They cast us out—but not completely. When a Delgado was sick, or hurt, they brought him or her to me. They knew about the power. They could feel it in my hands, see it in my eye; they detested me, but they were also full of fear and of belief. I learned to use the fire. I healed them when I could.
Old age and Castro came. The brothers of Antonio and their wives and sons and daughters got ready to leave. To America, of course. I told them I would go. But it was not for me but for them that I left; to accompany them to Miami, and be there to heal them. Because I had seen a picture of Castro, and the heat in his beady little eyes, and love of his people in his face—from there, from that, came the fire. I knew he would walk through the cane fields unscathed. He would fight, burning, all the way to Havana. A part of me wanted to stay—to meet him, face to face, to be in the presence of another cunning and terrible witch. But the Delgados were rich—though not for long—and were desperately preparing to flee. And I was a Delgado.
*
To heal. To heal. Como una bruja.
So when the son of Antonio’s brother came with his child, it was the worst illness—but not the first one.
Land of liberty. Land without compassion.
It made them all much sicker.
They were bright, and worked hard—at all the wrong things. Because they were pale the way my Antonio had been, before I seared his hands, and put some righteous color back into the man—almost white, almost colorless; and, when they wanted to, they could pass for one of the pale white money-making ghosts. So they did.
Me, I stayed out of it all, especially after Antonio died. In a concrete room in Miami, with my food stamps, and my Medicaid. Did not move. Sometimes shut the crazy eye. With it saw into the heart of the place. Me a ball of fire flying invisible through the streets of this city in the new money country, howling past beaches glutted with tourists, the fake planted palms on white-hot sidewalks, broad flat avenues where old people who had come down here to die hobbled along and barely looked up; barely recognized the fire, and its searing light—they were so used to their fear of it, of the flame and the light that would one day soon come, and signal their own end.
Como una bruja. Fire from the fire. Invisible, burning, I sat in a white concrete kitchen and sent the heart out of me, went flying through the streets of the city in this new land of money and of liberty. Through blinking red lights, past shopping malls where empty grocery carts glinted in the sunlight. White matrons loaded bags into car trunks, paused to listen as I went by. Purses hung from their shoulders, heavy with the handguns they carried as protection against demented Cuban refugees.
Black girl. Old ugly lady, bent body. Went flying, screaming without sound into the city’s core, where buildings squeezed together and streets narrowed. Heat steamed from iron grating over sewers. Lampposts were bent, useless, some with filthy shoes strung from their tops in place of lights. Fire hydrants gushed water along the curbs. In the cool wet rush children danced, twirled hair ribbons, sang rhyming songs in Spanish. Down one alley, men fought with knives—for drugs, and the love of a woman. Their blood flew up to spatter the white undershirts hanging from windows on twine. A terrier barked at them from behind some garbage caps. Boys trying to grow their first mustaches hung from fire escapes, watching, cigarettes dangling from their lips, sweat speckling their chests. Now and then to yell hoarse encouragement to one bleeding man, or the other.
Como una bruja. Invisible, I flew. Burning. From the Powers. From the fire. Like a witch. Black witch. Past an open storefront from which blared the music of a steel band once popular in Havana, before the days of the great witch Castro. Sound of a feeling hot, bouncing, metallic, like the rays of sun gleaming off polished silver bracelets. Irrepressible. Inescapable. It would have you dancing in ecstatic delirium forever, if you listened long enough. You’d leap and spin, reach out for the beckoning, sparkling platinum of moonlight on the sea. Like a fool, try to hold it in your hand.
Past all this, I flew.
To a late afternoon. Shifts changing in a hospital. Cars funneled from the parking lots surrounding it like broad concrete moats. Some drivers still wore nurses’ caps, or plastic identification cards on their chest, or stethoscopes. An ambulance took the emergency entrance. Outside waited reporters, and cameras. The story of Angelita’s only survivors would make the first edition of the evening news.
