Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  He was younger then, of course. They all say the accident changed him. I can see that in the photos, too. In the early ones he cuddles me, carries me on his shoulders. After her death, there are fewer pictures, and they take on a formal stiffness.

  The memories of others awaken memories in me, but where they seem to carry albums of pictures in their heads, I can only manage brief glimpses that fade before they are fully focused. I remember most clearly his voice. And the stories. He was always better at lecture and debate than casual conversation, but he was a master storyteller. With me practically running along beside him to keep up with his longer stride or lying in bed in the dark, he made the tales of Homer, Sophocles, and Shakespeare more exciting and immediate than any movie or television show.

  It’s hard to connect these memories with the dream. He never touched me as I lay in bed, so why do I suspect he molested Aly? Maybe it is the fact that he seemed to avoid touching me that makes me suspicious. I feel sure that there are holes in our relationship that can only be explained by what happened with Aly.

  I construct scenarios. He loved her too much, was enraged when he learned she was pregnant, and killed her. He loved her and he was the reason she was pregnant, so he killed her. Or he loved her and was so wounded by her suicide that he never recovered. Any one could be true.

  I have not asked him directly about Aly, but I’m sure he knows of my questions to others. He is worried and preoccupied when we talk. I can no longer seduce him into lively discourse with an inflammatory comment on an article in the latest New York Review of Books.

  I watch him closely over lunch. He is unusually solicitous, asks several times how I am feeling. The lines in his face seem deeper. His skin is looser; he appears to have lost weight.

  The lack of an answer doesn’t diminish my need for one. The dream continues to visit me almost nightly, taunting me and demanding action.

  Like Hamlet, I still cannot know the origins of my ghost. Maybe if I hadn’t spent my youth buried in books I’d know how to proceed, be more capable of action. I should have read Hemingway instead of Shakespeare.

  But we use what we have, and I am left with Hamlet, so, of course, my mind turns to the play. Not the tragedy itself, but the play-within-the-play, Hamlet’s device to “catch the conscience of the king.”

  I have almost a hundred and fifty high school students at my disposal. They’re always hungry for extra credit, for anything that doesn’t require them to think or write. I could easily assemble my troop of players.

  But here I hit a snag. Hamlet’s play confronted the king with his actions, accused him directly of the crime. But times have changed. Today, public accusation is as good as conviction, especially when a child accuses a parent. What if I am wrong? There are plenty of people like Margaret Perkins or Elise Winters who would convict my father without a trial, and make of me a false witness.

  No, the showing must be private, and subtle. My players must have a text strong enough to carry double meaning.

  But where to find that text?

  Ophelia, of course. I’ve never liked her much. Can’t see Aly in that role, playing the fool to Hamlet’s ravings or killing herself when he rejects her. She’d have been more like Laertes, exacting justice with a sword.

  But as I am Hamlet and not Laertes, I will use Ophelia. This good daughter will die again for others’ sins. If Stoppard could build a play around Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I can build one around Ophelia and her father, Polonius.

  The stage is set. My parents, my aunt, and a couple of close friends are invited to a reading by students from my junior English class. I have baited the hook well for my father. Talked for weeks of a feminist treatment of the play.

  My father hates feminism. He will not pass up a chance to provide the patriarchy’s rebuttal to my assault on Western letters. He will be looking forward to wielding the sharp scalpel of his reason.

  The students are nervous. They have trouble with this play that seems so thinly connected to the original. But then they also have trouble with the original. “But did Shakespeare mean that Ophelia was murdered?” stern-faced Jennifer asks. She’s the brightest of the lot, reminds me of myself at her age, so serious, so anxious to get the right answer.

  We are gathered in my living room. It’s a bit small, but that means I’ll be close enough to my father to watch him closely.

