by Iris Gomez
Make-believe number three: the incessant typing and retyping of illusory words that lulled him into faith that his delusions were real.
We were poisoning him with antitruths. Why?
Because it was easier than dealing with his temper, with its consequences.
And, maybe, because we felt sorry for him. Because the truth might break his heart.
Mami disappeared for most of the next day with Camila, whose husband had been steadily declining since his hospitalization. When the phone rang, I didn’t realize that the Palacio had called until Pablo came to stand in my doorway.
“Guess what?” he said, throwing me a Sentinel left over from his delivery. “Mami’s a cleaning lady.”
I pictured her polyester uniform in the washing machine and sadly recalled her meticulous fibbing to Tía Rita about the fictional inventory she supposedly tracked at her job. The land of make-believe was overgrown with untruths. “Pablo, you keep your big mouth shut,” I warned, staring him fiercely in the eye. “You’re too old to be a blabbermouth. Mami would die of shame.”
Pablo held both hands up. “Hey, I don’t care. Why are you always blaming me?”
I let the frown linger on my face for a moment. Sometimes you had to hammer the message in with a bit of meanness to get it through Pablo’s thick skull. But that was how Mami acted toward me, I realized with a twinge of regret. Maybe her meanness wasn’t the truth either.
“Sorry,” I said, getting up. “Let’s go water Mami’s tree.”
We went to the yard, and Pablo uncoiled the long rubber hose. I pulled it around to the front and waited for him to turn on the faucet before starting to water the níspero tree. The sun dipped behind the back of our house, then slowly rolled across the shoulders of the other houses and escaped. As my gaze trailed the diminishing evening light, I wished for a more certain truth. Did one even exist, like God you couldn’t see or prove but still might be there? Through all the twisted layers of falsehood, I thought I sensed it, a truth that I alone believed in, though I didn’t know what it was, or where to look for it.
Later, with Mami gone, my father came out of his cave and surprised my brothers and me by plopping down at the table where we were doing schoolwork. He had the old textbook we’d given him. Casually opening it, he nodded over a page before looking up to ask what “conspiracy” meant.
Manolo and Pablo traded smirks.
“Let me see, Papi,” I said, frowning at them. I leaned over, reading the passage about laws against labor unions to myself and then explaining it to him.
“Ya,” he said, bending over the text again.
I could tell from the way he nodded and blinked at the page that he wasn’t actually reading. But when Pablo hunched over his own book and blinked rapidly in imitation of My Father the Student, I kicked my brother hard under the table. Still, just letting my father pretend he was one of us deepened my feelings of foreboding about the layers of untruth that thickened through our house, as if they might someday suffocate us all.
[ SEVENTEEN ]
WE FINALLY GOT A CALL from El Chino’s secretary informing us of the date of my father’s near-mythical court hearing. Almost incapable of believing in it still, I plied Arthur for details about where and when we should meet Mr. Korematsu.
“Oh, honey, your whole family doesn’t have to go,” he said. “It’s a dismissal, they just sign and file papers. Stop-and-go.”
“Really?” Could my father’s absolution come that easily?
“Sure, like five minutes,” Arthur declared. “Your dad probably won’t have to talk.”
“Wow. That’s great. Thanks,” I added, before he hung up.
I relayed the astonishing news to my mother and then by phone to Tío Victor, who decided he didn’t need to miss work in that case. Mami roped Tío Lucho into giving us a ride.
For his court date, my father shook out his moth-scented suit jacket. As I watched him put it on, the pessimism I’d struggled to fend off since he’d last donned the baggy suit to induct me into typing his encyclopedia memoirs reared its ugly head: Nothing was really going to change. Sure, his criminal assault case would end and its attendant deportation threat. But as long as my father remained himself, even a calmer replica, what would free me from his chains?
Our courtroom experience was every bit the drive-by event Arthur had predicted. I barely saw anything because everyone up near the judge remained standing; no chairs were provided for lawyers or defendants or even in the witness box. From where I sat in the back, everything contrasted markedly with the sober impressions I’d formed while reading To Kill a Mockingbird. The main goal here was the finish line. Even the judge’s recital of each defendant’s rights was delivered in such rapid-fire fashion that a couple of lawyers near me took bets on how many minutes each advisal would take.
