A Simple Distance

by K. E. Silva

  * * *

  Some time later, the telephone rang us awake.

  I’m always on call, Susan explained, stumbling into the living room for the phone. She answered, This is Dr. Hill.

  But she brought the receiver to the couch, handed it to me.

  I heard static, and then an apology: Jean, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry to bother you. Your office gave me your mother’s number. She gave me this one. Something’s happened. I just need to talk. It was Cynthia.

  * * *

  The morning had caught her still in bed, Sadie at an overnight with a YMCA playgroup learning social skills, when the phone rang.

  Collect call from Linda Thompson. Do you accept the charges?

  Yes.

  Cynthia?

  Linda, where are you?

  At the police station.

  What’s the matter?

  I was attacked. Voice cracking.

  Are you okay?

  No.

  Cynthia’d pulled on Linda’s black polar fleece sweatpants from the way-back of the dresser drawer. She stumbled into their Volvo and ran the three stoplights leading to the station house. A fire engine waiting in front, lights flashing. A man and a woman sitting on the front steps.

  Two paramedics and a cop stooped over Linda. One trying to get her to sign a waiver, one trying to take her blood pressure, and one apparently just taking up space.

  Cynthia’d knelt, put her hand on Linda’s knee right in front of everybody, a move she mightn’t have done when they were still together.

  What happened?

  I was attacked, Linda answered.

  By who?

  Those people, pointing to the couple on the stairs.

  Why?

  And Linda began to cry.

  It had started with the dogs. Theirs and Linda’s, none of whom were on a leash and all of whom had wanted to sniff each other. So they had. The couple’s dog, busy, would not respond to their calls. They yelled at Linda for not having hers on a leash. She’d reminded them that their dog was also unleashed. The man threatened to hurt Linda’s dog and she told him he was crazy.

  Fucking dyke! Bitch! Fucking whore! The metal clasp of the man’s leash came down on her head first, its nylon strap cutting a gash across her face. And then she was on the ground, in the dirt, under the woman; the woman straddling Linda, her husband punching and kicking and spitting. Then the woman put her face to Linda’s breast and bit down, hard as she could.

  If you touch my wife I’ll kill you, you fucking dyke!

  They’d let her up.

  Okay. It’s over, he said.

  Not until I talk to a cop! Linda screamed.

  They jumped on her again.

  This time she was able to shout.

  But no one came.

  Linda had lain underneath. The woman’s full weight on her chest. She’d lain as they punched, kicked, and spat. She spat back.

  Again, they let her up. She followed them, asking everyone along the way, along the exercise path, for a cell phone to call the police. Everyone looking back blank. The fifth person she’d asked, a frail elderly woman, had taken pity and given her a phone. As Linda called the police, the couple started walking toward the station.

  She returned the woman’s phone and collected their little dog, who had started to run to Cynthia’s, they assumed, to get help. He never would have made it. He got so lost in the tall grass along the dunes. By the time Linda got to the station, the man had already burst through the front door, announcing, My wife’s been attacked!

  Linda followed him in, bruised and welted.

  The police officer was absolutely useless. Seems like a case of he said/she said. He took a report from Linda against the couple, and a report from the couple against Linda, while looking at their unblemished skin, Linda’s welts, bruises, and bite mark. A paramedic suggested she go to the emergency room, although the waiver she’d signed released him from actually having to drive her.

  Can I use the phone? she asked.

  There’s a pay phone over there.

  Cynthia had driven her to the hospital. The attending physician said Linda would be feeling effects for some time. Severe trauma, she’d said. Prescribed a pill for shock, and a tetanus booster. Within the next seventy-two hours, Linda would need a hepatitis check, an HIV test, and another one in six months. She should not have unprotected sex until the test results came back negative. She would need to call the district attorney, who had the power to court order the woman to have her blood drawn and tested for communicable diseases.

  There was no mention of Cara that evening.

