Come Together, Fall Apart

by Cristina Henriquez

  “Hey, mami! We can’t let them show us up!” Tito yelled over the music. “It’s my birthday after all!” He pulled Reina off the couch. She made a little curtsy and patted her hair before stepping into his arms.

  The construction guys were all clapping now and cheering them on. In the kitchen doorway I stood holding the tamales. Flor clutched her purse in her lap and smiled as she watched.

  Amid all the music and the clapping and the excitement it was easy not to notice at first that someone had come to the front door. When Flor screamed, though, we all turned to look. I nearly dropped the tamales. All five construction guys stood up at once.

  A small man with a thin mustache was standing in our living room, holding a briefcase at his side.

  “My apologies!” he said, and took a step back.

  My father stopped the tape and stepped in front of my mother.

  “I only meant to get her attention,” the man said, nodding toward Flor.

  “He tapped my shoulder,” Flor said, not taking her eyes off him.

  “Who are you?” Tito demanded.

  The man produced a business card from the inside pocket of his brown suit jacket and held it out, though no one stepped forward to take it.

  “Ernesto Patillo,” he said. “I’m here representing the Zona Construction Company.”

  “We’re not interested,” Tito said.

  Ernesto Patillo eyed my uncle wearily. There was an arrogance in his look, as though he had done this a million times before—barged into peoples’ houses, had the same conversations—and in the end always got his way.

  “I’ve been sent to make an offer,” he said. “We’ve already spoken to the owner of the establishment and he has given his permission. As a courtesy, however, we would also like to extend our offer to you.”

  “What’s going on?” Reina asked, looking worriedly at Tito. He put up his hand, signaling for her to wait a minute.

  “We have plans to build a new apartment building here—”

  Reina gasped. Ernesto Patillo glanced cursorily at her before continuing.

  “And are prepared to offer you twenty thousand dollars to do so.”

  It was staggering. I had never heard a sum so high in connection with anything actually having to do with my own life. I had little concept, then, of the value of something like a house, and especially of something like a home. I thought we could move, somewhere better and more impressive, and we probably could have, but I didn’t consider in that moment how much would have been lost.

  Everyone was quiet, shocked into silence.

  Finally, Ernesto Patillo cleared his throat. “As there is no decision, really, to be—”

  “No,” my father said. His voice was deep and clear.

  “I’m sorry?” said Ernesto Patillo.

  “No.”

  “As I said, we’ve already been in contact with the owner—”

  “Of the establishment,” my father said. “Yes, we heard you.”

  Ernesto Patillo cleared his throat. “Perhaps I’ll send my manager over. I should let you know, however, that you’ll need to vacate by the start of the new year. The construction will begin just after the holidays.” He paused, again as if he was used to having this conversation, as if he was waiting to see if anyone would ask him why then, of all days. Confronted by silence, though, he offered an explanation himself “It simply worked out that way in the schedule. As you can imagine, the company wanted to start as soon as possible but the crew was ready to strike unless we could assure them they wouldn’t have to start work until January third. We’re facing a very stringent deadline and unfortunately can’t delay any more than that. I understand, of course, that this is terribly inconvenient but as the owner has already given his permission ...” He trailed off and eyed us all with a look of mock apology, a shrug.

  “You should leave,” my father said. We were still frozen to the same spots we had been in when Ernesto Patillo first made his presence known.

  “It’s in your interest to take the money,” Mr. Patillo said. He said it as if we needed convincing. I knew we would take it, though. We would be crazy not to.

  “Okay,” Tito said. “You’ve made your case. You have also, as it happens, interrupted our evening. It’s in your interest to leave—now—so that we can get back to our dancing.”

  Tito turned the tape back on and pulled Reina toward him as we watched Ernesto Patillo leave. Flor got up and closed the door behind him.

  I thought someone would stop the tape again in another minute, that the return to our revelry was only a show of defiance for Mr. Patillo. I thought they would have to stop so that we could absorb and discuss what had just happened. But Tito and Reina danced, my father and mother danced, and everyone else went back to watching. The mood was somber at first but after a few minutes and a new song, the hollering and laughing resumed, and everything was as if Ernesto Patillo had been nothing but a dream.

  NOVEMBER 20, 1989

  Since our mothers wouldn’t let us go too far, Ubi and I started frequenting the neighborhood pool. We had discovered that we could sneak in through a flimsy piece of fence that lifted. We went in the mornings, stripped to our shorts, and tried to look our best for any girls who might be there. In the right light, it looked like I had a thin layer of hair on my upper lip, which I was sure gave me an edge over Ubi. We would dunk each other and do cannonballs when the girls weren’t there but when they were, we sat rigidly by the side of the pool, our legs dangling in the water, trying to appear sophisticated as we discussed world events. We had memorized an exchange from a radio talk show that we would launch into whenever a girl we deemed worthy was within earshot.

  “I think it would be fair to say we’re in a state of crisis,” Ubi would begin.

  “But would it be accurate?” I would say.