El Chino joined the courthouse speed race. In the lobby afterward, he handed over copies of my father’s dismissal orders, shook hands, and was preparing to scram when a startled Tío Lucho detained him. “But—is that it? Is my brother free now?”
The lawyer returned a droll smile. “Yes sir, your brother’s case is finito. Don’t worry, I went over everything with Mr. De la Paz. You guys are all set.” He fished out business cards and started handing them out.
“Could I ask just one thing?” I inquired anxiously in English.
“Shoot,” he answered with an amused wink. As an afterthought, he gave me a card too.
“What else could someone be deported for?” I probed. “Besides these things?” I indicated the court orders.
“Oh, there’s a long list of grounds,” he said, then translated that for the adults.
“But—what are they?” I persisted. “Like, not turning in those white forms in January? Not paying library fines? What?”
He shook his head as if the matter were way beyond me and turned to my parents. “I think your folks know it’s a good idea to avoid convictions. Period. But as for the rest,” he shrugged, “I’m not an immigration lawyer. You guys call Arthur.” He tapped the card I held. “He’ll get you a referral.”
On our way back, thrifty Tío Lucho promptly discounted that idea as a big waste of money.
When we got home, Mami came into my room to stash the dismissal orders in the Important Papers box in my closet. I watched her as I changed out of my dress-up clothes.
“It’s not over.”
Startled, she looked up. “What?”
“The problem with Papi.”
“You know very well that what happened to him wasn’t fair,” she scolded, before turning and leaving the room.
The next day at school I learned that while I’d been absent, an enthusiastic Madame Imbert had entered me and another French grammar wizard, Octavio, into an interscholastic competition. I suspected familial authorization would be difficult to procure for the drive with Octavio, an unknown male, especially to the hotel hosting the cultural component of the concours; but I decided I would wait and see how well he and I fared on the qualifier exam before broaching the topic at home.
Octavio was a friendly junior who owned a car and smoked long, skinny cigarettes. After French class that day, he unexpectedly joined me, Fátima, and her friend Amy Kaplan at lunch, and I discovered that he had a wicked side. A new student from Jamaica—where of course English is spoken—had joined us too, and some dumb girl questioned him about what they ate in his country, only she used that artificially loud, slow tone of voice people do for the hard of hearing. Observing her, Octavio pointed to his temple and said to the Jamaican kid in the same affected tone: “SHE’S NOT VERY BRIGHT.” I instantly wanted to put Octavio in my tiny constellation of friends, the Gemini twins of Fátima and Claudio—who wasn’t a friend exactly, though we had meaningful talks during ACs.
Octavio and I took the qualifiers just before Thanksgiving recess and scored well enough to perform at the cultural event. Since neither of us knew much about French culture, though he did subscribe to Life magazine’s French editi
on, Madame Imbert—or La Plump, as he began calling her privately—offered to help make les costumes and bake a French tarte. She went above and beyond the call of duty, though, when she bought me fabric for my mother and me to sew up my costume.
Mami greeted that request with the usual scowl over the latest nonsense from the public school system. “Why don’t they stick to books?” she protested.
“Mami, I had to earn the right to participate. It’s not like a stupid fruitcake fundraiser.” I decided to defer mention of the ride with Octavio to the Miami Beach hotel until after my costume was already sewn.
Mami peered over her reading glasses at Madame’s sketch. “Hmm. I guess they’re trying to teach you about being a lady in past times.”
Yeah, a Lady of Pastry, I chided myself with a smirk, recalling that Lara had also been puzzled over “the pedagogy” of the dress-up competition.
The long blue-and-white striped dress Mami and I sewed looked oddly suitable for an Amish candy striper, if such a thing existed. Lucky Octavio got to wear a blue shirt and white slacks under an apron Madame had adorned with blue and white fringe to match mine. Both of us had tall hats she’d constructed from white paper doilies.
