Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  I imagined the dead girl just minutes before, sitting alive in the backseat of the car, her father leaning back, saying whispery, “This will only take a minute.” Opening the car door, swinging it shut. Then—

  Then the blast. Unhinging things. Sending each limb off into different directions, each part of her soaring away with car parts.

  “Could we drive to see it?” I asked.

  Mamá’s hand froze inside my hair. “Why?”

  Cassandra turned her head away from the television, with effort, and followed Mamá’s eyes to me. Petrona let the bedsheet drop out of her fist and it floated down and lay on top of the bed like a wrinkled hill.

  “Just to see,” I said. “I want to see how the street is.”

  “On a day like this, Chula, it is better to stay indoors, where no one can see you.”

  “But you just said when it’s time, it’s time. You said there’s no escaping death. So why not go see it? If it isn’t our day, nothing will happen, Mamá.”

  “You won’t die if it’s not your day, it’s true, but remember: curiosity killed the cat. You might end up paralytic. That’s what happens when you go looking for what you didn’t lose, Chula. Why go looking for trouble?”

  “It’s true, niña,” Petrona said. “Listen to your mother.”

  I let my head drop and thought of the dead girl’s leg wearing its red shoe. Of all the years of watching the news and all its images of death, this was the worst by far. The girl’s shoe, like my size shoe, glimmered in my mind. I blinked and saw it, glowing eerily, on the backs of my lids.

  * * *

  I really wanted to know what it was like to be dead but nobody would tell me.

  The only dead person I knew was Tío Pieto. One Christmas Tío Pieto was there, snoring in the folds of a hammock; the next Christmas Tío Pieto was gone. At the funeral the priest said Tío Pieto was still alive—we just couldn’t see him. Tío Pieto had been a drunk and he lived in Barrancabermeja, so we rarely saw him. Mamá said when you died, you became alive elsewhere, but your body was put underground. You stayed underground and the worms ate your skin and eyes, but left behind your hair, your nails, your teeth, and your bones. In the car ride to the hotel where we stayed the night, Papá said the opposite and told us nobody really knew what happened after you died. He said it was possible that you just stopped existing. You stopped having thoughts, you stopped feeling, you were erased off the earth, and others lived on without you.

  “But how?” I asked.

  “Look, it doesn’t matter, Chula. If you stop existing, you won’t have the presence of mind to know you’ve stopped existing.”

  Mamá said, “Stop teaching the girls Western philosophy, Antonio, you’re scaring them.”

  Papá shrugged his shoulders. “They’re going to know, they might as well know now.”

  In the car, Cassandra bit her nails and wiped them on the chest of her black dress. I stared at the lap of my own dress and imagined what ceasing to exist would be like. I held my breath and tried not to have thoughts. I stared at the shape of my thighs, past them into a yawning void of nothingness, where I was unthinking and breathless, nonexistent and nonfeeling. For a few seconds, I was a big roaring nothing. Then I gasped in air and sprang back into fearful, rushed thoughts about not existing. How horrible it was to die! I breathed in deeply and let the air out slowly. My heart was beating fast. Blood thumped into my fingers. I tried forgetting about death, but still I wondered, so I held my breath and tried again. I paid close attention to nothingness so that I would always remember—so that when the moment came, in the split second of my waning presence of mind, I could recognize what was happening to me. I went forth into my un-thoughts and back to my anxiety, on like that, until night fell and I slept in tired terror, tossing and turning in the strange bed of the hotel.

  Lala claimed to know somebody who had found the Purgatory Spot and had seen the Blessed Souls of Purgatory walking. If the Blessed Souls of Purgatory had been seen, it meant that Papá was wrong and Mamá was right, and you became alive elsewhere after you died. Of course, Lala could be lying.

  Mamá was right about us playing it safe. We could end up paralytic. It could’ve happened. It might have happened if we weren’t careful. There was a lot to lose. There was a lot to protect in life.