  * * *

  I told Cynthia I’d be home as soon as I can, and that everything is going to be okay. I promised. I told her to take care of herself, and Sadie, and Linda. Keep safe. Keep yourselves safe, I told her, and hung up.

  The rain had come. It let down hard on the roof, mixed with the red clay of the roadside to make a mortar, walling me in. My breath shallow and fast.

  J, come back. Susan sat beside me, circled her arm around my shoulder, dug her fingers deep into my curls. Held me.

  Outside, shhhhhhh— the rain covered us in sheets.

  CHAPTER 29

  Susan and I rose early from our respective beds, took turns in the shower rinsing the stick of the night from our skin, went our separate ways: she to the clinic, me to Uncle Martin’s office just blocks away along Port Commons’ single street.

  I let the mosquito bites on my legs itch without scratching as I walked. The mosquitoes knew I didn’t belong in Baobique; drank their fill of me while they could. The longer I was there, the less I let them bother me. Their bites turned red and swelled on their own. Regardless of my actions, I’d scar.

  By the time I arrived, Uncle Martin was already in. But he had a preliminary matter to deal with before we could turn our attention to Godwyn. He called in a young girl holding a thrashing sack by its top with a death grip to keep it closed. Something angry inside, jumping and scratching to get out. The girl cleaned the apartment complex he owned down the road. Uncle Martin turned to me and asked, What would the criminal penalty be in the States for stealing a cat?

  A cat? I asked back, surprised at the question.

  Yes. A cat.

  Misdemeanor, probably, I hazarded a guess, shrugged it off.

  Oh! Then it’s okay. He turned to the girl, told her to walk out past the river and let it go.

  The girl nodded, left, tight fists first—bag in grip—shut the door behind her with a thickly calloused foot.

  Uncle Martin explained. The tenant knows the rules. No cats allowed in the rental units.

  So why don’t you just evict her? Unable to be alarmed anymore.

  I want her money. I don’t want her to leave. Just the cat.

  I didn’t raise a stink. And we moved on.

  These two worlds of mine, Baobique and California, are simply irreconcilable. It is like comparing apples to oranges, or plums to coconuts. When I’m in San Francisco, Baobique scarcely exists for me. Yet there, I have no family, no context, no blood to remind me that I, too, have ties to this earth. In Baobique, it is literally the earth that tells me who I am, where I come from, and, very possibly, who I am still to be.

  My uncle’s generation was learning day by day that they were mortal. Who was left, if not me, to move us forward?

  Let’s get to work, I suggested.

  And we did.

  There are many ways to solve a problem. And while I’d take a written agreement over kidnapping a woman’s cat any day, it is a weak family that turns to a contract to resolve its conflicts.

  But Baobique is like an onion pulled up from the ground, always peeling off another layer: layers of mountains and the valleys running through them; layers of green, constantly shifting hues; layers of truth popping out here and there from behind fast-moving clouds; layers of hate. And love. Every time I’d think I’d figured it out, something different showed its face.

  Uncle Martin picked up a p
ad of paper from a pile on his messy desk, cleared a space to write, and told me what I already knew. He pointed his index finger to my face, did not mince words. This agreement, he said, will never see the inside of a courtroom.

  I didn’t mention that threat was my only leverage to reel in my two uncles from those choppy waters.

  Uncle Martin picked up his fancy fountain pen from England, dipped it in a jar of ink, got in one last jab: I want you to know, Jean, this is a new low for the Pascals. I cannot believe it has come to this.

  I let that one pass, too, without response. But not really. To be honest, I agreed. I just placed fault at different feet in that particular instance.

  No one starts out drafting a contract in the hopes of a suit. And everyone knows a family’s laws are stronger than a court’s. But sometimes, maybe, a contract can be a bridge between too many tired voices, hoarse from screaming. At least that was the plan.

  It was up to me to set a cooperative tone. I gave Uncle Martin this: Let’s just be careful not to say anything we shouldn’t.

  Fair enough.