At the concours, Octavio and I stood like royal guards beside our pastry, which the contest judges weren’t allowed to eat until the end of the program. The whole time I worried that my hat would topple out of the bobby pin contraption Madame had composéd in my hair. Both the hazelnut tarte and our costumes turned out to be a big hit, and when our Second Prize victory was announced, I threw my arms elatedly around Octavio: I was so happy to win! My fatalistic fear of lifelong failure had finally evaporated.
We headed home in Octavio’s Beetle with a blue and red ribboned Certificat for the school and our two gift certificates. By then, we’d loosened up enough to poke fun at the concours. “They should make teachers participate,” Octavio commented, as he drove onto the expressway. “Wouldn’t you love to see La Plump squeeze into your skirt? That would be worth a tarte or two.”
Chuckling at her zeal, we began to gossip about other people we knew in common. “That guy you always talk in Spanish to is kind of interesting,” Octavio said out of the blue.
I scrunched up my face.
“You know, that AC kid, the one with the funny eye? Some skinny girl’s always tagging along waiting for him?”
“Oh. You mean Claudio.” I hadn’t realized that Claudio was the one person outside my family with whom I spoke only Spanish.
Eventually, Octavio pulled up in front of my house, where Mami was already waiting for me in a chair on the terrace. Octavio got out of the Beetle to go greet her and introduced himself with a smile.
“Would you like to sit for a moment?” Mami asked, patting her hair.
Octavio and I plopped awkwardly down on the stoop in front of her.
“We won Second Prize, Mami,” I announced, handing her the Certificat.
Though it was printed in French, she studied it closely. “Very good,” she said, smiling at Octavio. “Did you win too?”
Octavio flashed me an amused look, then returned her smile. “Same thing, señora.”
With the ice broken, interrogation began. Mami asked where Octavio lived, how long ago his family had left Cuba, what his parents did for work, and basically circled the wagons to determine whether he came from gente decente.
My father must have heard our voices, because he shuffled out in his slippers and mad scientist hair.
Feeling rattled, I stood up and dusted my bottom.
Octavio stood too. Politely, he extended his hand to introduce himself again, but before he could get any words out, my father loudly inquired, “¿Quién es este hombre?”
Octavio glanced at me and promptly announced, “Octavio Rodríguez Pereira, señor,” like a soldier reporting for duty.
“What are you doing here?” my father demanded to know in an even louder tone.
I threw a fearful look at my mother: What had happened with the Dalmane pills?
“I gave Gabriela a ride home,” Octavio explained innocently.
“Mi’jo,” Mami interrupted, as she rose to her feet. “This young man brought Gabriela back from a school program.”
“Who gave him permission?” my father shouted, like a oneman holy war.
He made me ashamed, as if I’d come home compromised or something. But when Octavio threw me a what’s-going-on look, I only widened my eyes in warning.
“She had to travel there somehow, mi’jo,” Mami explained, as if reason could go it mano a mano with my father. “There’s no bus.” Lightly, she pressed my father’s arm and tried to encourage him toward the front door.
“¿Este carajito?” he shouted, his vein popping as he gesticulated at Octavio.
Oh my God, I moaned silently, now he’s calling Octavio a shit! Why wasn’t the sleeping pill working?
Mami pressed firmly on my father’s arm. “Vamos p’adentro, mi’jo,” she urged intently. “Por favor.”
Snapping into action, I murmured, “Time to go,” and pushed Octavio in the opposite direction. While my father continued to curse and threaten in Spanish, Mami navigated him indoors.
When Octavio and I were safely at his car, I apologized profusely. “I’m so sorry. Really, really sorry.”
With a thoughtful expression, Octavio fiddled in his pocket for his keys. “Um, that’s okay, Gab, but—” He glanced at the door my parents had left ajar, then looked me in the eye. “What’s with your father?”
“It’s a long story,” I answered, evading his eyes. “I can’t really talk now. Thanks so much for the ride, though.” As I turned and ran toward the house, my humiliation spread. What on earth would I do now? Save that one drunken outburst in front of Olguita and Camila, and some sanitized complaints I’d made to Lydia, I’d never told people outside my family about Papi’s condition. I’d observed Mami’s golden rule: silence. Only now, I realized, I believed in the rule too. I didn’t want people to know what kind of family I had!
