A Fierce and Subtle Poison

by Samantha Mabry

  Isabel dashed through the courtyard door and over to the twisting staircase. Once there, she put her foot on the bottom step and turned toward me.

  “I need you upstairs.”

  Isabel lived in a room of glass. If anyone were to have seen it from outside, they would’ve thought they were looking at a perfectly perched rooftop solarium. Rows of thick plants obscured the windows that lined the room on all four sides. I could just make out their tall shadows and hear the squeaks of their stems being dragged across the glass by the wind.

  In the center of the room was a nearly rusted four-poster bed covered with a multicolored quilt and rumpled pages from old issues of El Nuevo Día. Stacks of books leaned against every immovable object, from the glass walls to the twin green nightstands to an armoire in the corner made of a dark-lacquered wood. Next to the armoire was a pile of canvases, and propped up against that was a folded easel. The whole place smelled like grass, oil paint, and turpentine.

  Isabel yanked open the armoire doors and started tossing out clothing.

  “I don’t remember where I put . . . here! Hold this.” She handed me a duffel bag, and then spun around to dig under the bed. Within seconds, she’d pulled out what looked like a child’s plastic suitcase.

  She then moved over to her desk to search through the piles of junk there, including several teacups and a mason jar full of used paintbrushes.

  “What do you need me to do?” I asked.

  “I’m looking for thread. Spools of thread. It doesn’t matter the color. Check the trunks behind you.”

  I turned. Lined up against one of the glass walls were four large trunks, the kind that fill grandmothers’ attics and contain costumes, old photos, and mothballs. Isabel’s contained none of that. The first was stuffed with mismatched sheets and blankets; the second was empty except for a handful of buttons, a single flower, dried to black, and a pair of opera glasses. The third trunk—made of wood stained blood red—was filled almost to the top with pieces of paper of all different sizes and colors. Some were scraps: receipts, torn corners of yellow notebook paper, pieces of matchbooks. Others were bigger: sheets of tracing paper and rolls held tight with disintegrating rubber bands.

  Some of the stray papers fluttered out and fell to the ground. One was a blue square, the size of a drink coaster.

  My knees hurt, someone had written on it.

  Another, written in crayon on a page torn from a coloring book: Make my baby sister stop crying.

  Another, on onionskin, in peacock-blue ink so old the words had faded to illegibility. Something about a daughter, or maybe a disaster.

  They were wishes. There must have been hundreds.

  “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I muttered. Turning, I saw Isabel holding the little suitcase, along with the duffel and a folded white blanket. She’d thrown the hood of her sweatshirt over her head.

  “You and your friends weren’t the first to drop wishes over my wall,” she said. “They still come, though not as often as they used to.”

  “Why do you keep them?”

  “Because they make me feel like I’m a part of people’s lives. I found the thread.” She held up the suitcase. “Do you know of a place we can go?”

  “Yeah,” I said, closing the lid of the trunk. “I do. How long has it been since you’ve been to the beach?”

  Part Three

  Leaves

  Seventeen

  MY MOM LEFT on my first day of second grade. She’d fixed me oatmeal that morning as usual, and, as usual she’d packed my lunch and put it in my backpack. After driving me the short distance to my school while we both listened to news radio, she’d waved to me as I got out of the car and was absorbed by the mass of shrieking kids.

  I remember her shouting out the car window, “I’ll see you later, Luke!”

  At 3:45 that afternoon, my grandma—my mother’s mother—drove up to the empty school in her ancient forest-green Buick. I’d been on the swings, waiting in the warm late-summer sun. The other kids were long gone. That wasn’t abnormal. When my mom or dad had to work late, they’d ask my grandma to pick me up. They always told her that school let out at 3 p.m.—which was fifteen minutes earlier than school actually let out—because they knew she’d be late. The reason my grandma was always late, my dad had said, was because she had lived for so long in the Dominican Republic and that people in the Caribbean have no sense of time.

