PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2018

by Jodi Angel

  When she came up for air, which was quite some time later, because she liked the swamp floor, Jude sat there still.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like to go somewhere with you.”

  Alex Terrell is currently pursuing an MFA. Her research interests include representations of individuated Black experience and Black bodies, magical realism, Afrofuturism, and how women speak in silent spaces. Alex resides in the Northeast, but she is a Tennessee girl.

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  What appealed to me on my first reading of “New Years in La Calera” by Cristina Fríes was the compelling sense of place in the story, a place that turns out to be both real and surreal nearly from the opening, when the narrator conflates the actual landscape of the Andes with the “dips and peaks” of her grandmother’s body. Like some writers from the American South, Cristina Fríes seems to see place in fiction as a dramatic force for narrative, and to my reading, this is what propels her story—this and some beautiful writing and some extraordinarily well-imagined scenes.

  When we came to discuss “New Years in La Calera” in an editorial meeting, I was surprised that the first editor to speak also began by talking about the importance of place in the story. Our discussion took off from that point, and, in uncharacteristic fashion, we elected to accept the story for Epoch after just one meeting.

  Michael Koch, editor

  Epoch

  NEW YEARS IN LA CALERA

  Cristina Fríes

  NEW YEARS, WE believe, was four days ago, but the party down the hill has not stopped since then. Those who walk through our hills—the drug traffickers, the guerrilla, the runaways—pause to listen to the boleros echoing against the valley walls, and know this place must be some kind of refuge. Without owning calendars but instead sensing the time of year through their memories or by watching the movement of the stars, they can tell it’s close to the first day of the new year. From the big house down the hill, the drum rhythms beat their way through the tall stalks of the tree ferns, inviting them to celebrate. I can even hear the party from our home when I’ve been bad and have to spend the night in the basement with the butterflies, blowing them off my nose with my sleeping, slow breath.

  While some people who pass by our home will be dressed in muddy jeans, holding the hands of children who wear the faded clothes of their older siblings, others will be in green army suits with their pants tucked loosely into their boots. This migration, I’ve learned, is evidence of the warfare occurring in the rest of the country. Here, on the hill where we have always lived, we are not involved. I watch the people pass by us like streams while we stay put, stubborn as rocks. My grandparents have lived in this house since they became the groundskeepers, so many years ago they can’t remember when they first arrived, unsure if it was when they were children or married adults, if the dogs were theirs or if they belonged to the farm, if there was war or peace. From the doorway, we can see the big house through the fog. The house is taller than all of the trees, and looks as though it has always been there, firmly built into the landscape that has not changed since prehistoric times, dense with enormous tree ferns and colorful flowers the size of my head. Sometimes when I’m not doing my chores and I hike through these hills in search of mushrooms and grasshoppers, I imagine traveling onward, past these hills and over beyond the precipice that drops thousands of meters to banana farms and warmer weather, never stopping in one place but instead moving on across the country like the groups of people I so often see passing through my home.

  The Andes burst up around us at all angles, like the dips and peaks of my grandmother’s body, her wide breasts when she lies in her bed, fat filling up every inch of the mattress, her belly rising above her sleeping, weeping face. There were times when I thought, from beneath the floorboards where I could hear her as I do now, that she was crying because of something I’d done. Over time, though, I’ve come to realize that it’s beyond my control—there is something haunting about a time that is lost to her, and that has caused her to deteriorate. I hear her cry about her ailments, though I know she can’t possibly be ill—she is much too stubborn. It’s cancer! she yells from above the basement, It’s a tumor in my heart, filling me up every day. I’m like a cow’s tit.

  From down here, I hear the night nurse scurry around our house, her miniature feet scuffling across what sounds like the kitchen tiles, fetching my grandmother her tea, her rosaries, the things with which she plans to get cured. Someday I’m going to burst, and you’re all going to get hit right in the face, she says while praying to the Virgin Mary. You’re all going to drown in my tumor. Then she quiets down and falls asleep in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of her meal, giving the night nurse a sense of relief as soon as the bedroom goes silent.

  The hatch to the basement is flush with the wooden floorboards, and if I kick it hard enough from down here, its vibrations must make our basement look like it’s haunted with angry ghosts. Looking up through a crack in the floor, I see the night nurse’s skirt glide overhead in the direction of the living room. While my grandmother rests, the night nurse spends her afternoons sitting on the couch and watching the dogs from the window—how many we have now, I couldn’t say, because every day some of them die and some new ones are born and there is no point in counting or naming them. I can hear the night nurse speak above me, but I can barely understand what she is saying—her voice is like the flapping of wings, so agitated and airy that it fills up every space in the house, a white humming, a mosquito in the ear. I yell at her from below the floorboards to go milk the cow, feed the dogs, just to make it stop. I’ve had enough with the butterflies as it is. If my grandfather were here, he’d be the one to tell her to begin preparing breakfast, made with whatever ingredients he’s stolen from the pastures, but since he spends his days tending to them—the carrot and potato fields, the fat cows and surly goats—that duty falls on me.

