by Samuel Park
“Why’re you so upset, Mommy? Did something go wrong today?” I asked, softly.
She took a deep breath and buried her face in her hands.
“He didn’t believe me,” she muttered into her palms. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to herself. “He didn’t believe me at all. He was so dismissive. He said I was just a troublemaker making things up. I am not a bad actress. I’m really not.”
I leaned my head against her shoulder, trying to comfort her. “I know, Mommy, I know.”
“He kicked me out of his office as if I was nobody. I’ve never been more humiliated in my life.” She moved her hand away from her face, and I could see that she was crying. “I’ve never met anyone so cold. Like he didn’t think I deserved to breathe the same air as him. He made me feel so small.”
I hated this man that I’d never met. I kept trying in vain to comfort my mother, running my fingers along her bare arm.
“Do we have any passion fruit juice left?” she asked, wiping the tears from her face. She gave me a weak smile.
I rose to check. We took turns being each other’s caregiver. In the kitchen, I did not turn on the light. We couldn’t separate the light from the hotness, and we didn’t need any more hotness in Rio. In the dark, I opened the refrigerator door, revealing a lonely, single potato, and a half-sliced onion. The jar of juice sat empty, just some seeds at the bottom. I was about to return empty-handed when I heard the sound of aggressive knocking. I heard her open the door, heard the unmistakable voices of the rebels.
I sat down backward on one of the metal dining chairs, doing a bad job of hiding. I was convinced they couldn’t see me, as though being in the dark and being invisible were the same thing.
“What happened today?” someone demanded gruffly. Pacifier.
My mother ignored him, and directed her anger toward the others. “What’re you doing in my apartment? I never said you could turn my home into a meeting place for troublemakers!”
“He didn’t believe you, did he? That’s why he wouldn’t leave his post.” Octopus. He seemed strangely, unexpectedly calm. As though he didn’t believe in wasting emotions as powerful as rage.
Her silence contained her answer. One of Octopus’s men walked to the window and closed the shutters, acknowledging me in the kitchen with a sharp glance and nothing more. While he did so, another man turned off the overheard fluorescent, leaving only the small bulb by my mother’s face.
“Why would he believe me? I’m a stranger off the street. Your plan was a piece of shit,” said my mother. She never cursed around me.
Pacifier started pacing around the room. “What did you say to him? Repeat, word for word.”
“Like we rehearsed,” said my mother, shrugging. “But he wouldn’t come with me. He said he’d send an officer with me, and I said, no, I didn’t trust anyone but the Police Chief. I said it clearly, if he wanted me to lead him to the group, he had to come with me.”
I peeked out from behind the darkness of the kitchen. Everyone stood around my mother—Octopus, Pacifier, La Bardot, and a few men I maybe recognized from the compound. My mother sat on the sofa by herself, her hands on her lap, her fingers interlaced. I saw her glance toward the kitchen, as though looking for my unnoticed self. What did she want me to do? Run out the back door? Or stay where I was? Take note of what they were saying?
“It’s very difficult to know what to do next when all we have is Ana’s account,” said Octopus, somberly. “We weren’t there, so we don’t know exactly what he said, or what shades of meaning Ana missed.” Octopus turned to my mother, apologetically. “I’m not saying you’re holding anything back, only that it’s hard to rely on a single account. The bottom line is, we were too optimistic. We’re going to have to give him some proof that Ana’s information is reliable.”
“I’m not returning to that station. I gave it my best shot,” she said.
“Really? Then give us back the portion of the money we already gave you,” barked Pacifier.
My mother scowled.
Octopus shook his head. “Regardless of what happens, that money is hers to keep. For her work so far. We’re not taking anything back.”
Pacifier rolled his eyes skyward, shaking his head. “You are part of our group now. That means if they find out about you and catch you, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.” He walked away from my mother, only to walk back to her with more urgency, even pointing a finger at her. “You’re going to need us to protect you. You want to stay on our good side.”
“I’m not part of your group,” my mother replied, gazing at each and every one of them. “I don’t care if this country’s governed by saints or sons of bitches! I’m not an idealist spoiled brat like all of you. I’m a pragmatist. If I don’t put food on the table for my daughter, who will?”
Pacifier crossed his arms and scoffed. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the government should put food on the table? And not just feed your daughter when times are hard, but give her a good education as well? I’m amazed at how apolitical you are.” He threw his arms in the air, in frustration.
My mother recoiled. I could tell she did not like Pacifier at all at that moment.
“No one else is going to help us,” Pacifier continued, his hands shaking a little. “Not the church, not the bourgeoisie. Certainly not the Americans. Who got us in this trouble in the first place, when they let those pigs remove our president.”
