Mauricio, completely abandoning his former communist ideals, suggested the most farcical plan of all: ‘We go back to Caracas to get Vanessa, Sancho and Che if they all wind up deported, then we go to Florida and apply for asylum there! Camille can get work in some millionaire’s house in Miami, and bring Fidel. He and Che can grow up to be little yanquis. The US is where our future lies!’
He was ignored en masse.
The twins, drawn by some Darwinian magnetism to high concentrations of equally hot women, suggested Brazil. Zulema, who was completely content in her life in Trinidad, thought we should stick with what we knew best and go all the way to, ‘like, San Fernando, which is like, totally a whole hour and a half away from Port of Spain and Ugly’s compinches would totally never, like, find us there.’ Mamá shut her down with a vitriolic eyebrow raise that said: Get real, bitch.
Still in my fatalistic funk and wretched with longing for Román, I couldn’t see how anywhere we went would be any different. There was no utopian immigrant-loving Candyland out there for us. The whole world was just a patchwork of plutocracies wanting to protect their own, all the same wolf underneath ideologically different sheep’s clothing. I let them hash it out while the Manriques added their two cents with an air of magisterial omniscience, but unless we could find a country to give us actual residency papers or asylum, I knew we’d be on an uphill Sisyphean trek to nowhere with our Maduro-faced monkeys on our backs, like every unwanted refugee before us who’d crawled under an electric fence, or ridden the high seas in an inflatable dinghy, or walked thousands of miles with stars in their eyes only to wind up in shit and misery all over again.
Later that night, we were riveted as the ten o’clock news unveiled the Ugly case, which had exploded in the media because it had already led to the immediate dismissal of a string of government ministers who’d been recorded frequenting the Pie. The most popular leaked viral clips were of the Minister of Finance tossing fistfuls of bills at an upside-down stripper (Scarlett) with legs blithely spraddled as she worked the pole, and of the Ministers of Energy, Health and Education guffawing at the applauding ass cheeks of one especially buxom dancer (Charity) who rolled her eyes and yawned, full of ennui, as she twerked. It was a spectacular shit show and Ugly was gonna fry for it.
I’d have said karma had come around, but if karma were actually a thing, wouldn’t I feel some kind of satisfaction at Ugly’s downfall? Wouldn’t Papá, Sancho, Vanessa and the baby be gathered around the living room with the rest of us? Would Román be on the other side of the Atlantic? There was no karma. Life was comprised of the random and the absurd. And I was exhausted by all of it.
I THEE LIBERATE
As I’d predicted, by three in the morning I was in my usual insomniac posture. Supine, staring with dry, aching eyes at the burls in the wood ceiling. My mind couldn’t rest. I wasn’t worried about Papá or Sancho. Aunt Milagros seemed assured that Papá would be okay, and even if Sancho was deported, he was so changed since the birth of Che, so relentlessly optimistic that I knew he and his new little family would be fine. It was the ache over Román leaving that was a feral animal, snapping and howling at me so I couldn’t ignore it.
How could I go back to life without him? It would be like never tasting salt again, never seeing in colour, never feeling the sun on my skin. All I saw rolling out ahead of me was a stretch of grey.
Hungry after hours of grim musing, I got up and went to the kitchen in search of something to eat, then out to the verandah with a cup of herbal tea and a pack of biscuits, pulling my sheet around me like a cloak to stave off the mountain chill. I nestled into a plump-cushioned love seat at the far side of the verandah, overlooking the swooping green bowl of the valley below, blew on my tea and prepared to slip down the chute of my memories with Román. I decided I’d force myself to think of every single one, from the first day we met – that lingering electric touching of hands – to the first time he’d shown up in my room and kissed me. To the firefly fireworks, the white anthuriums, the dark rivers, hidden waterfalls, the moon-washed beaches, all those furtive nights together, our jokes, the feel of his teeth on my skin, the roughness of his scarred arms under my fingertips. I indulged deeply, like an addict having one last binge, going right to the brink of heroin-induced coma before going cold turkey.