  My grandfather only comes home for dinner, and just before dawn he disappears into the hills again. Every morning when I get up to begin my chores, I see a trail of his footprints leading away from our home, down the tiny scoop of our hill, beyond our cow’s stable, and then I can’t see them anymore. His footprints cover the hills of our valley, but I am never eager to follow them.

  Last night I slept in the basement, and since there is no sunlight, the footsteps and the night nurse’s voice through the floorboards are my only clues that my punishment is finally over. I hear her unlock the hatch, and I rush to climb out.

  In the living room, I shake off like a wet dog the butterflies that have latched onto my hair and knees. I stretch out my joints and bend my neck before pulling on my apron, which was once my grandmother’s. It is still too large around the breasts and waist, as I have yet to fill out, but I’m confident it won’t be long until I do. I stand in front of the reflective surface of a golf trophy my grandfather stole from the big house and in it I see my own curvature, or what I hope will be soon.

  In my reverie, I almost don’t hear the knock at the door. It must be the escaped hostages who walk through our valley—who else would knock so quietly, with so much shame? The night nurse, nervous whenever we have visitors, hides in the kitchen while I greet the group of men at our doorstep.

  Wearing jeans splattered with dried mud, they look around the house with modesty, asking if we have any water or milk to spare, calling me su merced, as if I were some kind of high-class city girl. Why yes, we have plenty, I tell them, even though we don’t—our old cow is as moody and as close to death as my grandmother. But it’s polite to offer your guests as much as you can provide. We are a pit stop in the middle of their long journeys across the country, and they will be grateful for anything they can get.

  Our house lies outside of the big city, but we are hidden in the mountains, covered by their swooping shadows. The escaped hostages and the guerrilla soldiers who once kidnapped them camp and carry out their work in places like this, hiding in the jungle, and traveling by foot across
our country’s densest and most secret terrains. Whether they’re soldiers or prisoners, I am sure that when these people hide in the fog that rolls in from the north, covering everything but the tips of tree ferns and pointed mountain bluffs, they must sometimes look around and think, Qué belleza.

  It is a beautiful place, no? I ask these men, because despite their harrowed looks, I can see that they must be in awe of their surroundings. I watch them as they sip our herbal tea—some that I assume my grandfather has stolen from the big house down the hill. I tell the night nurse to bring us some pan de yuca, and she scuttles in her slippers into the kitchen, whispering things none of us can hear, while my grandmother screams at us from her room, saying, I am barely alive! I am tethered to life by a leg hair!

  I ask them where they’ve been, how they’ve managed to trek through the steep mountainsides, and where they plan to go next. They don’t answer my questions, too polite to reveal anything specific, instead responding with platitudes and smiles and bowed heads to show their respect. It’s mostly light chatter with the escaped hostages, whenever groups of them come knocking. They are afraid of saying too much to a girl about what they’ve seen, or they’re shy. So I resign myself to watching them drink their tea in silence, wipe their moustaches with their ragged sleeves, and then march down our hill, toward the main house on the plot of land. The drumming sounds from the landkeeper’s house carry through the valley, reverberate through the trees, and reach our house as a quiet beat, as quiet but as incessant as the night nurse’s voice. While doing housework, I’ll sometimes find my hips swaying to its almost imperceptible rhythm. I wish the men a Happy New Year and, watching them march on, I can tell that today the hostages will make another stop on their journey to celebrate with the man who owns this land and who, like all of us, is unsure of the exact day of the year.

  While my grandmother lies in bed, the night nurse tends to her health, and my grandfather disappears in the landscape of our valley, I perform the household duties. Today, I have to scrub the muddy footprints off the floor that my grandfather left after returning from his campesino work. Despite rarely being home, he leaves traces. With the crumbs of his dinner bread, I can see that he paces in the living room, which is small and full of patched-up furniture, and today, I spot new stolen objects scattered around the house: a lace tablecloth over the dinner table, and an empty vase on the windowsill that is surely over one hundred years old. It looks so delicate and fine, like a bird’s egg or a dandelion in the wind, that I am tempted to break it.

  I have seen my grandfather fix fences that have been trampled, inject medications into the cows that, soon after, scatter madly across the landscape. I have seen him with his entire arm up the backside of a pregnant horse, and heard him break the neck of the smaller of the twins lying inside. I have also seen him kick the dogs, and I’ve seen his small, hunched figure hide around the back of the landowner’s house before returning with stolen items bulging in his muddy overcoat. My grandmother, in response to his thievery, says, Watch out, or the Devil will tug on your penis in your sleep! When my grandfather removes his new belongings from his clothes, he says that the rich man owns so many nice things that he will never miss them. He says the rich man will blame guerrilla soldiers or escaped hostages, who are known for their robberies. I imagine the men who were just here stuffing their muddy sweaters with pots and pans, soccer balls and candelabras. Where would they put them? I wonder. Do they set up their new china on fallen logs and eat great feasts in the middle of the jungle?

  After cleaning the floors, I do the work that the night nurse, who is frail of heart, refuses to do. Today, it’s cleaning between my grandmother’s flaps of fat. It takes what feels like hours, going through every crevasse with my sponge. Barely noticing my touch, she stays asleep—a loud, snoring boulder. When I wash my grandmother, I often fear she’ll roll on top of me and trap me beneath her weight forever, and I’ll never get my own chance to feast in the jungles.

