“You know, we should take the money!” Tito swayed slightly in his chair. His eyes were glazed. “It would be a shame to let it all go to waste.”
“It’s a bribe,” my father said. He hadn’t taken another bite in the last few minutes.
“It’s a lot of money!” Tito said. “You could send Ramón to college or to the United States! It’s a nice sum.”
“Very nice,” Reina consented.
I looked at my mother, who continued moving her fork mechanically to her lips.
“It’s blood money,” my father said.
“They’re going to do it anyway, Francisco! Get your head out of the hole and try to understand what’s going on here!”
My father’s face, even under his dark skin, burned red. Then he looked at Tito and, of all things, smiled. “It’s you who doesn’t understand,” he said.
Tito quieted after that and I didn’t know what else to say. Soon I grew wrapped up in myself—thinking about what school I would go to over there and what the uniforms would look like, wondering how many buses I would have to take to get to Ubi’s house, envisioning our new home and the neighborhood. Outside, the crickets squawked in their secret language and birds rustled in the trees. The muffled sound of cars honking filtered through the air amid the grind of machinery. Inside, we stayed silent and finished our meal.
DECEMBER 15, 1989
Ubi and I went back to the pool as often as we could. Sofia was almost always there, in her orange bathing suit. Ubi and I saved a chair for her if she wasn’t around when we arrived, though Ubi would usually wander off and do laps in the roped-off area whenever she showed up. Apparently he wasn’t interested in a girl like Sofia, which only made things easier for me. She brought a towel and newspapers with her and settled in by the water to read. I told her my aunt worked for La Prensa so I could probably get it for her for free, but she said she liked to pay, to support things she believed in. I had never thought of it that way.
Her face looked different to me now than when we first met. Her olive skin seemed almost translucent, like the skin of a fish, and her dark eyes were more playful, less hardened. I still thought she didn’t eat enough—she lacked the hips that the beauty contestants on television had—but there was something gentle and effortless in how her body moved, and her slender neck, when she leaned forward to read the newspaper opened on her chair was, I began to believe, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Often, Sofia and I raced backstroke across the length of the pool. At first, I would let her win, but when she caught on to what I was doing, she refused to play along. I viewed giving her a head start as a sign of deference, trying to be kind. She maintained it was the ultimate disrespect because it was like denying her ability. It was also egotistic, she said. As if I was so sure I would win, anyway. After that, I raced as hard as I could and won, but it afforded me an advantage all the same because when I reached the other end, I had time to stand and watch while she pulled herself into the concrete wall, her thin arms whirling, her hair swishing under the water.
At home, I lay on my bed at night and thought of her, often reaching my hand under my shorts and stroking myself until I shuddered, wetting the sheet. I had kissed two girls last year but neither had the lingering effect that Sofia had. Neither changed—nor had the capacity to change—the way I understood the world and myself.
When I told Ubi I thought I was in love, he looked crestfallen.
“What?” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be happy for me?”
He was quiet for a few seconds, as if he was considering carefully what to say next. “So are you going to spend all your time with her?” he asked.
I laughed. “No. Don’t worry. She doesn’t even know.”
“I don’t think you should tell her,” he said. “She’s not a typical girl. It might not be the kind of thing she wants to hear, you know?”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We’ll still hang out. I found the bus that will go to your house after we move. Nothing will really change.”
Ubi had never been good at concealing when he didn’t believe me, and his face betrayed it then. I felt nervous, too, not so much about Sofia, but about how moving to Cerro Viento would affect my friendship with Ubi. Nothing will really change. People say things all the time with the best of intentions but it’s so easy not to believe the words that come out of your own mouth.
I thought a lot about what Ubi said, though, about Sofia not being the kind of girl who wants to hear professions of love. Truthfully, I had trouble even imagining what that scene would look like: what I would say to her, where we would be, what she would say back. In the end I settled on writing her a short postcard that would make my feelings known without being a whole overblown love letter.
