Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  “Anoint me,” I told Cassandra in my bedroom, and she got Mamá’s special body cream and sat me under the moonlight and greased up my hair.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to say something.”

  “I know.” She pulled on my hair. “I was getting to it.”

  She hovered her hands over my hair heavy with cream and exclaimed, “Dominus, dominus, anno domini!”

  I felt a great chill pass through me, and I squirmed and sucked in air. Cassandra dropped her hands. “Okay, now you anoint me.”

  At Petrona’s Confirmation, the choir sang in Latin, the Father droned on about the same old stories, and then incense fogged up the domed ceiling—that’s when the children being confirmed were called to the front and the Father opened his arms and asked for all the kids to be possessed by spirits; some nice, like the Spirit of Wisdom and Intelligence, but some dubious, like the Spirit of Holy Fear. I widened my eyes as the Father sealed the dark ritual by dipping his fingers in a golden chalice, smearing holy oil on each kid’s forehead in the shape of a cross, saying to each one, Pax tecum.

  At home, I paid close attention to see how the spirits the Father had set on Petrona were changing her. What I noticed was that Petrona looked off in the distance for long minutes, and when I asked what was on her mind, it took her a while to respond. The worry lines on her face seemed somehow to be treading deeper into her bruised skin. When she finally told me what she supposedly was thinking about, it sounded like nonsense: “Just thinking I have to tell your mother to get more laundry soap,” or “Oh, just noticing that stain on the wall.”

  One day I asked her directly if she felt changed by the experience of being anointed. “Yes! Can you tell?”

  She was so excited I told her I could.

  “I feel…” she said. “I feel I am made of light.”

  I tilted my head. Maybe it was true. Here and there Petrona began to seem older to me. Maybe it was the dress. When Petrona put it on and breathed, I noticed she actually had breasts. It was impressive. White lace spread below her neck but at the bust white satin was cut in the top shape of a heart. She was impossibly peaceful and serene. But then I ran into Petrona in the hall, and saw there were bite marks on her hand. She had obviously bitten herself, and as I looked at her it seemed like it wasn’t the Spirit of Wisdom settling into her but the Spirit of Holy Fear.

  I began to see the Spirit of Holy Fear everywhere. It lived in my dreams, in the pipes that didn’t bring water to the house, in the television that showed me Pablo Escobar. It lived in the deep sound of electricity leaving our home—the sizzle static of the television, the humming of voltage through walls and floors and ceilings—ebbing, unwinding, pirouetting into silence. It lived in the quiet after the electricity was gone: the dog’s bark, a grasshopper’s song, the howling wind rustling the leaves of the Drunken Tree. It lived as some kind of imminent sense, some kind of dark wingspan that slowly advanced on our house.

  In the days after Petrona’s Confirmation, while we awaited the day of her Communion, everything was in disharmony, and things happened as if full of knots and misunderstandings, like the Spirit of Holy Fear was going around our house wreaking havoc. The Spirit made Mamá obsessive. In the dark she noticed Petrona’s elbows were dry. “Petrona, come here, you need some cream.”

  Papá was in turn more gentle, listening to every word we said as if putting his ear to the ground, trying to detect an oncoming train. But he was careless too, taking unnecessary risks. He drove too fast when he was home, and things that would have usually scared him, didn’t. We came to know, for example, that at the entrance of Papá’s site in San Juan de Rioseco somebody had spray-painted a wall with the words You are now entering FARC territory. Papá dismissed it as fake.

  Papá laughed at Cassandra and me. “Look at you—you’re as fearful as my workers.” He told us there was such a thing as common criminals, with no actual ties to guerrilla or paramilitary groups, who earned a living by impersonating those groups, kidnapping people, and demanding extortion money. Papá was sure this was what was happening in San Juan de Rioseco, because the usual signs of the militarized groups—random killings, rape, peasants forced to harvest drugs, people kicked off their land—were missing.