My tea gone cold, biscuits untouched, I was languorously running the fingers of my memory over the time Román had shown me a leatherback turtle dragging its prehistoric heft up onto the sand to lay eggs, when I heard the crunching of feet over white pebbles. Pulse racing, I gently put the mug on a side table and lowered my feet to the floor. I didn’t know whether to stay put and hide or to chance peering around the side of the house to see who was walking up the driveway. Could Ugly’s people have found out where we were hiding so soon?
Now heavy footfalls were coming up the front steps of the verandah. I stood slowly, gripping the sheet around me as though it were a magic cape that would somehow make me invisible. I was still as a fly trapped in amber.
A figure shadowed in darkness rounded the corner as I held my breath, legs trembling, threatening to fold beneath me.
And then the man took another step forward and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew it wasn’t one of Ugly’s henchmen.
I bounded forward, the sheet falling away from my shoulders and rippling in the air behind me with exquisite theatricality as I – with equal theatricality – leapt up to lock my legs around Román’s waist and kiss him like he was a war hero fresh from the trenches. Román – not in Spain sipping a Rioja and flirting with flamenco dancers, but here, holding me, crushing his mouth onto mine, and tasting and smelling and feeling like everything I loved most in the world.
When at last I broke our kiss to catch my breath, my lungs and heart felt like they’d spontaneously combust with joy. I hopped down, arms still around his neck. ‘Aunt Milagros said you were gone!’ I breathed, light-headed.
He ran the back of his hand along my jaw. ‘How could you think I’d leave you?’
‘Well, she told me everything that happened. About RAT and all of it. She said you had to leave right away. Won’t Ugly’s people be looking for you now?’
‘Claro, but I know how to keep myself hidden when I want to, and besides,’ he paused to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, ‘I couldn’t leave without seeing you first.’
‘So you do have to go to Spain.’ My heart dipped. He’d come to say goodbye.
‘I’m going to Spain, yes. It’s the safest place for me. But let’s talk first.’
He led me back to the love seat and we sat. I felt as though my insides were shrinking, everything growing smaller and calcifying into hard little knots of dull pain. Seeing Román, feeling the smallness of my hand in his, the taste of him fresh on my tongue – and now I’d have to tell him goodbye, a proper gut-wrenching farewell. I chewed my lip to stop myself from blurting out that I understood things had to end and that he had to go, that long-distance would never work, that I loved him and I understood.
‘It’s a good thing you were out here,’ he said, clasping my hands in his. ‘Saved me having to break into the house and wake you.’
I tried to smile.
‘So,’ he began, ‘ever since I started working with Milagros and RAT, I knew there’d be a time in the near future when I’d have to get out of here, and I’ve been putting things in place for that. For myself and for you.’
He reached into his back pocket slowly. Years of being conditioned by cheesy romantic movies kicked in and suddenly my fear of heartbreak was gone – I could practically picture the Tiffany-cut solitaire diamond winking at me, saw myself squealing with the cookie-cutter thrill of unexpected betrothal, Zulema colouring my whole wedding beautiful, the cans clattering behind the ‘Just Married’ car.
Instead, what he pulled out was a red passport, ESPAÑA emblazoned across the front. He flipped to the back page and turned it to show me my own face looking back at me, emotionless and pallid under the fl
uorescent overhead lighting of the hole-in-the-wall I’d gone to for my passport photos. I didn’t know how he’d gotten the photo – my Venezuelan passport was back at our house – but there it was, next to the name Rocío Sánchez. Born in Andalucía, Spain. Age twenty-four.
Román pressed the passport into my hand. I gaped at it, more thunderstruck than if he’d whipped out a diamond. Because a diamond may cost a fortune, but a flawlessly forged EU passport is priceless.
‘I want you to come with me to Spain. Whole new identities, whole new lives.’
‘Román …’ I traced the Spanish coat of arms with my finger. ‘How did you get this?’