  Ubi would look very thoughtful and respond, “Consider the fact that President Bush has already botched at least one attempt. He’s looking to redeem himself in the eyes of his people. The way to do that is to try again and this time, to get it right.”

  “I see. So the question is: What means will he use to succeed?”

  Sometimes, we would get one of the lines wrong and we’d start laughing and forget the whole thing.

  That day, during our third attempt at the conversation, a voice interrupted us.

  “Don’t you two ever talk about anything else?”

  We looked up, surprised. Standing there, her hands on her hips, was a girl I had never seen before. She was not what I would consider one of the pretty girls. Her hair was short, and she was skinny as a straw.

  “I was here yesterday and you were having the same exact conversation.” She stared at us as if she expected an explanation.

  Ubi appeared frightened.

  “We feel it’s an important topic,” I said, puffing out my chest a little for effect.

  “It is,” she said, and I thought we were off the hook. “Important enough to use your own brains to think about it instead of regurgitating a debate from a radio talk show.”

  I felt myself blush. Ubi said, “Excuse me,” and slid from the edge of the pool into the water.

  “I’m still here,” she said, when he came up.

  She introduced herself as Sofia and sat down with us.

  “Ramon,” I mumbled.

  “Ubaldo,” Ubi said. It was one of the only times I had heard him refer to himself by his full name.

  Sofia admitted she was impressed anyone else our age had listened to that radio show at all, much less taken the time to memorize part of it. I said something about how contemporary politics intrigued me. Ubi just nodded.

  Sofia went to another school but was in the same grade as us. Her family had a membership to the pool, mostly so that her younger brother had a place to take swimming lessons. When she wasn’t here, she was at her parents’ seafood restaurant, seating people and clearing tables.

  “There’s my brother,” she said, pointing to a dark, skinny boy held at
the surface of the water by an instructor’s hands on his belly. His arms were straight out, like Superman, and he kicked his legs furiously.

  “I’ve never known anyone who couldn’t swim,” I said.

  “You think it’s a natural human instinct? You’re just plopped into the water and you automatically start churning your arms and kicking your feet?”

  I only meant that growing up near water, the ocean part of our everyday lives, it seemed like everyone figured it out sooner or later.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Ubi was on the other side of me, the farthest from Sofia he could manage.

  “Oh, right,” he said suddenly. “Like the time you almost drowned in six centimeters of water? Why didn’t you swim then if it comes so naturally?”

  I spun my head to him and narrowed my eyes.

  “You almost drowned?” Sofia asked.

  “He doesn’t actually remember,” said Ubi. “He’s constructing what he thinks are firsthand memories from secondhand accounts.”

  Sofia seemed to understand this perfectly. “How old were you?” she asked.

  I turned back to her. “Two and a half,” I told her. “And I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Which explains why now you act like you’re about three,” Ubi said, laughing.

  Sofia giggled too.

  I clenched my jaw and watched the kids splashing in the pool, listened to them screaming.

  Sofia leaned close enough that I could feel her breath against my ear and whispered, “Don’t worry. People only float in salt water, anyway.” I think it was supposed to make me feel better, and it did until she stood up and said, “Come on, Ubaldo. Let’s get a soda,” and I watched the two of them walk to the Coca-Cola stand at the edge of the pool.

  NOVEMBER 24, 1989

  My mother sent me to pick up the mail. The post office was within her circumscribed area that I was allowed to go while remaining, in her mind, relatively safe. In Panama at that time, people had post office boxes but no one, not even the wealthiest residents, had a mailbox at their house. If you were rich, you could send a messenger to get your mail, but there was no such thing as door-to-door service. We went once a week, usually, to pick up whatever correspondence had accumulated for us in the postal building near our side of town.

  With each passing day, my mother was growing more averse to the idea of even going outside. She went to church on Sunday, dragging me along with her as punishment for stealing the limes, but beyond that, she remained in the house. She watched from the window as I hung the laundry in the backyard, making sure I was doing it right and yelling out instructions through the rusty screen if I wasn’t. She put me in charge of picking up the coconuts after they had fallen from their tree and of trimming the banana leaves when they encroached upon our neighbor’s yard. She made me take the curtains outside and beat the dust out of them with a paddle. She tuned the radio to a music-only station instead of one with newsbreaks, and she unplugged the television as if she was scared that without her even pushing a button, it might turn on by itself and deliver bad news. My father, for his part, had developed a more sullen aspect ever since Ernesto Patillo’s visit. He tried to fight it, I could tell. But it seemed to overtake him at times and I would find him staring at a dark smudge on the wall or at a crack in the tile floor, completely absorbed.

  “Look at this, Ramón,” he said. “This is where the headboard on your grandparents’ bed came to. It’s a good marriage if there’s a mark on the wall like this.” He gave a small smile. “In imperfections, there’s the evidence of life.”

  The post office was crowded, hordes of people in front of the huge grids of brass mailbox doors covering the walls. Just inside the entrance, a shirtless man slept on the floor, enjoying respite from the heat.