  When Petrona left and night came, we closed our curtains and shut our windows. Mamá got on a stool and tied some rope around an aloe plant living on a little clod of dirt and then hammered a nail into the ceiling. White powder floated down. Mamá hooked the end of the rope to the nail on the ceiling. “If you hang an aloe plant it will absorb all the bad energy that comes to your doorstep. When it falls rotten to the ground, that’s how you know it’s working.”

  I didn’t know that bad energy could come looking for you at your doorstep. I thought about this type of inhumane persecution as I stared up at the aloe plant, turning on its rope, twirling its spiky edges, animated by a ghost wind.

  Cassandra and I went early to bed. Mamá burned sage bundles at every doorstep of the house. She went around the house shuffling her feet and muttering things under her breath. She held the chains of her brass pot of incense and swung it just above her bare feet. It followed her turns and kept in rhythm with her muttered prayers. It trailed puffs of white, hazy smoke behind her that made our mouths taste like lavender. I stayed awake for some time, watching how the creamy smoke dispersed and fogged everything in the house, and I thought about Petrona, how she had nothing to lose and how she was not touched by the tragedy of the girl and her red shoe as Cassandra and I were. I thought about what she had said—that the girl with the red shoe didn’t even know she was dying—and how she had meant it as comfort, but how the thought only filled me with terror. Mamá’s prayers hung about me and I went to sleep.

  Petrona

  The thing is they found a boy’s body in the trees behind the playground. The encapotados said that’s a false positive, that’s the police taking our innocent people, and I shook little Ramón. Now you see why I say keep your distance? But little Ramón brushed my hands off and said I was of no use to him with my heart of a woman.

  When little Ramón disappeared, I cried behind the bushes by our hut.

  There was an old man in the Hills. We called him Abuelo Andrés, but he was nobody’s grandfather that we knew. Abuelo Andrés told me he saw little Ramón join up, that he was in the mountains receiving guerrilla training. Abuelo Andrés with his white stubble said nothing would happen to little Ramón there. Worry later, he said. Worry when he comes back.

  Since I had memory, our young boys had been leaving the Hills with nothing on their back but a shirt. They returned in jeeps, wearing leather jackets and nice Nike shoes. We knew they had been in the mountains, training. Then the Colombian army came and shot them. Or they left and never returned.

  * * *

  Once a young boy came home carrying a large television. I was not working for the Santiagos then, and little Ramón still listened to me. We saw the boy climb the path, bent backward bearing the weight of a brand-new television. It was tied up in a red bow and everything. Everybody in the Hills came out to watch. We followed as the little boy walked to his grandmother’s hut. The old woman came out and clapped her hands. Mi nieto, what’s this? What elegance! The boy set the television down on the dust. For you, Abuela, to thank you for all the hard work of raising me into the man I am today. The boy was barely fourteen. How many batteries does it take? the abuela said, and then some rowdy boys in the crowd whistled. Abuelita no tiene electricidad! I was afraid for the whistling boys. They didn’t realize who they were making fun of. The abuela pretended not to hear and told her grandson. Bring it in, mi’jito, you have made me proud. I have just the place: in the center of the living room. That way when the comadres come by and see what my big muchachito has brought home, they’ll be green with envy. Gracias, mi’jito, gracias.

&n
bsp; Little Ramón and I had laughed about it. But later Ramón said, I want to return home like that one day, and I had to slap the back of his head. Don’t you know that boy was guerrilla? I prayed for Ramón, there were so many things he did not understand.

  * * *

  Leticia consoled me when little Ramón left. She lived in a shack in the north end near the bottom of the hill. We sat on one flat rock that was near the road. Across the muddied street, people lived in actual buildings. Leticia rubbed my back. I cried into a handerkerchief. Ramón is a real bobo, doesn’t he know there are other ways to make money? Leticia shook her head, anchoring her eyes to the ground. Then she inched closer to me on the rock and dropped her voice. I know you said you don’t want to do what I do, but when your family’s hungry? Extra money is extra money. Maybe it’ll bring little Ramón back. And what’s the big deal, anyway? No one’s ever been caught.