In my room, after quickly packing away the French victory remnants and then changing my outfit, I sat completely distraught before a homework assignment. Could it be that everything we’d been doing to control my father—isolating him from strangers, molly-coddling his delusions, and even the sleeping pills—still wasn’t enough?
Mami walked in, interrupting my private panic attack, to tell me that she was going over to Camila’s.
I couldn’t help but blurt out, “I told you it wasn’t over! Those pills aren’t a cure. He’s going to get in trouble all over again!”
“He will certainly not!” she retorted, though she glanced quickly away as if I’d caught her in something.
I considered my words and then said in a very measured tone, “El Chino told me that if Papi did get into more trouble, we wouldn’t all have to go.”
She stared at me. “What?”
“Just because he got deported,” I elaborated carefully, “doesn’t mean we would all have to leave.”
Mami went pin-drop still.
Dropping my eyes to the notebook in front of me, I nonchalantly turned to a blank page and initialed a Jesus-Mary-Joseph logo at the top, then began drawing a circle around it like we used to do in Catholic school.
I sensed my mother slowly walk toward me and stop, standing over me until I looked up.
“I would never leave your father alone,” she declared proudly, drawing herself to full height. “Or you either. That’s one thing those people who do things ‘differently’ here would never appreciate.” With that, she trounced out of the room.
I kept on tracing over the JMJ logo until it became a blue-black oval that threatened to rip through the paper. Other letters began to spell themselves out of my pen into a word El Chino had once tossed out casually. E-M-A-N-C-I-P-A-T-I-O-N, the legal form of F-R-E-E-D-O-M.
L-I-B-E-R-T-É.
On Sunday after Mass, I typed edgily for my father, who’d conveniently forgotten his fundamentalist ravi
ngs at Octavio and had returned to more relaxed displays of lunacy. In between agitating over what had gone wrong with his sleeping pill, I obsessed over what I would say to Octavio when Monday came around.
The only thing I could think to do, though, was avoid him. Too humiliated for a direct encounter in French class, I went to the nurse’s office in the morning with fake cramps. At lunch I sat with hippie girls he didn’t know. Then that night, I gratefully welcomed a diversion from all my dilemmas when Fátima and her friend Amy invited me to my first football game.
On the tallest bleachers where Fátima and I sat, my illuminated patch of reality seemed to diverge from the dark beyond, as if I were alone on a special raft in space. The light scattered the air around my raft like lovely particles whose names I’d paid scant attention to in Biology. It was so much better not to know how things worked, I felt suddenly, with a pang of sympathy for those poor scientists we’d read about who’d had to give up their Spontaneous Regeneration theory when they found out that life couldn’t appear just like that, out of rot. I sighed, and when Fátima’s parents arrived to pick us up, I left the illuminated city of football behind for good.
The following day I tried to slide casually into my seat in French class. Madame Imbert had brought a bottle of fake champagne, and she began passing out paper cups of it along with pain de chocolat to celebrate our victoire mervellieuse. Octavio kept shooting me pointed looks I tried to ignore.
After class, he caught up with me at my locker. “Why aren’t you talking to me, Gabi?” he demanded to know. “And why did your father throw me out of your house?”
I shut the locker tight. “Look,” I said. “He has these nervios—”
“Come on, Gabriela. Tell me the truth.”
The truth. I opened my mouth, closed it, then slid to the floor and buried my face in my hands.
Octavio joined me, his legs crossed, on the floor. “What’s the deal, Gabi?”
A part of me wanted to cry and another to laugh in helpless embarrassment. How could I tell a coherent story about my father? “Ay Octavio, I’m so humiliated at the way he treated you!” I burst out. Then, taking a deep breath, I started letting everything spill out. The temper tantrums at the lady in the tailor shop and at any sexy embraces on TV. Our legal problems and the whole green card saga. The puzzles and encyclopedia articles and my endless typing.