I was upstairs sitting at the big green metal desk, trying to shake life into a pen that had dried up. The dust in that room was so thick I could poke my finger down into it like mud. Reams of paper were stacked all over the floor, some in manila envelopes, some bound by rubber bands. Pressed against one wall, next to an old bench, was my high chair from when I was little. I had my postcard—a glossy photograph of a girl in a pollera-in front of me. So far I had written Querida Sofia. I was rummaging through a rusty drawer for another pen when I heard Reina run in downstairs and shout, “It’s happening soon! I heard it! They’re coming.” She scampered down the hall, calling my mother’s name.
“Mariella,” she sang, “you’ll be so happy! Now you have a real reason to stay inside.”
I hid my postcard under a stack of papers and crept downstairs just as my father and Tito, who gave my father a ride home every day, walked in.
Reina burst back into the living room, nearly breathless. “It was all over the newspaper office,” she panted. “It even filtered down to us.”
“What did you hear?” Tito asked. He laid his construction vest on the couch and walked to her.
Maybe she had been standing there for longer, but it was only then that I noticed my mother, in the shadows of the hallway, her eyes wide and unblinking. I couldn’t tell whether it was fear or the horror of confirmation that made her seem so small, so weak. But when Reina started to talk again and Tito wanted to turn on the television, she said quietly, “You can watch the television at the panadería.”
Reina frowned. “We have a television right here. You don’t have to watch. Go lock yourself in the bathroom and we’ll call you when we’re done.”
“It’s my house,” my mother said coolly.
Under her breath but loud enough for us all to hear, Reina said, “Not for long.”
I expected my father to say something but I think he knew that this was a battle my mother wanted to wage on her own. My parents were always good at that—silent communication, sensing each other’s needs by not much more than their pitch of voice, a tremble in the air.
“Leave,” my mother said. “Go and watch your spectacle. That’s what you want, isn’t it? The excitement that comes with the threat? That’s what gets you going. I thought you, of all people, would know better. But your legs? It was just another war story. Something to talk about and show off Something to scare people. I don’t want it in my house.”
Reina and Tito both looked dumbfounded. My father looked proud. I had seen my mother hang up the telephone on people before or ignore beggars in the streets, but it was the first time I had seen her stand up to anyone like that and it would not be the last.
The four of us went to the bakery to watch the news. I think my father would rather have stayed behind, but again it was as if there were some unspoken code he was able to decipher. As if he understood that everyone leaving the house was the only way for my mother to feel like she had won. The bakery workers in their paper hats crowded behind the long pink counter, watching the small wall-mounted television along with us. The newscasters said that Panama had officially declared a state of war. Anything they reported next, I didn’t hear. Despite the heat from the ovens pressing against my bac
k, I remember feeling a chill run through me at the sound of those words. I remember feeling a quiet, creeping fear throughout my body, and I remember thinking about Sofia. Before that, every moment had felt like waiting. As though we were all, as a country, teetering on the edge of a cliff We were peering down; we were holding our breath. We were on the brink of something, but we were waiting for some signal, some gust of wind to push us forward, to catapult us into action, into change. It came then. And we all, I think, wanted to believe that whether we jumped or fell, there would be something there to catch us, that things would be better once it was over.
DECEMBER 16, 1989
My mother was saying her rosaries when they arrived. I was upstairs, still struggling with my postcard to Sofia, when she called my name. I hurried downstairs.
A red housedress, scalloped around the edges with white thread, hung shapeless over her body. Her feet were bare.
“Ramón,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders and turning me toward the front door, which was open. “Go see who they are.”
Who they were seemed obvious enough to me. Two construction men, in dirty khaki pants, white T-shirts, and hard hats, were walking around the perimeter of our yard, poking small orange and blue flags into the ground.
“Go see what they want,” my mother said, giving me a little shove from behind.
