by Iris Gomez
“Okay, I’ll come,” I told Claudio, wrapping a towel around my hips.
We walked with the sun behind us. Claudio didn’t have a shirt on and was burnt to a crisp like me. His hair was wet and curly at the neck, and he walked with sudden stops to study the landscape. He said his family came here often and that he liked this time best. “Where is your family?” he asked in Spanish.
“Home. My father isn’t feeling well. Besides, we don’t have a car.”
“It’s hard when your family has difficulties,” Claudio said sympathetically. He used the word “dificultades” as we did in my family—vaguely, so that problems serious or small could be included.
As he pondered the sky, the water, and a patch of pines we were passing, he stopped and pointed. “Look. Where the sunlight pulls away, it gives the world back its color.”
I looked and saw that he was right: The blues and pinks were more distinct without the afternoon glare.
“Did you like the sketch?” he asked suddenly.
“Well—” I studied the tranquil water. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “It was good. I just don’t like standing out so much, or people looking at me.”
“But your face is good, not imperfect like mine.”
I examined his face without knowing whether to contradict him or ask about the tiny black teardrop that ran down his iris.
“Es una pupila derramada,” a spilled pupil, Claudio explained with a gentle smile. He’d been born with it.
“Oh,” I said, nodding. “It’s not that noticeable.”
That wasn’t true, but he looked handsome anyway. The pupila derramada suited his quirky yet dignified personality.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “We are what we are. Do you remember La negrita cucurumbé?”
“Sure. My mother used to play those albums when we were kids. Isn’t that the one about the little black girl who goes to the sea?”
“Wishing she were white,” he added, then quoted, “como la espuma que tiene el mar.”
White like the foam of the sea. “Pretty,” I murmured, as we watched the blues deepen in the water.
Claudio recited a verse about the fish telling the negrita how pretty her face was. His voice was low and textured, making the words sound mournful instead of corny.
“She didn’t see her beauty; it appeared in another’s eye,” he concluded after he’d finished.
I had a feeling that he was complimenting me, but how conceited of me to think so. “That song always made me cry,” I said humbly.
“Me too,” he admitted.
The bands of blue water near the shore were nearly the same color now as the distant horizon, all the blues becoming one. I asked Claudio about other songs I distantly remembered from El rey de chocolate, and he resuscitated words I’d forgotten. Our childhoods in Colombia and Venezuela had followed the same coastline. As we walked back, it seemed that we’d traveled a long way together, our common history more solid than the bits and pieces of childish memory. The neon sun dipped slowly into the water, like the great criollo dream of a Gran Colombia.
Over breakfast the next morning, I tried to piece together in my memory Claudio’s sketch of me. With belated pleasure, I recalled the soft silver shadings he’d used, how they’d illuminated the portrait—as if some secret might be revealed if only you waited long enough.
Did I like Claudio? I wondered in a burst of surprise. There was a kind of gentility with which he always listened to others that suddenly made me hope he wouldn’t feel out of place with those cynical gringos I knew he would be joining at the Persona magazine. Claudio was so noble that thinking of him moved me to feel guilty about how much I’d ignored my poor father lately with fake library trip excuses while I gallivanted with David.
Contrite, I went to find my father, and he was so pleased at my unexpected offer to type that I felt a new kind of tenderness toward him. As we sat in the kitchen together, he pressed creases out of a letter so that I could read it better. How quiet he was then, the exact opposite of the Jehovah God looming over me whenever I kissed David or watched the fictional kisses on TV.
Around me, the kitchen had aged. Wallpaper was splattered with fried oil residue, and the dusty overhead light no longer shone brightly. I got the impression that I’d typed these pages of my father’s before, but I’d lost track of his latest petroleum theories. I didn’t begrudge him the work this time, though. Let him be, I told myself gently. He isn’t hurting anybody with his strange hieroglyphs.