Inside this place a large group of witches took over. They did not have the fire, or the Powers, but they did command an impressive collection of delicate tools and magical machines. They could cut into the body of my nephew’s daughter without waking her. Sense her life power rise and fall and the inside fire smoke back to life, flickering, flickering, by use of strange wires. Her skin was washed and salved until every ash-colored, swollen, water-bruised inch of it glistened. They put a bag of colorless liquid food on a hanging metal thing beside her, and from the bag came a string, and this string they sank deep into her arm. Her legs, her chest, her head—all were wired to various witch devices. Tubes invaded her nose and forearms. One went right up into the secret part of her. So that she looked like some discarded toy rescued from a puddle: floppy and beaten, internal substance exposed, a vague imitation of something human.
Like this, she slept.
The Delgados came to claim her. They stood around her, sobbing.
I went inside her sleeping head. Burned a flame high to see it all. The water and the waves. Metal and the shattering pain. A demented man who wanted to lead the children; who sought to be a witch, but in the end was merely demented, a boyhood murderer of animals. Smearing himself with blood. Calling it the task of a warrior. He made their bodies strong; he made them ill inside.
Como una bruja. Burned a flame. I saw it all. The boy who loved her. The girl she loved. The water that she loved and hated. And I saw, clearly, that she had traveled into the place beyond life for a very little while; that she had seen it, and heard it, the light, and the thunder, and been afraid. And so had come back—to continue the work of quelling this fear. Such is the way of the Powers: by fire, or by water.
Under the spells and tools of the white-coated witches, she did not know this. She’d forgotten. What she experienced, now, was a vague sensation of rising and of falling. What she heard, now, was nothing but the sounds of her body: an agonizingly slow heart thud that seemed to rack each vein; the suck and pull of precious air into her throat and lungs. She was aware of little else—neither pain, nor thirst, nor hunger nor terror—except of maybe a dim but persistent sense that she was traveling somewhere, somewhere important, and so it was essential to keep moving. She was too ruined, too broken, too drugged, to know that she didn’t have to swim any more. So she kept on trying. It seemed important. For this reason, her muscles twitched.
It was like that, for me—when I lived through fire, when I kept on walking. When my ears heard the thunder and my crossed round eye saw it, saw it, saw the light. Reached for it. Saying, I am broken, take me, I give myself to you. All the pieces of this heart, shattered by love. But the light said, no, Corazón, not yet. Go back, and love more, and suffer. Go back and heal them. Como una bruja. Here, here. There is fire in your hands. Live one more life. And learn how to use it.
Watching her, I knew: Here was the one, a child I never bore; and it was time to pass on the power. Felipe’s daughter would live. And then, one day, would come to me.
*
Looking sorrowful, crazy, half drowned again, she is here. About to knock on my door. I’m there before she does, and open it.
“Tita?”
“Sure, child. Come in. You stayed away too long.”
With her father’s money she’s bought things, puts crackling paper bags on the little table in the middle of the square white room. Expensive sauces. Canned beans. Frozen vegetables. Fancy boxes of sugared fruit. Chocolate and coffee. Coca-Cola. An envelope, sealed and unaddressed, which she sets on the table, blushing. I know there’s money in it, hundred-dollar bills from a Delgado.
“I never use it.”
“But it’s working? Good. And when you go to the clinic, he said, be sure to take a taxi.”
She sits in the still white heat, sweating.
I limp around the buzzing refrigerator. Store food away. Limp around the cupboards. Bent back. Old black bruja. Grab tall glasses with colored flowers decorating the sides, crack into them ice, fill them with soda. One for her. One for me.
“You’re here alone?”
“Kenny died, Tita.”
“His poor little mother,” I say, “how can she live now? What a tragedy.”
But neither of us cry.
I take her into another room. This one darker, worn, filled with good and magic things—not modern, more humane. Stack of newspapers and old magazines in one corner. Butt end of a Kool or two in metal ashtrays on the beaten coffee table; I am not supposed to smoke any more, but maybe the child won’t tell what she saw. A pair of worn terry-cloth bedroom slippers set near the armchair, stained and molded to the contours of my hardened, crooked feet. One shelf crowded with books, in Spanish. The shelf above it is mobbed with framed photos of the Delgado family: in-laws, nieces, nephews, children and their spouses, and one single old black and white of my slave grandparents, dressed in skin and rags. On a sidetable, a mug from Disneyland filled with pennies. Also a telephone, dusty from lack of use. Placed in the most appropriate spot, next to these images of relatives—who call frequently, but I never respond; because there’s something unsound and terrifying about their money, their solicitude, their American way of speaking.