‘My connections,’ he said, smiling. ‘So, what do you think? I have an old friend over there, owns a tapas bar. I’m thinking I could invest, expand the business with him, even start a chain. And you could keep translating, finish your novel.’
I was still slightly lost for words but already feeling a stirring of excitement for a whole new beginning, one where Román and I could be together openly, live together, have a life together without Ugly hanging over us. It was so close, so real, that I felt almost drunk on the idea of it.
‘Of course I want to come,’ I told him. ‘I just … what about my family? Everything is so up in the air.’
‘I know,’ he said, rubbing my arm reassuringly. ‘I know. But Milagros has a lot of pull in RAT, trust me. She’ll have them working with the UN people around the clock to get your family amnesty somewhere safe – Costa Rica maybe. Or who knows, they might even wind up in Spain too. She thinks you should come with me, and I promise, Yola, it’s not like you’ll never see your family again. You’ll always be a phone call or a video chat or a plane ride away.’
‘Hang on,’ I laughed. ‘You told Aunt Milagros about us?’
He shrugged. ‘We’ve been working together for months.’ And then, looking mildly bashful (a highly unusual look for him), he added, ‘She’s a sharper woman than I thought – she actually confronted me about it. Suspected there was more to my saving her from Ugly and said you’d always acted funny if my name came up.’
‘Verga.’ I shook my head in amused disbelief. Would Aunt Milagros ever cease to surprise me?
‘Anyway,’ said Román, ‘take a day to think about it.’
‘A day? Can’t I have a little more time? It’s not that I don’t want to come – obviously I do. It’s just a huge decision.’
‘Sorry, flaca, the longer I stay in this country the more dangerous it is for me. I can’t risk hanging around.’
‘Of course, I understand.’ I exhaled. One day to decide whether or not to start a new life on the other side of the world.
‘I’d better get going,’ he said, standing.
I got to my feet and slipped my arms around him. ‘I wish you could stay.’
‘Me too.’ He was wearing an impish smile. ‘I have something for you before I go, though.’
I followed him to an unremarkable black sedan with windows tinted an impenetrable black, parked far along the driveway so no one would hear it pull up to the house. He opened the driver’s door and leaned over to get something off the passenger seat. When he turned back to me, he was holding the one thing better than a diamond ring, better than a Spanish passport, better even than Maduro’s head on a platter with a red apple gleaming in his mouth: Aunt Celia’s manuscript.
I snatched it like a starving child offered a loaf of bread. ‘Román! How did you …?’
‘I got it right before the raid, when all of you were already at the Pie. I didn’t know how things were gonna go down, and I wanted to make sure you had this in case of anything. I know what it means to you.’
What he couldn’t know in that moment was how much he meant to me.
* * *
I took the kettle off the stove just as the boiling water set it rattling, before it had a chance to scream and wake the house. I felt an intense kinship to that kettle, on the verge of blowing my top and screaming with the excitement of what Román had proposed and of having Aunt Celia back, at least in her paper reincarnation.
Holding a cup of Sencha tea – ‘from the Japanese ambassador, a dear friend, most recognizant of the work Vicente and I do’ – I curled up on the same seat where Román and I had sat not fifteen minutes before, and flipped to the last chapters of the manuscript.
At last, the end – or at least the end until the bucket was kicked out from under Aunt Celia.
My thirties and early forties didn’t belong to me. I dedicated everything, every breath, every second to those two little girls. Everything became about making sure they grew up strong and smart enough to not make the same mistakes I did, falling for a two-bit honey smuggler who can’t control the impulses of his polla.
And then Ava and Alejandra got older, grew strong and beautiful like their mother. My two elegant little queens, already fluent in English thanks to the ex-pat schools, more eloquent than the Queen of England. None of that Benitez whining that makes Mauricio one of the most snivelling little worms around, I don’t care what he says about making all the money and being the king in his castle. These girls are Palacios through and through. They have our fuerza, without whatever genetic hiccup gave us holier-than-thou Milagros.