The mention of Americans seemed to make La Bardot’s blood boil. “Don’t get me started on them. They had ships waiting in Santos to invade in case we resisted the coup. The Americans said Goulart was a communist. He was not a communist! He was a man of the people, the only one who could start land reform. Their President Johnson was so afraid of any hint of communism that he gave our country to the wolves.”
“And you, Ana, you go through life with your eyes closed,” said Pacifier.
“Do I? Or maybe I’m just not an extremist,” my mother spat back.
“No one questions the diligence of an ambitious person who’ll do anything for money. Or for sex,” Pacifier protested. “But devote yourself to the good of the country and you’re some kind of extremist.” He turned to the others expecting their agreement. “Sometimes I wonder if the problem with this country is not the people on either side. It’s the ones sitting on the sidelines.” He turned back to my mother, nearly fuming.
Octopus rested a hand on his shoulder. He sat down next to my mother. I feared he might admonish her, too, but instead he said, gently, “Our friends need you.”
“Your friends in jail? Are you sure they don’t belong there?” asked my mother. “I’d like to know what they did to get arrested.”
La Bardot sat on my mother’s other side, almost a mirror image of Octopus. Her long legs were covered with yellow Lurex socks, and she wore high-heeled sandals. I watched as she laid a hand on my mother’s arm. “Do you know what the Police Chief is doing to them? The techniques he uses? He strips them naked and hangs them upside down on a stick, their wrists tied to their ankles. Or he ties them down in the dragon’s chair, a metal chair with a strip of wood holding their feet back. He gives them electric shocks that make one half of the body go in one direction, the other half in the opposite one.”
My mother looked away. La Bardot’s words hung heavy in the air, as if Lima and his victims were right there in the room, gazing, listening.
“Police Chief Lima is the worst kind of devil,” La Bardot continued. “He will torture even a pregnant woman, and treat it like it’s all in a day’s work. ‘I’ll be home soon, honey,’ ” La Bardot mimicked him, adopting the voice of a tenor. “ ‘I just have one more to go. And oh, did you get the blood off my shirts like I asked?’ ”
My mother shook her head and put her hand up between La Bardot and her. “It’s not my fault. It’s not my responsibility.”
Octopus picked up where La Bardot had left off. “You’re going to go back tomorrow. This time, you’ll share
a piece of information with Lima that will check out. That will earn his trust. That will turn you into a valuable source.”
And then: “We will pay you more,” Octopus said simply. “Because it’ll take up more of your time, we will pay you more.”
“My time,” she muttered. My mother shook her head, then suddenly got up. I could tell she’d changed her mind the instant he mentioned more money, but she paced for a few seconds, making it look as though she were struggling with her decision. Finally, she said, adopting the exaggerated resignation of a martyr, “I’ll go back to Chief Lima and finish this job. But let me make it clear. I’m not doing this to help your fantasy that you’re changing the world for the better. That’s arrogance. Delusion.”
Octopus took her hand into his, and stared straight into her eyes, as though about to tell her that he loved her. “You go and warn him of the explosion. Once it actually happens, he won’t think of you as just some woman off the street. He’ll think of you as a valuable person.”
And like that, suddenly, they were gone, and when I blinked, I felt like it was the first time I’d blinked since their arrival.
After my mother shut the door on them, she reopened the window and our apartment was once again filled with the noise of the traffic outside, the heat of Rio at the height of the summer. She then came to the kitchen and walked past me. I remembered she had asked for passion fruit juice, and now she would see for herself that we didn’t have any.
My mother left the fridge door open, after seeing that no juice had miraculously appeared, and we could feel its last remaining breaths of coolness. The bulb inside went off, but she did not turn on the kitchen fluorescent, so all we had was a bit of light from the living room lamp. When it got too hot, we often avoided turning on lights, remaining in the dark.
My mother wrapped her damp arms around me, and kissed the top of my head. “You did very well, remaining so quiet.”
I felt like she’d given me permission to acknowledge what had just happened with those invaders. If she hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to tell her what was knocking about in my heart. “You don’t need to help them.”
“It’s all right. This will be over soon,” she said, playing with my hair, digging her finger deep into the clumps and strands along the curvature of my head. “With the money we make, I’m going to be able to buy you some chocolate yogurt and flan. Rice pudding. I’m going to get myself a perm done by a professional, and a dress made out of silk. Maybe we’ll go on a trip, even. Somewhere nice and cool.”
“Mom,” I said forcefully, to break her out of her reverie. “You can’t do this. If something happens to you, who’s going to take care of me?”
“Nothing bad is going to happen to me,” said my mother, growing irritable. “I wouldn’t take the risk if I thought something might. I know how important I am. I’m your mother and your father. I am all your aunts and uncles, your grandmas and grandpas.”