And as he sat so childlike beside me, I remembered being a little girl myself, riding the bus back once from our first public library visit. He’d taken me there, to the nice part of Queens, one sunny morning. The library was bright and spacious, and he’d admitted with embarrassment that he’d never been inside a library before. At first, shyly, he’d waited in the doorway and watched mothers read to their children. Eventually, he took a seat while I walked among the shelves. There were so many books to choose from, and no one had told me that I could borrow more than one. The one I chose had a cover full of shining leaves in every green hue from emerald to sea. The leaves reminded me of the Río Magdalena, especially the part where the thickest trees had once enclosed my grandfather and me on a canoe trip. Through the leaf images, the feeling of the little girl in the canoe—that the green world ahead would stay good and beautiful forever—returned to me. Joyfully, I took my book to the librarian, but she informed me that she had to talk to my father about it.
“He doesn’t speak English,” I’d explained anxiously after I called him over.
“Tell your father I need to see his driver’s license, dear.”
My father had looked at me quizzically. Finally, he said—and I translated—that he didn’t have one.
“Does he have mail—a bill or something?”
My father emptied the scuffed brown wallet and his jacket pockets and waited for the librarian to poke around with her finger and tell him if anything in there was good enough. Finally, she found something that allowed us to borrow the book.
On the bus ride home, my father looked out the window and didn’t speak.
With a sorrow I hadn’t known before, I held my hopeful green book on my lap without opening it, my fingers folded tightly around the edge of something that I sensed I couldn’t hold.
That night, I said good-bye to such nostalgia.
Tía Rita had invited us over. “Put on something nice, please,” Mami urged, and I donned my lavender birthday outfit.
When we arrived, Manolo and Pablo—who’d decided they were too old to associate with the twelve-year-old twins—threw themselves, legs spread out, on a couch in front of the TV in my aunt’s new recreation room. Tía Rita cajoled Raquel into distracting the twins outside, and I helped her until I got fed up and went to see what my own brothers were doing.
In the recently paneled room, Tío Victor and Tío Lucho were standing on either side of my father, who frowned ominously at the dark television. Oh no, I thought, shooting a nervous look at my brothers sitting silently in the shadows.
“Heh heh,” Tío Lucho forced a laugh and patted my father’s shoulder. “We’ll have to get the government to hire you as their TV censor.”
Good, the blow-up happened already, I thought, sighing inwardly with relief.
“¡No seas estúpido!” my father exploded.
Or maybe not, I decided fearfully, turning to leave. What a shock it was to hear him call his older brother stupid. As I glanced back, I saw that trusty Tío Victor had a hand on my father’s arm, whose fists remained tightly clenched. My own hands felt shaky, like my current confidence in Dr. Sanabria’s sleeping pills.
“Man,” said Manolo, who’d clambered after me. “I told you those pills weren’t too good.”
“What pills?” Pablo asked as the three of us headed outside.
I frowned at Manolo. “Some medicine Mami gave Papi for his nervios,” I improvised quickly.
“What kind?” Pablo persisted.
“Go ask the old lady yourself,” Manolo blurted out.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned Pablo. “It was just something she was trying to see if he would feel better. But it might not be legal, so just keep it to yourself, okay?”
“Maybe we should score some,” Pablo laughed.
Rolling my eyes in exasperation, I left to find Raquel.
I went to speak to Mami alone when we got home. Tiredly, she shared Tío Victor’s latest proposal for dealing with my father. Tío had suggested we choose a good day to double-dose my father with the Dalmane and then telephone my uncle to come over on some driving pretext, only he would take my father to a doctor instead.
Mami admitted that she was worried about what would happen after my father returned home if the doctor didn’t do anything.
She had a point. What if my father reacted badly to her betrayal? If the sleeping pill really wasn’t strong enough, who would survive that volcano? Still, we had to do something.
“Why don’t you get Camila’s advice?” I urged anxiously. “She’s got so much experience with doctors, especially now with Hernán in the hospital.”
No, she concluded, she would sort things out and decide.