I walked out and said hello. They presented me with work papers from Zoña and mentioned something about our mutual friend, Mr. Patillo. I told them he wasn’t our friend but they hardly seemed to hear. They were scheduled to begin in a few weeks, they informed me, which I already knew. They seemed like nice enough guys. I told them I was sorry about them having to work right after the holidays. They shrugged and said it could be worse. I told them my mother and I were inside if they needed us, but they assured me that they just had a few marks to make—some bright orange spray paint and more flags—and they’d be on their way. Feeling very much like a man, one capable of taking care of his family and his property and matters of business, I shook hands with both of them before going back inside.
“What did they say?” my mother wanted to know.
“They’re taking measurements. They won’t be here long.”
“We never signed anything,” my mother said. I wasn’t sure if she expected me to know what she was talking about.
“Have you seen the new house?” I asked, trying to shift her attention. Of course she hadn’t, though. For the past two months, she had hardly left this one.
“I saw it in a dream,” she said. “It was a mansion. And with so many windows.” She had the detached look of someone absorbed in memories. “I was happy there.”
Until then, I had assumed that my mother and father were of one mind in not wanting to leave our Velasco family home. But it seemed then as if maybe my mother wanted to leave, or at least wouldn’t mind leaving. This house, after all, had turned into her prison—a prison she had built out of her own fears, but a prison nonetheless. My father, I realized then, was the one who wouldn’t let go.
DECEMBER 17, 1989
For the past several days we had all been busy packing but my father insisted no one touch his things. He sat in his favorite chair, reading my copy of Don Quixote at times, and retired to his room to nap at others. We continued to work around him, like water flowing around a boulder, taping boxes and balling our clothes into plastic bags. When the day came to depart, a small pickup truck sent by Tia Flor arrived mid-morning. It would take multiple trips to transport all our belongings. That morning my father had finally packed his personal items. I stood watching him as he pulled his guayaberas from their hangers and put them in suitcases and bags. He tapped the last hanger so that it sent a series of collisions shuddering down the row, the sound of the metal tinkling and echoing in the empty room. He dragged his fingertips over the grain of the wood on the closet door. He was solemn in his actions, but at peace.
“Papi,” I said, startling him out of his contemplation. “Are you okay?”
“God will take care,” he said.
Near the end of the day, when the furniture and boxes had been hauled away, we stood in the living room one last time. We threw out. memories like letters into a fire, Reina starting by remembering the time—when she, my father, and Flor were little—that Flor came close to being stung by a scorpion.
“She was sitting on her bed, Francisco. Remember? Papa was standing in the doorway and he said, ‘Flor, stand up very slowly and come here,’ and she did. I was on the other bed because we had to share a bedroom.” Reina looked at us like we should understand the imposition of having to share a bedroom with Flor. “And then Papa pointed to the wall behind her bed and there was this scorpion, its tail curled, only a few centimeters above where Flor’s head had been. I jumped up from the bed, too, at the sight of that. Papa came back into the room with a pair of scissors and walked right up to it and held the scissors flat and snipped it in half Both pieces—the head and the tail separately—fell onto her pillow. She made us move her bed after that, remember ? She didn’t want it there anymore.” Reina laughed.
“I remember kissing you on that patio,” Tito said. “You had on that white dress and, mami,” he shook his head, “you were a hot thing that night.”
“It wasn’t long after that that white became, let’s say, not fitting for me.” Reina smiled teasingly at Tito.
“I remember bringing Ramón home from the hospital,” my mother said.
“That almost didn’t last long, either,” Reina whispered, but we all ignored her.
“I took you around the house so you could get used to where you would be living. I said, Here is the bathroom, here is the television, here is the curio, this is a couch. I kept your bottles in the little refrigerator where I keep my Jell-O now.” There were tears forming in her eyes as she said this.
It was my father’s turn. He didn’t say anything at first, though, so Reina spoke up again, providing a memory for him.
“Do you remember the time you knocked Tito’s tooth out?” she said.
“What?” I asked.
