‘We freaked out yesterday when she turned up – I mean freaked …’ Alejandra was even laughing. ‘But Papá told us that it was this big mistake, the only time he’d ever slipped up, right after Mamá told him she was getting a divorce.’
‘He was heartbroken, you know,’ said Ava.
‘Was he heartbroken when Fidel was conceived too?’ I asked.
‘It really took a toll when Mamá got a lawyer and everything. She even kicked him out for a while. He said it totally crushed him,’ chirruped Alejandra, ignoring me. ‘And of course, whatever Papi did isn’t Vanessa’s fault. It was his mistake. Vanessa’s always wanted to meet us. She’s never had a real family, just her on her own with her mother in Isla de Gato.’
‘And she really is just so sweet,’ added Ava.
‘Verga, we get it, she’s sweet,’ I said. ‘But you seriously like her? How can you when …’
Mamá was glaring at me. Eyes like an owl on speed. I knew what that look meant: drop it. But if anyone had to stick up for Aunt Celia, it was me.
‘Sorry, chama, I don’t see how you can be okay with everything …’ I started, but Ava interrupted me.
‘I guess we realized that you really never know how long you’ll be around. You could die at any second of any day. That’s what Mamá’s last lesson was to us. All that matters is love and family. And Vanessa’s our half-sister. We want to know her and love her.’
‘That’s a beautiful attitude to have,’ beamed Mamá, who’d been nothing if not vocal about her dislike of Aunt Celia, so couldn’t give two shits about whether Mauricio ever cheated on her or not. She was just tickled at having new gossip fodder for her and Zulema to discuss over their pink zinfandels when they had ‘girly nights’. But as much as I wanted to call my mother out for her hypocrisy (think she’d want to ‘get to know family’ if family constituted a Shakira-shaped teen Papá had fathered in the early days of their marriage? Bitch, please) and as much as I wanted to cajole the twins into ripping Mauricio a new one, I realized it wouldn’t be worth my while. The twins were gonna stick by Mauricio’s asinine story of heartbreak-fuelled adultery no matter what, because nothing I said could ever shift the female impulse to forgive and justify the picaresque wanderings of the male member. Maybe we all have the natural compulsion to make excuses for men, or else the world would descend into anarchy as wives, girlfriends and daughters mass-murdered all the cheating husbands, boyfriends and baby-daddies out there.
So I boarded the denial canoe alongside the twins and picked up my oar. ‘You’re right, guys. Mistakes do happen in marriage. Your attitude is great.’ Because when your family members are cruising along a river of bullshit, sometimes it’s best not to tell them how to navigate. The only thing to do is help them paddle ahead into clearer waters and leave the bullshit behind.
UNAVOIDABLE CLICHÉS
Seven a.m. the following Sunday, our day of reckoning. We didn’t have to be at Mauricio’s house for our meeting with Ugly until midday, so I was indulging in my morning ritual: reading on a beach chair in the backyard wearing my favourite pyjamas, a threadbare Rolling Stones T-shirt stolen from an ex back in Caracas.
I was just tipping the mug over my tongue to get the last drops of coffee when a loud burst of knocking echoed through the house. I turned to look through the open porch doors. You could see straight through to the living room, past the dining table to the front door. Figuring it was Sancho or Mauricio come to strategize with Papá before our tête-à-tête with Ugly, I flipped back to the page I’d been reading.
Another round of knocks and my father shouting, ‘Hang on! I’m coming!’, then the creak of hinges desperate for WD40 as Papá opened up.
‘Buenos días, Hector! Nice to see you up and about at this bright and early hour of the day of our Lord.’
Ugly.
I looked over my shoulder so fast I nearly snapped a vertebra. My father, in bleach-splattered boxer shorts, was blocking the open doorway. I turned back to look down at my legs, bare right up to the white triangle of my underwear. Christ, why did we have to be a naked house? No one was ever fully clothed unless we had guests. I craned my neck around again to see if there was any possible way I could dart into the house and across the living room to the bedroom hallway without being noticed.
(I couldn’t.)
