, Jean McNeil, everyone on the UEA MA workshop, Lighthouse literary journal, Daunt Books, The White Review, The New Yorker, Lauren Rose, Rachel Mendel, Ph.D. Babes, Emily & Laura, Pansy, Nick for MP.
Biggest thanks to my family, especially my parents: without their love and support I never could have finished this.
Thank you to the following books:
Out of Captivity (Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes)
Long March to Freedom (Thomas R. Hargrove)
Law of the Jungle (John Otis)
My Life as a Colombian Revolutionary (María Eugenia Vásquez Perdomo)
My Colombian War (Silvana Paternostro)
The Dispossessed (Alfredo Molano, Aviva Chomsky)
Beyond Bogotá (Garry Leech)
Law in a Lawless Land (Michael Taussig)
Los ejércitos (Evelio Rosero)
El olvido que seremos (Héctor Abad Faciolince)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JULIANNE PACHICO was born in Cambridge, England, and grew up in Cali, Colombia. She currently lives in Norwich, England.
@juliannepachico
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The Lucky Ones Page 21