I opened my mouth to plead with her, but the expression in her eyes revealed that maybe she hadn’t fully confided everything to Camila either.
“Rita’s checking the dosage,” Mami added reassuringly.
I tried to reassure myself, too, that my father’s blow up hadn’t been that unusual, except for his turning on my uncle a little harshly. But when I heard Mami officially decline my uncle’s proposal, on the phone with Tía Rita later that night, I felt deflated. “Roberto will have to go to a doctor eventually,” Mami rationalized over the phone. “He’s got that gall bladder problem.”
For a few days, I couldn’t shake a feeling of doom that we were living in purgatory, waiting for my father to commit the act that would start the cycle of criminal and deportation threats all over again. I was so weary of worrying about what could happen. Wistfully, I wished I belonged with the nuns who cared for one another in the convents of the world. Or the socialist kibbutzim David praised, in which everyone seemed to be cared for too. Wasn’t there some place out there for me?
I was more than ready to be cheered up by the time David pulled up to our meeting spot that week. “Al parque, niña?” he greeted me.
I smiled back and hopped in. “Yes, please, the park. Me encantaría.”
“ Encantar. I remember that—enchant! I gotta ask you something, though. Why are guys in Spanish textbooks always named Esteban? I had three different books with that guy’s name in them.”
I giggled as he drove off toward our day’s adventure, a rendezvous at the house on Alameda Avenue where he’d been staying. His aunt and uncle had apparently gone AWOL for the week. We stopped at a park to get high beforehand so that their cleaning lady wouldn’t detect any mischief. As we sat on a log together, David lit up and talked music, and I shared Pablo’s dream of turning primitive cello sounds into groovy rock ’n’ roll. That got a laugh. “Yeah, maybe I’ll learn to play Israeli folk instruments,” David ruminated, “maybe accordion.”
“We have those,” I said, explaining cumbia and vallenato music.
“I’d love to check out South America,” he said, smoking. “Machu Picchu, Patagonia. And after that, maybe the Seven Wonders. I wonder which are left?” While he thought it over, possibilities flew around tempting him.
“The Pyramids,” I replied authoritatively, taking a small toke when he offered the joint. His ruminating made me wish I could jump up and seize one of the winged possibilities for me. “What about sailing the Nile on a barge?” I proposed enthusiastically, as if we might go together.
He laughed. “Yeah, guess I better make more dough before the kibbutz.”
The wings of possibility flew away, dropping me precipitously into the cage of my life.
Abruptly, I asked him what he was really going to do with his life.
“It’s too much work, figuring that out,” he said, smiling and offering me the joint again.
I shook my head, refusing. “Maybe you could start by ruling out what you don’t want to do,” I encouraged.
“Well, I don’t want to work all the time like my father. I don’t want—”
“David, that’s not what I meant,” I interrupted.
“Tell me what you want to be. Maybe that’ll inspire me.” He put the roach away and, folding his hands like an altar boy, scuttled close to me on the log. “Shoot.”
“Okay. I guess I wouldn’t mind being a history professor, or maybe do what the lady I babysit for does. Write books. But I’m not sure how you get a job with that, I mean that you can live on. I know the things I don’t want to be.”
“Let me guess.” He fiddled with my blouse. “A doctor?”
“How’d you guess?”
“You hate science.”
“That’s true.” I closed my eyes and let him slide his hand up my belly. “What I would really hate to be is a petrochemical plant worker.” Firmly I took David’s still climbing hand out of my blouse and gave him a Fernandita-to-El-Loco look. “How about you now?” I demanded.
He leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “Do you want to be a nun?”
I whispered in his, “Do you want to be Leonard Cohen?”
He laughed out loud.
“You shouldn’t take your luck for granted, David. You have so many choices. Nothing’s stopping you from choosing.”
“Sure it is. I want to be here now. In the moment. My parents say I have to be productive.”
All his freedom was pretty invisible to him, and I felt the tiniest bit mad. But something compelled me to him anyway, very physically.