  He started writing, spoke each word as he completed it. Right-of-Way: WHEREAS, the Pascal family wishes to preserve access to the burial plot of Dr. and Mrs. William Pascal, and their children, Sophie Pascal-Souza grants the Pascal family members an access road, no wider than twenty feet—

  No way, I stopped him. Twenty feet is too wide. Ten feet in width is more than enough for a car.

  Ten feet, plus one foot on either side for drainage. It will need drainage. Uncle Martin did know about cutting roads.

  Fine. Twelve feet in width. I was satisfied.

  He continued, all business. I’d never seen him so focused—no wider than twelve feet. To cut from the existing estate access road, to the burial plot—

  No. I could see what he was doing. Always pushing, Uncle Martin. So I demanded, We need to map out the path as we walked it last night. So it’s clear where to cut.

  Oh, I see. I see where you’re going with this … Okay: no wider than twelve feet. To cut from the existing estate access road, to the burial plot, along the following path: cutting in at, and passing between, the two grapefruit trees along the eastern portion of the existing estate access road; continuing to, and proceeding left at, the first coconut tree; proceeding parallel to the existing access road, along its eastern edge—

  Leave the croton hedge. And the segos, I reminded him.

  As we reached the bottom of the last page, the end of the right-of-way, we were both completely at ease, hunched over Uncle Martin’s desk: him writing, me watching his every pen stroke, stopping him, backtracking, reworking. The agreement was as rough as the port at Sommerset in the middle of the night. But I wasn’t in San Francisco anymore. And rough worked in Baobique.

  We looked at each other, smiled, hoped it would hold.

  We still needed my mom’s signature. But I could get that. If I had to reach under her pillow, place that pistol to her head, she’d sign. This was the best deal she’d get. And it was up to me to make it so. I knew what was best for her.

  Yet Uncle Martin was still Uncle Martin—he was on the phone with contractors to cut the road even before it had been typed up.

  I called my mom for a ride back to Godwyn from the waiting area.

  If all went well, we’d bury Granny the next morning. And I’d be on the afternoon flight out.

  CHAPTER 30

  My mom picked me up from Uncle Martin’s office in her jeep, had waiting: two bottles of water and a brown paper bag with two slices of fresh-baked banana bread, still warm from the old woman in Tete Queue.

  I told her, Uncle Martin will have the agreement typed up for you to sign before the funeral tomorrow. You don’t have to worry anymore about Godwyn … It’s over, Mom.

  What about the trees? Did you tell them he couldn’t cut down any of the trees? He’ll cut them, you know; he’ll take out my whole yard if you let him.

  Mom. Let go. It’s over. This is as good as it gets. He’s not going to cut any of the trees we talked about last night. Okay? Just accept it. Be happy, for Christ’s sake. For once.

  She couldn’t, though. Finally, I saw that. Even though she didn’t say anything more about it, her mind was going ’round and ’round, locked in conflict.

  Granny’s passing got my mom Godwyn. And the agreement we all negotiated for the right-of-way to the graves would hopefully quiet the family’s stormy attitude about the whole situation, or at least downgrade it from hurricane level. I know I was needed there for that. I know I helped. But I wished I could untangle my mom’s real troubles, the ones inside her head that take over now and then and knock her flat—with no small help from the people around her.

  When she first called to tell me about Uncle George’s death, she’d been distracted by the havoc such a large funeral service would wreak on her small plot of land. She’d wanted to buy torches, lace them between the sego lining her drive for the younger brother who’d passed in her arms. But it slipped her mind.

  Before we cleared Port Commons, I asked her, Maybe we could buy some of those torches and stake them for Granny?

  So we did.

  * * *

  Back at my mom’s, I thought it would be a good idea to check in on Cynthia, to see how she and Linda were doing.

  It was so incredibly surreal, sitting at the dining table, looking out at my mom starting to stake torches between the budding palms just in front of the bright orange flowers on the flamboyant tree; calling Cynthia in San Francisco to see how bad Linda’s beating had been.

  I dialed the numbers but Cynthia didn’t answer. Their machine picked up with a recording of Sadie. A soft invitation to please leave a message.