She nodded. “Your father didn’t like Tito at first.”
“I have no idea why not,” Tito said.
“What I remember is that Tito came to this house to pick me up for our first real date. We had met each other a few times before that. Just for sodas. It was innocent.”
Tito snorted.
“I spent all day getting ready. I even went to the salon to get my hair blow-dried. That cost me two dollars then. It was almost all the money I had, but I thought it was worth it. Tito was supposed to pick me up at seven. He told me he was taking me to dinner. Francisco, remember? You and Mama and Papa were sitting at the table, eating already, and I was stiff with nerves, waiting for my date by the door. Mama didn’t want to start eating, but Papa, who couldn’t resist food in front of him, even for a second, said a quick prayer and was on his way. Then you all were. And I was still waiting.” Reina raised her eyebrows pointedly at Tito. “I waited until nine o’clock. My makeup was a mess by then because I had been crying. Francisco, you tried to lift me out of the chair and carry me to my room. You weren’t very strong, of course, so it did no good. Then, just after nine, I saw Tito strolling toward the front door, a toothpick in his mouth, like nothing was happening. Francisco saw him, too, and walked outside and slugged him, just like that”—Reina thrust her fist in the air—“and knocked him down.”
“You did?” I asked, looking at my father.
“He did,” Reina said. “You might not know this, Ramón, but your father can be crazy sometimes. If he gets an idea in his head, no matter how idiotic, he will do it. The only thing that wasn’t like that was priesthood. And the problem with that was that he got an even more idiotic idea instead.”
I must have appeared confused because my mother said, “She means me. She means he got the idea to marry me.”
“Anyway,” Reina continued. “Your father knocked out one of Tito’s front teeth. He has
a false one now.”
“Really?” I asked.
Tito tapped a tooth with his nail. “This one right here.”
“I’m telling you, your father can be very reckless.”
“It’s true,” my mother said with a hint of admiration in her voice.
“Tell me more,” I said.
And then finally my father chimed in. “I remember the time the electricity went out for a whole week. You remember, Reina?” She nodded. “There was not much to do besides eat and sleep. It was difficult to read at night by not more than candles. We couldn’t turn on the radio. I was young. Restless, too, but Mama wouldn’t let us go out at night because the streetlamps and the traffic lights were off I was so mad about having to stay inside that whole time. But that’s when I fell in love with this house. It was like being blind. I experienced everything differently. The shock of the cool floor as I moved my feet over it was something I had never noticed to that degree. The rough feel of the walls as I trailed my fingers over them, trying to steer my way down the hall. I smelled the gas from the stove stronger than ever.”
It seemed like he was going to say more but he stopped. I looked at him and saw my father, like my mother, on the verge of tears.
And me? I probably had the fewest memories of any of us, the least time to have accumulated them. But I felt my whole life swell in me as I stood there. I remember everything, I wanted to say. But instead I said, “I remember when there was furniture in here,” and everybody laughed.
We squeezed into Tito’s Datsun and headed for Cerro Viento. How strange it was that at the moment we had all come together, everything around us was about to fall apart. My mother kept her eyes closed for the duration of the ride, fingering the rosary in her lap. Tito sang along to the radio as he drove and Reina tapped her nails to the beat against the dashboard. My father, a few last books piled at his feet, stared out the window. I watched it all go by: the gangly man selling dish towels to the cars stopped at red lights; the neon signs flickering as we passed an electronics store and the El Dorado mall; a car without wheels abandoned on the side of the road; billboards for new high-rises with picturesque scenes that didn’t look anything like the plots they were being built on; a tank standing guard by a cinder-block wall painted with an Atlas beer advertisement ; men in military garb lined up in front of corrugated metal doors that had been drawn to cover shops, whether with the owner’s consent or not. I was paying attention to where the stores were in our new part of the city, watching the watery sun as it quivered low in the sky, and composing in my mind more of my letter to Sofia, buoyed by the novelty of love and the promise of change.
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