Afterward, we drove to the house, which was large and shaded by ficus and palm trees. Inside, the temperature was cool, but David jacked up the air-conditioning to the max, then poured us beers in two refrigerated glasses and showed me his room. He put on a Moody Blues record I liked and, as we drank the beers, I began to relax out of my own moody blues. Eventually, we climbed into the twin bed and had fun rubbing each others’ bodies for warmth under the blankets until I nervously pushed him off.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, scrunching one eye open to appraise me.
“I’m not that used to this,” I admitted.
He slid back over me with a smile. “You get more used to it with practice.”
I had to grin back, though I couldn’t help hearing that stupid song, “Me vuelvo loca,” in my head. Did people actually go crazy with love? Was that what love was supposed to be? Crazy? Shutting my eyes tightly against all that, I let myself float back into the warm bay waters of kissing, and then David removed his T-shirt and pulled me close. “Come on, Lita,” he whispered, partially unzipping my jeans, “just a little.” I cracked up trying to zip them back up, because my pants were too tight and I couldn’t do it with one hand. Laughing too, he unzipped his own pants and took them off, then started roaming around in his underwear and slid a hand down mine. That instantly shot the crazy-in-love feeling straight into my blood. But I didn’t want to be crazy—not even for love. Panicking, I rolled myself into a blanket and dropped to the floor. “Cut that out,” I said furiously.
“Come on,” he coaxed, his nearly naked body outstretched. “It’s not even fucking.”
My heart pounded madly at the sound of the word, and I scrambled to my feet, but David grabbed my leg and tripped me back down beside him. “What’s the deal with you?”
I started to cry.
“Oh man, oh shit, Lita. Don’t cry.” He pulled me into a hug. “It’s okay,” he said. “I just don’t get you.” With a sigh, he clambered out of the bed. “Let’s just get outta here. Help me find my sneakers, okay?”
It ended so weirdly, and I felt so guilty, but I had no choice.
The really bad feelings didn’t start until he’d dropped me off and I wa
s alone again, walking home. Suddenly, I was scared that David would dump me, but I grew even more afraid of my own body betraying me in some vague way, as I always feared my thoughts would. What was craziness anyway? That darkness took hold as I opened the door of my house and went inside.
“Mami’s been calling you all afternoon,” Pablo alerted me. “She’s at Camila’s. You better go over there. Hernán died.”
[ TWENTY ]
ADEFEATED-LOOKING CAMILA WAS RESTING in an armchair while relatives scattered around coddling her and assuming responsibility for things like checking with Pan Am about her son’s flight. As I stepped up to tell her how sorry I was about Hernán, she smiled kindly and took my hand, then said what a good girl I was and how they’d always wanted a daughter like me.
I blinked back tears as Mami smiled in gratitude and led me away toward the master bedroom, where Lara was chatting with the nail lady from a hair salon where I’d delivered many an Avon package. Both of them were charitably gathering Hernán’s old clothing for the St. Stephen’s donation bin, but one glimpse at the neatly folded male apparel on the bed made me teary again. Lara stopped what she was doing to come hug me, and Mami patted my arm comfortingly as she handed me a plastic bag to start loading clothes.
“Many hands make light work, ah?” said Lara, simulating cheer. She was the only one of the three who looked herself in her black outfit, maybe because it went better with her salt-and-pepper hair. Zoila, the nail lady, and Mami seemed a little washed-out, especially Mami, who must have been crying with Camila and had to wipe off her mascara.
I shook my plastic bag open. “How come Camila and Hernán didn’t have another kid, Mami?” I asked thoughtfully.
“Oh, they tried, mi’ja,” she said ruefully, grabbing another shirt from the closet. “Believe me, they tried.”
Zoila clucked. “Por lo menos, the marriage lasted. Sometimes all that trying squeezes the zumo right out of a relationship.” She lifted her eyebrows knowingly at Lara.
Lara returned an amused smile and joked back, “Sometimes the zumo is just fine, but the orange is a problem.”