For the first couple of weeks, chasing rats out of the apartment and arguing over who used all the hot water seemed like an adventure but when no word came from the other members of the ERP, people started to get restless. Trini tried to hide the fact that she was miserable by seducing Adrian every chance she could.
She abandoned her old self completely. The shy, naïve girl Adrian first met in Buenos Aires was gone. She would sneak up behind him and drag him under the stairs, a thin wall of hanging ivy being all that separated them from the people walking by. As she clawed at him, begging him to take her, he would think back on the feat it once had been just to get her to undress for bed. Her stepfather had trained her to be submissive and timid in the presence of a man but it was as if the moment they ran away together, she cut every string tying her to her past life.
Now that she was out in the world, out from underneath her stepfather’s fists and lies, she was hungry for all of the things she had always been too afraid to let herself want. And for those first few years all she wanted was Adrian. Adrian had been with other women before Trini. There was the time he had sex with his barber’s daughter in a storage closet next to a vat of shaving cream and the night he had sex with a friend’s cousin while their parents were at the opera. And then there was the time he had an affair with his teacher. They met almost every night for a month in the parking lot of her apartment complex until she got a job at a school in Mendoza.
But there was something about the way Trini clawed at him, the way she held on to him with such urgency. He could almost hear the panic trapped inside each breath and sometimes making love to her made him feel like a monster. Every time, he was afraid he was hurting her somehow and he was even more afraid that that’s what she wanted.
Over the next two years the apartment became a warehouse for making bombs and storing automatic weapons and ammunition. Adrian didn’t even know who half of their targets were. Some were doctors thought to be treating government officials, some were law enforcement, politicians, wives and children of military leaders. The list went on and on. But Adrian never talked about the people he had watched die with his own eyes, the people he had aided on their way out with his own hands and he never mentioned to Trini the children and their mothers that his bombs had killed—not when he fell asleep every night, that soft moon rising above her navel pressing against his back.
Trini was pregnant by the time they got word of their first assignment and she carried the child for just three months before she lost it. Adrian tried not to think about the morning he found her sitting on the bathroom floor, the blood on her legs already dry. But despite all of that she was determined to try again and voiced to Adrian how dangerous the apartment was becoming for a child and he’d agreed, especially with the ERP having so many valuable explosives and weapons around.
Over the next four years they moved from place to place, staying with other ERP members for short periods of time as they made their way back to Buenos Aires. Adrian was moving up in the ERP and taking on more responsibilities. When they reached Buenos Aires again, the war was at its height. The number of disappeared was steadily climbing and the military was becoming less discreet about who they took and when.
ERP members in Buenos Aires started planning a raid on a military weapons warehouse and Adrian was just one of 100 ERP members who surrounded it early one morning while the sky was still dark. Once all of the exits were covered Adrian led the first group in. The warehouse wasn’t swarming with armed soldiers like they thought it would be and they quickly took out the first few guards before spreading out to the other entrances of the warehouse.
Once all of the guards had been taken out, ERP members took over manning the entrances in pairs while the rest of the group started gathering the weapons. Suddenly the overhead lights started flashing, striping Adrian’s vision with sporadic white flames, and water began spraying down over everything. Someone had pulled the fire alarm. Adrian glanced up toward the second level of the warehouse to a dark shadow streaking across one of the hallways and he ran up the stairs, his rubber boots slipping on the wet cement. There was no way out on the second floor and he knew he had him. But out of the darkness a pair of arms threw themselves around Adrian’s throat and he fell to the floor, rolling onto his side. He lowered his jaw, sinking his teeth into the arm of his attacker and the arms sprang away. Adrian flipped himself over until he was straddling the soldier and then he reared back his arm, slamming his fists into the soldiers face, throat, and nose. He beat him into a bloody mess until his limbs stopped moving.
Eight months later, when the fires of war that had been blazing over Argentina for years finally seemed to be fading, the ashes just beginning to settle, Trini was coming home from the market. When she reached the apartment the door was wide open and she took a few steps back, calling for Adrian. But no one answered. Still carrying the grocery bags she leaned inside the doorway and looked inside. Shattered glass and splinters of wood covered the floor.
Everything was broken—the furniture, the children’s toys; broken dishes were piled against the far wall and someone had dragged their clothes out of the closets and ripped them to shreds. Trini fell to her knees in the doorway. The glint of a silver frame caught her attention. She crawled over to the broken pieces and began to scoop them up, wrapping them in the fabric of her skirt. Then she made her way to the kitchen, sliding her hands into the pile of shattered china, searching for the little ceramic bowl her daughter had painted for her.
She felt the rough face of the bowl, like sandpaper, and pulled the pieces out, folding her fingers around a jagged piece until the sharp sting of the edges painted her hands with blood. She tried to inhale through silent sobs, desperate to scream out, but before the pain could manifest into sound, the cold barrel of a gun was pressed against her temple and then she was swallowed up by darkness, another pile of broken pieces waiting for Adrian when he got home.