I pressed my head against her chest, letting her envelop me. I put my arms around her waist. I stared at the empty, darkened refrigerator, looking so unfamiliar without its usual hum, its usual might.
“You think I don’t know my responsibility to you?” she clucked. “I’m the one who made it clear to your dad that he was to stay away from us. I made sure he’ll never come back south. I made you just one parent away from being an orphan.”
“Was that my dad? On the bus?” I asked my mother. Not being able to see her, only feel her, made it easier to ask such a question. Sometimes it helps when a person is not a person, and just a presence.
“What? When?” my mother asked, startled, letting go of me.
“On the bus. During Carnaval. When we were with Janete. You made us leave.”
She was silent, and when I turned to her my mother twisted her face in a way I hardly ever saw, her face replaced by a stranger’s.
“That wasn’t your father,” my mother said, but the way she had transformed so wholly told me she was lying. “That was the butcher. I owe him for my tab. I wasn’t going to let him confront me in public. And that’s a lesson to you. You never, ever let someone humiliate you in public. There’s no shame in being short on cash, especially if you’re an honest person.”
That had been my father. Now he knew my mother wanted nothing to do with him, and he’d board a bus back to wherever he came from, probably the Northeast where she met him. Her action, taken out of impulse, had permanent consequences. Intenwtionally or not, my mother had made it so it was just the two of us. I felt her irreplaceability fill me, overwhelm me.
How could I convince her to stay home the next few days?
Even if I could think of a way to convince her, it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have stopped her. She was a river, and I was just the boat careening from side to side.
chapter five
I’D NEVER BEEN INSIDE A police station before. it was packed with people fidgeting. No one could stay still, not the criminals, not the officers. The chairs were made of the flimsiest, cheapest black plastic, as though the plan was to throw everything into the trash at the end of the day. There were rows and rows of binders, and giant typewriters that made weird staccato music.
The main room, where we were, had an open layout, so you could see everyone from every corner. Against the wall there were private offices, with windows, some with the blinds drawn. A hallway led into a group of cells filled with prisoners from wall to wall. Then there was a door that read Selected Personnel Only, and occasionally a sweaty, tired-looking officer came out. I noticed the door had the same kind of soundproofing I’d seen in my mother’s dubbing booth.
My mother was waiting for Police Chief Lima to see her, and I was waiting for her to be done. I wanted to be on a playground, not in a police station. “It could be some time,” my mother said. “He’s a very busy man.”
Indeed, Lima was one of the most powerful men in Rio de Janeiro. He had been nicknamed Panopticon, due to his ability to keep tabs on everything and everyone. He was credited with coming up with one particularly creepy mode of modern surveillance: He enlisted retired public sector workers to stand by the windows of their apartments with binoculars and watch their neighbors across the street. He figured why not, since they stayed home most of the day anyway, and in Rio, it was too hot to keep the windows closed. The spies were supposed to report any suspicious activities, and the Department of Political and Social Order was able to get many helpful leads that way. It was rumored that torture was their preferred method of investigation.
Finally, an hour later, as a man emerged from an office, I saw my mother jump out of her seat.
“Chief Lima,” I heard her call for him, grabbing his attention.
He gestured for her to sit back down. We were lodged at a bench against the wall, and he sat down next to us. Chief Lima was the biggest man I’d ever seen—a tall giant, really. He must’ve weighed over two hundred pounds, and his body crowded the bench. He didn’t wear a uniform, like the others. Just a suit and a tie. He looked old enough to be a grandfather, but lacked the kind eyes those men always had on television. He scared me, right away.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than buzz around me, like a fly?” was the first thing he said to her.
My mother remained undaunted. “I’m trying to help you do your job, sir. I have information about the student terrorists.”
“You have nothing but delusions of grandeur, ma’am,” said Chief Lima dismissively.
My mother seemed offended by what he said and I could see her frustration ballooning inside her. It made me wonder if he was right—if my mother was there to make herself feel important.
“They’re going to cause an explosion in front of the American consulate this afternoon,” my mother said, with urgency.
“That makes no sense. There are a gazillion red-skinned agents guarding that place.”
“I’m telling you. I heard it with my own ears. My neighbor is a member of the guerrilla group. I to
ld you before, they gather there in the afternoons.”
Chief Lima glanced toward the cells in the back, distracted. I couldn’t see the prisoners being held there, but I could occasionally hear a yell, the clanking of metal bars.
“I already told you, next time you see them congregate, you give me a ring here, and I’ll send an officer to check it out.”
“No,” said my mother as she’d rehearsed, standing her ground. “I don’t trust your men. I only trust you.”
Chief Lima gave my mother a long, appraising look. “You know what I think?”
“What?” my mother asked, cautiously, fearing what he might say next.