  We received only two items that day: a water bill and a letter from the Zona Construction Company. I tucked both under the waistband of my mesh soccer shorts and started home.

  On the street, a man on crutches hobbled up to car windows, brandishing a bouquet of roses, pleading with drivers to buy just one. A boy younger than me pushed a sno-cone cart, the bell at the front making a hollow clank as the wheels bounced over pebbles. Stores were open. People bustled in and out of the air-conditioning, stopping to talk on the sidewalks and parking strips.

  I was close to home when I heard the same voice from the other day—the guy from the alley.

  “Hey,” he said.

  I kept walking.

  “Come here.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me but given the fact that no one else was on the street, there was a good chance he was.

  “I said come here!” he shouted.

  I stopped—I don’t know why—and looked at him. He had his shirt off. He was all bones and taut skin, his ribs like a grate over his chest. He wore dirty jeans with the same rag I had seen before threaded through one of the belt loops. A shorter guy stood beside him, a baseball cap on his head and an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  “Where are you going?” the first guy asked.

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  “I’ve been there,” he replied. I thought then that they were probably crazy. I don’t know why I didn’t just leave. We were still standing across the street from each other.

  “I’m kind of in a hurry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. Nowhere will wait for you. It always does. I want you to see something.”

  “Come on,” the shorter guy said, and motioned for me to cross the street.

  I did, scared of what they would do if I didn’t.

  “How old are you?” the skinny guy asked.

  “Fifteen,” I said.

  “A full-fledged man,” his companion said. The cigarette bobbed as he spoke. The other guy laughed.

  “Do you know what’s happening, joven?”

  I stared at them.

  “Have you heard of the Dignity Battalions?”

  Dignity Battalions was the name Noriega’s paramilitary forces used, although I doubted these guys had anything to do with them. I nodded.

  “Look, the Americans are coming. They have a shit-load of equipment, you know. Tanks, bombers, machine guns. They think they’re going to tear us up,” the skinny guy said.

  He paused and I nodded because I felt like I had to.

  “We have to be ready. We can sell you something small for one hundred.” He had lowered his voice now. “You want to see?”

  I knew what they were talking about. “We already have a gun,” I lied.

  “You can never have too many,” the shorter guy said.

  I wanted to leave. The birds in the trees twittered like even they knew I was in over my head.

  “Can I think about it?” I said.

  “What’s to think about? Come on. At that price? With everything that’s going on?” He shook his head in mock disappointment, tsk-ing at me through his teeth. The corners of the letters were poking the inside of my thigh under my shorts.

  “Please,” I said. I didn’t think they were going to give in.

  Then the first man crossed his arms and shrugged. “Okay, you think about it, little man. You save up your money and come back to us. You’re going to need it before you know it,” he said and winked.

  The other man pulled the cigarette from between his lips and tapped the end with his finger, watching me.

  I nodded, backing away from them. I didn’t run, I wouldn’t let myself, but I walked as fast as I could back home, the gravel crunching under my shoes, my heart hammering in my chest.

  Without a word, I handed the mail to my mother. She was standing in the kitchen. Not doing anything, just standing. I heard the samba music from her radio and thought, for the first time, that maybe my mother had the right idea.

  DECEMBER 8, 1989

  In the following weeks, we got two more letters from Zona and each time my mother calmly tore it up and threw it away. Once, I pieced one together to see that it was an evacuation notice. That was what I
had expected. I had no illusions about the compassion of the world; I knew the construction company wouldn’t change their plans just because my parents didn’t want to go. In the letter, there was a line, underneath a spot where the owner of our house had already signed, where my father was supposed to fill in his signature, but it had been left blank.

  I asked at dinner one night, “When are we leaving?”

  We were eating scrambled eggs with cubes of cheese and ham. Tito was having a beer.

  My father stuffed a forkful of the eggs, like yellow clouds, into his mouth and said, “We are not leaving.”

  “I thought we had to,” I said.

  My mother cast her eyes down and didn’t say a word. I looked to Reina and Tito. Reina was poking Tito and raising her eyebrows.

  Tito swirled his beer in its amber bottle and said, “In ten days, Ramón. We’re going to Cerro Viento. In San Miguelito.” Tito let the rest of the beer run into his mouth and then swallowed it all at once. He shook his head as if he were trying to get water out of his ears. “Why don’t you tell him, Francisco?” he said.

  My father said, “We are not leaving”

  “Eh,” Tito said dismissively waving his hand at my father. He turned to me. “Your Tia Flor found us a house there. She took it on herself—went around, looked at a few places, even got us a good price. Don’t worry, you’ll still have your own bedroom.”

  “It’s a nice house,” Reina said. “It has a huge patio in front.”

  “Everybody knew except me?”

  “Someone was supposed to tell you, but I guess they forgot,” Tito said, looking directly at my father. “Your aunt and I have already started packing.”

  “Are we taking the money?” I asked. It still sounded like a good deal to me: a new house, piles of money. I knew my parents would be sad to go, but they would readjust, they would see.