Against one wall, the altar. Feathers. Water. Flower petals, and drops of perfume. Tapestry. Some half-melted, unlit candles. We sit on the torn sofa, watching it.
“Um. I don’t know why I’m here, Tita. For Kenny, I guess. And to see you. But, I mean, I really just don’t know.”
Many flights below, traffic on the streets. The sounds come from far away. Fade into a void. Along with the hum of fans and air conditioners, refrigerators, TV sets. There is silence now. I feel her waiting.
“It’s okay, child.”
The voice of an old woman, measured and thin, cracked in the middle of each word. Still, it reassures her.
“I went back to school, Tita. I’ve been swimming again, on this little team there. And I love this—I think, that I fell in love. Except I kind of don’t know. I’m still afraid all the time.”
“Why,” says my old voice, “why are you afraid?”
“I don’t know exactly; It’s like I’m stuck in this fear. I wake up in the night afraid. Even when I’m laughing I feel sad all the time. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can’t even imagine anything—the only thing that comes to me is this black, black space. I mean”—the young face struggles—“I want to feel good, really good, you know, like, joy, like other people seem to feel—but I can’t. Something stops me.”
“How long have you been afraid?”
“A long time.”
“What is it about Kenny dying that makes you come here?”
“Angelita,” she says. And weeps.
“Why are you crying?”
“I think I’m queer.”
“What? Strange?”
“Yes. No. I mean, homosexual.”
“Ah. So you’re afraid of that.”
“Maybe. Of not having children. Or hope.”
She forgot the rest, she tells me, what happened the night before Angelita. But now remembers. Sometimes, as she talks, she’s enraged, almost taunting, or near tears, at other times sounding calm and dead. Saying, it wasn’t Liz who came running downstairs after me, Tita, the night in San Juan, not her and not Kenny, it was Sager.
I listen to her words. I see the man Sager brushing by the young man Kenny, the young woman Liz, shirtless, barely nodding, eyes set ahead, buttoning the top button of his jeans. It was Sager who followed, bare callused feet on cement. He hardly made a sound.
In the room where her things were she locked the door. Light rose faintly from the bedside table, illuminated the bottom half of a bad painting on the wall, graveled beach streaked red, streaked pink. There was sand inside each shoe. She took them off. Shook them out. Breathing hard. Fingers numb. Then a sound like a crack at the door, the latch snapped easily, just like a dried twig, and it opened. There was Sager. She looked up at him with shoes in her hands.
Okay, he said. The voice seemed funny. A cool tenor. She remembered, suddenly, that he was young.
Get out, she said. He shook his head. In the halfway dark she saw a flash of eyes, fluorescent hallway light streaking in from the cracked-open door, almost but not quite a smile. And he said, No, Kitten, you’ve got it all wrong, you don’t tell me what to do.
“Fuck you, Bart.”
Something knocked her head sideways so for a second she didn’t breathe. Then twisted it around, smothering, grinding against pillows, and trying to breathe she made a sound. Heard him say, Stupid kid, you’ve got that wrong, too.
Then her forehead went into a headboard, once, twice. She thought, bewildered: There won’t be any blood. Tried to push herself up with arms tangled in sheets. Something ripped. Massive hands around her wrists pulled back, and up, and in the light under the pink-streaked red-streaked gravelly sand she was on the bed on her knees all of a sudden, shoulders wrenched, hands pinned, frozen still, unstruggling, her face in pillows, a throbbing in her head. She told herself: Yell. Instead, froze. What came out were weak muffled sounds. He pulled the hands and arms higher until every ligament in each shoulder strained to the danger point, aching to break. Saying, Big girl, huh? Big animal? Worthless. All that money down the gutter. But remember, Kitten, everything you get comes from me. Every race. Every medal.
He leaned over then to whisper. And every time she fucks you, it’s because I say so.