  Papá explained all this to his workers, but they were a gullible group, and now they were claiming to have seen the FARC patrol the edges of the oil site. “They hear the guerrillas this, the guerrillas that, then they see something, and they jump to conclusions. That’s called the power of suggestion. You would be amazed at what the mind makes up under those circumstances. See, I was there when they saw quote unquote the guerrillas. We were all standing by the drilling rig. Then, at the edge of the oil site where there was some fog we saw a group of men walking. Now, according to the workers, with their superhuman vision, they saw all kinds of impossible details—the men carried machine guns, they were wearing dark bandanas over their mouths, all kinds of details. Now, power of suggestion, right? But since I am a man with a clear mind, not prone to being tricked, both eyes wide open, I can tell you that the group of men we saw walking into the fog were not guerrillas at all.” Papá waited a moment for effect, then he added, “I think they were ghosts.”

  Papá said that the townspeople of San Juan de Rioseco had been seeing a particular group of ghosts that fit the description of what he had seen. Sightings dated back to the 1800s, when a group of Franciscan monks entered the mountains to look for a healing herb and were never heard from again. Sometimes the Franciscan ghosts showed up in full robes asking for a glass of water, and if you didn’t give it to them fast enough, they revealed to you their skeletal grin. Sometimes they were seen bending down talking to a child. But because they were Franciscan monks, nobody was really afraid of them, except for the women of the night, as Papá called them, because the Franciscan monks often hid those women’s shoes and purses when they were trying to leave their house for work. I said I thought the Franciscan ghosts sounded very nice. Maybe they would look after Papá. Cassandra told him to be careful.

  Papá had to leave on Saturday. He was missing Petrona’s Communion. Mamá said we needed the car, so he got Emilio to pick him up. It was late evening when Emilio arrived. He sat at the dining table stirring milk into a steaming cup of coffee—five times clockwise, twice counterclockwise. Seeing he was occupied, Cassandra and I went to explore his taxi. The vinyl seats were a symphony of smells—cigarettes and cologne and something astringent like rubbing alcohol. There was that little window, too, that had a tiny sliding door. Cassandra and I crawled all over Emilio’s seats, playing with the radio, counting his change. There was something about a taxi that was unlike any other place on earth. Even the trunk seemed like a new world. We took turns shutting each other inside. In the dark hollow, the curve of the spare wheel dug on my side. I lay there quietly until it felt like it was hard to breathe. I kicked on the trunk.

  Cassandra’s singsong voice came muffled: “I can’t hear you, Chula. What is that you said?”

  I kicked harder and screamed. I gasped for air, trying to calm down, but also feeling like I would suffocate; then the trunk door sprung open, slowly and with a wet sound. I saw the dusking blue of the sky and Cassandra in silhouette.

  When Papá left, Mamá walked upstairs, crisscrossing the beam of her flashlight to light our way. She told us we needed to go over some things for the next day for Petrona’s Communion. She told us we were going to Petrona’s house after the church, which meant we needed to wear hiking clothes. “But it’s a special occasion,” Cassandra said as we entered Mamá’s bedroom. “Don’t we get to wear anything nice?” Mamá ignored Cassandra and said that in addition, we had to wear our hair in a tight bun. I asked Mamá if I could put my hair in a ponytail since it was prettier, and Mamá said yes—if I wanted to give a criminal the opportunity of having a proper handle to pull me behind a bush with. “We’re going to an invasión,” Mamá added sternl
y. “You will both wear jeans, an old T-shirt, sneakers, and your hair in a tight bun—is that clear?”

  We said together, “Yes, Mamá.” I went to my room and lay on my bed. Through the night I dreamed of my hair in a ponytail dragging long behind me, a levitating knife coming down on it—the rope of my hair in dismembered sections marking the places I’d run.

  Petrona

  To protect my family, I dusted my knees. I brushed my hair. I hiked to the playground, past the bushes, up the mountain in search of the men who I knew congregated around a lit fire. I delivered myself to show I had no intention to betray them. I spoke over the noise of the fire. I can fix it.

  I said, Hit me as hard as you can.

  I said, If the family sees me beat up they’ll have me stay through weekends, and then I’ll be there every second, I’ll make sure the little girl doesn’t say anything.

  I said, I’ll do it, I’ll deliver what you want.

  Gorrión came from the shadow of the fire and put his arm around me. He called to the others, See? She’s a revolutionary through and through, my Petro.