  By the time I finish, the sun has gone down, the dogs have curled into a ball of worms to keep warm through the night, and I’m covered in grime and dust. I go to the bathroom and take off my clothes and fill the tub with warm water. My grandmother used special soap in her baths when she was still slim enough to fit inside the tub. I pour in half the bottle and relish in its pinkish hues, its luxurious smell filling the bathroom with the scent of angels.

  As I step into the soapy water, I hear my grandfather open the front door. He tells the night nurse to heat up some rice and beans. And now, I know, he is approaching the bathroom to wash his hands. I take a big gulp of air and then my face is wet and my head and all of me is underwater and it is quiet. Finally, I think, savoring the solitude. I can see nothing but the black behind my closed eyelids, feel nothing but the silence like electricity in my ears. I wonder, Is this how the hostages felt when bags were tied over their faces, when they were knocked over the head and made to feel nothing, the way my grandfather told me it happens when people are taken into the jungle? If it had been anything like being thrust underwater, I think, it must have felt, momentarily, like freedom.

  And then, I feel my grandfather pulling chunks of my black, sudsy hair, and the cold air again on my face. What are you doing? he yells. What do you think we are, royalty?

  It’s true; I am taking a bubble bath. But after everything he has stolen, I don’t see the problem with my indulgence. His jacket is bulging with half a dozen heavy objects, making him look fat and demented with his nostrils flaring like a boar’s. His yelling wakes up my grandmother, who then begins screaming that nobody treated her like a queen in her whole life, that she never once got to use silver utensils or sleep on fur coats, that princesses don’t exist, that in her day she would have done something I was unable to hear because by then I was already being shoved into the basement, and all I could hear was the awful beating of butterfly wings.

  The basement has no windows. My grandfather’s only attempt at making it livable was to throw in a cot with a blanket the size of a pillowcase around the time that I began making him angry because I’d been breaking his stolen objects. But even before he began his stealing, my grandfather would come home to broken dishes and ruined furniture. He’d look around at the mess and point his wrinkled finger at me and call me his nieta de mierda. I used to spill almost every drink or bowl of soup, but always by accident. It was the dogs, I’d tell him when he’d find a cracked mug or fallen flowerpot. Then train those damn dogs, he’d say. Put tags on them and put them to work. But when I’d see the dogs outside the kitchen window I couldn’t help it. I’d run out and chase them through the pastures. They were much too beautiful just to watch—they seemed to dance on the tips of the blades of grass, with light paws and open mouths, as though singing.

  And sometimes it really was the dogs who broke things. When I’d forget to close the front door, they’d run through the house in their messy, hypnotic way. They’d stumble through the living room, slipping on the tile with their claws loud like a woman’s high heels. Past the kitchen, they’d burst through the door left ajar into my grandmother’s room and crawl over her boulder of a body, and she’d curse them and call them the spawn of the devil, and then they’d continue on through the house, which is small so it wouldn’t take long for them to tip over vases, drool on the countertops, discover food in places we would have never known food had been left. And then they’d be gone, their tails wagging high in the air so far away, almost out of sight, a cluster of brown and black moving steadily across the green, and around me all would be in ruins.

  After seeing the house littered like this day after day, my grandfather finally said, Ha, now you will pay; now you will know how I feel about the mess you make in this house! He captured the butterflies from the pastures in glass jars and released them into our basement. Once the basement was full and we could hear the flapping of wings from outside, he shoved me in and locked the hatch. I see you running through the fields with your head in the clouds like th
e damn butterflies, he said. They’re omens, butterflies; they bring about disorder. So now you will learn what it’s like to live in chaos! he yelled, while my grandmother screamed something else, something I couldn’t hear.

  He started punishing me like this three years ago or the year before that. I can’t be sure—I, too, have trouble keeping track of time. It’s even harder when I’m in the basement. I’ve grown into the habit of counting my thoughts before they drift somewhere else, hiding in a new territory of my mind, as a way to determine how much time has passed. Every time I come here the cot is somewhere different. Now, naked and wet from the bubble bath, I cannot find it, although the basement is small and there aren’t very many places it could have hidden. There are no lights, so my senses are reduced to touch, smell, hearing, taste, and intuition, which is the only sense women have that men don’t, I once heard my grandmother say before she got so huge she couldn’t get out of bed. We can see the things that are just marginally visible, like ghosts or the emotions of men. But now I cannot intuit where the cot is in this basement, and the butterflies seem to have multiplied, making it harder to sense with my other senses where I am and what I should do. I try and I try, but I can’t count my thoughts yet. Sitting down on the cold floor, naked and soaking wet, I hold my knees until I am perfectly still. Shhhhhh, I tell myself, stop screaming.

  IN THE MORNING, the night nurse opens the hatch and a little ray of sunlight pours into the basement. Come, she breathes, hurry before they all fly out. And I do. My grandmother sees me crawl out, covered in butterflies—purple, orange, green spots on my naked body—and yells that I look like the plague. Stay out of my room; you’ll kill me with your breath! You’ll bring this country to ruin!