  There are so few women in the play, I have been forced to create new characters—friends and confidants for Ophelia, serving women who watch and comment. My action is precisely the activity taking place offstage. I begin not with the soldiers on the ramparts, but with a cozy gathering in Ophelia’s chambers where she shares with two friends her excitement at Hamlet’s attention.

  My Hamlet focuses not on the prince’s obsession with his father’s murder, but with Ophelia’s struggle between her duty to her father and her love of Hamlet. Obeying her father’s admonition to avoid Hamlet, she finds the prince behaving as if he has gone mad and believes herself the cause. He is bitterly cruel to her, and her father, interested only in the prince, ignores her pain and uses her to try to ensnare Hamlet.

  In the scenes with her, the old man is seductive. He is too interested in his daughter’s relationship with Hamlet, asks for details and makes inappropriate suggestions. I paint him as a lecherous voyeur and plant suggestions that he could be worse.

  We do not see Polonius’s death at Hamlet’s hands, only Ophelia’s reaction when she learns of it. Nor do we see her slip from the willow into the stream and drown. Instead, we witness the serving women preparing her body for burial, and we hear their commentary.

  “If the priest had his way, the poor child would lie in unhallowed ground,” the first remarks.

  “Priests are no lovers of women, save when their horns are up,” the second says.

  The third objects, “’Tis church law, a suicide cannot lie in hallowed ground.”

  First woman: “And was it you saw her jump?”

  Third woman: “Not I, but the queen did report it.”

  First woman: “And she had report from someone else, no doubt. ’Tis a great convenience for them all to be so easily rid of the maid.”

  Second woman: “Say you it was no suicide?”

  First woman: “’Twould not be the first time a maid was pushed to her death when her life became an inconvenience to powerful men. The magician tricks the eye away from what he would not have you see. So, too, may clever men lead others to debate ’twixt accident and suicide, so their eyes look not for murder. Once a maid is in the ground, she’s soon forgot.”

  I watch my father closely. His face is the color of old ashes. He stands and stumbles from the room. My mother looks from me to him. I have never seen her so lost.

  Aunt Hannah rises from her chair and follows him out.

  The girls have lost their lines. They stand confused and embarrassed. There is no need to finish the play. It has served its purpose, but I prompt them and they pick up where they left off.

  My father is gone. I heard his car pull out shortly before the end of the reading. My friends are charmed by the play. They discuss the feminist issues with Jennifer, who is pleased by their attention.

  After cookies and punch, I herd the students out. My friends follow them. It is only then that Hannah returns to my house. Her mouth is as hard and tight as a bowstring. She has grown in size as my mother shrank.

  “Why?” she demands of me. “What led you to this madness?”

  “I had to know,” I say. “I have a dream in which he pushes her from the balcony. I had to know if it was true.”

  “Tell her,” Hannah commands my mother.

  Mother just shakes her head. “No,” she says, her voice soft as flannel.

  “Tell her.”

  Mother’s head comes up. “No,” she says. “And you won’t either.”

  Hannah hesitates. “No, I will tell her. Someone has to.” She turns to face me, and suddenly I am afraid. Her face is cold fury. If she were
carved from stone, she would be softer. “You had to know,” she says, “so now you will.”

  “Your dream is true, to a point. James did struggle with Aly just before she fell. But not because he wanted to hurt her. Not for any of the crazy reasons you’ve imagined. He did it to save you.

  “Aly hated you almost from the moment you were born. She was awkward and rebellious; you were cute and lovable. She hated the attention you got.”

  “It was my fault,” Mother says softly. “I failed her. I was so excited about having a baby, so in love with you, I shut her out.”

  “She shut herself out,” Hannah says sharply. “There was room enough for her if she hadn’t been so jealous.”

  “The drugs and the wildness, the boys—they were a cry for help,” Mother says. “I tried to reach out to her, but she was so angry, so tough. I didn’t have the strength to save her.” I hear seas of tears in her voice.