  My grandma honked her horn and then stuck her whole arm out of the window to wave. She was always one to make her presence known, even if we were the only two people around. I leapt off the swings and raced to the car. Without acknowledging that she was late, my grandma drove me home. After letting us in with her spare key, she made me oatmeal—just like my mom had done that morning. While we sat at the table, I had her tell me stories I’d heard hundreds of times, stories of living in the forests outside of Santo Domingo, where the monkeys would come right up to you and snatch food from your hands if you weren’t watching, and how my mom used to climb trees higher and hold her breath underwater longer than all the boys.

  “You should have seen her, Lucas,” my grandmother had said. “Like a deer, that girl could run—fast and graceful through the grass. No one could catch her. She would point to the highest of the mountains and tell me that she was going to live there someday.”

  Along with my mom, my grandma was one of the first storytellers in my life, and for a long time the Caribbean islands seemed like a land of fantasy, where myths passed for history and my mother was a marvelous daredevil, whose speed and agility was the envy of everyone.

  When my dad came home in the early evening and saw my grandma and me sitting by ourselves at the kitchen table, he told me to go to my room. It was there that I saw a note from my mom on the bed. As I read it, I could hear my dad yelling from the other side of the house, saying that he should have known better and demanding information my grandma couldn’t or wouldn’t give.

  Mom’s note was written in black pen on a piece of green construction paper she’d taken from my desk. The note said that she’d never thought she was a very good mom and I’d grow up stronger without her. She told me she loved me and that even though I might be mad at her for a little while, I’d soon see that her moving away would turn out to be the best thing for the both of us. I’m doing this for you, she’d written. On the bottom of the page, she’d drawn a picture of a palm tree.

  My dad never found out about the note. I’d hidden it in a shoebox under my bed and would only pull it out every so often. I finally threw it away a couple of years ago. I’d learned enough by then to know my mom was full of shit. She’d claimed her decision to leave had been about me and my well-being, when, in reality, it had been about her and her nagging regrets about marrying my dad, starting a family, and leaving a place where she could climb to the tops of the highest trees and swim in clear warm water. There were no mountains for her to live on in Houston.

  During the cab ride east toward Condado Beach, with Isabel beside me in the backseat, I was reminded of my mom. Something Dr. Ford had said earlier, about how marvelous Isabel was, had triggered my memory. He was acting in her best interest, he’d said; he’d been doing it all for her. Bullshit. He was doing it all for himself. Just like my mother had done. At least Isabel had the guts to own up to her atrocity. Her father had hit the floor still clinging to the belief that his actions were somehow justifiable.

  “I hope you’re right about this,” I said.

  Isabel shifted, slanting her knees away from me and toward her door. The duffel bag stuffed with stems and leaves from the plants in the Ford’s courtyard was wedged between Isabel’s feet, and the little green plastic suitcase sat between the two of us. Folded on Isabel’s lap was the white blanket. Folded on that blanket were her hands. They trembled slightly, along with the breaths she was trying hard to keep smooth and quiet.

  “I am.” Isabel had her gaze directed toward the window; the hood of her sweatshirt was still up, coveri
ng most her hair, and all I could see of her face was a dim reflection in the glass. “If she’s alive, she’s out near Rincón, in one of my dad’s cabins. I’m sure once we’re out on the road, I can find them again.”

  I had to believe her. I had no choice. This mission was set in motion, and unless I wanted to take off by myself and search the entire island with nothing to guide me but weakly burning hope, I was forced to follow Isabel’s lead.

  “What is this place we’re going to, exactly?” Isabel asked.

  Earlier, when we’d first climbed into the cab on Calle Sol, I’d given the driver the address of the abandoned hotel on Condado Beach. He’d lowered the volume of the guajira-son music that had been blaring from his speakers. His eyes had shot up to the rearview mirror and narrowed to indicate he hadn’t heard me right. He blurted out a question in such rapid Spanish that the only word I could understand was “hotel.” After watching me try to sort out the words of two languages in my head for a couple of seconds, Isabel answered the cab driver in Spanish. Even then he’d still seemed confused.