  I didn’t, though. I placed my mom’s receiver back in its rest before the end of the beep, certain only that I shouldn’t intrude.

  * * *

  My mom and I passed the afternoon in her yard, worked with our hands, not our heads, to ready the torches for Granny and the rest of them, come tomorrow morning.

  But Granny’s funeral wouldn’t be near the size of Uncle George’s. I reminded her of that, repeatedly.

  And in the dirt she loosened.

  Did I ever tell you about your father’s chicks? she asked.

  There is a picture of my parents in Illinois at a party. They seem like, in their mid-twenties, babies themselves, but I know by that time they’d already had me, unpictured. My father is sitting on a couch between two women, laughing; my mother in a chair to the side, not. I don’t know how many affairs my father had, how many more sisters or even brothers I might have had, had he not gotten an operation that made it medically impossible.

  Chicks? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. As in women?

  No. Chicks! Chicks! Baby chicks!

  Oh God, I half-laughed. No, you didn’t.

  So she told me. For months, all we ate was chicken. First I just baked it, or powdered it with white flour and fried it up in a little oil on the stove. But after a while, I started thinking hard: “How can I make this taste like something else?” Let me tell you, we ate sweet chicken, salty chicken, ketchup chicken. You name it, I put it on that chicken. Chicken with orange sauce, mango sauce, coconut.

  You still see them selling those chicks at the airport; cardboard crates of them piled in their vans. That’s where your father got the idea for his. He bought a pallet of them straight from Trinidad. He thought he could make a side business, while he taught during the day. Got enough orders in the first few weeks to sell the whole batch when the hens reached maturity. We fed those chicks by hand, you know, with eyedroppers from Grampy’s office: fortified cow’s milk, canned, like we drank ourselves, and farinha. Those birds ate better than most Baobiquens.

  But when the time came for him to sell, none of the people who’d placed orders came through. Not a one. It was George, you know. Just to be spiteful. Trading favors in secret to stop the sales; showing his true colors even then: politicking at nineteen. Your father thought he w
as something else for winning me, Dr. Pascal’s daughter, on nothing but a teacher’s salary. Nothing but a pauper, your father; that’s what he was. George reminded him of that.

  * * *

  We were sitting in a booth of cracked red pleather, eating breakfast at the back of a Phoenix diner, the first time I realized my father saw the world as one big conspiracy—intentionally picking its victims.

  Eggs over-medium with hash browns and lots of ketchup; toast, uneaten.

  Before the divorce, my dad was a microbiology professor teaching medical students and earning less, with my mom and me to support, than his students paid for a year’s tuition.

  By the time I was in college, he’d gone to medical school himself and become a doctor, grossing multiples of his previous salary, which made him happier, but beyond that hadn’t changed him much at all.

  Second semester sophomore year, I needed somewhere to go for winter break. I visited him because he paid for the plane ticket.

  He likes to speak loudly in public places, especially if the things he’s saying are things people normally don’t.

  He likes to shock.

  Over eggs sophomore year, he told me what he thought about AIDS.

  The American people don’t know this, but believe me, AIDS is an international government plan to wipe out the faggots … Listen to me—you don’t think I know what I’m talking about?

  My father, the benevolent physician, continued, When I was in microbiology research, I almost worked for the Department of Defense … Biological warfare, Jean. They have scientists working day and night. They tested it in the Caribbean first, the fuckers. Now it’s domestic strategy. His doctoral thesis had been on blue-green algae. A lay person might have missed the connection.

  I finished my eggs with nods and grunts, vowed to start the day as if it were any other.

  * * *

  My mom finished her story about my dad and his chicks as she stabbed the soft earth with an unlit torch. After that, your father would stop at nothing to get off this island. Nothing. And he took his turn on me: always needing to remind me he was on top—even if I was a Pascal.

  I hazarded a guess at her motives for telling me that story. So I guess Baobique isn’t for everyone after all. Maybe it’s only for real Pascals.