***
“The children were with a neighbor, a friend of ours who watched them when Trini did her errands.”
“And you,” Liliana whispered.
“Working. I had a real job. Things weren’t looking good for the ERP. We were losing too much ground. There just weren’t enough of us anymore. Trini found out she was pregnant again and she begged me to leave it all behind. I told her it wouldn’t be much longer, everyone would be getting out soon. But it was too late. And Trini, who had already suffered more than anyone should, was murdered, in our home, carrying our child.”
Adrian grew quiet and the sound of a cartoon cannon exploding escaped from the next room where the children were watching TV.
“I used to tell her that’s why I did it, that’s why I was fighting. It was all for her. I was going to build her a world where suffering didn’t exist. For me, that’s what the war was about.”
A red mess of hair peeked around the corner. The little girl ran to Adrian and crawled into his lap.
“Story time, Papá,” she said.
Adrian looked at his watch and nodded. “Alright, get your brother,” he said, a smile almost cutting through his dark expression. He looked at Liliana and Diego. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “One story’s all they need and they’ll be asleep in no time.”
The TV clicked off and high pitched chattering floated behind Adrian as he walked into another room. Their voices echoed and Liliana could hear their laughter bouncing off of the walls all the way in the kitchen.
“The stork,” a voice squealed.
“Ok, hand it over,” Adrian said. “Ok, the stork,” Adrian repeated, “Once upon a time, there was a stork and he flew around all day delivering babies to all of the other animals.”
“That’s not really where babies come from.”
“What?” chirped the little red haired girl.
“Babies don’t come from the stork,” Adrian’s little boy said proudly.
“Yes, they do.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Ok, can we finish
reading, stop it you two.”
“Then where do they come from?”
“I’m not tellin’ you.”
“You don’t know where they come from, you’re lying.”
“Am not.”
“Are too, you liar.”
“Stop it right now,” Adrian’s voice bellowed.
“I’m not lying.”
“Prove it. Where do babies come from?”
“From your butt. Babies come out of your butt.”
“What did you say?” Adrian said.
“Simon told me babies come out of the girl’s butt.”
“That’s not true,” argued the little girl.
“That’s ridiculous,” Adrian said. “You’re not allowed to talk to Simon anymore, understand? Alright now, are you going to be quiet?”
There was silence and Liliana could just picture them doe-eyed and nodding. She glanced at Diego, something like a laugh glinting in his eyes.
“Ok, well the stork had trouble seeing…”
“He was rear-sighted,” said the girl.
“Near-sighted.”
“Rear-sighted.”
“It’s near-sighted,” Adrian said, “and one day he made a terrible mistake.”
“Oh can I tell it Papá?”
“No, I want to tell it, please?”
“I asked first.”
“Take turns or no one gets to tell it,” Adrian yelled.
“The stork was near sighted so he couldn’t see all that good and he accidentally delivered the baby sheep to the wolf family and the baby wolf to the sheep family.”
“Then he remembered and flew back to the wolf family.”
“But they wouldn’t let him take back the baby sheep. They had already fallen in love with the baby sheep even though he really wasn’t theirs.”
“And the sheep family didn’t want to give back the wolf because they already loved him too.”
“But the stork tried to tell them it was too dangerous. The wolf would grow up and figure out he’s not a sheep that he’s really a wolf and he’ll eat the other sheep. And one day the wolf family will get hungry and eat the baby sheep.”
“But they wouldn’t listen and they told the stork to leave them alone.”
“And then the aliens came and they gave the stork special powers so he could shoot laser beams out of his eyes and never have to sleep and he…”
“Ok, that’s enough,” Adrian laughed. “Now go to sleep.”
The light flicked off.
“Goodnight,” Adrian whispered before sliding the door closed behind him and heading back into the kitchen.
“Can I get you two something to drink?”
“No, I’m ok, thanks,” Liliana said.
Diego shook his head and Adrian poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat there, silent, tracing his finger around the rim of his glass. He stared down at the table and lowered his voice as he spoke.
“Liliana, I remember the day your mother was taken.”
Liliana just stared at him, the words trembling on the edge of her understanding and she slid to the edge of her chair.
“I was there, in the plaza. I saw them taking her away.”
“What?” Liliana finally managed to say.
The alarm in Liliana’s voice was so sincere that Adrian stopped himself before he could say another word. She looked down, at the table, at her hands, and then at Diego.
“They told me she was just an innocent bystander. That she was killed in a riot. It was an accident.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he told her, “you can make the choice right now to go back. I’ll take you home. We’ll go home.”
“Tell me,” she said.
But Adrian didn’t move, he wouldn’t look at her.
“Are you sure you want…”
“Tell me, Adrian, please.”
“You don’t remember?” he breathed.
“What do you mean?”
“That day, in the plaza, you were there. Across the street with your father and his brother. You were all together, walking the shops, when the tanks rolled in.”