  “De veras!” she’d exclaimed, tossing her hand in the air. That I understood. It roughly translated into, yeah, really.

  “It’s an old hotel.”

  “I gathered that.” Isabel turned her head, which allowed me to glimpse again the iron-gray strands of hair falling from her hood and across her chest. “I guess I meant, how did you come across it?”

  Isabel pulled the blanket more tightly into her lap. The bruise on her hand, the one I’d touched, was larger now, extending down toward her wrist, spreading like a blue-black rash. My kiss didn’t make it better. Of course it didn’t.

  “Rico and Ruben and Carlos and I found it when we were kids,” I replied. “Every summer when I come back to San Juan, I’m surprised it’s still here.”

  “It’s nice you’ve all been friends that long,” she said.

  I realized she was baiting me, subtly, and I didn’t want to bite. The plan was for us to get to La Andalusia and stay there until Isabel finished up whatever she needed to do. I’d find a phone, call Rico, and convince him to let us borrow his scooter. Isabel and I would head west as quickly as we could, ideally before sundown. There was no part of the plan that involved Isabel and me making small talk or getting to know each other better.

  And yet. A small slice of the anger I felt towards her was softening into pity. Back in her courtyard, she’d mentioned her sorry excuse for a life, and there was no way I could argue with that. Physically, she was withering away. Her poison blood was seeping to the surface, bleaching her hair and marring her skin. She had no friends, no mother. No one had ever held her hand. Her closest companions were her plants and the desperate strangers who threw their wishes to her.

  “Things will be different next year,” I said. “My dad told me they’re tearing the convent down. We’ll be staying out at Rincón, where his firm is building a new resort. Rico and Ruben could maybe come out for a day or two, but I know once Carlos has saved enough money, he’s leaving the island completely.”

  “Rincón is not so bad,” Isabel offered. She turned again to face the window, craning her head to try and peer down the shoreline. “You think we’re close?”

  I pulled the sheet of plywood away from the window and followed Isabel into La Andalusia.

  Once inside the old ballroom, Isabel made a beeline for one of the tables, opened her suitcase, and pulled out a small sewing machine. She stripped off her sweatshirt and then set the machine up quickly, positioning a spool of dark-colored thread on the spindle and winding it through the machine. After that, she attached a pedal, which she placed down by her feet.

  “There’s no electricity in here,” I said, noting the coin-sized bruises that ran up and down both of her arms. “You should’ve told me.”

  She shook the leaves onto the table and unfolded the blanket. “Not a problem. The machine runs on a pedal.”

  I watched as she pumped the pedal with her foot and brought the machine whirring to life. I remembered the shirt she’d given me on the night of the hurricane, the one with the mend her father had recognized.

  “Where’d you learn how to do this?”

  Isabel yanked the black thread free from its spool and deftly wound it through the machine. “One collects these types of hobbies out of boredom and necessity.”

  “You’re sure you won’t take long?”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can. Don’t get too close, though. When the needle pierces the leaves the smell might make your head spin.”

  Isabel pulled a long dollar-bill-green leaf from the pile and laid it out on top of the blanket. She then guided both of the layers through the machine. She did the same thing with another long leaf and another section of the blanket. When she reached the bottom, she pivoted the short end of the blanket and started going up the way she’d come.

  After pacing for close to ten minutes, I went across the room and collapsed on a couch, the same one I’d slept on the night I found Marisol. I shut my eyes and draped my arm across them, attempting to block out my senses, maybe even get lucky enough to snag some rest. Instead, I was plagued by the torturous humming of Isabel’s machine. The persistent needle went up and down in a quick, determined rhythm. My watch, inches from my ear, ticked slowly and surely. My heart, however, bucked erratically. My mind raced.

  “Tell me about Zabana,” I demanded, my eyes still closed.