  Hannah ignores the seas. Her voice is ice. “The day she died your father found her on the balcony with you. She’d pushed a table to the rail and was lifting you onto it, urging you to play circus with her. He grabbed you from her, set you behind him then reached back for her. She struggled, fought him. We’ll never know why, whether she was trying to get at you, or simply to hurt him, but as they struggled she stepped back and fell.”

  The room is silent as she finishes. My mother stares at the floor, rocking slightly.

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” Hannah says. “I hope the truth is worth the cost. Your father’s drinking again. He’s locked himself in his study. He almost drank himself to death after Aly. You were the only reason he stopped last time; he wanted to be a decent father to you. You’ve taken that from him tonight.”

  I look to my mother, but she won’t meet my eyes. She looks unbearably frail. If I reached to touch her, she would shatter into a million pieces.

  Hannah voice fills the room with her anger. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. You had to know.”

  I stare at my mother and think of my father in his study and realize my error. I have pictured myself as Hamlet, but I have been playing Oedipus.

  MYRIAM LAURINI was born in Argentina, but was exiled from 1976-1980 during a military dictatorship. She lived in Spain for a time before settling down in Mexico. She has had one novel published, with another undergoing final editing. Laurini has appeared in several magazines in Mexico, as well as publishing a report on sexual violence in Mexico.

  Lost Dreams

  Myriam Laurini

  Translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman

  Dead Body

  Commander Videla lay faceup. Somebody’d really laid into him, everything was red with blood, his shirt, his bare arms, his pants. I counted at least six knife wounds, wide and raggedy, as if they’d been made with a butcher’s knife. His eyes were wide-open, marbles of dark glass, sticking halfway out of their sockets, as if he didn’t realize what was going on.

  Flashes, one after another, illuminated the scene, turning the stiff corpse into a famous actor: Pedro Infante for a day. Nuevo Laredo’s own. All the local papers would run it on the front page, everybody would be talking about it.

  The judiciales busied themselves outlining the body in chalk, checking for fingerprints, clues. Passersby started to crowd around and the cops yelled at them: Clear out, bola de cabrones, and you, morena, get a move on. And me: Press, I’m a reporter, I’ve got a right to be here. And them: The hell with the press, scoot, morena.

  Videla the corpse was thirty-five years old. He’d trained in martial arts every single day, went without salt to stay trim, cut out eggs for the cholesterol. The huevos he already had were enough, the way he figured it. Ten years on the force. The people of Nuevo Laredo loved him. He was fair with the poor and took bribes from the rich, the drug runners, and the coyotes.

  He left a wife and two children.

  There was a sergeant who threw up when they carried him away. Videla stunk of dried blood and fresh shit. El miedo puede más que un par de huevos, my grandpa used to say. Another sergeant, his veins popping with hatred, muttered in a hoarse voice: We’ll get even, Videlita.

  Maria Crucita

  Seeing Videla’s corpse kind of gave me the willies, all that blood and all that stink. That was one part of it. The other part was that I was tired as hell all of a sudden and still had to go write my story. So I decided to grab a bite to eat. I went into the Chinaman’s place and sat waiting for my chop suey, rolling little balls of bread between my fingers. That’s when I saw her come in. She’d just gotten out of the shower, her hair was wet and she smelled of lavender. Some women are fanatics for cleanliness. Getting up at dawn and taking a shower after spending all night fucking some John wasn’t exactly my idea of the good life.

  I liked her, though. Maybe it was her aura of sadness. She asked me for a light and I invited her to sit at my table. We’re both alone after all, I told her. She was the kind of person who wore her emotions on her sleeve, something that always makes me feel uncomfortable, but in between the empty words she started to tell me her story. I dug into the best chop suey in the state and tried not to let her sob story get to me.

  She’d come to Nuevo Laredo like so many others, pretty colored ribbons in her long black braids, huaraches on her feet. Hiding the wild hope in her eyes, her hunger for life. She was fifteen then, with a baby girl she’d left behind in the village with her mother, knowing that if she didn’t come back soon … Women aren’t worth too much up in the sierra, she told me. First the men get what little there is to eat and then, if there’s anything left, the boys, and then the women, and then the girls.