I tried pulling the T-shirt down lower – pointless – and settled for tucking my legs up against me, sinking down low in the beach chair and praying Ugly wouldn’t notice the back of my head if he happened to look through the French doors leading to the porch and backyard.
That sociopathically cheerful voice: ‘What happen, Hector, you not inviting us in?’
Us?
Heavy footsteps and the door slamming shut.
‘Now, now, Hector, no need for slamming doors. Best you remember to keep your cool. Román don’t have the same patience as me. He who slam the door in the wrong man’s face is he who get his hand chop off so he cannot slam any door again! That not how the saying does go, Román?’
Who the hell was Román? My neck twitched with how badly I wanted to look behind me, but I stayed put. If Ugly saw me in this T-shirt and panty, I’d have to burn them both. Something about the way he looked at you made you feel like his tongue had run over your body instead of his eyes.
‘What I can do for you, Ugly?’ sighed my father, not hiding his exasperation. You had to hand it to him, Papá had huevos.
‘I said to myself, why wait ’til lunchtime to come and talk to my new Palacios friends? I thought, why I don’t pay everybody a visit at they house with my right-hand man?’ He whistled. ‘Boy, Milagros nearly wet she-self she was so frighten when we gone to see she!’
‘Hijo de puta, you better not have fucking done anything to Milag—’
Papá sputtered, choked. Hearing him gasping for air, I leapt up instinctively from the chair – to do what, I have no idea, but you hear your father being choked, you fucking do something. A man, taller and much younger than Papá, had him lifted by the throat. The tips of my father’s toes grazed the tiles.
‘STOP!’
Ugly started at my scream and the younger man’s eyes flicked towards me as his hand instantly unclamped itself from around my father’s neck. Papá rubbed at his throat, gulping air, but the look he gave me could’ve razed whole cities to the ground.
‘Well, well, you should have tell us we have company, Hector!’
I stood there, hands over my crotch. What now? Ugly was making his way across the living room towards the porch doors, my father and the younger guy trailing him. Verga. I dropped back down into the beach chair and pulled the edges of my T-shirt down as far as I could, managing to at least cover my underwear. And then the three of them were standing over me: my father, livid and glowering. Ugly grinning with a demented malevolence. But this other man, he was looking me over like someone contemplating a painting, with a sort of curious appreciation. I felt the pink hit my cheeks the second my eyes connected with his – two live wires sparking as their tips touched. Now that he was standing directly in front of me, I could see that he was something. Rich olive skin, tousled dark hair – pretty-boy features – but on a lightweight boxer’s broad-shouldered, sinewy frame, with exceptionally vascular forearms that gave the effect of having been used to land many a jaw-cracking, nose-breaking blow in scrappy street fights. Other hints at a less than savoury past: the scars on his forearms and knuckles – a constellation of marks, all different sizes and shapes, some with the rippling sheen of old burns, others that looked like they’d been roughly carved into his skin with the tip of a blade, round pocks that could be souvenirs of chickenpox or the wrong end of a lit cigarette. There was a whole history of rough living etched into his arms and fists. He smiled at me, showing protruding canines that overrode otherwise flawless dentition. The scars, the fang-like teeth, the wiry strength – they gave him a predatory something, made my pulse quicken. I caught his eyes dart down the length of my legs, sending a current of cold air runnin
g from my chin to the tips of my toes and back up again. It was only at a wolf whistle from Ugly that we unlocked our eyes.
‘All you Palacios women really something special to see, boy. Román, you see this girl? I know she lanky, not like her cousins, but she have a nice ass on her, boy. Wait and see when she get up.’
Without taking his eyes off me, Roman stepped forward and extended a hand. ‘Encantado. Un placer, Yola, de veras.’
I was taken aback. He was Venezuelan. I took the hand, felt the rough calluses on his palm, the intentional lingering of his fingers as our hands slowly slid apart, the contact stirring something visceral and hungry in me.
‘Meet Román,’ said Ugly, clapping him on the back. ‘He handling you Palacios for me. Keeping all-you in line, making sure everything run nice and smooth.’