  Isabel hesitated. “How do you know her name?”

  “Your dad brought over one of his books to the hotel. He dedicated it to her. He wrote that nothing could tear them apart. But something obviously did.”

  I opened my eyes and turned my head toward Isabel—the very something—that was able to tear apart Zabana and Rupert.

  “Did she leave because you were sick?” I asked. “That seems like a pretty shitty thing to do.”

  “She was ashamed.” Isabel cast a quick glance up to me. “I am the way I am because of her. She felt like leaving was her only option—at least that’s what she told my dad.”

  Isabel plucked a leaf from her pile and readied for another pass through the machine.

  “She took the bird and left a curse,” I said. “That’s what the señoras always said.”

  “Why are you bringing this up?” Isabel asked wearily. “Truly, you don’t care about me or my mother or . . . ”

  “I need a distraction,” I replied, cutting Isabel off. “Please. Just talk. I need a story to distract me from the ones that I’m currently making up in my head about Celia dead in some cabin in the middle of the forest. Silence isn’t doing me any good right now.”

  Isabel’s eyes shot up to mine again. They examined me the same way they’d done the first day I landed in her courtyard—warily —like she wasn’t sure she approved of what she saw.

  “The señoras weren’t completely wrong,” she said after a beat. “The story goes that my mom was a jíbara, a peasant. She grew up in a tiny beach village on the south side of the island, outside of Ponce. One afternoon when she was fifteen years old, she was out on the water’s edge weaving together a small basket from strips of fallen palm fronds when a man approached her. He spoke in a language she’d never heard before, but she somehow understood him. After giving her a warning about a boy with a scar on his right cheek who would grow up to destroy the village, he took the strips of the fronds out of her hands and wove a perfect basket, just big enough to hold three swallows of water.

  “My mom was scared because her brother Tino had a scar on his right cheek,” Isabel continued. “Even though she loved him very much and he’d been the one to teach her how to swim and write and draw pictures, she went back to her village to show her mother her basket and pass on the warning from the man. Once she heard the story, my grandmother led my mom to the hut where the cacique lived. There, she repeated what happened to her, word for word, to the old lady with the gray eyes and tangled gray hair who she’d been afraid of her whole life. The cacique offered my mom some wate
r and a piece of bread and touched her lightly on her arm. She asked what exactly my mom was doing when the man appeared. She wanted to know exactly what he looked like and what he said.”

  “Wait,” I said, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. “What’s a cacique?”

  “A cacique’s a Taíno chieftain,” Isabel replied. “She leads the community. Anyway, my mom ate the bread, told the cacique what she’d been doing, what the man had looked like, and what he’d said. The old lady then patted my mom on the head and told her she was very brave. That night, four men came to my mom’s family’s house and took Tino away. As he was being dragged through the door, he placed a curse on my mother. He said that he hoped her belly would be full of poison and that any of her children and her children’s children would die in the streets like dogs. My mom stood frozen and said nothing. She said she could feel his words. They landed all over her body, and like worms, they burrowed through her skin and into her organs.

  “The next morning the cacique told my mom she was a bohique—a priestess—and the man she had spoken to on the beach was a god. He’d come to give her a message because he knew she was one of the few people who could receive it. Because of that message, the cacique said, my mom saved many lives.”

  Isabel paused briefly. “Of course there was never any proof of that. My dad has told me this story dozens of times, and he always stops right here and snorts and says, ‘Of course there was never any proof of that.’”

  “Regardless . . . ” Isabel sighed. “The cacique told my grandma that her daughter was a rare gift to her people, but my mom never believed it; what she did believe was that Tino cursed her and that she could feel that curse festering inside her belly.”

  Even though Isabel had lied to me in a variety of unforgivable ways, I believed this story. It was about magic and disappearing. Zabana was special, but her village eventually forgot her. Then it forgot itself. I thought about my mother again, though this time about the story of la ciguapa with the backward feet, and then her asking me: What’s there not to believe?