  I did not consider myself part of them. I barely noticed as Gorrión told me I was doing the right thing, as he put his hand over my shoulder. All I could think of was he had called me Petro. I swirled in the past of my family calling me Petro, that last night, Umberto bashing his head against a tree, and then Gorrión was putting in front of me a teaspoon of gunpowder. Swallow it, it’ll give you courage. Little Ramón in his casket jumped to my mind, his hands perfumed with gunpowder, and I wondered if they had made him swallow gunpowder too. I hated Gorrión and hated the Santiagos too for not seeing what was happening to me, nobody there to pull me from this free fall and I put my mouth over the dust and then Gorrión gave me a bottle of aguardiente to chase it down with. Gorrión took away his arm from my shoulder and walked away into the shadows of the fire again, and I was afraid, and as the men descended on me like a pack of wolves, I held on to the only thing I had left—the sound of my pet name, the one from the time of before, Petro, how nice it sounded to my ears.

  20.

  The Dress and the Veil

  Petrona’s Communion was not as exciting as her Confirmation; the priest didn’t invoke any spirits and he was overall very tame. The boys and girls taking their First Communion (boys on the left, girls on the right) looked bored and fiddled with their starchy, never-to-be-worn-again clothes. Petrona was the tallest among the girls. They each held a long white candle that was lit halfway through the service. I was struggling to stay awake. It felt like I had only closed my eyes for a second when the congregation startled me in one booming voice, Deo gratias. I shot up. The pews where the Communion kids had been were empty. Mamá glared at me, and pulled me down to my seat. Cassandra was smirking. I spotted the Communion kids kneeling a line at the altar. The Father dragged the sleeves of his robe on the tiled floor, an altar boy in tow, and he turned and twisted, picking a holy wafer from a bowl and placing it directly on each kid’s tongue, then lowering a golden cup and giving each kid a sip.

  When it was over, the whole congregation rose to their feet and clapped.

  Outside Mamá gave flowers to Petrona. Petrona’s cheeks were flushed and there were sweat stains under her armpits. An old woman approached, dabbling a smudge of mascara. She wore a simple black dress, and as I stepped aside to let the old woman pass, I noted the silhouette of her waist broken by what must have been the tight elastic of her panty hose. The fat of her stomach bulged out under and over it. Petrona put an arm around her.

  “Señora Alma, girls—this is my mother, Doña Lucía.”

  I widened my eyes and felt my cheeks grow hot. I didn’t know Petrona’s mother would be in attendance—what if she had seen me sleeping? Petrona’s mother shook Mamá’s hand. “You can call me Lucía, I have heard so much about you.”

  “Where were you sitting, Doña Lucía?” I blurted, thinking that if she sat near the front or back left there was no way she could have seen me. She patted my head. “They have so many questions at that age.”

  Mamá drove us to Petrona’s house. Doña Lucía sat in the front passenger seat. She and Mamá were saying something but I couldn’t hear what because Cassandra had lowered her window. I was stuck in the backseat between Petrona’s dress and Cassandra. Petrona’s skirt rose in a tall cloud of shiny white and at the other side I was assaulted with wind. Petrona hugged the fluff of her skirt. “You’re going to see my home, are you excited?” I nodded. Petrona grinned from behind her white veil. The white veil cascaded down from her crown, which was made of small, fake white flowers and was secured with pins to her smooth, cropped hair.

  We got to the invasíon faster than I expected, and as Mamá slowed, Cassandra rolled up her window. Outside Petrona’s window was the blur of the orange mountain. “Where should I park?”

  “Anywhere,” Doña Lucía answered. Seeing Mamá hesistate, she said, “You don’t have to be nervous. I’ve talked personally to the community. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Mamá gave a nod but puckered her lips how she did when she was worried. We parked under a palm tree next to some trash bins. When I got out, the air was cool on my face. I had been looking forward to coming, but now that we were there, I couldn’t wait to leave. The hill looked deserted—not like there were no people around, but like there was someone lying in wait. I scanned the mountain for Petrona’s boyfriend. His afroed hair would make him easy to spot. If he were the threat, then we would have strategy on our side. But if he wasn’t, then I didn’t even know what to look for.