‘And this,’ said Román in lightly accented English, ‘is, of course, Yola. Yola Encarnación Palacios Suárez. English degree from La Universidad Central. Masters in technical translation. Amateur fiction writer. Shortlisted for the Concurso Latinoamericano de Cuento, the Fernández Lema Prize, the Honor de Miranda short story prize.’
My skin rippled with goosebumps. I was so private about my writing that I’d only talked to Aunt Celia about it. And I’d never even told her about those shortlists.
Román watched me evenly, but there was none of Ugly’s malice in his face. ‘You’re a very talented woman,’ he said. There was a smooth sense of control in the way he spoke that put me on edge.
Ugly whooped, took his gun out of its holster and twirled it deftly on his index finger. ‘Talented? But she never win a single one of them prizes you call out! Sound like a loser to me.’ He cackled and holstered the gun. ‘Don’t look so shock, Miss Yola. Román here know everything about everybody. You ain’t hear I tell you he my right hand? He have a file fat so …’ He gestured to show that the files were apparently two feet thick. ‘… on every one of all-you. He know everybody skeleton and which cupboard to look for it in. Don’t try no fuckery with Román – he know what you doing before you even think to do it.’
He shoved my father’s shoulder. ‘Come, Hector, enough niceties.’ Papá’s cheeks were flecked with red, the vein running along his forehead thick as a tree root, turgid with rage. ‘Important business to discuss!’
Ugly led my father away but Román lingered, staring at me with a glimmer of a smile. I stared right back, affronted at how entitled he was to just stand there and drink me in. Affronted but sort of flattered.
Now I know what you’re thinking – this guy’s a criminal who was just choking your father, you horny bitch! All I can say is: forbidden fruit is the original aphrodisiac.
And then there was the other thing. You hear about it all the time – cheesy clichés about thunderclaps and fireworks – but when it happens to you, you realize those clichés came about for a reason. During that sexually charged stare-down, I felt all those stale old clichés. I had the sensation of being incredibly alive and invigorated, like I’d just slipped beneath the cool ocean on a hot day, like I’d just jumped out of a plane with the clouds rushing up to meet me. I felt every delicious, sentient thing I’d ever seen, smelled, touched, tasted, like a syringe of adrenaline had been rammed into my chest. It was lust. Pure wet, messy, make-your-toes-curl lust. The kind that makes you do stupid things like sleep with dangerous men.
Still, there are limits. I wasn’t going to take things a step further and actually have a conversation with the guy. So I got up from the beach chair and turned on my heel, not caring that my underwear was exposed now that Ugly was inside. I tossed my hair over my shoulder, grateful for my financially unsustainable addiction to lavish hair products that kept it lush and glossy. And I walked away, mentally patting myself on the back for my self-control, but so weak in the knees I must’ve looked like a newborn foal as I tottered back to the house.
Only at the porch doors did I let myself look back. He was watching me with a half-smile, like he’d been waiting for me to do exactly that.
THE FUCKED-UP YEARS: A FINAL HIT
It’s a testament to the kind of parent my father is that when Ugly and Román left our house after moseying by for a Sunday-morning visit peppered with violence and threats, he didn’t knock back a few tranquillizing rums or seek out my mother for a conciliatory quickie to make him feel better about being choked. Instead he came, features softened with paternal concern, to ask me why I’d never told him about the literary shortlists. ‘I didn’t even know you were that into the writing thing. I wish you’d told us, gordita, I’d love to read your stories.’
I exhaled by way of a weak laugh. ‘I never won. There was nothing to tell.’ That was a lie. I’d never won anything but I’d had short stories published in a smattering of literary journals all over Latin America. Plus there was the novel I’d been drafting for over a year back in Caracas, that I fantasized compulsively about getting published if only I could get my shit together and finish the thing.
I couldn’t put my finger on why I’d never shared any of it, especially not the novel that I’d worked on for so long. Maybe it was because so much of my writing was inadvertently about my family. Or maybe it was because I felt I needed something as concrete as a competition win or a book deal to be taken seriously when I publicly declared myself a writer – so I wouldn’t have to tack the word aspiring onto it.
‘Por favor, as if we’d care about winning,’ said Papá. ‘You put too much pressure on yourself.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re so much like Celia, you know that?’