  She’d survived eating dirt, roots, leaves, chewing on old bones.

  I survived because I liked the sun, she said in a quiet voice. And because I could dream, I’m telling you the truth. I used to dream about little things.

  When she was twelve she went to work in Mexico City. She ate a lot and the señora would scold her, but Maria Crucita didn’t care, hers was an ancestral hunger.

  The family she worked for went on vacation to the Caribbean and sent her back to the village. It’s not good to neglect your parents, they told her, you stay there until we send for you.

  One afternoon while she was watching some maguey flowers and dreaming one of her little dreams, a boy, barely sixteen himself, came over and started to say silly things Maria thought were wonderful and beautiful. They did what they had to do and she liked it. She liked it so much that they did it again every day until the sun-tanned family came to bring her back to the city. About seven months later they finally understood why all the diets the señora prescribed for Maria, so young and so fat, hadn’t done any good. She had a fruit in her belly that kept growing and growing whether its mother ate or not. Full of the righteous indignation decent people feel in the face of dishonor, they put Maria out in the street with only the clothes on her back. The ungrateful little whore didn’t deserve to take along the old rags they’d been kind enough to give her.

  The baby girl was born in the village. Maria caught a fever but the sun and her dreams cured her. The boy said the baby wasn’t his, there was no way of telling whose it could be, that Crucita girl’s a horny little thing, that’s for sure.

  So, squeezed by hunger once again, pushed on by her dreams, she decided she’d try and make it to the other side.

  The maid she’d worked with in Mexico City used to tell her about the other side. Incredible strange things happened on the other side. The very poorest families, poorer than they were, had their own cars, a house with a real floor and windows with glass in them, the women didn’t wear braids and they ate every day. The children always had enough to eat too, and they went to school in a special bus that came by just for them. Just like here in this house, said the maid, but there it’s the same for the poor folks too.

  Maria arrived one morning in Nuevo Laredo dizzy with hunger and fear. She waited for the other passengers to leave the bus and tried to disappear into
her seat. She wanted to go back. Get down now, you, this is as far as we’re going, the bus driver yelled at her. Maria couldn’t. Her legs wouldn’t work, she was paralyzed, but the man kept shouting at her and finally somehow she got down from the bus to go stand on the dirty pavement, her small bundle of clothes gripped in her hand, not knowing what to do, not daring to look at anything that wasn’t that piece of stepped-on gum smeared across the ground. She stayed like that for a while until a handsome tall young man came over and asked her if she was alone. Excuse me, sir? she said. Poor thing, he said, where did she come from, where was she going to, did she have family there, friends? And Maria answered back like she would have to her sun-tanned ex-boss in the city, and she felt like she could trust the young man who said, yes he was going to help her, yes he could get her across, that on the other side all your dreams become true, stopped being dreams and turned into pure hundred percent reality. But she was going to need money. You had to bribe the guards and the migra, and Maria showed him the fifty dollars she’d changed with the maid and the young man laughed and it seemed like he would never stop laughing, and his fresh spontaneous laughter was contagious and Maria smiled because she didn’t know how to laugh like that, but she promised herself she’d learn. Once, when she’d dreamed about a man who laughed so crazy uncontrollably like that, they’d told her it was the devil but she didn’t believe them.

  “You’ve got to gel more money,” he told her in between bursts of laughter. “What you’ve got there’s barely enough for a Coke and a hot dog. I’ll get you a job with a woman who’s got a big house, sort of like a barn really, full of little wooden rooms with a bed and a curtain, where you can make the money you need. It’s easy work, all you have to do is spread your legs a little.” Maria remembered the first and only boy she’d spread her legs for but she pushed him out of her mind, he didn’t know how to laugh like this young man.