  I thought about what Leticia had told me the day we were walking together in the neighborhood, Leticia showing me the money that was her payment for passing information: All you do is wait at a corner and pass an envelope to a man on a motorcycle, nothing to it, all of us girls do it. It was hard to believe that it was possible: triple what we were paid, just for handing on a piece of paper.

  I turned to Leticia, who was so close I smelled the scent of mangoes coming off her hair and the sour mustiness of her breath. Her brows were thin, drawn with a reddish color. Her hair was dark near her scalp and then blond. I inhaled. Leticia, you know, I am not the kind of girl to do anything illegal. She angled back to look at me. Perdón, but I am not that girl either.

  I thanked Leticia for watching out for me, but I wanted to do things as Papi would have done, and Papi would have not stood in the middle of the street delivering an envelope. Leticia shrugged. I am only trying to help you, Petrona. I patted her knee. Gracias, Leticia, gracias.

  * * *

  Mami said, What did I tell you, only women survive this. She begged me to look after the boys, but most of all, to take care with Aurora, our youngest. Mami was wheezing because it was cold that day, a light coat of dust on her cheeks, but still I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

  Mami was right. I had to protect Aurora. I ran to the playground and found little Aurora there, sitting on a patch of grass drawing in a notebook. I wanted to slap her, how could she be humming in the same place where the army shot that boy. The blood had drained into the dirt, but a few days ago, before he disappeared, little Ramón crouched before the stain, saying the dead boy was his friend, the Colombian army shot him and dragged him to the back of the hills and dressed him in fatigues, planted a gun in his arms, took photos so they could say he was guerrilla. I said, Why would the army do that, Ramón, don’t you see it’s all a story made up by the guerrillas to get new recruits? Ramón insisted the army really did kill innocent people and pass them off as guerrillas for bonuses and vacation. The Colombian army had killed his innocent friend, what more proof did I need? Those sons of bitches. He scoffed. Those are the people supposed to defend us.

  I wanted to drag little Aurora away from there by the hair, but when I got close I saw she was so thin, so little, and I draped my sweater on her. Don’t worry, Aurora. I gathered her to my chest. She tried to wriggle free, Petrona, what are you doing? but then she saw I was crying. Petrona, what’s wrong?

  I’ll get you out of this place. I looked at the dry earth, at the tall retaining wall built by the government for the rich people who lived on the other side, to keep them separate and away from us. The rich people who had so much money they had hired security and hired help. I closed my eyes and smelled the scent of Aurora’s hair, and tried to forget how I had lost Papi, then one brother, and another, now another. God help me we’ll all die in this hill, is there anything I can do to prevent it.

  6.

  Hola Padre, Hola Madre

  There was a flurry of preparations the day of Papá’s arrival. Fresh meat was bought and placed in the freezer, coffee was sent for, Papá’s aguardiente was replaced, his shirts were handwashed and refolded in his closet, the bookshelves were dusted, and Petrona was trained.

  Mamá and Petrona went over what Petrona was supposed to say and not supposed to say.

  “So if el Señor asks, Petrona, if there are any men that telephone the house when he’s away, what do you say?”

  “I say that I never answer the phone, Señora.”

  “And what if he says, ‘Well, what about the time I telephoned and you answered, Petrona?’ What do you say to that?”

  “I say that it was the one exception, Señora.”

  “Good. Petrona, and you remember: you listen to me. I’m the one who runs this house. El Señor, he knows nothing.”

  “Sí, Señora Alma.”

  Cassandra and I were excited to see Papá. We kept a lookout for Emilio’s taxi from the second floor window, knowing that’s who would give him a ride home. Emilio was Papá’s friend from high school. Emilio had a hooked nose and high arching eyebrows and garlic-rosemary breath. Mamá said Emilio and Papá had been communists together, but while Papá was no longer a communist, she thought Emilio still was. We could spot Emilio’s taxi from a distance because a small flag of Cuba unfurled in the wind from the hood antenna. Papá had once made Cassandra and me memorize all the flags of the world. He pointed at each flag with a pen. He tallied our points on a separate piece of paper, each flag worth one point except for the flag of Cuba, which was worth twenty. It was a full fifteen minutes before we spotted the taxi, but when we did we ran down to the door. In two seconds Emilio would pull up, Papá would open the cab door, walk to our front gate, and look up.