‘I do.’
Which was why I’d only talked with her about my writing and even then I kept my secrets. I had only told her about the novel and the published short stories, never the shortlists. She’d only respect a win.
‘Anyway, you’ll tell us next time you enter a contest, won’t you?’
‘I will,’ I lied. ‘Definitely.’
Fatherly concerns dealt with, he went on to tell me that we’d still be having family lunch together as originally planned, but that everyone would be coming to our house instead of Mauricio’s.
‘There’s a lot to discuss,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it somewhere my shoes are sticking to the floors and there isn’t a crumb in the house. Mauricio needs to get a damn housekeeper.’
‘Let him pay Vanessa to cook and clean. Isn’t she here looking for work?’
Papá stifled a smile but didn’t indulge me. ‘Everyone’s coming over for twelve,’ he said. ‘And cut Vanessa some slack. If I can be okay with her, so can you.’
‘I know, I know. The twins are on board with her as well, so who am I to stay up on my high horse. But it’s not as easy as you think.’
‘Well, like I said, you’re like Celia. Being on a high horse comes natural.’
I gave a mock laugh and stuck my tongue out at him before turning back to my laptop and the translation job I’d been working on. But Papá lingered at the door until I looked up from the screen.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘I really do see so much of Celia in you now. It was never as noticeable to me until after she was gone.’
I smiled, my cockles warmed by the power of good old genetics that allowed familial traits of bitchiness to transcend even death.
By lunchtime, the family was gathered at our house, lounging around the living room and the backyard while Zulema and I helped my mother in the kitchen. Whacking the knife against the cutting board as she sliced a cucumber, Zulema leaned in to whisper to me.
‘Who was that man with Ugly?’
‘Román. He’s Ugly’s muscle or something. Gets intel on everyone. He’s Venezuelan, too.’
‘Really?’
She said it like I’d just told her the most eligible bachelor in town was newly available. A flare of proprietary jealousy took me by surprise.
‘How’d you see him anyway?’ I asked.
‘Out the window. Duh.’
I forgot that her bedroom window looked out on
to the front yard and the street. She must’ve seen when they came and left.
‘Oh.’ I hoped she couldn’t tell that just the thought of Román was having an effect on me. I could picture his eyes, feel the roughness of his hand, hear the steady control in his voice. My cheeks flushed. I chanted it in my head, a mantra: He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal.
‘He was pretty freaking gorgeous,’ giggled Zulema.
I gave her a once-over out of the corner of my eye. My sister and I have the same slim, leggy build, same long Amerindian hair, but with different key assets. She has the tits, I have the ass. I looked at the porn-star-perky boobs trembling while she chopped, then down to the unimpressive slope of her backside. Hoped Román was an ass man. He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal.
‘Girls, let’s put everything on the table now.’ Mamá was taking an immense lasagne out of the oven, eyeing my sister and me suspiciously, like she always did when we were whispering. ‘Yola, hurry up with that salad. You haven’t even chopped the tomatoes yet.’
‘I can do the tomatoes!’ Zulema dumped the plastic tub of cherry tomatoes onto the cutting board. Whack! Whack! Whack! I eyeballed her cleavage. Shake! Shake! Shake!
There we all were: one big, happy family coming together for Sunday lunch and to review the details of our collective blackmail. Even little Fidel was there, doing his gooey adorable baby thing. We’d all grown so attached to him that his mother, Camille, dropped him off sometimes on Sundays, her only day off, so she could take a much-needed break from round-the-clock servitude. Now he was bouncing on Vanessa’s knee while she fed him a bowl of mashed pawpaw. Another attempt, I’d noticed, at trying to make herself useful, along with offering to lay the table and help with whatever Mamá needed. I clung harder to my grudge on Aunt Celia’s posthumous behalf. With the twins and everyone else already welcoming her with open arms, I was the only one left who seemed to remember that Vanessa was Mauricio’s seventeen-year-old secret. It might’ve been a flagging, irrational cause to keep up my dislike of her – the girl’s ass-kissing did seem pretty sincere – but it was the last candle I could burn for Aunt Celia.
One Year of Ugly Page 3