Liliana felt something sharp twisting in her stomach and she couldn’t breathe. She knew what day he was talking about. She remembered bracing herself against her father’s shoulders, trying to pull herself higher so she could see over the crowd. But never once had she remembered her mother being with them. She tried to force her way back through her memory of that day but she was treading through darkness, the truth muddled beneath more than a decade of lies and anecdotes and the false remnants of someone else’s memory.
“Why did they take her?” Liliana asked.
Her voice was cracking and Diego put his hands on her knees to steady her. She thought about all of the lies that people had been feeding her since she was a child. Lies that had etched themselves so deep within her memory that they became inseparable—they became truth.
“I don’t know.”
“No one knows why they took a lot of people,” Diego said, reaching for her hand.
She looked at him as his fingers, warm and calloused, tried to lace themselves through hers. Then she squeezed them until her knuckles burned white.
“Did no one try to get her back? Did anyone find out where she was taken? How does anyone even know what really happened to her?”
The more questions that came spilling from Liliana’s lips, the more impossible it seemed that she would ever find any answers.
“I don’t feel well,” she said, the words catching in her throat. “I need to,”
“Let’s go. Let’s get you home,” Diego pleaded.
“No. Adrian, you have to tell me. Please. Tell me everything.”
Liliana’s mother was not just an innocent bystander who was killed in the chaos of the riot. When the place erupted in panic, she was deliberately sought out, pulled from the crowd and restrained by two soldiers in civilian clothing. They twisted her arms behind her back and led her into the trees—a green ford falcon, void of plates and camouflaged by the green sunlight reflecting off of the leaves waiting for her. She’d screamed until she grew hoarse but no one could hear her, her voice being swallowed up by the frantic crowd just on the other side of the tree line.
Adrian had watched them take her from the other side of the plaza, where he was pinned between a doorway and a family of four. He’d called out to her but he was too far away. Then to his right, across the fountain, he’d seen Manuel holding Liliana as he strained to see over the mass of people and Raul, who was next to him, taking Nita in his arms as he pulled Manuel in the direction of the road. Manuel had shaken him off, trying to push his way through the people moving in the opposite direction, his lips moving and frantic. Adrian could see him calling out for Isabella but he couldn’t hear him. A tank began heading in their direction, the giant tracks climbing over those that had fallen, leaving nothing but a thick trail of blood behind. Raul had gotten behind Manuel, pushing him out of the way of the tank, pushing until all four of them were safely on the other side of the road.
Liliana stepped outside for a moment, the wind tugging on her as she looked out over the balcony at the twinkling lights of the cityscape. Liliana had been without her mother for so long but all of a sudden everything felt achingly familiar again. Every wound had been ripped open, every lie cutting her new. Liliana clutched her waist, lowering herself down onto the ground as she pressed her face against the cold steel guardrail, letting her cheeks absorb the sting until it was all she could feel, until she couldn’t feel at all.
Chapter 22
Diego
Inside Diego and Adrian stared at the walls, the ceiling, Liliana’s shadow just outside the door, anything but each other.
“I should go make sure she’s alright,” Diego finally said.
“Maybe she just needs a little time.”
“Why do you think they‘ve been lying to her for so long? It’s been more than a decade,” Diego said.
“To protect her, maybe? I’m no
t sure. But back then, everyone was keeping secrets.”
“But why would they say it was an accident if it wasn’t. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know. All I know is what I saw and I saw them take her. But I don’t know why. Everyone was trying to get out of the plaza, at one point it was impossible to move. That’s what I never understood about that day. They could have grabbed anybody. But I watched them fight their way through the crowd just to get to her.”
Diego leaned forward, elbows cutting into his knees as he peered through a small oval gap between the door and the frame, watching the wind toss Liliana’s hair around her face. Her cheeks were flushed raw from tears, from the cold, and he wondered if she was numb enough yet.
“Out of all of those people who disappeared, how many of them ever had their bodies found?” Diego said, breaking the silence.
“Not many. The junta would drop them in the ocean or burn their bodies in mass graves. They left no trace of the people they captured, nothing.”
“But some escaped.”
“Some. Not many.”
“Could Isabella have escaped?” The impossibility clung to the back of Diego’s throat and he tried to gulp it down.
“I don’t know.” Adrian shook his head. “Escaping was next to impossible.”
“But not impossible.”
“No. Not impossible. But if someone did escape, they wouldn’t just have to escape from the prison, but they’d have to find a way to escape the country. Even with a passport, they weren’t letting anyone in or out of Argentina.”
“So how would they get out?”
“I know a lot of people who knew they were on the military’s hit list found a way to travel underground. The Gypsies built tunnels on the outskirts of the city to get people past the check points.”
“Tunnels? What did the Gypsies have to do with any of it?”
“The Gypsies, musicians, artists, they were all targeted by the military too. So they started working together. And when the churches started turning families away, out of fear that if they helped them they would be killed, the families started going to the Gypsies, paying them for their black magic.”
The Things They Didn't Bury Page 11