  Mamá dug in the trunk of the car for the box with food and used kitchen stuff we’d brought for Petrona and her family. Petrona was struggling in her cloud of lace and artificial silk, and Cassandra and I took her gloved hands and pulled. Then, Petrona held herself in space as Doña Lucía fussed about the skirt of her dress and Mamá came over to right the crown on Petrona’s head. Petrona stood contained in the white bell of her dress, smiling, knowing she looked pretty.

  Cassandra stared at Petrona’s shoes. Petrona’s shoes were old, scuffed, and peeling back in brown scratches all over the heels and toes. Petrona shifted and the tops of her shoes retreated and disappeared under the bell of her dress.

  We all turned to look to the tall hill. Orange air blew in sheets over the footpath that cut through the middle. There were thinner paths that sprang from it to the left and right. I wondered where they led. Far up, on a horizontal path that cut across the top of the hill, there was a horse advancing along with a rider. A person on foot was leading the horse. I couldn’t tell if the person leading the horse was a man or woman, but the person on the horse seemed like a child.

  I heard the beep of the car alarm and Mamá came to my side and leaned the box on her hip. Petrona balled up her skirt and hugged it to her chest, and then we followed after Doña Lucía, who led us to an opening between some rocks. Doña Lucía was wearing shoes with low heels. I stayed two steps behind her and as we climbed the dirt path up the tall hill, I expected her to wobble, but she didn’t. She was sure-footed and quick. There was nobody around. I guessed as long as we were with Doña Lucía and Petrona we were safe. I stared at the skin-color mesh of Doña Lucía’s pantyhose. There was a place at her heels that was rubbed red from her shoes. I looked over my shoulder to make sure we weren’t being followed. The orange hill sloped down, empty. Directly behind me, I saw some of Petrona’s dress had escaped her grip and was grazing the dirt. Behind Petrona was Cassandra, then Mamá, carrying the box, hoisting it against her hip. The path evened out, and when I lifted my eyes I saw we were on the first terrace of the hill, shacks packed as far as the eye could see, but also shacks ahead, climbing up the slope.

  We paused to catch our breath. Doña Lucía said she would go ahead and take care of a few things. Before we could respond, Doña Lucía speedwalked across the terrace and began to climb the next slope, getting a fo
othold on nonexistent stones, ascending like those were stairs she was climbing. Soon she was out of view. Petrona rubbed my back and smiled. “You’re safe here,” she said. “Here, I’ll go in front.” The tail of her dress slipped from her grasp and dragged on the sand and stones.

  I took deep breaths and looked around and tried to relax. I liked how the shacks were constructed out of random parts. Sheets of wood were made into doors, doors were walls, corroded advertisements were ceilings, plastic tarps were windows. Through the gaps I could see flashes of the lives inside. As the path snaked up the mountain, wherever rust ate through the metal, or a breeze lifted up sheets hanging at door and window frames, I saw—a woman’s sandaled foot pushing against the dirt to rock herself in a hammock, a man crouched before a fire on the ground, boys playing marbles, a dresser covered in the kind of vinyl paper Mamá used to line her kitchen drawers. “Chula,” Mamá called, “stay close.” She adjusted her grip on the box. I saw plenty of crucifixes too, worn and desolate, hanging from nails with string or twine or propped against walls or pots.

  Then Mamá, Cassandra, and I were bent down, holding on to rocks and trees. “My house is just at the top,” Petrona said. I looked up, but couldn’t see the top of the hill. I concentrated on the path, planning on where to place my feet and where to hold on in case I fell. I was wondering whether Petrona’s house would be made out of discarded metal or poured cement, when we came upon a boy slumped against a rock next to a plastic tarp held up by sticks. He was chewing on a dry piece of grass. My looking made him stir, but it was only when he spotted Petrona’s dress that he jumped up and followed us. “Petrona! You get married without telling me, you love me so little?”

  He looked at me briefly, then at Mamá, then turned to Petrona again. “At least let me take off the garter, you look so good all made up.” He glanced at her chest, then looked into her eyes. “You’re so well packed.” Petrona snarled. She was sweating. I saw that the gray of her bruises was beginning to mottle through her makeup. Petrona hastened her step. “It’s a First Communion dress, Julián, what a rotten little boy you are.”