  When Papá came home from work, he often looked different. Once he wore thin silver glasses instead of his black-framed ones and his whole face was thrown off balance. Another time he arrived without his mustache, and there was nothing to justify his thick, black brows. He had looked like a stranger then, like somebody else’s father.

  When the cab pulled up, Papá stepped out and Emilio drove off honking a friendly goodbye. Papá opened the gate and walked toward the house. At the moment of lifting his eyes, his face lightened and he smiled brightly and said in English, “Oh, gad. Wat a welcome!” His tie was loose and the top buttons of his shirt were undone. He staggered up the stone steps, his face clumsy and slack.

  Cassandra said, “You smell like whiskey.”

  Papá said airplanes made him nervous, and bringing his face close to Cassandra’s he added, “That’s what the smell really is, Cassandra. It is fear.”

  Cassandra recoiled from him and Mamá appeared at the door. Mamá surrounded Papá’s waist with her arm. She stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss on his cheek: “Hola, Padre.” Papá smiled at her from his height and returned the salute: “Hola, Madre.”

  Hello, Father. Hello, Mother. It was a tradition that Papá said dated back to the grandparents of past generations. Husbands and wives had saluted each other just the same way and the salute had traveled down from generation to generation like an heirloom.

  At the door, Cassandra and I pulled on Papá’s sleeves and bounced in an orbit around him as he went up the stairs, down the hall, and into his bedroom, asking: “What did you bring us, Papá? What did you bring?” I wondered for a moment where Petrona was hiding. Then in the bedroom, Papá smiled and opened his bag. “All right, chicas, see if you can find them.” He lay down on the bed and rested his neck against the headboard.

  Inside his duffel bag, there were colorful barrettes for our hair hidden in the roselike pockets of his bunched up socks. Tucked in the white arms of his button-up shirts there were colored pencils, stickers, and gum erasers that smelled like grapes. We smelled the erasers, rubbed them, and pressed them on our cheeks. At the bottom there were two books of maps, one for Cassandra and the other one for me. They had raised, colored mountains and veined rivers that climbed the hills and the dips
of the paper.

  When we looked up, Papá was sleeping. We stood there looking at him until his head fell to the side but his glasses remained balanced on his nose.

  “Is he sick?” I asked.

  “He’s drunk,” Mamá said.

  Mamá said that Papá couldn’t drink at work, and he had so little self-control, he was so weak of spirit, he didn’t have the decency to wait and drink when he got home; he had to go and drink whiskey on the airplane.

  Petrona left at the end of her workday, looking relieved. Maybe she was glad she hadn’t met Papá, or maybe she was relieved she hadn’t had to lie on behalf of Mamá—I mean, I didn’t know if Petrona would be lying. Were there men that called the house while Cassandra and I were at school? I knew Mamá had many friends.

  That afternoon and evening swelled with Papá’s snoring. Even from the bedroom I shared with Cassandra I could hear him. When he inhaled there was a wheezing, choking sound, and then three consecutive, short snores, and then silence. Papá’s sleeping was a habit carefully teased and maintained by his work. The hours of sleep he knew were erratic and depended on the whims of the drill at the oil site, so he had learned to give himself to sleep entirely and quickly. When he slept it was as if a small death overcame his body, but his mind was alert and careful not to go too far away, just in case it was needed to share its expertise on drills, the trigonometry of its angles, or the landscape of the earth plates. But the snoring was always worse when he fell asleep drunk.

  Close to midnight Cassandra and I stood at the closed door of Papá and Mamá’s bedroom: “Mamá, we can’t sleep.” Mamá opened the door and turned on the nightstand lamp and the three of us hovered over Papá, watching him snore, trying to decide how to stop him. We moved his shoulders, stuffed pillows under his head, turned him over, plugged his nose, raised his feet, put pillows on his face, raised his arms, scissored his legs, covered his mouth, until finally Papá sat up with a bolt, looking at us in half terror.