Oh, she thought, inanely, watch out for the shoulders.
As if he caught the thought on air he lowered both her arms carefully, then, to the small of her back, but kept his grip tight around both wrists. For a second, she wanted to thank him. Thinking, as if it mattered: Too many pushups, maybe, baby those joints. Thinking: Time trials, max out. And National Team. Save them for next summer.
Right, he whispered. He spoke softly now, very calm, almost kind. Gold medal deltoids. Million dollar knees. And we don’t want to hurt them, Kitten, do we?
He was yanking at her waistband. No, she thought, this is not real. Somewhere, clothes ripped. She could not see. Only feel steamed close air against bare flesh, back, thighs, knees hurting. Sucking air desperately through the pillow cover in her mouth. Between them air, denim, buttons. Then nothing but what he had willed, this piece of him hard and thick and cruel. No, she said, not that, please. But it found what it was looking for and pushed deep inside. Pain burst up through her so that she forgot to breathe again.
Then something left her and went into the aching dull light of the bedside lamp, hovered around bad pictures of gray waves and sand, watching as he did this to her body.
Pain tore up to her body’s intestines, but, watching, she did not feel it. For a minute he closed his eyes. He began to move then, harder and faster. She watched from the bedside lamp. Sand seared. Waves foamed down from the bad pink and gray painting on the wall, bubbled like water in a pot. On the floor were her body’s torn clothes. On the bed two shoes, partly filled with sand.
Big girl, he said. Big girl, huh4? But I’ll show you. Stuck-up little mixed-breed bitch.
She watched, feeling nothing. Until her pinned wrists were yanked up urgently, his head tilted back and pale eyes closed, and he jerked forward in a spasm that distorted his face, made him drop both her arms so that they fell numb on the bed, and he groaned once, sharply, plunged some last piece of himself forward, spilled out of her dripping pale drops, dripping blood. Then collapsed across her back, and there were two human beings stacked one on top of the other, still and flat against a ruined bed. She
watched, feeling nothing. But her body cried.
Whoa, he said, whoa.
She watched, feeling nothing, as his lips kissed the neck of her body. Then he groaned as if to sob, hid his face against the back of her body’s neck, but no more sounds came out. For some reason, or for no reason, the hands of the girl who was her groped forward, pulled pillow covers away from a tear-smeared face, turned the body sideways so that she curled halfway into the shadow of him and was still, crying, and he put his arms around her. She touched a thick white-haired arm with cold fingers. Her voice shook. Incongruous.
Bart?
He was barely there. Gave no reply.
When he stood, he stroked her shoulder. She lay motionless. He stuffed himself back inside the denim jeans and buttoned them up in an orderly fashion, bottom to top, perfectly. He spoke and the words came softly.
See, Babe. He was at the door now, broken latch swinging from its insides, and he opened it a crack then quietly closed it, firmly, intentionally.
See, I can do that any time. Come through any door.
In the light, his back glistened. His face looked tired, a little paler than usual, drained. He turned and was gone.
The body that was hers did not move for a long time. After a while, when tears had dried on the face, it rolled off the bed trailing a sheet spotted with dark drops, and she watched emotionlessly as it crawled across the dusty floor, past rug tassels and spiders, to the threshold of the bathroom; as it paused there, swaying on both knees like a wounded animal, then pulled itself across dirty old tiles to a bathtub that was large and rounded at the edges, colonial style. She watched the bruised wrists swell, watched the hands turn rusted faucets. Watched a young woman climb over into the old white rounded tub while cold water spilled in, puddled around her raw nakedness, and once in a while her body panted in short, repetitive sequence, and once in a while it cried.
She watched, feeling nothing. Followed sparking trails of light from the bedside lamp, from the bad oil painting, fused with stained sand and wet air, watched over her from the light itself and whenever she cried stepped back inside her for a moment, stopping her, saying, Shut up, girl. Saying, I am the brains now, I am the fire here, I am the power. I am the water that puts out the fire. I am the flame that can burn through the water. I am you, girl, I am the thing that will save you. This, here, watching. Take it. Have it. When what happens is too hard to bear. When reason does not matter.
The Sea of Light Page 36