But those two beautiful Palacios daughters of mine go off to secondary school and I realize coño, here I am with all these years behind me spent doing nothing for myself. Now I spend all night pacing on the Persian rugs and staring at my face getting older with every fucking second in the gold-framed mirrors, and I can’t sleep, it’s like the plague in One Hundred Years of Solitude and soon I’m going crazy in this fucking castle Mauricio built us, trailing around the house like a zombie every night, wishing I could sleep outdoors in a hammock strung up between the palms like we used to do as kids, because I can’t stand the stink of it any more – the stink of dirty money from killing all those crocodiles. So much puto money and why did we have it all? Why did we fritter it away on STUFF? That’s how it goes with money. You have it, so you start to buy, buy, buy. Then when you have everything you need, when all the flurry of commerce is over, you’re left with this hole that gapes bigger every day. What to do? So you scratch the itch: you buy, buy, buy some more. Because you’ve had the same living room décor for two years – time to upgrade! Because your kitchen appliances don’t have the newest features – upgrade! A never-ending carousel of consumerism. Then because you keep spending, you have to keep on EARNING. Those fucking crocodiles were never going to get a break. Mauricio had to keep slaughtering them, skinning them, and making more money to buy more stuff.
They say opium addicts are always chasing the dragon, that first perfect high. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing too, chasing after those golden Miami days when Mauricio got me my first piece of jewellery, the first time I ate in a Michelin-star restaurant, first time I tasted real blow not cut with baby laxatives. But that first perfect high is never coming back – trust me, I’ve spent enough money to know it. And what else is there for me? Keeping a house, raising kids? How is that enough? Orangutans spend their lives spitting out kids, building nests, putting fruit and insects on the table. Shouldn’t I want more out of life than some saggy-titted orangutan? How am I supposed to tell my girls to want a little more out of life than STUFF and housework when I’m just Mauricio’s glorified concubine? And not just the twins – my nieces, too.
(Maybe not Zulema – she’d better find herself a Mauricio. Girl has a face like a movie star and a brain like a puff of cotton candy. At least she’ll benefit from some of my tried and trusted seduction tactics when she’s old enough for me to tell her.)
But that Yola, she’s a bright one. Tells the best lies I’ve ever heard out of any kid that young. She was only ten years old when she told me she wanted to be a writer. ‘I like how you tell stories, Aunt Celia. It’s amazing how I can picture the whole thing – even if the ghost stories are pretty scary. I want to be able to tell stories like that too. So people can see the story and feel scared
or whatever I want them to feel. That’s what writers do, right?’ I wanted to hold her, squeeze her hard and tell her chama, you can be a writer, be whatever the fuck you want, just don’t tie yourself down with some asshole who wants you to do nothing but breed and swan around looking pretty. Let your soul roam wild, find a partner who lets it roam, makes it soar.
Next to that paragraph, scribbled in her handwriting, were several messy notes:
*For Yolita – Be whatever the fuck you want.
**For you, Yolita. Never forget to let your soul roam.
*** For the young woman who inspired me to For Yola.
I swallowed back tears as I realized she’d been brainstorming dedications. The manuscript hadn’t only been for her. It had been for me all along.
I read on to the year it all changed. The same year the rest of us Palacios had come over to Trinidad, and the year Mauricio’s croc-skinning empire would come crumbling down, its bitter end heralded by the ominous ringing of the ivory telephone at Mauricio’s bedside in the middle of the night. Police raid. Crackdown. Disaster. They had to leave that same night with nothing but a couple suitcases of cash. Just enough cash to pay a shady guy to relocate them to Trinidad, and just enough time to make a deal to get the twins fake residency permits for a series of wild payments Celia never thought Mauricio would be unable to make. She never imagined that he’d fall into the same depression as when he lost everything in Miami, and that in middle age he wouldn’t have the energy to bounce back; that he’d settle for working double shifts at a crappy casino, earning squat, leaving Celia to handle their debt to Ugly alone.
One Year of Ugly Page 29